TURTLEDOVE, Harry (Norman)

(1949-)

   US writer and academic who has made use of his field of scholarship (his PhD was in Byzantine history) to create all his best-known work. The fantasy Videssos Cycle - The Misplaced Legion (1987), An Emperor for the Legion (1987), The Legion of Videssos (1987) and Swordsof the Legion (1987), with the Krispos sequence, Krispos Rising (1991), Krispos of Videssos (1991) and Krispos the Emperor (1994), serving as aprequel - follows the exploits of a Roman legion translated to the empire of Videssos, situated in a world where MAGIC works and Byzantine history is recapitulated. The Basil Argyros stories (1985-7), set in an ALTERNATE WORLD in which Mahomet became a Christian saint - assembled as Agent ofByzantium (coll of linked stories 1987) - follows the exploits of a medieval secret agent who tends to cause scientific innovations against both his brief and his intentions. Though these books focus on their various charismatic and canny protagonists, HT's thorough understanding of his source material gracefully infiltrates the fun and fantastication.HT began writing work of genre interest with two SWORD-AND-SORCERY tales as by Eric Iverson, Wereblood (1979) and its sequel Werenight (1979), and was soon publishing sf and fantasy with some frequency, sometimes as by Eric G. Iverson, some of his better non-series work being assembled asKaleidoscope (coll 1990). Noninterference (fixup 1988) - in which a galactic survey team runs across ALIENS - and Earthgrip (fixup 1991) - in which a reader of sf uses the expertise so gained to save alien races - are, unusually for HT, straight sf books not set in alternate worlds; but A Different Flesh (fixup 1988) places hominid survivors (APES ANDCAVEMEN) in an alternate USA, and A World of Difference (1989) confronts Soviet and US missions on an alternate Mars - here called Minerva - populated by warring Minervans. HT has never failed to be exuberant when he sees the chance; and although it may be argued that he has not yet written any single book that has unduly stretched his very considerable intelligence, the WorldWar sequence - comprising WorldWar: In the Balance (1994) and WorldWar: Tilting the Balance (1995), with further volumesprojected - deftly, and at great length, unfolds an ALTERNATE WORLD WW2 scenario, in which the opposing forces are uneasily allied in opposition to an invading force of comfortingly obtuse aliens, very clearly described in strict accordance (so far) with the traditional sf view that invading alien armies were almost certainly to be run by hidebound, reptile-thick bureaucrats. HT won a 1994 Best Novella HUGO Award for"Down in the Bottomlands" (1992).

   JC

   Other works: The Pugnacious Peacemaker (1990 chap dos), a sequel to L. Sprague DE CAMP's The Wheels of If (1940 Unknown; 1990 chap dos), which precedes it in this sequentially printed DOS volume.

   See also: ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION.