Inconsistencies in Turtledove's Work

From Turtledove

Harry Turtledove has periodically been criticized for inconsistencies within a given series or novel, and, more rarely, with the OTL historical record.

Contents 1 Possible Explanation 2 Inconsistencies in Atlantis 3 Inconsistencies in Beyond the Gap 4 Inconsistencies in Days of Infamy 5 Inconsistencies in A Different Flesh 6 Inconsistencies in Earthgrip and "Nasty, Brutish, &. . . " 7 Inconsistencies in The Gladiator 8 Inconsistencies in The Guns of the South 9 Inconsistencies in In the Presence of Mine Enemies 10 Inconsistencies in "Must and Shall" 11 Inconsistencies in Ruled Britannia 12 Inconsistencies in Southern Victory 13 Inconsistencies in Thessalonica and The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump 14 Inconsistencies in War Between the Provinces 15 Inconsistencies in A World of Difference 16 Inconsistencies in Worldwar

Possible Explanation

In the alternate history novels and series, some of these inconsistencies, such as the apparent gaffes over Hamlet, George Patton's nationality, etc., may be explained by the butterfly effect. However, no such explanation has been explicitly offered.

Others are probably intended to be inside jokes.

The remaining mistakes can only be the result of error. While these might be explained with creative retconning, it is not the purpose of this article to do so.

Inconsistencies in Atlantis

1. In Opening Atlantis, Henry Radcliffe refers to his wife Lucy. Later in the book, he's married to a woman named Bess. Admittedly, the two moments take place 15 years apart, and Henry may have remarried, but this is not made clear in the text.
2. In Opening Atlantis, Edward IV of England banishes the Earl of Warwick to Atlantis. However Richard Radcliffe's wife Bertha informs her husband that Henry VI of England is reponsible.

Inconsistencies in Beyond the Gap

1. Gudrid's ability to understand the Bizogot language varies tremendously throughout the novel. At some points she understands, or seems to understand, comments concerning her, and at others she demands translation for comments addressed directly to her.

Inconsistencies in Days of Infamy

1. Oscar van der Kirk encounters the American submarine Amberjack, and its commander, Woody Kelley, in 1942. In OTL, the Amberjack was commanded by Lt. Commander John A. Bole, Jr., from its launch in 1942 until it was sunk in 1943.

Inconsistencies in A Different Flesh

1. In the story "The Iron Elephant", a character notes that the Federated Commonwealths of America had been independent for a generation by 1782, implying that independence had come in 1762. However, in the following story "Though the Heavens Fall", we learn that independence came in 1738, which is closer to two generations.

2. In "The Iron Elephant", an inventor named Richard Trevithick builds the first steam-powered engine. In OTL, Trevithick was born in 1771, which would have made him at most 11 years old at the time the story is set. (Implicitly, the demographic shift caused by the tyranny of England impacted the Trevithick gene-pool.)

3. In "Trapping Run", Henry Quick is having a conversation with a James Cartwright. A few paragraphs into the conversation, Quick calls Cartwright "John".

Inconsistencies in Earthgrip and "Nasty, Brutish, &. . . "

1. No date is given for either of these stories in relation to each other; both take place some time around the turn of the thirtieth century. Naplak Naplak Nap tells Walter Harbron about the Great Ones' attempt to destroy humans by creating the common cold prior to the Suicide Wars, suggesting knowledge of the discovery of the Great Ones' stronghold in Earthgrip, as that information had been previously lost to the Foitani; from this we may deduce that the short story is set after the novella. However, Harbron falsely believes that the Suicide Wars were fought for racial and religious reasons, which suggests that the other great revelation of Jennifer Logan's Foitan adventure, the sexual nature of the Wars, is not known, suggesting either that the story is set earlier or that the information regarding the roles of kwopillot and vodranet in Foitan history had been suppressed after all; but if either is true, presumably knowledge of the Foitan expedition to Earth would still be unknown.

Inconsistencies in The Gladiator

1. A gaming shop in San Marino is first called the Triple Six. Subsequently, it is referred to as Three Sixes

Inconsistencies in The Guns of the South

1. Robert E. Lee meets with Senator William Barksdale of Mississippi in 1868. Barksdale was killed at the Battle of Gettysburg nearly a year before the novel's point of departure.

2. The Confederate Congress creates a bill for gradual emancipation of its entire slave population. The bill itself was modelled after a proposed act of legislation in slave-holding Brazil, though the real bill was not proposed until years after the setting of the novel, and Turtledove has conceded that it is, indeed, anachronistic.

Inconsistencies in In the Presence of Mine Enemies

1. During its 2010 coup, the SS attempts to install Odilo Globocnik as Fuhrer. Globocnik is described as being a man in his fifties. In truth, Globocnik would have been 106 in 2010, an unusual choice to run a country.

Inconsistencies in "Must and Shall"

1. John Andrew of Massachusetts is referred to as a Senator. He was never a Senator in OTL.

Inconsistencies in Ruled Britannia

1. During an Easter Mass, William Shakespeare thinks of his deceased father, a Catholic who did not live to see his religion restored under Queen Isabella and King Albert and who therefore presumably died before the novel's 1588 point of departure. John Shakespeare lived until 1600, and since OTL was followed until the battle between the Armada and the Royal Navy, the elder Shakespeare should not have died.

2. In the same scene Shakespeare mentions that his father often spoke nostalgically of the reign of Mary Tudor and also of Henry VIII prior to the English Reformation. The Reformation was finalized by the Act of Union in 1531. Shakespeare's father was born in 1530. Presumably, he would not have many memories of the pre-Reformation period.

3. Robert Parsons is intensely suspicious of William Shakespeare's possible associations with Edward Kelley and professes to know nothing of Shakespeare's religious or political sentiments. In 1580-81, Parsons travelled through England with his fellow English Jesuit, Saint Edmund Campion, ministering to the country's persecuted Catholic populace. The two visited Stratford-Upon-Avon and there is a great deal of evidence that they met with John Shakespeare, whose signature is believed to appear on a document developed by Campion saying the signator would swear to remain a Catholic in his heart, obtaining the grace of Extreme Unction in the event a priest would be unavailable to give Last Rites at the moment of death. If the elder Shakespeare was indeed a devout Catholic even in the face of persecution, and an associate of Campion, the memory of the meeting should have assuaged Parsons' concerns about his son somewhat.

4. Shakespeare's play Prince of Denmark is performed in 1597, and Christopher Marlowe mentions that it had debuted on the stage one year earlier. The play copies Shakespeare's OTL Hamlet in every particular. Hamlet was written in 1600.

5. During the writing of King Philip, Lope de Vega encourages Shakespeare to represent an episode between Philip II and Pope Sixtus V in which Sixtus encourages the Spanish King to invade and conquer Protestant England by offering the King one million ducats to be paid the minute a Spanish soldier set foot on English soil at the van of an invading army. In fact, that offer was made to Philip by Sixtus's predecessor, Pope Gregory XIII.

6. After her release from the Tower of London, Queen Elizabeth delivers to her subjects an address which is nearly identical to the Tilbury Speech which she gave to English forces as they anxiously awaited news of the battle between the Royal Navy and the Spanish Armada. Presumably she would have given the same speech before learning of the defeat of her fleet in the timeline of Ruled Britannia, so that repeating the speech so closely would be plagiarizing herself. An eloquent woman, it is questionable whether Elizabeth would have been willing to do so.

7. Elizabeth later attends a production of Boudicca at the Globe Theater. Earlier, Queen Isabella had attended a public showing of Lope de Vega's El Mejor Mozo de Espana. In the sixteenth century, monarchs did not attend public performances of plays; theater companies gave them private showings in their own palaces.

Inconsistencies in Southern Victory

1. In Walk in Hell, the flag of the United States is mentioned to have thirty-three stars in one scene and thirty-four in another.

2. In The Center Cannot Hold, Return Engagement, Drive to the East, and The Grapple, Sam Carsten frequently mentions visiting Ireland during the Great War as part of the U.S. Navy's campaign to smuggle weapons to Irishmen participating in the Rising. Carsten undertook no such mission during the war, though George Enos did.

3. Jake Featherston runs for President of the Confederate States in 1921. In 1924, it is mentioned that he has just turned thirty-five, the minimum age requirement to serve in that office.

4. In The Center Cannot Hold, Abner Dowling speaks with "a distant relative of the last Democratic President [who was Theodore Roosevelt]" who is wheelchair bound as a result of poliomyelitis, a secretary in the Democratic Hoover Administration. Presumably this refers to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In Return Engagement, however, Roosevelt debuts as a lifelong Socialist official.

5. In The Victorious Opposition, Armstrong Grimes attends a high school history class in which the question "What happened to the border between the United States and the Confederate States between the end of the War of Secession and the end of the Great War?" is "correctly" answered "Nothing." In fact, the border was extended in 1881 with the Confederate purchase of the states of Chihuahua and Sonora from Mexico.

6. In How Few Remain, Thomas Jackson mentions that Jeb Stuart Jr. is seventeen years old. Stuart was born in 1860 and would therefore have been twenty-one at the time.

7. In The Grapple, a US military installation in Utah is named Fort Custer, and reference is made to George Armstrong Custer having been the commander of US forces in Utah during the Second Mexican War. In fact he was second-in-command to John Pope.

8. George Patton and George Herbert Walker are both Confederate nationals in the Second Great War. In fact they were born in California and Missouri respectively.

9. Josephus Daniels is said to have served as Secretary of the Navy in Theodore Roosevelt's administration during the Great War. Daniels was born in North Carolina and should therefore have been a Confederate national. Also, he was a socialist, making it even more unlikely he would have served in a Democratic Cabinet at a time when the Democratic Party was not seriously challenged by Socialist Party.

10. At the beginning of The Grapple, Hipolito Rodriguez reflects that his son Miguel is serving in Virginia and his son Jorge is serving in New Mexico. When Jorge debuts as a viewpoint character later in the novel, it is he who is assigned to the Army of Northern Virginia.

11. In The Center Cannot Hold, the Confederate state of Tennessee is reported to have voted for Calvin Coolidge in the 1928 US Presidential election.

12. In American Front, Woodrow Wilson is described as having been "a widower for twenty years," meaning that his wife, presumably Ellen Louise Wilson, died in 1894. In OTL she lived until 1915.

13. In Walk in Hell, Reggie Bartlett and Ralph Briggs hear US soldiers singing "Roll Out the Barrel" in 1915. The song was first composed in 1927 and the original lyrics were written in 1934.

14. From The Victorious Opposition on, Winston Churchill is Prime Minister of Britain. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American citizen, and thus there is at least a fair chance she would not have moved to Britain and married Churchill's father, as Britain was very clearly considered an enemy state at the time, a fact which has never been addressed.

15. In American Front Jake Featherston implied that he could remember the slaves being manumitted, which is unlikely given what we know about his age and the timeframe of manumission.

16. In Blood and Iron, Abner Dowling considers George Custer's use of the word "Reb" to refer to Confederates anachronistic in the extreme. However, during the Great War, just a few short years earlier, the term was used universally among US characters, including those as young as Mary Jane Enos--and by Dowling himself.

17. In The Center Cannot Hold, Mary McGregor Pomeroy is introduced for the first time as a viewpoint character, and her age is stated to be 13 (in 1924). In Drive to the East, she is said to be 35 (in 1942). If the first age reference were correct, she would have been born in 1911 and would only be 31 in 1942. If the second were correct, she would have been born in 1907.

18. In Blood and Iron, Hosea Blackford is stated to be 15 years older than Upton Sinclair (born 1878), which implies that Blackford was born in 1863. However, in The Victorious Opposition, Blackford is said to be nearing his 74th birthday in 1934, which implies that he was born in either late 1860 or early 1861, as does Abraham Lincoln's estimate that Blackford was "twenty-one or twenty-two" when they met on a train in How Few Remain. Nonetheless, Blackford claims to have been born "after the War of Secession, although just barely."

19. In How Few Remain, Ophelia Clemens is said to be four years old, which implies she was born in 1877; in Drive to the East, Clemens is revealed to be 15 years older than Flora Hamburger, which implies that Flora was born in 1892. However, Flora ran for Congress in 1916, which, if the age reference were correct, would have made her only 24 years old at the time of election, and would have made her ineligible to run at all (25 is the minimum age to run for Congress).

Clemens was, in fact, born in 1872.

20. In American Front, it is stated that Eugene V. Debs had twice run unsuccessfully for president before the Great War, before which the two most recent elections were in 1908 and 1912. However, in Blood and Iron, it is stated that Debs had lost to Theodore Roosevelt twice in 1912 and 1916, not counting 1908, and that Debs was not running for a third nomination.

21. In Drive to the East, Jonathan Moss is imprisoned in Andersonville Prison Camp in Georgia along with other officers ranging in rank from lieutenant to colonel. While it is certainly possible that Andersonville could have changed between its 1862 opening and the scenes' 1942 setting, it should be mentioned that Andersonville was originally a prison camp for enlisted men, and that no officers were kept there.

22. In Blood and Iron, it is mentioned that on July 4, 1918, Houston would become the 36th state in the Union, with Kentucky having been the 35th. However, the maps at the beginning of each novel in the Great War series show 33 states, with no new admissions prior to the readmission of Kentucky.

23. According to the treaty between the US and CS at the end of the Great War, the Rappahannock River became the new border between the nations and their respective states of West Virginia and Virginia. However, the maps included in each novel of the American Empire and Settling Accounts series show a border between the two that does not conform to the Rappahannock.

24. Although the Army of the Potomac captured Special Orders 191 prior to the OTL battle of Antietam, its commander, George McClellan, made so little use of the orders and their revelation that the Army of Northern Virginia was scattered across the Maryland countryside that by the time McClellan offered Robert E. Lee battle, all but one Confederate division had been reunited with the main body of the army. Thus, it is unlikely that keeping the order out of Union hands would have imparted any significant advantage to Lee.

25. In How Few Remain, Alfred von Schlieffen meets Nellie Semphroch and estimates her to be five years old. In The Victorious Opposition, Nellie claims she was "six or seven" years old during the Confederate bombardment of Washington, D.C. at the start of the Second Mexican War.

26. In The Victorious Opposition, the new Kaiser of Germany is called "Kaiser Friedrich I" of Germany and "Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm V" of Prussia. While Wilhelm II's eldest son was named Friedrich Wilhelm, he was known in OTL as Crown Prince Wilhelm. Thus had the Hohenzollern Dynasty remained in power in Germany, the Crown Prince would have been known as Wilhelm III upon his ascenscion.

27. In The Grapple, it is mentioned during Abner Dowling's drive towards Camp Determination that he and Daniel MacArthur had attempted to quell the rebellion in Houston prior to the 1941 plebiscite that returned it to the CSA. However, in The Victorious Opposition, it was Irving Morrell who was sent to Houston with MacArthur.

28. Doroteo Arango, the Radical Liberal Party's candidate for President of the Confederate States in the 1915 election, was born in the Mexican state of Durango and did not move to Chihuahua until 1894, thirteen years after that state had passed into Confederate hands; so he would not have been considered a natural citizen of the CS by any definition used for Chihuahuans and Sonorans born before their states changed hands, and thus would have been ineligible for the Presidency.

29. When Abraham Lincoln meets with British Ambassador Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons in the White House in the prologue of American Front, he makes reference to a French-backed "tinpot emperor" of Mexico, presumably a reference to Maximilian I. The scene takes place in 1862; Maximilian was installed as Mexican Emperor in 1864.

30. Jeb Stuart III was born in 1897. In American Front he debuts as a captain of artillery with command of an entire battery in 1914. Even allowing for the nepotism of the Old South from which he would immensely benefit, it is questionable whether he could have attained such rank at such a young age (17), though of course it is possible the name Jeb Stuart III would have been given to any son of Jeb Stuart Jr. regardless of whether he was the historical Jeb Stuart III.

31. In Walk in Hell, the Order of Lee is the second highest award that a Confederate Army man can recieve; right below the Confederate Cross. However in Return Engagement the Order of Albert Sidney Johnson is said to be the second highest award.

32. In The Center Cannot Hold, it is mentioned that Rita Martin's first husband was named Joe Habicht. However, in Return Engagement, she states that her first husband's name was Ed.

33. In American Front, Lyman Baum is a fighter pilot in the same squad as Jonathan Moss. Baum would have been the age of 58 in 1914, making him an unlikely choice for such a new field. In Return Engagement, Jonathan Moss remarks that during the Great War the field of combat aviation had been too new to include any seasoned older pilots.

34. In four seperate scenes in How Few Remain, Gilbert Moxley Sorrel, chief of staff to President James Longstreet, escorts General Thomas Jackson into Longstreet's office. That duty would fall to Longstreet's personal secretary, not his chief of staff.

35. In Breakthroughs we learn that Robert Lansing served as Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of State. In OTL, the two men passionately despised each other and disagreed on nearly every foreign policy issue of the day.

36. In The Victorious Opposition, Mary McGregor Pomeroy considers smoking a cigarette while she relaxes in her Rosenfeld flat. In Return Engagement, she purports to hate cigarettes.

37. In the prologue of How Few Remain, Ambrose Burnside and Joseph Hooker both serve as wing commanders in the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Camp Hill. On the Maryland Campaign, both Hooker's I Corps and Burnside's IX Corps were part of the army's right wing. Burnside commanded the wing, when the wing system was used at all; Hooker, who was junior to Burnside, did not serve as a wing commander.

38. In The Center Cannot Hold, Jake Featherston makes a campaign speech in which he says the US "took away two states and carved chunks out of three more". In addition to the annexation of Kentucky and Sequoyah, according to the maps provided in the front cover, four Confederate states lost territory: Virginia (northern part annexed to West Virginia), Arkansas (most of the bank of the Mississippi annexed to Missouri), Sonora (a wedge of territorry annexed to New Mexico) and Texas (the US state of Houston)

39. In The Grapple, Irving Morrell's drive on Atlanta is stymied by heavy rains. The fall of 1943 was not a particularly rainy time in Georgia.

40. In Breakthroughs, Theodore Roosevelt's Vice President is named "Kennan". In Blood and Iron, his name is "McKenna".

41. From the minute the Republic of Quebec is proclaimed, their flag is four white fleurs-de-lys and a white cross on a blue field. This is said to have been the previous provincial flag. The flag was not adopted by Quebec Province until 1948.

42. A monument commemorating Benjamin Braswell's posthumous foundation of a school for poor white children funded by the estate sale of thirteen slaves in 1817 is said to stand in Madison, Georgia. No such monument exists.

43. Upon the death of Charles XI of France in 1944, he is succeeded by Louis XIX. A Louis XIX had already reigned in France in 1830, albeit for a mere twenty minutes.

44. Near the end of The Grapple George Enos, Jr. moves into the position of loader on a 40mm anti-aircraft gun and Ekberg is introduced as the new shell-jerker. Near the beginning of In at the Death Marco Angelucci is introduced as the new shell-jerker.

45. In The Grapple, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary is named as Karl II. While Karl I had a son named Karl Ludwig, the next in line was Crown Prince Otto. The fact that Otto was alive as the time HT wrote the volume might explain the name change.

46. In Drive to the East, Scipio says in 1942 that Jerry Dover had known him for twenty years, so his white manager should not be surprised that Scipio could speak like an educated white. However, Scipio got his job at the Huntsman's Lodge and met Dover in the summer of 1933, only nine years before.

Inconsistencies in Thessalonica and The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

1. According to Turtledove's official website, "The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump does seem to be set in the same universe as Turtledove's own Thessalonica." However, in the former novel, Poseidon appears as a living god in no danger of extinction, and in the latter, it was established that Zeus had gone extinct because when a religion lost its followers the greatest gods were the first to die. In the Olympian tradition, Poseidon was the next-greatest god after Zeus, making his survival for many centuries beyond his brother's until religious tolerance in the western world advanced to the point that he could receive worship once again unlikely.

Inconsistencies in War Between the Provinces

1. Throughout the series, characters who are direct analogs to OTL historical figures are both met and referenced. In Advance and Retreat, reference is made to the Northern unicorn-rider commander Jeb the Steward, presumably a reference to Jeb Stuart. In Marching Through Peachtree, however, an earlier obvious reference to Stuart had called him Jeb the Beauty.

2. Similarly, California is at different points called Baja Province and The Golden Province.

3. In Sentry Peak, "Marquis" Joseph the Gamecock is mentioned. In Marching Through Peachtree, Joseph is a count, and apparently always has been.

4. Usually, the organization of Detinan armies is army-wing-brigade-regiment, but at certain points a divisional level seems to have been added between brigade and wing.

5. In Advance and Retreat, it is mentioned that General Peegeetee attacked Sumptuous Castle. In Sentry Peak, it was merely referred to as "a fortress in Karlsburg."

6. Given the extremely aristocratic nature of Detinan society, especially in the north, it seems unlikely that noblemen, statesmen, and generals would have the ordinary job skills indicated by names like Jeb the Steward, Thert the Butler, Daniel the Weaver, Patrick the Cleaver, and Richard the Haberdasher.

Inconsistencies in A World of Difference

1. When accused by his human visitors of being unsympathetic with the plight of mates like Lamra, Reatur bitterly tells them that every Minervan male who has seen a mate die has experienced sorrow, saying "We are not animals, and neither are they." However, earlier in the book he had privately reflected that "unlike some males" he treated mates as well as he could.

2. In Sergei Tolmasov's first scene as a POV, Oleg Lopatin is introduced by his correct name. However, later in the scene he is referred to as "Igor Lopatin."

Inconsistencies in Worldwar

1. In Upsetting the Balance, Heinrich Jager remembers destroying five of the Race's landcruisers in France. Earlier in the book he destroyed six in the battle referred to.

2. In In the Balance, Atvar is addressed as "kinsmale of the Emperor." We later learn that the Race does not keep track of kinship except for those in direct line of succession of the Ssumaz dynasty, and does not practice nepotism.

3. In In the Balance, Teerts destroys a British Spitfire and very casually describes it to his comrades as "easy as a female in heat." Earlier in the novel, Atvar had given his computer an "anatomically impossible" order. In Second Contact, Nesseref mentions that even thinking of mating behavior in the absence of the appropriate stimuli is indicative of severe hormonal imbalances. Neither Teerts nor Atvar was ever accused of hormonal imbalance.

4. In Aftershocks, Vyacheslav Molotov has a meeting with Urho Kekkonen, the Finnish ambassador to the Soviet Union. Kekkonen had held two Cabinet posts long before 1942 and was director of several important national offices during the Winter and Continuation Wars, all of which were more prestigious than an ambassadorship. He was also vehemently anti-Soviet and his appointment to the post would likely have alienated to Soviet Foreign Commisariat. For these reasons, he should be considered an unlikely ambassador.

5. In In the Balance, Atvar claims that the crime of regicide had never even occured to him or any other male of the Race till Vyacheslav Molotov boasted of the assassination of Nicholas II of Russia during the Russian Revolution. However, in Striking the Balance, he speaks of at least one instance of attempted regicide which is well known in the species's history.

6. In In the Balance, Atvar claims that Halless 1 was politically unified under a single imperial dynasty when the Race's Conquest Fleet arrived. In Homeward Bound, Wakonafula claimed that the planet had been divided among competing empires and that one benefit of the Race's arrival was poltical unification which put an end to warfare among the empires.

7. At Big Five meetings in In the Balance and Tilting the Balance, Shigenori Togo speaks German and Japanese but requires a translator to communicate with his English-speaking colleagues. However, at the Peace of Cairo conference in Striking the Balance, Togo has learned English well enough to conduct important, complex diplomatic negotiations on his own.

8. In Second Contact, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria are described as Germany's vassal states and are placed on a list of all the sovereign not-empires in the world that does not include Slovakia. In Down to Earth, the list is repeated at the outset of the Race-German War of 1965, and Slovakia has replaced Bulgaria, which is not mentioned at all.

9. In Tilting the Balance, Ttomalss shows Liu Han an ultrasound of the baby with which she is pregnant. Liu Han thanks him for showing her that she will have a male, presumably because she saw, or thought she saw, a penis in the picture. However, the child is born a female, Liu Mei, and neither Liu Han nor Ttomalss find this the least bit surprising.

10. From Striking the Balance onward, frequent references are made to the fact that Japan was shorn of its empire by the Race under the terms of the Peace of Cairo and remained sovereign only within its Home Islands. However, the maps at the fronts of the Colonization books show Japanese Pacific and Indochinese (though not Chinese) territory at or near its World War II height.