Gunpowder Empire (Crosstime Traffic, Book 1) (Hardcover)

by Harry Turtledove (Author) "When Jeremy Solters found a note from his mother in his lunchbox, he started to laugh..." (more)
Key Phrases: home timeline, crosstime traders, transposition chamber, Agrippan Rome, Lucio Claudio, Sesto Capurnio (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Readers nostalgic for the juvenile SF novels of Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton will find much to enjoy in alternate-history master Turtledove's time-travel novel, the first of a new series, in which a late 21st-century world has eliminated pollution and resource scarcity by exploiting the resources of various alternative realities. The Solter family spends their summers in one such reality, on the frontier of a Roman Empire that never fell, trading Swiss Army knives and other hi-tech trinkets for grain. When the mother suffers an appendicitis attack, the Solter parents travel back home to Southern California for treatment, leaving their teenage children in charge. Then things start to go wrong-the parents are stuck back home and can't communicate with the kids, while invaders lay siege to the Roman city near their summer place, and ever-efficient Roman bureaucrats start asking the kids embarrassing questions. Turtledove (In the Presence of Mine Enemies, etc.) presents his teenaged heroes with a series of moral choices and dilemmas that will particularly resonate with younger fans. This is a rousing story that reminds us that "adventure" really is someone else in deep trouble a long way off.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
The current master of alternate history honors genre founding father H. Beam Piper (1904-64) in a story set on an exhausted, early-twenty-second-century Earth that draws resources from a host of parallel time lines, in some of which the planet is a wilderness, in others inhabited--or uninhabitable. Jeremy and Amanda Solter, typical L.A. teenagers, are spending the summer with their grain-trading parents in a time line in which the Roman Empire never fell. The promise of an interesting experience evaporates when, in rapid succession, their parents go home because of their mother's appendicitis, the cross-time-traveling machine goes down, and the Lieutvans (avatars of the Lithuanians) invade. Tough as they are, Jeremy and Amanda discover that real war is indescribably more ghastly than described war, and dealing with slavery, fur-wearers, and other nonamenities of premodern civilizations is pretty grueling, too. Seemingly a series opener intended to introduce the concept of parallel worlds and Turtledove's take on it, the book succeeds as an homage to parallel-worlds pioneer Piper and a well-told, engaging tale. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (December 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076530693X
• ISBN-13: 978-0765306937
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #948,616 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beware, Turtledove fans!, October 8, 2005

By	Konrad Baumeister (Milwaukee, WI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

An alternate history where the Roman Empire survives into and past our own time would make for a fascinating read if researched and written well, and Harry Turtledove would be one author who could probably do it. If so, he needs to try again, and a little harder.

Nowhere on the book jacket or cover blurbs or inside this $25 book is there are warning/indication that this is a book for children and maybe (very) young teenagers, but what is what it is. Since it is sold as standard science fiction/alternative history, and the author is well-known for that kind of standard fare for adults, it strikes me as a little cynical to just let the adult reader find this out for himself after buying the book.

Unfortunately, even as a youth-oriented adventure story that happens to be set in another "timeline," it falls short. JK Rowling need not fear this entry into her market.

It seems a little churlish to quibble about details in a kids' story, but kids are smart enough to pick up on this stuff, and Turtledove is smart enough to know better. So here are some of my personal quibbles.

The thing is set in the 2090s, and science has made interdimensional travel possible. Here, it seems to be used primarily for plundering oil and foodstuffs from the other worlds and bringing the goods back home, in exchange for slum trinkets like Swiss army knives and gaudy Japanese watches. Despite the "current" year being some 80 to 90 years ahead of us, very little besides this inter-dimensional trick has changed. Kids are still obsessed with TV and CDs, they shop at WalMart and Home Depot, use a PowerBook computer, and all of the gadgets in common use were in use in our time, 2005. They also speak English. Given the speed at which current fashions and customs have changed in the last 100 years, this is ridiculous. Only one SERIOUS change has occurred, and that is implied by the comment, "Guys in Los Angeles usually weren't so crude." Now that would signify massive change!

Sadly, the kids are too perfect by half, being politically correct to a mind-numbing and eye-rolling extent. Their physical revulsion at the concept of slavery is mentioned dozens and dozens of times, they abhor the idea of personal valor and even question the morality of self-defense, and they also seem to have a very strange aversion, again regularly bringing them to the verge (and beyond) of vomiting, when confronted with the custom of people wearing furs. Most odd, coming from kids wearing and using leather all the time, and craving a good burger and lamb vindaloo. Their precious and unwavering moral rectitude almost had me reaching for the airsickness bag myself at times.

Turtledove presents the Roman Empire roughly as it was in AD 150, adds the invention though not perfection of early gunpowder weapons, and at that point stops all progress. This seems way overly simplistic (and way too easy on an ambitious author). The Byzantine (East Roman) Empire outlasted the Western Empire by 1000 years, and there was significant progress made in that time in every field of knowledge. Why nothing new in 2000 years in this timeline? Why use time-dates at all; it would have been easier to say that the children went back in time itself. They don't need an alternate world for this.

Finally, every sf and alt/hist reader will be familiar with various logical and time-honored conventions concerning the genre. These are either absent or unevenly applied in this case. For example, they are prevented from interfering with the civilization as they find it...but are permitted (and encouraged) to trade goods technologically far advanced. And ultimately they negotiate with an enemy's king, free a slave, etc. This is non-interference? Better to allow them to actively interfere and deal imaginatively with the fall-out. Even the idea of essentially looting all the available food from a culture only slightly above subsistence level is pretty questionable for people who consider themselves moral paragons.

I can't recommend this book to either juvenile adventure readers (it is fairly dull and overly simply plotted) nor to Turtledove fans (way below his form).

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Turtledove is getting very, very lazy, January 6, 2004

By	Michael K. Smith (Gonzales, Louisiana) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

When Harry is on a roll, he produces some of the best alternate history yarns of recent years. When he's not paying attention, however, his stuff can be overwritten and under-thought, sloppily edited and thin in the plot line. More than that, this first volume in a series is obviously a Young Adult book but there's no indication of the target audience anywhere on it. The premise is that sometime in the next few decades, we will stumble across the technology (never explained or even theorized about) to cross into variant timelines: Worlds where Germany won World War II, where the Armada conquered England, where the Vikings stayed in New England and beat off later European settlers, etc. In other words, all the usual alternate history themes. Specifically, this one is set in an alternate Rome where Agrippa survived into old age, conquered Germania for Augustus, and established a 2,000-year empire which is now just beginning to develop cannon and flintlocks. Teenagers Jeremy and Amanda Solters accompany their mercantilist parents every summer to an alternate town in Romania (Dacia in that world), where they carry on a brisk business in pocket watches, glass mirrors, and Swiss Army knives. They have to be careful not to upset things in that world by talking too much -- just what effect all this alien technology is supposed to have is lightly passed over -- and they take grain in trade rather than silver because the Home Line needs the food. Then their mother develops appendicitis and has to be escorted back through the portal by their father. And then the portal malfunctions and the kids, naturally, have to fend for themselves -- possibly forever. And then the Lietuvans (Lithuanians) invade. And then, and then, and then. The author takes every opportunity to impress upon the reader just how dirty and disease-ridden and ignorant and generally unpleasant Agrippan Rome is. (Yeah, so are Ecuador and Bangladesh and the South Bronx in this world. . . .) But he does it by talking down to the reader, using short sentences, and repeating the didactic messages over and over. I got two-thirds of the way through and found I didn't much care *what* happened to Jeremy and Amanda, so I tossed aside this not-thick book (288 small-size pages) and went on to something else that wasn't a waste of my reading time. The notion that this is only the first installment of a new series does not excite me at all.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting concept, boring story, January 14, 2004

By	D. H. Richards "ninthwavestore" (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In this short novel (novella?) Turtledove uses the ideal of parallel worlds and thus alternative histories. In this case, a world where the Roman Empire never fell and primitive muskets and cannons are state of the art. The twist is that living in this world are people from our own future, where they have found a way to travel to these parallel worlds and exploit their resources. As resources run low on our world, "traders" go to parallel worlds and get the stuff we need.

Conceptually this is very interesting stuff, and Turtledove does a reasonable job explaining how and why history would be different, as well as how these people would have developed socially etc. He is a little sketchy on how exactly this kind of parallel world travel works (he is no Michael Crichton).

The main problem with this book is that once this is all established, and the characters (Traders from our world) are set up, not much happens. The Characters seem to get into some sticky situations, but then sort of just get out of trouble, setting a pattern of non-events for the whole book. Not to give things away, but the characters are never in any "real" danger, there is no compelling narrative drive.

Perhaps a worthwhile paperback or library book but save your money otherwise.