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Hail Friends, I will begin with a little reminiscing, then share some news with you. I became the Art Director of the Grantville Gazette back in 2008 with Volume 15 after my dear friend Paula Goodlett saw a photo of me that I had doctored up in Photoshop to be wearing ‘Paula Goodlett, Editor’ swag that the Gazette was selling through an online store, it was all really just for fun! I told her I was her “biggest fan”! She laughed and said “You’re pretty good with Photoshop, how would you like to be the Art Director?” I happily played that role for the following 87 issues to the final one, 102. I had a great time, what a pleasure it was! Thanks, Paula! I was terribly sad to see it end. We all mourn Eric, and I am sure you who are reading this are, like me, grateful to him for creating such a wonderful fictional world and inviting all of us to come play in it! I have a lot of fond memories, but I have already gone on too long! So, onto the news. When the new magazine’s owners asked me to join them to help get it started, I was pleased and proud to do so. I am so glad that they were able to get the Grantville’s Gazette’s successor up and running, it is wonderful to see Eric’s world growing and changing, I think it’s safe to say he would have been delighted by all of this! I humbly thank Bethanne, Bjorn, and Chuck for the opportunity to get back in that saddle for a time, it was a pleasure. But, with all new things, change comes, too. And so, I am writing to you today to let you know that I will no longer be the Art Director of Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond magazine. My last issue in that position was #7. That…

Getting Started Writing Bjorn Hasseler             I don’t remember where the idea for Neustatter’s European Security Service came from.             I remember going to the library—the New Carrollton branch of the Prince Georges County, Maryland library system—looking for Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars trilogy.  I read the first two, but The Last Command was never on the shelf.  A couple shelves up or down, though, was a set of eight matching books that were clearly a science fiction series.  About the third time the Zahn book wasn’t there, I grabbed David Weber’s first Honor Harrington book, On Basilisk Station.  Then I came back got the next two, and the next two, until I’d read up to Echoes of Honor, which was the most recent one on the shelf.  (Ashes of Victory wasn’t staying on the shelf any more than The Last Command was.)             And then I was out of things to read again.  I walked down the aisle, and I saw this book whose cover has three guys in a pickup facing off against a couple guys in armor.  It had the same rocket ship publisher logo the Honor Harrington books had.  I figured it would be a fun read.             1632 turned out to be awesome.             This was sometime between when 1632 was published (February, 2000) and when I moved (December, 2003).  At that time, lots of people had websites dedicated to their favorite series, organized into “webrings.”  They drove traffic to each other.  At some point (it took a while), I found Baen’s Bar.  1632 had three chat boards:  Slush, Slush Comments, and Tech.  They weren’t just talking about the book; they were working on actual stories in the 1632 universe—that were going to count.  And anybody could play.  I think by then 1633 had come out, and if Ring of Fire wasn’t out yet, it was certainly a done deal.  So it was probably 2004 or…

Eric Flint Bibliography (Chronological) NOTE: For those of you who prefer your bibliographies chronologically, here it is. This page does not include the classic SF series I’ve edited. — Eric Flint. 1970Trade and Politics in Barotseland During the Kololo Period, 1970 Journal of African History (Volume XI:1) 1993Entropy and the Strangler, (short story), in Writers of the Future Volume IX 1997Mother of Demons, September 1997 (pb) 1998An Oblique Approach, March 1998 (pb) with David DrakeIn the Heart of Darkness, August 1998 (pb) with David Drake 1999Destiny’s Shield, July 1999 (HC) with David Drake 20001632, February 2000 (HC)Destiny’s Shield, June 2000 (pb)Fortune’s Stroke, June 2000 (HC) with David DrakeRats, Bats & Vats, September 2000 (HC) with Dave FreerThe Thief and the Roller Derby Queen, (short story), in The Chick is in the Mail, edited by Ester Friesner, October 2000, (pb) 20011632 February 2001 (pb) From the Highlands, (short novel), in More than Honor #3: Changer of Worlds with David Weber March 2001 (HC)The Philosophical Strangler, May 2001 (HC)Carthago Delenda Est, (novella), in Foreign Legions, edited by David Drake, June 2001, (HC)Fortune’s Stroke, July 2001 (pb)The Tide of Victory, July 2001 (HC), October 2002 (pb) with David DrakeRats, Bats & Vats, September 2001 (pb)Pyramid Scheme, October 2001 (HC), with David Freer 2002From the Highlands, (short novel), in More than Honor #3: Changer of Worlds February 2002 (pb)The Philosophical Strangler, March 2002, (pb)Forward the Mage, March 2002 (HC) with Richard RoachThe Shadow of the Lion, March 2002 (HC) with Mercedes Lackey & Dave FreerThe Tyrant, April 2002 (HC) with David DrakeThe Islands in Warmasters, an anthology, May 2002 (HC) with David Drake and David Weber1633, August 2002 (HC), with David Weber“Carthago Delenda Est,” (novella), in Foreign Legions, September 2002 (pb)The Tide of Victory, October 2002 (pb) with David Drake 2003Pyramid Scheme, February 2003 (pb), with David Freerâ–ª “Fanatic,” (novella) in The Service of the Sword, the fourth Harrington anthology, April 2003 (HC), compiled by David Weber1633, July 2003 (pb)Forward the Mage, August 2003, (pb)The Course…

Book clubs are fantastic! We would love to hear about any book clubs reading and discussing 1632 and any books or magazines in the 1632verse. To answer one common question: The book was originally expected to be a stand-alone book, not a series. Jim Baen, of Baen Books, said that books with even numbers sell better than ones with odd numbers. Thus, it was named for the year the story ends instead of the year it starts. And so that is why all the names for “mainline” Baen books in the 1632verse start with the year the book ends and not the year it starts. General Questions: How realistic do you think 1632 is? What elements make it more, or less , realistic? Is there anything you would change to make it more realistic? Do you think Grantville and the up-timers are a good reflection of a real small town in West Virginia in 2000? 1632 was published in 2000. Over 50 novels, 104 magazine issues, and multiple anthologies in the 1632verse have been written by approximately 200 authors in nearly 25 years. When it was first written, everything was contemporary. Twenty-five years later, technology, pop culture, and a lot of other background things have changed. What challenges do you think this presents to the writers? How do you think readers will respond to this story when the series is 50 years old? How do you think Eric Flint’s life and beliefs are reflected in this novel? What do books and libraries contribute to the plot and to the 1632verse? How much power do Grantville and its residents have to change their world? How do the up-timers comfort themselves when they are sent back in time? How do the down-timers comfort themselves with all the war-related trauma in their lives? How do you think you would cope if you were in their shoes? Other than the way Grantville was sent…

aka: Mannington in 1630s Germany (alternate history series) What does that mean? In 2000, Baen Published Eric Flint’s alternate history novel 1632. Eric lived in Granville, West Virginia when he was working for the unions in the 60s and loved it, so he wanted to show small-town West Virginians making the world better. By 2000, Granville had changed (lots of big box stores), so he looked for a small town closer to his memories and chose Mannington, renamed Grantville in the novel, as his model. In 1632, Grantville is sent back from April 2000 to May 1631 and lands in Thuringia, Germany during the Thirty Years War. They quickly realize they need to make the tools to make the tools to make the things we take for granted in the 21st century, such as light bulbs and toilet paper. Some things, like drugs including penicillin, are simply too far beyond their resources, including their knowledge. For those living in the 17th century, even simple (to us) things like basic sanitation have profound impacts. Grantville is very much a boomtown. Is Grantville identical to Mannington? No, but you have to look close to find differences (other than names). The biggest is that Grantville has a power plant but no oil. Buildings that are demolished in the real world still exist in the 1632verse, particularly near the interchange of Water and Market Streets. The more time passes, the more the two diverge, of course. The massive size of the universe requires extensive coordination. Keeping buildings and geography fairly tightly tied to Mannington makes this easier. For characters, we have something called “the Grid” that lists everyone who came back through the Ring of Fire (the up-timers). Down-timers are people who were already there when Grantville arrived in 1632 or who were born after that. The jobs, birth dates, death dates, family trees, education, age at marriage – all of it was based…

As a small town, up-time Grantville didn’t have a lot of claims to fame. Down-time? It’s the most famous place on the planet, reputed to be a magical place filled wealth and wonders untold. It’s a bustling city whose size is primarily constrained by the local geography. This local geography is one constraint that ensures it will remain smaller than many other cities for the foreseeable future, and that real estate will remain quite valuable. Up-time, the round “Red Barn” run by the historical society and the County Fair were probably the two biggest attractions. They also had Oktoberfest (relatively new in 2000) and the Great Buffalo Canoe Race. Interestingly, down-time Germany did not have Oktoberfest, which didn’t start until the nineteenth century. They did, however, have tons of local fairs, festivals, and other events, both secular and religious in nature, which are not included in this list. Attractions and Annual Events: Breitenfeld Day (September) This is a new down-time holiday to celebrate the victory at Breitenfeld. Canoe Race (May) The Great Buffalo Canoe Race was normally scheduled in May (up-time), but the exact date was based on water flow rates and other weather-related factors. It may need to be scheduled down-time. It also may need to be moved since Fairmont is gone and the new down-stream route may not work for a canoe/kayak race. Description: A canoe race on the Buffalo Creek between Mannington and Fairmont, WV. Saturday, May 6th, 2000. Rain date is May 13th, 2000. Sponsored by The West Virginia Police Reserves. Registration begins at 8:00am at the Hough (pronounced “Huff”) Park Community Building in Hough Park, Mannington. The race starts at 10:00am. Racers may drop over the falls at their own risk, but it is not recommended. The DNR and West Virginia Police Reserves are not responsible for any injuries or accidents. On Sunday, May 7th at 2:00pm there will be a picnic and awards will be given at…

If you’ve ever built a WordPress site, you’ll have seen that new sites are set up so the first post is “Hello world!” Sitting here, about to delete this post, I decided what the heck – I’ll go with it! Welcome to Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond. This is our first post. Read it or skip it, then start reading! You may notice that while this is “our first post,” there are dozens and dozens of older posts. The explanation for that is simple: Those are blog posts, magazine forewords, and other things written primarily by Eric Flint himself but also by other people working for and with him. In fact, one of the two sticky posts at the top of this blog is something Eric wrote in 2005! Hopefully you enjoy reading them! Even if you don’t read any of the rest, please read the one pinned to the top of the blog. It’s Eric’s view on what the 1632verse magazine was all about, and it’s worth the short time it takes to read. All joking aside, we are very proud to be sharing this all new venture. We announced the existence of a new short-story venue for Eric Flint’s 1632 Universe, the magazine “Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond”, at LibertyCon on June 23, 2023. The first issue will be published on 1 August, 2023, with new issues every two months after that. So, look for new issues on the 1st of every odd numbered month! To be assured of not missing a month, please click here to subscribe now. Updated January 26, 2024

by Jeff | Jun 8, 2021 | Interviews https://youtu.be/stKjEC1CZ2k JMW: Hello, this is Jean Marie Ward for BuzzyMag.com. With me today is Eric Flint, the New York Times bestselling author of over 50 novels and the creator of the ever expanding 1632 Universe. Welcome, Eric. When you sat down to write the proposal for 1632, what made you think it would be a good idea to transplant West Virginia miners into the Germany of the Thirty Years War? Eric Flint: Well, what I wanted to use the novel for…novels should work on several levels. One of them is just entertainment. And I write action-adventure novels. So I wanted something in a setting that would allow me to do that which the Thirty Years War was certainly good for. Thirty Years War was kind of sheer chaos that was probably, most historians would agree, the most destructive war Europe ever went through, worse than any of the two world wars, especially in terms of its impact on Central Europe, which is centered on Germany but involves other countries around what’s today the Czech Republic, other parts. At the time, that was really the center of Europe. And that was true politically, as well as culturally. Through a mysterious ancient alien civilization the residents of Grantville, West Virginia are thrown back in time to 1631 Germany in the middle of the 30 Years War. On top of coping with the shock of being displaced in time and location, the people of Grantville must overcome the surrounding raging war, language barriers, and numerous social and political issues, including class conflict, witchcraft, feminism, the reformation and the counter-reformation, among many other factors. The image people have of Germany is a Germany that was created out of the Thirty Years War and the outcome of it. But the Germany prior to the early years of the Thirty Years War is a very, very different place. It was very dynamic. It was quite…

by Eric Flint | Feb 19, 2020 | Blog | 23 comments “Tempus fugit” is a Latin phrase that officially translates as “time flies.” What it really is, though, is a hoity-toity way of saying “old farts forget stuff.” The old fart in this instance being me—and what I forgot was that my novel 1632 was published exactly twenty years ago. Well… Using the term “exactly” with some poetic license. The book was indeed published in February of 2000, but I’m pretty sure it was published earlier than the 18th day of the month. So I’m fudging a little. By any reasonable measure of the term “success,” 1632 was a successful novel. To begin with, it was successful on its own terms. It sold—this is taken directly from my royalty reports so there’s no fudging at all—7,458 copies in hardcover, which was very good at the time for hardcover sales. Better still, it also had a 69% sell-through. For those of you not familiar with publishing lingo, “sell-through” means the percentage of books printed and shipped that are actually sold. The industry average is around 50%, so 69% is very good, That was the initial hardcover print run. Since then, Baen Books has done a special edition leather-bound hardcover edition ($36.00 a copy BUT CHEAP AT THE PRICE) that has sold 765 copies at a 77% sell-through. Furthermore, the novel is still in print after twenty years, and has sold over 140,000 copies in paperback with a 88% sell-through, which is like incredibly, spectacularly good. A publishing house which has a book that maintains an 88% sell-through over two decades has essentially been able to legally print money for all that time. And—I love this fact because I sneer at so-called “electronic piracy”—keep in mind that 1632 has been available electronically FOR FREE for about the last eighteen years and… still just keeps selling and selling. Every year I get royalty payments for the book somewhere between $4,000 and $5,000. But the novel doesn’t stand on…

(aka the Ring of Fire series)by Eric Flint Whenever someone asks me “what’s the right 1632 series reading order?”, I’m always tempted to respond: “I have no idea. What’s the right order for studying the Thirty Years War? If you find it, apply that same method to the 1632 series.” However, that would be a bit churlish—and when it comes down to it, authors depend upon the goodwill of their readers. So, as best I can, here goes. The first book in the series, obviously, is 1632. That is the foundation novel for the entire series and the only one whose place in the sequence is definitely fixed. The digital eBook edition of 1632 is available as a free download at Baen.com. Click here to get your free copy! Thereafter, you should read either the anthology titled Ring of Fire or the novel 1633, which I co-authored with David Weber. It really doesn’t matter that much which of these two volumes you read first, so long as you read them both before proceeding onward. That said, if I’m pinned against the wall and threatened with bodily harm, I’d recommend that you read Ring of Fire before you read 1633. That’s because 1633 has a sequel which is so closely tied to it that the two volumes almost constitute one single huge novel. So, I suppose you’d do well to read them back to back. That sequel is 1634: The Baltic War, which I also co-authored with David Weber. Once you’ve read those four books—to recapitulate, the three novels (1632, 1633 and 1634: The Baltic War) and the Ring of Fire anthology—you can now choose one of two major alternatives for the 1632 series reading order. The first way, which I’ll call “spinal,” is to begin by reading all of the novels in what I will call the main line of the series. As of now, the main line consists of these seven novels: 16321633 (with David Weber)1634: The Baltic War (with David Weber)1635: The Eastern Front1636: The Saxon…

There is much to be said for inventiveness and imagination. Given our head, half the population of Grantville at the moment of the Ring of Fire would have contained exactly the right mix of characters and equipment to make our story a real whiz bang yarn. Hence the need for Virginia’s Grid. Unfortunately there too many of us and too many of these halves. Chaos is an ugly word. It’s worse than that. In addition to the half who are rocket scientists and the other half who are SEALS, Eric has provided us a list of the following additional halves: The half who are engineers, which are in turn divided into half electrical engineers, half locomotive engineers, half chemical engineers, half mechanical engineers, and too many thirds and quarters to count. The half who are collectors of all forms of weapons, including the third who collect Abrams tanks and Predators. The half who have a library larger than the Library of Congress. The half who have a library smaller than the Library of Congress, but significantly larger than the Great Library of Alexandria. The half who are above the age of 18 and below the age of 21. The half who are above the age of 21 and below the age of 23. The half who are above the age of 23 but below the age of 25. The half who are college graduates. The half who are one month away from graduating from college. The half who are one year away from graduating from college. The half who have advanced degrees in (see above, not forgetting the thirds and quarters). There is, I believe — at last count — exactly one person in everybody’s fantasy Grantville who is elderly and illiterate. Of course, he’s also the son of Alvin York and shoots even better than his daddy.

In the 1632 novels, you get—more or less—The Big Picture featuring the Stars of the Story. In the 1632 anthologies, you get basically more of the same, simply with a narrower and tighter focus and (often but not always) featuring a worthy character actor who gets his or her day to strut on the stage. What do you get in the Gazette? All the shenanigans of everybody else, that’s what. The damn spear-carriers, run amok. Slice of life story piled onto family sagas—functional and dysfunctional alike—and all of it ladled over with a heavy scoop of personal melodrama. I mean, honestly. Who cares—just to name one example—if Karen Bergstralh’s woebegone blacksmith gets around the oppression of the guild-masters and starts setting up his own successful business? Who cares—to name another example—if the pimply-faced American teenager in Jay Robinson’s “Breaking News” wins the heart of the (hopefully not acne-ridden) teenage daughter of a downtime artist who is only remembered by art connoisseurs? (The mother, not the daughter—nobody except scholars remembered the daughter, for Pete’s sake, until Jay dragged her out of historical obscurity.) Shall I go on? Who cares if Velma Hardesty’s daughters escape from the Horrible Mother’s clutches, in Goodlett and Huff’s “Susan Story”? Just to make it worse, from what I can tell about a dozen other writers seem to have become infatuated with Wicked Velma, and it looks like we’ll be getting a small cottage industry cropping up of “Velma Gets Her Just Desserts” stories. Sigh. Not one of these stories deals with Ye Big Picture. Not one of them fails to wallow in the petty details of Joe or Dieter or Helen or Ursula’s angst-ridden existence. Pure, unalloyed, soap opera, what it is. There are times I think of just throwing up my hands and publishing all of the stories in the Gazette as “continuing serials.” And, in my darker moments, contemplate changing the title of the…

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. Well—hallelujah—we managed to get Volume 5 of the Gazette out pretty much on schedule, about four months after the publication of Volume 4. As I said in my preface to that issue, I’m hoping to be able to maintain a triannual publication schedule for the magazine. We should be able to do the same, I think, with Volumes 6 and 7. We’ve already got all the stories and articles assembled for Vol. 6, and most of the ones we’ll need for Vol. 7. That said, most of the time involved in producing such a magazine is required by the editing and copy-editing process, which takes some time. Still, we should be able to get Volume 6 out before the end of the year. Some remarks on the contents of this volume: As always, parsing the distinction between “regular stories” and “continuing serials” probably falls somewhere in the category of secularized medieval scholasticism. Just to name one example, Karen Bergstralh’s “Of Masters and Men” is essentially a sequel to her “One Man’s Junk,” published in the last volume. But since there is—yet, anyway—no indication that she’s going to be continuing this story, I chose not to put it in the category of continuing sequels. Yes, you can argue the point. The fact remains that I’m the editor of the magazine and if say the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin is 15,468,622, then—here, at least—15,468,622 it is. Ultimately, this is probably a hopeless battle on my part for Literary Clarity. Hopeless, because as time goes on, it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that the assessment I made of the Grantville Gazette in my preface to Volume 4 is indeed…

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).…