Some historical fiction is uncontroversial because it presents the past merely as a backdrop for a story that does not suggest new facts or challenge widely accepted interpretations. Other successful creations go the other way, dispensing with the truth so brazenly that they render caveats fatuous because their narratives aren’t so much revisionist history as counterfactual fantasy. Only a pedant could object to Quentin Tarantino changing the course of World War II in Inglourious Basterds to tell a story of Jewish commandos assassinating Hitler in a French movie theater.