I know I’ve been concentrating only on authors from Baen, but it’s what I’ve been reading lately, so… :) I *do* have non-Baen books lined up for reading after I finish what I’m currently reading, before the *next* Baen book (it’s actually part of this series) comes out lol!
But for now…some more Eric Flint :) This time, it’s all about the Assiti Shards Series, also known as the 1632 Universe. This series is…very different from anything else that you’ve read before…not because of the subject (SF/what-if/military) nor because of the quality (the usual great writing by Flint), but because it’s not only a series of books.
First of all, the premise of the series:
Due to a badly bunged artwork by an Assiti artist, a shard from a time-sculpture hits the Earth in the year 2000…and sends the small West Virginian town of Grantville back in time and to another geographycal spot…Thuringia, Germany, during the 30 Years War…more precisely, in 1632, right in the middle of it.
The Series talks about how the american uptimers manage (or not) to survive in the new, lethal environment in which they find themselfs, and about how the downtimers react to having a new town suddently appear in the middle of their countryside during the war.
Mike Stearn’s is the leader of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America, and when it all falls on the rotary air impeller, he steps up and is the one who tries to make sure everybody survives, and not only the uptimers…and one of the things he understands is that gearing down is what survival will be all about. Yes, the uptimers have all the modern tech that any town in the US has in the begining of the 21st century, but their manufacturing technology and their knowledgebase is not the same one that the whole modern world has, so…they have to find a way to build things as advanced as they can get them, within the constrictions that the manufacturing capabilities and resource access gives them in the Germany of 1632.
The daily struggle and the long-term goals…survival is at stake, and it’s up to the 3500 people that were yanked from their country and time to find a way to make it through, losing as little as possible of their society, knowledgebase and technology.
The Universe is currently made up of the books:
Then there’s the anthology called Ring of Fire which is edited by Flint with stories by several different authors.
Now…here’s the one thing that sets this Universe appart: The Grantville Gazette. This is an electronic magazine with fiction stories and science articles about different things related to the world in 1632 and what the Grantville people can and can’t do to change their world. Currently, there’s six volumes of the Gazette published:
- Grantville Gazette Volume I
- Grantville Gazette Volume II
- Grantville Gazette Volume III
- Grantville Gazette Volume IV
- Grantville Gazette Volume V
- Grantville Gazette Volume VI
This Gazette is very much like any other F/SF ‘zine out there, except…it’s only about the Assiti Shards Series. All the stories (either short stories or serials) are part of the Universe, and Flint makes sure they all fit into the Series correctly. The ‘zine accepts submissions by anybody and everybody, as long as they survive the process for acceptance (which isn’t easy…both the writers and readers of this series are…picky :) The Gazette is so much a part of the Universe that the third book (1634: The Galileo Affair) and the fourth book (1634: The Ram Rebellion, already out in hard cover and out in e-book format in May) are based on characters created by writers that got their first pro publishing in the Gazette.
If writing fiction isn’t your thing, you can always submit a science article, about how to “gear down” the tech that the Grantville residents have information about to what is possible with the current resources and technology of the 1630’s (the article about getting rubber in the 1630’s in Volume VI is great, for instance, as well as the one about radio in Volume I)…these articles give a particularly interesting view into the difficulties the uptimers face in trying to make life as good as possible in the 1630’s.
This is one of the best what-if historical series I’ve read in a long long time (together with the Belisarius Series, in which Flint also has his hand), and it’s well worth reading it.
Technorati Tags: science fiction, Eric Flint, 1632, 30 Years War, books, what-if history
Tags: Books, Reviews
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