This January, join us as we travel through new worlds in an issue dedicated to divergent histories and uchronias. The stories in this issue present historical events with a twist, asking what if? Sweden’s Karin Tidbeck posts an otherworldly explanation for a town’s disappearance and France’s Xavier Mauméjean wonders how a matinee idol’s accident might have changed the face of international cinema. Mexican writer Bef describes a confrontation between Emperor Maximilian I and the digital ghost of Benito Juárez while Argentine Hernán Vanoli delves into the world of a female soccer gang protecting the reanimated cyborg of Lionel Messi. Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro pictures Portugal’s King Dom Luís II’s escape to Brazil while Aldo Nove tells the peculiar life story of St. Francis of Assisi from the perspective of his nephew Piccardo. From Chile, Jorge Baradit explores what might have happened if Allende had thwarted the coup attempt of 1973, and Peruvian Jorge Eduardo Benavides describes an allohistorical Peru in which Shining Path defeated the armed forces.
Our special thanks to guest editor Gabriel T. Saxton-Ruiz for opening these allohistorical worlds to us.