Welcome to issue 52 of Ibn Qirtaiba. We have a diverse issue this time, beginning with a short story The Meeting by new contributor, Bob Downing. Following this is a book review of Harry Turtledove's latest novel Walk in Hell, by Owen Williamson. Owen is Local Secretary of Paso del Norte Mensa, in El Paso, Texas, and has previously contributed Night Journey Home to the magazine.
The conclusion of D K Smith's powerful serial Grave Singer is next. Smith is a young writer and editor from Los Angeles, who has been published in numerous zines and won several awards. He is the Sci-Fi editor of a multi genre zine named The Writers Hood, and also has a personal website. Issue 52 concludes with poetry from another new contributor, Steve Proposch.
The illustrations in this issue serve as a prequel, if you will, for a serial that will begin next month. They are taken from an illustrated story verse entitled Epoch by J Mitchell. Epoch sets the scene for an epic tale called Land of the Ancestors which has been made into an independent movie and which will be serialised, in prose form, beginning next issue. Stay tuned for that, and in the meantime please enjoy issue 52.
Short story: The
Meeting by Bob Downing
Review: Turtledove's Walk in Hell by Owen Williamson
Tauman's skin tingled in the morning wind as his human flesh reformed from directed energies. He stood at the first moments of an earth sunrise, senses ablaze in its colorful caresses. He mentally tugged at an approaching cloud cover that threatened his view, hurling it far over the horizon. Silver sparkles flickered through the gusty spring dawn, a touch of fantasy to enhance this sol-earth system's turning-Tauman's offering to this persistent planet.
For Earth had cut its yearly solar arc some twelve billion times now. And after so many ages. Tauman felt the fading warmth of home, the illuminated face of an ancient Terra growing cold in the light of a reddening sun.
She's late he thought. How can so few moments seem so endless? Could she have finally attempted to cross the void between galaxies? Tauman brushed the fear from his mind. Pausing there in the disc of the rising sun, he focused on a rather intricate problem in stellar physics.
It was a matter of delicate timing that would bring joy to his tardy lover.
Suddenly a swirl of sparkling butterflies darted down at him at incredible speed. The swarm turned upwards, slowed gracefully. From the swarm a shimmering form slowly condensed before him. a smiling silver goddess stepping lightly onto the earth.
"You're late," he said a microsecond before her eyes met his, melting away the frozen loneliness of so much time and distance.
"I was deflected from my calculated temporal coordinate by the aberrant gravitational flux of this star. Why did you pick such a -", she stopped speaking abruptly, her eyes bright with understanding. She whispered into the mind of her lover.
It's the surprise for this meeting... and a reason among the countless that I love you.
His thoughts answered.
Embrace me, Thera. There are novas to be felt. Sol will soon envelope and vaporize this earth humankind has deserted.
Moments passed for Tauman and Thera, their gentle touching erasing the years of separation. Their moments passed, our lifetimes. As their bodies touched and their minds merged, they loved as children.
They became aware adults in the bodies of children, frolicking fleshy nine-year olds. In huge leaps they bounded through the tall grasses of the hillside, pausing in a sloping meadow to embrace, to touch, to surrender to each other.
A giggling wheel of merged body and mind they rolled over and over across the dew crowned grasses. A swath of flowers unfurled from the flattened grasses in their zigzagging pathway through this special morning.
At the edge of a lake, they waded and skipped stones. Tauman skipped one six thousand times, so naturally Thera skipped hers six thousand and one. The water sprayed their laughter, rippled smiles. The lake splashed cool on their bodies, and the joy of their union enveloped them like a warm blanket.
When the now adult humanoid pair awoke in each other's arms on the mossy bank, an adult Tauman asked, "Have you ventured far outside the galaxy? You were considering such a trek through the void when we last met."
"How nice to hear voices, sounds everywhere in an atmosphere." said Thera, her eyes distant, her voice from far away, "Yes Tauman, I've made a start. For a long time I swam among the fringe stars of the outer arm, staring out into that deep nothingness. It's one of my few fears, that chasm between the islands of stars. My dives into its depths have been brief, but my strength is growing as I understand the reasons for my fear."
"It's not fear from lack of ability, Thera, that I all too readily know. Your translocator powers surpass mine, your control excellent. But please do not confuse my understanding with approval. I fear for your safety. A personal space-time translocation of intergalactic distance has never been attempted."
Thera paused, then spoke. "My fear is of myself, for my thoughts are all that light the way through such distant emptiness. One feels alone there, a loneliness in an abyss far darker than the interstellar night. I need the strength of knowing that I am enough, that I can exist and learn though swallowed by empty intergalactic space. And one day I shall appear in the fields of yet unseen stars, bask in their alien radiations, and sense the energy flow of new galaxies as well as I know the spiraling disc of our own Milky Way."
Tauman felt the strength of her dream in her words. "Perhaps with your help I could journey with you, There are things yet undreamed to learn about the creation of mass-energy, the life cycles of stars.
Once my research took me to the new stars of a globular cluster. One highly erratic young star's gravitational field attracted my instrument's attention. I left the ship and personally translocated into the star. Just as I reached its center, the star suddenly collapsed. Its outer atmosphere condensed toward me at incredible speed. I had never encountered such disruptive forces in a young star before, so it caught me off guard..."
Thera pinched him playfully. "There, caught you off guard again!"
"Not the first time", admitted Tauman. "Well back in the contracting energy sphere, I saw that a stellar explosion was imminent, and was just about to translocate when the core exploded."
Gravity clouded Thera's attentive eyes.
"The premier blast wave didn't penetrate my personal shields but my individual atoms were dispersed throughout the sector for over a century. I was finally able to reintegrate my physical structure on the planet of a nearby star. Fortunately these clusters are crowded with forming suns, blazing protostars kicking off a lot of free energy. Otherwise I would have had to settle for a nonphysical existence, and the sorrow of never touching you again."
Thera nestled warmly in Tauman's arms, eyes wet with love. They held each other tightly, an embrace of love that had not died in a stellar cataclysm, nor perished at the edges of the intergalactic void.
As they stared out into that black sea of nothing, they felt life in each breath; standing there in the disc of the sun, the winds caressing, their minds gently touching.
We are they whispered, and they loved as a growing one.
Still merged their mind flew into a nearby flowering tree. Tauman tugged his essence free of hers and entered the body of a pollen grain. Thera settled into the structure of a female flower, a fertile cavity awaiting love's union.
Tauman of the pollen nucleus sensed Thera's need as she felt his growing
approach within her outer tubules. Soon the pollen tube of Tauman's adopted
body branched into the nuclear envelope, deep within the flower that was Thera.
And a seed was born of their chromosomatic fusion.
The one grew. Tauman and Thera's combined essence struggled to push through the soft earth into which their seed had fallen. Their roots soaked up the cool rains, which still washed the ancient face of Earth. Together they raised leafy arms upward, gratefully feeding on Sol's red-orange offering. Time was lost in their growing.
Beside a mature tree, seven meters tall and heavily burdened with blossoms, two silver humans materialized, smiled, and again embraced.
"Time grows short," said Tauman staring into the reddening disc of Sol. "Soon there must be a parting, even as this earth passes into cosmic vapor."
"Tauman," said Thera softly. "You have offered me company on my journey. But what of your research? Your studies on the creation of mass-energy are needed science."
Tauman smiled. "My intentions are to sacrifice neither myself nor my work. Think of the models I might construct from the vantage point of comparative data. These stars of separate galaxies have evolved differently in their own unique space-time. Totally controlled translocator ability could open up passage at will through such unexplored suns. It could provide insights of magnitude similar to the biological leap man made in planetary exploration. The study of alien ecosystems expanded our definition of life. Can these alien stars do less for astrophysics?"
Thera smiled a face full of love. "Then let us go. So passes this green Earth."
Seconds later two silver humans locked arms and began to spin in the very face of erupting Sol. We are they thought as their silver surfaces mirrored fire from a sun gone mad, as their bodies and mind focused the mad energies into a beam of pure force. They touched the weak points in the distorting space around the exploding star. With purpose and grace the pulsating duo pinwheeled through the stressed space and its gyrating radiation fields.
As a wave of solar brimstone rushed to extinguish the wheel of life that was Tauman and Thera, they hurled forth their ray of concentrated energy, a beaming ionic scalpel that punched a nanosecond exit into a nexus of decimated space. Riding the wave front of crackling forces, the pair slipped nimbly into that tiny space between moments.
The surprise! thought Tauman quickly. Look back!
Thera's mental eyes caught a last glimpse of the space-time now so far behind them.
There in the full glory of the exploding sun, energies took shape, and her mind reeled at flaming words the size of stars:
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I stayed at a hotel for the rest of my leave.
I registered under an assumed name, to make sure my folks wouldn't find me. What did they need me for anyway? They'd just summon up my electronic clone. Maybe I should have gone back. I don't know. But it didn't matter if I died now. Billy could just bring up that program of me and pretend like it was old times. All I had of him all those months in the tank was that dumb picture.
Sometimes I dreamed that it wasn't real. George hadn't really died. It was just a game, like the Sergeants at Boot Camp said. The Phantoms weren't really real, the whole war wasn't real, none of it was real. If Billy could have me anytime he wanted, if he could even make me do anything he wanted in that virtual world, how did I know that each time I put on a helmet in that Red Tank it was real? How did I know I wasn't in a VR chamber right now?
How the hell did I even know if I was real?
Mars had the most advanced computer technology of all the colonized planets. Because of the dome's limited living space everyone lived in cyberspace. We had the smartest and fastest computers, and maybe even some sentient computers being born in hidden labs somewhere. Sometimes I walked through the Martian malls and shopping centers, and I saw all the advertisements for the virtual games and virtual drama shows and virtual shit and wondered how long before we were all virtual humanity. First radio then movies then television then commercials and capitalism and money and advertising and games and empty stories and lifeless people in front of VR Chambers watching virtual porno and screwing virtual sluts...
I found a glass in my hotel room and broke it, cut my finger. The pain felt real, it felt good, at least the blood tasted real. I smashed my fist into the wall, I smashed plates, looking at my reflection in their shiny surfaces while they cracked like my life like my reality like my goddamned little war!
Oh god what was happening to me oh someone help me oh please...
The barracks were sad and gray when I arrived at the end of my leave. I found Joey seated by himself on a bench, while the large building echoed with the voices of a couple hundred soldiers. I sat, placed my duffel bag on the floor and leaned against the wall. "You okay?" I asked.
"Yeah."
Silence. I stared at the ceiling. He stared at his hands.
"You meet up with your folks?"
"Yeah."
The air stank, too - too many sweaty socks. I took some gum from my pocket and offered it to him. He refused. So I chewed instead.
"I heard George's parents cremated him," said Joey.
"It doesn't matter," I said.
A moment's silence, then Joey said, "You too, huh?"
I looked at him. "What do you mean?"
"Going home wasn't all it was cracked up to be," he answered. "You know, how we spent all that time in that tank, wishing we could go home? So what? We could do everything in that tank we could do anywhere else. We could eat and sleep and we had VR helmets in there and in the barracks, too. Heck, all I ever did before I was drafted was wear the VR helmet. Remember all the fun we used to have blasting away phantom enemies in cyberspace? That's all we did. And then when a real war came, all we could do was complain about it. I mean, why were we complaining? It's like little boys playing with toy soldiers, and then complaining when they had to fight the real thing, ya know?"
"It's all just a game," I said.
"Yeah, I used to think that, too. But you know, I want to live, Frankie. I want to live, I don't want to die. I don't think I've ever known what living was, and I don't even think I do now. But I want the chance man, I so want the chance! When George died, that was the first time I'd really seen anyone go, man. I mean, I keep expecting George to just pop up out of nowhere, I keep expecting him to sit down beside me. Like I expected him to be reloaded, you know? But he doesn't come, and he won't. I mean, I finally got an idea what's really real, what really matters, and that's gotta be you and me, Frankie. We're the ones who matter, because we're the ones who breathe."
"I don't give a damn whether I live or die," I said. "I don't got no one. It might as well be a game."
"Yeah, maybe," said Joey. "It's comforting to think it's all a game. Hey, did you hear? The Chinese Colony withdrew from the Martian Coalition."
"Yeah, I heard." I shrugged. "All that international and interplanetary tension, and so many friendly fire incidents caused by the Phantoms - who the hell's surprised?"
"Don't you see what it means, Frankie?" Joey put his hand on my arm. "It's means war, it means real live war. If there's just one more friendly fire incident, we're plunged into chaos and the whole Martian colony project could go down the tubes. People are going to die, Frankie."
"Maybe that's what we need," I said darkly. "A good war. Maybe dying will make people realize they're still alive."
Joey looked at the ceiling again. "Real, live war. Not just against the computers, but with each other."
"What do you mean, not just against the computers?" I asked.
"Oh. You never let me say what my little theory was."
"How's that?"
"My theory about what caused the Phantoms. You know when we were talking about it way back? I think the computers are causing the Phantoms."
I chewed - lovely taste of chewing gum sugar in saliva. "What?"
"You know how you keep saying the Earthers are causing the Phantoms? I don't think that's true. It think it's the computers doing it. I mean, you've heard the rumors about sentient computers being developed in the military labs, right? The military is bound to use those computers in combat. A computer can react a hell of a lot faster than a human being, and you know there's still an arms race going on. Any sentient computer would almost have to have access to the Martian Internet, or even the Interplanetary Web. And what would they see, Joey?"
I slowly took my gum from my mouth, and tossed it thoughtlessly away. "They'd see Billy playing war games," I said.
"Not just Billy. They'd see everyone doing it. It's all the rage here, you know, all that repressed hostility in the close quarters of colony domes? Everyone's fighting with everyone else in cyberspace, but it's not real so it's harmless. Computers don't understand about life of death, they don't know that they're hurting anyone–they'd just think it was a game, too. And so the sentient computers would think, 'Well gee, this is what humans do.'"
Silence. I stared into the distance, and suddenly I remembered that ghostly old man, and I said aloud, "Be careful what you teach, or your... weapons will learn..."
"Yeah, something like that," Joey said. "But it's all just speculation, I can't believe the Military would really let something like this happen. I mean, if they let those sentient computers get loose it'd be a disaster. It's just my little theory. How's Billy?"
"What?"
"How's Billy? You know, your little brother?"
I glanced at him distractedly. "I don't know, Joey, I... just feel so helpless..."
In the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of someone - an old man with a white beard disappearing into the crowd. Joey suddenly laughed. "Hey, don't worry man. I'm just pulling your chain - I don't really think the computers -"
"Excuse me," I said.
I thrust my way through the crowd, through the dozens of young faces just like mine and the uniforms all so identical. Every now and then I would catch a glimpse of him, but he kept fading from sight, until I was alone in a small hallway. I found a door here, so I opened it.
He was waiting for me.
I entered the room slowly and shut the door. There I stayed, motionless.
His banjo was propped on his knee. He seemed happy, I guess. He was studying me with shrewd, all-seeing eyes. I felt myself pressing against the door.
"You're going to die," he said.
"This isn't real," I said firmly. But why I had I just followed him here? So I asked, "When?"
"In battle."
"Which battle?"
"Today's."
"What?"
He nodded. I sagged against the door jamb. "Oh..." I wanted to curse, but suddenly all the familiar words seemed utterly futile, just dumb, "...no," I finished weakly.
"Did you say good-bye to your family?" he asked.
"Who are you?" I asked forcefully. "At first I thought you were just some computer glitch, but that doesn't explain what you're doing here, now. Maybe this really isn't real, maybe I really am in a VR chamber somewhere. Who are you? Is this just some game for you?"
"I was going to ask you the same questions," he said.
"Don't play with me!" I shouted. "I'm not a toy!"
"I know."
"How could you know? I don't even know -" I pounded the door jamb. "I'm not gonna die. I can't die. None of this is real."
He leaned forward. "Did you say good-bye to your family?" he asked again.
"No, no... it didn't work out."
"Don't be a fool." Was it just me, or was the room becoming hazy? "Go on, call them, visit them, write them - do anything, but don't just die! They're what make you real, Frank, they're what make you real..."
He vanished into thin air.
My hands were trembling. I tried to remember, in real life did people simply fade away? I didn't remember anymore. Was I in the bowels of some machine? Or was this old guy something - was he a ghost, was he death, was he God? Or had I finally gone insane? "Who the.. who... come back..." I said to the empty air, I wanted to hear his banjo again, I wanted him to tell me about the days when things were real...
Something fell out of my pocket. I don't know the how the hell it did, or even that I had taken it with me, but on the ground was the tiny audio CD my Mom had given me.
I left the closet and found the nearest audio player. I put it in and listened.
I heard... banjo music...
Someone called my name.
I turned, slowly. For some reason all the other soldiers were running around, like there was a drill on or something. Maybe I hadn't heard an announcement while in that closet - but there, I heard my name again, and through the rushing crowd I saw - my family.
Mom and Dad and Billy... Billy was there.
They were calling my name, they'd come back for me, I stepped forward and waved at them, I reached out my hand - Joey appeared abruptly from nowhere and grabbed it. "C'mon, we gotta get suited up!" he shouted. "They did it! I can't believe they did it! There's an alert, c'mon!"
"What -" I grabbed the disc from the player- "Alert about what? Leave me alone, I gotta -"
"War!" Joey shouted at me. "Didn't you hear the broadcast? Where the hell have you been? The Colonies declared war - they did it, they really did! Americans declared war on the Chinese, then the Chinese - Aren't you paying attention - this is a real war, the real thing! Frankie, snap out of it - listen to me it's war -"
In the distance I saw MPs come from nowhere and grab my parents, they were pushing them out of the Barracks, I could almost hear them saying, "This is no place for civilians during a Battle Stations Alert -"
"No!" I shouted, shoving Joey aside, "No!" I ran after them, "No, come back -" I caught a glimpse of Billy's frightened face as they shoved him out of the Barracks and shut the heavy metal doors - "Billy!" I screamed, "Billy -"
Hot steel.
Broken legs.
Cracked chest.
Dying spirit.
"Dear Billy..."
I gasped. Sweat trickled with blood down my forehead. The hot air was getting stale fast, real fast. Damn, I didn't have any more time, but what could I say...
"I think something took over the Tank's controls and played with us, Billy. No one knows what but we're all dead. Something maybe the computers maybe devils just came and took over our controls like we were toys and played with us like they were gods and we weren't real like we weren't real like we were just colors and we're all dead..."
Joey lay in his blood across from me, his legs twisted against his torso like some kid in a sandbox had broke his toy soldier. I could see myself fighting for breath in Joey's eyes in the dead reflection of his broken gaze.
I shrieked and started pounding the ground, bleeding reality red. The agonies had started again, all too real, all too real... With a cry, I forced my hand to my forearm, to the two-inch gash of a wound, poked my finger into it, whimpering.
Once the tip was red, I started trying to write again.
"Don't worry about me Billy I can't die it's all just a game don't cry oh Billy don't cry... Stay real, Little Bro, stay real..."
The blood kept running on the overturned tank's floor. Why hadn't they tagged us with a nice, clean shot? One that made everything vaporize - how was I supposed to write him -
I heard tapping.
"No."
I heard tapping.
In agony and terror I screamed. The hatch dropped open, the dark tank was flooded with light. I raised my one hand, I tried to hide, I -
"It's okay, it's me."
The old man was above me. I knew it then, I knew I was dying, because I was fading -
"Don't be sad. It's all over for you, son. Be happy. The game's over."
Then he lifted his banjo but I said, "Wait! I... must..."
With a sigh he put down his banjo and knelt beside me. He took my hand, and with his gentle help I scrawled "I love you, Billy," in large, red letters which somehow stayed in place. When he released my hand I was crying. "Thank you, Mister," I sobbed. "You warned us, didn't you? But we didn't listen... thank you, who are you..." With the last of my strength, I took the tiny audio CD out of my pocket, and placed it in the center of the all the flowing blood, where it shined bright silver. "Make sure it gets to Billy," I said, "Make sure it gets to him, please..."
He nodded, and tousled my hair like a momma. He smiled.
Then he picked up his banjo.
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Harry Turtledove's latest SF volume, Walk in Hell, may not be the book from hell, but it's unquestionably the worst of this popular SF author's alternative history novels. The second in his The Great War series, this is actually Turtledove's fourth book placed in an alternate timeline where the slaveowners' Confederacy wins victory in the American War Between the States. Without knowledge of the previous three volumes, an unsuspecting reader would have considerable difficulty understanding this latest book.
In Turtledove's dark universe, North America becomes a bloodsoaked and
balkanized killing-field after the victorious slaveholding States ally with
Great Britain. Following its defeat, the traumatized and truncated USA falls
into a period of deep national despair. Abraham Lincoln is reviled as an
incompetent loser and a fool, but lives on to become a Socialist Party agitator.
Industrial, scientific and military development stagnate. Groups like the Utah
Mormons establish quasi-independent mini-states in the areas they control. The
independent south reluctantly emancipates slaves into a sort of peonage, but
maintains a semi-feudal social order alongside rapid industrialization.
Ultimately, north and south fight another war in the 1880's over Confederate annexation of northern Mexico, and Britain and Canada enter the war on the side of the Confederates. Pinned between hostile powers, the hapless US forces are trounced again and forced into a humiliating peace-settlement that leads the battered nation into an alliance with imperial Germany. As World War I breaks out in Europe, the system of alliances that pulled the Great Powers into the abyss also drags Canada, the United States, and the Confederacy into yet another round of blood-letting, the third in as many generations.
Turtledove's North America is more than a simple charnel-house. White North Americans in both north and south have turned against African-Americans with a vengeance. In the south, Blacks remain enslaved in all but name, while in the north vicious Jim Crow racism rules unchallenged.
As the latest volume opens, trench warfare along the Mason-Dixon line, complete with poison gas, has gone on for almost two years with little gain for either side. Washington, DC lies in ruins under the Confederate bootheel. In Canada, US forces are bogged down at the St Lawrence River, in Ontario and in Manitoba. Under the turgid leadership of the redoubtable General George Custer, US forces batter futilely against Confederate trench-lines. In Canada, US occupation proves to be no more benign than any other wartime military occupation, and Canadians become as warlike as their oppressors.
Precious little actually happens in over 400 pages, except for an abortive Marxist uprising by Black rebels in the deep south. Tank warfare is introduced. Aviators fly. Infantrymen die. Long, lovingly- crafted chapters of combat unfold into oceans of blood. Sea-battles expend printer's ink as though it were coal or gunpowder. But nothing moves. And the war goes on, and on, and on.
Even worse, Turtledove's treatment of the Black uprising and of race relations in general leaves much to be desired. Within the premises of the story, racism is a given, and the author's oppressive use of the "N" word on virtually every page drives the point home like a blunt object hammering the reader's skull. Perhaps it is reasonable to suppose that under a victorious Confederacy, African-Americans would still bear a first name only ("Nero," "Cherry," or the like) and might indeed still talk like Uncle Remus well into the 20th century, having been denied education or even literacy. Alternate-universe tales do allow for immense literary licence.
However, Turtledove's description of the Red rebellion is probably his worst writing in an otherwise unremarkable book. All we see are a few corrupt, venal pasteboard Blacks striding across the pages, declaiming phrases like "'pression 'gainst the proletariat" and displaying red flags with a broken-chain emblem. The rebels are defeated with a wave of the Confederate hand, remaining as a plot device for reference only. Remarkably, in Turtledove's world there is no Niagara Movement, no NAACP , no WEB DuBois, not even a Booker T Washington. (True to form, there seem to be no Jose Marti, Benito Juarez, Emiliano Zapata or Francisco I Madero either. Nor yet a VI Lenin, for that matter. This is a world run exclusively by second-division players.)
A rebellion by oppressed African-Americans is probably one of Turtledove's most credible scenarios, but the reader is left disappointed. One yearns to ask more about the rebellion; how it started , how it was fought, and why it was defeated. And where did illiterate peons fighting with captured weapons and rags on their backs get all those fancy red flags with the emblems? Turtledove misses a major chance to draw a positive picture of African-Americans organized to fight for their freedom. (Perhaps he would have done better to interview some of the considerable number of real-world African-American Marxists, who would probably have been overjoyed to give him some ideas for exciting and credible storylines and decent dialogue.)
True, this book has no heroes. This is indeed a hell-world where the good die young and evil flourishes like the grass. Still, one searches in vain through 400+ pages of prose for at least one honest, decent, non-two-faced Black character. This is not a book that Black readers can enjoy, or that conscientious white readers can recommend, even putting all considerations of "political correctness" aside.
As a denunciation of the horrors of war, Walk in Hell clearly achieves its goal. North America was spared most of the suffering of the "Great War," but, as Turtledove reminds us, "There but for fortune go you and I." With this and the other books in his series, Turtledove underscores with broad strokes how indebted we are to those who won the American Civil War, and how the total defeat of the American slaveholding power in 1865 may have literally saved civilization in North America to an extent unimaginable even by the most ardent Unionist of that time.
However, these seem to be the only virtues of this overlong book, which probably could have been condensed into an extra chapter of an earlier or later volume. Taken as a series, Turtledove's alternative history novels are generally good to excellent, but Walk in Hell is clearly an exception. It is, no doubt, a faithful description of WW I-era trench warfare, but just like the combat it describes, the book is time-consuming, expensive, blood-soaked, and goes nowhere. If you want classic contemporary description of the horrors of "The Great War," pick up All Quiet on the Western Front, or any of a number of other works from the WW-I period. If, on the other hand, you are in the market for good science fiction, you should seriously consider waiting for Turtledove's next volume - you won't have missed much.
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If you could have seen the stars that night
exploding in profusion
you would take your pick
and grab a ship
and head off, out to greet them.
Over distance the human mind reels from
to the firey core of a new sun
and give birth to a race
from the vacuum of space
be a God for the time left to come.