History
The idea for creating Uchronia was first conceived in late February 1991 and was initiated by a request to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf-lovers (now rec.arts.sf.written) for help finding stories in the alternate history genre. Version 1 of the "Usenet Alternate History List" was then posted on April 11, 1991, to rec.arts.sf-lovers. It was essentially a plain text file about 30 kB long and included about 250 items. Much of that first posting was based on information provided by Evelyn Leeper, who continues to post information today.
A new version of the Alternate History List was posted to Usenet once every month or two over the next six years. The first web version was posted in 1995, but for the next two years it remained just a slightly modified copy of the same material that was still being posted to Usenet. In early 1997, the list became Web-only.
Uchronia received its current name late in 1997. At almost the same time it also was converted into a website, which is extracted dynamically from a text database. Although the underlying script has been heavily rewritten since 1997, the user interface of Uchronia has remained basically unchanged since then. As of January 2008, the database was over 1.4 MB in size and included over 2900 entries.
Uchronia also hosts the main website for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.
Read more about this topic: Uchronia: The Alternate History List
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)