While the eighteenth volume of the series included C.L. Moore’s Vintage Season and Robert Silverberg’s In Another Country, which takes place at the same time, this volume includes a story and an actual sequel. It also includes the first original story in the series (Silverberg’s story appeared in IASFM nearly a year before appearing in this story). From a production point of view, this is also the first volume that does not have an embossed cover.

The Wheels of If was originally published in Unknown Fantasy Fiction in October, 1940. The story is an alternate history tale that follows Allister Park. Park is a prosecutor in a world which seems to be our own. His current goal is to successfully prosecute the Antonini gang. He sees the successful prosecution as a stepping stone to being nominated for the position of District Attorney for the County of New York. However, when he awoke on Monday, April 11, it was clear that something was different. Park suddenly had a moustache and the New York in which he found himself was not the New York in which he was familiar.

Over the course of the next week, each time he woke up, he found himself in a slightly different body in a slightly different New York. It wasn’t until almost a week later that his life stabilized and Park found himself in the same New York for several days. Unfortunately for him, he was also tied up in that New York, unable to escape.

Park does manage to escape his captors and discovers that in his current world, his brain is inhabiting the brain of Bishop Ib Scoglund of New Belfast in a world in which there is a much stronger Celtic influence than our own. Scoglund is politically active and attempting to gain rights for the Skrellings, his world’s equivalent of native Americans. Park is much more politically savvy than Scoglund and not only brings his acumen to supporting Scoglund’s goals, but also creates a separate persona as Allister Park, who quickly works his way up the opposing political side to ensure he has all the power he needs. During his adventures, Park confides in a few close associates what has happened as he attempts to track down the low level hood who would appear to be able to restore him to his proper timeline.

The strength of The Wheels of If is de Camp’s concept behind his multiple worlds, in which there are several worlds which differ slightly from each other. Each person exists in multiple worlds, but in different versions based on the different timelines, so Allister Park and Ib Scoglund have the same ancestors at one point, but follow a similar line of ancestry, which makes them similar, but different. Although the reader only really is introduced to Scoglund’s timeline, de Camp hints at the other timelines.

With such a strong focus on Park/Scoglund, most of the other characters suffer underdevelopment and women are practically nonexistent in the story. Once Park figures out what is happening and masters his ability to mimic Scoglund, he focuses his efforts to building up his presence in the world as Park, which seems to happen, perhaps, a little too easily.

A little over two-thirds of the way through the novel, things tend to get bogged down as war comes to Vinland and Park finds himself managing the battles, with a little help from his Scoglund persona. Although Park is using the war to expand his power, this portion of the story fails to have the freshness that pervades the earlier parts of the story.

There is a ruthlessness to Park’s character perhaps indicative of the sort of attorney he was in his original world or perhaps showing how tough his original world was. He has no problem destroying people’s lives when they get in his way, although in at least one case, he runs up across a difference of culture that forces him into a physical conflict with one of his adversaries.

The Wheels of If is a foundational alternate history story, and, along with Lest Darkness Fall, one of the major works that resulted in de Camp winning the first Sidewise Special Achievement Award. Re-reading it, the world-building and the concepts of multiple and alternative worlds supports the novel’s reputation, even if the characters de Camp has created, aside from Park/Scoglund don’t quite stand up to scrutiny. The plot wanders a bit and de Camp doesn’t play with the dual roles Park is playing as much as he could have, although one character does notice the similarity between Park and Scoglund.

The Pugnacious Peacekeeper was an original story for the Tor Double line and is a sequel to L. Sprague de Camp’s The Wheels of If. This volume was published in the standard anthology format rather than tête-bêche , perhaps reflecting the two stories’ relationship to each other as original and sequel. Joe Burleson provided the cover.

Turtledove’s story accepts that Park has now fully taken on the role of Ib Scoglund, although Scoglund’s assistant, Eric Dunedin, is aware of the replacement. Turtledove has also jettisoned Scoglund’s position as a bishop and made him a judge of the International Court who is being sent from New Belfast to Kuuskoo in an effort to avoid a war between an Incan-based civilization and the neighboring empire established by Islamic invaders in a world in which the Spanish and Portuguese did not colonize South America.

Turtledove finds a good balance between building up his characters, providing more depth to the various people Park comes into contact with, than de Camp did. His Park is as competent as de Camp’s, without the need to play two roles. His assistant, Dunedin, is a logical extension of the character de Camp created, still coming to terms with some of his new master’s peccadillos, but demonstrating himself to be resourceful and more flexible than previously. Similarly, supporting characters are fleshed out more in The Pugnacious Peacekeeper than they were in The Wheels of If.

The story follows not only Park’s attempts at diplomacy and learning about the two empires he must deal with, but also with his personal life, as he meets Kuurikwiljor, a widow. This relationship gives Park additional insight into her culture, as well as potential connections he may be able to use as he tries to find a path to peace.

Despite Park’s best intentions, the two sides move, inexorably, toward war, exacerbated when a terrorist attack kills and injures several people in Kuuskoo. Despite the emirate denying complicity, there is retaliation, and as Park investigates, he realizes that both sides have been targeting civilians. He also learns that the two sides are essentially fighting the war for different reasons. The indigenous people are fighting a war against colonizers, while the Muslims are fighting a war against pagans, who their religion sees as less worthy as they are not People of the Book.

When the fighting heats up, Park is pulled away from Kuuskoo in a last attempt to find a peaceful solution. When an engine fails, he finds himself traversing the jungle by ship before finding another airplane to complete the journey. To occupy the time, he asks Ankowaljuu, an imperial inspector and one of his traveling companions to share the tenets of their religion so he could better understand the differences between the two combatants. Although Ankowaljuu is under the impression that Park is interested in converting to his religion, reading as much as he can about the situation he is in is a character trait de Camp established in The Wheels of If and which Turtledove built upon.

While the battle sequence in The Wheels of If slowed the story, when Park and his traveling companions arrive near the front, the story continues apace, perhaps because Turtledove doesn’t focus on the military aspects of the front, but rather the judicial, a space Park is specifically designed to occupy. Shot down by Muawiyah, an Muslim fighter pilot, Park finds himself arguing before a local qadi and eventually the emir, not only for his freedom, but also the freedom of his companions.

Set against the backdrop of first a potential, and then a real, war, Turtledove uses the story to explore the cultural differences between the two sides. Both sides are based on historic cultures, even if one of them has been overrun in our timeline, but the clash of cultures is a recurring theme throughout history and Turtledove makes it ring true.

The idea for this double came from Martin H. Greenberg, who pitched the idea to Harry Turtledove at the 1988 Nebula Awards in Hollywood.  Turtledove tried to capture the feel for the language de Camp had used and from an early stage in the writing sent a copy of the manuscript to de Camp.  De Camp liked the story, although he made one suggestion.  Turtledove had originally named the story Making Peace with the Land of War, but de Camp thought the title too long.  The results was the similarly paradoxical, but more alliterative The Pugnacious Peacekeeper.

Unique among the Tor Double line, this volume was later essentially reprinted by Baen Books in 1999 with the addition of Turtledove’s Hugo Award winning novella Down in the Bottomlands as Down in the Bottomlands and Other Places.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.