The Best of Harry Turtledove

This imaginative collection from Hugo Award winner Turtledove (Down in the Bottomlands) brings together 24 “what if” stories set in surprisingly altered Earths. “Junior & Me” asks what if dinosaurs, rather than hominids, evolved to create a rowdy version of the American Wild West, while “Bedfellows” explores what would happen if a U.S. president (“W”) fell in love with a terrorist chieftain (“O”). After the Nazis win WWII and exterminate all European Jews in the intense “Shtetl Days,” the historical reenactors employed by a tourist trap “Jew Village” slowly begin to feel the moral component of their roles during their enactments of the High Holy Days. In “Typecasting,” the giant Sasquatch governor of a Western state discovers that his daughter has been given the part of Caliban in The Tempest because the insensitive director believes she’s ugly enough to play the role without makeup. Readers willing to entertain such diverse speculations—or relax with a wacky, pun-saturated yarn about “a muppetoid heroine in chainmail and her clunky sidekicks” (“The Mammyth”)—are sure to be entertained by this massive collection. [em]Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary. (Apr.) [/em]