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Like many authors, Harry Turtledove and Laura Frankos periodically pay homage to other authors in their work. What follows is a list of such homages which can be found in Turtledove's body of work, organized by the author (or other creator of fiction) whose work is invoked. In some cases, a work produced by an unknown author, or a large team of people, is listed by the work's title.

Note: As many homages are subtle, they can easily escape the notice of any given reader. Therefore, we strongly encourage anyone who has found, or believes he has found, an homage not already on this list, or by an author not represented, to add it.

Scott Adams[]

Dilbert

Do not listen to his "best advice to white people."

Scott Adams (b. 1957) is a far right commentator, white supremacist, conspiracy theorist, and the syndicated cartoonist who created the comic strip Dilbert and its eponymous character. Dilbert became something of a cultural icon starting in the mid-1990s and was heavily marketed on many different forms of merchandise. Since 2016, the once-moderate Adams' extremist politics have eroded the popularity of the strip. In 2023, he described black people as "a hate group," citing a highly dubious Rasmussen poll which he appears to have misread, and advised white people to "get the hell away from black people." Outrage over these comments led to the termination of Adams' contracts with his publisher, his syndicator, and hundreds of newspapers.

In "Forty, Counting Down," the elder Justin Kloster obtains a secondhand Dilbert T-shirt in the late 2010s and wears it to allow himself to blend in with the fashions of 1999.

In Supervolcano: All Fall Down, Rob Ferguson defended being in a moderately successful band like Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles because otherwise he might have found himself working in a cubicle next to Dilbert.[1] In the same volume, Bryce Miller thought of the office cubical spaces at the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power as "Dilbertland".[2]

Literary Note[]

All of the works referenced above were written before Adams' outspoken racism began.

Alexander Afanasyev[]

Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev (Александр Николаевич Афанасьев) (23 July [O.S. 11 July] 1826 — 5 October [O.S. 23 September] 1871) was a Russian Slavist and ethnographer who published nearly 600 Russian fairy and folk tales, one of the largest collections of folklore in the world. The first edition of his collection was published in eight volumes from 1855–67, earning him the reputation as being the Russian counterpart to the Brothers Grimm. Most of the definitive Baba Yaga legends were first transcribed by Afanasyev.

Afanasyev's accounts tend to be regarded as reliable, as opposed to the allegations of "fakelore" leveled at American folk icons Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill.

A large part of Frankos' "Slue-Foot Sue and the Witch in the Woods" is a retelling of "Vasilisa the Beautiful," with the American adventurer Slue-foot Sue substituting for the titular servant. Prince Dmitri, a character from another Afanasyev story, also appears.

Al-Tabari[]

Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (Persian: محمد بن جریر طبری‎, Arabic: أبو جعفر محمد بن جرير بن يزيد الطبري‎) (224–310 AH; 839–923 AD), commonly known as Al-Tabari, was an influential Persian scholar, historian and exegete of the Qu'ran from Amol, Tabaristan (modern Mazandaran Province of Iran), who composed all his works in Arabic. Today, he is best known for his expertise in Qur'anic exegesis, Islamic jurisprudence and world history, but he has been described as "an impressively prolific polymath. He wrote on such subjects as poetry, lexicography, grammar, ethics, mathematics, and medicine."

In the world of Through Darkest Europe, Al-Tabari appears to be quite widely read indeed.[3]

Hans Christian Andersen[]

Hans Christian Andersen (often referred to in Scandinavia as H. C. Andersen; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories, called eventyr in Danish, express themes that transcend age and nationality.

Andersen's fairy tales, which have been translated into more than 125 languages, have become culturally embedded in the West's collective consciousness, readily accessible to children, but presenting lessons of virtue and resilience in the face of adversity for mature readers as well. Some of his most famous fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling", "Thumbelina" and many more.

In "The Mammyth", Turtledove references Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes" by describing an unnamed Emperor who once wore a robe made from "mammyth" skin. Turtledove implies that the Emperor was indeed naked as in Andersen's story, primarily because mammyths don't exist. But, in keeping with the tone of the story, Turtledove does leave open the possibility that the Emperor really was wearing a mammyth robe.

Every Inch a King contains a reference to an analog named Hans Eliphalet Andersen.

A Little Mermaid statue, which stands in Copenhagen's harbor, pays tribute to one of Andersen's stories. The statue makes a brief appearance in The War That Came Early: West and East.

Poul Anderson[]

PoulAnderson

Poul Anderson, one of the great heroes of the golden age of science fiction

Poul Anderson (1926-2001) was a prolific American author of science fiction, fantasy, and alternate history in the mid-20th century.

In 2004, Turtledove and Noreen Doyle edited the anthology First Heroes. The final story in the anthology was an original, previously unpublished story by the late Anderson, "The Bog Sword." Turtledove wrote a short essay prefacing the piece in which he praised Anderson as "one of the great heroes of the golden age [of science fiction]."

In addition, the world-building of Turtledove's The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump was influenced by Anderson's Operation Chaos. Both novels are fantasies that take place in a recognizable present-day world where magic works and is treated like technology is in our own and where social institutions are geared to regulate and control its use.

The time traveling criminals in Turtledove's "Death in Vesunna" are wary of being caught by the Time Patrol. While this name is fairly common in the genre, Turtledove's stated fondness for Anderson makes it possible that is a deliberate reference to Anderson's series of novels by that name.

Antoninus of Piacenza[]

Antoninus of Piacenza is the name commonly assigned to a 6th-century Christian pilgrim from Piacenza, Italy. Antoninus traveled to the Holy Land at the height of Byzantine rule in the 570s and wrote a widely circulated narrative of his pilgrimage. Debate over the pilgrim's true identity and the reliability of his account continues to this day. That there are a number of historical figures known as "Antoninus of Piacenza" adds to the muddle.

In Through Darkest Europe, Khalid al-Zarzisi briefly stops over in Piacenza, a town which he has heard of only from having read the pilgrim's travelogue.[4]

Argosy[]

Argosy, originally The Golden Argosy, later titled The Argosy and Argosy All-Story Weekly, was the first American pulp magazine, running from 1882 through 1978, and revived sporadically since the 1990s.

In "Myth Manners' Guide to Greek Missology," Prince Perseus of Argos becomes an editor for Argosy.

Aristotle[]

In addition to Turtledove's more important references to Aristotle, others are merely incidental.

In "Islands in the Sea," emissaries from competing civilized kingdoms attempt to explain Aristotle's importance to the primitive Bulgars. As the Bulgar language lacks an exact translation of sage or philosopher, the diplomats say that Aristotle was a shaman.[5]

In Through Darkest Europe, the contrast between Al-Ghazali's and Thomas Aquinas' opinions of Aristotle is presented as having been a watershed moment in history.

Isaac Asimov[]

IsaacAsimov02

Isaac Asimov, who in many ways really laid the "foundation" for Turtledove's first novel.

Isaac Asimov has long been considered one of the giants of the field of science fiction writing. Harry Turtledove has both been inspired by and contributed to the works of Asimov.

Asimov falls victim to a time-traveling plagiarist in the short story "Hindsight".

Turtledove's first published novel, Wereblood, and its sequels, which make up the Elabon Series, share some themes with the first half of Asimov's Foundation trilogy as well as the classic standalone novella "Nightfall." The title of the series' final novel, Fox and Empire, is a clear homage to the middle book of the original Foundation trilogy, Foundation and Empire. Foundation and Empire consists of two novellas, "The Dead Hand" (or "The General") and "The Mule." The conflict which gives rise to Fox and Empire's premise is quite close to that of "The Dead Hand."

In "Someone is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy," most citizens of the Galactic Empire consider Earth to be "the most insignificant planet in the galaxy." In Asimov's first published novel, Pebble in the Sky, the same concept, even the same phrasing, is attached to Earth by the majority of citizens of a very different Galactic Empire.

Asimov himself wrote the forewords for the anthologies A Different Flesh and Agent of Byzantium. The latter introduction took the form of a memorable essay titled "The Ifs of History," in which he shared his musings on alternate history, which was at the time a rather novel genre.

See Also: Turtledove's Literary Influences

John James Audubon[]

In addition to his POV role in "Audubon in Atlantis", John James Audubon's skill as an artist proves helpful to a few characters in "Birdwitching", when they use his art to identify the extinct Carolina Parakeet, temporarily revived by magic.

St. Augustine of Hippo[]

In addition to his pachydermic importance to "The Maltese Elephant," Saint Augustine is referenced in Turtledove's work for more trivial matters.

In The Wages of Sin, Viola Williams defecates profusely while giving birth to her son, and thinks of the saying "We are born between shit and piss," a popular translation of the Latin Inter faeces et urinam nascimur. In OTL, this line has been variously attributed to Augustine, or to the 11th-century French saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Viola names Augustine as the source.

William Averell[]

William Averell (February 1556 – September 1605) was an English pamphleteer, prose writer, parish clerk, and schoolmaster. He is best known as the author of A Mervalious Combat of Contrarieties (1588) that William Shakespeare used as the source for the parable of the revolt of the members against the belly in Coriolanus.

Averell also wrote An Exhortacion to all English Subjects, several lines of which were borrowed by Turtledove to pad out the script of the fictional Shakespearean play Boudicca in Ruled Britannia. As Exhortacion had been written in prose, Turtledove rewrote the borrowed lines in iambic pentameter himself.

L. Frank Baum[]

LFrankBaum

L. Frank Baum's final mission with the US Army Air Corps during the Great War involved scouting Canadian lines from a position somewhere over the rainbow.

Aside from Baum himself actually appearing as a character in the Southern Victory novel American Front, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy tale Queen Zixi of Ix is featured in The Victorious Opposition from the same series. Both of these references are a bit questionable, suggesting that a little magic was involved in Baum's presence in the series.

In The War That Came Early: The Big Switch, a screening of the film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz is the setting of the last date of Pete McGill and Vera Kuznetsova. The film is interrupted by a terror attack by the Chinese Communist Party, which kills Kuznetsova.[6]

In "My Hypothetical Friend", Dave Markarian uses yellow bricks for the path to the door of his business, intentionally referencing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.[7]

A number of characters recite a variation of Dorothy Gale's line "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," often worded as "Looks like we're not in Kansas anymore,' or "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."[8]

Peter S. Beagle[]

Peter Soyer Beagle (born April 20, 1939) is an American novelist and screenwriter, especially of fantasy fiction. His best-known work is The Last Unicorn (1968), a fantasy novel he wrote in his twenties, which Locus subscribers voted the number five "All-Time Best Fantasy Novel" in 1987. During the last twenty-five years he has won several literary awards, including a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2011. He was named Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master by SFWA in 2018.

In the short story "Character", self-aware fictional character Steve buys a copy of Beagle's The Folk of the Air. He is particularly focused on Beagle's Benkei the Ronin. In the next scene of "Character", Steve awakens to discovery he's been transported through time into the body of the real warrior Benkei.[9]

Ben Ross Berenberg[]

Ben Ross Berenberg wrote the 1946 children's book The Churkendoose, about a misfit bird who is a chimaera of chicken, turkey, duck, and goose.

In The Hot War: Fallout, Aaron and Ruth Finch read the story of the Churkendoose to their son Leon.[10]

Giovanni Boccaccio[]

Giovanni Boccaccio (16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was a Florentine humanist writer and poet. Boccaccio wrote a number of notable works, including The Decameron and On Famous Women. He wrote his imaginative literature mostly in the Italian vernacular, as well as other works in Latin, and is particularly noted for his realistic dialogue which differed from that of his contemporaries, medieval writers who usually followed formulaic models for character and plot.

"The Summer Garden" is based on a tale from The Decameron. "The Talking Cat," third entry in the Clever Rolf Stories, was published as part of A New Decameron: Stories for a Plague Year, edited by Jo Walton at Patreon.

In Ruled Britannia, William Shakespeare combs an unspecified Boccaccio story for the plot of his new play Love's Labours Won.

Leigh Brackett[]

Leigh Douglass Brackett (December 7, 1915 – March 18, 1978) was an American writer, particularly of science fiction, and has been referred to as the Queen of Space Opera. Eric John Stark is her most famous protagonist. She was also a screenwriter, known for her work on such films as The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), The Long Goodbye (1973) and Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980). She was the first woman shortlisted for the Hugo Award.

Turtledove wrote an essay for a 2007 anthology of Brackett's space operas.

Norman Bridwell[]

CliffordDog

Crosstime Traffic agent Emily Elizabeth with a specimen of the alternate dog species Canis rufus giganticus.

Norman Bridwell (1928-2014) wrote the popular children's book series Clifford the Big Red Dog. In The Valley-Westside War, the Mendoza family have a tradition of reading this series, and are reminded of it by the sight of Pots the war dog.[11]

David Brin[]

Postmanmovie

Great literature does not always make great film.

Glen David Brin (born October 6, 1950) is an American scientist and author of science fiction. He has received the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards. His best known works are the Uplift series, The Postman, Earth, and the non-fiction work The Transparent Society.

In Earthgrip novella "The Great Unknown," Jennifer Logan's class studies a number of Brin novels, most importantly The Postman.

Dan Brown[]

DaVinciCode

6-15-18-13-21-12-1-9-3, 21-14-15-18-9-7-9-14-1-12, 16-12-1-7-9-1-18-9-19-20-9-3.

Daniel Gerhard "Dan" Brown (born June 22, 1964) is an American author best known for his espionage thriller novels featuring Professor Robert Langdon, who is drawn to solve mysteries involving archaeology and clues based on ancient literature. The Da Vinci Code (2003), arguably the best known entry in the series, is controversial because of Brown's baseless statements that its depiction of secret cyphers within the pages of the Bible, and a secret history of Jesus' family life, are factually true.

In Alpha and Omega, Reverend Lester Stark regards the claims of The Da Vinci Code (among others) that vast cryptograms run throughout the Bible, as heresy. But to avoid alienating a large part of his audience, he slides around saying this directly.[12]

Algis Budrys[]

Algirdas Jonas "Algis" Budrys (January 9, 1931 – June 9, 2008) was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen names Frank Mason, Alger Rome (in collaboration with Jerome Bixby), John A. Sentry, William Scarff, and Paul Janvier.

In Earthgrip section "The Great Unknown," Jennifer Logan thinks of the repeatedly dying hero of Budrys' Rogue Moon, when she sees that Nangar and Loto have apparently died and been cloned back to live again repeatedly in Imperial Foitani fortress.[13]

John Bunyan[]

Johnbunyan

Where are my axe and blue ox, you ask? No, I'm not that Bunyan!

John Bunyan (27 November 1628 – 31 August 1688) was an English tinsmith and Roundhead soldier during the Civil War (1642-1651), who later became a preacher of a "nonconformist" Protestant denomination later known as the Baptists. During the reign of King Charles II, Bunyan was often in jail for organising religious meetings not sanctioned by the Church of England. While in prison, he wrote diaries of his spiritual thoughts and began work on the novel The Pilgrim's Progress. This work, published in 1678 and revised in 1684, is an allegory of Bunyan's spiritual struggles against doubt and fear, cast in the form of a Hero's Journey where a man travels on foot from a depraved sin-filled town to a heavenly city, overcoming monsters and villains with names such as Giant Despair, Apollyon, and Lord Hate-Good. This novel had a disproportionate importance in the English-speaking world in the 18th and 19th centuries, being the second book that most families owned, if the Bible was the first. Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Abraham Lincoln are among the American historical figures who cited the novel as an important part of their upbringing.

In How Few Remain, POV character Lincoln reads from The Pilgrim's Progress during his stay in Utah in 1881.

Paul Bunyan[]

Paulbunyan

The original Paul Bunyan and Babe statue in Bemidji, Minnesota. Crumby and stupid? You be the judge.

Paul Bunyan is a fictional lumberjack with superhuman strength, often depicted as a giant, who travels with Babe the Blue Ox throughout the United States and Canada on missions of discovery and invention. Although errant "folkloric" references to "Paul Bunion" can be found as early as 1893, Bunyan's definitive elements were created by known authors for advertising purposes, causing him to be sometimes regarded as "fakelore". The most popular Bunyan stories were written by W.B. Laughead (1882-1958) for the Red River Lumber Company in 1916, and collected in book form as The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan in 1922. As the character was never under copyright, Paul has been exploited by numerous artistic media, including several oversized statues in tourist stops across North America. Some authors make Paul Bunyan a teammate of the similar character Pecos Bill.

The narrator of "The Catcher in the Rhine" remembers reading "this book about Paul Bunyan and Babe the giant Blue Ox" which was "a pretty crumby book with really stupid pictures." The wall of flame guarding Castle Isenstein looks strong enough to reduce Babe to short ribs and steaks in nothing flat. As perhaps a dozen Bunyan books were in circulation during the narrator's 1930s-40s childhood, any more precise identification is impossible.

John Burgon[]

John William Burgon (21 August 1813 – 4 August 1888) was an English Anglican clergyman and poet who became the Dean of Chichester Cathedral in 1876. He is remembered, among other things, for his poem "Petra," about the historical site in Transjordan (now the Kingdom of Jordan), which contains the stanza: "The hues of youth upon a brow of woe/which Man deemed old two thousand years ago/match me such marvel save in Eastern clime/a rose-red city half as old as time."

In Homeward Bound, Jonathan Yeager thinks of the last line of this stanza and reflects that the English author has earned immortality "of a sort," because very few people, even if they remember the line, know the remainder of the poem, or even the author's name. Poems have been written in the Race's language about Preffilo, a city which is old enough to make it seem that Petra could have been built yesterday.[14]

Robert Burns[]

Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, the National Bard, Bard of Ayrshire, the Ploughman Poet and various other names and epithets, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is in a "light Scots dialect" of English, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest.

In the short work "No Period", the unnamed narrator quotes the first lines from Burns' poem "To a Louse": Oh wad some power the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as others see us!

John Steinbeck borrowed the phrase "Of Mice and Men" from Burns' "To a Mouse" for the title of his own 1936 novella and play, and Turtledove in turn parodied this as "Of Mice and Chicks."

Edgar Rice Burroughs[]

JohnCarterofMars

John Carter of Mars:They don't write stories like this any more. . . . Or do they?

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was one of the founding fathers of science fiction. Arguably his most memorable creation is Tarzan of the Apes. Following a close second is John Carter, a Confederate States Army veteran who travels to the planet Barsoom (Mars) and fights for justice alongside the lovely Dejah Thoris and the honorable Tars Tarkas.

Turtledove has used Carter to name characters on occasion. In The War Between the Provinces: Advance and Retreat, the historical Confederate officer John C. Carter's Detinan alter ego is John of Barsoom. In Settling Accounts: In at the Death, Confederate aristocrat Jack Carter owns the Tarkas Estate.

In Days of Infamy, Jim Peterson suggests to a major that Tarzan of the Apes would have difficulty with the Hawaiian terrain. The major turns out to be a Burroughs fanatic, and pontificates upon whether Tarzan could or couldn't, before invoking John Carter and Carson of Venus.

In "Before the Beginning", the time-viewer reveals that Mars did indeed once have life, but it was all microscopic organisms, a marked contrast to Carter and Thoris.[15]

In the Worldwar Franchise, Sam Yeager is fond of sf, including Burroughs' Barsoom epics. In Down to Earth, Sam's son Jonathan Yeager compares Kassquit, a human woman raised by the Race, to Tarzan of the Apes.[16] We also learn that the Race found the Barsoom series to be ridiculously naïve.[17]

In the non-fiction essay "Leigh Brackett", Turtledove contrasts the character treatment in Burroughs' stories with those of Leigh Brackett who admired him.

John W. Campbell[]

John W. Campbell was the long time editor of Astounding (later Analog) science fiction magazine. While Campbell died in 1971, before Turtledove's writing career had begun, he did base the Jim McGregor in "Hindsight" on Campbell.

Orson Scott Card[]

Orson Scott Card (b. 1951) is an American writer of science fiction, fantasy, and alternate history. His most famous creations are the Ender Wiggin series and the Alvin Maker series. Card and Harry Turtledove have occasionally edited each other's stories for anthologies.

In the Days of Infamy Series, an important supporting character is named Orson Sharp, possibly a pun: "cardsharp" is a skilled gambler.

In The War That Came Early: Last Orders, Lt. Anastas Mouradian got into a dispute with Lt. Vladimir Ostrogorsky. The two took it outside the mess tent where Mouradian attacked without warning and then gave Ostrogorsky a beating. He wished a victory as complete as possible to discourage others from mocking him[18] much the same way the Ender Wiggin beat a classmate (unknowingly to death) to discourage others from picking on him.

Dale Carnegie[]

Dale Carnegie was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, one of the first self-help books. The book has been in print continuously since its original publication in 1936, and has sold well over 15 million copies worldwide.

In The War That Came Early: Coup d'Etat, Peggy Druce describes the book as "a bunch of hooey, nothing else but." Her husband does not disagree but does point out that Carnegie made a small fortune in royalties.[19]

Lewis Carroll[]

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll: "I'm not sure I understand what's going on in "The Mammyth" either."

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, which includes the poem "Jabberwocky", and the poem The Hunting of the Snark – all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic and fantasy. There are societies in many parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life.

Turtledove's "The Mammyth" makes a number of allusions to Carroll's work, The Hunting of the Snark in particular. For example, a few lines into Turtledove's story, the narrator ponders how one finds the legendary mammyth by paraphrasing a line from "Fit the Sixth" of The Hunting of the Snark: "You may seek it with thimbles—and seek it with care. You may hunt it with forks and hope." The narrator stops, realizing that this method is for hunting something else, but there is no need to be "snarky". Later in the story, after he has a side encounter with a mammyth in King Wolcott's palace restroom, Tremendous Ptarmigan tells his friends Tundra Dawn and Cleveland to watch out for the "one" from fit the eighth, but he does not know what that means. Cleveland immediately responds that The Baker could tell him. In "Fit the Eighth" of The Hunting of the Snark, a character called the Baker does find a snark, but when the other characters join him, he has vanished. The poem ends by explaining "For the Snark was a Boojum, you see." The same thing happens to the protagonists, for the mammyth is also a Boojum.

"The Mammyth" also makes use of The Walrus and the Carpenter, two characters from a poem appearing in Through the Looking Glass. They also make references to more recent pop-culture: the Walrus is named Paul, and when Tremendous Ptarmigan asks if they've seen Dave, the Carpenter immediately says "Dave's not here."

Gaius Catullus[]

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote in the neoteric style of poetry. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art. Catullus' poems were widely appreciated by other poets. He greatly influenced poets and authors such as Ovid, Horace, Vergil and apparently Harry Turtledove.

In Joe Steele, after Father Coughlin is shot by firing squad on President Joe Steele's orders, the lieutenant of the firing squad says "Ave atque vale" ("Hail and Farewell") to Coughlin's garbled "ave--", a reference to a line in Catullus' famous poem 'Catullus 101'.

Geoffrey Chaucer[]

Chaucer

Chaucer seems sad to learn that he either dies early or is studied exclusively by Germans.

In addition to having had a truncated life in In High Places, Geoffrey Chaucer is referenced in other Turtledove works. In In the Presence of Mine Enemies, we learn that the works of Chaucer, much like William Shakespeare, are studied in much greater detail in Germany than in Britain. Susanna Weiss teaches, debates, and studies a variety of Chaucer pieces throughout the novel.

"Gladly Wolde He Lerne" takes its title from a line in The Canterbury Tales.

In the Clever Rolf Stories entry "The Talking Cat", barkeep Marcel tells carpenter Luc a "very long, very dirty story that involved another carpenter, his wife, and a red-hot poker used where it would do the most good." This is a reference to "The Miller's Tale" in The Canterbury Tales. As "The Talking Cat" first appeared as part of Jo Walton's A New Decameron at Patreon, and as Chaucer was inspired by the original The Decameron, this is a reference within a reference.

In Noninterference, Magda Kodaly and Stavros Monemvasios are undercover among pilgrims to Helmand. When Magda compares their pilgrimage to the one to Canterbury, Stavros (whose classical education is largely limited to ancient Greece) doesn't get the reference.[20]

Agatha Christie[]

Dame Agatha Christie (15 September 1890 - 12 January 1976) was a prolific English writer of mysteries, whose best known characters include Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple.

Christie's writings are periodically referenced by Turtledove characters. In The War That Came Early: Two Fronts, Pete McGill observes that the USS Suwannee has a common naming origin with Stephen Foster's song "Swanee River." Bob Cullum replies “You just now noticed, Hercule Poirot?” The narration pointedly tells us that he pronounced it poi-rot, as if the native Hawaiians’ staple had gone bad, rather than the correct Belgian "pwaro".

Winston Churchill[]

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, in addition to his political career, which is depicted directly in several Turtledove works, was well regarded as an orator and writer.

In OTL, after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Churchill stated in a speech advocating support for Joseph Stalin: "If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons". This quote is referenced in "Ready for the Fatherland".[21]

In the novel Joe Steele where Stalin is born in the U.S. and elected President, Churchill gives a speech thanking Steele for the equivalent of Lend-Lease and states "If the Devil opposed Adolf Hitler, I should endeavor to give him a good notice in the House of Commons. Thus I thank Joe Steele".[22]

Carl von Clausewitz[]

Carl Philipp Gottfried (or Gottlieb) von Clausewitz (1 June 1780 – 16 November 1831) was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral" (meaning, in modern terms, psychological) and political aspects of war. His most notable work, Vom Kriege (On War), was unfinished at his death. Clausewitz was a realist in many different senses and, while in some respects a romantic, also drew heavily on the rationalist ideas of the European Enlightenment. One of his more famous aphorisms is "War is the extension of politics by other means."

In The War That Came Early: The Big Switch, Julius Lemp reflects that Clausewitz' aphorism is especially relevant to the convoluted twists and reversals to this timeline's version of World War II.[23]

Groff Conklin[]

GroffConklin

"Groff" is a perfectly fine name indeed.

Edward Groff Conklin (September 6, 1904 – July 19, 1968) was a leading science fiction anthologist. He edited 41 anthologies of science fiction, wrote books on home improvement and was a freelance writer on scientific subjects. In 1953, he and his wife Lucy edited The Supernatural Reader.

In the short work "The Star and the Rockets", Joe Bauman is reading The Supernatural Reader the night three strange men changed his life. Bauman describes the name "Groff" as quite the handle.

Richard Connell[]

Richard Edward Connell Jr. (October 17, 1893 – November 22, 1949) was an American author and journalist, best remembered for his short story "The Most Dangerous Game" (1924), the story of a mad nobleman who hunts humans as big game on his island hideaway.

In "The Last Word," Draka officers Benedict Arnold and Piet van Damm discuss a story whose plot matches Connell's. However, in this timeline the author was supposedly English rather than American.

Cosmpolitan[]

Cosmopolitan (Cosmo for short) is a best-selling international fashion and entertainment magazine for women. First published in 1886 in New York City as a family magazine, it was later transformed into a literary magazine and since 1965 has become a women's magazine. It is known for articles discussing relationships, sex, health, careers, self-improvement, celebrities, fashion, horoscopes, and beauty.

In Household Gods, it is a primary character trait that Nicole Gunther, despite being in a legal profession that requires much education, is intellectually lazy. At one point it is revealed that Cosmo is the only non-work-related reading material she keeps in her West Hills home.

Dante Alighieri[]

Dante

Dante Alighieri's affirmation of Catholicism is so powerful, even God-less Commies love it.

Dante Alighieri, or simply Dante (c. 1265– 13 or 14 September 1321), was an Italian poet from Florence. His central work, the Divine Comedy, is considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature. The most famous cantica of this work is Inferno.

Inferno serves as the basis of a homework assignment in The Gladiator. Moreover, in the short work "Clash of Arms", Stephen de Windesore is surprised to see that "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" adorns the gates of Hell; the line comes from Dante's work. Kelly Ferguson is also reminded of the line when she visits the post-eruption Yellowstone Supervolcano.[24] Oscar van der Kirk thought the phrase should be over the door to the "Special Case" office in the Honolulu Hale when he went there to enquirer after Charlie Kaapu.[25]

Dick Barber[26] and Bryce Miller[27] also reference Dante's Inferno in the Supervolcano trilogy, where the innermost circle is a frozen lake trapping Satan in the middle, while contemplating the unusually cold winters after the eruption.

The Inferno is also quoted in "The Scarlet Band" by James Walton, who finds the grisly sights and smells of an Atlantean prison reminiscent of Dante's depiction of Hell.[28]

L. Sprague de Camp[]

Sprague

L. Sprague de Camp: If you like Turtledove's work, thank de Camp. If you don't...blame de Camp. (Though we might ask why you're exploring his Wiki.)

L. Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. Turtledove's interest in writing alternate history was sparked by de Camp's novel, Lest Darkness Fall.

In 1999, Turtledove wrote "The Pugnacious Peacemaker", a sequel to de Camp's Wheels of If which was published in Down in the Bottomlands and Other Places. In 2005, Turtledove edited a volume of short stories called The Enchanter Completed, which celebrated de Camp's writing. Turtledove's own contribution was "The Haunted Bicuspid". The bartender in this story is George M., a musical allusion to bartender Cohan from de Camp's Gavagan's Bar (1953). In The Two Georges, a minor character is named "Gavagan the bartender".

In The War That Came Early: Last Orders, a Kriegsmarine Kapitan zur See named Rochus Mauer mentions that he had fought in the World War II "with a slashing slide rule", something de Camp had jokingly said about his own World War II experiences in a United States Navy research facility in Philadelphia.[29]

In Or Even Eagle Flew, a minor character is a war pilot named Lyon Sprague, who at one point "decamps" from a plane.

See Also: Turtledove's Literary Influences

Daniel Defoe[]

Robinson Crusoe 1719 1st edition-1-

All those Crusoes, but no Fridays....

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy, most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe. The novel tells of a man's shipwreck on a deserted island and his subsequent adventures while being isolated from the rest of the world for over 30 years.

In Settling Accounts, U.S. Army soldiers trapped behind Confederate lines for extended lengths of time during the Second Great War are referred to as "Robinson Crusoes".[30]

In Gunpowder Empire, Jeremy Solters compares himself and his sister Amanda to Robinson Crusoe when a disaster cuts them off in Agrippan Rome from the home timeline.[31]

Dio Cassius[]

Cassius Dio or Dio Cassius (c. 155 – c. 235) was a Roman Senator, Consul, and historian of Greek origin. He published 80 volumes of history on Ancient Rome, beginning with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy, and the subsequent founding of the Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic, and Roman Empire. Written in Greek over 22 years, Dio's work covers approximately 1,000 years of history. Many of his 80 books have survived intact, or as fragments, providing modern scholars with a detailed perspective on Roman history.

In The War That Came Early: The Big Switch, Samuel Goldman, after learning of the death of Winston Churchill, attempts, without much success, to calm his nerves by reading a selection from Dio Cassius in the original Greek.[32]

Diodorus Siculus[]

Diodorus Siculus (flourished 60-30 BC) was an ancient Greek historian, known for the monumental universal history Bibliotheca historica ("Historical Library"). According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium (now Agira) in Sicily. With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work.

Diodorus selected the name "Bibliotheca" in acknowledgment that he was assembling a composite work from many sources. Identified authors on whose works he drew include Hecataeus of Abdera, Ctesias of Cnidus, Ephorus, Theopompus, Hieronymus of Cardia, Duris of Samos, Diyllus, Philistus, Timaeus, Polybius, and Posidonius.

In "Death in Vesunna", Gaius Tero uses a copy of the work of Diodorus to bait a trap for the murderers of Clodius Eprius.[33]

Mary Mapes Dodge[]

Mary Mapes Dodge (January 26, 1831 – August 21, 1905) was an American children's writer and editor, best known for her novel Hans Brinker (1865), taking in place in the Netherlands. Although Dodge had never visited the Netherlands at the time, her research into Dutch culture was so perfect that the story has been adopted by the Dutch as an ersatz native legend. A subplot of Hans Brinker involves a boy who saves his town from flooding, by holding his finger in the dike. This boy is not named in the book, but in popular culture is also often called Hans Brinker.

In A World of Difference, Dr. Sarah Levitt is attempting to find a cure for Minervan mates' inevitable childbirth deaths, which would involve plugging six burst arteries at once, and metaphorically wishes that the boy at the dike had six hands.[34]

John Donne[]

John Donne (1572-1631) was an English cleric and poet, considered by most to be the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets of the 17th century. Arguably his most famous work, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624), includes the oft-quoted line:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

In Southern Victory, when Congresswoman Flora Blackford introduces a motion condemning the Confederate States for mistreatment of law-abiding Negros, Congressman Hosea Blackford quotes Donne when speaking in favor of the motion to address opponents who argued that the CSA were a foreign land and not the business of the USA.[35]

In the Jefferson story "Typecasting", Bill Williamson suddenly remembers part of the line while visiting Ashland.

In Supervolcano: All Fall Down Marshall Ferguson reads a newspaper story about a young man who committed suicide because he felt cut off from the world since the eruption. The reporter went on to quote Devotions's first line and how everyone has been thrown back on their own resources becoming islands.[36]

Arthur Conan Doyle[]

Conan doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle wonders when Turtledove will pastiche the incredibly popular and interesting Professor Challenger.

In addition to their significant references in Earthgrip, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his creation Sherlock Holmes are frequently referenced in Turtledove's work.

Turtledove's short story "The Scarlet Band", is a pastiche of the Holmes stories. In the analog, Sherlock Holmes becomes Athelstan Helms, Dr. John Watson becomes James Walton, and Inspector Lestrade becomes La Strada. In an unusual move for Turtledove, this pastiche is actually part of the Atlantis Series, rather than being a stand-alone work.

Holmes and company are well known for their one-liners, some of which were, ironically, not created by Doyle. "Elementary, my dear Watson" originates from stage and film adaptations of Holmes, although it is a reasonable paraphrase of sentiments Holmes did express on several occasions. Within Turtledove's canon, it sets up an atrocious pun in the "Nothing in the Nighttime" section of Earthgrip,[37] and has probably been used on other occasions.

Another such statement is "No kidding, Sherlock". This sentiment probably originated from a man-on-the-street, with no definitive origin. It can be worded several dozen different ways, and Turtledove has probably incorporated all of them into his work at one point or another.

A legitimate Doyle line, originating in "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet," says that "when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." In The Valley-Westside War when Private Dan, reporting to Captain Horace his conviction that the technologically advanced Mendozas must be time travelers from the Old Time, refers to the Great Detective and his saying that "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth".[38]

In "Hindsight," Katherine Lundquist playfully tells her husband Pete, "The game's afoot, Watson," paraphrasing a line from "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange", which in turn cribbed from William Shakespeare's Henry V.[39]

In Every Inch a King, Bob of Albion says "I did nothing in the nighttime," and Max of Witte says (unheard by Bob) "Thou lying dog."[40]

Inn Colonization: Down to Earth, the Race's diplomats Felless and Kazzop, observing suspicious activity in Marseille, observe a questionable group of Tosevites who resemble "The Red-Headed League" by being uniform in their hair color, but with the color being black rather than red. Kazzop, a veteran of the Conquest Fleet and who has read the story, makes the reference. Felless, newly arrived in the Colonization Fleet, is unfamiliar with human culture.[41]

In The War That Came Early: West and East, Pete McGill makes an obvious observation and reflects that, if he were an investigator, he would not put Sherlock Holmes out of business.

In the world of Through Darkest Europe, there is a series of popular fictional works about a detective named Tariq, whose dim-witted sidekick is in the habit of saying things like "Astounding, Tariq. What leads you to this astonishing conclusion?"[42] This is a paraphrase of several Watsonisms aimed at Holmes.

Matt Drudge[]

Matthew Nathan "Matt" Drudge (born October 27, 1966) is an American political commentator, and the creator and editor of The Drudge Report, a conservative, right-wing news aggregation website. Drudge is also an author; he was a radio show host and a television show host.

One of the myriad anachronisms in "Myth Manners' Guide to Greek Missology" is that The Drudge Report is read by people in Ancient Greece. Prince Perseus consults the website to determine whether his evil grandfather King Acrisius is still chasing him.

"Duchess at Tea"[]

An anonymous limerick reads: "I sat next to the Duchess at tea/It was just as I thought it would be/Her rumblings abdominal/Were simply phenomenal/Everyone thought it was me!"

This verse has been quoted in the thoughts of Paula Shaffer in "Hatching Season" and Nicole Gunther in Household Gods.

Alexandre Dumas[]

Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) was the author of numerous adventure novels set in France between the 16th and 19th centuries. His best known works are Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers) and its sequels. In The Valley-Westside War, when Dan tells Liz Mendoza that he has become a Musketeer of The Valley, she thinks of him as resembling Athos, Porthos, or Aramis (the titular musketeers), or d'Artagnan, the young musketeer-in-training who is the novels' true central character.[43]

Finley Peter Dunne[]

Turtledove has frequently referenced an axiom of Finley Peter Dunne's: "Trust everybody, but always cut the cards."

Albert Edersheim[]

Alfred Edersheim (7 March 1825 – 16 March 1889) was an Austrian Jewish convert to Christianity, and a Biblical scholar known especially for his book The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883).

In Alpha and Omega, Lester Stark finds Edersheim's book to be an invaluable guide to the portents unfolding in Stark's lifetime.[44]

George Eliot[]

Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively "Mary Anne" or "Marian"), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. One of her novels, The Mill on the Floss, was first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The novel spans a period of 10 to 15 years and details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, siblings growing up at Dorlcote Mill on the River Floss at its junction with the more minor River Ripple near the village of St. Ogg's in Lincolnshire.

In Supervolcano: Eruption, Vanessa Ferguson was stranded in a high school building in Garden City, Kansas, while fleeing the Yellowstone Supervolcano eruption. Her bunkroom was used to teach English literature, and so having nothing else to do, she read several times one of the many copies of The Mill on the Floss on a bookshelf in the room.[45]

T.S. Eliot[]

TSEliot

This is the way the world ends? Bummer.

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) was an American-English playwright, literary critic, and an important English language poet of the 20th century. Perhaps his most famous lines end his poem The Hollow Men:

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

In Supervolcano: Eruption, Kelly Birnbaum thought Eliot's lines missed the mark while experiencing a series 7.0 earthquakes in Yellowstone National Park the night before the supervolcano erupted. She anticipated that would end her world with quite the bang.[46]

In Southern Victory: Drive to the East, Lieutenant Colonel Tom Colleton also thought that the lines were untrue and figured the (unnamed) Eliot must have missed fighting in the Great War, otherwise he would have never written that.[47]

The working title of The War That Came Early: Last Orders was originally announced as Not with a Bang, presumably an allusion to the same poem.

In The Hot War: Bombs Away, Bill Staley remembers that oft quoted line from "The Hollow Men" on the eve of the outbreak of World War III. Staley is amused that Eliot could write "The Hollow Men" and "The Waste Land" and then also write silly poems about cats.[48]

"The Mrem Go West" features numerous Mrem characters who are based on characters from Eliot's children's book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Eliot's name is also used as Tessell Yatt.

Old Possum's is best known in popular culture as the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats: The Musical. Characters from Webber's interpretation of Eliot appear in "The Great White Way," and the play is discussed in "Natural Selection."

In "Topanga and the Chatsworth Lancers", Jared Tillman reflects that The Change ended the old world not with a bang but with a whimper, and thinks "Tough shit, Eliot!"[49] The punning expression is also used by countless other Turtledove characters.

Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer[]

Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer (10 December 1790 – 26 April 1861) was a Tyrolean traveler, journalist, politician and historian, best known for his controversial theories concerning the racial origins of the Greeks, and for his travel writings.

In "The Mammyth", the unnamed narrator repeats a fictional claim that pictures of a throne made of mammyth ivory may be found in a fictional Fallmerayer (here spelled "Fallmereyer") tome called Geistkunstgeschichtliche Wissenschaft. The narrator further repeats a rumor that someone removed every image from every copy of the Fallmerayer work; as there were only ever nine copies, this was not an impossibility.

William Faulkner[]

WilliamFaulkner

"Time travel? Me? But the past isn't the past!"

William Faulkner (1897-1962) was an American novelist best known for charting out the complex, multi-volume history of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.

In the shared multiverse story "Eyewear", Esperanza quotes Faulkner's observation that "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past" to illustrate the fluidity of time and time travel. Esperanza initially believes that Faulkner didn't know the first thing about time travel, but then, upon reflection, allows for the possibility that Faulkner did.

Jack Finney[]

Walter Braden "Jack" Finney (born John Finney; October 2, 1911 – November 14, 1995) was an American author. His best-known works are science fiction and thrillers, including The Body Snatchers and Time and Again. The latter is a time travel novel in which sketch artist Si Morley participates in a government project to travel through time by use of self-hypnosis.

In the short story "Under Coogan's Bluff", the 2040 Los Angeles Angels travel back in time to 1905 New York City. Pitcher Keyshawn Fredericks, having read the novel Time and Again, recognizes the Dakota Apartments, which Finney used as a setting. His teammate, Joshua Kaplan, didn't read the book, but he has seen the TV series that aired on Netflarx in 2040.

Gustave Flaubert[]

Gustave Flaubert (12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist, whose best known works include Madame Bovary (1857), the tragic tale of a financially naive Norman country family in the 1830s-40s, and Salammbo (1862), the tale of the Mercenary Revolt in 3rd-century BC Carthage.

In The Great War: Walk in Hell, we are told that Salammbo is very popular among Confederate blacks, as the story of the revolt of dark skinned mercenaries strikes a chord in the heart of even the most peaceable black man.[50]

CS Forester[]

Cecil Louis Troughton Smith (1899–1966), known by his pen name Cecil Scott "C. S." Forester, was an English novelist known for writing tales of naval warfare such as the 12-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during Britain's wars against Napoleonic France. These are often compared to the work of Patrick O'Brian. His other works include The African Queen (1935; filmed in 1951 by John Huston) which is set during World War I.

In The Hot War: Bombs Away, Aaron and Ruth Finch see the famous film version of The African Queen, which is an improbable accomplishment on their part. Aaron reflects that he loves Forrester.[51]

In "In the Shadow of the Great Days," Captain Mandela Lowell keeps a collection of books by Forester and O'Brian in his ready room on the USS Constitution.[52]

In Settling Accounts: In at the Death, some US Navy personnel read the historical naval fiction of C.S. O'Brian, whose name is an obvious portmanteau of the two.[53]

Robert Frost[]

Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet, highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. Frost received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, the Congressional Gold Medal, and the post of poet laureate of Vermont. Among his more famous works is "The Road Not Taken" (1916), whose famous first line is "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood".

The title of Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken" is taken from Frost's poem. Within the story, Togram and Ransisc discuss this poem, translating the author's surname as their language's word for Hail or Snow. They use the poem as a metaphor of how two different societies go on different paths of technological discovery.[54]

In Joe Steele, Charlie Sullivan capitalizes on the public's love for Frost by writing a novel called Two Roads Diverged.[55]

Erle Stanley Gardner[]

Erle Stanley Gardner (July 17, 1889 – March 11, 1970) was an American lawyer, travel writer, and novelist, best known as the creator of defense attorney Perry Mason, who first appeared in print in 1933, and was later adapted to radio, television, and film. The best known version of Perry Mason is the 1957-66 CBS TV show] starring Raymond Burr.

In Household Gods, ambitious young lawyer Gary Ogarkov tries to imitate Perry Mason (presumably Burr's version) when speaking in public, but sounds as if he's been quaffing helium.[56]

Edward Gibbon[]

Edward Gibbon FRS (8 May 1737 – 16 January 1794) was an English historian, writer and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788 and is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its polemical criticism of organised religion, blaming Christianity for destroying the Roman Empire.

The Decline and Fall, as it is sometimes known for short, is referenced in a number of Turtledove works. In American Empire: Blood and Iron, Scipio enjoys reading the volume about the Moorish conquest of Visigothic Spain.[57]

In The War That Came Early: West and East, Theodosius Hossbach explains his unwieldy first name by saying that he was born when his father was reading a German translation of Gibbon's work.[58]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe[]

Goethe

"Really, Turtledove? Really? My whole body of work, and you only bother to reference that one obscene line? Whatever!"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (pronounced "Gurta," 1749–1832) was a German diplomat, novelist, poet, playwright, historian, and artist, sometimes considered the greatest German-language writer of all time.

German soldiers in Hitler's War reference the most famous line from Goethe's play Goetz von Berlichingen, namely "mich im Arsche lecken!" This effectively translates as "Lick my ass!"

Olivia Goldsmith[]

Olivia Goldsmith was the pseudonym of Justine Goldfield (January 1, 1949 – January 15, 2004), an American author, best known for her first novel The First Wives Club (1992, movie adaptation 1996), which tells of several wives' humorous revenge on philandering husbands.

In "Myth Manners' Guide to Greek Missology," Zeus hears Hera and Danaë talking about a "First Wives' Club" which he believes to be a bludgeoning weapon.

Kenneth Grahame[]

Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) was a Scottish writer of fairy tales, most famously The Wind in the Willows and The Reluctant Dragon, both of which were adapted into animated films by American producer Walt Disney. The Disneyland theme park has an attraction called Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

In The Disunited States of America, Beckie Royer is a fan of The Breeze in the Birches, the novel which inspired Mr. Frog's Crazy Ride at Mortimer's World.[59] Mortimer's World is an additional literary allusion, to Disneyland mascot Mickey Mouse, whose name almost became Mortimer before Disney decided that sounded too highbrow.

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is also referenced in A World of Difference.[60]

Harold Gray[]

Harold Lincoln Gray (1894–1968) was an American cartoonist who expressed political philosophy through popular comic strip characters, including Little Orphan Annie and Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks.

The world depicted in The Valley-Westside War has been so devastated by nuclear war that the surviving civilizations have conflated fact and fiction rather freely. For example, the historical stuntwoman Annie Oakley is conflated with Gray's Annie. In this folklore, Little Orphan Annie Oakley was an outlaw partner of Jesse James, and escaped punishment by marrying Judge Warbucks.[61]

The fact that musicals were written about both Annies probably didn't help.

Thomas Gray[]

ThomasGray

It's not Thomas Gray's fault that H.L. Mencken had no faith in humanity.

Thomas Gray's (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) Elegy Written in a Country Courtyard lamented that "Some mute inglorious Milton" rested there. Nearly two centuries later, H.L. Mencken answered Gray with the assertion that "There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the imaginations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton." Gray's Elegy and Mencken's response serve as the thematic foundation of "The House That George Built".

Brothers Grimm[]

Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Carl Grimm (1786–1859), were German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers and authors who together collected and published folklore during the 19th century. They were among the first and best-known collectors of German and European folk tales, and popularized traditional oral tale types such as "Cinderella", "The Frog Prince", "The Goose-Girl", "Hansel and Gretel", "Little Red Riding Hood," "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin", "Sleeping Beauty", and "Snow White". Their definitive collection, Children's and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), was published in two volumes — the first in 1812 and the second in 1815.

In Thessalonica, set in 597, George the shoemaker wishes that there could be a spirit or fairy that would make shoes for him as he lay in bed.[62] This is an allusion to the Grimms' "The Elves and the Shoemaker," about a poor shoemaker who receives much-needed help from three young helpful elves.

Frankos' "The Great White Way" features Grimm characters Dame Gothel and The Wolf, as filtered through Stephen Sondheim's play Into the Woods.

Every Inch a King contains a reference to the Grim Brethren, a Schlepsigian duo who wrote similar stories.

Edward Everett Hale[]

"The Man Without a Country" is a short story by American writer Edward Everett Hale (April 3, 1822 – June 10, 1909), first published in The Atlantic in December 1863. It is the story of United States Army lieutenant Philip Nolan, who renounces his country during a trial for treason and is consequently sentenced to spend the rest of his days aboard ship at sea without so much as a word of news about the United States. Though the story is set in the early 19th century, it is an allegory about the upheaval of the American Civil War and was meant to promote the Union cause. When first published, many believed it to be a true story. In 1898, Hale stated that the story was inspired by the deportation of US Congressman Clement Vallandigham to the Confederate States.

In Homeward Bound, the final novel of the Worldwar Franchise, Sam Yeager learns from Nicole Nichols that the United States government is intent on stranding him on Home, Yeager is reminded of "The Man Without a Country". The difference is that while Philip Nolan didn't want his country, Yeager's country doesn't want him.

Dashiell Hammett[]

MalteseFalcon

How Embarrassing:The Poster Reads "Maltese Falcon," When We All Know The Title Was "Maltese Elephant!"

Samuel Dashiell Hammett (May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, screenwriter, and political activist. He was the author of The Maltese Falcon, of which Turtledove's short story "The Maltese Elephant" is a pastiche.

In the Southern Victory universe, Hammett himself may have titled the work The Maltese Elephant. At any rate, a film by that name was produced in the United States some time in the late 1930s or early 1940s. It apparently starred Humphrey Bogart, who also starred in the 1941 film about the Falcon in OTL.

Sam Spade is the detective who narrates the quest for the Maltese Falcon. In The Two Georges, RAM Captain Samuel Stanley is referred to by Common Sense reporter Michael Shaughnessy as "Sam the Spade", in the context of a racialist slur.[63]

"Hoxbomb" features a detective named Sam Spud.

Václav Havel[]

Havel

"So, Turtledove, I'm either an analog or a literary influence, but never a real character?"

Václav Havel (5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, writer and former dissident, who first rose to prominence as a playwright. His 1978 essay Moc bezmocných, known in English as The Power of the Powerless, dissects the nature of the Czechoslovakian communist regime, life within such a regime, and how by their very nature such regimes can create dissidents of ordinary citizens. Defying a government ban, it became a manifesto for dissent in Czechoslovakia, Poland and other communist regimes. After the Velvet Revolution toppled communism Havel served as the last President of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the country's dissolution in 1992 and then as the first President of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003.

Turtledove has stated that the story "Powerless", set in a dystopian California, was inspired by Havel's essay.

In the Presence of Mine Enemies has a minor character, the unnamed leader of the Unity Party of Bohemia, with some similarities to Havel, including being a playwright.

Robert A. Heinlein[]

Heinlein

Robert A. Heinlein's looking a little henpecked. Perhaps he's mooning over a harsh mistress?

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) was an American science fiction writer in the 20th century and is often called "the Dean of Science Fiction". As Turtledove states in his essay "Thank You" in Requiem: New Collected Works by Robert A. Heinlein and Tributes to the Grand Master that Heinlein was his inspiration to persist in becoming a professional fiction writer.

Turtledove also had Heinlein appear or be referenced in a number of his works. Heinlein has a cameo in the Colonization: Second Contact. He is referenced by Jennifer Logan in the far future science fiction novel Earthgrip and his story "The Man Who Sold the Moon" provides Logan with a solution to her difficulties in "6+". Michelle Gordian plagiarizes Heinlein's "All You Zombies" in "Hindsight." Admiral Anson MacDonald in "The Last Word" is named for a pseudonym which Heinlein sometimes wrote under, and has an origin story similar to Heinlein himself. The plot of the same story taken from Heinlein's Sixth Column. Heinlein's Have Space Suit - Will Travel is frequently consulted in Three Miles Down.

Turtledove's inclusion of Luna among the nations participating in the Sixty-sixth Winter Games in "Les Mortes d'Arthur" may or may not have been an homage to Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. That novel deals with the establishment of an independent nation-state on the Moon known as Luna, but no details are provided that would let us judge whether Turtledove's Luna resembles Heinlein's. The idea of a lunar nation by itself is quite generic in science fiction, as is the name Luna.

At the end of Turtledove's "Father of the Groom", we have the wedding of Archimedes Kidder and Kate, where, after the vows and before the minister could say anything else, Archie said "Kiss Me, Kate!". She did so and, if she couldn't quite "grok" why he had the smile he had, well she was only finishing up an MBA.[64] Grok is a neologism first coined by Heinlein for his seminal 1961 science-fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, and became popular in the hippie community in the years after its publication. In The Valley-Westside War, over a century after the 1967 nuclear war, the descendants of Westside survivors continue to use hippie jargon including the word "grok".

Turtledove's Crosstime Traffic Series reportedly takes much influence from Heinlein's work aimed at juveniles. Heinlein is named on the dedication page of Gunpowder Empire, the first volume. As a further reference to Heinlein in the series, several characters from the home timeline own a fasarta, which seems to be a very desirable luxury item. The first known example of the word "fasarta" appears in Heinlein's 1951 novel Between Planets. It is also mentioned in the apparently unrelated novel The Door Into Summer (1956), this time as a "subflexive fasarta." That book's protagonist muses on the difficulties of making time travel commercially viable - especially since with the means of such travel available to him it is impossible to know if you'd go forward of backwards in time, Hence, "Imagine winding up at the court of Henry VIII with a load of subflexive fasartas intended for the twenty-fifth century". That modification to "subflexive fasartas" also makes its way into Crosstime in The Disunited States of America. Neither Heinlein nor Turtledove ever define just what a fasarta is; the ambiguity is presumably meant to be part of the fun.

In Heinlein's The Puppet Masters (set in a 2007 where the Soviet Union still exists and the Cold War had resumed after the Americans and Soviets have gone through an inconclusive nuclear war) the protagonist muses that "Russia is too big to conquer and too big to ignore". At the end of The Disunited States of America, Justin Monroe makes precisely the same observation.

See Also: Turtledove's Literary Influences

Joseph Heller[]

Joseph Heller (1923-1999) was an American author best known for Catch-22 (1961), a scathing satire of bureaucratic incompetence in military organizations. The book's title has entered the English language as a noun which can be defined as a paradoxical conundrum caused by contradictory rules and limited options, or perhaps the proverbial spot between the devil and the deep blue sea.

In The Man With the Iron Heart, Toby Benton and Lou Weissberg find themselves in such a situation, and speculate that someone will write a popular novel about such a predicament and give it a memorable name. Weissberg says "It's a heller, all right."[65]

Ernest Hemingway[]

Ernie

Some Guy Named Ernie

In addition to his direct appearances in Turtledove works, Ernest Hemingway is discussed on other occasions. In The War That Came Early: Two Fronts, Chaim Weinberg reads For Whom the Bell Tolls and discusses both the novel and its author with Mike Carroll.

Turtledove's 2013 short story "Running of the Bulls" is a science fiction pastiche of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.

In "Powerless", Mary Ann Hannegan quotes something a "wise and progressive writer" once said: "The world breaks every one and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills." This is a line from Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Whether or not Hemingway is the "wise and progressive writer" Hannegan had in mind is never clarified.

Graham Lee Hemminger[]

Graham Lee Hemminger (1895-1950), was promotion director of the Topics Publishing Co. and a member of its board of directors. While student editor of Froth at Penn State University, he wrote a short poem to fill some empty space:

Tobacco is a dirty weed,
It satisfies no normal need,
It makes you thin, it makes you lean,
It takes the hair right off your bean.
It's the worst darn stuff I've ever seen.
I like it.

In "Hindsight", Pete Lundquist quotes this poem when Michelle Gordian asks him not to smoke inside her house. She replies "More fool you" but waits outside with him as he finishes his smoke.[66]

Herodotus of Halicarnassus[]

Herodotus (circa 484 – 425 BC) was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria (modern day Bodrum, Turkey). He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a well-constructed and vivid narrative.

From his Histories, Turtledove quoted "When Darius was king, he summoned the Greeks who were with him and asked them for what price they would eat their fathers' dead bodies. They answered that they wouldn’t do it for any amount of money. Then Darius summoned those Indians who are called Callatiae, who eat their parents, and asked them (the Greeks being present and understanding through interpreters what was said) what would make them willing to burn their fathers at death. The Indians cried aloud, that he should not speak of so horrible an act. So firmly rooted are these beliefs; and it is, I think, rightly said in Pindar's poem that custom is king of all". Turtledove used this as the title of a short story foreshadowing the twist ending and cited the quote in his introduction.

Colonel Thomas Bushell also quoted "custom is king of all" to Captain Samuel Stanley when the latter wondered how the Russians could drink tea without milk. Bushell then wondered to himself whether the North American Union remaining bound to the British Empire was custom as well and if it had become independent would its inhabitants also consider it natural. He concluded that wasn't the same thing, unknowingly proving Herodotus correct.[67]

Herodotus's account of how Peisistratos used trickery to become tyrannos of Athens is the basis for Turtledove's short story "Goddess for a Day".

Outofdate

"This history of India must be out of date. I can't find tree-wool, giant ants, or black semen."
"Well, keep looking."

Throughout the Hellenic Traders series, the scholarly Sostratos remembers the writings of Herodotus (or Herodotos in the Greek) on various occasions. In Over the Wine-Dark Sea, for example, Sostratos is astonished to learn that peafowl are from India, as Herodotus limited his writings about India to clothes made from tree-wool, enormous ants that mined gold, and the people themselves, with their blacks skins and black semen, but neglected to mention the peafowl.

James Herriot[]

James Herriot was the pen name of James Alfred Wight (3 October 1916 – 23 February 1995), an English veterinary surgeon and writer, best known for his semi-autobiographical novels including If Only They Could Talk (1970) and All Creatures Great and Small (1972). He identified as Scottish and English at different points of his life, and spent much of his career in Yorkshire.

Turtledove's "The Yorkshire Mammoth" is a pastiche of Herriot's work, set in a world where the Last Glacial Period didn't recede as completely as in OTL, and European megafauna survived into the modern era.

In Laura Frankos' St. Oswald's Niche, Jennet Walker visits an exhibit which includes a collection of Herriot's veterinary tools at the Castle Folk Museum in York.[68] Later in the same novel, Mary-Lou Henley says that the North Yorkshire countryside makes her expect to see Herriot, but Roger Barclay points out that Herriot's range was a little further north.[69]

Frank Hewlett[]

Frank West Hewlett (December 30, 1913[70] – July 7, 1983) was an American journalist and war correspondent during World War II. He was the Manila bureau chief for United Press at the outbreak of war, and was the last reporter to leave Corregidor before it fell to the Japanese.

Hewlett's limerick poem, "the Battling Bastards of Bataan" came to symbolize that campaign:

We're the Battling Bastards of Bataan,
No Mama, No Papa, No Uncle Sam,
No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,
No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces,
And nobody gives a damn!

During an equivalent Japanese attack on Bataan Peninsula in Joe Steele, Charlie Sullivan reflects on the Battling Bastards and recites the limerick to himself while not remembering who wrote it.[71]

Hieronymus of Cardia[]

Hieronymus of Cardia (354?-250? BC), ancient Greek general and historian from Cardia in Thrace, was a contemporary of Alexander the Great (356–323 BC).

After the death of Alexander, he followed the fortunes of his friend and fellow-countryman Eumenes. He was wounded and taken prisoner by Antigonus I Monophthalmus, who pardoned him and appointed him superintendent of the asphalt beds in the Dead Sea. He was treated with equal friendliness by Antigonus' son Demetrius, who made him polemarch of Thespiae, and by Antigonus Gonatas, at whose court he died at the age of 104. He wrote a history of the Diadochi and their descendants, embracing the period from the death of Alexander to the war with King Pyrrhus of Epirus (323–272 BC), which is one of the chief authorities used by Diodorus Siculus (xviii.-xx.) and also by Plutarch in his life of Pyrrhus.

He made use of official papers and was careful in his investigation of facts. The simplicity of his style seemingly rendered his work unpopular to people of his time, but modern historians believe it was very good. In the last part of his work he made a praiseworthy attempt to acquaint the Greeks with the character and early history of the Romans. He is reproached by Pausanias (i. 9. 8) with unfairness towards all rulers with the exception of Antigonus Gonatas.

No significant amount of his work survived the end of the ancient world. Like the even more famous lost history of Alexander by Ptolemy I of Egypt, not one book, not one chapter has seen the light of day.

In "Death in Vesunna", one of Hieronymus' lost works is used as bait by Gaius Tero to catch the killers of Clodius Eprius.[72]

Thomas Hobbes[]

Thomas Hobbes (5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) was an English philosopher, whose famous 1651 book Leviathan established the agenda for nearly all subsequent Western political philosophy. In it, Hobbes described life in the state of nature as "nasty, brutish, and short."

This line supplies the title for the short work "Nasty, Brutish, &. . .". The story, set centuries in the future, is set in a bar Hobbes', located on the distant planet Rapti. Patrons who use Hobbes' famous phrase are entitled to a free drink.[73]

Homer[]

Homer is the generic name given to the unitary author of the early Greek poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, which deal with the Trojan War. It is now generally believed that they were composed by illiterate aoidoi (rhapsodes) in an oral tradition in the 8th or 7th century BC. It is unclear whether the traditional biography of Homer was based on one man or several. Homer's works began the Western Canon and are universally praised for their poetic genius. By convention, the compositions are also often taken to initiate the period of Classical Antiquity.

Due to the degree in which the Homeric canon has permeated international culture, similar to William Shakespeare and the Bible, numerous characters in Harry Turtledove works with a post-700 BC POD make passing allusions to The Iliad and/or The Odyssey. Turtledove has written a few stories set in Greek mythology, with "The Horse of Bronze" being especially Homeric in its treatment of geography and biology.

Only "Death in Vesunna" has a plot-relevant reference to Homer himself, where Gaius Tero studies Homer to learn the Greek language.[74] During his reading in AD 147, Tero wonders aloud what Hektor would have thought if a modern Roman legion surrounded the walls of Troy, a thought that eventually leads him to the killers of Clodius Eprius.[75]

In Household Gods, one scene takes place at the performance of The Judgment of Paris, a play based on scenes from the Iliad.

In Thessalonica, set in AD 597, it is noted that the enduring popularity of Homer, also among Christians, gave a kind of half-life to the old gods, since it was impossible not to believe in them at least a little bit while reading or listening to Homer's poetry. POV character George meets some centaurs who are old enough to remember the Trojan War.

John Bell Hood[]

JBHood

Says John Bell Hood of Advance and Retreat: "Wow, this Bell character is such a shithead! I'm glad he doesn't remind me of anyone I know."

John Bell Hood (June 29, 1831 – August 30, 1879) was a Confederate general in the American Civil War. Hood had a reputation for bravery and aggressiveness that sometimes bordered on recklessness. Arguably one of the best brigade and division commanders in the Confederate States Army, Hood gradually became increasingly effective as he was promoted to lead larger, independent commands late in the war, but his career and reputation were marred by his decisive defeats in Georgia and Tennessee.

In his retirement, he wrote his memoirs, entitled Advance and Retreat, in which he sought to defend his most controversial command decisions.

Turtledove's novel Advance and Retreat--the final book of The War Between the Provinces trilogy, which fantastically reimagines the Civil War--covers many of those controversial decisions by Hood's Detinan alter ego, General Bell. Turtledove acknowledges the same title in the "Hysterical Note" at the end of the novel. There he insists that the identical titles are purely coincidental. However, he is very obviously being tongue-in-cheek at that point.

Hood himself is referenced in The Guns of the South, but plays no role in the action. Robert E. Lee thinks of the look of implacable purpose on Hood's face[76] and his boldness to match. However, Lee also reflects that Hood was hopeless with any larger command, and would attack whether it called for or not.[77]

Richard Hooker[]

Hawkeyealanalda

Alan Alda, the most famous screen Hawkeye (sorry Donald Sutherland).

Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr. (February 1, 1924 – November 4, 1997) was an American writer and surgeon who wrote under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. Hornberger's best-known work was his novel MASH (1968) and its sequels, based on his experiences during the Korean War and written in collaboration with W. C. Heinz. It was later used as the basis for a critically and commercially successful movie (1970) and television series (1972–1983). MASH, sometimes rendered M*A*S*H, recounts the comic misadventures of Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce and other prank-loving United States Army surgeons from the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.

The Hot War: Armistice deals with a version of the Korean War, and features a brief appearance by a U.S. Army surgeon who is referred to as Hawkeye. While soldiers named Hawkeye are common in fiction, this particular combination of details is a clear reference to MASH.[78]

See also[]

Anthony Hope[]

Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins (9 February 1863 – 8 July 1933), better known as Anthony Hope, was an English adventure novelist, best known for The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), about an Englishman who poses as the king of a foreign country. The first of many Zenda film adaptations was released in 1913, the same year which German acrobat Otto Witte named as the date of his brief reign as King of Albania. Skeptics of Witte's tall tale pointed out that large parts of it seemed to have been lifted from that film.

Witte's story, in turn, provides the basis for Turtledove's novel Every Inch a King.

A. E. Housman[]

Alfred Edward Housman (26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems wistfully evoke the dooms and disappointments of youth in the English countryside.

The Hot War's Cade Curtis was trying to reach American lines during the Korean War when he recalled two lines of Housman's poetry that reflected how he felt:[79]

I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.

Robert E. Howard[]

REHoward

A fellow from Texas who writes about war.

Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American pulp writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, boxing, western, and detective fiction. After a relatively brief but prolific career, Howard committed suicide. Howard's home in Cross Plains, Texas is now a museum.

His most famous creation is Conan the Cimmerian.

Conan of Venarium is Turtledove's authorized prequel to the Conan series.

Prior to that, Turtledove wrote "The Boring Beast" featuring Condom the Trojan, a loving parody of the same character.

In American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold, Jeff Pinkard reads a short story about aerial combat in the Great War from a pulp magazine. Though the author's name is not given, he is from Cross Plains and apparently has a Howardesque style of plot structure.[80]

See Also: Turtledove's Literary Influences

Thomas Hughes[]

Thomas Hughes (c. 1550-1623) was the author of The Misfortunes of Arthur, lines of which are borrowed by Turtledove for the fictional Shakespearean play King Philip in Ruled Britannia.

Victor Hugo[]

VictorHugo

If the French army mutinies during The Big Switch, I don't want to go to the barricades alone. Will Hugo with me?

Victor Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry and then from his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables (1862) and Notre-Dame de Paris (1831, known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). He produced more than 4,000 drawings, and also earned respect as a campaigner for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment.

In The War That Came Early: The Big Switch, Luc Harcourt confronts a soldier named Boileau, whom Harcourt suspects is seriously considering attempting a mutiny. Harcourt warns Boileau that mutinying, disobeying orders, and inciting his comrades-in-arms to mutiny are all capital offenses under the French code of military justice. Boileau, a communist, attempts to harangue Harcourt, whom he judges to come from a proletarian background, to join him in mutiny if it were to come to that, ending his appeal by saying "To the barricades!" and pumping his fist in the air. Harcourt tells him to stop trying to sound like Victor Hugo, presumably in reference to his Les Misérables, whose climax takes place amidst the June Rebellion of 1832.

In Joe SteeleMike Sullivan is assigned the number NY24601 after he is arrested and imprisoned by the tyrannical United States government. Jean Valjean's number in Les Miserables is 24601, the name by which Inspector Javert refers to him throughout the novel.

Aldous Huxley[]

Aldous Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English novelist best known for the dystopian future of Brave New World (1932). In The Valley-Westside War, Liz Mendoza recalls reading this book.[81]

W.W. Jacobs[]

William Wymark Jacobs (8 September 1863 – 1 September 1943) was an English author of short stories and novels. Although much of his work was humorous, he is most famous for his horror story "The Monkey's Paw".

In "News From the Front", an AP reporter asks Sgt. Leland Calvert (who believes that the mystery meat eaten by his starving regiment includes monkey) if he knows of the monkey's paw story, but he's never heard of it.

Jerome K. Jerome[]

JeromeKJerome

Jerome K. Jerome's dry sense of humor has plainly influenced Turtledove's own droll style. Other people are responsible for the vampire, the werewolf, and the sasquatch, however.

Jerome Klapka Jerome (2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927) was an English writer and humorist, best known for the comic travelogues Three Men in a Boat (1887) and Three Men and a Bummel (1900), whose central characters are Jerome's own fictionalized alter-ego, his friends George and Harris, and Jerome's dog Montmorency.

Turtledove has written three pastiche works based on Jerome's series: "Three Men and a Vampire", "Three Men and a Werewolf", and "Three Men and a Sasquatch". In the first story, the Three Men and the dog accompany Bram Stoker's heroic Professor Abraham van Helsing on the hunt for a vampire. In the second, the Three Men encounter a werewolf among allusions to the song "Werewolves of London". In the third, the Three Men travel to San Francisco and meet a sasquatch in a work that ties into Turtledove's State of Jefferson Stories.

In In the Presence of Mine Enemies, Susanna Weiss agrees with Jerome's' assessment of Richard Wagner: "A lone, lorn woman stands upon a stage trying to make herself heard. One hundred forty men, all armed with powerful instruments, well-organised, and most of them looking well-fed, combine to make it impossible for a single note of that poor woman's voice to be heard above their din."

In The War That Came Early: West and East, Peggy Druce agrees with Jerome's assessment of German political culture, as laid out in Three Men on the Bummel. She is chilled by how accurately Jerome seemed to have predicted the disaster which would befall Germany upon the ascension of the Nazis and wondered if he had either a crystal ball or H.G. Wells' Time Machine.[82]

Samuel Johnson[]

Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [OS 7 September] – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and is described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is best known for A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary. Although not the first dictionary, it is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language.

In "News From the Front", Johnson's quote "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" is referenced in a New York Times editorial on January 1, 1942. When the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration question the press' patriotism, the editorialist responds that bringing out this Samuel Johnson quote is too easy, but that he will not deny himself the pleasure.[83]

Juvenal[]

Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, known in English as Juvenal, was a Roman poet active around AD 100. Very little is known about his life. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the Satires, which contain the famous question "Quis custodiet ipsos custodies"? (Satire VI, lines 347–348). This phrase is variously translated as "Who will guard the guards themselves?", "Who watches the watchmen?", "Who will watch the watchers themselves?", "Who polices the police?", or any number of other versions. Originally referring to marital fidelity, this rhetorical question is now used in reference to the problem of controlling the actions of persons in positions of power.

In Through Darkest Europe, Giacomo Badoglio explains the famous line for the benefit of Khalid al-Zarzisi and Dawud ibn Musa, referring to the problem of not being certain that the Italian Ministry of Information is wholly Aquinist-free.[84]

Norton Juster[]

ThePhantomTollbooth

Perhaps Juster was predicting the invention of EZPass with his title?

Norton Juster wrote the classic children's book The Phantom Tollbooth. Turtledove stated that "The Phantom Tolbukhin" was inspired by the pun of Tollbooth and Fedor Tolbukhin.

Franz Kafka[]

Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was an Austro-Hungarian, later Czechoslovakian, writer of novels and short stories who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, written in German, fuses elements of realism and fantasy, typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible social-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include Die Verwandlung ("The Metamorphosis"), Der Process (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle). The term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those in his writing.

In The War That Came Early: The Big Switch, Samuel Goldman describes his daughter Sarah's efforts to navigate Nazi bureaucracy in order to obtain a marriage license as being like Kafka's works. He speculates that Kafka would not have wanted to live to see his futuristic visions come true.[85]

Omar Khayyam[]

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet, who is widely considered to be one of the most influential scientists of the middle ages. He wrote numerous treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy and astronomy. Outside Iran and Persian-speaking countries, Khayyám has had an impact on literature and societies through the translation of his works and popularization by other scholars, particularly the Rubaiyat.

In The Hot War: Bombs Away, U.S. President Harry Truman quotes four famous lines from the Rubaiyat to George Marshall when the latter hesitates in telling him of the Soviet bombing of the Panama Canal:[86]

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a Word of it.

Stephen King[]

Stephen King (born 1947), American writer from the state of Maine, is the author of dozens of fictional works, many of which have been made into movies. King's preferred genres are horror and fantasy, although he has occasionally dabbled in science fiction and alternate history as well. (His epic series The Dark Tower combines all four.)

By the late 21st century in the Crosstime Traffic Series' home timeline, King's name is treated as a verb for meditating on morbid situations like the ones he wrote about. In The Disunited States of America, Justin Monroe travels past a series of remote, out-of-the-way small towns and imagines that visitors who enter will not come out again. According to the text, "[o]nce Justin started stephenkinging, he had a hard time stopping."[87]

In Supervolcano: Eruption, Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles are traveling through Maine in a snowstorm. When Justin Nachman mentions to Rob Ferguson that he keeps expecting a St. Bernard by the side of the road, Ferguson replies to be careful, it might be Cujo since they are in Stephen King country. He then added that there might be vampires from 'Salem's Lot around since the blizzard hid the sun well enough let them come out in daylight.[88]

Rudyard Kipling[]

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936), an English writer born in India, wrote exotic adventure stories set in various lands and in the Atlantic Ocean, and poems praising the British Empire. Some of his entries in the latter genre have become quite controversial.

"Recessional," which Kipling composed for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee (1897), contains the line "Lo, all our pomp of yesterday, is one with Nineveh and Tyre!." In Supervolcano: Eruption, Vanessa Ferguson thinks of this line (but doesn't remember that Kipling was the author) when ash from the Yellowstone Supervolcano threatens to make Denver as extinct as Nineveh and Tyre.[89] In the same novel, Kelly Birnbaum reflects on a parody of Kipling's poem "If-" namely if you keep your head then you don't understand the seriousness of the situation[90] and Gabriel Sanchez recites the key line of Kipling's "Gunga Din."[91]

"Tommy", an 1890 poem, addresses the ordinary British soldier of Kipling's time in a sympathetic manner. It is written from the point of view of such a soldier, and contrasts the treatment they receive from the general public during peace and during war. It contains the line "O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Chuck 'im out, the brute'; But it's 'saviour of 'is country,' when the guns begin to shoot." In Gunpowder Empire, Amanda Solters thinks of this line when hearing the citizens of Polisso complain about the uncouth habits of the Roman soldiers who protect them from Lietuvan invaders.[92]

C.M. Kornbluth[]

Cyril M. Kornbluth (July 2, 1923 – March 21, 1958) was an American science fiction author, whose famous works include "The Marching Morons", the story of a man who wakes up in the future and finds that humanity's collective IQ has declined.

In Earthgrip section "The Great Unknown," Jennifer Logan shows "Marching" to an assortment of Foitani, who agree that its metaphor is much like the problem facing their species.[93]

Ring Lardner[]

Ring Lardner (March 6, 1885 – September 25, 1933) was a sports columnist and fiction writer, known for, among other things, a series of epistolary fictional works written featuring bush-league baseball player Jack Keefe between 1916 and 1925. Each work sees Keefe writing a series of letters to his friend Al back home. Turtledove's short story "Batboy" is an admitted pastiche of Lardner's works, with vampirism thrown in.

Richard M. Lee[]

Richard M. Lee (1917-2011) was a United States Army General and historian, who wrote Mr. Lincoln's City (1981) and General Lee's City (1987) about the American Civil War. In The Guns of the South, a time travel paradox gives Robert E. Lee the opportunity to read these histories by a man with a similar name, and admire their fairness in dealing with both sides.[94]

Fritz Leiber[]

Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. (December 24, 1910 – September 5, 1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theater and films, playwright and chess expert. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber can be regarded as one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fantasy, having coined the term.

In Gunpowder Empire, a pet cat in the home timeline is named Fafhrd after one of Leiber's protagonists.

Gaston Leroux[]

Leroux

And while we're on the subject of phantoms. . . .

Gaston Leroux (6 May 1868 – 15 April 1927) was the author of Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, a French novel originally published serially in 1909 and 1910. The first English translation was published in 1911 as The Phantom of the Opera.

The Phantom of the Opera has been adapted to performances on both stage and screen many times. The first, and widely considered the best, film adaptation was a 1925 silent film starring Lon Chaney as the Phantom.

In the Southern Victory timeline, a silent film titled The Phantom of the Catacombs was made in the United States in the 1920s. Like the OTL Phantom of the Opera, it starred Chaney in the lead role. The author of Catacombs is not named.

In The Man With the Iron Heart, Diana McGraw is impressed by Secretary of State James Byrnes' ability to captivate the hearers of speech, remembering that of the Phantom of the Opera had a similar talent.

Abraham Lincoln[]

Lincoln

The Poetic Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, who has been featured as a character in a number of Turtledove stories, is of course best remembered as the greatest President of the United States. He also dabbled in writing poetry. His 1846 poem "My Childhood Home I See Again," which includes the line "Where many were, how few remain of old familiar things!" provided the title for How Few Remain, the first installment of the Southern Victory series. Three stanzas of this poem are excerpted in the book's front matter.

In a number of works, characters quote Lincoln quoting a man being ridden out of town on a rail: "If it weren't for the honor of the thing, I would just as soon walk" when they faced an unpleasant task or situation.

The Gettysburg Address, arguably Lincoln's most famous piece of writing, has been quoted by characters in numerous timelines with a Point of Divergence after 1863. The most significant example comes in "Must and Shall," when Hannibal Hamlin succeeds Lincoln as President and references several passages from his predecessor's speech in his own inaugural address.

In The War Between the Provinces, not only is King Avram of Detina modeled closely on Lincoln, but his speech to his ministers in chapter VII of Advance and Retreat mostly comprises passages taken verbatim from Lincoln's State of the Union Address of December 6, 1864. Only some proper names and other plot-specific details have been changed in these passages.

Hugh Lofting[]

Pushmi-Pullyu-Story-of-Doctor-Dolittle-1-

Dolittle and his crew examine the pushmi-pullyu.

Hugh John Lofting (14 January 1886 – 26 September 1947) was a English-American author, trained as a civil engineer, who created the character of Doctor John Dolittle, one of the classics of children's literature. Doctor Dolittle first appeared in the author's illustrated letters to his children, written from the trenches while serving in the British Army during World War I. The first published volume appeared in 1920. Dolittle is a veterinarian who can hold conversations with his patients, and travels the globe encountering mythical creatures. One memorable denizen of Dolittle's world is the pushmi-pullyu, an antelope-like animal (portrayed in the films as a llama) with heads on either side of its body.

In The Hot War: Armistice, a piece of loading equipment reminds Aaron Finch of the pushmi-pullyu. He tries to remember where he heard of the creature, and correctly guesses it's from a Dolittle adventure he bought at a second-hand bookstore.[95]

H.P. Lovecraft[]

Howard Phillips "H. P." Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works of horror fiction. Virtually unknown and only published in pulp magazines before he died in poverty, he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors in his genre.

Turtledove has also written four works that are set in H.P. Lovecraft's elaborate Cthulhu mythos: "The Fillmore Shoggoth," "Nine Drowned Churches," "Interlibrary Loan," and "The Colour out of the Shadow". In the first one, Lovecraft is "tuckerized" as ill-fated historian Howard Phillips.

In "The Genetics Lecture," a professor and one of his students are named for Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep, two of Lovecraft's most famous and frightening creations.

In The Hot War: Bombs Away, Harry Truman, horrified by the course of World War III and the prodigious use of atomic bombs, remembers a line from Lovecraft's work "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward": "do not call up that which you cannot put down."[96] In The Man With the Iron Heart, Tom Schmidt thinks of the same line but doesn't remember where the quote is from when Congressman Everett Dirksen stirs up a crowd to a near riot with his speech.[97] In Thessalonica, the philosopher Philotechnus is known for this maxim.

In Supervolcano: Eruption, when the band Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles arrived at the Trebor Mansion Inn in Guilford, Maine, one member was surprised at its appearance and said it must have an "H.P. Lovecraft slept here" plaque given its spooky architecture.[98]

See also Turtledove's Literary Influences

David Low[]

DavidLowRendezvous

Pardon me, but shouldn't you be Leon Trotsky not Joe Steele?

Sir David Alexander Cecil Low (7 April 1891 – 19 September 1963) was a New Zealand political cartoonist and caricaturist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom for many years. His works are featured in many British history textbooks. One of Low's most famous cartoons, Rendezvous, was first published in the Evening Standard on 20 September 1939. It satirises the cynicism which lay at the heart of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, depicting Adolf Hitler and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin bowing politely before each other after their joint invasion of Poland.

In Joe Steele, after an analogous invasion of Poland by Hitler, a similar cartoon appeared in a British newspaper with Leon Trotsky in place of Stalin and with Hitler stating "The dirty Jew, I believe?".[99]

Betty MacDonald[]

Betty MacDonald (1908-1958) wrote the humorous memoir The Egg and I. This is referenced in The Man With the Iron Heart as a favorite of Ed McGraw and Diana McGraw.[100]

Niccolo Machiavelli[]

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian Renaissance historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer. He has often been called the founder of modern political science. He was for many years a senior official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is renowned in the Italian language. He was secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power. He wrote his most renowned work The Prince (Il Principe) in 1513.

"Machiavellianism" is a widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort Machiavelli described most famously in The Prince. Machiavelli described immoral behavior, such as dishonesty and killing innocents, as being normal and effective in politics. He even seemed to endorse it in some situations. The book itself gained notoriety when some readers claimed that the author was teaching evil, and providing "evil recommendations to tyrants to help them maintain their power." The term "Machiavellian" is often associated with political deceit, deviousness, and realpolitik. On the other hand, many commentators, such as Baruch Spinoza, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, have argued that Machiavelli was actually a republican, even when writing The Prince, and his writings were an inspiration to Enlightenment proponents of modern democratic political philosophy.

A few Turtledove characters have read Machiavelli's The Prince. In Colonization:Aftershocks, Fleetlord Atvar, follows Machiavelli's advice that a conqueror should visit the region he had conquered as soon as he could, to make the defeated people aware of their new masters, by paying a visit to Nuremberg, the hitherto capital of the Greater German Reich in the aftermath of the Race-German War of 1965.[101] In American Empire:The Victorious Opposition, Jake Featherston follows the same suggestion by going to Louisville after Kentucky votes to return to the Confederate States.[102]

Alfred Thayer Mahan[]

In addition to his posthumous Presidential role in Southern Victory, Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan's OTL role as a naval historian is referenced in "In the Shadow of the Great Days," where Captain Mandela Lowell keeps a collection of Mahan's histories in between the fiction of CS Forester and Patrick O'Brian in his ready room on the USS Constitution.[103]

Thomas Mallory[]

King Arthur

Mallory wrote the death of Arthur once. Turtledove tried and failed to do it more often.

Thomas Mallory (1400-1470, dates estimated) wrote Le Morte d'Arthur, considered the definitive collection of the classical Arthurian legends. The title of Turtledove's short story "Les Mortes d'Arthur" is obviously inspired by Mallory's work, but beyond that the one does not resemble the other in any way.

Turtledove's story "A Massachusetts Yankee in King Arthur's Court" makes use of rather more elements of Mallory's work.

Andrew Marvell[]

Andrew Marvell (31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English metaphysical poet, satirist, and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. Marvell is best known today for his poem "To His Coy Mistress", which begins with the couplet "Had we but World enough, and Time/This coyness, Lady, were no crime." The poem was first published posthumously in 1681, but may have been written as early as 1651.

Turtledove's "Worlds Enough, and Time" is titled from this line.

In A Different Flesh, section "And So To Bed", Samuel Pepys tells the Earl of Sandwich of his thoughts that men were responsible for the extirpation of American beasts in Europe. The Earl responded, "Had we but world enough and time, who could reckon the changes that might come to pass?" Pepys recognised this as a paraphrase of the poem's opening lines. Then the Earl suggested that the Swanscombe quarry excavations might discover sim bones next. Pepys began to consider that as a distinct possibility.[104]

George Barr McCutcheon[]

George Barr McCutcheon (July 26, 1866 – October 23, 1928) was an American popular novelist and playwright. His best known works include the series of novels set in Graustark, a fictional Eastern European country, and the novel Brewster's Millions, which was adapted into a play and several films.

In Turtledove's The War Between the Provinces: Sentry Peak, Graustark is an author of historical romances which are popular among Detinans.[105] In Frankos' "One Touch of Hippolyta," the fictional Massachusetts town of Graustarkton is a setting.

Dean McLaughlin[]

Dean Benjamin McLaughlin, Jr. (born 1931) is an American science fiction writer. His best-known work is "Hawk Among the Sparrows" (1968), which was nominated for both the Hugo Award and Nebula Award for Best Novella. It concerns a late-20th century fighter plane which travels through time, and tries to contend with World War I aircraft.

In Earthgrip section "The Great Unknown," Jennifer Logan shows "Hawk" to an assortment of Foitani, who agree that its metaphor is much like the problem facing their species.[106]

Herman Melville[]

Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851), whose titular white whale has become a synonym for unattainable goals and unhealthy obsessions.

In The Two Georges, protagonist Thomas Bushell realises that recovering the titular painting has become his "great, grey whale"[107] in a famous North American Union novel of the same title. The author is not named.

A direct reference to Melville's white whale comes in the novel Joe Steele, when soldier Gary Cunningham learns Mike Sullivan had survived time in a punishment brigade, comparing meeting Sullivan to seeing the "Great White Whale".[108]

The short work "The Quest for the Great Gray Mossy" is a pastiche of Moby-Dick set in the Chicxulub Asteroid Missed series of stories.

A. A. Milne[]

Alan Alexander "A. A." Milne (18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. Milne served in both World Wars, joining the British Army in World War I, and was a captain of the British Home Guard in World War II.

In the Southern Victory series, we learn that, despite the long animosity between the United States and the United Kingdom, even the U.S. enjoyed the Pooh-bear, with no reference to the book's author.

At the end of Household Gods, Nicole Gunther skims through a Winnie the Pooh book translated into Latin, to prove to herself that Liber and Libera's magical gift of the language remains with her.

John Milton[]

JohnMilton

Speak up, John! There are no mute, inglorious Miltons!

John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse.

Milton's Sonnet XIX ends with the line "They also serve who only stand and wait." In Settling Accounts: The Grapple, Ophelia Clemens quotes this line for the benefit of General Abner Dowling, who mistakenly attributes its origin to William Shakespeare.

Thomas Gray invoked Milton in his Elegy in a Country Courtyard, claiming that "some mute, inglorious Milton" rested there. H.L. Mencken dismissed this idea, believing that anyone of Milton's native ability could not help but find artistic expression. In Turtledove's "The House That George Built," a fictionalized Mencken uses this belief to dismiss George Ruth's insistence that he had the talent to make himself a giant in the game of baseball, but for certain unlucky breaks in his youth.

Margaret Mitchell[]

Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) was an American writer best known for Gone with the Wind, a novel which was adapted to the most successful movie of all time. In addition to his more significant direct references to the novel/movie, and some minor characters spoofing Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, Turtledove references Mitchell specifically in Joe Steele, where Charlie Sullivan reads and enjoys Gone With the Wind a few years after its release. He mentions his enjoyment of the novel to Stas Mikoian, who wonders how a black waiter might have felt about the book. Sullivan allows that the waiter might want to punch Margaret Mitchell in the face.[109]

See also[]

Margaret Mitchell at the Gone with the Wind wiki

Mother Goose[]

Mother Goose is the imaginary author of a collection of French fairy tales and later of English nursery rhymes. Mother Goose is generally depicted in literature and book illustration as an elderly country woman in a traditional Welsh tall hat and shawl, but is sometimes depicted as a semi-anthropomorphic goose wearing a bonnet.

One Mother Goose rhyme is "Humpty Dumpty", whose text is the following:

  • "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
  • Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
  • All the king's horses and all the king's men,
  • Couldn't put Humpty together again."

Since the 18th century, book illustrators have interpreted the title character as an anthropomorphic egg, even though there is no egg mentioned in the text, which seems to identify Humpty Dumpty with the king.

The Hot War: Armistice had the working title of All the King's Horses from the rhyme. Within the novel, the "Humpty Dumpty" rhyme is referenced several times to indicate how difficult rebuilding from the destruction inflicted by the nuclear Third World War would be. President Truman is quoted using the rhyme in a public statement to General-Secretary Lavrenti Beria when offering peace terms.[110] Truman later repeated the rhyme to General Dwight Eisenhower in a private meeting.[111] On both occasions, it was to indicate the impossibility of repairing the destruction if the war persisted or restarted.

Ogden Nash[]

Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) was an American poet well known for his light verse, of which he wrote over 500 pieces. With his unconventional rhyming schemes, he was declared the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry.

In "Topanga and the Chatsworth Lancers," Jared Tillman reads Nash's four-line piece "The Middle" from an old paperback and reflects on how it perfectly describes the Changed world.

Friedrich Nietzsche[]

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a Prussian-born philosopher, cultural critic, poet, composer, and Latin and Greek scholar. He wrote several critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy, and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor and irony.

In the Atlantis Series story "The Scarlet Band", Athelstan Helms and James Walton begin a discussion about scientific discovery and its impact on theology. When Helms wonders if humanity is in a "parlous state" because of reason or despite reason, Walton suggests Helms consult Nietzsche, who'd written works on that question.[112]

In Joe Steele, Mike Sullivan reflects how after several years in a labor encampment he was in harder, more muscular shape than he had ever been in his life and how it proved Nietzsche's idea that "whatever didn't kill you, made you stronger".[113]

Andre Norton[]

Andre Alice Norton (born Alice Mary Norton, February 17, 1912 – March 17, 2005) was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy, who also wrote works of historical fiction and contemporary fiction. She was the first woman to be Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy, first woman to be SFWA Grand Master, and first inducted by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

In "Hindsight," Pete Lundquist and Jim McGregor have heard that Andre Norton is a woman author, and thus find Michelle Gordian's masquerade as "Mark Gordian" acceptable.[114]

In the Earthgrip section "The Great Unknown," Norton's Star Man's Son is part of Jennifer Logan's class study material.[115]

Turtledove has described After the Downfall as a "a man-who-learned-better fantasy inspired by Andre Norton's Witch World books".[116] The title page contains a dedication to Dr. Jorge Petronius, a fictional character from Norton's series.

Alfred Noyes[]

Alfred Noyes (16 September 1880 – 25 June 1958) was an English poet, short-story writer and playwright, best known for his ballads, "The Highwayman" and "The Barrel-Organ".

In The Man With the Iron Heart, Everett Dirksen recites lines from "The Highwayman," which Tom Schmidt recognizes, although he can't remember who wrote it.

Patrick O'Brian[]

Patrick O'Brian, CBE (12 December 1914 – 2 January 2000), born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his series of novels about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, officers in the Royal Navy during Britain's wars against Napoleonic France. His work has been compared to that of CS Forester.

In "In the Shadow of the Great Days," Captain Mandela Lowell keeps a collection of books by Forester and O'Brian in his ready room on the USS Constitution.[117]

In Settling Accounts: In at the Death, some US Navy personnel read the historical naval fiction of C.S. O'Brian, whose name is an obvious portmanteau of the two.[118]

See also[]

William of Occam[]

William of Occam (c. 1287 – 1347) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the 14th century. He wrote significant works on logic, physics, and theology. In the Church of England, his day of commemoration is 10 April. He is commonly known for "Occam's razor," the principle that states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

Occam and his "razor" are occasionally referenced in Turtledove's work. For example, in the Atlantis Series installment "The Scarlet Band", Athelstan Helms states rhetorically that William of Occam would have approved of the theory that Terranova and Atlantis, whose coastlines resemble pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle, were once part of the same landmass.[119]

George Orwell[]

EricBlair29

George Orwell: author, broadcaster, anti-alien activist.

1984first

A book about Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Vanessa Williams, AT&T, and The Cosby Show

In addition to his direct appearances in a few novels, and the special significance of his masterpiece 1984 in others, George Orwell is referenced often in additional Turtledove works.

In Supervolcano: All Fall Down, Colin Ferguson, his son Marshall, and Colin's second wife Kelly, discuss tyranny, revolutions, and their aftermaths. Kelly quotes "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others" which Marshall was surprised to be able to identify as coming from George Orwell's Animal Farm.[120]

In The Hot War: Bombs Away, Lt. Cade Curtis is familiar with Orwell's works, having read the inevitable 1984 and Animal Farm as well as the lesser known Homage to Catalonia.[121]

Wilfred Owen[]

Wilfred Owen (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and World War I soldier, whose poem "Mental Cases" provides the title for the Southern Victory installment Walk in Hell, set during the Great War analogous to WWI. The verse of the poem which contains the phrase (in the line "Surely we have perished sleeping/And walk in hell; but who these hellish?") is excerpted in the book's front matter.

Edgar Pangborn[]

Edgar Pangborn (February 25, 1909 – February 1, 1976) was an American mystery, historical, and science fiction author. While popular within his own lifetime, his work fell into obscurity after his death, but was rediscovered in the early 21st century.

In "The Star and the Rockets", Joe Bauman reads Edgar Pangborn's "Pick-up for Olympus" (which is called "Pick Up From Olympus" - whether this is Bauman's mistake or Turtledove's is unclear).

In In High Places, a new martyred Savior overshadows Jesus, and his followers use a "sign of the wheel". This idea may reference Pangborn's book Davy, about a theocratic movement following a nuclear war.

Davy is also referenced in the Earthgrip story "The Great Unknown" as one of the studying tools in Jennifer Logan's class.[122]

Dorothy Parker[]

Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist.

In Joe Steele, when reporter Mike Sullivan asks a fellow reporter named Hank for a "cure" for humanity, Hank quotes from Parker's poem "Resumé": "Guns aren’t lawful/Nooses give/Gas smells awful/You might as well live."[123]

Plato[]

Plato

Ironically, Turtledove's Atlantis is more rooted in reality than Plato's.

In addition to his direct role in "The Daimon," the philosophical legacy of Plato, aka Platon or Aristokles, is referenced throughout Turtledove's work. Plato's most enduring contribution to wider popular culture is the myth of Atlantis, an ideal society which nevertheless fell afoul of higher powers and was destroyed by inundation.

In Turtledove's Atlantis Series, 15th-century English fisherman Edward Radcliffe, being familiar with Plato's legend, gives the name Atlantis to a newly discovered small continent west of Europe. However, the continent does not resemble conventional depictions of Atlantis in any way, instead developing in Turtledove's alternate history as an analog of the United States, but with fauna resembling that of New Zealand.

In "Death in Vesunna," Roman police chief Gaius Tero worries that men from Atlantis have invaded Vesunna, but Doctor Kleandros insists that Platon's tale was a work of fiction.[124]

Pliny the Elder[]

Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus, AD 23 – 79) was an author, naturalist and natural philosopher, a naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and friend of the Emperor Vespasian. Spending most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field, Pliny wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. Pliny seems to have died from inhaling toxic gases from Mount Vesuvius' eruption which destroyed Pompeii and other cities. His nephew Pliny the Younger witnessed this from afar and wrote an account of it.

In The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, lovers David Fisher and Judy Adler keep the testicles and blood of a dunghill cock under the bed as a magic spell for contraception, and Fisher credits Pliny as the source of this wisdom.[125]

In Bridge of the Separator, we are told that Videssian writers imagine the more remote parts of Pardraya to be peopled with dog-faced men, web-footed aquatic men, and headless men with faces in their chests, imagery from Pliny's writing.[126]

In Through Darkest Europe, Lisarh ibn Yahsub, in charge of the much delayed Pompeii excavation in 2018, discusses both Plinies with Khalid al-Zarzisi and Dawud ibn Musa.

Pliny the Younger[]

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (AD 61 – c. 113), better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and magistrate in the Roman Empire. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him.

Pliny the Younger wrote hundreds of letters, of which 247 survived, and which are of great historical value. Some are addressed to reigning emperors or to notables such as Tacitus. Pliny served as an imperial magistrate under Trajan, and his letters to Trajan provide one of the few surviving records of the relationship between the imperial office and provincial governors.

Pliny was an eyewitness to Mount Vesuvius' destruction of Pompeii and other cities. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, was among those killed.

In Through Darkest Europe, Lisarh ibn Yahsub, in charge of the much delayed Pompeii excavation in 2018, discusses both Plinies with Khalid al-Zarzisi and Dawud ibn Musa. They decide that the younger Pliny was less brave but more sensible than his uncle.

Edgar Allan Poe[]

Poe

"The Haunted Bicuspid" featured a character rantin' and Raven about Edgar Allan Poe's stories.

Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Although best known for poetry and short stories of macabre fantasy, Poe also dabbled in detective fiction, science fiction, and slapstick comedy. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

In "The Haunted Bicuspid," while never named in the text, Poe is a driving force in the story. Narrator William Legrand is named for a primary character in Poe's "The Gold Bug". A tooth implant causes Legrand's sleep to be troubled by nightmares which reenact some of Poe's better-known works. Implicitly, the donor of the haunted tooth is Poe himself, who died only a year or two before the story setting.

In The Guns of the South, Robert E. Lee, who won the Second American Revolution via time-traveled assistance, references Poe when learning how the OTL Civil War played out, saying the truth is almost as frightening.

Alexander Pope[]

Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744) was an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his satirical verses Essay on Man, The Rape of the Lock, and The Dunciad, as well as for his translation of Homer. Famous for his use of the heroic couplet, he is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations after William Shakespeare.

The Two Georges POV character Thomas Bushell recites passages from Pope's writings several times in the novel.

Beatrix Potter[]

Helen Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist, best known for her children's animal fables. The best known examples of these depict Peter Rabbit's frequent attempts to trespass in Farmer McGregor's garden.

In The Great War: American Front, when Canada is invaded by the Americans, an army Lieutenant named Pierre Lapin, whose name translates as Peter Rabbit, chooses to set up a strong point at a farm whose owner is ironically named Arthur McGregor.[127] (While later Southern Victory volumes feature a POV character named Clarence Potter, this seems to be a coincidence unrelated to the earlier Lapin-McGregor reference.)

In Laura Frankos' "A Late Symmer Night's Battle", Mr. Tod the fox, a cavalry mount in the Army of Faerie, shares his name and species with another of Potter's quasi-anthropomorphic heroes.

Anthony Pratt[]

Anthony Ernest Pratt (10 August 1903 – 9 April 1994) was an English musician and the inventor of the detective-themed board game Cluedo (first edition 1949, marketed as Clue in the United States and Canada). Using tropes from the writings of Agatha Christie, players draw cards and roll dice to identify the murderer of Dr. Black (Mr. Boddy in the American version), with the list of suspects in the original version being Miss Scarlet, Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White, Mr. Green, Mrs. Peacock, and Professor Plum.

In Liberating Atlantis, a high ranking officer in the Atlantean Army is a Greek immigrant named Colonel Balthasar Sinapis. Sinapis is the Greek word for a type of mustard plant, so the character's name is effectively Colonel Mustard.

Marcel Proust[]

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu; with the previous English title translation of Remembrance of Things Past), originally published in French in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.

In the short story "No Period", the unnamed narrator reviews his youth and childhood, then his memory does a "Marcel Proust" and he snaps back to being his present-day elder self.

François Rabelais[]

Rabelais

"I know more Rabelais than you!" "No, I know more Rabelais than you!"

François Rabelais (c. 1494-1553) was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor and humanist. He was regarded as an avant-garde writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, dirty jokes and bawdy songs.

In The United States of Atlantis, Victor Radcliff and Custis Cawthorne prove to each other how smart they each are by quoting extensively from the works of Rabelais.

Mary Renault[]

Mary Renault (4 September 1905 – 13 December 1983) born Eileen Mary Challans, was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece. In addition to vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato and Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander.

In Supervolcano: Eruption, we learn that Bryce Miller found and read a secondhand copy of Mary Renault's The Persian Boy while he was in high school, which sparked his interest in the Hellenistic age, which, in turn led to his academic studies and attempt to make a living as a PhD in the era.[128]

Miller's story is similar to Turtledove's own discovery of L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall which led to his interest in the Byzantine Empire.[129]

H.A. Rey and Margret Rey[]

Curiousgeorge

Two brave GBI agents arrest that infamous wrecker, Curious George.

H.A. Rey (Hans Augusto Reyersbach, September 16, 1898 – August 26, 1977) and Margret Rey (Margarete Elisabeth Waldstein, May 16, 1906 – December 21, 1996) were German-born American illustrators and authors of children's books, best known for the tales of a good-natured, accident-prone pet monkey named Curious George.

In Joe Steele, Charlie Sullivan reads a Curious George book to his son Patrick. Rather than simply recite the printed text, Charlie turns it into a game of mad libs.[130]

Robert Ripley[]

LeRoy Robert Ripley (February 22, 1890 – May 27, 1949) was a journalist and showman who created the column "Believe It or Not," which ran in various mediums, starting in 1918, and reported very hard-to-believe phenomena which purported to be factual. Although some of his claims turned out to be fraudulent or mistaken, Ripley's reputation was not harmed, and some of the fact-finding groups and museums he founded continue to this day.

In The Disunited States of America, Justin Monroe passes by the town of Ripley, Virginia and is reminded of the column's title. But he knows that Robert Ripley either never lived or never wrote his column in this alternate world, so he resolves to keep the phrase to himself so as not to seem odd to locals. [131]

In Joe Steele, both Mike Sullivan and Charlie Sullivan invoke "Ripley's Believe It or Not" at different points.[132]

Spider Robinson[]

Spider Robinson (born November 24, 1948) is an American-born Canadian science fiction author. He has won a number of awards for his hard science fiction and humorous stories, including three Hugo Awards.

In the Earthgrip section "The Great Unknown," 30th-century Professor Jennifer Logan laments that Robinson's stories, written in what her people call "Middle English", are impossible to translate into modern Spanglish without losing the flavor, due to all the puns. While Robinson is not given a first name, it is fairly obvious that the reference is to Spider, not any other Robinson.

Buck Rogers[]

Buck Rogers is a fictional space opera hero created by Philip Francis Nowlan in the novella Armageddon 2419 A.D./The Airlords of Han (1928-9), subsequently appearing in multiple media, including radio, comic strip, and film. The character's far-reaching influence inspired the rival imitation character Flash Gordon, and created a renewed interest in the earlier John Carter of Mars novels. Buck Rogers was also a primary influence on Star Wars.

Throughout the original Worldwar tetralogy, various characters use Buck Rogers' universe as a frame of reference when describing the technology of the Race.

InThe Man With the Iron Heart, Diana McGraw regards all the new weaponry and communications technology that emerged from World War II as something out of Buck Rogers.[133]

Will Rogers[]

In addition to his contemporary appearances, Will Rogers has been referenced posthumously in a number of works.

Harry Turtledove has referenced Rogers' quip "All I know is what I read in the newspapers" in more than one work. Herman Szulc quotes it during a conversation with Pete McGill about life in China under Japanese rule in The War That Came Early: The Big Switch.[134] Clarence Potter also quotes the line while talking to Jake Featherston, ascribing it to "a comic from Sequoyah" in American Empire: The Victorious Opposition.[135] The comic is presumably Will Rogers or a close analog, and he seems to be still alive in 1940, although no specifics are confirmed.

Ron Rubin[]

Ron Rubin is credited as the author of the following limerick:

"'I'm glad pigs can't fly,' said young Sellers/ (He's one of those worrying fellas)/ 'For, if they could fly,/ They'd shit in the sky/ And we'd all have to carry umbrellas!'"

From time to time, Turtledove has had characters echo young Sellers' earthy concern.

Shota Rustaveli[]

Shota Rustaveli was a Georgian poet who lived during the 12th and 13th centuries. Within the Georgian language, he is seen as a literary giant, holding a status equal to Leo Tolstoy's in the Russian or even William Shakespeare's in the English. However, very little is known of his life; large parts of his biography come from dubious legends.

Turtledove named a Georgian character in A World of Difference after Rustaveli. Except for the name and nationality, the character shares almost no traits with the medieval writer. Turtledove's Rustaveli is certainly not a poet, though he does at one point discuss poetry with his comrade, Yuri Voroshilov, who does write original verse.

JD Salinger[]

Salinger

JD Salinger. Oh, there's no joke here; that's just his name.

Jerome David "J.D." Salinger (January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010) was an American writer who won acclaim early in life. He led a very private life for more than half a century. He published his final original work in 1965. Salinger was the author of Catcher in the Rye (1951). Turtledove's short story "The Catcher in the Rhine" is a pastiche of this novel, with a thinly disguised Holden Caulfield wandering into the Nibelungenlied.

Even in the world of Joe Steele, Salinger was a definitive name in literature. There is no clue as to how his work in that world differs from OTL.[136]

Jean-Paul Sartre[]

Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher and writer. He was trapped in Paris during the German occupation in World War II. Later in life, he concluded that "Hell is other people."

When the aged Anne Berkowitz (a longer lived Anne Frank) hears this referenced in the short work "The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging", she agrees that Sartre's observation perfectly fit the period she and several others spent in hiding.

Charles M. Schultz[]

Charles M. Schultz (1922-2000) was the cartoonist of the long running comic strip "Peanuts, featuring Good Ol' Charlie Brown" beginning in 1950. In The Valley-Westside War, Jeff Mendoza compares mysterious night visitors to the Great Pumpkin (an unseen hypothetical savior from the Peanuts gags) and soon afterward exclaims "Good grief!", a catchphrase which was not invented by Schultz but was popularized by him.[137]

Walter Scott[]

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832) was a Scottish historical novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of both English language literature and of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, Rob Roy, Old Mortality, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor. Scott's knowledge of history, and his facility with literary technique, made him a seminal figure in the establishment of the historical novel genre, as well as an exemplar of European literary Romanticism.

In The Guns of the South, Robert E. Lee purchases a copy of Quentin Durward, which he never gets around to finishing. Scott's work is referenced by a number of characters in Southern Victory, including Arthur McGregor who is seen reading the same novel at one point.[138]

Dr. Seuss[]

Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991), who wrote under the name Dr Seuss, is among the most loved children's authors of all time in the English-speaking world. Among his more famous works is How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which is set in and around a town called Whoville. Other Seuss works name Whoville as a setting, although it is not always clear that it is the same place.

Whoville

Every Who down in Hooville liked Christmas a lot. But the Grinch, who lived just north of Hooville, did not.

In The United States of Atlantis, a small town in Atlantis is called Hooville. In-universe, it is named for Sir Thomas Hoo, a 15th-century benefactor, though even the town's residents have forgotten this fact by the 18th century. Given Turtledove's penchant for puns (and the fact that the novel was released during the holiday season), it is likely that the name is meant to invoke Dr. Seuss.

William Shakespeare[]

Main Article: Shakespearean References in Turtledove's Work

William Shirer[]

Shirer

William Shirer is plainly depressed about American politics since 2015.

In addition to his direct roles in Turtledove's work, William Shirer provides the inspiration for an anecdote recounted in Worldwar: Tilting the Balance. In the novel, Edward R. Murrow reports that the Americans have built a dummy airfield as a decoy, and the Race have responded by dropping a dummy bomb on it. This is apparently a variation on a World War II-era joke first reported by Shirer in Berlin Diaries, involving a British wooden bomb dropped on a German airfield, which grew into an urban legend.[139]

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster[]

Superman1942

Siegal and Shuster's most famous creation. He can't save your failing relationship.

Jerome "Jerry" Siegel (October 17, 1914 – January 28, 1996) and Joseph "Joe" Shuster (July 10, 1914 – July 30, 1992) were the co-creators of Superman, the first of the great comic book superheroes and one of the most recognizable of the 20th century. Siegel generally handled the writing, while Shuster was the primary artist, although as the character grew more popular, he shared duties with other artists. Their initial stories introduced a number elements to the character's mythos that remain present to this day. These include the planet Krypton, the city of Metropolis (an exaggerated version of New York City), and The Daily Planet newspaper with its reporters Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Perry White, and Jimmy Olsen.

Superman is directly or indirectly referenced in a number of Harry Turtledove's works. In The Man With the Iron Heart, one American soldier compares the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima to something out of Superman, much to the silent disgust of Lou Weissberg.[140] In The War That Came Early: Coup d'Etat, Chaim Weinberg tells Vaclav Jezek that his relationship with his wife Magdalena is going down the drain, and not even Superman would be able to stop it. He then has to explain to Jezek just who Superman is.[141]

In Settling Accounts: The Grapple, we learn that a comic book character created in the United States proves to be very popular with its readership in both the United States and the Confederate States. While the Freedom Party banned the sale of the character because he often battled Confederate forces, his popularity was so great that the ban was widely ignored, prompting the C.S. government to create the similar Hyperman to fill the Confederate demand. While the U.S. character is not named, his identity is not in doubt.[142]

The short work "The Mammyth" features a city called Metropolis. While this name is not unique to the Superman mythos, a street in the city is called "Lois Lane," confirming the connection.

In the short story "Murderbirds", the unnamed narrator says "Up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's ...! It isn't Superman." It's Quetzalcoatlus although the narrator used the opening narration from the radio and early TV Superman shows.[143]

E. E. "Doc" Smith[]

Edward Elmer Smith (also E. E. "Doc" Smith, Doc Smith; May 2, 1890 – August 31, 1965) was an American food engineer (specializing in doughnut and pastry mixes) and an early Science fiction author, best known for the Lensman and Skylark series. He is sometimes called the father of space opera. Although "Someone is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy" was inspired by Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, some aspects of the Space Patrol were borrowed from the Galactic Patrol of the Lensman series.

Kimball Kinnison was the protagonist of most of the Lensman novels and is described as a tall, muscular but lean man, of quick reflexes and quick mind with piercing grey eyes. In "Hindsight", when Pete Lundquist meets Jim McGregor at the airport, he is secretly disappointed that Jim looks nothing like Kinnison.[144]

Smokey the Bear[]

SmokeyBear

A sentient ursine life-form from one of Crosstime Traffic's alternates, perhaps?

Smokey the Bear, an anthropomorphic bear wearing a park ranger's uniform, is an American advertising mascot created in 1944 by the Ad Council with artists Albert Staehle and Harold Rosenberg. Smokey is administered by the Ad Council, the United States Forest Service, and the National Association of State Foresters to educate the public about the dangers of wildfires.

While the character's official name is Smokey Bear with no middle epithet, his 1952 theme song (by Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins) is entitled "Smokey the Bear,". adding "the" to Smokey's name to preserve the meter. This longer version has become universally accepted in the public consciousness. Many state and county law enforcement agencies throughout the United States have hats similar to Smokey's as part of their uniform, and a "Smokey hat" has become a common expression.

In The Disunited States of America, Justin Monroe thinks of Smokey upon seeing Sheriff Chester Cochrane's hat, then remembers that Smokey was never created in this alternate.[145]

Socrates[]

In addition to his direct POV role in "The Daimon," Socrates and his teachings are referenced frequently throughout Turtledove's work.

For example, in The War That Came Early: Coup d'Etat, Sarah Goldman reflects that her husband and his parents, with their relative lack of intellectual curiosity, conformed with the people Socrates referred to in the Apology when he said "The unexamined life is not worth living."

In The Hot War: Bombs Away, Lt. Cade Curtis also thought of the Apology when discussing the fighting during Korean War with Sgt. Lou Klein. Just because the sergeant knew how to run an army company, he thought he could do a general's job much the way the craftsmen who knew their own business thought they knew everything according to Socrates.[146]

In Through Darkest Europe, Khalid al-Zarzisi is a bit disturbed by Domenico Pacelli's use of Socratic arguing methods to reach very un-Socratic conclusions.

In Settling Accounts: In at the Death, Dr. Leonard O'Doull commented that Socrates seemed so smart because he tried to get answers from others rather give them himself. Medic Goodson Lord replied that it was all Greek to him.[147]

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn[]

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn serves as a minor plot element in "Les Mortes d'Arthur". Solzhenitsyn's work A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is referenced indirectly in Joe Steele, where the name of supporting character John Dennison is a literal translation of Ivan Denisovich, and his biography is quite similar.

Something old[]

"Something old" is a rhyme, whose author is unknown, and whose earliest known reference is from 1876, which details what a bride should wear at her wedding for good luck:

Something old,
something new,
something borrowed,
something blue,
and a silver sixpence in her shoe.

In "Topanga and the Chatsworth Lancers", Chatsworth Lancers headman Bruce Delgado thinks of how the rhyme applies to his homemade battle dress, which includes a fading blue police uniform made before the Change.[148]

Theodore Sorenson[]

JFK

Ask not what Turtledove's writing can do for his country, ask what famous lines in American history can do for Turtledove's writing.

Theodore Sorenson was the main speechwriter in the John F. Kennedy Administration. Sorenson wrote the President's celebrated inaugural address, including the famous line "Let the word go forth, from this time and place, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans."

In American Empire: Blood and Iron, Turtledove paraphrased that line and the few sentences that followed for Upton Sinclair's acceptance speech on the night of the 1920 Presidential election, which he won. Kennedy was the first President in OTL to be born in the 20th century; Sinclar was the first President in the series to be born after the War of Secession, and thus had a claim comparable to Kennedy's of being the first President of a new generation. Also, both OTL Kennedy and TL-191 Sinclair broke records for being the youngest man ever elected to the office.

Also in The Valley-Westside War, as the war began, Westside City Council Chairman Cal paraphrased Kennedy's inaugural exhortation that the people "Ask not what the Westside can do for you. Ask what you can do for the Westside."[149]

John Steinbeck[]

John Steinbeck (1902-1968), an American novelist whose most famous writing focused on the working class people of California, wrote The Grapes of Wrath, which features in The Gladiator. Turtledove's "Of Mice and Chicks" is a feminist fantasy parody of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

In Joe Steele, Charlie Sullivan tries his hand at writing fiction, and negatively compares himself to Steinbeck.[150]

Bram Stoker[]

Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula, considered one of the definitive vampire novels of all time. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving, and business manager of Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London.

Abraham van Helsing, the heroic professor and vampire-hunter from Dracula, appears directly in Turtledove's "Three Men and a Vampire".

Turtledove has also frequently referenced film adaptations of Dracula, particularly the 1931 version; see Bela Lugosi and The Universal Monsters.

Winifred Sackville Stoner, Jr.[]

Winifred Sackville Stoner, Jr. (1902–1983) was an American author of educational poetry. One of her best known poems is entitled, The History of The U.S., best known for its opening line "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

In the Atlantis Series, Edward Radcliffe's 1452 voyage to Atlantis is commemorated by the verse "In fourteen hundred and fifty-two, Ed Radcliffe sailed the ocean blue."[151]

Harriet Beecher Stowe[]

Stowe

The Little Lady Who Started The Big War:Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an anti-slavery activist who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, whose status in Southern Victory is outlined in The Grapple.

In The War Between the Provinces, reference is made to a comparable novel, Aunt Clarissa's Serf Hut. The Detinan author is identified as female, but is not named or described in any detail.[152]

In A Different Flesh, the story "Though the Heavens Fall" features a character named Harry Stowe, who is the kind of evil overseer who might have come from the pages of Uncle Tom and similar stories.

Jonathan Swift[]

Jonathan Swift by Charles Jervas detail

Jonathan Swift can totally fight Nazis, too, Mr. Turtledove.

Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric. Arguably, his most famous works are Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal, but he wrote a number of well-regarded works, many of which are still read and studied today.

In American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold, John Oglethorpe calls Freedom Party men "yahoos," the savage hominoids from Gulliver's Travels.[153]

In Supervolcano: All Fall Down, Vanessa Ferguson also thinks of her supervisor as a yahoo who didn't know what a yahoo actually was.

In "Cayos in the Stream", Ernest Hemingway quotes from Swift's 1733 poem, "On Poetry: A Rhapsody".

In Gunpowder Empire, Amanda Solters regards the patriarchy of Agrippan Rome as "a bunch of sexist yahoos." The narration then tells us that Amanda has a view of Gulliver very different from the pop cultural image of the book. "The parts of the book everybody knew, where he went to Lilliput and then to Brobdingnag, were only the icing on the cake. The real essence came later."[154]

Tacitus[]

Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (c. AD 56 – c. AD 125) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire, best known for the Annals and the Histories, which survive in incomplete form. Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians.

The Annals is an important source for William Shakespeare when he writes Boudicca in Ruled Britannia, although how much the fictionalised Shakespeare learned from it and how much he made up, is the subject of an error on Turtledove's part.

In Joe Steele, Charlie Sullivan recalls how Tacitus once said that good men can serve bad emperors. Charlie says that he has always tried to be a good man, even while serving the dictatorial President Joe Steele.[155]

In Agent of Byzantium "Unholy Trinity", Basil Argyros' encounter with Hilda causes him to think of Tacitus' writings about Germanic women's fierceness on the battlefield and their defense of their chastity.

Ruth Plumly Thompson[]

Ruth Plumly Thompson (July 27, 1891 – April 6, 1976) was an American writer of children's stories, best known for her Oz novels of the 1920s and '30s, commissioned by Reilly & Lee Publishing and featuring characters and places from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels.

In Supervolcano: Things Fall Apart, Kelly Ferguson reads the Oz books to her daughter Deborah. After reading Baum's volumes, they cover Thompson's. Kelly finds Thompson to be a rare occasion where a successor author of a series was better than the original author. Thompson's plots are smoother and more clever, although Baum was perhaps better at worldbuilding. Deborah enjoys both versions. When reading Thompson's The Hungry Tiger of Oz (1926), based around a supporting character from Baum's stories, Deborah says of their cat Playboy, "He's our Hungry Tiger."[156]

JRR Tolkien[]

Ringstrilogyposter

I wonder if TL-191 would be this successful as a film adaptation?

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE FRSL (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor who is best known as the author of the classic high-fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, all set primarily on the continent of Middle-Earth.

Turtledove's early career as a fantasy writer was heavily influenced by Tolkien. A first draft of what would become The Videssos Cycle was originally written as a Lord of the Rings fanfic.

The Lord of the Rings is referenced directly in a number of Turtledove works.

"After the Last Elf is Dead" has been described by Turtledove as a reversal of Tolkien's basic premise, positing a world where an evil demonic entity defeats the forces of good.

In the Atlantis Series, the plant which OTL knows as "tobacco" is referred to as "pipeweed". This is also the name by which tobacco is called in Lord of the Rings. As this trivia was widely popularized by the Lord of the Rings movies just a few years before Turtledove began work on the Atlantis series, this is very likely a direct homage.

In The Hot War: Bombs Away, Daisy Baxter was reminded of What has he got in his pocketses, a line from a children's book when she heard the word "pocket".[157] This was a line by Gollum during the riddle game with Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit.

In A World of Difference, two volcanoes are named after Smaug and Ancalagon, two dragons from the Middle-Earth mythos.

In Alpha and Omega, the Reverend Lester Stark is giving a serious sermon on the Book of Revelation, the four Horsemen and the End of Times. To break the tension, when he mentions the third Horseman was on a black horse, he jokes that it wasn't the steeds of the Nazgul from The Lord of the Rings.[158]

In Frankos' "The Great White Way," Brent Birley refers frequently to a Tolkien virtual reality game he's making.

See Also: Turtledove's Literary Influences

Leo Tolstoy[]

Count Lev Nikolayevich "Leo" Tolstoy (Лев Николаевич Толстой, 9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 – 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910) was a Russian philosopher, journalist, and pacifist, best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). The earlier novel, which features Napoleon as a character, is often called one of the greatest novels ever written, and is the subject of jokes in pop culture about its excessive length.

The narrator in "Of Mice and Chicks" knows of a similarly weighty novel called War and Pieces, and laments that people who best know about war and pieces - i.e., people who were casualties of war and are now in pieces - are in no condition to write about it.[159]

Harry Turtledove[]

In The House of Daniel, Turtledove directs a self-deprecating barb at his own canon. When Fidgety Frank Carlisle throws a silver coin to repel a werewolf, he rather reluctantly admits, with embarrassment, that he had gotten the idea from "a story [he] had read in a rag called Amazing by a hack named Iverson." This almost-contemptuous reference is to the story "Blue Fox and Werewolf," one of a number of stories Turtledove published under the pen name Eric G. Iverson.

A late-20th-century writer named Iverson is taught by Professor Jennifer Logan in the Earthgrip story "The Great Unknown". He is said to be a contemporary of S.M. Stirling, who in real life is a co-author of Turtledove in shared universes.

In Settling Accounts: Drive to the East, a movie starring an actor named Humphrey has been made of The Maltese Elephant, the title of an earlier Turtledove story which spoofed Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.

Frankos references her husband's pen name in St. Oswald's Niche, where historical reenactor Matthew Jonas portrays a Viking named Erik Iverson.

In the Frankos story "The Great White Way," Trina Hutchinson and Brent Birley agree that characters in their Broadway musical-related battle video game will not have any weapons anachronistic to their plays of origin. Hutchinson says that you cannot, hypothetically, give Robert E. Lee an AK-47, an obvious reference to The Guns of the South.[160]

Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain[]

SamClemens

Nice suit, Mark Twain. Must have gotten rich selling people the privilege of painting his fence.

Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens, is a POV character in Turtledove's How Few Remain. Turtledove casts Clemens as a newspaper editor in San Francisco. Both Clemens's editorials and his dialogue make use of occasional cribs from Twain's body of writing, and, though he did not obtain the same level of fame and immortality that he did in OTL, he is remembered fondly decades after his death, as late as the Second Great War.

Additionally, the title of Turtledove's short story "A Massachusetts Yankee in King Arthur's Court" was inspired by Twain's classic novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

The latter was perhaps the original historical novel narrated by a time traveller, a subgenre of science fiction to which Turtledove has contributed The Guns of the South and several short stories.

Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny[]

René Goscinny (1926-1977) was a French comic writer and editor who worked with illustrator Albert Uderzo (1927-2020) on a number of titles, the most famous of which are the Asterix series, a cartoon slapstick portrayal of Gaulish resistance to Julius Caesar's occupation.

Early on in Through the Darkness, reference is made to two minor characters who do not appear directly: "Uderzo the florist" and "Goscinnio the portraitist", a likely reference to the famous French duo.

In The Valley-Westside War, George Stoyadinovich's mustache reminds Liz Mendoza of Asterix and Obelix.[161]

Ulfilas[]

Ulfilas (spelled several ways) was a Goth (or perhaps half-Gothic and half-Greek) Christian bishop and missionary in the 4th Century. Among other things, Ulfilas translated the Bible into Gothic, essentially inventing the Gothic alphabet in the process. Ulfilas' translation is alluded to by Gothic language professor Stan in the story "Something Going Around".

Vegetius[]

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus was a celebrated Roman military writer of the 4th century. Nothing is known of his life, station, or military experience.

His treatise, Epitoma rei militaris (also referred to as De Re Militari), was dedicated to the reigning emperor (possibly Theodosius the Great). His sources, according to his own statement, were Cato, Cornelius Celsus, Frontinus, Paternus and the imperial constitutions of Augustus, Trajan and Hadrian.

In the Southern Victory universe, Vegetius' treatise was translated into English by US Army General William Dudley Foulke, who gives a copy to Major Irving Morrell to read on the train to Philadelphia.[162]

Voltaire[]

In addition to his more significant references in Turtledove's work, Voltaire is referenced in passing in a few others.

In The War That Came Early: The Big Switch, Luc Harcourt is shot in the buttock, and Sgt. Aristide Demange jokes that he assumed the surgeons would cut the buttock off like the old woman in Voltaire's Candide.[163]

In "The Barbecue, the Movie, & Other Unfortunately Not So Relevant Material", the time-traveler Lasoporp Rof uses a device called a pangloss to translate ancient languages for him. Dr. Pangloss, whose name means "all languages" in Greek, is a supporting character in Candide.

The short story "Clash of Arms" takes place in Thunder-ten-tronckh, a fictional German city which first appeared in Voltaire's Candide.

In The Guns of the South, Andries Rhoodie asks General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate chances of victory. Lee replies that while the North outweighs the South, they have managed to outfight them and, God willing, they would continue to do so. Rhoodie replies with Voltaire's "God is on the side of the big battalions" and then proceeds with his sales pitch on the AK-47's superior rate of fire countering the North's advantage of numbers..[164]

In Joe Steele, after Admiral Husband Kimmel was convicted of dereliction of duty and the presiding judge explained that the death sentence was to remind other officers of their need for diligence in pursuit of their duties, Kimmel replies with Voltaire's "Pour encourager les autres" in reference to Admiral John Byng's execution.[165]

Every Inch a King ends with a sentiment mirroring that of Candide's ending: "As we go through our lives, we all must cultivate our gardens as best we can."

Lew Wallace[]

Lewis "Lew" Wallace (April 10, 1827 – February 15, 1905) was an American lawyer, United States Army general in the American Civil War, governor of New Mexico Territory, politician, diplomat, and author. Among his novels and biographies, Wallace is best known for his adventure story of the Roman Empire, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880). The novel tells the story of Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy young Jewish man falsely convicted of attempted murder. After surviving a period of harsh imprisonment, Judah rises to new fame and fortune as a chariot racer in the arena. He also learns a valuable lesson about life from his acquaintance with Jesus of Nazareth. Ben-Hur has had multiple film adaptations, including the 1959 version starring Charlton Heston.

In Household Gods, Nicole Gunther, abruptly sent by time travel magic to the Roman Empire, dimly remembers a movie that Frank Perrin was obsessed with, featuring chariot races and Charlton Heston.[166]

William Watson[]

William Watson (c. 23 April 1559 – 9 December 1603) was an English Roman Catholic priest and conspirator, executed for treason. He was also the author of Ten Quodlibetical Questions Concerning Religion and State (1601), which is referenced by characters in A Different Flesh in the segment "Though the Heavens Fall".[167]

Bill Watterson[]

Spaceman-Spiff

Isn't that Spiffy.

William Boyd Watterson II (born July 5, 1958), known as Bill Watterson, is an American cartoonist and the author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. His career as a syndicated cartoonist ran from 1985 to 1995; he stopped drawing the series at the end of 1995 with a short statement to newspaper editors and his readers that he felt he had achieved all he could in the comic strip medium.

When Rob Ferguson was complaining about being stuck in New England during an early winter after the Yellowstone Supervolcano erupted, Justin Nachman reminded him that his father had warned it was going to go kablooie just like Hamster Hughie, a fictional children's book from Calvin and Hobbes.[168]

In the short story "Hi, Colonic", one of the alien characters is named Iffspay, which appears to be a pig-Latin version of the name "Spiff". Spaceman Spiff was one of Calvin's frequent alter-egos during the course of the Calvin and Hobbes strip.

Laura Frankos is also familiar with the antics of Calvin. In her short story, "A Late Symmer Night's Battle", the fairy Peaseblossom refers to reremice (bats) as the "big bug scourge of the night." Her cousin Moth, corrects her by saying "Reremice aren't bugs." This is a references to a particularly well-loved series of Calvin and Hobbes strips in which Calvin writes a particularly poorly researched school report entitled "Bats: The Big Bug Scourge of the Skies," and is told several times that bats aren't bugs.

Stanley Weinbaum[]

Stanley Grauman Weinbaum (April 4, 1902 – December 14, 1935) was an American science fiction writer. His career in science fiction was short but influential. His first story, "A Martian Odyssey", was published to great (and enduring) acclaim in July 1934, but he succumbed to lung cancer less than a year and a half later.

In The War That Came Early: The Big Switch, American tourist Peggy Druce is stranded in Sweden. She thinks about how cold it is, which turns her mind to the Gulf Stream, without which, Sweden would be uninhabitably cold. She remembers reading a science fiction story postulating a world without a Gulf Stream. While she can't remember Stanley Weinbaum's name, she does remember he was Jewish.

In Homeward Bound, Sam Yeager thinks of Weinbaum's notion of Venus upon seeing the Home city of Rizzaffi.[169]

H.G. Wells[]

HG Wells by Beresford

No, I'm that other Wells. My Martians landed in Horsell Common in Surrey, not Grover's Mill, New Jersey.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) - known as H. G. Wells - was a prolific English writer in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, and social commentary, and textbooks and rules for war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels, and is called the father of science fiction, along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback.

H.G. Wells' 1898 classic The War of the Worlds is referenced on a few occasions in the Worldwar Franchise. In Second Contact, Glen Johnson is rereading it and reflects that Wells' Martians would have been much easier to beat than the Race. The same-named 1938 radio play by Orson Welles, based on the novel, is referenced at the start of In the Balance.

Wells' 1895 classic The Time Machine is referenced in Supervolcano. Rob Ferguson compares the summer people and townies in Bar Harbor, Maine to the Eloi and Morlocks from the novel.[170] Also, in the Southern Victory series, while Clarence Potter couldn't remember Wells' name, he wished he had a Time Machine as depicted in the story.

Calvin H. Wiley[]

Calvin Henderson Wiley (Feb. 3, 1819 – Jan. 11, 1887) was a North Carolina educator. He was the first superintendent of public schools in the state, as well as a novelist. In The Guns of the South, schoolteacher Nate Caudell uses Wiley's North Carolina Reader as a textbook, and observes that Wiley unrealistically makes the state look like an earthly paradise.[171]

William Butler Yeats[]

Yeats

Thanks for giving me credit for giving you the titles of your stupid novels, Turtledove! Oh, wait, that's right - You ripped off my line and didn't mention me at all!

William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and English literary establishments, he helped the foundation of the Abbey Theatre, and in his later years served as an Irish Senator for two terms and was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and others.

The titles of the novels The Center Cannot Hold (the sixth Southern Victory book) and Things Fall Apart (the third Supervolcano book) are each taken from a line of Yeats' poem "The Second Coming":


Turning and turning in the widening gyre.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer's cry.
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere,
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are filled with passionate intensity.

Unlike Abraham Lincoln, Wilfred Owen, and Ambrose Bierce, whose poetry provides titles for other volumes of the same series, Yeats' work is not excerpted in the front matter of The Center Cannot Hold.

In The Hot War: Armistice, Soviet Colonel Volodymyr Petlyura quoted the lines "Things fall apart./ The center cannot hold." to Boris Gribkov after World War III ends in an armistice and the Soviet satellites try to break free. Petlyura explains that with Stalin's death the center is gone (not holding) and so the Soviet Union is falling apart.[172]

In The War That Came Early: The Big Switch, Arno Baatz' voice is described as having "lacked all conviction," though that is not necessarily taken directly from the poem, especially since Baatz' squad did not think him as "the best".

In Alpha and Omega, where the literal Second Coming is at hand, Lester Stark wonders "What rough beast slouched toward Bethlehem to be born now?," paraphrasing a key line of the same poem. Stark reflects that Yeats' poem is full of very bad theology, but also of effectively hair-raising imagery that haunts his thoughts.[173]

Legend of Ys[]

Ys, also spelled Is, is a mythical city that was built on the coast of Brittany and later swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean. Most versions of the legend place the city in the Douarnenez Bay, and attribute its destruction to a pact which the king's daughter made with the Devil. It is similar to the Ancient Greek legend of Atlantis. Several operas, novels, comic books, and video games about Ys have been created.

In Opening Atlantis: New Hastings, Nell Radcliffe thinks of the legend of Ys when her husband says he has been to Atlantis. He reflects that it is appropriate that François Kersauzon, a sailor from Brittany, was the man who told him how to get there.

References[]

  1. All Fall Down, pg. 24, HC.
  2. Ibid., pg. 121.
  3. Through Darkest Europe, pg. 220.
  4. Through Darkest Europe, pgs. 214-215.
  5. See, e.g., Departures, pg. 80.
  6. The Big Switch ch 14
  7. Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, Vol. CXXXX1, Nos. 1 & 2, January/February, 2021, pg. 31.
  8. E.g., "Forty, Counting Down" in Counting Up, Counting Down, pg. 9, TPB.
  9. Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2021
  10. Fallout, pg. 356.
  11. The Valley-Westside War, pgs. 32-33.
  12. Alpha and Omega, pg. 70, HC.
  13. E.g., 3xT, pg. 677, HC.
  14. Homeward Bound, pg. 270, HC.
  15. Futureshocks, pg. 94, TPB.
  16. Down to Earth, pg. 296, HC.
  17. Ibid., pg. 329.
  18. Last Orders pgs. 323-324, HC
  19. Coup d'Etat chapter 7.
  20. E.g., 3xT, pg. 159, HC.
  21. See, e.g.Counting Up, Counting Down, pg. 101, tpb.
  22. Joe Steele, pg. 224, HC.
  23. The Big Switch, p. 208, HC.
  24. All Fall Down, pg. 175, HC.
  25. End of the Beginning, pg. 175, HC.
  26. Eruption, pg. 375, HC.
  27. Things Fall Apart, pg. 199, HC.
  28. See e.g.: Atlantis and Other Places, pg. 383, HC.
  29. See e.g. The Enchanter Completed - Introduction.
  30. In at the Death, pg. 166, hc.
  31. Gunpowder Empire, pg. 102.
  32. The Big Switch, chapter 14.
  33. Departures, pgs. 47,49, pb.
  34. A World of Difference, pg. 177.
  35. Blood and Iron, pgs. 166-167, hc.
  36. All Fall Down, pg. 215, HC.
  37. 3xT, pg. 538, HC.
  38. The Valley-Westside War, pg. 247, hc.
  39. E.g., 3xT, pg. 305, HC.
  40. Every Inch a King, pgs. 205-206, tpb.
  41. Down to Earth, chapter 14.
  42. Through Darkest Europe, pg. 79.
  43. The Valley-Westside War, pg. 124.
  44. Alpha and Omega, pgs. 147-148.
  45. Eruption, pgs. 262-264, HC.
  46. Eruption, pg. 144.
  47. Drive to the East, pg. 584.
  48. Bombs Away, pg. 50.
  49. The Change: Tales of Downfall and Rebirth, p. 452.
  50. Walk in Hell, pgs. 357-358, HC.
  51. Bombs Away, pg. 307, ebook.
  52. The Reinvented Detective: Tales of Futuristic Crimes & Mysteries Beyond Time, pg. 270.
  53. In at the Death, pg. 138.
  54. See e.g. Kaleidoscope, pg. 193, mpb.
  55. Joe Steele, pg. 438, HC.
  56. Household Gods, pg. 22, HC.
  57. Blood and Iron, pg. 50, HC.
  58. West and East, pg. 4, pb.
  59. The Disunited States of America, pg. 228
  60. A World of Difference, pg. 209.
  61. The Valley-Westside War, pg. 19, hc.
  62. Thessalonica, pg. 27.
  63. The Two Georges, pg. 202, HC.
  64. See, e.g., We Install and Other Stories, loc. 185-196, ebook.
  65. The Man With the Iron Heart, pg. 301.
  66. Kaleidoscope, pg. 119, MPB.
  67. The Two Georges, pg. 243, MPB.
  68. St. Oswald's Niche, pg. 23.
  69. Ibid., pg. 145.
  70. Some sources give 1909 or 1910.
  71. Joe Steele, pgs. 256-257, HC.
  72. Departures, pg. 46, pb.
  73. See, e.g., Departures, pg. 321.
  74. See, e.g.., Departures, pg. 44.
  75. Ibid, pg. 49.
  76. The Guns of the South, pg. 346.
  77. Ibid., pg. 431.
  78. Armistice, pg. 167, HC.
  79. Bombs Away, pgs. 31-32, HC.
  80. The Center Cannot Hold, pg. 249.
  81. The Valley-Westside War, pg. 127.
  82. West and East, pgs. 195-196, HC.
  83. Atlantis and Other Places, pg. 87.
  84. Through Darkest Europe, pg. 136.
  85. The Big Switch, pg. 412, HC.
  86. Bombs Away, pg. 294, HC.
  87. The Disunited States of America, pg. 58, pb.
  88. Eruption, pgs. 312-313.
  89. Eruption, pg. 196.
  90. Ibid., pg. 149.
  91. Ibid., pg. 368.
  92. Gunpowder Empire, pg. 152.
  93. E.g., 3xT, pgs. 682-684, HC.
  94. The Guns of the South, pg. 462.
  95. Armistice, pg. 390.
  96. Bombs Away, pgs. 192-196, ebooks.
  97. The Man With the Iron Heart, pg. 397.
  98. Eruption, pg. 337, HC.
  99. Joe Steele, page 215, HC.
  100. The Man With the Iron Heart, pg. 185.
  101. Aftershocks, pgs. 1-2, HC.
  102. The Victorious Opposition, pg. 595, mmpb.
  103. The Reinvented Detective: Tales of Futuristic Crimes & Mysteries Beyond Time, pg. 270.
  104. E.g., The Best of Harry Turtledove, pg. 458.
  105. Sentry Peak, pg. 204.
  106. E.g., 3xT, pgs. 682-684, HC.
  107. The Two Georges, pg. 347, HC.
  108. Joe Steele, pg. 381, HC.
  109. Joe Steele, pg. 144.
  110. Armistice, pgs. 91-92, HC.
  111. Ibid., pgs. 221-222.
  112. See, e.g., Atlantis and Other Places, pg. 403.
  113. Joe Steele, pg. 209, HC.
  114. E.g., 3xT, pg. 314, HC.
  115. Ibid., pg. 557.
  116. https://twitter.com/HNTurtledove/status/1673855455251283969?cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email
  117. The Reinvented Detective: Tales of Futuristic Crimes & Mysteries Beyond Time, pg. 270.
  118. In at the Death, pg. 138.
  119. Atlantis and Other Places, pg. 403.
  120. All Fall Down, pg. 115, HC.
  121. Bombs Away, pg. 314, HC.
  122. 3xT, pg. 557, HC.
  123. Joe Steele, pg 63.
  124. Departures, pg. 43.
  125. The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump, pg. 35.
  126. Bridge of the Separator, pg. 32.
  127. American Front, pgs. 43-44.
  128. Eruption, pgs. 91-92, HC.
  129. See e.g. the Introduction to The Enchanter Completed.
  130. Joe Steele, pg. 292, HC.
  131. The Disunited States of America, pg. 56
  132. Joe Steele, pgs. 73, 305.
  133. The Man With the Iron Heart, chapter VII.
  134. The Big Switch, pg. 167, HC.
  135. The Victorious Opposition, pg. 447.
  136. Joe Steele, p. 437, HC.
  137. The Valley-Westside War, pg. 167.
  138. Blood and Iron, pg. 239, HC.
  139. Tilting the Balance, pgs. 21-22.
  140. The Man With the Iron Heart, pg. 58.
  141. Coup d'Etat, pg. 245, HC.
  142. The Grapple, TPB, pg. 221.
  143. Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Vol. XCIV No. 7 & 8, July/August 2024.
  144. Kaleidoscope, pg. 101, MPB.
  145. The Disunited States of America, pg. 120.
  146. Bombs Away, pg. 387, HC.
  147. In at the Death, pg. 186, hc.
  148. The Change: Tales of Downfall and Rebirth, pgs. 455-456.
  149. The Valley-Westside War, pg. 40.
  150. Joe Steele, pg. 437, HC.
  151. Liberating Atlantis, pg. ***
  152. Advance and Retreat, pg. 54.
  153. The Center Cannot Hold, pgs. 422-425.
  154. Gunpowder Empire, pgs. 204-205.
  155. Joe Steele, pg. 434, hc.
  156. Things Fall Apart, pgs. 298-300, HC.
  157. Bombs Away, pg. 222, HC.
  158. Alpha and Omega, pg. 69, hc.
  159. Turn the Other Chick, pg. 281.
  160. Analog, September 2000, pg. 117.
  161. The Valley-Westside War, pg. 198.
  162. American Front, pgs. 400-402.
  163. The Big Switch, pg. 165.
  164. The Guns of the South, pg. 4
  165. Joe Steele, pg. 251, HC.
  166. Household Gods, pg. 73.
  167. A Different Flesh, pg. 152.
  168. Eruption, pg. 317.
  169. Homeward Bound, pgs. 146-147.
  170. Eruption, pg. 213.
  171. The Guns of the South, pgs. 278-279.
  172. Armistice, pgs. 315-316, HC.
  173. Alpha and Omega, pg. 149, HC.
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