But some discussion of the complex relationship between “allohistory” and sf is appropriate here, as the genres overlap in certain ways. Classical allohistory— such as Trevelyan's What if Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo? and Churchill's If Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg —is a rigorously consistent thought-experiment in historical causality.

Unfortunately, every cowpat that is burned as cooking fuel means that no nitrogen is available for use as fertilizer.

The implicit counterfactual — that these members would support gun control if not for the $1,000 they received from the NRA — seems unlikely to me.

He noted Gandhi’s sense of satyagraha and a statement of Lincoln’s during the depths of the Civil War: “We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”