‘A Prophet Without Honor’ is subtitled ‘A Novel of Alternative History’ because there is no better genre description at present. But the book is actually a novel of what might be called ‘contrafactual history’. ‘Alternative history’ is exemplified by Philip Dick’s ‘Man in the High Castle’ and the Harry Turtledove novels. There are strong elements of science fiction and even fantasy in such books. Rooting the narrative into a probabalistic scenario that could have arisen from actual history is secondary.
‘Contrafactual history’ is developed on far narrower and more realistic premises. Philip Roth’s book ‘The Plot Against America’ is one such, as is Stephen Carter’s ‘The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln’. Roth’s contrafactual history is intended to show just how strong the isolationist elements were in United States politics before the Second World War. Carter shows off the complexity of post-Civil War politics. Both develop plausible scenarios out of the actual history of the period. Neither could be fairly characterized as science fiction or fantasy.
In ‘A Prophet Without Honor’, I hope to show how precarious and chance-ridden Hitler’s march to the abyss of the Second World War actually was. The dreadful course that history actually did take depended very much on personalities and the devil’s own good luck. Of course, the ultimate goal of any writer is to provide ‘a crackin’ good yarn’ and I hope and believe that the book as all the entertainment a reader could expect. But the book does have a serious grounding, a fairly solid base in actual Twentieth Century German history, and I hope the serious reader will enjoy it on that basis as well. It’s far more historical novel than historical fantasy
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