Get some new ideas in our regular column by Steven Savage. However, Bova s World War II is different than the one in our world. Franklin Delano Roosevelt has given up smoking and does not die on April 12. Churchill, meanwhile, has put a small piece of plutonium into a ceremonial sword he presented to Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference and has arranged to have the plutonium removed from its lead casing and placed in Stalin s proximity.
Triumph is pure alternate history with no real science fictional content.
The sort of story which makes the reader wonder why alternate history is included as a subgenre of science fiction. Nevertheless, it fails to completely satisfy the reader in a number of ways. Bova uses a large number of viewpoint characters during the 250 page book, ranging from the Roosevelt, Churchill and Patton down through the ranks to Grigori Gagarin, Kim Philby and fictional US army grunts. Because of the large cast, Bova is not fully able to define each character, relying more on the reader s own impression of the historical figures than trying to bring his own interpretation to them. Because there are so many characters, Bova is frequently not able to tie up all the plot threads he has begun.