Harry Turtledove The Gladiator

The Gladiator

Harry Turtledove

Tor, Jun 2007, $23.95

ISBN 076531486X

Over a century ago the Iron Curtain came down as the Soviet Union won the Cold War. As a result of the communist triumph over western capitalism, society is extremely controlled with surveillance everywhere. Though security is tight, as long as one avoids counterrevolutionary activity, a person was safe and secure as most violent crimes have been eliminated. That is except those perpetrated by the state against individuals and since it is government doing the act, it is not a crime.

Whereas the elderly embrace the secure environs just secretly praying to live one more day, the young students are bored having a passion for life. In Milan, Stalinist Italian People's Republic seventeen years old Annarita Crosetti and sixteen years old Gianfranco Mazzilli attend Enver Hoxha Polytechnic. Gianfranco is a terrible student going nowhere while Annarita is a superb pupil with a future as the daughter of a party hack and a member of the Young Socialists' League. They find the Gladiator game shop where they play a complex game Rails Across Europe with enthusiasm. However, shops like the Gladiator are always betrayed from within leading to the security police shutting it down for the capital punishment crime of teaching capitalism although the owner Eduardo escapes. Having been exposed, he has no place to go, but tells his two teen customers that he is a marooned Trader from a crosstime line in which capitalism defeated communism.

The fifth Crosstime Traffic saga (see IN HIGH PLACES) may be the best in a strong futuristic alternate history series. The vivid landscape comes alive through the escapades and capers of the lead teenagers. The story line is fast-paced as Harry Turtledove paints a deep tale of living in the middle to late twenty-first century in a Soviet Republic beyond the Cole War's Iron Curtain. Targeting young adults, older sub-genre fans will want to read this intelligent superb thriller.

Harriet Klausner