Note: The Roman numeral references the version put out by Baen books, available in print copy. The arabic numeral is the one used in the online version released by as part of the online magazine. Some remarks on the contents of this fourth volume of the Grantville Gazette: Once again, I had to go through my usual dance, trying to decide which stories should go under “Continuing Serials” and which should be published as stand-alone stories. This is a dance which, as the Gazette unfolds, is getting . . . Really, really complicated. In the end, I parsed the contents of this volume in such a way that only David Carrico’s “Heavy Metal Music” fell into the category of “Continuing Serials.” I am even willing to defend that choice under pressure, although—fair warning—my defense will lean heavily on subtle points covered by Hegel in his Science of Logic. (The big one, not the abridgment he did later for his Encyclopedia. So brace yourselves.) That said . . . Well, to give just one example . . . “Poor Little Rich Girls,” by Paula Goodlett and Gorg Huff, continues the adventures of the teenage tycoons-in-the-making that Gorg began in “The Sewing Circle” in Volume 1 of the Gazette and continued in the story “Other People’s Money” in Volume 3. Eventually, many of these characters will probably appear in a novel that I’m planning to write with the two of them. (As will the characters in David Carrico’s story, in a novel he and I are working on.) Note: Those books are 1636: The Viennese Waltz and 1636: The Devil’s Opera. The Barbie Consortium is a sequel to The Viennese Waltz by Paula and Gorg, without Eric. The same will probably prove to be true, sooner or later, with many of the other stories in this volume. The truth? The distinction I make for the Gazette between “continuing serials” and “stand-alone stories” is pretty much analogous to the distinction the law…
Eric Flint
Note: The Roman numeral references the version put out by Baen books, available in print copy. The arabic numeral is the one used in the online version released by as part of the online magazine. First, I need to apologize for the long delay between the publication of Volumes 2 and 3 of the magazine. That was due to several factors, only one of which-my own heavy writing schedule this past summer and early fall-was predictable. The others involved illnesses to two key people involved in the work, and the recent decision by Baen Books to issue a paper anthology which will contain about one-third of the material that had originally been planned for this volume. That decision, while it was one I welcomed, required us to do another round of story selection and editing. (The current working title for the anthology, by the way, is 1634: The Ram Rebellion. I hope to have it turned in by the middle of next year, in which case it should be published sometime in 2006.) Fortunately, however, the material for Volume 4 is already put together and needs only the final rounds of editing and copy-editing. So there shouldn’t be the same long delay between publication of this volume and the next. It should be available sometime in late January or February. People who’ve read the first two volumes of the Grantville Gazette will notice that I’ve added a section entitled “Continuing Serials.” In this section, I’m placing those stories whose episodes are clearly and definitely not stand-alone stories. In this issue, we conclude the short novel “An Invisible War,” which was begun in Volume 2, and we continued the episodes of Enrico Toro’s “Euterpe.” (Episode 3 will appear in Volume 4 or 5.) I readily admit that there’s a very gray area involved here, because some of the “stand alone” stories in this issue either continue a story thread begun in…
Note: The Roman numeral references the version put out by Baen books, available in print copy. The arabic numeral is the one used in the online version released by as part of the online magazine. As you can perhaps deduce from the simple existence of a paper edition of the second volume of the electronic magazine the Grantville Gazette, the first issue—which we did as an experiment, to see if there would be enough interest in such an oddball publication—proved to be successful. Quite successful, in fact, better than either I or my publisher, Jim Baen, had expected. The magazine’s been doing well, also. Five volumes of the Gazette have been published thus far, with more issues in the works. Now that I know the Gazette will be an ongoing project, at least in electronic format, I’ve got more leeway in terms of the kind of stories I can include in the magazine. A number of the fiction pieces being written in the 1632 setting are either long or are intended as parts of ongoing stories. There are two examples in this issue: Danita Ewing’s “An Invisible War”and Enrico Toro’s “Euterpe, episode 1.” In terms of its length, “An Invisible War” is technically a short novel. In the electronic edition, it was serialized over two issues of the magazine, the second half appearing in Volume 3. Since that wouldn’t be suitable for a paper edition, I included the entire novel in this volume. Enrico Toro’s story is somewhat different. Neither he nor I know what the final length of this story will be. Not to mention that in later volumes of the magazine, his story begins to intertwine with a series written by David Carrico. “Euterpe” is written in the form of episodes, each told in epistolary form by the narrator. I wanted to include it because (along with Gorg Huff’s story, “God’s Gifts”) Toro’s piece approaches the 1632 framework…
The Grantville Gazette originated as a by-product of the ongoing and very active discussions which take place concerning the 1632 universe Eric Flint created in the novels 1632, 1633, and 1634: The Galileo Affair (the latter two books co-authored by David Weber and Andrew Dennis, respectively). More books have been written and co-written in this series, including 1634: The Baltic War, 1634: The Bavarian Crisis, 1635: The Cannon Law, and 1635: The Dreeson Incident. 1635: The Eastern Front is forthcoming, and the book Time Spike is also set in the Assiti Shards universe. This discussion is centered in three of the conferences in Baen’s Bar, the discussion area of Baen Books’ web site. The conferences are entitled “1632 Slush,” “1632 Slush Comments,” and “1632 Tech Manual.” They have been in operation for almost seven years now, during which time nearly two hundred thousand posts have been made by hundreds of participants. Note: Baen’s Bar now has three areas for 1632. As of mid-2023, “1632 Tech” has 349 pages of content. I have no clue how many posts, comments, and participants that equates to, but it’s a lot. There are also 138 pages of “1632 Slush”. Every one of those comments on “slush” is a story submission, either new or revised. Since “1632 Slush Comments” doesn’t go back quite as far as “1632 Slush”, it “only” has 126 pages. Soon enough, the discussion began generating so-called “fanfic,” stories written in the setting by fans of the series. A number of those were good enough to be published professionally. And, indeed, a number of them were-as part of the anthology Ring of Fire , which was published by Baen Books in January, 2004. (Ring of Fire also includes stories written by established authors such as Eric Flint himself, as well as David Weber, Mercedes Lackey, Dave Freer, K.D. Wentworth and S.L. Viehl.) The decision to publish the Ring of Fire anthology triggered…
This is how it all started, with a post from Eric Flint to the “Authors” conference in Baen’s Bar. This was before there was such a thing as a “1632 Tech Manual” conference, and the proposed title was “Fire in the Hole” (later changed to 1632). Topic: Fire in the Hole (1 of 353), Read 501 times Conf: Authors From: Eric Flint Date: Tuesday, March 02, 1999 09:00 AM I’m posting a new topic in a shameless bid to enlist aid and assistance in my next book. Y’all understand this is a serious and solemn project and there’ll be none of the usual badinage, disrespect, wild-eyed-opinion-spouting, surly remarks and the other stuff that routinely transpires in the Bar. (Yeah, sure. And pigs will fly.) OK, here’s the problem. The novel I’m starting on, Fire in the Hole, requires a wide range of knowledge to write properly. Some of that I have (the history of the period, for instance). Some I can get, from friends. But some of it requires me to scramble like a monkey. Any help I can get will be appreciated. The setting of the novel is as follows: For reasons I won’t go into here (read the book when it comes out, heh heh), a small town in West Virginia finds itself transposed in time and place into Germany in the middle of the Thirty Years War. The time is spring/summer of l630 AD. The place is Thuringia, in central Germany. The Americans are in the middle of one of history’s worst wars and they have to survive (and hopefully, prosper). In order to do that, they have the resources available to them which would be in any small town in the area. I’m going to be leaving in three days to spend some time there (I used to live in the area — near Fairmont and Morgantown — but it was twenty years ago; things change).…