The Grantville Gazette is the first of a series of collaborative literary works that started as an experimental sub-set within the 1632 universe created by Eric Flint in his novel 1632. The Gazettes are initially published as serialized e-magazines and then as e-books, which are part of the canonical background for the other works (novels and anthologies) in the rapidly growing ongoing alternative-history series edited by Flint and set in his 1632 Multiverse, starting from spring in 1631.

Series premise

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The first novel, 1632 and resultant 1632 series share a common theme, which is to ask the "What if?" questions common to and characteristic of the science fiction genre: "What if a mysterious cosmic event occurred which juxtaposed the location of a whole populated region of West Virginia with a matching portion of early modern Germany?" Flint added the additional query to his premise: "What if the two places also switched their respective places in time so that the region from our here-now traveled back in space-time to the land and peoples of 369 years ago?" Mix in a character focus repudiating the Great Man theory of history, making the whole town of Rednecked Hillbillies, hillbilly and German Rednecks your collective protagonists allowing plenty of scope for fast-paced parallel plot development, add two cups of calculating authoritarian noblemen who think social-class matters, a pinch of venile grasping clergymen, and a quart each of American law, American can-do elan, and half a pound of American attitudes and imagine the fun they'll have interacting in interesting times when High-Tech means just-invented flintlock rifles.

Authors

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The various other authors featured in the Gazettes are part of Flint's online experiment (Phase II) in developing a milieu in conjunction with many others on the webforum Baen's Bar. For specifics see the sub-article 1632 Editorial Board. These authors first submit to a tough peer review process, which is the provence and venue of the 1632 Slushpile sub-forum. Once critical readers have deemed the nascent story worthy, the work passes to an editorial board, which also considers how the work will fit into and affect the milieu as currently planned out and plotted. Some stories have thus served as the genesis of their own 1632 universe sub-series or plot thread. This is chaired by Flint, who retains veto power over all work in the 1632 universe, and who then decides to which issue or volume of the Gazette the story should be allocated. Authors get paid a sub-professional rate upon the acceptance of the work, and additional financial remuneration and considerations when the anthology reaches print at a later time.

The Gazettes thus contain short stories based in the world of Flint's 1632 series, and articles about the restrictions on technology available in the time-stranded town and the plausibility of items and redeveloped technology within the milieu of the 1632 multiverse; these essays are written by a member of a more formal subset of contributor-advisors known as the 1632 Research Committee.

Book Table of Contents

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Grantville Gazette Volume I
Table of Contents

Title	Writer	Page
About Baen's Bar Online community and Editor's Preface for the Paperback Edition	by Eric Flint	p  1
Fiction
Portraits	by Eric Flint	p  5
Anna's Story	by Loren Jones	p 17
Curio and Relic	by Tom Van Natta	p 77
The Sewing Circle	by Gorg Huff	p115
The Rudolstadt Colloquy	by Virginia De Marce	p233
Fact Articles
Radio in the 1632 Universe	by Rick Boatright*	p297
They've Got Bread Mold, So Why Can't They Make Penicillin?	by Robert Gottlief*	p319
Horse Power	by Karen Bergstralh*	p335
Afterword	by Eric Flint	p361

*  Writer is a member of 1632 Research Committee

Publishing history and information

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This first gazette was envisioned as a e-magazine experiment funded by Baen Books, originally to be published solely as a monthly electronic serialized-book anthology from Baen Books. The experimental joint venture between author-editor Flint and publisher Jim Baen was so successful that the e-magazine has become a sustained, self-funding operation of its own, now with Grantville Gazette VII in pre-production and Grantville Gazette VI released in March 2006 as a serialized e-magazine. Publication by e-magazine and e-book release is tabulated in the main article: The Grantville Gazettes, but the pattern will be broken with Grantville Gazette III—it will be released solely in the three book formats as Eric Flint has become the editor of the new Jim Baen's UNIVERSE e-magazine venture.

In November 2004, The Grantville Gazette was also released in a mass market paperback edition. The second volume was released in hardcover in March 2006, and Grantville Gazette III is scheduled for hardcover release in January 2007, and the fourth and fifth should follow about four months apart by announced planning.

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• available as free e-book from the Baen Free Library, Paperback First printing, November 2004
• was released in hardcover in March 2006

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As of May 2006 the electronic editions were available up to volume seven. The series is contracted up to volume ten, and is arguably open ended.

External links

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