TRIUMPH

Intriguing speculation on a major historical turning point, from the veteran editor-writer (Mars, p. 503, etc.)—namely, what if Franklin Delano Roosevelt had lived and Josef Stalin had died? Well, in Bova's persuasive April 1945 scenario, FDR, having quit smoking, consequently never dies of a stroke. Elsewhere, that master of intrigue, Winston Churchill, plots Stalin's assassination: hidden inside the Sword of Peace presented to the dictator at Yalta was a wafer of deadly plutonium; ambitious Soviet security chief Beria arranges for the plutonium to be placed inconspicuously in Stalin's desk—and within weeks the dictator is dead of a "mysterious" illness. A Kremlin power struggle ensues, crucially delaying the Soviet assault on Berlin. In the Western Allies camp, meanwhile, after much arm-twisting by Churchill, FDR orders General Patton's Third Army to advance on Berlin; in clue course, the city falls to a combined American and Soviet assault. Patton, however, fails to survive his triumph when his jeep hits a land mine. And the long-term consequences of all this, barely hinted at in the narrative: no postwar Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, no cold war, and no nuclear-arms race. Though sometimes blurred in the fine detail (Bova has problems with British speech and idioms, for instance): a low-key, convincing what-if, stuffed with famous figures and likely to tempt WW II buffs, as well as Bova fans and sf regulars.