Pavane

Pavane by Keith Roberts is an alternate history science fiction fix-up novel first published by Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd in 1968. Most of the original stories were published in Science Fantasy.
Pavane soon found an important place in the "alternative history" sub-genre of science fiction and the work's high reputation continues, with the authoritative The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction assessing it as "now credited as the finest of all 'alternate histories' ". Algis Budrys found the novel to be "a tapestry of a book; a marvel of storytelling", and concluded that, despite an unnecessary Coda, it was "a truly wonderful work".