1632 (series)

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Central Europe on the eve of the Thirty Years War. Habsburg ownership: Austrian line, Spanish line



The 1632 series (also known as the Ring of Fire series ) comprises a number of different science fiction publications. The focus of the plot are the residents of the fictional American town of Grantville , which is transported from rural West Virginia in 2000 to the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War in Thuringia in 1631.

While the first volume was written by Eric Flint , the other publications come from other authors alongside him. Flint then took on the task of ensuring the consistency of the plot as well as the uniform use of the biographies of the different characters.

The book series is only available in English. In addition to the novel, an internet platform provided by the publisher developed very quickly on which interested parties can exchange ideas about the political, economic, social and military consequences of various developments in the framework and develop specific suggestions.

The series began with work 1632 , which appeared in February 2000. Eight volumes had been published by August 2009 - two books with smaller short stories ( Ring of Fire I and Ring of Fire II ) and 24 Grantville gazettes and an online magazine.

Basics

Cooperative development

The series is based on a carefully planned collaboration between Flint and other authors and the online community networked via a central website. In addition to regularly updated and updated content from the 1632 universe, the platform offers numerous discussion forums in which readers and authors regularly exchange information about the further development of the series.

The spectrum of the sub-aspects discussed in the individual forums included not only natural and social science but also political discussions. The focus is always on the question of how the real conditions of the Thirty Years' War and especially historical details can develop in the interplay with the fiction of the series.

Historical and technical framework

State division of the district before 1922

Grantville's new position is in what is now the district of Saalfeld-Rudolstadt .

Based on the human, technical and scientific resources transferred from the 20th century, the series develops the image of an expansive and at the same time struggling for survival small town, which over the course of time develops into a new German-American model of society. Since there is practically no industrial production base for products of the 20th century in Grantville, with a few exceptions, the residents use their resources to develop a technology that is clearly superior to that of the 17th century, but de facto in various forms rather that of the 18th or 19th century.

The series uses the real historical framework and develops it further as an alternative timeline. As the series progresses, the differences between the original and the alternate timeline take on more and more massive forms. In addition to the immediate behavior of the newcomers, their technologies, the political principles they propagated, and above all the encyclopedic knowledge of the political developments and actors of the original timeline all contribute to this. Since the great powers can increasingly obtain access to the relevant analyzes and biographies of their elites from the libraries of Grantville, they are changing their strategies and alliances.

Restrictions

In order to ensure a fundamental realism in the further development of the series, the use of modern technologies and people within the series follows strict guidelines and rules. In order to prevent individual authors from “discovering” surprisingly extraordinary scientific, personnel or military resources within the urban area that has been thrown into the past, Grantville strictly follows the model of a real city. Resources that did not exist in the real mining town of Mannington, West Virginia in 2000 or can be assumed to be credible contradict the canon of the series and are expressly excluded as a basis for its further development.

meaning

The series has now become one of the most famous sci-fi series in the English-speaking world. a. also because readers add their own subject-specific articles or background stories. For this purpose, the publisher offers its own subscription- based internet platform. Some fan fiction stories have appeared in the two Ring of Fire books, the characters and subplots of which became part of the canon of the series. The novels subsequently developed by Eric Flint and his co-authors take up these regularly.

Additional content appeared in five printed anthologies under the name Grantville Gazette . In addition to classic narratives, these volumes also contain articles based on natural sciences or engineering that deal with topics such as the hypothetical development of one's own radio technology, the adaptation of advanced weapon systems or pharmacology under the conditions of the 17th century.

After the publication of the Grantville Gazette V , the publisher discontinued further print editions, as the editions published on the Internet were now in the double-digit range and this gap increased increasingly.

Classification of the volumes published so far

Most of the volumes published so far follow chronologically the political, economic and military events in Europe resulting from the appearance of Grantville. With the inclusion of digital media (e-books), the following publication sequence results so far:
1632 , 1633 , Ring of Fire , The Grantville Gazette I , 1634: The Galileo Affair , Grantville Gazette II , Grantville Gazette III , Grantville Gazette IV , Grantville Gazette V , Grantville Gazette VI , Grantville Gazette VII , 1634: The Ram Rebellion , 1635: Cannon Law , 1634: The Baltic War , 1634: The Bavarian Crisis , 1635: The Dreeson Incident , 1635: The Eastern Front

The edited volumes of the Ring of Fire series reflect stories that were previously published on the series' online platform, offer interesting background knowledge for the overall framework and meet special qualitative requirements.

In addition to the purely chronological classification, the volumes can still be divided into a northern and a southern European storyline. The first two volumes, mainly set in southern Europe, are 1634: The Galileo Affair and 1635: The Cannon Law .

Novels
title Date of first publication author Co-author ISBN Remarks
1632 2000 Eric Flint N / A ISBN 0-671-57849-9 First volume in the series.
Grantville, West Virginia, is dumped into southern Thuringia in the 1630s in the late 1990s. In order to ensure the continued existence of their city, the inhabitants are forced to defend themselves against troops from the Holy Roman Empire, to rebuild their infrastructure sustainably and to develop political networks with the local rulers.
1633 2002 Eric Flint David Weber ISBN 0-7434-3542-7 Direct continuation to 1632
Grantville allies with Gustavus Adolphus and begins to develop a state structure in Germany based on the structure of the USA.
1634: The Galileo Affair 2004 Andrew Dennis Eric Flint ISBN 0-7434-8815-6
A diplomatic trade mission to Venice gets into trouble. The attempt of individual participants to save Galileo Galilei from the Inquisition leads to a conspiracy to assassinate the Pope. A French conspirator tries to destroy France to enable the rise of the Huguenots .
1635: The Cannon Law 2006 Andrew Dennis Eric Flint ISBN 1-4165-0938-0 Direct continuation to 1634: The Galileo Affair
Cardinal Borja decides to assassinate Pope Urban and his political allies in order to establish himself as his successor. Although he manages to occupy the Vatican and get a majority of the frightened cardinals' votes, Urban escapes. This leads to Borja becoming the antipope, recognized only by the Spaniards and their satellite states.
1634: The Baltic War 2007 David Weber Eric Flint ISBN 1-4165-2102-X Direct continuation to 1633
The Western European powers are trying to throw Gustavus Adolphus back. The events lead to naval battles in the Baltic States, the conquest of Denmark by Sweden and a sea victory for the Marine Grantville, which was laid down in Magdeburg, with its newly developed ironclad ships .
1634: The Bavarian Crisis 2007 Eric Flint Virginia DeMarce ISBN 978-1-4165-4253-7 Direct continuation to 1634: The Baltic War
The Spanish Crown Prince takes over duties as viceroy in the Spanish Netherlands and decides to secede from Spain and to make himself king. With the support of Grantville, he freed the daughter of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Duchess Anna Maria.
1635: The Dreeson Incident 2008 Virginia DeMarce Eric Flint ISBN 1-4165-5589-7 Direct continuation to 1635: The Cannon Law
The Huguenots rebelling in France plan to destroy Grantville by means of targeted assassinations of leading personalities. To camouflage the attacks, they spread anti-Semitic lies. In the further course, two important personalities of Grantvilles die, and large areas of the areas controlled by the Allied Grantvilles are hit by massive riots against Jews.
1635: The Eastern Front 2010 Eric Flint ISBN 1-4391-3389-1 Direct continuation to 1634: The Baltic War
After Mike Stearns lost his re-election as president, Gustavus Adolphus appointed him general in the USE forces. While Stearns' successor tries to reverse parts of the democratic reforms and so provokes open uprisings in the population, Stearns is preparing for the military conflicts in Brandenburg and Saxony.
1636: The Saxon Uprising 2011 Eric Flint ISBN 978-1-4391-3425-2 Direct continuation to 1635: The Eastern Front
The Anaconda Project N / A Eric Flint N / A N / A Fortsetzungsroman the right on the story The Wallenstein Gambit in the Ring of Fire I followed.
The serial novel describes Wallenstein's struggle to build his own empire. After the conquest of Ruthenia, the general, with the help of Ashkenazim and Cossacks, massively expanded his territory in Eastern Europe.
Anthologies
title Date of first publication author Co-author ISBN Remarks
Ring of Fire I. 2004 Eric Flint ISBN 0-7434-7175-X Continuation to 1632 and 1633
1634: The Ram Rebellion 2006 Virginia DeMarce & Eric Flint ISBN 1-4165-2060-0
Several interwoven short stories complement each other to form a story that describes the fall of the ruling order in Franconia . The satirical stories about an unruly ram in one of the new political newspapers lead to the uprising of the Frankish subjects in their struggle for democratic rights.
Ring of Fire II 2008 Eric Flint ISBN 1-4165-7387-9
1635: The Tangled Web 2009 Virginia DeMarce ISBN 978-1-4391-3308-8 Sequel to The Ram Rebellion
Several interwoven short stories complement each other to form a narrative that describes the further course of events in Franconia. Some of the events take place in Fulda .
Ring of Fire III 2011 Eric Flint ISBN 978-1-4391-3448-1

Others

  • Jonathan M. Thompson: Eric Flint's 1632 Resource Guide and Role Playing Game , 2004, ISBN 0-9721419-4-4 ( role-playing game based on the series)
  • Marilyn Kosmatka & Eric Flint Time Spike , 2008; ISBN 978-1-4165-5538-4 (continuation of the novel 1632. The novel describes the timeline on which Grantville surprisingly disappeared from the USA)

Issues published so far

  • Also Grantville Gazette I - Grantville Gazette V (print, online at the end of March, Grantville Gazette XXIV )

The publishing house Baen offers several works from the series free of charge on the Internet and encourages third parties to read them:

Web links