by Harry Turtledove
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Product Description
Usually Crosstime Traffic concerns itself with trade. Our world owns the secret of travel between parallel continuums, and we mean to use it to trade for much-needed resources with the worlds next door. Preferably without letting them know about any of that parallel-worlds stuff. But there’s one parallel world that’s different. In it, the atomic war broke out in 1967, at the height of the Summer of Love. Now, Crosstime Traffic has been given a different sort of mission: find out what on earth, or on the many earths, went wrong.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 A total waste of time, 2008-11-11
This book is shelved in the adult fiction section of my library. It is however, not a book aimed at adults. The writing is meant for juveniles, maybe 10-year-olds. But I think, even a 10-year-old would be disappointed by this book. This is the second Cross Time Traffic book I read. The other book, Gladiator, was much better. I'm OK with the premise. People have learned how to cross over into an alternate reality where history has taken a different path. This is Harry Turtledove's life work, writing such novels. My real problem with this book is that there is plenty of story but virtually no plot. The only thing that kept me going was the hope that Liz was going to discover where this world had gone wrong. What was the turn that led to a nuclear war? My hope was realized, she does figure it out. The reason turns out to be so academic and trivial that I was really sorry I'd wasted my time. No more Cross Time Traffic novels for me. Most likely no more Harry Turtledove novels for me.
0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 anti-religous propaganda--and boring, 2008-10-24
In addition to the other reviews, let me point out that Turtledove uses this YP level book to push his anti-religious views. On pp. 41-42, the protagonist, Liz, has trouble seeing any difference between religion and superstition:
"For that matter, what was the difference between superstation and religion generally? Lots of people had spilled lots of ink and killed lost of trees and pushed around lost of electrons trying to define the answer. So far, most of what they said boiled down to What I believe is religion, and what those foolish people over there believe is superstition."
"There was no evidence that knocking on wood made the world less likely to go wrong. There was no evidence that praying in a church or a synagogue or mosque made the world less likely to go wrong, either. That didn't stop people from doing both kinds of things. When it first became plain that science explained how things happened...better than religion, lots of "experts" from Karl Marx on down, predicted that religions would wither up and die."
"It hadn't happened in the home timeline. It also hadn't happened in any high-tech alternate Crosstime Traffic had found. Most people weren't rational enough, or weren't rational often enough..."
So Harry takes a page to push his view that religion is irrational, a popular, if irrational view. I would recommend instead of Crosstime Traffic, the Dragonback series by Timothy Zahn. Dragon and Thief: The First Dragonback Adventure (Dragonback) Not only are these very suitable for young people (as well as us oldsters!), they are much better written--real page turners. They deal with genuine moral dilemmas without being moralizing or boring.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 What can profit do for a war-devastated world?, 2008-10-04
It wasn't a particularly beautiful world. In this timeline, nuclear war had broken out between the US and the Soviet Union during 1967, destroying both nations. Now, the residents of Los Angeles struggle to survive, and squabble--while historians from Crosstime Traffic try to determine what actually went wrong--what made this timeline veer into war rather than follow the many paths leading to peace. Along with two adult historians is their daughter, Liz. Liz hopes to get a leg up on her fellow college students with some field experience but when war breaks out between The Valley and Westside (where she and her parents live, near the UCLA campus), Liz gets more closely involved in actual history than she ever wanted.
As far as Dan is concerned, the Westsiders were asking for it. According to treaty, the passes between the Valley and Westside were to remain open, but Westside closed them and demanded a toll. When the Valley is able to bring a pre-nuclear heavy machine gun into the fight, the Valley's armies quickly drive Westside's further south. Dan can't help being fascinated by Liz--for one thing, she's a very pretty girl. The longer he spends with her, though, the more he thinks she's more than just pretty. There's something strange about her, something that doesn't quite fit into the world as he knows it. What Dan doesn't know is that his curiosity just might cause big troubles for both Liz and himself.
Author Harry Turtledove continues his CROSSTIME TRAFFIC series with another look at the many paths that time could have taken--and perhaps did in one timeline or another. 1967 was a period of crisis in the United States and in the cold war. American bombers raided North Viet Nam, bombing ships and harbor facilities that surely contained Russian and other foreign sailors. Czechoslovakia lurched toward its famous 'Prague Spring,' and young Americans, radicalized by the apparently pointless war, marched the streets and plotted both non-violent and violent resistance. It's certainly plausible that something could have pushed that America, or that USSR, over the edge.
Turtledove uses the microcosms of a San Fernando Valley-based city-state waring with a Westwood Village city-state (in turn supported by a San Pedro city-state) to point out the silliness of much faux-patriotism, and also raise a warning flag about the fragility of the veneer of science, democracy and reason that sustains US society. By doing so in the context of a young adult-oriented story, Turtledove provides a welcome counter to the jingoism-heavy SF that seems to fill every shelf.
I would have liked to see a bit more of a resolution of some kind to the story. We know Dan's life is changed, but we don't know how much, or what he's really going to do about it. Liz, in contrast, seems content to move along, recognizing that people forced to survive in war-damaged universes, will do a lot of suffering for the sins of their ancestors.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Turtledove Young Adult ALMOST History, 2008-09-06
I own all of this series. It isn't the best, but it is still a very good read. I tThink that my students will like this tale because it relates to their world of gangs and stupid little wars.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Valley-West Side war, 2008-08-16
Good book. Not a difficult read. Good example of an alternate history story. Like the intertwining of developing, if inadvisable, personal relations, and the question of non-intervention.
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