Harry Turtledove

Harry Norman Turtledove (born June 14, 1949) is an American novelist, best known for alternate history, historical fiction, fantasy and science fiction.

Early life and education

Turtledove was born in Los Angeles, California on June 14, 1949, and grew up in the nearby city of Gardena, California. His paternal grandparents, who were Jewish Romanian immigrants, had first settled in Winnipeg, Canada, before moving to California. He was educated in local public schools in early life.

After dropping out during his freshman year at Caltech, Turtledove attended UCLA, completing his undergraduate degree and receiving a Ph.D. in Byzantine history in 1977. His dissertation was titled The Immediate Successors of Justinian: A Study of the Persian Problem and of Continuity and Change in Internal Secular Affairs in the Later Roman Empire During the Reigns of Justin II and Tiberius II Constantine (AD 565–582).

Career

In 1979, Turtledove published his first two novels, Wereblood and Werenight, under the pseudonym "Eric G. Iverson." Turtledove later explained that his editor at Belmont Tower did not think people would believe the author's real name was "Turtledove" and came up with something more Nordic. He continued to use the "Iverson" name until 1985. Another early pseudonym was "Mark Gordian."

Great War (series)

Great War is an alternate history trilogy by Harry Turtledove, which follows How Few Remain. It is part of Turtledove's Southern Victory Series series of novels. It takes the Southern Victory Series Earth from 1914 to 1917.

The Great War saga

Smarting from two defeats at the hands of the Confederate States of America, which was allied with the United Kingdom and France, the United States of America has turned to an alliance with the strengthening German Empire as well as Austria Hungary, and The Ottoman Empire. The US military has been reformed along German lines, and gets a great deal of technical assistance from Germany, especially with regard to fighter aircraft. The antebellum Republican Party has mostly collapsed, discredited by the defeats, leaving the right-winged Democratic Party and the left-winged Socialist Party (whose rise was aided by the defection of former president Abraham Lincoln and his supporters from the Republicans to the Socialists) as the main political parties in the United States.

World War I

World War I (WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War, or the Great War, was a global war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. Over 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians died as a result of the war (including the victims of a number of genocides), a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents' technological and industrial sophistication, and the tactical stalemate caused by trench warfare, a grueling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved.

The war drew in all the world's economic great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom/British Empire, France and the Russian Empire) versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Although Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary, it did not join the Central Powers, as Austria-Hungary had taken the offensive, against the terms of the alliance. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war: Italy, Japan and the United States joined the Allies, while the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers.

Great War (disambiguation)

The Great War is an alternative term for World War I. It may also refer to:

Historical conflicts

These are all in translation from the original language.

Works of popular culture

Transformers (toy line)

The Transformers (トランスフォーマー, Toransufomā) is a line of toys produced by the Japanese company Takara (now known as Takara Tomy) and American toy company Hasbro. The Transformers toyline was created from toy molds mostly produced by Japanese company Takara in the toylines Diaclone and Microman. Other toy molds from other companies such as Bandai were used as well. In 1984, Hasbro bought the distribution rights to the molds and rebranded them as the Transformers for distribution in North America. Hasbro would go on to buy the entire toy line from Takara, giving them sole ownership of the Transformers toy-line, branding rights, and copyrights, while in exchange, Takara was given the rights to produce the toys and the rights to distribute them in the Japanese market. The premise behind the Transformers toyline is that an individual toy's parts can be shifted about to change it from a vehicle, a device, or an animal, to a robot action figure and back again. The taglines "More Than Meets The Eye" and "Robots In Disguise" reflect this ability.