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By Gary Oswald. The 2020 hardcover edition; image courtesy Amazon. Literary genres are a funny thing. On the one hand they are essentially advertising, 'did you like this book? Well, it's a fantasy book and here are 200 more fantasy books, you'll like them too, please buy them'. On the other hand, it's kind of a reader's guide, telling you, the consumer, what to expect and how to engage with the text. I will react differently to the introduction of a dark handsome neighbour i

In May and June 1970, viewers of the BBC’s Doctor Who  were treated to an apocalyptic vision of a fascist Britain as Jon Pertwee’s Doctor crossed over in a parallel world. One where Britain was a fascist state that was risking its own destruction with an ill-conceived project unleashing energies from deep within the Earth with the power to transform men into monsters. Inferno fascinated viewers for more than a half-century and inspired speculation about what led that world t

By Ryan Fleming. The man himself. Public domain image courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Since its 1912 sinking, the Titanic  has loomed large in popular culture, including multiple films. When Alfred Hitchcock, another titanic figure, left the United Kingdom for the United States in the late 1930s, it was common knowledge that his first project would be a drama based on the sinking of the Titanic . For several reasons, that project wound up never happening and Hitchcock’s first Ame

By Charles E.P. Murphy In 2002, the "rage virus" swept through Britain; everyone infected went rabid and turned on the people around them. The world quarantined the nation and abandoned all who hadn't managed to flee. Twenty eight years later, the ageing Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), builder of a vast memorial hewn from human bones, makes a tentative contact with the Alpha infected he's dubbed 'Samson' (Chi Lewis-Parry). The young Spike (Alfie Williams), however, has met som

By Gary Oswald. So AH you can see an alternate version of it! Picture courtesy Amazon. Being enthusiasts of alternate history, everyone reading this is probably able to name an iconic piece of AH fiction in most formats. A book, a comic, a tv show, a video game etc. But it's maybe a little harder when it comes to motion pictures. There have obviously been a bunch of AH feature films but none have really been advertised as the big new AH media in the way TV shows like The Man

By Ryan Fleming. In no way mediocre! Special edition blu-ray, image courtesy Amazon. Mad Max: Fury Road was released in May 2015. It was the fourth film in the Mad Max  series, and the first without original leading man Mel Gibson. Though it saw disappointing returns as far as the studio was concerned, it received critical acclaim, received ten nominations at the Academy Awards and won six of them, was critically acclaimed, making multiple top ten films that year, and later

By Matthew Kresal. Cover courtesy Big Finish website. On the 27th of February 1985, Doctor Who was officially and quite publicly put on hiatus. The two years that followed were among the most dramatic in the series history, with an entire season worth of serials being scrapped in favor of an overarching narrative even before behind the scenes events played out in the public eye in fandom and the larger British press. Among the scripts for what could have been Colin Baker’s s

By Gary Oswald. Cover of the current UK e-book version, picture courtesy Amazon. The exact effect the smallpox epidemics had on the native populations of the New World is a deeply contentious historical argument. This is because there are no agreed upon population counts of how many Native Americans lived in the Americas prior to European contact in 1491. Alfred Kroeber suggested a number of around eight million people, Henry Dobyns however argued the number was above one hun

By Ryan Fleming. Not actually The Thief and the Cobbler, nor a family classic. DVD cover for the Arabian Knight edit (retitled) courtesy Amazon - could another world have an early 2000s DVD of the real thing? There are some films whose development hell has made them infamous, usually for ruining what could have been a good film. Then there are those whose development hell has made them legendary. We’ve touched upon a couple of these in this series already: A Confederacy of Du

By Matthew Kresal. Mention the title Flashpoint to a fan of DC Comics and you’ll get a flicker of recognition. It was the title, after all, of a 2011 crossover event that reshaped the DC universe prior to the launch of the New 52 with alternate versions of various characters. An arc that not only inspired an animated adaptation released two years later but also influenced story elements that appeared in both TV and films adaptations of the Flash (with decidedly mixed results

By Matthew Kresal. The Colin Baker era of Doctor Who , filled as it was with various trials and tribulations, left behind a plethora of unmade serials. Some were scripted for the originally planned season 23 before the series went on hiatus, only to be replaced by Trial of a Time Lord . Others were serials grandfathered into the era (such as  The Space Whale  aka   The Song of Megaptera ) or commissioned but never produced (such as The First Sontarans from Andrew Smith). Amon

By Owen Michael. Cover courtesy Amazon. The Art of Saving the World was a birthday gift from my younger sister, who (accurately) thought a fantasy story with an asexual heroine and heavily featuring alternate universes was a concept that would appeal to me. It's not quite alternate history as traditionally defined; only one alternate universe is depicted as having clear and major world differences, as opposed to clear differences for the main character and her family. But it

By Ryan Fleming. A famous Hollywood celebrity poses with his co-star Julie Adams. Image courtesy the FDA (who Adams autographed it for...

By Ryan Fleming. All Eyez on Me, Tupac Shakur's last album released while he was alive and shortly after he first wrote Live 2 Tell....

By Matthew Kresal. The Dark Planet cover, courtesy Big Finish Productions. Early 1960s Doctor Who is at times an extraordinary thing to...

By Colin Salt. Bruce Begins. 1974 hardcover, picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Of the theory that behind every great 1970s movie is a...

By Ryan Fleming. Release poster, image courtesy wikipedia. The notion of Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg collaborating on a film...

By Gary Oswald. A promotional image of the event; from the DHM website, copyright DWM & David von Becker. From December 2022 to January...

By Ryan Fleming and Charles E.P. Murphy In our world, this show does not exist - but in another world, you can find DVD boxsets right...

By Ryan Fleming. Cover courtesy Amazon. “Is Alternate History a genre or a setting” is an oft-debated topic in the genre (or the...