Crosstime Traffic is a series of books by Harry Turtledove .
65-612: The central premise of the stories is an Earth that has discovered access to alternate universes where history proceeded differently. "Crosstime Traffic" is the name of the company with a global monopoly on the technology. The background strongly resembles that of H. Beam Piper 's Paratime series and Keith Laumer 's Imperium Series . One tribute paid to Piper's series is the names of the inventors of temporal transposition: Ghaldron and Hesthor in Piper, Galbraith and Hester in Turtledove. In all of
130-684: A Stone Age culture having evolved on Earth independently, but never advanced. The means of traveling through timelines is a flying saucer -shaped "conveyor" using the Ghaldron-Hesthor field generator, which was developed via a fortuitous fusion of attempts to develop faster than light space travel with ones attempting to explain certain psychic phenomena. Conveyors are fixed in place, which means that as they travel through timelines, they may end up inside nuclear reactors or other hazards or be caught in warfare (a common activity on at least one timeline in nearly every trip, Paratimers note). Weakening of
195-488: A copy editor and independent scholar. Hellekson's first book, The Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (2001), derives from her MA thesis and incorporates material from a 1993 paper. Based on the archive of Cordwainer Smith materials at the University of Kansas, including drafts, reviews and unpublished material, the book reviews Smith's life and critiques several key stories as well as his novel, Norstrilia . A review in
260-418: A humanist who views humanity as a "matter of an individual's heart or spirit" unrelated to "genetics, social status, or even intellect", emphasizing his "benevolent concern for humane behavior". Her PhD thesis was published as The Alternate History: Refiguring Historical Time (2001), the earliest English-language book devoted to analyzing the popular genre of alternate history , in which, for example,
325-593: A BA in English from Gustavus Adolphus College , Minnesota (1988). Her MA is from the University of Kansas , with a dissertation on the science-fiction author Cordwainer Smith , entitled "Archipelagoes of stars: the science fiction of Cordwainer Smith" (1991). Her PhD (1998), also from the University of Kansas, was supervised by James Gunn ; her thesis is entitled "Refiguring Historical Time: The Alternate History". Prior to completing her PhD, Hellekson left academia to work as
390-644: A civilization that was less advanced than our own in almost every way except for their travel technology. Turtledove's world, although set in the 2090s, resembles the 2010s of the real world, with modest general advances in technology including the crosstime capability, as well as inflation resulting in US$ 100 (nicknamed 'franklins') having the same buying power as US$ 1 in the 2010s. The books are young adult novels with teenage protagonists, who frequently become stranded in dangerous alternate worlds and must adapt to survive. Their adventures give them increased appreciation for
455-623: A colonel of scouts. By the time of Great Kings' War , Vall has taken over as Chief of the Paratime Police, replacing the newly retired Tortha Karff. Hadron Dalla is a psychical researcher and has been married to Verkan Vall twice. On the home timeline, she is a member of Rhogom Memorial Foundation of Psychic Science in Dhergabar. Dalla traveled to the Akor-Neb sector to continue research, where she discovered evidence that human consciousness survives
520-627: A detailed review for the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts , praises the "wide-ranging and intelligent" essays but describes the book as "a challenging read" for the non-specialist, with the contents predominantly being "dense with academic theory". The editors aim to take a literary criticism approach involving close reading, rather than discussing fan fiction as a social or cultural phenomenon, as most earlier works had done; however, Bronwen Thomas considers that
585-520: A fan-studies canon, which she explains as "defining a relatively new field's identity, negotiating its limits, and setting the agenda for future research ... centralizing an often-scattered sub-discipline and assembling a shared base through which scholars working in diverse disciplines and methods can have a common language and conversation." Kustritz criticizes the exclusion of quantitative studies including quantitative psychology , while Lesley Willard notes that in their focus on feminist interpretations,
650-592: A hideout of a crime organization that traded slaves across timelines. In the Second Level, the colony succeeded, but there were intermittent periods of Dark Ages between civilizations. The Akor-Neb civilization of Last Enemy is Second Level; its technology is almost identical to the Home Timeline except for paratemporal transposition. The culture there has legends or records of their Martian origins. The Jak-Hakka civilization follows an ideology of "Dictatorship of
715-600: A nuclear battery to 200 degrees Celsius . A commonly used curse by Verkan Vall is "By the Fangs of Fasif" referring to the religion common in the Kiftan Sector. Third Level timelines, as Piper described them, were "A few survivors—a shipload or so—were left to shift for themselves while the parent civilization on Mars died out. They lost all vestiges of their original Martian culture, even memory of their extraterrestrial origin." Some Third Level timelines have developed space travel;
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#1732851661345780-502: A paratemporal slave-trading ring in Time Crime . (In Home Timeline usage, family names precede personal names.) The Abzar Sector is one where the survivors exhausted the resources of Earth and exterminated each other in a series of wars. Apparently the Home Timeline was only saved from a similar outcome by the discovery of paratime travel, which allowed it to exploit the resources of other timelines. Some Abzar Sector timelines were used as
845-470: A subsistence agriculture economy to survive. The culture is pacifistic and nonaggressive, though Dwarma peoples eat meat. One major event people remembered for years is when a farmer and trader contradicted themselves on the price of a pig; they raised their voices and shouted at each other. Verkan Vall and Hadron Dalla were planning a vacation in the Dwarma Sector when it was interrupted by the discovering of
910-524: Is a member of the nobility of the Home Timeline, able to style himself His Valor, the Mavrad of Nerros, though he does not and often forgets he has a title. (This indicates that a mavrad is approximately equivalent to a duke .) Vall's Paratime Police position is Special Assistant to the Chief of the Paratime Police, Tortha Karff's personal roving inspector. He serves as a general troubleshooter for Chief Tortha Karf and
975-549: Is assigned to cases that require special attention from the Paratime Police. In Police Operation , he has to hunt down a Venusian night-hound that escaped onto our timeline; in Temple Trouble , he must rescue Home Level paratimers from torture and execution; in Last Enemy , he must locate researcher Hadron Dalla; and in Time Crime , he is in charge of an investigation to track down a large criminal organization of slave traders. At
1040-481: Is called Vall by his friends, Hadron Dalla is known as Dalla to her friends and so on. It is also the case that nearly all male names have a two-syllable family name and a one-syllable personal name. Verkan Vall was born on the island of Nerros ( Cuba ) in the Home Timeline some time in the late 1800s; in Last Enemy , he noted he was eighty when he and Dalla Hadron were first married. He is described as having "handsome regularity of his strangely immobile features." He
1105-445: Is known for her research into fan fiction , which she considers to have a long history: "fans have always been engaging with texts, often in transformative ways by literally scribbling in the margins, rewriting scenes, and crafting new endings". She has edited two collections of essays on the topic with Kristina Busse . Their first collaboration, Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of
1170-625: Is more important than one outtimer's life. Sometimes they stumble out of the conveyor onto another timeline: this could have happened to British diplomat Benjamin Bathurst in He Walked Around the Horses (Note: This "could" is almost a certainty since the details of the story of such an occurrence that Tortha Karf tells in Police Operation match exactly the events in this story) or to the stranger on
1235-569: Is the account of a group of Martian colonists arriving on Earth between 75,000 and 100,000 years ago exactly as described by Piper in several of his Paratime Police stories. All of the names used in Genesis follow the conventions used in all of the Paratime stories but not used in Piper's other stories. Additionally the events in He Walked Around The Horses are referred to by Tortha Karf in
1300-533: Is the home of the Paratime civilization. This is the only known timeline with paratime travel capacity, and protection of the Paratime Secret is the highest priority. Venus and Mars are also colonized by the Home Timeline (or in the case of Mars, reclaimed), and paratime transport exists there as well. The Dwarma sector is one where paratime travel was never discovered, and the Martian colonists settled down into
1365-455: The Paratime stories. Karen Hellekson explains that "Piper divides his worlds into levels, based on their proximity and likeness to the home time line", meaning the time line of the people who know how to move between parallel worlds. She explains this as a useful technique for developing the alternative histories of the story. Hellekson compares Paratime to Frederik Pohl 's The Coming of
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#17328516613451430-730: The Aryan-Transpacific sector, the Aryans moved east, through Asia into North America (the Minor Land Mass); one timeline in Aryan-Transpacific is the setting of Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen . After Piper's death, three additional books have been written based in this universe. The Proto Aryan Sector had the Aryan migration occur 1500 years later than in our sector, where the presence of established Sumerian and Nile civilizations inhibited their migration. Near our timeline are timelines where there
1495-580: The Caribbean Islands, who were reputed to be the best fighters in all paratime. In Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen , Vall investigates the wounding of a Paratime Policeman by Calvin Morrison and determines whether or not Calvin should die or live. He decides that Morrison is no threat to the Paratime Secret, though he must have deduced it. Vall takes occasional service with the Morrison-led army of Hos-Hostigos as
1560-448: The Chosen," it has been used as an example of political structures the Home Timeline wishes to avoid. The Khiftan sector is one whose cultures are brutal and violent. Their cities are low domes, for protection against nuclear blasts; the priesthood of Fasif punishes blasphemy with torture; and an example of Khiftan craftsmanship seen in Time Crime is a whip, the tip of which can be heated by
1625-817: The Confederacy won the American Civil War. Hellekson considers the earliest Western examples of the genre to be Louis-Napoléon Geoffroy-Chateau 's Napoléon et la Conquête du Monde (1836) and Isaac D'Israeli 's Curiosities of Literature (1824), although Geoffrey Winthrop-Young highlights possible alternative histories by authors as early as Livy and Herodotus . The Alternate History discusses examples drawn from science fiction, including works by Brian Aldiss , Poul Anderson , Michael Crichton , Philip K. Dick , William Gibson / Bruce Sterling , Ward Moore and H. Beam Piper , and also reviews anthologies compiled by historians, which, Hellekson posits, attempt to curtail
1690-477: The Esaron civilization developed space travel before it developed the germ theory of disease and suffered a great setback when Venusian microbial life killed off most of the population. The Caribbean islands of this sector are overrun with pirates reported to be the best knife fighters in all of Paratime. Verkan Vall learned his knife fighting technique from them. The Fourth Level is the level of highest probability:
1755-402: The Home Timeline civilization must ever know about paratime travel. The Paratime Transposition Code sets out legal penalties for this, as well as other crimes involving paratime, such as kidnapping and enslavement. Paratime Police officers are authorized to use extrajudiciary means, such as assassination, of both Home Time residents or outtimes, to protect the secret if necessary. This action is at
1820-513: The Home Timeline hold a reserve commission as Paratime officers, and are expected to activate their powers when needed. The Chief of the Paratime Police at the beginning of the series is Tortha Karf. Special Chief's Assistant Verkan Vall is the protagonist of most of the Paratime stories. All persons in the Paratime stories have names where the family name is first, somewhat similar to usage in Asiatic cultures in our timeline. For example, Verkan Vall
1885-400: The Home Timeline, overall, believe themselves to be scientific rationalists , otherwise known as Rational Empiricists , and atheists . Their calendar numbers days of the year rather than months. The Home Timeline's capital city apparently is Dhergabar, as is the home of many of its prominent scientific and cultural institutions. Based on clues in the stories, Dhergabar seems to be located in
1950-520: The Internet (2006), was conceived, in Hellekson and Busse's words, to "give voice to the many scholars we had met at conferences and online; create a volume that would start with the premise that academics were often fans and fans often academics and that that was okay; and permit conversations that did not always begin with introductory definitions but instead would assume a knowledgeable audience, thus raising
2015-461: The Quantum Cats , describing similarities in the approach to parallel timelines, as well as some meaningful differences including the fact that Pohl doesn't use the same idea of "nearness" as Piper, and that Pohl makes a heavier use of analogous characters who develop differently between timelines. Alva Rogers says the "stories were entertaining tales not intended to be taken too seriously", noting
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2080-419: The agent's discretion. Another method to protect the Paratime Secret involves spreading uncertainty and doubt about accounts of encountering paratimers. In the case of pre-scientific cultures, this is easier; actions can be explained as acts of the gods. In our timeline, in which the concept of alternate realities is common, the Paratime Police have spread stories which are implausible when investigated; however,
2145-449: The benefits of living in a civilized, high-tech society. Invariably, each book has two viewpoint characters, a boy and a girl—different ones in each book; in most books one of them is from the home timeline and the other from a visited alternate. Except for "Gunpowder Empire", where the protagonists are siblings, love interest developing between the protagonists is invariably part of the plot. In two books it ends with successful consummation,
2210-448: The body and reincarnation is a scientific fact; this research led to a major upset of Akor-Neb politics and societal structure, and forced Verkan Vall to retrieve her lest the Paratime Secret be disclosed (see Last Enemy ). Dalla remarries Vall. Before they can go on a vacation on the Dwarma sector, Vall is called to investigate a gang of paratime slave traders; Dalla goes along with him on
2275-686: The book Practicing Science Fiction: Critical Essays on Writing, Reading and Teaching the Genre (with Craig B. Jacobsen, Patrick B. Sharp and Lisa Yaszek ; 2010). She co-edited SFRA Review , the periodical of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA), with Jacobsen (1998–2000 and 2008–10). She won the 2002 Mary Kay Bray Award from the SFRA for her paper "Transforming the Subject: Humanity, The Body, and Post-Humanism". Hellekson
2340-456: The break, sometimes a long time after"; and parallel worlds , in which "no break" occurs. Phillip E. Wegner describes the book as a "useful study" of the genre, while Kathleen Singles considers that it "lacks the comprehensiveness necessary to account for alternate history as a complex, interdisciplinary phenomenon". Hellekson contributed the chapter on alternate histories to The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction . She also co-edited
2405-419: The chosen essays "sidestep issues of race, class, and intersectionality", and Fiona N. Cheuk highlights the absence of any discussion of disability . The editors deliberately include only those texts that discuss works based on Western media. Cheuk takes issue with this choice, drawing attention to the prevalence of fanworks for non-western media sources such as Japanese anime and manga , and concluding that
2470-428: The descendants of the Martian colonists. Timelines with points of divergence before the Martian colonization attempt are not discussed. This is the level of complete success of the Martian colonization. However, in this level are several sectors of several thousand timelines each: Home Timeline, and its associated Fifth Level Commercial, Fifth Level Passenger, Fifth Level Industrial Sector, Fifth Level Service Sector,
2535-598: The editorship of John W. Campbell . The series deals with an advanced civilization that is able to travel between parallel universes with alternate histories, and uses that ability to trade for goods and services that its own, exhausted Earth cannot provide. The protagonists of the stories are the Paratime Police, the organization that protects the secret of paratime travel. These stories were written by Piper: Sequels not written by Piper and mainly written by John F. Carr : Some persons dispute He Walked Around The Horses and Genesis being Paratime stories, however Genesis
2600-515: The end of Time Crime Vall is promoted to Chief of Duplicate Paratime Police, a new system set up on Police Terminal to seek out and destroy large organized crime syndicates operating across Paratime like the Organization described in Time Crime . Vall is a crack shot with either hand (like most Paratimers, he is ambidextrous) and learned knife fighting from the Third Level Khanga pirates of
2665-441: The essays "sacrifice depth for breadth and only rarely engage with specific narrative techniques". In their second collection, The Fan Fiction Studies Reader (2014), Hellekson and Busse aim to "gather together in one place some of the foundational texts of the fan fiction studies corpus". Their selections are described as "vital" by the reviewer Anne Kustritz, who considers the editors to have been largely successful in building
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2730-410: The exclusion "seems to contradict the diversity and expansiveness of the fan fiction works and communities", leading to a "metanarrative of absence, placelessness, estrangement, and unbelonging for non-western narratives in western academic traditions". The selection of reprints includes 1980s and 1990s extracts from the offline and early-Internet periods, representing the work of the earliest scholars in
2795-402: The fan-run Archive of Our Own with various commercial sites. She wrote the chapter "Fandom and Fan Culture" for The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction . With Busse, she co-founded the online academic journal Transformative Works and Cultures in 2008 and continues (as of 2021) to act as its co-editor. It covers "popular media, fan communities, and transformative works" and
2860-399: The field, including Henry Jenkins , Camille Bacon-Smith and Constance Penley; Kustritz characterizes some of these "classic" texts as "somewhat quaint" but adds that they give a "necessary grounding". She describes the editors' introductory contextualizing material as valuable and well balanced, and praises the volume's themed organization for bringing the older texts into conversation with
2925-496: The freedom inherent in alternate history by excluding works considered too unlikely or "frivolous". Hellekson considers narrative strategies in the genre, reflecting on the opinions of Paul Ricoeur , Stephen Jay Gould and Hayden White . She underlines the fact that history represents not the actual past, but a narrative about the past in which "the historian is complicit in [the] storytelling, not an objective, impartial recorder of events". She notes that alternate histories "change
2990-529: The general vicinity of our timeline's India - Malaysia , some three hours travel by rocket from the east coast of North America over the North Pole . The government of the Home Timeline, the "Management", is a parliamentary system. Many of the inhabitants of the Service Sector, as well as servants and low-status workers in Home Timeline, are Fourth Level tribesmen from primitive cultures who are recruited by
3055-560: The investigation. Her skills as a psychic researcher and investigator are highly valuable to the investigation, and she becomes a member of the Paratime Police. Dalla goes with Vall to the kingdom of Hos-Hostigos in Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen , serving as a second pair of eyes and a companion to Princess Rylla, who becomes Morrison's wife. This disturbs Vall a little bit; he regards the two women as two identical sticks of dynamite, believing that whatever sort of trouble one of them didn't think of,
3120-429: The journal Science Fiction Studies praises Hellekson's wide-ranging and detailed research and her "thoughtful" discussion. It criticizes her acceptance of prior critical thought, even when the material she has uncovered undermines accepted ideas about the author, and comments that her "sometimes scattered argument may be hard to navigate" for non-experts. In this book and her earlier paper, Hellekson classifies Smith as
3185-529: The level of discourse." The book's four sections are each introduced by the editors, and additionally there is a 25-page introductory essay "Work in Progress" by Hellekson and Busse. Matt Hills, in a review for the journal Popular Communication , describes the collection as a "fine set of interventionist essays", which "smartly expands and develops ways of thinking about fandom and the cultural production, circulation, and reception of fan fiction". Alicia Verlager, in
3250-426: The more modern ones. Willard also praises the "comprehensive" introductory material; she considers the volume's broadening of focus at the end to include works other than fan fiction to be "somewhat jarring". Hellekson has published on topics relating to the fan community. Her highest-cited research article is on gift culture in online fandom , in which she posits that "giving, receiving, and reciprocating are
3315-496: The number of stories to investigate lessens the chance of detecting the truth. Headquarters for the Paratime Police is at the city of Dhergabar, which is the Capital city on home Timeline. There is also a separate timeline that is exclusively for the use of the Paratime Police; they can locate conveyors wherever necessary there, or commandeer private property to locate a temporary conveyor. In many timelines, business agents working from
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#17328516613453380-407: The other would. At the beginning of the series, Tortha Karf is a man entering middle age at 290; he is beginning to become overweight and having gray hair. Karen Hellekson Karen L. Hellekson (born 1966) is an American author and scholar who researches science fiction and fan studies . In the field of science fiction, she is known for her research on the alternate history genre,
3445-482: The present by transforming the past". In a widely adopted taxonomy (first presented in an earlier article and responding to the work of William Joseph Collins ), she divides the alternate history genre into three categories, depending on how the narrative relates to the divergence point from our reality: nexus stories , which "occur at the moment of the break" and include "time-travel-time-policing-stories and battle stories"; true alternate histories , which happen "after
3510-795: The prospect of an enslaved girl being sexually abused, but does not use the word "rape" (although the word is later used in The Valley-Westside War ). This shows considerable restraint of the author Turtledove, who is famous for writing scenes of unfettered sexuality, violence and profanity in his adult novels such as the series of Worldwar , Southern Victory , and The War That Came Early . Paratime series The Paratime series written by H. Beam Piper and subsequently by John F. Carr consists of several short stories, one novella, and one novel, all but one of which were originally published in Astounding Science Fiction under
3575-428: The protagonist from an Alternate timeline getting exceptional permission to come to the Home Timeline; in one book, lovers must say goodbye with a tearful heartbreak; and circumstances in one make it end with boy and girl becoming staunch foes, despite their mutual attraction. While there is considerable violence, the language and plots are restricted by the intended audience. For instance, In High Places includes
3640-425: The series the "home timeline" was running low on resources, and it has used its knowledge of time to covertly import supplies from other Earths and save their civilization from collapse. The most important difference is the nature of the home timeline. Piper's world was inhabited by a culture which had been technologically advanced for thousands of years and was even more distantly related to our own. Laumer's series had
3705-456: The stories attempts to answer various " Fortean mysteries". Rogers says that Piper even got the initial idea from Charles Fort . In Piper's Paratime universe, there are an infinite number of timelines , but in each timeline, events occurred differently. They are grouped into five Levels, based on the probabilities of success of an attempt by Martians to colonize Earth 75,000 to 100,000 years ago; humans, on timelines where they are present, are
3770-451: The story Police Operation where he describes the event briefly to Verkan Vall. The Reader's Guide to Twentieth-Century Science Fiction notes that, as in most of Piper's stories, the Paratime plots nearly all "rely on the self-sufficient human. This type of person, nearly always male, uses inner strength to pull through situations that weaker persons cannot survive". The Guide notes Piper's expertise for exploring "'what if' history"
3835-538: The survivors lost all concept of their Martian origins and believe themselves to have developed on Earth. The Nilo-Mesopotamian cluster of sectors, including the Macedonian Empire Sector, the Alexandrian - Roman , Alexandrian- Punic , Indo- Turanian and Europo-American (which includes our own timeline), there was an Aryan invasion of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor about four thousand elapsed years ago. In
3900-407: The three central tenets of participation in online media fandom". A response from Abigail De Kosnik counters that female fans writing fan fiction without financial compensation "risk institutionalizing a lack of compensation for all women that practice this art in the future." Hellekson has also written on the attempted monetization of fan fiction by the short-lived FanLib archive, and has compared
3965-432: The topic of her 2001 book, The Alternate History: Refiguring Historical Time , and has also published on the author Cordwainer Smith . In fan studies, she is known for her work on fan fiction and the culture of the fan community. She has co-edited two essay collections on fan fiction with Kristina Busse , and in 2008, co-founded the academic journal, Transformative Works and Cultures , also with Busse. Hellekson has
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#17328516613454030-510: The train in Crossroads of Destiny as it did to Pennsylvania State Police officer Calvin Morrison in Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen . In those cases, the Paratime Police try to return them to their home timelines with memory obliteration. In other cases, such as a "Christian Avenger" of the Hitler-victory timeline, they decided he's better off dead and will let the locals do the job. The people of
4095-409: The transposition field is a concern of Paratimers. Because there are so many timelines and many conveyors, it is possible for two conveyors to "cross" each other and end up with mutually weakened fields. In this case, objects from the outside may penetrate the conveyor. Often these objects are alive. If they are people, they face two choices: be shot or have their memory obliterated. The Paratime Secret
4160-546: The tribe to work. They are not mistreated, but they do not have Citizen status, which can be granted through adoption into a Citizen family. At least two divisions of soldiers are stationed in Service Sector to deal with riots and rebellion. To supervise Paratime, the Paratime Commission exists; to enforce the Paratime Code, the Paratime Police exists. There is only one law that is totally inviolate: no one from outside
4225-475: Was a Second American Civil War, as well as a band where racial-based fascism rules North America as a result of a Nazi victory in 1940. The Fifth Level are those where the colonization either failed or never took place; they are empty of Martian derived human life. Piper described the Fifth level as "on some sectors Subhuman brutes...on most of it nothing even vaguely human...". Fifth level Neanderthal man exists in
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