In 2003, Edgar L. Chapman, in the introduction to a now out-of-print collection of alternate history essays he edited with Carl B. Yorke, stated that he wanted his collection to call attention to two important facts:

Over a decade later, whilst progress has been made, these basic points remain cogent. Excellent works of scholarship do exist on alternate history, but as the introduction to this collection has pointed out there are still strangely few of them. Meanwhile, alternate history fiction itself has further developed into an increasingly important field deserving of the insightful and focused studies which are beginning to emerge. Whilst this collection cannot completely make up the difference, it provides a crucial stepping stone towards it, and we hope a timely one for a genre of ever-increasing critical and cultural value.

Why does this gap exist at all? One possible explanation is in alternate history's literary lineage, with its roots in historical counterfactualism leading scholars of science fiction studies to disregard it as kin to the mainstream historical novel (perhaps explaining the absence of chapters on alternate history from many – although by no means all – texts serving as introductions to sf), whilst many historians and scholars of historical fiction regard its playfulness as too fantastical. Or, paradoxically, perhaps the small size of the field of alternate history scholarship is due to the vastness of the topic. In putting together this collection, we could not but struggle to cover the wide range of themes, nations and cultures, and historical periods that alternate history itself has tackled. Considering that alternate history begins as far back as Livy in 35 BCE and continues in the twenty-first century at a greater intensity than ever before, the immensity of the topic is difficult to contain in one book, let alone do justice to it properly. This does not even begin to address issues of translation, when one considers the number of different cultures that produce alternate history.