THE GLADIATOR.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: NOVEL

What if the Soviet Union won the Cold War and Americanstyle capitalism was all but wiped out? That's the premise of alt-history master Harry Turtledove's The Gladiator. Published in 2007, his Prometheus Award-winning novel places the fulcrum of its dark timeline somewhere around the Cuban Missile Crisis, setting up a communist cascade across Latin America, Asia, and Europe.

The book is part of Turtledove's Crosstime Traffic series, in which economically meddlesome chrononauts pop in and out of various parallel universes. In The Gladiator, they function as a time-traveling Nockian Remnant, guardians of...