1632 (novel)
Encyclopedia
1632 is the initial novel
in the best-selling alternate history 1632 book series
written by historian, writer and editor Eric Flint
. The flagship novel kicked off a collaborative writing
effort that has involved hundreds of contributors and dozens of authors. The premise involves a small American
town of three thousand 'Hillbillies
' sent back to April 1631, in an alternate Holy Roman Empire
during the Thirty Years' War
.
(modeled on the real West Virginia town of Mannington
) and its power plant are displaced in space-time, through a side effect of a mysterious alien civilization.
A hemispherical section of land about three miles in radius measured from the town center is transported back in time
and space from April 2000 to May of 1631, from North America to central Germany
. The town is thrust into the middle of the Thirty Years' War
, in the German
province of Thuringia
in the Thuringer Wald, near the fictional German free city of Badenburg. This Assiti Shards effect occurs during a wedding reception, accounting for the presence of several people not native to the town, including a doctor and his daughter, a paramedic. Real Thuringian municipalities located close to Grantville are posited as Weimar
, Jena
, Saalfeld and the more remote Erfurt
, Arnstadt
, and Eisenach
well to the south of Halle
and Leipzig
.
Grantville, led by Mike Stearns, president of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), must cope with the town's space-time
dislocation, 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. One complication is a compounding of the food shortage when the town is flooded by refugees from the war. The 1631 locals experience a culture shock when exposed to the mores of contemporary American society, including modern dress, sexual liberation, and boisterous American-style politics.
Grantville struggles to survive while trying to maintain technology sundered from twenty-first century resources. Throughout 1631, Grantville manages to establish itself locally by forming the nascent New United States of Europe (NUS) with several local cities even as war rages around them. But once Count Tilly
falls during the Battle of Breitenfeld
outside of Leipzig, King Gustavus Adolphus
rapidly moves the war theater to Franconia
and Bavaria
, just south of Grantville. This leads to the creation of the Confederated Principalities of Europe (CPoE) and some measure of security for Grantville's up-timer and down-timer populations.
received the novel favorably, describing it as "a fine, thoroughly engaging story about real people in an extraordinary situation."
—perhaps instigated by reception of fan-fiction on 1632 Tech Manual—and invited other authors to help shape the series milieu and fictional canon and began putting together the anthology Ring of Fire
.
The market for anthologies in fiction is but a small percentage of the market for novels, and the alternate history genre is a smallish niche to begin with—leading publisher Jim Baen
to "hold up" the Ring of Fire collection to see if the series
would get a boost from New York Times best selling author David Weber
, who had just contracted to do five novels with Flint. Flint had to set aside several planned projects (the Assiti Shards novels were in outline form at the time) and do some additional co-writing with Weber as Ring of Fire gestated.
The anthology stories leaned on the large novels 1632 and 1633
and vice versa, creating the characteristic interdependence of short fiction in the series (now numbering in the dozens of canonical works of all kinds
—and now consisting of ten books plus twenty-four Grantville Gazettes, only the first five of which have been published as traditional print published
books. The other nineteen Gazettes are available as e-book
s (available either individually or by subscription).
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
in the best-selling alternate history 1632 book series
1632 series
The 1632 series, also known as the 1632-verse or Ring of Fire series, is an alternate history book series and sub-series created, primarily co-written, and coordinated by Eric Flint and published by Baen Books...
written by historian, writer and editor Eric Flint
Eric Flint
Eric Flint is an American author, editor, and e-publisher. The majority of his main works are alternate history science fiction, but he also writes humorous fantasy adventures.- Career :...
. The flagship novel kicked off a collaborative writing
Collaborative fiction
Collaborative fiction is a form of writing by a group of authors who share creative control of a story.Collaborative fiction can occur for commercial gain, as part of education, or recreationally - many collaboratively written works have been the subject of a large degree of academic research.-...
effort that has involved hundreds of contributors and dozens of authors. The premise involves a small American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
town of three thousand 'Hillbillies
Hillbilly
Hillbilly is a term referring to certain people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas of the United States, primarily Appalachia but also the Ozarks. Owing to its strongly stereotypical connotations, the term is frequently considered derogatory, and so is usually offensive to those Americans of...
' sent back to April 1631, in an alternate Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
during the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
.
Plot summary
The fictional town of Grantville, West VirginiaWest Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
(modeled on the real West Virginia town of Mannington
Mannington, West Virginia
Mannington is a city in Marion County, West Virginia, United States located in the hills of North-Central West Virginia. Known as Mannington since 1856, the town is rich with history and heritage – from Native American relics to frontiersmen and their settlements to Civil War legends...
) and its power plant are displaced in space-time, through a side effect of a mysterious alien civilization.
A hemispherical section of land about three miles in radius measured from the town center is transported back in time
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
and space from April 2000 to May of 1631, from North America to central Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. The town is thrust into the middle of the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
, in the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
province of Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
in the Thuringer Wald, near the fictional German free city of Badenburg. This Assiti Shards effect occurs during a wedding reception, accounting for the presence of several people not native to the town, including a doctor and his daughter, a paramedic. Real Thuringian municipalities located close to Grantville are posited as Weimar
Weimar
Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...
, Jena
Jena
Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...
, Saalfeld and the more remote Erfurt
Erfurt
Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
, Arnstadt
Arnstadt
Arnstadt is a town in Ilm-Kreis, Thuringia, Germany, situated on the Gera River. It is one of the oldest towns in Thuringia and is nicknamed Das Tor zum Thüringer Wald, The Gate to the Thuringian Forest....
, and Eisenach
Eisenach
Eisenach is a city in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated between the northern foothills of the Thuringian Forest and the Hainich National Park. Its population in 2006 was 43,626.-History:...
well to the south of Halle
Halle, Saxony-Anhalt
Halle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...
and Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
.
Grantville, led by Mike Stearns, president of the local chapter of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), must cope with the town's space-time
Spacetime
In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space as being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort from the spatial dimensions...
dislocation, the surrounding raging war, language barriers, and numerous social and political issues, including class conflict, witchcraft, feminism, the reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
and the counter-reformation
Counter-Reformation
The Counter-Reformation was the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648 as a response to the Protestant Reformation.The Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort, composed of four major elements:#Ecclesiastical or...
, among many other factors. One complication is a compounding of the food shortage when the town is flooded by refugees from the war. The 1631 locals experience a culture shock when exposed to the mores of contemporary American society, including modern dress, sexual liberation, and boisterous American-style politics.
Grantville struggles to survive while trying to maintain technology sundered from twenty-first century resources. Throughout 1631, Grantville manages to establish itself locally by forming the nascent New United States of Europe (NUS) with several local cities even as war rages around them. But once Count Tilly
Johan t'Serclaes, Count of Tilly
Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly , commanded the Imperial forces in the Thirty Years' War. He had a string of important victories against the Protestants but was then defeated by forces led by the King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden...
falls during the Battle of Breitenfeld
Battle of Breitenfeld (1631)
The Battle of Breitenfeld or First Battle of Breitenfeld , was fought at the crossroads villages of Breitenfeld , Podelwitz , and Seehausen , approximately five miles northwest of the walled city of Leipzig on September 17 , or September 7 The Battle of Breitenfeld or First Battle of Breitenfeld...
outside of Leipzig, King Gustavus Adolphus
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden
Gustav II Adolf has been widely known in English by his Latinized name Gustavus Adolphus Magnus and variously in historical writings also as Gustavus, or Gustavus the Great, or Gustav Adolph the Great,...
rapidly moves the war theater to Franconia
Franconia
Franconia is a region of Germany comprising the northern parts of the modern state of Bavaria, a small part of southern Thuringia, and a region in northeastern Baden-Württemberg called Tauberfranken...
and Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
, just south of Grantville. This leads to the creation of the Confederated Principalities of Europe (CPoE) and some measure of security for Grantville's up-timer and down-timer populations.
Reception
F&SF reviewer Charles de LintCharles de Lint
Charles de Lint is a Canadian fantasy author and folk musician. He is also the chief book critic for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction....
received the novel favorably, describing it as "a fine, thoroughly engaging story about real people in an extraordinary situation."
Legacy
The book generated an unusual amount of fan involvement. When first contemplating a sequel, Flint decided to throw open the universeShared universe
A shared universe is a fictional universe to which more than one writer contributes. Work set in a shared universe share characters and other elements with varying degrees of consistency. Shared universes are contrasted with collaborative writing, in which multiple authors work on a single story....
—perhaps instigated by reception of fan-fiction on 1632 Tech Manual—and invited other authors to help shape the series milieu and fictional canon and began putting together the anthology Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire (anthology)
Ring of Fire is the third published book by editor-author-historian Eric Flint of the 1632 series, an alternate history series begun in the novel 1632 . The Ring of Fire is both descriptive of the cosmic event as experienced by the series' characters, but also is at times used as the name for the...
.
The market for anthologies in fiction is but a small percentage of the market for novels, and the alternate history genre is a smallish niche to begin with—leading publisher Jim Baen
Jim Baen
James Patrick "Jim" Baen was a noted U.S. science fiction publisher and editor. In 1983 he founded his own publishing house, Baen Books, specializing in the adventure, fantasy, military science fiction and space opera genres...
to "hold up" the Ring of Fire collection to see if the series
Book series
A book series is a sequence of books having certain characteristics in common that are formally identified together as a group. Book series can be organized in different ways, such as written by the same author, or marketed as a group by their publisher....
would get a boost from New York Times best selling author David Weber
David Weber
David Mark Weber is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Weber and his wife Sharon live in Greenville, South Carolina with their three children and "a passel of dogs"....
, who had just contracted to do five novels with Flint. Flint had to set aside several planned projects (the Assiti Shards novels were in outline form at the time) and do some additional co-writing with Weber as Ring of Fire gestated.
The anthology stories leaned on the large novels 1632 and 1633
1633 (novel)
1633 is an alternate history novel co-written by Eric Flint and David Weber, and sequel to 1632 in the 1632 series. 1633 is the second major novel in the series and together with the anthology Ring of Fire, the two sequels begin the series hallmarks of being a shared universe with collaborative...
and vice versa, creating the characteristic interdependence of short fiction in the series (now numbering in the dozens of canonical works of all kinds
Canon (fiction)
In the context of a work of fiction, the term canon denotes the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction, which are not considered canonical...
—and now consisting of ten books plus twenty-four Grantville Gazettes, only the first five of which have been published as traditional print published
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
books. The other nineteen Gazettes are available as e-book
E-book
An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
s (available either individually or by subscription).
Release details
- 2000, USA, Baen Books (ISBN 0-671-57849-9), Pub date ? February 2000, hardcover (First edition)
- 2001, USA, Baen Books (ISBN 0-671-31972-8), ? February 2001, paperback
- 2001, ?, Rebound by Sagebrush (ISBN 0-613-36671-9), ? October 2001, hardback (Library binding)
- 2006, USA, Baen Books (ISBN 1-4165-3281-1), 30 June 2006, paperback
- The full text of the novel is available from the Baen Free LibraryBaen Free LibraryThe Baen Free Library is a digital library of the science fiction and fantasy publishing house Baen Books where 112 full books can be downloaded free in a number of formats, without copy protection...
as an e-book: February 2000, DOI:0671578499
External links
- 1632 free e-book