6. Have you written/read fan fiction before visiting the 1632 forums, and for how long?
dvdscar
Nope. Had been writing on/at a novel for 15+ years at the time I sold my first story, but no urge to do fan fic before 1632.
Johnzeek
The isn't really Fan-Fic since many of the ideas of the writers of stories in GG and the RoF influnce the prime authors
GWV17
I've read a bit of fan fiction and written some odds and ends over the years, it's fun of course, but I have always felt that unless its a shared universe, like a TV series or our 163X alternate history where collaboration is intended, that you are playing with other people's toys and you can't keep them. It's much more fun to make my own toys.
7. Feel free to comment on any part of your experience that I haven't covered.
W1PK
Grantville Gazette is a unique place to learn to write and sell fiction. Because all submitted drafts are visible on-line to all members of the 1632 community who hold a log-in password, authors receive help that no print publication could come anywhere near matching. Rather than feedback from a single first reader, we get feedback from dozens of fellow writers as well as the editorial board members. Instead of a couple of sentences, we get detailed analyses that can run for pages. Instead of waiting a year to get a response, we get it in hours, sometimes minutes. In my case, I went from first attempt to write a story to acceptance in four days. The one caution is that all this is forthcoming only to those who actually make use of the advice they receive, and make the necessary corrections promptly and without nagging. Arguing, blowing off comments, or just not getting the point are quick ways to get ignored.
virginiaeasleyd..
It's often been fun. Sometimes it's just plain drudgery.
dvdscar
This is an utterly unique forum, due partly to Baen's general support, but mostly to Eric's willingness to let people play in his sandbox with very few restrictions.
ivergmail
I also maintain story time frames, which tracks the temporal settings of the stories, to make it easier to spot potential conflicts.
rboatright
"How did you do it?" Lucky. In the right place at the right time.
jones
Feel free to comment on any part of your experience that I haven't covered. Thank you!
– - Research. It takes a lot of research to write historical fiction. When you've got a large community as we have in the 1632 universe, you can leverage that to get a lot of research done. Writing the Joseph Hanauer series forced me to dig up topo maps and geologic maps of the entire route from Frankfort to the Ring of Fire, just so I could make sure that, when he walked up a hill, there was really a hill in that place, and so the chalky soil could be chalky here, and the rocks sandstone there. Then, I had to research the coal mine, digging up photos of the actual mine, re-engineering it to fit where Eric Flint moved it, so that I could write properly about such simple things as the bus trip from Grantville to the mine on Joseph's first day of work. The research of others was immensely important in this, particularly Virginia DeMarce's population database and story timeframes database, and Jack Carroll and I collaborated on much of the work on gearing down the power plant as it plays strongly into his work on the growth of the post RoF electrical industry.
Karen
I've been at this since "1632" was first published. It has been interesting, sometimes amusing, often frustrating (why won't they do the simplest research!) and I've learned a great deal about many things.
We love stories so write us one! No excuses. We've heard 'I can't write, I can't write fiction, I'm too busy' from many of our now published authors. :-P]
Appendix B: 1632 Books in Print as of June 2011
1632, February 2000
1633, August 2002
1634: The Galileo Affair , April 2004
1634: The Ram Rebellion , May 2006
1634:The Baltic War, May 2007
1634: The Bavarian Crisis, October 2007
1635: The Cannon Law, October 2006
1635: The Dreeson Incident, December 2008
1635: The Eastern Front, October 2010
1636: The Saxon Uprising, April 2011
Ring of Fire , January 2004
Ring of Fire II, January 2008
Ring of Fire III, July 2011
Grantville Gazette I, November 2004
Grantville Gazette II, March 2006
Grantville Gazette III, January 2007
Grantville Gazette IV, June 2008
Grantville Gazette V, August 2009
[1] Though the event is referred to colloquially as the “Ring of Fire”, this is more of a poetic metaphor than a technical term. What the characters actually saw (based on later authorial discussions) was “a very brief, very bright flash of light emitted from a spherical surface 6.1 miles in diameter centered somewhat below ground level. The flash of light lasted much less than the blink of an eye, but was probably a quantum mechanical after-effect of a spatio-temporal transfer event that was orders of magnitude briefer than the visible flash. Milliseconds for the flash, possibly picoseconds for the transfer event.” (Jack Carroll)
[2] The book starts in the year 1631 but ends in 1632. The series which followed, also generally called “1632,” is named for the first book.
[3] The “Great Man” theory is a once-popular historical approach credited to Thomas Carlyle, who declared that all history was essentially the biographies of great men.
[4] Grantville, West Virginia, was the fictional town transported back in time at the beginning of the series.
[5]Canon: A body of works considered to be established or significant (Oxford English Dictionary). In fan-speak, established facts or an unalterable part of the storyline.
[6]Up-timer: one who comes from up-time, i.e. the future. Down-timer: one who comes from down-time, i.e. the present.
[7] I am grateful to Kerryn Offord for clarifying the ins and outs of the character claiming process.
[8] A period of sunspot inactivity in the late 17th – early 18th century, which would have adversely impacted the ionosphere, and hence short-wave radio transmissions
[9] Paraphrased: If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
[10] “dreck” is a mild swearword in fan-speak, meaning something like “yuck.” It is also the German word for “manure.”
[11] Henry Jenkins, in Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers, defines the term collective intelligence as “knowledge available to all members of the community”, in contrast to shared knowledge, which is “information known by all members of the community”. He further defines the term by saying, “Collective intelligence expands a community’s productive capacity because it frees individual members from the limitations of their memory and enables the group to act upon a broader range of expertise.” (139)
Climate: The Little Ice Age After the Ring of Fire
Iver P. Cooper
In winter 1634, James Byron "Jabe" McDougal "recalled that "the winter of 1631-32 had been quite a shock to himself and his fellow up-timers. Not only were they considerably farther north than they had been when Grantville was in West Virginia, but they were smack in the middle of what up-time historians had called the "Little Ice Age," which had begun some two centuries prior and would continue for another century, give or take. (Robinson, "Mightier than the Sword," Grantville Gazette 6).
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So what was this Little Ice Age? The real Ice Ages were prolonged (as in millennia) periods of pronouncedly colder world or hemispheric temperatures in which the polar and continental ice sheets were of considerably greater extent than in historical times. There have been a dozen or so major glaciations over the last million years. A particularly big one occurred 650,000 years ago and lasted 50,000 years. However, the one that is usually considered the last Ice Age peaked about 20,000 years ago.
So that implies that a little ice age is one that is shorter and milder than th
at one, yet still noteworthy. Defining when a little ice age begins and ends is a bit tricky. Do you draw the line based on when a particular glacier advances or retreats, when a particular lake freezes or thaws, or when the grapes are harvested? If you rely on mean temperatures, then over how many years do you average them, and to what longer reference period do you compare that moving average? What if the temperature "breakpoints" are different in Iceland than they are in France?
Depending on who you ask, the Little Ice Age began in 1200, 1250, 1300, 1350, 1400, 1450, 1500, 1550, 1600 or even 1650. There is more agreement as to when it ended; 1850 is the year usually cited, but some would say 1870, 1900, or even 1920.
When people talk about the Little Ice Age (LIA) nowadays, they are mostly interested in the Big Picture: Was the LIA, viewed on some appropriate time scale, a global, a hemispheric or merely a European phenomenon? How much colder was the earth then than it is now? What caused it? Is the Earth warmer now than it was during the "Medieval Warm Period" that preceded the LIA? And to what extent is that warmth attributable to human activity (changes in albedo as a result of deforestation, or increases in greenhouse gases as a result of factory emissions)?
However, for those writing in the 1632 Universe, the Little Picture is what we need: what is the climate likely to be like in Germany, Italy, France, Scandinavia, England and in other areas of interest, each yearover the decade following the Ring of Fire (RoF)? (The RoF occurred up-time on April 2, 2000 and down-time on May 25, 1631 Gregorian calendar.) How does it compare to the climate in living memory, for both the down-timers and up-timers? What practical effect will it have on health, agriculture, transportation, communications, mining, industry and warfare?
In the first part of this article, I will provide some background as to the effects that climate can have on human society.
In the second part, I will try to fill in the Little Picture, based on the assumption that the Ring of Fire hasnot altered world climate; i.e., I can rely on modern reconstructions of historical temperature and precipitation averages in the areas and years of interest.
Finally, in the third part, I will consider the Ring of Fire as a meteorological phenomenon, and speculate about how much and for how long it could perturb weather and even climate.
PART I: EFFECTS OF CLIMATE ON HUMAN SOCIETY
Climate and Health
Excessive heat and cold can directly threaten human life. In studied regions of England and Wales (1993-2003 data), it was found that risk of mortality increased by 3% for every degree Celsius above the "heat threshold" (95th percentile of the mean daily temperature for the region), and by 6% for every degree below the "cold threshold" (the 5th percentile). In general, heat effects were seen once mean temperature reached 17-18oC, and cold effect below 5oC. (Hajat). At least in modern Europe and the United States, cold-related deaths are more common than heat-related ones, and that was even more likely to be true in LIA Europe.
The very old and very young, and those in poor health, are the most vulnerable to temperature extremes. However, the human body can adapt over time, which is why we can live in both cold and hot climates.
In addition, there are "cultural" as well as biological adaptations, and these can work in the short-term. In cold weather, one can wear heavier clothing, or go indoors and build a fire. In the 17th century, there was less that could be done about hot weather, of course. Especially since many Europeans thought that bathing was a bad idea.
Lives may be also be lost as a result of flooding caused by excessive rainfall, if the endangered population cannot flee to higher ground in time. Drought can also kill, if water has not been stored in advance. In hot, dry climates, dehydration is often associated with heat stress.
Even when climate extremes don't kill you outright, they can cause famine, which in turn reduces the body's resistance to infectious disease. "Malnutrition aggravated an influensa epidemic of 1557-8" (Mandia).
Normal seasonal variations may also have health consequences. Sometime around 400 B.C., Hippocrates declared, "The changes of the season mostly engender diseases." The basis for seasonality is not always clear. It may be related to increased pathogen (or disease vector) survival under particular temperature and humidity conditions, increased opportunity for transmission as a result of travel or overcrowding, or reduced host immunity or impairment of other host defenses (e.g., drying of the mucous membrane).
That said, some diseases definitely have seasonal propensities. In autumn and winter, we have influenza; in spring, measles; in summer, malaria (and in modern times, polio). (Dowell). In 1908 Manhattan, scarlet fever and measles were most common in March; there was a higher incidence of death from pneumonia and bronchitis from November through April; death from childhood diarrhea peaked in July-August, and cases of typhoid in August-September (North).
For malaria, the role of climate is well-understood. "Malaria transmission does not occur at temperatures below 16oC or above 33oC, and at altitudes › 2000m because development in the mosquito (sporogony) cannot take place. The optimum conditions for transmission are high humidity and ambient temperature between 20 and 30oC. Although rainfall provides breeding sites for mosquitoes, excessive rainfall may wash away mosquito larvae and pupae." (Cook 1202). The northern limit for malaria in Europe has been the 15oC July isotherm (Reiter).
While Europe was colder during the LIA, it wasn't cold enough to prevent malaria. However, a correlation has been reported between high (over 16oC) summer temperatures in Kent and Essex parishes; Reiter speculates that the "hot weather . . . could certainly have increased the probability of transmission by shortening the extrinsic incubation period (the time required for the mosquito to become infective after feeding on an infected person)."
Yellow fever also is seasonal. In Trinidad, the density of one mosquito carrier was six times more common in the wet season (May-November) than in the dry season; bear in mind that in the tropics; the seasonal variation of temperature is small (Chadee).
Plague is rather more problematic. In Switzerland, 1628-30, the outbreaks were mostly between September and January, with November the month of highest frequency (Eckert). But other outbreaks favored summer, with peaks of mid-summer for Penrith 1597-8, Marseilles 1720, and London 1665, and late-summer for London 1625 and Debrecen 1739 (Welford).
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The climatic deterioration was blamed on human misconduct. In Switzerland, Cysat wrote in 1600, "Unfortunately because of our sins, for already some time now the years have shown themselves to be more rigorous and severe than in the earlier past. . . ." (Pfister2007).
From blaming sins, it was a short step to looking for sinners. In Treves, Hans Linden's Gesta Treverorum blames the nigh-continuous crop failure of 1581-99 on "witches of devilish hate," and proclaims that "the whole country stood up for their eradication."
Accusations of causing "unnatural weather" or crop failure peaked when climate extremes disrupted agriculture. Moreover, it was generally considered unlikely that a single witch could control weather on a large-scale, which meant that the witch hunts were comparably large in scale (Pfister2007, Behringer).
In the 1620s, in Central Europe, there was a succession of extremely cold summers. For example, on May 24, 1626, there was a hailstorm in Stuttgart, "which brought hailstones the size of walnuts. . . ." Two nights later, ice formed, and crops failed. Witch-burnings in central Europe rose to a peak of over 500 a year, well above the "normal" (presumably, non-weather-related) level of the mid-16th century of 100 a year. As late as 1630, "suspects still had to confess that they had been responsible for the extreme frost in May of 1626."
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The wealthy, of course, get to choose where they live, and they live where conditions are healthiest. Lamb has pointed out that in Surrey, 20th-century luxury housing is on the hilltops, whereas in the LIA, the favored sites were in the valley bottoms (LambCHMW 251).
Climate, Agriculture and Fishing
Jabe McDougal was not the only up-timer who has the
Little Ice Age on his mind. One May, after the death of Mabel Jenkins in 1632 (Grid), Joe Jenkins grumbles that "there's snow on the ground" and "it's still here from February." He is worried that it won't be gone in time to plant corn and tomato, and adds, "If it weren't for the wheat, I could just up and starve with this here 'Little Ice Age.'" (Howard, "Golden Corn-A Tale of Old Joe on the Mountain Top," Grantville Gazette 9).
In the broader scheme of things, climate change can affect what crops can be raised in a particular part of the world. The ability of a plant to grow in a particular place is dependent on soil and climate.
Too much or too little heat, or too much or too little rain, can result in crop failure. Both droughts and floods can kill crops. Floods can be caused, not just by excessive rain, but by normal rain after a prolonged dry spell, as a result of which the soil has lost its normal ability to absorb water (Brooks 60).
If food cannot be rapidly and economically brought in from an unaffected area, crop failure leads to famine. Famine several years in a row can result in a major increase in illness, death or emigration, or in political unrest resulting in overthrow of the government or bloody suppression of a rebellion.
The down-timers in Thuringia are growing grain (primarily rye, barley, and spelt), vegetables, grasses for hay, and woad for dyeing. Of course, those are already adapted to the local climate. How will the plants that passed through the Ring of Fire, and are accustomed to the conditions of West Virginia in 2000, fare in LIA Germany?
There are complex plant-specific crop models available for predicting the combined, nonlinear effects of temperature and rainfall on plant development. These take into account changes in the sensitivity of the plant depending on its growth stage.
That's too complex for us, but we can look at what are called "cardinal temperatures"-minimum (base), optimum, and maximum (ceiling). Even those have their subtleties, as the cardinal temperatures may differ for germination, vegetative growth, and reproductive yield (which for grains is the crop yield).
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