by Harry Turtledove
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Product Description
Time travel doesn't work. You can't go backward or forward; you're stuck at "now". What you can do is travel sideways, to the same "now" in another timeline where history turned out differently. So far, only our home timeline has figured out how to do that. We use it to conduct discreet trading operations in less advanced timelines, selling goods just a little bit better than the locals can make. It's profitable, but families who work as Time Traders have to be careful to fit in, lest the locals become suspicious. Justin's family are Time Traders. The summer before he's due to start college, he goes with them to a different Virginia, in a timeline where the American states never became a single country, and American history has consisted of a series of small wars. Despite his unease, he accompanies Randolph Brooks, another Time Trader, on a visit to the tiny upland town of Elizabeth, Virginia. He'll only be away from his parents for a few days. Beckie Royer thanks her stars that she's from California, the most prosperous and advanced country in North America. But just now she's in Virginia with her grandmother, who wants to revisit the tiny mountain town where she grew up. The only interesting thing there is a boy named Justin--and he'll be gone soon. Then war between Virginia and Ohio breaks out anew. Ohio sets a tailored virus loose on Virginia. Virginia swiftly imposes a quarantine, trapping Beckie and Justin and Randolph Brooks in Elizabeth. Even Crosstime Traffic can't help. All the three of them can do is watch as plague and violence take over the town. It's nothing new in history, not in this timeline or any other. It's part of the human condition. And just now, this part of the human condition sucks.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 What a horrible book, 2008-07-11
Harry Turtledove takes a very interesting concept ... and butchers it. The writing is beyond bad, it's horrible! Simple concepts are beaten to death, cliche phrases are overused, the "characters" appear to have no basis in reality.
I give it one star for an original idea but I would never ever recommend anybody actually spend money for this book.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 The Disunited State of America, 2007-12-12
This book is not one of Harry Turtledove better books -- it is really simple to good reading
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Decent Turtledove, 2007-11-21
Whether you like it or not, Turtledove is the master of American "alternate history." While this isn't to the epic par of his Timeline-191 series, it's worth a read, and even if you're not a teenager (I'm 24,) as a paperback, it's a fun weekend diversion. It's fast paced, like the rest of this series (unlike Timeline-191 or Guns of the South,) and pretty straightforward. Crosstime Traffic kid meets local kid, and goes through a local snapshot of another "what could have been." If you want Turtledove at his best, start with How Few Remain and Great War: American Front. If you want a easy way to happily kill a weekend, the less than $10 for this book will do.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Wasted opportunity, 2007-09-22
In the unlikely event that scholars decide to study Harry Turtledove's fiction, they will certainly note the frequent mismatch between the author's inventive ideas and failures in execution. As with so many other recent Turtledove books, The Disunited States of America is a virtual primer on those deficits.
This book, obviously intended for a younger reader but not so labelled, is part of Turtledove's "Crosstime Traffic" series. The premise is that by the end of the 21st centry, the world has solved few problems -- most have gotten worst -- but does know how to travel to "crosstime" alternate realities. These parallel universes are exploited for their resources in a merchantilistic way, while the authorities at Crosstime Traffic make sure that the more advanced of these worlds do not stumble upon crosstime travel themselves.
In this volume, the alternate world is a very high tech version of the United States that never stayed united. The action, such as it is, centers around two older teenagers, Beckie, a politically correct native of the powerful nation of California, and crosstime traveler Justin. Both have been stranded in a tiny town in the racist nation of Virginia, which is under attack by aggressive Ohio. Ohio, for what we are told are generally economic reasons, has gone so far as to unleash a deadly plague on its neighbor, while cynically stirring up a doomed insurrection by Virginia's oppressed blacks at the same time. From Ohio's over the top behavior, you would almost think that there was a football rivalry at stake. Either way, virtually none of Turtledove's largely passive characters react in a realistic way.
Leaving aside that very little of this hangs together, this book represents about the worst Turtledove writing I've seen in years. Here you will find all of the mind-numbing repetition, cliches, tepid pacing, bland characters and lack of satisfying resolution the made the World War series so painful to read.
Turtledove has written nice things in the past several years -- but not too many. Whatever is going on, and my bet would be overproduction, the "Master of Alternative History" may need to take a sabbatical.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Despite the title, this is not yet another "What if the South had won" book, , 2007-08-10
Fourth in the "Crosstime Traffic" series of books about a company which trades between parallel universes.
This series is obviously aimed at teenagers. The hero or heroine is always a teenager, all swear words and strongly offensive comments are censored and referred to indirectly - e.g. after a quote Turtledove will often add something like "except that the hateful word he used was not 'people'." There is usually a romance between the central character and a person of the opposite sex but it is always extremely chaste and the books never directly refer to it going beyond a kiss.
Nevertheless it would not be entirely fair to characterise this series as "Paratime-Lite." It's not afraid to cover complex or difficult issues such as how you deal with racism or intractable hatred between races, the steps that a universe which had discovered travel between worlds would almost certainly take to keep it secret from other universes, and fact that war is not glamorous when the person next to you gets shot or, worse, you get shot or you have to shoot someone yourself. It is quite possible for an adult to enjoy these books.
Stories about travel between parallel universes are a rapidly growing genre. The closest examples to this are H. Beam Piper's "Paratime" books, and Keith Laumer's "Worlds of the Imperium" series. The "Crosstime Traffic" books are another take on the same sort of idea, and if you enjoyed them you will probably enjoy this one.
When I saw the title of this book I wrongly assumed that the alternative history world in which it was set would be yet another example of a universe where the South won the United States Civil War/War between the States. No: the divergence goes back further than that. Most of the action of this book takes place in a world where the United States constitution was never ratified, and the original confederation between the 12 colonies which successfully rebelled against British rule in the 18th century fell apart a few decades later. So the states of North America are nations, which are completely independent and frequently go to war against one another. Almost all the Southern States are openly racist, including the one state no longer run by whites, Mississipi, which has simply replaced white oppression of african-american people with african-american oppression of white people.
The story revolves around Beckie Royer, a girl from California in that timeline, and Justin, a boy from the Crosstime Traffic homeworld who is pretending to come the local Virginia. Both of them are trapped in a small Virginia town, when a war starts between Ohio and Virginia. First Ohio attacks Virginia with bioweapons causing a plague and forcing a quarantine, then incites an african-american revolt.
The Crosstime series is:
Gunpower Empire
Curious Notions
In High Places
The Disunited States
The Gladiator
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