The Gladiator is a 2007 Harry Turtledove novel for young adults. Part of the loose Crosstime Traffic family of books it is set in a world in an alternate history in which the Soviet Union has won the Cold War. It tied with Jo Walton's Ha'penny for the 2008 Prometheus Award. The Gladiator follows the same concept as the other Crosstime Traffic novels. A parallel world similar in most respects to our own has discovered the technology to visit and trade with other parallels, spreading the notions of liberty and capitalism at the same time. The plot of The Gladiator follows the same formula of... the other books in the series with an imperiled company operative and local protagonists being used as guides to the parallel. In The Gladiator it is indeed the capitalist West that has been consigned to the "dustbin of history" and the world has been remade in the image of the Soviet Union. The point of divergence from ours was the decision of the United States to allow the Soviet missiles to remain in Cuba during the Cuban Missile crisis and the complete withdrawal from Vietnam in 1968.
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| Author: | Harry Turtledove |
| Genre: | Alternate history, Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative fiction |
| Year published: | 2007 |
| Number of editions: | 1 |