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:
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“In front of these sinister facts, the first lesson of history is the good of evil. Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)