John Chandler Simpson

John Chandler Simpson is a key fictional character in Eric Flint's alternate history book series 1632. In the lead novel "1632" (2000) of the nineteen some works now in publication (including The Grantville Gazettes), Simpson is immediately cast in the role of bad guy most likely to kick dogs and beat his wife. In the first book he and series hero Mike Stearns, now suddenly find themselves "In-laws", and are trading unfriendly glares at one another across the room of a wedding reception by the end of the first paragraph of the novel. This comes about as Tom Simpson, the groom now married to Mike's sister Rita Stearns Simpson apologizes for his parents insulting behavior in the novels first sentence of chapter one: "I'm sorry about my parents, Mike." Tom gave the two people in question a look of resentment. "I'd hoped—" He broke off, sighing faintly. "I'm sorry. Really I am. You spent a lot of money on all of this." The boorish behavior by the elder Simpsons is made plainer on the rest of page one, if that opening doesn't suffice.

From bad to worse

For the rest of "1632", Simpson's reputation goes downhill to further ruin and ridicule, but when the outcry for a sequel to the stand alone novel grew into an unignorable demand, Flint elected to try an experiment and opened the new milieu up to other established authors and some wannabes and agreed to write with best selling author David Weber no less than five co-authored sequels. Meanwhile, furious conversations were taking place on the Baen's Bar reader forum 1632 Tech about the likely developments and effects of this factor or that, and the sketch of the New Time Line (NTL) or neohistory began to emerge. One key subject for discussion was skill sets, education, and likely resources, as the discussions were aimed at making plot decisions that were as plausible and logical as possible. If the collective protagonists in Grantville were to have a skill set or asset, it had to have a plausible background, and a strict accounting was begun to rein in wilder ideas.

Needs meet characterization

But when transportation effects and sea powers' influence on history came on the discussion table for dissection under 17th century conditions, Simpson soon began to make a comeback under the skilled hands of Weber—he'd been the sole major character cast by Flint in "1632", and since the town was in land locked West Virginia, the only one with any naval experience with ship design and combat duty. One other character had served on an air craft carrier, and one in the coastguard, but if Grantville's influence on neohistory was to extend to the sea, Simpson was the best qualified and most likely character to put together a navy.

With that analysis all ongoing, and concurrent with writing the 2002 sequel "1633", Flint, wearing his editor's hat, was taking submissions from other established writers and harvesting fan fiction at the Baen's Bar forum created for its submittal: 1632 Slush. This was published in "Ring of Fire" (January 2004), but held up by the publisher Jim Baen despite it being written in about the same time frame as "1633". In Flint's words from its forward:

In most shared-universe anthologies, as a rule, the stories are tangential to the main line of the story as developed in creating the author's own novels. They might be excellent stories in their own right, but they rarely have much if any direct impact on the logic of developments in he series itself. The reason is simple. Authors are generally reluctant to have other authors shape their own setting, and the contributing authors to an anthology respect that and that and design their stories to be "somewhat off to the side." The stories are "in the setting", but they do not really affect the setting very much.

That is not true of "Ring of Fire". The stories in this anthology all feed directly into the development of the series as a whole. They are not simply part it, "they actively shape" it.

Indeed several of them have already done so. Many of these stories were written before Dave Weber and I wrote "1633", and we deliberately incorporated them into the plot of that novel.

In the novel "1632" the opening chapter's traded glares and dirty looks turn into a couple of ugly confrontations in later chapters, especially in an emergency town meeting three days after the actual Ring of Fire was experienced (chapter 7) in the novel. Overall, Simpson is generally demonized as all that is bad about corporate bigshots "down sizing" the working stiff, while taking home big perks and being protected by golden parachutes. He is used by Flint as a tension builder device, skillfully wielded (mostly off stage) to give a sense of internal strife and especially to let the author's sympathetic characters, especially Stearns, carry exposition forward in discussions (rants) against this or that sort of practice in our world (OTL). He is painted as a rich heir to a family business and fortune and he and his wife, Mary are so awful, that even a nice guy like his son Tom turns his back on his parents by mid-book and won't have anymore to do with them.

In general, during the later part of the novel "1632", Simpson is further transformed into the figurehead of the opposition within Grantville as the good guys, strive despite the dead weight of people like Simpson to build a new place in the hostile new world and launch the "American Revolution" offset to Europe, "150 years early"—as it is put by Mike Stearns in a statement of position.

In the process, Simpson becomes the lightning rod attracting the dissident elements and bigots ("No dogs or Germans allowed") who clump together, and in time, form the democratic opposition to the Stearns team and its political party. In a later scene, as hard work and co-operative effort have led to a measure of security for Germany's newest community (doubled and redoubled in population by refugees from the war) Simpson's political party presents an amendment position paper more than five times the length of the constitution proposed by the Stearns teams' constitutional sub-committee, and Flint presents Stearns making another memorable speech pillorying Simpson and the wrong thinking he exemplifies. Had "1632" been the stand alone novel Flint had expected, Simpson would go down in literature as someone to spit at should you meet him crossing the street.

Beginning rehabilitation

The (out of sequence in the order published) beginning of Simpson's rehabilitation as a character was written into the short story "In the Navy" by Weber in the "Ring of Fire", which was released after 1633 which was co-written by well established best selling '90s "Face of Science Fiction" David Weber. Hence, reading the first half of "Ring of Fire (anthology)" is directly beneficial to understanding the circumstances of "1633" in general and Simpson's ascendancy in the series as a whole. The second half of "Ring of Fire" is important introductory material to later works and various plot lines, though Flints' own novella, the capstone of the anthologies in "Ring of Fire", "The Wallenstein Gambit" actually begins in March 1633, while "1633 (novel)" climaxes circa 10 October, 1633 in the neohistory (NTL).

In "In the Navy" Simpson is carefully humanized and becomes almost likable as seen through the eyes of young Eddie Cantrell, who begins the work arguing with Stearns that a navy is far more important to the New United States and to Gustavus Adolphus than Mike understands. Having made his case, Stearns surprises himself concluding that his political enemy is the best and only person that could possibly put together the technical feat and disparate knowledge that could make a technically advanced navy a possibility.

Meeting with Simpson, his rehabilitation is begun when he acts in ways we can see sympathetically and as reasonable and readers experience Stearns surprise and appreciation of the man and the encounter. Traveling with Eddie, we see Eddie's preconceptions getting dismantled by a plethora of small surprises, and again Simpson elicits some small measure of likability and sympathy. Reaching the new Capitol, Magedeburg, for a moment Weber seems to present a John Simpson reverting to (our preconceived) type, but then the reader finds out he's again on top of things, and that was a good thing. In the event, he first persuades a bar full of Gustavus's officers (convincingly), that the innovations the up-timers are bringing in firearms has transformed ground warfare as they know it, and by the end of an evening has become very popular with the Swedish Army's officer corp.

En route to their lodgings, he, re-enactor ________ and Eddie are attacked by a group of assassins we are led to believe are mercenaries, reacting to a general price put on the heads of any up-timer by series heavy Cardinal Richelieu. Simpson acts with alacrity to deal with the menace, pulling a well worn Browning 9mm from concealment and dealing sudden and unexpected death to the surprised would-be assassins.

By stories end, Simpson is a stiff, sometimes officious, but human and moderately likable character that actually has a sense of humor, no matter how hard he tries to conceal it. Having solved the technical issues with whether building ironclads at Magdeburg is possible, negotiated by radio with Stearns on founding the service, Admiral John Chandler Simpson, informs Lt. Eddie Cantrell that he's in the Navy now.

Enter the Admiral, debut in 1633

Admiral and hero, The Baltic War