Literature / Crosstime Traffic

Crosstime Traffic is a series of young adult Alternate History novels by Harry Turtledove. Set in the late 21st century, the series details the adventures of the employees of Crosstime Traffic, an organization which makes its money by sending traders to various timelines. Each work is set in a different timeline, and effectively acts as a standalone novel (though each one mentions the events of the previous one in passing, and the third book has a significant impact).

The protagonists in each story are teenagers, usually one boy and one girl, and usually with at least one POV from the home timeline.

The six volumes are, in order of publication:

• Gunpowder Empire (2003), set in the Dacia of a world where the Roman Empire never fell.
• Curious Notions (2004), set in the San Francisco of a world where Germany won World War I.
• In High Places (2006), set in a world where the Black Death killed more of Europe and allowed for Islam to conquer more of Europe (and for a radical new form of Christianity to arise).
• The Disunited States of America (2006), set in the West Virginia of a world where the Constitution was never created and the American states became independent nations.
• The Gladiator (2007), set in the Milan of a world where the Eastern Bloc won the Cold War. Notably, this is the only one where both viewpoint characters are from the alternate timeline.
• The Valley-Westside War (2008), set in the ruins of Los Angeles after a nuclear war between the US and USSR in the 1960s.

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The series provides examples of:

• 20 Minutes into the Future:
  • Despite being set about a century in the future, the series's home timeline looks like this. Apart from a hundred years of ordinary inflation, a few undescribed and apparently undescribable consumer objects, and the Crosstime vehicle itself, the home timeline is thoroughly familiar (Burger King apparently still exists, but a Whopper will cost a few Benjamins or C-Notes. Even the Euro still exists, though you need a hundred of them to buy anything).
  • Apple still makes their products, and The Incredibles is such a beloved classic that the proprietor in The Gladiator has it on his future PAD or whatever Apple will call that device.
• After the End: The Valley-Westside War is set in a world trying to rebuild after a nuclear war over a century ago.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: The rules of travel to parallel timelines strictly forbid revealing the existence of the "Prime" timeline (i.e. the one that invented crosstime travel) or introducing technology too advanced for anyone on that world to have invented (they sell goods that are just better than anything the locals can make to keep their economic edge).
  • Subverted in The Gladiator, where the prime-timeliners are trying to introduce democratic and capitalist ideas into a world where the Soviets won the Cold War, and any actual trading is incidental.
  • HEAVILY subverted in In High Places, where a group of rogue prime-timeliners purchase slaves in a Crapsack World where the Black Death was worse, and then take them to another timeline where they play at being conquistadors and slave owners. The discovery of this by the Crosstime Traffic company and the government is a huge scandal.
  • In The Valley-Westside War, Dan (a local from a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles) calls them out on this when he finds out what's going on — the Crosstime Traffic people have the tech and know-how to help rebuild society there, but all they're interested in is research to find out what exactly went wrong in that timeline to cause a nuclear war.
• Divided States of America:
  • In The Disunited States of America, every state becomes its own country after the United States ceases to exist because they kept the Articles of Confederation. California is an economic and technological superpower in the region and is one of the most liberal societies, while many former slave-owning states in the South have a racial caste/hierarchy/apartheid system where the white people are the top of the ladder while the blacks are treated like trash (with the exception of Mississippi, where the racial oppression is reversed). Some states are also geographically different, including a United Virginia, a United Carolina, and the state of Boone (Kentucky and half of Tennessee). Since every state is its own country, there are many conflicts in North America, such as the Florida Intervention (the state was forcibly split into three parts, one of which becomes owned by Cuba). Most of the plot centers around Virginia, where Ohio decided to piss off that state and start a war by spreading a genetically modified measles virus and supplying weapons to the oppressed black population in Virginia.
  • The Valley-Westside War depicts the US far more thoroughly broken up in the aftermath of a nuclear war in 1967. A hundred years later, there are a score of sovereign nations in the territory of the city of Los Angeles alone, each with its own national pride, a specific system of government, hereditary enemies, a miniature national army and protective tariffs to defend the national product. In the whole of the former US territory, there must be many thousands of such mini-states.
• Exact Words: Time-travelers are often pretty careful about things they say that might expose their true feelings about Crapsack World alternate universes, due to how they can't risk drawing too much attention to themselves.
  "How do you feel about Virginia's social system?" Special Agent Jefferson asked. I hate it, I think you deserve every pound's worth of trouble you've brought on yourselves, Justin thought. Sometimes the truth wasn't the best answer. If he told the truth here, they would haul him off to an unpleasant jail and do even more unpleasant things to him. He didn't like being a hypocrite, now or any other time. But the question rubbed his nose in the fact that you couldn't always say what you thought. And so he gave what he thought was a casual response: "The same as anybody else, I guess." It wasn't even completely a lie. Anybody else from the home timeline was likely to feel the same way he did.
• Expendable Alternate Universe: The point of the Crosstime Traffic company is to extract resources from alternate timelines. They directly extract oil and other natural resources from timelines where humans never evolved, but even in ones with relatively advanced societies, their first concern is providing for the home timeline.
• Fantasy Counterpart Religion: In the world of In High Places, the Black Death killed 80% of Europe's population, allowing Muslims to conquer most of southern Europe and prompting a "New Revelation" by "God's Second Son", Henri, who was martyred by the Catholic Church and whose faith subsequently replaced them.
• Firearms Are Revolutionary: The effects of this are seen in Gunpowder Empire, set in a Roman Empire that never fell. The world is divided among several competing empires (Rome, Lithuania, and Persia, to name a few), all armed with Renaissance-level guns. The empires crush any attempts at breakaway states, but can't defeat each other because the central governments suppress any attempts at advancing gun technology to maintain their monopoly.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: When characters from alternates come to the "home timeline", they're often shocked at the contrasting technology levels and cultural norms. Jacques has no idea what a toilet is, and ends up using his hotel room trash can as a chamber pot before it's explained to him.
• Fur and Loathing: It gets a bit ridiculous in Gunpowder Empire. The two main characters will literally stop whatever is happening just to talk about how nobody wears fur anymore and how polite society sees it as repulsive. This doesn't just happen once, but about 9 times in a 200 or so page book. The alternate timeline never saw the Roman Empire fall or technology advance much past our timeline's 400 AD. Still, even if they're in northern Europe and freezing, "FUR IS EVIL!"
  • Notably, the narration points out the hypocrisy involved. It's something of a hallmark of Turtledove to have characters express a viewpoint, while the narration points out the flaws and cultural viewpoints that shade that belief.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): All over the place:
  • The ancient Roman city of Porolissum is known as Polisso in Neo-Latin.
  • The Lithuanian Empire is known as Lietuva (though that's its native name in OTL)
  • In The Disunited States of America, the state of Boone encompasses Kentucky and half of Tennessee.
  • In the same timeline, it's implied their Battle of Stalingrad took place in a still-Tsarist Russia, since the city is still named Tsaritsyn (or was during the war, at least).
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to his other alternate history works, as the series is written for teenage and young adult readers (there is still violence, but the sexual violence is toned down compared to his other works). Most of his other alternate history works are generally written for adults, thus containing massive amounts of profanity, sexual violence, and sexuality.
• Magic 8-Ball: In The Valley-Westside War, it is strongly implied that the Valley's king consults one of these to decide whether to go to war with the Westside and ultimately chooses to do so. Fridge Horror, especially when you consider that the 8-ball is significantly more likely to give an affirmative response than a negative one.
• Mundane Luxury: Exploited by the Crosstime Traffic traders. They travel to parallel universes and trade items that are cheap to make in the home timeline, but just slightly better than anything the locals have (for instance, they trade Swiss army knives and modern mirrors to Romans who are at a ~1500s tech level, or new jeans to the survivors of a nuclear war).
• No Bikes in the Apocalypse: Averted in The Valley-Westside War. 150 years after a nuclear exchange between the US and the USSR, cars are useless except as animal-drawn carts (not that heavy once you remove the engine block), but some people still ride bicycles. Rubber tires having disintegrated in the meantime, people have to make do with wooden ones.
• Not So Extinct: Exploited by the Crosstime Traffic employee who goes with Randolph, Cyndi, and Justin to monitor them in quarantine in a timeline where humans never evolved. They bring binoculars and a birdwatching guide, hoping to see extinct species like the Carolina parakeet and the passenger pigeon.
• Omniglot: By the 2090s, brain implants allow people to instantly learn other languages without spending years studying them. This is especially useful for worlds where the language doesn't exist in the home timeline, like Gunpowder Empire, which speaks Neo-Latin (though Classical Latin is also used).
• Persecution Flip: In The Disunited States of America, Mississippi's black population overthrew the white government and proceeded to treat them just like they'd treated black people.
• Phlebotinum Analogy: The secret weapon in The Gladiator. The storefront where they are trying to reintroduce capitalist and democratic ideas are doing so through 18XX railroad games, Monopoly, and Dungeons & Dragons. More overt items would end up getting shut down. It's inverted because the characters are using technology (tabletop games, in this case) to explain a concept.
• Post-Apocalyptic Dog: The Valley-Westside War mentions one of the warlords in the ruins of Los Angeles having a horse-sized attack dog (mutated by the radiation).
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: In The Valley-Westside War, guns from The Beforetimes still exist, but most people use bows or muskets, since nobody knows whether a century-old gun will blow up in your face when you try to use it.
• Ridiculous Future Inflation: The home timeline has a hundred-dollar coin.
• Russia Takes Over the World: In The Gladiator, pretty much the whole world is under Soviet Russian cultural hegemony (for example, Russian is the language of international diplomacy, and is essential for all important jobs), except for the countries in the Chinese Bloc.
• Scavenger World: In The Valley-Westside War, a nuclear exchange in the 60s led to the collapse of the United States, the USSR, and it's implied most other countries. 130 years later, the former area of "Ellay" (Los Angeles) is divided into several petty chiefdoms with nothing more advanced than muskets (some modern firearms survived, but nobody knows how to make new ones or make more ammo to fit them, and there's always a risk that it'll blow up in your face). Many of the abandoned cars have been repurposed into horse-drawn carts, since they're not that heavy after removing the engine, and others have been cannibalized as a source of metal. Bicycles and lighters from The Beforetimes still exist, though they have to replace rubber tires with wooden ones and lighter fluid with alcohol spirits.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Crosstime Traffic series is at least partly inspired by H. Beam Piper's Paratime stories — and to emphasize this, the names of the developers of the crosstime technique are clearly based on the names of the people who developed the paratime transposition.
  • In The Valley-Westside War, the password for entering the secret crosstime chamber is Mellon, referencing the entrance to Moria. A character from the post-apocalyptic world is able to figure it out, though, since LOTR was published before 1967 (when the nuclear war happened), and copies still exist.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: In In High Places, Annette and her parents refuse to trade in slaves, though it's normalized in the world they visit. Then Annette herself is captured and sold as a slave, and taken to another timeline where rogue crosstimers play at being conquistadors and slave owners. And some crosstimers even pay to be temporarily "enslaved", presumably as a BDSM thing. When she escapes, the revelation rocks the entire world and leads to a highly-publicized trial in the home timeline.
• Stealth Insult: In The Gladiator, Annarita gets in a good insult at her fanatical, self-righteous rival for the socialist equivalent of class president when they make their speeches to the class.
  Annarita: Maybe I was wrong about The Gladiator. At least I know I can be wrong though. I don't think Maria's ever been wrong in her life—and If you don't believe me, just ask her.
  'Maria Tenance stated to nod. She almost gave herself a whiplash stopping when she realized, a split second too late, that Annarita wasn't complimenting her.
• Synthetic Plague: In The Disunited States of America, Ohio develops a genetically-modified measles virus and uses it in its war against Virginia.
• Time-Travelers Are Spies: A frequent plot device in the series. While not exactly time travel, the protagonists travel to alternate universes where historical events have departed from their own future history. In most of the stories so far, they get mistaken for spies. For example:
  • In The Disunited States of America the protagonist is travelling with forged identity documents in a war zone and steals a uniform in order to infiltrate a military unit — any of which would get him executed for espionage had he been caught, even though that wasn't his intent.
  • In Curious Notions the protagonists are suspected of being double agents by both the Imperial German occupation government and the Triads in San Francisco due to the actions of their predecessors (selling slightly more advanced technology from the home timeline to the locals — against company rules precisely because it attracts undue attention from the authorities).
  • In The Gladiator the Crosstime Traffic organization is actually participating in espionage, attempting to subvert the victorious Communist government by reintroducing capitalist concepts to the population in a timeline where the USSR won the Cold War.
• Time-Travel Romance: Several of the books (especially Curious Notions) have this, though again, it's not exactly time travel.
• Trapped in Another World:
  • The first book has Jeremy and Amanda Solters get cut off from the home timeline after a terrorist attack in Romania (they don't find out until the end of the book). They switch from accepting barter for their goods to only taking cash, and worry what will happen when the trade goods, and especially the antibiotics, run out.
  • The third book has Annette be trapped and sold as a slave to criminal crosstimers who take her to a third universe.
• The Triads and the Tongs: Despite the German occupation of the United States, the Chinese Triads still operate in the San Francisco of Curious Notions.
• Wasteland Warlord: In The Valley-Westside War, a nuclear war in the 1960s reduced the United States and the USSR to hundreds, if not thousands, of petty states. The title refers to the Kingdoms of Westside and the San Fernando Valley, fighting over control of what used to be Los Angeles, 130 years later. The Valley is a straight example of this trope, ruled by King Zev, but Westside is ruled by a nine-member city council.
• Wham Line: In High Places starts out as just another dimension-traveling adventure, although with higher stakes than usual when slavers kidnap the main character. Then, she finds out that the slavers are from her timeline and 1) are taking her away from any chance of quick rescue, and 2) are involved with something that has always seemed taboo to anyone from the home timeline. She discovers this due to a certain accessory in their basement.
  That was—could only be—a Crosstime Traffic transportation chamber.
• World War Whatever: In Gunpowder Empire, there is mention of an Alternate Universe in which nuclear weapons were never invented. The United States and the Soviet Union are fighting World War VI in the 2090s.