Curious Notions: Crosstime Traffic [Mass Market Paperback]

This second book in the series is lacking what gave the first book some charm: the clear tributes to earlier authors, especially H. Beam Piper. I gave the first book 4 stars, in large part because even though there were flaws in the writing, it did appeal to my love of Piper's Paratime series and specifically the story "Gunpowder God." This book, however, has no such tribute. This is Turtledove going back to the same old Germans-won-the-war that he has been writing about interminably. This time it's slightly different - supposedly it's WW 1 the Germans won - but the world he comes up with is much the same.

Some specific gripes:

1. This book is very clearly a juvenile/Young Adult, and yet it's not being marketed as such. It's being sold in bookstores in the science fiction section, and in libraries on the regular adult fiction shelves, rather than the YA or J sections. This makes it an especial disappointment to adult readers, who expect not only better writing out of Turtledove, but also more mature characters in whatever they are reading.

2. The adult characters are so simplistically stupid and greedy for profit that it is not possibly to regard them as real people. I know that teenagers think that most adults are somewhat slow and stupid - I was one, once - but I didn't want the adults *agreeing* with me on that; I wanted reassurance that there really were a few smart people out there thinking things through and trying to run things properly. In this book, though, the adults are written as being as slow and stupid as teenagers think they are. Paul's father ignores totally obvious problems; characters state aloud that they are more concerned with profit than anything else; the Crosstime people blithely ignore interference with the culture of the timeline they're in and treat the locals like cartoon characters. Even the adults who do fix things and solve problems, such as Sammy Wong, introduced late in the book as a sort of deus ex machina to get Paul and his father out of trouble, do so with a sneer at everyone else who makes mistakes and complete contempt for the locals.

3. Some things are so obvious that they really, really shouldn't be done. Gosh, the Germans, the Triads, everyone is out to find and imprison Paul and he knows it. Wong has hidden him in a hotel with luxury service. So of COURSE Paul sneaks out of the hotel for a hamburger, without discussing it first, telling anyone where he's going, leaving a note, or even, for Pete's sake, dropping bread crumbs. Oh, come ON. And then, after leaving the luxury hotel, which Paul has called a luxury prison, he gets caught and thrown in a real prison, the real prison gets glossed over as if there were no real differences between it and the hotel except for the occasional interrogation. Paul spends less time thinking about how miserable he is in prison than he ever did in the hotel.

There are gaping holes in logic, and a gaping lack of rules for Crosstime. I mean, by now, everyone who reads SF at all has a notion of the principle of cultural non-interference. Ignoring that background notion without any explanation of why this culture wouldn't have such rules, is just careless. In fact, careless or thoughtless is what I'd say Turtledove was here. The book was slapped together with no thought to character development at all, no attention to the *good* cliches of alternate timeline stories, and most of the effort going into the bad cliches of young adult fiction.

I save my 2-stars for things that have serious editing and continuity flaws, and 1 star for things that are downright unreadable, and this is neither. The story is readable, it's just not very good, and that's why it gets a mediocre rating. There are even a few things I liked about it. The clues that the home timeline is not, in fact, our timeline, are reasonably subtly done. There are some culturally stereotyped characters, but at least the stereotypes are thrown around fairly evenly; there's not any one group of people who has all the intelligence and culture, or any one culture which is particularly worse than all the others. The length of the book is OK. Mostly, the copy editing was well done; there are only a few noticeable typos and grammar errors, quite good by today's rather lowered standards.

It's not awful. It's just not very good.

Not many Sci Fi/Fantasy authors today turn out anything I will pay money to buy. I suppose I was spoiled by the really first rate speculative fiction I grew up reading, written by the likes of Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Niven and Pournelle, and others. Most of those authors are gone now, and it just doesn't seem to me that the ones writing today are nearly as good. When I picked up Harry Turtledove's Videssos Cycle back in college, I really had hopes that here was a new author who would prove worthy of his forebears. Alas, lately Turledove is not turning out to be, if his recent work is anything by which to judge.

This is a real pity, as I really want to like his stuff. I absolutely loved the Videssos Cycle, and I keep hoping he'll turn out something just as good, or even almost as good. His recent work seems shoddy, poorly thought out, and badly edited. This book shares a flaw common to much of Turtledove's work, and which I remarked upon in my review of his novel "Homeward Bound" -- endless repetition of the same point. In this novel, the point that is brought forth again and again and again is the difference between the value of money in the earth that the hero comes from, and the one in which he finds himself as the book unfolds. When the main character reflected on this for the third time, I started counting. The author makes the point no less than nine times throughout the book. This sort of thing gets intensely irritating. What makes it ironic is that early in the book the young hero wearily braces himself to listen to his father tell him something he's heard (and understood) many, many times before, and Turtledove accurately portrays the young man's exasperation at this patronizing repetitiveness, and then he turns around and does the same thing to the reader himself!

Unfortunately the repetitiveness which is fast becoming Turtledove's trademark is not the only flaw in this book. As other reviewers have noted, the adults in this book seem far too dull and slow witted, especially the German authorities. It's as though Turtledove got his idea of what German secret police are like from watching too many B grade WWII movies, where Gestapo men are portrayed as sinister, sneering bullies who are dangerous, but ultimately are stupid bumblers, easily outwitted by the hero. The hero, Paul Gomes, is portrayed as smarter than any of the adults around him, which is not bad in and of itself, but then, having made Gomes so smart, Turtledove gets him into trouble by having him do things that are inexplicably stupid and careless for a character as smart and quick witted and Gomes has been built up to be. Gomes gets stuck on this alternate earth by failing to take an obvious and easy path to safety and help that literally stands open in front of him: after the German authorities raid his house and take his father into custody while he was out, he has an opportunity to go inside the house before they return to it, and escape back to his home world and report the matter to people who can help get his father back, and he doesn't. Turtledove was obliged to keep Gomes stuck in this earth, or no adventure would follow to write about, but he could have solved this problem with the simple and obvious expedient of having the Germans leave a couple of men in the house to snatch young Gomes up upon his return, and having Gomes evade them somehow. The second slip of this type comes when Gomes, after having been taken to a place of safety by a man who has come from his home world to assist him, sneaks out without telling this man simply because he's bored and wants to get out for few minutes. Of course he gets nabbed immediately. The problem with this is not only that this supposedly very clever character suddenly becomes so stupid, but also that the same authorities who couldn't find him for weeks when he was moving around and living in an area of town they were actively combing, find him mere minutes after he emerges in a place where they were never even looking.

And finally, there is a far more basic flaw in this book, and one which is common to "Gunpowder Empire", Turtledove's first book about an earth where they have discovered how to travel to other dimensions with alternate earths. Supposedly, the people of this earth are running so low on resources, not only various raw materials, but food as well, that the only way they can sustain themselves is by sending people out to these alternate earths to bring back such necessities. Yet in both books of this crosstime travel series, the method we see them use to do this is totally inadequate to the task. In both books we see a little mom and pop store selling goods to the locals better than they can make themselves, and using the profits from this to buy produce. There is just no way that the single truckload of produce sent back every few weeks could ever justify 1) the presumably enormous expenditure of energy needed to effect travel between dimensions, 2) the expense and difficulty of manufacturing obsolete electronics solely for this export market (it's too outdated for these people to use at home), 3) the expense and difficulty of inserting people into a modern world where birth records, school records, identification papers, business licenses, etc. all have to be altered or forged, 4) the risk of tipping off people in this world to the possibility of travel between dimensions, and probably some other flaws I simply haven't spotted yet. There is just no way that the tiny dribs and drabs of foodstuffs an operation like this could haul in could ever justify the outlay of money, effort, and risk that this operation entails. This seems even more incredible when Gomes remarks to another character in the book that some of the alternate earths discovered are ones where people never evolved. Well if there are no people there to compete for resources with, why not colonize those worlds? Why not relieve overcrowding by sending colonists, and alleviate hunger at home by setting up modern, efficient, productive farms there? The haul from that would dwarf anything that operations like the one described in this book could ever hope to bring in. Turtledove attemtps to provide a second justification for the main characters' presence in this alternate world by noting that they need to keep an eye on the natives to make sure they don't develop crosstime travel on their own. But how is a little corner shop located in a poorer neighborhood in a city far from the centers of power on this world going to keep its finger on the pulse of technology there? The basic premise behind this whole story (and the one of "Gunpowder Empire" just doesn't ring true at all, which really hurts suspension of disbelief, and makes it hard to get into the story.

So all in all, what you have here is a basic premise, crosstime travel, that is a pretty great as an idea around which to build a sci fi story, but unfortunately, Turtledove makes a hash of it with a flawed justification for such travel, characters who step out of character and do inexplicably stupid things for no other reason than that he can't make the story work if they don't, and his wearisome repetitiveness. All this is a shame, because the basic idea of crosstime travel is a great one, and Turtledove is certainly capable of so much better. Maybe he should go back and reread Poul Anderson's short story "Eutopia". Anderson treated the idea vastly better in that one story than Turtledove's been able to do so far in two novels.

Curious Notions (2004) is the second novel in the Crosstime Traffic series, following Gunpowder Empire. Lawrence Gomes is a CT employee living in San Francisco in an alternate timeline where Germany has won the Great War. Paul Gomes is his son. They are storekeepers in the Curious Notions shop where electronic gadgets are sold to get money to buy foodstuffs for the home timeline.

In this novel, Lucy Woo is a Chinese girl who works in a shoe factory in this alternate San Francisco. Charlie Woo, her father, is a radio repairman who knows a lot about the current electronic industry. He has been puzzled over the gadgets sold by Curious Notions for some years.

One morning shortly after Paul and his father took over the store, Inspector Weidenreich dropped in to inspect their identification and business permit. He finds nothing out of order, but questions Paul about their source of supply. Paul denies any knowledge of the buying side of the business and refers the Inspector to his father, who is not in the store at the moment. The Inspector leaves, but promises to come back to see Paul's father.

When Lawrence comes in a few minutes later, he is less than pleased to learn of the Inspector's visit. Paul's Dad pulls several names out of the phone book and, when the Inspector returns, gives him the names as suppliers of the gadgets sold in the shop. Charlie Woo is included in this list. The Germans promptly take in Charlie for questioning.

Lucy Woo is rather angry about the situation and visits Curious Notions to express her opinion. Paul passes on her complaints to his Dad and arrangements are made to release Charlie Woo. Paul continues to see Lucy after that and they have several conversations. However, Paul underestimates Lucy's intelligence and gives her some significant hints about his origins.

In this novel, the Germans continue their investigation of Curious Notions, leading to the apprehension of Paul's Dad. Now Paul is on the run with the entire German empire on this tail (at least it feels this way). Lucy thinks about the clues and comes up with the Crosstime Secret. Everything is really going well . . . Not.

This novel shows another aspect of being an agent for Crosstime Traffic: a sufficiently advanced society is more difficult to fool. Even worse, such a society is probably capable of developing crosstime travel if the secret comes out. Crosstime Traffic has made a major mistake in opening Curious Notions.

Of course, flooding the alternate timeline with perfect counterfeits would be even more disastrous to the Crosstime Secret. Such an operation would require large quantities of small bills, thus making the juxtaposition of two identical bills very likely. Moreover, the transposition device would be fixed in place since the foodstuffs would have to delivered to the homeline. Thus, the Germans probably would soon learn of the counterfeits and would quickly follow the trail back to the device itself. Voila tout, no more Crosstime Secret!

Highly recommended for Turtledove fans and for anyone else for enjoys tales of alternate history and travel thereto.

-Arthur W. Jordin