''A World of Difference'' is a 1990

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

novel by American writer

Harry Turtledove Harry Norman Turtledove (born June 14, 1949) is an American author who is best known for his work in the genres of alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy, science fiction, and mystery fiction. He is a student of history and completed ...

. The book begins with a space voyage that departed

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

in an alternate 1989. In the universe of the book, the fourth planet from the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

, in the orbit occupied by

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...

in our reality, is named ''Minerva'', which is similar in size and makeup to

Plot summary

When the ''

Viking 1 ''Viking 1'' was the first of two spacecraft, along with ''Viking 2'', each consisting of an orbiter and a lander, sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking program. The lander touched down on Mars on July 20, 1976, the first successful Mars land ...

'' space probe lands on Minerva in 1976 it takes a picture of a native Minervan wielding a primitive tool, thus proving the existence of intelligent life on other worlds. The main action of the story involves separate American and

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

missions, who both pay lip service to non-interference with Minervan society, but in the course of their research, the teams' respective political ideologies inevitably come to the fore. This leads the teams and their commanders back home to use the Minervans in a transparent analogy to

Third World The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

proxy conflicts on Earth. One of the Americans saves the life of a female Minervan after she gives birth. Eventually Minervans get their hands on high tech items like steel hatchets, rubber rafts, and finally

AK-74 The AK-74 (Russian: , tr. ''Avtomat Kalashnikova obraztsa 1974 goda'', lit. 'Kalashnikov assault rifle model 1974) is an assault rifle designed by small arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1974. While primarily associated with the Soviet U ...

s, which severely disrupt their way of life.

The planet Minerva

Minerva has an atmosphere similar to Earth's and breathable by

humans Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...

, and liquid water exists in significant quantities on the surface. The planet's mean atmospheric temperature is lower than Earth's due to the greater distance from the sun, although the

greenhouse effect The greenhouse effect is a process that occurs when energy from a planet's host star goes through the planet's atmosphere and heats the planet's surface, but greenhouse gases in the atmosphere prevent some of the heat from returning directly ...

of its thicker atmosphere means that it is not as cold as our universe's Mars. The ancient astronomers of the novel name the bright blue/gray planet Minerva after the

goddess of wisdom A knowledge deity is a deity in mythology associated with knowledge, wisdom, or intelligence. Ancient Egyptian mythology * Neith, goddess sometimes associated with wisdom * Thoth, originally a moon deity, later became the god of knowledge and w ...

Minervan biology and society

Minervan animals (including the

sentient Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations. The word was first coined by philosophers in the 1630s for the concept of an ability to feel, derived from Latin '' sentientem'' (a feeling), to distinguish it from the ability to ...

Minervans) are hexameristically radially symmetrical. This means that they have six eyes spaced equally all around, see in all directions and have no "back" where somebody could sneak on them unnoticed. The different way that Minervans perceive their environment, and its major influence on their culture and way of life, is a significant plot element – especially important in the battle scenes towards the end. Females (referred to as "mates" by the Minervans) give birth to litters that consist of one male and five females, and the "mates" always die after reproducing because of torrential bleeding from the places where the six

fetus A fetus or foetus (; plural fetuses, feti, foetuses, or foeti) is the unborn offspring that develops from an animal embryo. Following embryonic development the fetal stage of development takes place. In human prenatal development, fetal deve ...

es were attached; this gives a population multiplication of 5 per generation if all females live to adolescence and reproduce. Females reach puberty while still hardly out of childhood, and typically experience sex only once in the lifetime – leading to pregnancy and death at birth-giving. Thus, in Minervan society male dominance seems truly determined by a biological imperative – though it takes different forms in various Minervan societies: in some females are considered expendable and traded as property, in other they are cherished and their tragic fate mourned – but still their dependant status is taken for granted. The American women arriving on Minerva and discovering this situation consider it intolerable; a major plot element is their efforts, using the resources of Earth medical science, to find a way of saving the Minervan females and let them survive birth-giving. At the end, they do manage to save a particularly sympathetic Minervan female – potentially opening the way for a complete upheaval in Minervan society. Technically, the Minervans can be said to be living in a

neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

society, since they use stone tools. However, though using no metals, their society is actually

feudal Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a wa ...

and comparable to late

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

Europe, and actually one of the Minervan societies depicted – the one contacted by the Soviets – shows the beginnings of

mercantile Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct exchan ...

capitalism (which is directly related to its being the more aggressive and predatory one). It is this nascent capitalist society which the Soviets decide to support in its effort to invade and conquer its feudal rival. This raises some eyebrows among the cosmonauts; however, as the resident ideologue explains to his bemused comrades, it is quite sound

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

doctrine, based on

Marx's theory of history Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborat ...

: Capitalism is more progressive than

Feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...

; therefore, helping it win will help prepare Minervan society to get to Socialism some centuries hence.

Earth

In addition to the existence of Minerva the book alludes to a variety of subtle differences between its history and ours. The fact that the fourth planet was blue rather than red as in our universe, and named for a different deity of the Classical pantheon, did not significantly change life on Earth.

Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

is mentioned as having seen Minerva in his telescope and made the first drawing of its surface; this did not, however, make his general career significantly different from in our timeline. However, fundamental differences seem to have started to develop since the mid-1970s. Following the discovery of intelligent life on Minerva, both superpowers engaged energetically on efforts to launch a crewed spacecraft there. This evidently had an effect of exacerbating tensions on Earth, with American and Soviet planes engaging three times in direct aerial combat over

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

– presumably drawn, after the Israeli Invasion of Lebanon in 1982, into a far deeper involvement than in our history. An escalation into all-out

nuclear war Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear w ...

was avoided only with difficulty, and though things have calmed down a bit by 1989 when the plot takes place, the

is still very much on, and the Soviet Union is still very much a

police state A police state describes a state where its government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the exe ...

keeping its citizens (even cosmonauts millions of miles from home) on a short leash.

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

had led for only nine months, and barely got started on

Glasnost ''Glasnost'' (; russian: link=no, гласность, ) has several general and specific meanings – a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information, the inadmissibility of hushing up problems, ...

, before dying from a stroke (though there are rumors of a secret assassination, which Soviet characters prudently avoid discussing too loudly).

Allusions to other works

The Georgian member of the Soviet crew, who has some frictions with his Russian crewmates due to cultural differences, is named "Shota Rustaveli" after the 12th century poet

Shota Rustaveli Shota Rustaveli ( ka, შოთა რუსთაველი, c. 1160 – after c. 1220), mononymously known simply as Rustaveli, was a medieval Georgian poet. He is considered to be the pre-eminent poet of the Georgian Golden Age and one of th ...

Publication history

''A World of Difference'' has been published in hardcover in Great Britain by

Hodder & Stoughton Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint (trade name), imprint of Hachette (publisher), Hachette. History Early history The firm has its origins in the 1840s, with Matthew Hodder's employment, aged 14, with Messrs ...

Translations

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

: ' (Mission to Minerva) (transl. by Carlo Borriello) Fanucci Editore, 2000. *

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

: (A Space Battle) (transl. by G.A. Il'insky) Rusich, 1997, .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:World Of Difference, A 1990 American novels Novels set during the Cold War Novels set on fictional planets Novels set on Mars Novels by Harry Turtledove 1990 science fiction novels Planetary romances American alternate history novels American science fiction novels Del Rey books Fiction set in 1989