Big parts of Kim Stanley Robinson's sf alternate history, The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) comes the closest to doing that severe re-imagining. It wasn't the most popular of his works -- it was considered boring also, by many. Nevertheless, this novel "in which neither Christianity nor the European cultures based on it achieve lasting impact on world history." It won the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2003.
That's a lot harder to do than genre mashups with lots of handwaving behind which the author hopes the reader won't notice that really it is the same stuff, just given not even very different clothes.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-09-01 09:27 pm (UTC)That's a lot harder to do than genre mashups with lots of handwaving behind which the author hopes the reader won't notice that really it is the same stuff, just given not even very different clothes.
Love, C.