Note: Starting with The Grantville Gazette Volume 6, the Baen books with the same number (e.g., The Grantville Gazette VI) no longer have the same content as the online magazine. Volume 6 of the Gazette is coming out three months later than we’d projected. There are three reasons for that, which are closely connected. The first reason is that our copy editor fell behind, for various reasons including some health problems. The second reason is that she’s also one of the copy editors for Baen Books, with many other assignment. And the final reason is that the launch of the new online magazine, Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, further complicated the situation because the Gazette’s copy editor is now also one of JBU’s copy editors. To put it another way, the Gazette was the runt of the litter. On the bright side, the long delay due to production problems also means that the editorial staff of the magazine is way ahead of the game. We’ve pretty much got the next volume already put together, and most of the one that comes thereafter. From a purely editorial standpoint, therefore, we could publish Volume 7 very quickly, and Volume 8 soon thereafter. However… We’d likely run into the same bottleneck and logjam with the process of copy-editing and proof-reading. The tie-up with Volume 6 was not the first time that’s happened, and it’s very likely to happen again. Being the runt of the litter is never any fun, and, alas, the runt is what the magazine shall remain. Facts are stubborn things, and it’s just a fact that while the paper editions of the Gazette generate a significant income for Baen Books, this electronic magazine does not. Yes, yes, granted—it’s the root source. But publishers are no different from you or me or anyone else, when they are faced with that nastiest of all nasty eight-letter words: Cash flow. Okay, it’s two words. But,…
From the Editor
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…
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…
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…