Published in Different Truths on June 16, 2025. Written by Dr. Azam Gill, author of JADINY: Just Another Day in New York, the only counterfactual historical thriller on 9/11.
Dr. Azam Gill elucidates that fiction reshapes reality — counterfactual and dystopian genres ask ‘what-if’ to warn, teach and reimagine society’s past and future, exclusively for Different Truths.
Dr. Azam Gill elucidates that fiction reshapes reality — counterfactual and dystopian genres ask ‘what-if’ to warn, teach and reimagine society’s past and future, exclusively for Different Truths.
Dr. Azam Gill elucidates that fiction reshapes reality — counterfactual and dystopian genres ask ‘what-if’ to warn, teach and reimagine society’s past and future, exclusively for Different Truths.
“Science and fiction both begin with similar questions: What if? Why? …” – Margaret Atwood, Booker Prize laureate.
The Bard himself took popular tales, asked himself questions, reworked them with plot twists and ‘what-ifs,’ submitted them to his genius, and his renown transcends time and space.
What if Khalid ibn al-Walid had lost to Heraclius at the Battle of Yarmouk in 636 and Abdel Kader had won the Battle of Tours against Charles Martel in 732? What if the Mahrattas had won the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, Nelson had lost the battle of Trafalgar in 1805, Napoleon had won at Waterloo in 1817 or Confederate General Robert. E. Lee had prevailed at Gettysburg in 1863? How would the world have unfolded then, and where would we have been today?
Or if Hitler had won the war and England had been occupied, as in Robert Harris’s best-selling 1992 novel, Fatherland. The answers to these questions acquire the status of didactic fiction that instructs within an entertaining framework.
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Azam Gill 
Thanks Gill Sir for this incisive peace on alternative literature for. Up or Down Counterfactual can be very interesting. What if there was no partition ? What if there was no J&K Issue? What if India and Pakistan had retained respective kingdoms as independent entities with in the fold bound by some federal rules? What if Manipur or Nagaland had developed as independent states within India’s federal structure. I feel some fiction based on these utopian ideas can interest many and provide for an alternative thought . Then what about usurping the facts of history and making fresh but incorrect assertions thereby changing the tone of history or appropriating it? It has happened many times . Yet to procure and thus read your new book. warm regards , HK Singh
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Thank you for your own incisive observations and comments, sir. Bharat does, indeed, offer the among the richest and most challenging of raw materials for counterfactual fiction, and everything (and much more) you’ve brought to the fore beckons. Time will tell. In the meantime, with my gratitude to Sabre & Quill, JADINY’s up and running on Amazon India, and I look forward to your verdict: https://www.amazon.in/JADINY-Just-Another-Day-York/dp/B0FB9DH3GC
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