What would have happened if Pontius Pilate had pardoned Jesus ? If Hitler had been killed in a car accident in 1930 ? If Napoleon had won at Waterloo? World history would have been entirely different. Unlike other forms of literature of the imaginary, in which inventiveness knows no bounds, the aim of uchronic literature is to rewrite a probable history from the point at which what actually happened could have turned out differently.
As its founder, Charles Renouvier, expressed it, "uchrony" (consisting of the negative prefix u + chronos, meaning “time”) is “a utopia applied to history.” In other words, it is history “logically reconstructed according to what it could have been.” This work penned by the leading French expert on uchrony offers definitions, descriptions and comparisons which will allow the reader to grasp every nuance of this fascinating literary genre in which fantasy often intermingles with philosophical meditation and historic reflection.

Éric B. Henriet, who holds a PhD in Chemistry, is a researcher in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. An expert on uchrony, he is the author of L'Histoire revisitée. Panorama de l'uchronie sous toutes ses formes published by Les Belles Lettres.