Joe Steele by Harry Turtledove

Harry Turtledove’s Joe Steele is an alternate history of the United States stretching from the Great Depression to the 1950s in which a version of Stalin who had immigrated to the United States becomes President instead of FDR. Turtledove is the prolific master of alternate history having written over fifty novels in the genre in numerous series. I’ve only read a few myself, but Joe Steele is firmly within his established formula.

Turtledove maps actual history onto alternate events. Steele’s American Rise follows Stalin’s Soviet rise fairly closely. Familiar historical figures are placed in similar yet occasionally revealing situations. J. Edgar Hoover as Steele/Stalin’s strong-arm man is particularly compelling and damningly plausible. Unlike in his masterwork, however, where he extrapolated an entire altered 20^th Century out of the South winning the US Civil War, Joe Steele remains unexpectedly close to real world events.

The specter of a United States run by a version of Stalin is an intriguing concept, and like many of Turtledove’s best works stems from a plausible change. Turtledove never quite made the most of his scenario, and as with many of his novels, the characters fell a little flat. Joe Steele, nevertheless, is a fast paced alternate history thriller filled with interesting ideas written by the master of the genre. Turtledove knows how to write these kinds of books and that familiarity and ease is both the novel’s great strength and it’s weakness.

 

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Joe Steele can be found here on Amazon

Received a Copy From NetGalley For Review

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