The 'Sidewise Award for Alternate History' winners list

I watched the movie “Inglorious Basterds” for the first time earlier this week, and I’ve been thinking it a lot ever since.

In most reviews, this movie is classified as a drama, thriller or war movie. It is all of those things, but first and foremost, in my opinion, it’s one of the best alternative history movies I’ve ever seen.

For those of you unfamiliar with this genre, alternative history is a genre of fiction (or film) in which stories take place in settings in which history has diverged from real events. These types of stories are well known for exploring “what ifs” at major turning points in history and give readers a different version of the resulting history.

The best example of this genre that I have ever read is the extremely entertaining book, “The Guns of the South” by alternative history master, Harry Turtledove. In this story, time travelers from the future visit Robert E. Lee and supply the Army of Northern Virginia with a trainload of AK-47s, which leads to a Confederate victory in the Civil War.

In “Inglorious Basterds,” (SPOILER ALERT) the good guys bring about the end of World War II by killing Adolph Hitler and a number of other high level Nazi leaders during a 1944 film premiere in Paris. Of course, we all know that the war didn’t end that way, and that’s where we get into the realm of alternative history.

I say all of this to say that yesterday I ran across a list of all of the books that have received the “Sidewise Award for Alternate History” over the years. This award was created in 1995 and is given in to the year’s best alternative history stories in two categories, Long Form and Short Form. Long Form winners are alternative history works of more than 60,000 words, and Short Form winners are less than 60,000 words. Most Long Form winners are either novels or a complete series of novels.

Today, I give you a complete list of all of the Long Form winners. Here they are:

1995 – “Pasquale’s Angel” by Paul J. McAuley
1996 – “Voyage” by Stephen Baxter
1997 – “How Few Remain” by Harry Turtledove
1998 – “Making History” by Stephen Fry
1999 – “Resurrection Day” by Brendan DuBois
2000 – “Ash: A Secret History” by Mary Gentle
2001 – “The Children’s War” by J.N. Stroyar
2002 (tie) – “Ruled Britannia” by Harry Turtledove and “The Severed Wing” by Martin J. Gidron
2003 – “Collaborator” by Murray Davies
2004 – “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth
2005 – “The Summer Isles” by Ian R. MacLeod
2006 – “The Family Trade,” “The Hidden Family” and “The Clan Corporate” (series) by Charles Stross
2007 – “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” by Michael Chabon
2008 – “The Dragon’s Nine Sons” by Chris Roberson
2009 – “1942” by Robert Conroy

A panel of six judges selects the Sidewise Award winners annually, and the membership of the panel changes from year to year. The current judges are Stephen Baxter of Great Britain; Stuart Shiffman of Seattle; Evelyn Leeper of Matawan, N.J.; Kurt Sidaway of Great Britain; Jim Rittenhouse of Lisle, Ill. and Steven Silver of Deerfield, Ill.

For more information about the Sidewise Awards, visit http://www.uchronia.net/sidewise/.

In the end, let me know if you’ve had a chance to read any of the Sidewise Award winners. What did you think about them? Which would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.