- 1632 (novel)
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1632 Author(s) Eric Flint Cover artist Larry Elmore Country USA Language English Series 1632 series Genre(s) Alternate History, Novel Publisher Baen Books Publication date February 1, 2000 Media type Print (Hardcover & Paperback) & ebook Pages 512 pp (first edition, hardback) ISBN 0-671-57849-9 (first edition, hardback) OCLC Number 42786188 Dewey Decimal 813/.54 21 LC Classification PS3556.L548 A616 2000 Followed by 1633 1632 is the initial novel in the best-selling[citation needed] 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.
Contents
Plot summary
The fictional town of Grantville, West Virginia (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.[1]
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.
Reception
F&SF reviewer Charles de Lint received the novel favorably, describing it as "a fine, thoroughly engaging story about real people in an extraordinary situation."[2]
Characters in "1632"
Main articles: List of 1632 characters and List of 1632 characters (fictional)Legacy
The book generated an unusual amount of fan involvement. When first contemplating a sequel, Flint decided to throw open the universe—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-books (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 Library as an e-book: February 2000, DOI:0671578499
See also
References
- ^ Eric Flint (2000). 1632.
- ^ Books to Look For, F&SF, September 2000
External links
- 1632 free e-book
Assiti Shards series by Eric Flint 1632 series Main series works 1632 (2000) • 1633 (2002) • Ring of Fire (2004) • 1634: The Galileo Affair (2004) • 1634: The Ram Rebellion (2006) • 1635: The Cannon Law (2006) • 1634: The Baltic War (2007) • 1634: The Bavarian Crisis (2007) • The Anaconda Project (2007–08) • Ring of Fire II (2008) • 1635: The Dreeson Incident (2008) • 1635: The Tangled Web (2009) • 1635: The Eastern Front (2010) • 1636: The Saxon Uprising (2011) • Ring of Fire III (2011)The Grantville Gazettes Categories:- 1632 series books
- 2000 novels
- Baen Books available as e-books
- Books by Eric Flint
- Free e-books
- Novels set in West Virginia
- 1632 in fiction
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