[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-330497-105":59,"doc-detail-330497-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","the-alteration-introduction","The Alteration - Introduction","","Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) is presented as a major British novelist, poet, and critic, celebrated for satirical writing. Biographical coverage traces his education, wartime service, academic career, major publications, major honors including the Booker Prize and knighthood, and his family life. The text then shifts to William Gibson’s introduction to The Alteration, emphasizing the novel’s counterfactual premise, the intellectual demands of parallel-world fiction, and an England of 1976 shaped by a stable global Catholic theocracy that suppresses scientific change.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-alteration-introduction/330497/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-alteration-introduction/330497.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Theodora","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-29","2026-09-21",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":34},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Who is Kingsley Amis according to the document?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Kingsley Amis is described as a popular and prolific British novelist, poet, and critic, widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest satirical writers.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What does William Gibson introduce about The Alteration?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Gibson explains the novel’s demand for counterfactual thinking and familiarity with real history, and highlights its craft as a rigorously executed parallel-world story.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What is the central premise of The Alteration’s alternate England?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The novel imagines a 1976 England where the pope rules a stable, monolithic global Catholic theocracy, with democracy and electricity absent and scientific inquiry suppressed.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},330497,1790065346,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":34,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},687197207919,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/a000253d6f5f7c60be?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1779446848396160552","KINGSLEY AMIS (1922–1995) was a popular and prolific British novelist, poet, and critic, widely regarded as one of the greatest satirical writers of the twentieth century. Born in suburban South London, the only child of a clerk in the office of the mustard-maker Colman’s, he went to the City of London School on the Thames before winning an English scholarship to St. John’s College, Oxford, where he began a lifelong friendship with fellow student Philip Larkin. Following service in the British Army’s Royal Corps of Signals during World War II, he completed his degree and joined the faculty at the University College of Swansea in Wales. Lucky Jim, his first novel, appeared in 1954 to great acclaim and won a Somerset Maugham Award. Amis spent a year as a visiting fellow in the creative writing department of Princeton University and in 1961 became a fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, but resigned the position two years later, lamenting the incompatibility of writing and teaching (“I found myself fit for nothing much more exacting than playing the gramophone after three supervisions a day”) . Ultimately he published twenty-four novels, including science fiction and a James Bond sequel; more than a dozen collections of poetry, short stories, and literary criticism; restaurant reviews and three books about drinking; political pamphlets and a memoir; and more. Amis received the Booker Prize for his novel The Old Devils in 1986 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990. He had three children, among them the novelist Martin Amis, with his first wife, Hilary Anne Bardwell, from whom he was divorced in 1965. After his second, eighteen-year marriage to the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard ended in 1983, he lived in a London house with his first wife and her third husband.  \nWILLIAM GIBSON is the author of many novels, including Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition. His collected essays and articles have been published under the title Distrust That Particular Flavor.  \nOTHER BOOKS BY KINGSLEY AMIS PUBLISHED BY NYRB CLASSICS  \nThe Green Man  \nIntroduction by Michael Dirda  \nLucky Jim  \nIntroduction by Keith Gessen  \nThe Old Devils  \nIntroduction by John Banville  \nTHE ALTERATION  \nKINGSLEY AMIS  \nIntroduction by  \nWILLIAM GIBSON  \nNEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS  \nNew York  \nTHIS IS ANEW YORK REVIEW BOOK  \nPUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS  \n435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014  \n[www.nyrb.com](www.nyrb.com)  \nCopyright © 1976 by Kingsley Amis Introduction copyright © 2013 by William Gibson All rights reserved.  \nFirst published in Great Britain in 1976 by Jonathan Cape  \nCover image: Eric Hanson  \nCover design: Katy Homans  \nThe Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:  \nAmis, Kingsley.  \nThe alteration / by Kingsley Amis ; introduction by William Gibson. pages cm—(New York Review Books classics)  \nISBN 978-1-59017-617-7 (pbk.)  \n1. Choirboys—Fiction. 2. England—Fiction. 3. Satire. I. Title. PR6001.M6A48 2013  \n813’.6—dc23  \n2012045909  \neISBN 978-1-59017-637-5 v1 .0  \nFor a complete list of books in the NYRB Classics series, visit www.nyrb.com or write to:  \nCatalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014  \nContents  \nBiographical Notes  \nTitle page  \nCopyright and More Information  \nIntroduction  \nTHE ALTERATION  \nDedication  \nChapter One  \nChapter Two  \nChapter Three  \nChapter Four  \nChapter Five  \nChapter Six  \nIntroduction  \nWhen I read, last year, that the Chinese government had banned film and television productions involving the theme of time travel, I immediately knew why. Like Kingsley Amis, they appreciate the subversive potential of a certain sort of imagining: the counterfactual, which is quite beyond state control.  \nFiction set in imaginary, counterfactual, parallel worlds, worlds in which history has taken a broadly different course, are quite demanding, both for author and reader. If nothing else, they require a second level of literacy: some familiarity with actual history (t","cbCaic1rnuKzATMe","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaic1rnuKzATMe","pdf",1994562,170,"English","# Biographical Notes\n## Title page\n## Copyright and More Information\n## Introduction\n# Chapter One\n## Chapter Two\n## Chapter Three\n## Chapter Four\n## Chapter Five\n## Chapter Six","[{\"question\":\"Who is Kingsley Amis according to the document?\",\"answer\":\"Kingsley Amis is described as a popular and prolific British novelist, poet, and critic, widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest satirical writers.\"},{\"question\":\"What does William Gibson introduce about The Alteration?\",\"answer\":\"Gibson explains the novel’s demand for counterfactual thinking and familiarity with real history, and highlights its craft as a rigorously executed parallel-world story.\"},{\"question\":\"What is the central premise of The Alteration’s alternate England?\",\"answer\":\"The novel imagines a 1976 England where the pope rules a stable, monolithic global Catholic theocracy, with democracy and electricity absent and scientific inquiry suppressed.\"}]","The Alteration - Introduction | PDF",1789989174,262]