''The Valley-Westside War'' is a 2008 American

young adult A young adult is generally a person in the years following adolescence. Definitions and opinions on what qualifies as a young adult vary, with works such as Erik Erikson's stages of human development significantly influencing the definition of ...

alternate history Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, altern ...

novel by Harry Turtledove. It is the sixth and final book in the

Crosstime Traffic ''Crosstime Traffic'' is a series of books by Harry Turtledove. The central premise of the stories is an Earth that has discovered access to alternate universes where history proceeded differently. "Crosstime Traffic" is the name of the company ...

series.

Background

In ''The Valley-Westside War'', a global

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 ...

broke out between the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

in 1967, leading to the collapse of civilization. The book is set in the ruins in what was once

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

, 130 years after the war. The area of the city is controlled by two rival feudal states at war with one another: the Kingdom of Westside and the Kingdom of the Valley. The

team is dispatched to investigate the remains of the

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

library in an attempt to discover what happened to cause the initial nuclear war, but are caught up in the local war by citizens of both kingdoms who believe that they are trying to access the knowledge of the old people to create advanced weapons.

Plot summary

The Mendoza family, funded by a Crosstime Traffic grant and disguised as traders, return to postwar Earth to learn who initiated the hostilities. Liz Mendoza frequently visits the UCLA library to analyze the period books and magazines, searching for insight and reasons for the conflict. It is on her regular trips to the library that she meets Dan, a Valley soldier whom she initially considers dull and dumb. Dan, however, is not as unschooled and ignorant as Liz thinks, and, although he is attracted to her, he has his misgivings about the Mendozas. His suspicions are confirmed, and he blows their cover and causes them to return to their own time alternate, but not before he asks why someone from a different time, who has the knowledge and expertise to help Earth recover from its postwar havoc, does nothing.

Reception

The '' School Library Journal'' gave the novel a good review saying fans of

dystopia A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...

s would enjoy the story. SF Scope said the novel was "an interesting exploration of what a post-apocalyptic world might be" but found the characters, except for Liz and Dan, to be little more than ciphers. The '' Los Angeles Times'' did not give a positive review describing the book as sloppy and saying it failed to live up to other dystopias based on alternate histories like '' The Man in the High Castle'', ''

The Difference Engine ''The Difference Engine'' (1990) is an alternative history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is widely regarded as a book that helped establish the genre conventions of steampunk. It posits a Victorian era Britain in which great t ...

'', or ''

The Plot Against America ''The Plot Against America'' is a novel by Philip Roth published in 2004. It is an alternative history in which Franklin D. Roosevelt is defeated in the presidential election of 1940 by Charles Lindbergh. The novel follows the fortunes of the R ...

''.

References

2008 American novels Crosstime Traffic novels American post-apocalyptic novels Novels set during World War III Novels set in Los Angeles Fiction set in the 2090s Tor Books books Novels set in fictional wars {{2000s-ah-novel-stub

Background

Plot summary

Reception

See also

References