Curious Notions: A Novel of Crosstime Traffic
3.5/5
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About this ebook
In a parallel-world 21st-century San Francisco where the Kaiser's Germany won World War One and went on to dominate the world, Paul Gomes and his father Lawrence are secret agents for our timeline, posing as traders from a foreign land. They run a storefront shop called Curious Notions, selling what is in our world routine consumer technology-record players, radios, cassette decks--all of which is better than anything in this world, but only by a bit. Their real job is to obtain raw materials for our timeline. Just as importantly, they must guard the secret of Crosstime Traffic--for of the millions of parallel timelines, this is one of the few advanced enough to use that secret against us.
Now, however, the German occupation police are harassing them. They want to know where they're getting their mysterious goods. Under pressure, Paul and Lawrence hint that their supplies comes from San Francisco's Chinese...setting in motion a chain of intrigues that will put the entire enterprise of Crosstime Traffic at deadly risk. Curious Notions is the second book in Harry Turtledove's Crosstime Traffic series
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Harry Turtledove
Harry Turtledove is an American novelist of science fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy. Publishers Weekly has called him the “master of alternate history,” and he is best known for his work in that genre. Some of his most popular titles include The Guns of the South, the novels of the Worldwar series, and the books in the Great War trilogy. In addition to many other honors and nominations, Turtledove has received the Hugo Award, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and the Prometheus Award. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, earning a PhD in Byzantine history. Turtledove is married to mystery writer Laura Frankos, and together they have three daughters. The family lives in Southern California.
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Titles in the series (6)
Gunpowder Empire: A Novel of Crosstime Traffic Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Curious Notions: A Novel of Crosstime Traffic Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Disunited States of America: A Novel of Crosstime Traffic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In High Places: A Novel of Crosstime Traffic Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gladiator: A Novel of Crosstime Traffic Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Valley-Westside War: A Novel of Crosstime Traffic Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
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Reviews for Curious Notions
43 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I understand now that this series was directed at the younger readers.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Harry Turtledove enters the world of juvenile science fiction. Several reviewers on Amazon compared the books to Robert Heinlein’s young adult books (Have Spacesuit, Will Travel or Podkayne of Mars, perhaps) and there are some similarities, but while Heinlein’s books were about individual responsibility, Turtledove is more interested in larger society.
“Crosstime Traffic” is the name of the series; the individual books published so far are Gunpowder Empire, Curious Notions and In High Places. (I have not yet read the last one; it isn’t out in paperback yet and I don’t have the budget or shelf space for hardbound books).
The books are not sequels; they do not share the same characters. However, they do have the same premise; in the late 21st century a device allowing access to parallel universes enables our Earth to solve all its resource problems by going into alternate Earths and exploiting theirs. Thus the series title (which is the name of the organization that oversees this traffic) is a misnomer; there’s no time travel involved (thus avoiding the problem of changing history). The first novel is set in a Roman Empire that never fell (because Agrippa outlived Augustus, became emperor himself, and stabilized things) and that has progressed to the early gunpowder stage; the second takes place in a world where the Germans won the First World War (because the Schlieffen Plan worked), developed atomic weapons early (because there was no persecution of Jewish physicists) and conquered the world. The Crosstime Traffic entity (it’s never made clear if it’s a government agency or a private corporation) is exploiting these worlds by setting up small trading posts and swapping technology (Swiss army knives and pocket watches to the Romans, consumer electronics to the Germans) for - food.
Here’s where things go haywire for me. It’s made clear early in the first book that there are alternate worlds with no human population at all. Crosstime Traffic has entered those worlds and is busy drilling for oil. Well, why not farm them as well? Why go to all the trouble to send people - families, so you can get teenagers into the books - into dangerous environments just for wagonloads of grain from the alternate Roman empire and truckloads of produce from the alternate Second Reich? Paradoxically, it’s OK to suspend the laws of physics in science fiction - I have no beef with authors that have various armwaving excuses for things like faster-than-light travel or gravity polarizers - but it’s not OK to suspend the laws of logic. And none of the teenagers in these books ever ask their parents this embarrassingly obvious question.
Second, Turtledove has a bully pulpit that he refuses to preach from. The natives in the first book have a Late Medieval-Renaissance technology level, with all the disease, brutality and nastiness that go along with it; the natives in the second are oppressed by a dictatorial government. And the Crosstime Traffic people have the power to change that. This could raise all sorts of interesting - and obviously highly relevant - questions about the duties and obligations of technologically and politically advanced cultures to less advanced ones that might give teenage readers considerable room for thought. Maybe Turtledove expects them to ask those questions without any prompting from him; he does nibble around the edges a little. A Crosstime character in Gunpowder Empire frees a slave, and one in Curious Notions insists on rescuing a “local” family that saved him from the dreaded Feldgendarmie (like the GESTAPO, but with Pikelhauben), but the larger questions of principles aren’t addressed.
Maybe I should give Turtledove the benefit of the doubt here. This is a series, and I haven’t read the third novel yet, so perhaps he intends to pull young readers in with the adventure aspects of the stories and drop the philosophy on them gradually.1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This one's an okay book about a father and son who set up shop in an alternate reality where the Germans won the first World War. The authorities start to suspect them and things go from bad to worse. I got the book because I was curious how the Kaiser's America would compare to other alternate reality tales. It wasn't all that different from a What-If-the-Germans-Won-World-War-2 scenario. No Nazi trappings, of course, but otherwise very familiar.--J.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The cross time trafic series is enjoyable and entertaining. Each giving a photograph view of what life could be like in an alternate history. This book gives this view as if Germany won WWI and domoniated the U.S. however, a negative is this book for me was very predictable due to first reading Gladiator another cross time book by Turtledove. This story is virtually the same story line as Gladiator but told in a different alternate history.