Alternative History, as a subgenre of speculative fiction, offers a distinctive lens to interrogate historical causality. Drawing on a non-exhaustive survey of Portuguese works published primarily in the twenty-first century; thematic focus and narrative outcomes are discussed. Portuguese Alternative History tends to privilege divergences located close to the authors’ present and to foreground limited regime change scenarios, often less liberal or more conservative social orders. While such narratives sometimes function as cautionary tales or expressions of historical nostalgia, their proximity to the writer/reader’s timeline appears to limit more radical speculation about alternative forms of governance and social organization, constraining the genre’s emancipatory potential to challenge entrenched assumptions about historical inevitability.
Carlos Silva (Mon,) studied this question.