This week’s question comes via reader stucifer, who suggested it in response to a recent question*:
What is your favorite alternate / revisionist history lately? What about how this show/movie/etc reimagines, or ignores, the known historical record is compelling to you?
“What if the Nazis won World War II?” is a perennial favorite for those creating parallel timelines (hence my choice of illustration, from Prime Video’s The Man in the High Castle, which I’ve enjoyed in the past but am a season or two behind on). I haven’t seen it yet — it’s high on my to-watch list — but one of the reasons I’m intrigued by the premise of the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind is that it appears to explore an alternate history that is more positive than the one we live in: one in which the human adventure in space exploration, rather than one robots have gotten to have, continued on after the first moon landing.
As a big science-fiction geek, I love alt-history stories. But most of them seem to posit parallel timelines that are worse than ours. Much as I’m starting to wonder why we seem more drawn to dystopian storytelling rather than tales of a brighter future for ourselves, I despair that too many people, including those who trade in imagination, feel that it’s easier to envisage a worst past and present, too.
*In that question, I asked you what question (about movies, TV, pop culture in general) you would like to put to Flick Filosopher readers. Please keep dropping your questions here!
As soon as I saw your question, I immediately thought of “For All Mankind”. What an incredible show.