Quote:
Originally Posted by screwballl
Alternate history can also follow into the fantasy category, depending on how far off it goes. If it is something like including items that never were real like dragons controlled by modern computer chips, then yes it is "fantasy alternate history", otherwise it is just primarily alternate history using items and beings that were possible to exist in the real world, with a different timeline.
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I think that "alternate history" is its own genre; while I think it usually does have a sf framing device, it doesn't have to, and the book doesn't necessarily have to have any science-fiction-y or fantastic elements.
Although I think it practice the books are more similar to SF. A lot (but not all) of SF is really about the present, but extrapolated out into the future where certain technological or sociological changes have occurred, and part of the work looks at how these changes have or haven't transformed society.
Alternate history is like this, except instead of looking forward to a society transformed by technology or social change, it (sometimes) looks at how a society might be transformed by a different outcome to a historical event (i.e., Man in the High Castle). On other occasions, it will look to see how a past society might be changed by the introduction of modern technology or knowledge into the past). Those strike me as being more like sf than fantasy.