Illumine Lingao
Also known as Morning Star of Lingao, is a Chinese chuanyue (time travel) novel co-written by Xiao Feng (萧峰) under the pen name «Boaster» (Chinese: 吹牛者). The novel was originally published online in 2009 on Qidian Chinese Network. The first print volume was published by China Radio, Film & TV Press in 2017
In the story, more than 500 people from early-21st-century China intentionally travel back in time via wormhole to the Chongzhen-era late Ming dynasty in 1628 AD. Settling in Lingao County on the island of Hainan, the time travelers set out to establish an industrialized society and change the course of history.
The Difference Engine
The Difference Engine (1990) is an alternative history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It has been described as an early work of the steampunk genre, and is regarded as having helped to establish that genre’s conventions.
It posits a Victorian-era Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after the mechanical computers of Charles Babbage make widespread impact, there and globally, resulting in historical individuals taking on markedly different roles (Lord Byron instead surviving the Greek War of Independence to lead Britain, the late Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli instead becoming a tabloid writer, etc.), and European and American continents of markedly different political dispositions (e.g., the United States being, rather, several competing nations).
Fatherland
Fatherland is a 1992 alternative history detective novel by Robert Harris. Set in a world where the Axis won World War II, the story’s protagonist—Xavier March—is an officer of the Kripo, the criminal police, who is investigating the murder of a Nazi government official who participated at the Wannsee Conference. A plot is thus discovered to eliminate all of those who attended the conference, to help improve German relations with the United States.
The novel subverts some of the conventions of the detective novel. It begins with a murder and diligent police detective investigating and eventually solving it. However, since the murderer is highly placed in the Nazi regime, solving the mystery does not result in the detective pursuing and arresting the murderer. The contrary occurs: the murderer pursuing and arresting the detective.
The Years of Rice and Salt
The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history novel by American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson, published in 2002. The novel explores how world history might have been different if the Black Death plague had killed 99 percent of Europe’s population, instead of a third as it did in reality.
Divided into ten parts, the story spans centuries, from the army of the Muslim conqueror Timur to the 21st century, with Europe repopulated by Muslim pioneers, the indigenous peoples of the Americas forming a league to resist Chinese and Muslim invaders, and a 67-year-long world war being fought primarily between Muslim states and the Chinese and their allies. While the ten parts take place in different times and places, they are connected by a group of characters that are reincarnated into each time but are identified to the reader by the first letter of their name being consistent in each life.