Curious Notions - Harry Turtledove

2004; 272 pages. Book #2 of the "Crosstime Traffic" series. New Author? : No. Genre : Alt-History, YA (kinda). Overall Rating : 4½*/10.

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In the late 21st century, our timeline learns how to dimension-hop into parallel wotlds. Which is good, because we are suffering from an acute food shortage. So we buy produce and grain in alternate timelines, while selling them technology that is outmoded to us (VCR's, cassette tape decks, etc.), but slightly more advanced than what they have.

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Lawrence Gomes and his teenage son, Paul, run one of the Crosstime buy/sell fronts in an alternate San Francisco, where Germany won WW1 and now rules the world, including the USA. But the Crosstime operation is put in jeopardy - indeed, the whole dimension-hopping process is at risk - when the German occupiers start wondering where this 2-bit family shop is getitng all of its amazing gadgets.

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What's To Like...

The whole idea of parallel worlds (but all at the same point in time) is a typical Turtledove brilliancy. He postulates that a new world is formed at every critical juncture in history. So there are hundreds of alternate universes out there.

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I found the storyline to be believable. There's more action in Curious Notions than there was in the first book, Gunpowder Empire, reviewed here. And although this #2 in a series that now has about 6 books, each one appears to be a stand-alone story.

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Turtledove also made this a G-Rated book. There are no drugs, sex, death, blood, gore, or cussing. The parents of the two teenage protagonists are called "Dad" and "Mom", and although we the readers can see love budding between the kids, there isn't so much as a peck on the cheek. Even the interrogation sessions are ridiculously clean. 'If you don't talk, I'm going to shine this really, really bright light in your eyes.'

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Kewl New Words...

Only one, and it's a bit of an inside joke. Fasarta. Good luck on finding it defined anywhere. It appears to be a nonsense techno-geeky word from Robert Heinlein's Door Into Summer. Harry Turtledove reportedly is a big fan of Heinlein's, and this is his way of giving Heinlein a tip of the old hat.

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Excerpts...

People in San Francisco sold anything that moved. If you stepped away from your shadow for a minute, they'd pry it off the sidewalk and try to sell it back to you. (pg. 27)

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"You would do well not to make the Kaiser's government suspect you," the big Feldgendarmie man said. "Next time, you may not be so lucky."

"But I didn't do anything," Lucy's father said.

"If you had not done anything, we would not have arrested you." The German sounded just as sure as if he'd said the sun would come up in the morning. "Just because we cannot prove it does not prove a thing." He also sounded sure he made sense. (pg. 70)

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...this wasn't his San Francisco. For the USA in this alternate, it was a first-rate city. But this USA was a second-rate country, and this San Francisco felt second-rate to him. The town he was used to bounced. This one ... lurched. (pg. 209)

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He was, in a word, bored. In two words, very bored. (pg. 209)

Turtledove wrote Curious Notions to be a YA novel, but I think it should be classified as "Juvenile Fiction". If you know a tweenager who likes Alternate History, this may be a great read for him. But if he's in 8th Grade or higher, he'll likely find this book too dumbed-down and repetitive. Adults should probably avoid this series entirely. 4½ Stars.

End of the Beginning - Harry Turtledove

2005; 519 pages. Genre : Alternate History. Overall Rating : 5½*/10.

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This is the sequel to Days of Infamy (reviewed here), in which the Japanese followed up their surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor with a successful land invasion of Hawaii. End Of The Beginning begins in early 1943, with the Americans building up a massive force to try and retake Hawaii, and the Japanese working feverishly to construct impregnable defenses.

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What's To Like...

Turtledove uses his usual style here - telling the story via POV's of about a dozen individuals. There are a couple American soldiers, of course; but we also get to follow two POW's, a number of Japanese soldiers and brass, and representatives of the various ethnic groups that were on the islands at the time - Japanese, Whites, and native Hawaiians. Our surfer dude is back, as is the (Hawaiian) Japanese dad dealing with his two high school kids who think of themselves as Americans. And for you romantics, there's a love story between one of those sons and a teenage white girl.

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Turtledove has a nice feel for Japanese expansionism and Hawaiian nationalism. He also acquaints you with the horrors of living under WW2 Japanese occupation. If you're not familiar with things like the Bataan Death March, enforced conscription into "Comfort Houses", working POW's literally to death, and a flagrant disregard for the Geneva Convention (which, to be fair, Japan had never signed); this book will open your eyes.

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There are some weaknesses. Like the book/movie, The Longest Day, it takes forever for the action to get going. If you're going to read EOTB for the war strategy and killing, just skip the first 240 pages or so. The good news is, once the shooting starts, Turtledove is in his element, and the second half of the book scoots along just fine. And as is true in all wars, some of the good guys die; some of the bad guys survive.

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There is the author's usual penchant for repeating himself. You will be told umpteen times that mortar fire is scary because it can land right on top of you before you hear it; that a pilot should always obey the flagman when landing; that maltreated POW's keep getting skinnier and skinnier; and that American soldiers aren't as soft as the Japanese soldiers believed. Veteran Turtledove readers learn to accept this. You also have to accept cusswords, racial epithets, and graphic sex scenes.

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Kewl New Words...

None. Although Factotum showed up again. That word is stalking me.

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Excerpt...

Commander Minoru Genda walked past the front entrance to Iolani Palace. Fairy terns, almost whiter than white, floated through the blue, blue Hawaiian sky. The flag of the newly restored Kingdom of Hawaii fluttered on five flagpoles above the late-Victorian palace. Seeing that flag made Genda smile. The Hawaiians had gone out of their way to accommodate both Britain and the United States, with the Union Jack in the canton and red, white, and blue horizontal stripes filling the rest of the field.

Much good it did them, the Japanese officer thought. (opening paragraphs)

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Shigata ga nai... (see pg. 137)

EOTB is an easy read and kept my interest better than I'd feared. Turtledove gives you a well-reasoned answer to "what if the Japanese had conquered Hawaii in December 1941?" And maybe that's the drawback of the book - you can pretty much predict the USA's response and the ultimate outcome. Turtledove is also accurate about the brutality of the occupation. But if you've ever read about what the Philippines went through in WW2 under the Japanese heel, you can anticipate what happens here.

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This is not a stand-alone book, and I'm not sure who the target audience is. It's too crude for kids; and adult readers might be looking for a bit more depth. We'll give it 5½ stars, because Turtledove can spin a good, well-researched story and has a knack for asking cool, Alt-History "what if" questions. Just keep in mind that it's fiction, not literature.

Gunpowder Empire - Harry Turtledove

2003; 286 pages. Genre : Sci Fi - Parallel Universes; Young Adult. Book #1 of the "Crosstime Traffic Series". Overall Rating : C.

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The Solter family has a novel way of spending their summer vacation - they travel to a parallel universe where the Roman Empire never collapsed. Technology-wise, that world has evolved up to muskets and cannons, so the "this-worlders" can trade common items from here - mirrors, mechanical watches, Swiss army knives, etc. - for much-needed grain.

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What's To Like...

Turtledove does a nice job comparing the two Roman Empires, and portraying how history might have changed if the Barbarians had never seriously threatened Rome. He also paints a detailed picture of the parallel medieval city, its government, and its daily life.

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OTOH, the "this-world" timeframe is set at 100 years from now, and it isn't much different from the present day. No one wears furs (but we still eat meat), our computer understands our voice commands, and of course, we can dimension-hop. That's about it. Not a lot of progress for an entire century.

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As usual, our dimension conveniently happens to be the most advanced one around. Just once, I'd like to see some more-evolved chrono-hoppers land in our world, and be condescending to us primitives. The ending isn't very climactic, and there's too much "telling not showing". See the "sexism" section on page 60.

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Excerpt...

But people were people, in her timeline or any of the alternates. Knowledge changed. Customs changed. Human nature didn't. People still fell in love - and out of love, too. They still schemed to get rich. They squabbled among themselves. And they needed to feel their group was better than some other group. Maybe they had more money. Maybe they had blond hair. Maybe they spoke a particular language. Maybe they had the one right religion - or the one right kind of the one right religion. It was always something, though. (pg. 43)

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And the target audience is...

It's important to know for whom Turtledove is writing this series . It quickly becomes obvious. The Solter kids are a pair of teenagers. The names of the parents are given once, then thereafter, it's "Mom said so-and-so" and "Dad did such-and-such".

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There's no romance, let alone sex. The characters are cardboard thin and their actions predictable. After a couple chapters, the kids have to fend for themselves in the parallel Rome. War comes, and there is some bloodshed, but the horror of conflict - raping, pillaging, and plundering - is only hinted at. The emphasis at all times is how different the parallel world is from our own.

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So this is an ideal book for a young boy - say, 7-12 years old - who is interested in alternate worlds. The lack of depth means there's not much here for an adult, unless you used to enjoy the 50's sci-fi books by Andre Norton. I did, so an occasional book like this is okay. We'll give it a "C", and stress that this isn't your typical Harry Turtledove series.

Days of Infamy - Harry Turtledove

2004; 520 pages. Genre : Alternate History. Overall rating : C.

   .In DOI, Turtledove examines an alternate timeline where Japan, instead of just raiding Pearl Harbor on 07 December 1941, successfully invades and occupies the islands of Hawaii. DoI is the first of two books on this (does that make it a 'bilogy'?), covering the invasion and about 12 months after that.

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    Turtledove is at his best when he's describing military stuff - the planes, the ships, and the strategies that would be involved in conquering Hawaii. But beyond the fighting, he also looks at a number of other topics. Among them are : the racial stereotyping that both the USA and Japan were guilty of; the Hawaiians yearning for their own sovereignty again; the pull that one's homeland has, even when one has lived for decades somewhere else; the role that oil played in Japan's decision to attack the US, and how transient basic supplies are when 99% of life's necessities and luxuries are imported from overseas.

   .Turtledove creates some interesting characters to follow. There's a Zonker-type surfer dude who doesn't let something like a war interfere with his catching that perfect wave. There's a Japanese father who finds an insurmountable generation gap between him and his two Americanized kids. Also, the Japanese fighters are not mindless zombies; nor are the American soldiers John-Wayne clones. Even the lackeys are shown to have redeeming points.
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What's Not To Like...
    The characters may be interesting creations, but they don't progress at all. The surfer and the fisherman go out to sea. And catch fish. Again and again. And again. Then there's the haole civilian woman who is forced to plant a turnip garden. Follow her adventures as she rakes, hoes weeds, battles bugs, and eats turnips. Again and again. And again. What fun.

   .Also, while Turtledove does a good job examining the Japanese and American psyches, he doesn't create any Hawaiian characters, outside of a few royalty figures making cameo appearances. That's a significant omission, given that the setting is Hawaii.

   .To steal a punchline from Ambrose Bierce, "The covers of this book are too far apart." Only about 20% of the book is Alternate History. The rest is character study. If I wanted character study, I'd be reading Tolstoy or Hawthorne or Steinbeck or something.

What if Japan had conquered Hawaii?
    Well, I suppose I'll have to read the sequel to this to get Turtledove's opinion. But I'm betting Harry has us Yanks tossing them war-crimes-committing, Japanese so-and-so's back into the Pacific to become shark-food.

   .And frankly, that would be my take on this Alternate Timeline as well. The dynamics of the Pacific fighting in WW2 would've been different, but not the outcome. In the long run, America's industrial might, larger population, and safe homeland means that we wouldn't lose.

    .Personally, I think Japan could not have made a bigger mistake than attacking Pearl Harbor. If the Axis were going to win World War 2, instead of attacking the USA possessions, Japan should've invaded Siberia. Make the Russians fight on two fronts, and keep (or at least forestall) America from entering the war. After Russia and Great Britain fell, who cares what the USA does? But this is speculation for some other time.
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In summary, this is a typical Turtledove book. The concept is great, but there's too much drama, and not enough Alternate History. The plusses pretty much balance out the minuses here. And I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that certain literary genres are inherently only worthy of a "C" rating.

Ruled Britannia - Harry Turtledove

Overall Rating : B.

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It's 1597. England seethes under a long Spanish occupation, following the success of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Queen Elizabeth is in the Tower of London. The state religion is once again Roman Catholic. The Inquisition is rooting out all Protestant die-hards and other heretics.

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Will Shakespeare couldn't care less. All he wants to do is write and stage plays, and get paid for them. But karmic forces are in motion. The English insurgents hire him to write a nationalistic play ("Boudicca"), while the Spanish oppressors hire him to write a eulogistic drama to memorialize their dying monarch (Philip V). The tension mounts as Will reluctantly finds himself forced to play both ends against the middle, but becoming unexpectedly wealthy as he does.

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What's To Like...

Shakespearophiles will love this book. Turtledove cribs freely from various plays of the the Bard himself, as well as some bits of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine. The result is a fine piece of drama that will appeal to even those of us who weren't thrilled about having to read one of Shakespeare's plays every cotton-pickin' year in High School.

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The author serves up a delightful cast of characters. There's the witty and punning Wil Kemp who will keep you groaning & chuckling. His counterfoil is the bombastic fellow-actor Richard Burbage. There's the Mitonesque detective Constable Strawberry, who can take a simple statement and embellish until not even the Queen herself can make out what he just said. And the lovable-but-lazy manservant Diego, employed by the womanizing Spanish soldier and wannabee-writer, Lope de Vega. And finally, at center-stage throughout, we have the but-I-never-wanted-to-be-a-hero Will Shakespeare.

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What's Not To Like...

Did I mention it's a drama? Therefore, don't expect much action. The book starts promisingly, with a pleasant public burning-at-the-stake, but that's pretty much it for blood-spilling until around page 500. (Yawn)

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Turtledove takes great pains to immerse you in 1590's England. But that includes that dreadful renaissance English that made reading The Merchant of Venice such a royal PITA. You will find yourself getting tired of being repeatedly subjected to words like fain, liefer, gramercy, certes, 'swounds, bethinks, belikes, and a whole slew of other verbs prefixed by that annoying "be-". Forsooth, it besucks.

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Finally, if you're English and Protestant, you will probably find this to be an uplifting tale. But if you're Spanish and Catholic, you may take umbrage at the stereotyping of all the occupiers as being either stupid or evil.

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To Be Free, or Not To Be Free...

Plotwise, the story ambles to a predictable conclusion. Spoiler Alert : The oppressors are ousted, the Queen is freed, and like Robert Asprin's Skeeve, Turtledove's Shakespeare somehow bumbles his way into becoming a hero.

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Yet there is a subtle undertone to the story. In the end, as Shakespeare wanders through London observing the joyous celebrations of long-awaited liberty, he also notes that the English citizenry are treating the unfortunate remaining Spanish (and anyone perceived - justly or unjustly - as being a collaborator) with just as much brutality as the Spanish had doled out for nine years. Even the likable Diego, who has never done any harm to the English, and who only wants to sleep his way through life, ends up dead-as-a-doornail, a casualty in the name of Freedom.

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But I digress. As a drama, Ruled Britannia rates an "A". As an action novel (hey, Mr. Turtledove! You at least cooda included the Armada's successful campaign against England in the story), it only rates a "C". That averages out to a "B", so that's what we'll give it.

The Great War : American Front - Harry Turtledove

Overall Rating : C.

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The Great War : American Front is the second book in an 11-volume opus by Harry Turtledove; covering a timeline that initially veered off with the South's winning the Civil War. Book One, How Few Remain, deals with a second conflict in the 1880's, also won by the South, and featuring "alternate lives" for a bunch of famous people such as Samuel Clemens, Teddy Roosevelt, James Longstreet, Frederick Douglass, etc.

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TGW:AF picks up the storyline with the outbreak of World War 1. The Confederacy sides with England and France; the USA with Germany. It is the first book of a WWI Alt-Hist trilogy and goes to about the end of the summer, 1915.

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What's To Like...

This is "pure" Alt-History. No shifts in the time-space continuum (such as Flint's 1632 series); no visits from extraterrestials to alter History (which technically wouldn't be Alt-Hist anyway).

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As usual, Turtledove tells his story from a dozen or so perspectives. Each "glimpse" lasts about 2-5 pages; then he jumps to another person's story. There's a good balance in the people he chooses - Yanks, Southerners, Canadians, men, women, blacks, whites, rich folks, poor folks.

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What's Not To Like...

Unlike as in How Few Remain, Turtledove chooses "unknowns" to follow in TGW:AF. That makes it tough to follow. Was Arthur MacGregor a Yank, a Reb or a Canuck? What front and what side was Reggie Bartlett fighting on? Teddy Roosevelt and George Custer carry over from HFR, but are no longer followed in detail. Following these unknowns is not nearly as interesting.

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The action is basically a clone of what historically happened in Europe in WW1. You have trench warfare; poisonous gas attacks; the evolution of of air fighting; and there even is the repeat of the "Christmas Truce", something that took place in Europe during the first year of the war (The History Channel has an excellent episode covering that). The trouble is, that ain't Alternate History; it's just transplanting the events from one continent to another. One expects more divergence in an Alt-Hist story.

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Finally, there isn't any climax to this book. The story sashays along from page 1 to page 560. In the last couple pages, the blacks of the South are seen to rise up in a coordinated worker-socialist revolution. No details are given; this is an obvious hook to get you to buy the next book. Since this is a trilogy, one can predict that the next book won't have a dramatic climax either.

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Robert Jordan Syndrome is alive and well...

This is the first book of a trilogy; but it is also Book Two in an 11-volume opus by Turtledove that starts in 1880 (in the storyline. Book 1, HFR, came out in 1995) and goes for another full century. Book 11, "In At The Death : Settling Accounts" just came out in hardcover last July. Reportedly, it is the end of the saga, but there are enough loose ends left over for Turtledove to pen Book 12 if he wants.

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This means you better be prepared to spend a lot of hours reading a lot of pages in a lot of books about this alternate timeline. Well, I did that with Jordan's "Dragon Reborn" series, and he up and died on me before finishing the final book (#12). I don't intend to get sucked into that again; not with Turtledove's North/South narrative; not with Eric Flint's 163x series.

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One wonders where this Robert Jordan Syndrome will end. Time was when a trilogy was considered the literary limit. An intriguing beginning; a tedious middle; and a thrilling end. Hey, it worked fine for Tolkien.

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Now we have someone ghost-writing Book 12 in Jordan's Wheel Of Time; and Turtledove one novel away from tying that mark. You just know some other author will make it his goal to write a 13-book epic. It's getting to the point where Tolstoy and Dostoevsky will be relegated to the "Short Story" section of your local library. Whoodathunkit?

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But I digress. TGW:AW is a decent book, but How Few Remain was better. The characters are not sufficiently engaging to warrant me committing to reading another nine books about them. We'll give it a C rating, cuz it isn't bad, and get our next Alt-Hist fix from one of S.M. Stirling's books.

How Few Remain - Harry Turtledove

Overall Rating : C+.

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Harry Turtledove is a prolific author of Science Fiction and Alternate History books. This was my first Turtledove book.

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HFR is "pure" Alt-History in the sense that the timeline doesn't change due to some inscrutable cosmic event. Instead, McClellan's army doesn't intercept Lee's battle plans after Antietam. With the US army kept in the dark, Lee is victorious in the battlefield; England and France recognize the new nation; and the Confederate States of America gains independence. HFR is set in 1881, when the "second war of independence" erupts between the North and the South.

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What's To Like...

The book is a great "What-If" novel. Turtledove weaves a detailed alternate timeline by following a number of historical figures. Abraham Lincoln is doing the speech-giving circuit and contemplating becoming a socialist. Teddy Roosevelt is a bronco-bustin' cowboy in Montana. James Longstreet is the president of the CSA. Frederick Douglass is giving anti-slavery rallies. Samuel Clemens runs a newspaper in San Francisco and rails against the folly of war. George Custer, Jeb Stuart, Stonewall Jackson, and even Geronimo are followed.

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Some of the good guys die. Some of the bad guys live. And, unlike many other works of fiction, you can't predict who lives/dies by the author's character development (or lack thereof).

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What's Not To Like...

Well, if the character-development is superb, the plot-advancement is non-existent. Mexico sells the states of Sonora and Chihuahua to the CSA, which for some unfathomable reason p*sses off the USA to the point of going to war. So far, so cool.

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Alas, the total events of the war consist of a few CSA minor victories in Arizona; some skirmishes between the US and Canadians/Brits in Montana, a British naval raid on San Francisco, and the USA for some reason trying to take (of all places) Louisville, Kentucky. That's it. Failing in those endeavors, the USA calls off the war. Talk about a lack of resolve.

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Turtledove tells the story from a pro-CSA POV, so the issue of slavery in the South is downplayed, almost to being ignored. James Blaine, the US President, is given short shrift. It would've been nice to understand the workings inside his head as to why he decided to quickly go to war, then just as quickly opted out.

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Oh yeah, and the couple of sex scenes are incredibly lame and completely pointless. Were they put in there to titillate teenage male readers? If so, it failed miserably.

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Why I've Been A Lifelong Alt-History Fanatic...

I read my first Alt-History book 45 years ago. It was titled "If The South Had Won The Civil War" (yep, same theme), and if you google that, you will find that it is by MacKinlay Kantor and was re-issued in the 1990's, and is still available from Amazon.

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Looking back, it was a rather tepid attempt at Alt-Hist. The South wins; Texas secedes from the CSA; slavery again gets downplayed; and the three countries remain best-of-buddies for a hundred years. After a century of group-hugs and bonding, they all schedule a joint news conference, and it's strongly implied that Reunification will occur.

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Okay, it was not a hard-hitting book. But I was in 5th or 6th grade at the time, and despite its lameness, I thoroughly enjoyed the "What If" scenario. That passion for Alternate History has stayed with me ever since. The genre is done much better nowadays, but I think it's fair to say that that's because science fiction & science fantasy as a whole are now being done so much better.

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But I digress. Your opinion of How Few Remain will hinge on how important a plot is to you. For me, this was a fun read, and I enjoyed "getting to know" the various historical characters. But the story didn't go anywhere. The war came, the war went, and nothing really changed and/or progressed. I came away with the feeling that Turtledove only wrote this to set up the characters in his World War One Alternate-History series. The first book of that series (second if you count HFR) is on my "to be read" bookshelf, albeit, along with a dozen other "must-read" books. So eventually, I'll find out whether this tangential timeline takes off or fizzles out.