The Gladiator (Crosstime Traffic) [Mass Market Paperback]

Harry Turtledove (Author)

Book Description

Series: Crosstime Traffic | Publication Date: September 30, 2008

The Soviet Union won the Cold War. The Russians were a little smarter than they were in our own world, and the United States was a little dumber and a lot less resolute. Now, more than a century later, the world's gone Communist, and capitalism is a bad word.
 
For Gianfranco and his friend Annarita, a couple of teenagers growing up in Milan, life in a heavily regimented, surveillance-rich command economy is just plain dreary. The eventual withering-away of the state doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon.
 
Annarita's a hard-working student and a member of the Young Socialists' League. Gianfranco is a lot less motivated--but on the other hand, his father's a Party apparatchik. The biggest excitement in their lives is a wargame shop called The Gladiator, which runs tournaments, and stocks marvelous complex games you can't find anywhere else.
 
Then, abruptly, the shop is shut down. Someone's figured out that The Gladiator's games are teaching counterrevolutionary capitalist principles. The Security Police are searching high and low for the shop's proprietors, who've not only vanished into thin air, but have left behind sets of fingerprints that aren't in the records of any government on earth.
 
Only one staffer is left: Gianfranco and Annarita's friend Eduardo. He's on the run, and he comes to them in secret with an astonishing story: he's a time trader from our own timeline, accidentally left behind when the store was evacuated. The only way Eduardo can get home to his own timeline is if Gianfranco and Annarita can help him reach one of the other time trader sites in this world--and the Security Police will be on their tails all the way there.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in a future world where the Soviet Union won the Cold War, Turtledove's absorbing fourth Crosstime Traffic novel (after 2005's In High Places) is the best yet in this SF series with substantial YA crossover. The two main characters are particularly well drawn: 17-year-old Annarita Crosetti and 16-year-old Gianfranco Mazzilli, students at Enver Hoxha Polytechnic in a Milan that's part of the quasi-Stalinist Italian People's Republic. Gianfranco is a fairly hopeless student, until he discovers a new game shop called the Gladiator, where he's delighted to play a game, Rails Across Europe, that improves his algebra scores. When the security police close down the shop for teaching capitalism, the head clerk, who's a friend of Gianfranco's and a marooned outtimer, goes on the lam. Fans of Turtledove's unambiguously adult alternative history (Days of Infamy, etc.) will find this effort up to his usual high standard. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Young Socialist Leaguer Annarita and apparatchik's son Gianfranco have grown up together in Milan after the Soviet Union won the cold war. Gianfranco discovers the Gladiator, a game shop whose fascinating wares teach him to think differently. Suddenly, the shop is closed. The regime realized that the games teach capitalism. The proprietors have vanished, and nowhere are their fingerprints registered. Annarita and Gianfranco run into former shop staffer Eduardo, who admits being an accidentally abandoned trader from another time line. The only way home for Eduardo involves getting to another crosstime transfer point--just ahead of the police. The fifth Crosstime Traffic yarn is a barn burner. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction; First Edition edition (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765353792
• ISBN-13: 978-0765353795
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #730,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > ( T ) > Turtledove, Harry
  • #67 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Alternate History

More About the Author

Harry Turtledove is the award-winning author of the alternate-history works The Man with the Iron Heart; The Guns of the South; How Few Remain (winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Novel); the Worldwar saga: In the Balance, Tilting the Balance, Upsetting the Balance, and Striking the Balance; the Colonization books: Second Contact, Down to Earth, and Aftershocks; the Great War epics: American Front, Walk in Hell, and Breakthroughs; the American Empire novels: Blood & Iron, The Center Cannot Hold, and Victorious Opposition; and the Settling Accounts series: Return Engagement, Drive to the East, The Grapple, and In at the Death. Turtledove is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos. They have three daughters: Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting Fun out of Communism, June 3, 2007

By 

Edward E. Rom (Mankato, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Gladiator (Crosstime Traffic) (Hardcover)

I liked this book a lot! When I first started reading it, I for some reason thought that it might not be all that good, but that thought was short-lived.

The _Crosstime Traffic_ series is a juvenile (or "young adult," if you prefer)series involving a corporation of that name, which has a means of travelling between alternate timelines. They basically do clandestine import/export between their timeline ("home timeline") and the others ("alternates"). In this novel, you see mission creep setting in; Crosstime Traffic is engaged in subverting the political system in a timeline in which the communists won the Cold War. The story is set in a communist Italy of the late 21st century; I must say that it has a very realistic feel, in that it feels like it's been the 1940s for 150 years (I remember reading an editorial which stated that it was the 1940s in eastern Europe from the 40s until the fall of the Berlin Wall -- it makes sense to me). One of the Crosstime Traffic employees gets trapped there when the secret police close down their business (it sells subversive board games), and has to hide out with some acquaintances of his. The story is told from the point of view of the local characters, not the Crosstime Traffic point of view; it feels almost like Turtledove himself has spent time in a communist police state prior to 1990 or so.

In a previous review, I wondered what it is about Turtledove's writing that I like so much. I've thought about it, and a couple of things occurred to me. One is that his "local color" is always very good. His stories have little details in them that give them that sense of authenticity. Another is that his characters tend to be sympathetic, and seem real as well. His pacing is pretty good, too, so that it's easy to keep turning the pages in one of his stories.

I'd highly recommend this book (as well as the rest of the series) to anyone of any age, even though these books are written as juveniles.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars juvenile or adult??, October 5, 2007

By 

J. Nachison "long-time SF and history lover" (Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Gladiator (Crosstime Traffic) (Hardcover)

I found this action-packed alternate world one of Harry's better juveniles... a good Heinlein replica 50 +/- years later. It moves swiftly, with well-drawn high school characters and their "supporting" adults -- and is an almost believable yarn. If you ever visited the old USSR and also understand some of our "real" historical turning points this story makes sense. It didn't happen in our world, but this apparently "re-made" socialist "paradise" a very believable Italy. It is a very "1980's Hungarian or Leningradian almost-replica. I'd debate whether or not such an empire would last 150 years, but that is author's perogative.

Bottom-line -- I enjoyed it thoroughly - and that is after 50 years of deeply reading science fiction, with a personal knowledge base going back to the 1930's pulps. Harry, while I thought some of your other recent books had "slipped," this is one of the better alternative adult world(s) you have invented. In some ways I enjoyed this as well as "Guns of the South." Quick, straight, relatively uncomplicated and easy to sort thru and out. As the saying goes, "you got your groove back."

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars simple repetitive structure in the narrative, June 28, 2007

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Gladiator (Crosstime Traffic) (Hardcover)

Already the 5th book in this Crosstime series! Turtledove has impressive if not prodigious productivity. Commendable how this book continues the trend of describing a timeline quite different from those in the earlier books. Reading across the series, there is an unpredictability in settings that can be an attraction to some readers.

By the way, here there seems to be a slight reference to Turtledove's first big hit, The Guns of the South. The latter was also about alternate universes. In which the logo of Apple Computer was described. Also done in Gladiator. Turtledove probably put the remarks here, simply because a reader could recognise it, without him having to explicitly name the manufacturer. But maybe he's also reaching out to his earliest fans.

Another person who reviewed this book was spot on, hilariously but accurately, in labelling it "mission creep". An interesting development harking back at policy changes in the parent world.

Unfortunately, the narrative, in the combination of both the spoken dialog and the thoughts attributed to various characters, is often weak. There is a structure often present, usually involving a statement immediately followed by a counterpoint or negation of that statement. If you haven't noticed this, try rereading and parsing carefully. Once you see it, then you see it everywhere. Also true of the author's other works, like his 10 or 12 volume Civil War series. But in this book, the repetitive structure seems especially pronounced. As though he is dumbing down the narrative, for a young audience. Or that he is not putting enough effort into writing interesting prose. It can get stale to read, after you notice.

By contrast, look at Rowling's Harry Potter books. Also ostensibly for a similar audience. However the narrative flow is far more varied and interesting to read. You cannot easily deconstruct her works to detect a simple narrative pattern. Also reflected in the marketplace. Her books outsold any in the earlier Crosstime series books, probably by over an order of magnitude.

Granted, the typical reader of Gladiator probably will not consciously notice the repetitive structures. But unconsciously, this may be subsumed and expressed simply that the book is "ok but not great". And ultimately in sales. A pity, because Turtledove's series is a great idea, that deserves stronger expression. We need a successor to Piper's Paratime, and this series is the closest active approximation.