Gunpowder Empire

Harry Turtledove

2003

Set about fifty years from now, the science of the day has developed a technology that enables the humans of the day travel from one alternate history to another. Each possible choice has lead to its own reality. Our main point of view characters are Jeremy and his sister Amanda. During term time they’re typical south Californian youths. During the summer vacation, though, they, along with their parents, become traders to a reality where the Roman Empire had not fallen. It had developed gunpowder and cannon but socially it was more alike to Augustinian Rome than present day Western civilisation. Amanda and her mother found themselves stuck in the kitchen whilst Jeremy and his father dealt with business matters.

For Jeremy and his family spend their time trading simple penknives and pocket watches for the food their world required to survive.

Much of the time they don’t spend trading they spend in household chores and adjusting to the ways of the society they find themselves in for the slavery still practiced by this Rome is utterly repugnant to those travelling the alternaties.

In this reality Empires that fell long ago in ours are still to be found facing each other. Rome faced by Persia in the Middle East and Lietuvia (roughly based on Lithuania in OTL) in Europe, and it’s this empire that threatens the city where the Solters are based.

When Jeremy’s mother is taken seriously ill she has to be taken back to her home time line for expert medical care. With both parents gone for what should only be a short period, the children don’t worry too much especially as there’s still e-mail contact between the timelines. So when the e-mail link suddenly stops working, the children begin to panic as the days stretch into weeks and months. Out of the city on a quick check of the cross time terminus, Jeremy is almost surprised by an army reinforcing the city.

All too soon the city is under siege from Lietuvian forces and the youngsters find themselves facing a hostile investigation from the city authorities. And it is the latter that is most dangerous!

This is clearly a Young Adult novel and equally certainly written from a very South Californian point of view. The extreme reaction that Jeremy and Amanda suffer from the gift of a fine fur coat from the Lietuvian king seems somewhat over the top.

I would still highly recommend the book however and am waiting to see how the series develops with interest. A temptation with this kind of story is to tie together the various series that an author has done (e.g. Robert Heinlein in Number of the Beast!). This must have been particularly hard in Dr Turtledove’s case seeing as he’s written so many different series. So far we have only seen these alternate realities in a school lesson – see how many you recognise!

Dr Turtledove has credited Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton and H Beam Piper and it is Norton’s Crosstime novels influence that appears most obvious in this first book of the series (Piper’s Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen stories and the aforementioned Number of the Beast from Heinlein).

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