Most original AH you've read, seen or heard of ?

[Petike]

The thread is your's.

[trekchu]

I say Peshawar Lancers.

[Sachyriel]

Tutrledove's 'The Gladiator'... Communist Italy + Cross-time Travel + Tabletop Roleplaying Stores

[The Red]

Blasters of the Swiss is pretty original.

But if that count as ASB then id need to choose that story about Tsarist Russian forces fighting Indians in Alaska in the present day.

[General Mung Beans]

For Want of a Nail

[Polish Eagle]

Dunno. I'd have to say Ruled Brittania or Worldwar. A Spanish Britain or Aliens in World War 2. Peshawar Lancers was also very different. Maybe Curious Notions, because no mainstream AH writer before Turtledove wrote about German victory in World War 1, not that I've heard of. Everyone talks about WWII.

[MrP]

Originally Posted by Petike

The thread is your's.

Yours not your's, old boy.

[MacCaulay]

There was a short story that Nicholas A DiChario wrote called The Winterberry. Harry Turtledove selected it for his The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century.

It's from the point of view of John F. Kennedy, in 1971. He survived, but Oswald's bullet caused immeasurable brain damage. And it may be the only story that ever made me cry.

That one, and Mike Resnick's story Over There, about Teddy Roosevelt reforming the Rough Riders to go to World War I, and what he realizes about modern warfare there.

I would say that those two showed what alternate history can do to stretch the boundaries of how we perceive people. All to often, the genre can become wish fulfillment. And these two stories are almost the exact opposite of that.

The other story that showed what alternate history can do is Peshawar Lancers. S.M. Stirling managed to use AH to make an old-timey adventure story, which was something that can't be done nowadays. There's something liberating about reading a book with actual honest-to-God moustache-twirling villains. Harry Harrison did the same thing with his Stars and Stripes series, and I always thought people took those books in completely the wrong manner. Had they read them like they read Peshawar Lancers (as I believe they were meant to be read), then they would have had a fun time.

[Petike]

Originally Posted by MrP

Yours not your's, old boy.

Oops. Sorry about that.

Originally Posted by Ivan Druzhkov

Hey, past me, you forgot to mention Martin Gidron's The Severed Wing. It never guite explained the rational behind the existence of the alternate timeline, but that somehow just made that story all the sadder.

Wow... I read the synopsis. Now this one sounds like a really weird alternate history.

[Fenrir_Angerboda]

on the ASB/fictional universe AH, I'ld say Anno-Dracula is pretty orignal.

on the serious side, Ruled Britannia.