1632 by Eric Flint (2000)
baen.com
baen.com
The Grantville Gazette publishes short stories set in the world by other authors, there's in fact a master character list where authors can "check out" characters to ensure consistency. It also has technical articles on subjects such as building aircraft using 17th century techniques, how to build radios that are effective during the Maunder Minimum or how to synthesise different primers in order to manufacture cartridge ammunition.
† I find the logic of this series-splitting very interesting; David Drake seems to license out his setting for the creation of, essentially, fanfiction, but fanfiction where he sits in as creative consultant. So other authors create stories in his setting, and he declares them canon.
But, since those stories are not his stories — not created as part of his original series planning — the later novels in the mainline series aren't planned to take these side-sequences into account, but rather just have references to those side-sequences worked in in non-arc-damaging ways as the series allows. Almost like the characters and events from the ascended fanfic are "guest starring" in the main series, as a reward to the audience for reading those side-series and a semi "seal of quality" nod by Drake toward those series.
This isn't a practice I've ever seen anywhere else. The closest might be simultaneously-running TV dramas with different writing teams who lend one-another characters (and their actors) for crossovers, with each writing team acting as the creative consultant for how that character is written by the other team. But even then, there isn't a hierarchical relationship between the two teams, as both teams own their own setting. Also, this setup usually implies that the dramas to be owned by the same production studio.
What Drake does with his settings, is more like when franchise with a valuable IP licenses that IP out for the creation of "licensed" works in adjacent media, on the condition that they sit in as creative consultant for how their IP is being used. E.g. when some random game studio decides to make "a Spiderman game." Except in this case, the IP isn't all that valuable, just an inspiring setting for other authors; and the licensed works aren't in an adjacent medium, but rather also in the original medium, such that they almost "blend in" with the original works.
It's be as if Star Wars were primarily a novel series, but then the various Star Wars Extended Universe licensed novels were still a thing.
Although honestly I lost interest around the first 1636 book. For me the initial setup of the United States of Europe was interesting but I feel like as the books progressed they got fairly fast and loose with history and historical characters become one dimensional. The first three books were really good as historical fiction that is clearly trying to be entertaining while trying keep some connection to reality, fourth one was decent, and by the time Flint got to 1636 it was too far out of left field for me and I preferred to going back to just reading nonfiction history books.
My family on both sides come from West Virginia, and interestingly, all of Appalachia was settled by people fleeing the various religious wars in Europe in that time. Specifically, Appalachia was settled mostly by refugees from Ulster (primarily the Scots-Irish Presbyterians and other non-Anglican protestants who found themselves isolated in northern Ireland) and a smaller percentage of the settlers were Protestants fleeing the aftermath of the 30 years war in Germany. My family's ancestry reflects this.
The echoes of those wars still carry on in the culture there. What was then known as Presbyterian (virtually zero relation to the current Presbyterian faith, and far more in line with evangelical Christians today) at the time shaped the culture to be hugely antagonistic to all forms of central authority. The Scots-Irish were particularly antagonistic to the British monarchy due to them being used to secure northern Ireland, and then in decades following being isolated from society due to laws treating non-Anglicans as second class citizens. The part of history I want to learn far more about is the 30 years war in Germany. My lack of knowledge on this subject was particularly embarrassing when I last went to Prague and was looking at the former seat of power for the Holy Roman Empire (one of many, since the capital shifted over the years to various cities). I had very little historical context for that part of Europe, which was frustrating.
I am curious as to what percentage were out of Ulster vs. from the borderlands.
Baen is a good source of science fiction and fantasy which, as often as not, has a conservative military slant to it. May not be everyone’s taste, but I also greatly enjoy reading Orson Scott Card who has a conservative (but not fundamentalist) religious slant to his stories.
“At that moment Freedom and Justice, American style, are introduced to the middle of The Thirty Years War.” It all feels a little too like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court but not written as a burlesque.
I've read all the Honor Harrington books/stories and basically nothing else by either of them. Every now and then I read the phpbb forums (forums.davidweber.net) because it's interesting to see conversations by people who have a pretty different worldview than me. Seems like pretty nice folks.
The one author whose book I just set down because it made want to puke was one by John Ringo (it was an ARC, don't worry, no money of mine went into his pocket).
https://hradzka.livejournal.com/194753.html
This review even coined the meme "OH JOHN RINGO NO" lol.
I can't say "good times" but i read a bunch of Ringo's books just because I couldn't believe how an original so bad could get multiple sequals.
Eh. Baen is (was?) a capitalist, and his publishing house operates likewise - if it sells, they'll buy more of it. I can respect that, even if it doesn't always result in great literature. (Honorverse novels used to be a major guilty pleasure, I'm not in any position to judge here.)
There is a lot of desperate demand for the simple acknowledgment that America got a lot of things right, and had a deep commitment to doing better.
The books have some lengthy subplots exploring our nations sins, and dark parts. But the general framing is, "good people with good intent doing their best who fall short, get up and do their best again. And that is AWESOME!"
And that’s just one example out of many.
The Americans are a collection of unintentionally hilarious stereotypes - the rugged hero who saves the beautiful & brilliant damsel in distress and gets everybody swooning over him, the virgin nerd who suddenly gets appreciated by a strong girl, the badass teenager girl who shows all those prejudiced old fools how much ass a badass teenager girl can kick, oh yeah!
The 'native' characters are a bit better, because the author is constrained by historical records to make them slightly less cartoonish. Gustav Adolf (& related family) is the designated Good King but he's still an absolute king and occasionally a jerk as a result; Axel Oxenstierna and Richelieu get caricatured as villainous viziers but their reasons for opposing the New American Order do get at least a perfunctory acknowledgment. Non-historical 'native' characters are as two-dimensional as the Americans, though.
The reason I do not regret reading the series is that it scratches certain nerdy itches very very well. It's full of wikipedia-type fun facts that gets turned into plot points, like clothing dyes being a big deal, or customary laws of Early Modern Germany being an absolute clusterfuck, and of course all kinds of changing social mores from privacy in the presence of house servants to serving wine to children. It has funny nerd moments like Lennard Torstensson gawking over a micrometer, or when Richelieu is revealed to be the first leader smart enough to acquire a spoiler (a history book from the 'future') and take action over it, in that case refocusing away from costly European wars in order to consolidate control of the New World and set up France to become the dominant world empire in the timeline.
I think the short stories are probably the best part of the setting for an adult reader, because they have less focus on the sub-par characters and more focus on the fascinating peculiarities of the time and place. And while the History of kingdoms and religions got derailed pretty early in the series, making historical accuracy kind of a moot point, the little histories of craftsmen and traders get a chance to shine and be properly explored in the short stories.
I found them moderately enjoyable pulp adventure myself.
There seemed to be a lot of questions about what would happen if the supply chain broke today... this series explores that issue in a deep way.
if anyone else has any other recommendations in same genre of time travel and re-booting up civilisation it be great to hear! I always found the genre interesting since Jules Verne's Mysterious Island https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32831.The_Mysterious_Isl...
The island of Nantucket goes back to the Bronze Age. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_in_the_Sea_of_Time
Most of these books are probably overly optimistic about what one or a small group of smart people who just happen to have to right skill sets could accomplish in such a situation with very limited supply chains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Came_Early
Another classic one is "Lest Darkness Fall" by L. Sprague de Camp in which an archaeologist is transported to Rome in the year 535 AD.
He also wrote "Ranks of Bronze" which is sort of the reverse idea, a Roman Legion kidnapped by aliens for preindustrial warfare. Absolutely worth a read, and an interesting counterpoint to most of the 'bringing civilization to the barbarians' narrative these stories normally follow.
H. Beam Piper did a bunch too, check out "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen" if you can find it.
There's a couple that I know of:
https://www.goodreads.com/series/40821-belisarius https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=safehold&qid=
Flint was involved in the Belisarius series (along with David Drake), and Safehold is basically Weber's "reboot" of one of the books in his "Armageddon Moon" series.
If you liked 1632 you will probably like these as they're in a similar vein
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/dennis-danvers/th...
Nowadays I won't even start a series if I see it has that many books without showing any signs of coming to an end. At some point I want to have some closure.
Ideally a series has 5 books max, 3 or 4 would be ideal.
Hello, Wheeel of Time.
Hello, A Song of Ice and Fire.
Let's see if Martin pulls a Jordan.
Dying before finishing the final book? That seems pretty likely.
> At the start of February, Martin told his followers that lockdown had enabled him to make headway on the eagerly anticipated Song of Ice and Fire Book Six. He said: "I wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages of THE WINDS OF WINTER in 2020. The best year I’ve had on WOW since I began it." However, he added some less encouraging news.
> Martin added on his blog (called 'notablog'): "I need to keep rolling, though. I still have hundreds of more pages to write to bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion."
This sounds almost like "I only really started working on book six in 2020 because the lockdown meant I couldn't gad about the world doing conferences." given that he only writes while on his Wordstar PC that's at his home.
BookS, in Jordan's case. Sanderson wrote at least two, I think maybe three.
Is Winds of Winter supposed to be the last or second to last book of aSoIaF; I thought there was supposed to be something like two more after that?
WoW is the penultimate book in the series apparently. Book 7 will be titled "A Dream of Spring" if it ever arrives...
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_de...
https://www.baen.com/boundary.html
(Like 1632 it also has a dreadful cover - actively despised by Ryk I believe).
The series helped me think more deeply about the history of Europe, also other parts of the World. There are now stories about China, India, the Americas, probably other places I am forgetting right now.
In the real world Germans already were on a technological comparable level to the Americans. Not to mention that by the 1940s the German language had already been much more standardized than it would have been in 1632, one big reason mentioned in the books that boosted "Amideutsch" was the fact that there was no "German" language that all German immigrants to Grantville/Magdeburg could fall back to.
It's sometimes difficult to distinguish between a grammatical error and a grammatical "difference to the standard", for example in a dialect or even Creole language. But if it hurts a native speaker, it may very well be a mistake.
To me as a native, it just has a feeling of wrongness. For the German language this is different than Dutch because Dutch has a less complicated morphology.
One non-morphological example is that they would translate "uptime" as something like "aufzeit", while referencing it like a river. "zeitauf" would make sense as an adjective, but it hurts as a noun. The literal translation would be "Hochzeit" which unfortunately already means "wedding", but could be distinguished by context and pronunciation.
Really? The series leans heavily pro-union, for example.
My point is more around the entrepreneurship and how easy it is for the Americans (and sometimes downtimers) to make a fortune. Also how easy it is to retool whole industries and economies in a short time-frame. But hey, it's fiction...
It's a general pattern with this type of book. They're probably way too optimistic about what you could accomplish in the absence of refined raw materials, tools, etc. even if you had a lot of the basic knowledge in some form. Even if you weren't thrown in prison as a wizard or crazy person, making even WWI-level weaponry or antibiotics in a world without even the concept of standardized manufacturing processes would be challenging to put it mildly.
For example, they learn that they cannot even make WW1 level weapons (they settle on a sort of hybrid civil-war era rifles + flintlocks for mass production because of problems making percussion caps, IIRC). And they learn quickly that they can't make antibiotics at more than small lot lab amounts. A lot of their retooling is cannibalizing parts from existing equipment for different uses.
Some low hanging advances like clean sheets and washing your hand among doctors.
It does, with G. Ritchter and CoCs.
Unions are more of a labor vs capital thing, banding together for more bargaining power. In the 1632 series this isn't a big issue yet because most people aren't working for employers with many employees, so the power imbalance isn't yet as bad. Also the ring of fire "back-ported" some labor rights legislation.