Weber is Weber but Flint is a special joy because of his fresh look at familiar concepts in SF.

Check out 1632 at www.baen.com. Their e-book section is called webscriptions. For $10-!5 per month, you can buy an e-version of every book published for a given month going back to 12/1999. They can be downloaded in multiple formats (like palm OS or HTML), and are NOT encrypted like peanutpress.com. It is THE BEST e-book deal on the web. My only complaint would be that sometimes books are reappear in other months. Actually the better deal is the Baen Free Library. Some Baen volumes are available free.

I read 1632 but have not read 1633. At first, I liked the book, but when I finished I thought that it was really hokey. The "psychological attack" using modern and classical music was so painfully dumb I almost stopped reading the book a mere 50 pages from the end.

I did finish but it left me with no desire to read the sequel. Which is too bad because the book began promisingly enough. As the reviewer says, the attempt by the author to show the Americans applying American values was interesting. The author also has a few interesting characters amongst the Americans and Germans. I suppose those might be interesting to follow through a series.

If you're going to read it, just check it out from your local library.

I'm afraid that I have to agree with Michael T. on this one. The book showed great promise, started with an interesting situation, and then kind of fell flat. The "psychological attack" was one weak spot, another was when the local sherrif stops a calvary troop charging straight for him with his .40 handgun.

Gee, I wish MY handguns could do that.

James

That was the sheriff and a hundred or so people with modern rifles, shooting from cover, against massed 17th C cavalry charging down a street.

The psychological attack was a prelude to the near-napalm lobbed into the tower full of enemy troops. And the sharpshooters with modern rifles against guys with 17th C firearms.

While I liked 1632 and will, shortly, buy 1633, I think S.M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time/On the Oceans of Eternity series is far better. [Nantucket Island + USCGS Eagle get transferred to 1100BC or thereabouts end up meeting among many others Odysseus.]

Anyone who recommends Master and Commander should try the Power of One. Its listed as juvenile fiction but its more than that.

Anyone who recommends Master and Commander should try the Power of One. Its listed as juvenile fiction but its more than that.

I read 1632 and thought it was okay, but not outstanding--this is a basic time-travel idea that has been done A LOT by numerous other authors, and I don't think there is enough original twists here to put it in a class with Lord of the Rings or Master and Commander or Ender's Game. I certainly won't buy 1633 in hardbound--I might get it from the library or in paperback, but only because I'm an addict.

I'm curious as to why Charles Quinn reommends Power of One to anyone who liked Master and Commander. I haven't read Power of One, I see that it got some enthusiastic reviews on Amazon--but what does it have in common with M & C?

It's now on my Amazon.com wish-list. If it's as good as you say, can you recomend others?

I'll be happy to, Pearse. I'm going to take a look at the Stirling books and the Power of One mentioned above, as well. Not reading anything particular at the moment, though I've got like 6 books in a pile.

I wanted to read this book because it has the same central concept as the Island in the Sea of Time series by S. M. Stirling. As well as because I was curious what kind of writer Eric Flint really was. He had been around rec.arts.sf.written for a while, somewhat bellicose and abrasive, especially on the topics of editing and writing novels. He seemed to think his credentials as a published writer and editior automatically meant he was in the right.

Now I have to praise Flint for at least one thing, because he is the driving force behind the Baen Free Library. Baen had already published online versions of their books via their webscriptions, but this time they provided them for free. A sort of sample of the books they publish. And amongst the books on offer was 1632.

The central concept of 1632 is the same as that of S. M. Stirling's series: a small US community gets thrown back into time for some unexplainable reason and has to survive in a hostile world. The difference lies in that this time the community is a West Virginian mining town, not the yankee island of Nantucket and the time they're thrown back to is historical instead of prehistorical: 1632 Germany, right in the middle of the Thirty Years War.

Apart from that, there's also a big difference in the focus. Where Stirling gave equal time to other concerns beside warfare in at least the first of his Island books, Flint chose to almost exclusively write about the war for survival Grantville has to fight. When other concerns crop up, like determining the political structure of Grantville, these are quickly and perfunctionally dealt with. 1632 is pure mil-sf and hence the main structure of the book is the series of ever bigger battles Grantville has to fight.

This is not necessarily a bad thing of course, but I do feel this has warped the book too much. Few of the various characters struck me as much more then a somewhat fleshed out stereotype. There's Mike Spearn, the popular but modest leader, Rebecca Abrabanel, the love interest and her father, who for 17th century Jews of Spanish descent seem to be awfully close to 20th sentiments, there are the villains, who practically sneer their ways through the pages. The one character that really convinced me was Gustav Adolf, who is of course plucked straight out of history and in one of the chapters dealing exclusively with him, Eric Flint almost becomes lyrical in writing about his greatest battle.

Apart from the characters, what irked me the most about the book is the simplifications of history. All the good, Grantville supporting historical characters seem to be 20th century people in drag, calmly accepting Grantville morals and attitudes towards religion and women frex. There's no sense of the very important role religion played in almost everybody's life. These were people fighting decades long wars about their religions, but here they seem to have no more religious feeling then your average Unitarian. Not to mention the way in which the Catholics are portrayed as the bad guys, almost solely responsible for the whole Thirty Years War, which is just plain wrong. Or the "Rah rah America" tone of the book, with the backward Europeans being shown the One True American Way of Truth, Jusitce and Democracy...

But does this mean 1632 is a bad book? Does it have nothing redeeming whatsoever? I'd say no. If you like mil-sf, you will find this a rollicking, fast and fun read. But you will have to turn your brain off first.

Opposing POV from Martin's:

The comparisons with Stirling and Flint are not appropriate in that Stirling _set out_ to write a series while 1632 was originally only to be a single book.

I found both novels to be extremely historically accurate. And while I suppose that Flint could have added several hundred pages of info-dump to educate the reader about The Thirty Year War...what purpose would that have served?

Another difference between Stirling and Flint is that Stirling's Nantucket is an arms factory through which the Nantucketers can conquer the world. In Flint's story the main character, Stearns, must make alliances. I found Stirling's concept that Nantucket would soon be turning out late 18th century firearms in mass quantity to be absurd; and Flint's refusal to have the Swedes quickly armed with superior weapons to be far closer to belief.

The "Rah, Rah America" criticism is somewhat fallacious. Clearly Flint is writing about individuals who value freedom. The UMWA does not represent what most of us would think of as jingoistic Americans. The fact that there is a Constitutional Convention and not a rewrite of the American Constitution should make that plain. However, I could see someone living in another country at a time when America was preparing to go to war to see any praise of American ideals to be jingoistic.

And the Catholics, in the form of the Hapsburgs, were pretty much responsible for the war. A catholic emperor removed a protestant king from a predominantly protestant, or catholic dissenter, country. Hence White Mountain. And Flint makes it quite clear, see the scene the reviewer quoted, that American sensibilities about religion were vastly different from the people they meet in 1632. And if one reads further in the series one sees this issue addressed again and again.

1633 clearly becomes more alternate history than mil-sf as more of the story revolves around politics and social change. But it is odd that such a criticism would be made, in that the entire sub-genre of Alternate History usually revolves around military action. As it must, because small changes in a single battle can substantially change the course of future events. I have yet to see a successful "alternate history" where the critical change was made via a different vote in Parliament than what happened in reality.

Judging by the opening paragraph of Martin's review, I suspect, though I do not know, that there was a bit of a usenet ax to grind. One reason I do not frequent such places, nor put much stock in commentary coming from it.

Despite a few minor unnecessary irritations, I really enjoyed 1632. 1633 was a decent 400 page story in a 600 page book. Too much boring, grandiose, & illogical political b.s. Some better editting of the content would have made these outstanding & interesting books to read. They were still decent but left me regretting the books they could have been.

Loved 1632 and liked 1633. Understandably, 1633, was meant to flesh out the probable history of such an event as happened upon Grantville and 17th century Europe. Certainly 1633 opens doors for a very workable series. Flint's portrayal of historical charachters seems to be reasonable, if not very accurate. This alone could get high school students to read and study history. I don't know if I would compare 1632/3 to Stirling's works as to Forstchen's Lost Regiment or H. Beam Piper's (et al) Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen series. Both of those authors utilize a need to make alliances quickly as well as taking strong political stands and encouraging scientific method (allowing the locals to build a technological base to support higher technology and culture). The books are readable and well written, and certainly could inspire discussion and study. While elements are certainly simplistic, there needs to be some leeway in order to keep the books under 2000 pages. I will agree that as of yet, Flint has glossed over the spiritual side of issues while or just using them as a bogeyman, which in 16-18th century world certainly were major values and tenets even to those who were nominal in their faith. Albeit the Scots and the Gustavus characters do have intelligent and inciteful views on theology and would seem to typify the thought of the day. It will be interesting to see how Flint and company handle the issue of producing brass and primers for their 20th century weapons to continue working. Pournelle solved this in the Janissary series by having the aliens resupply the Star Lords. A writer named Adams, I believe, in an alternate history set in England and Ireland dealt with the issue by dismissing the pursuit of producing primers because they could not produce smokeless powder so all the small caliber guns would be rendered useless (short sighted but expedient)and the characters devolved into using shortened shotguns and period weaponary. I mention this in that most of those books seemed to be written by one man outfits and the technology represented and pursued was limited to the authors' experience. In 1632/3 the author(s) seem to have broad experience and also bring other people in for expertise. Thankfully there are multiple characters with enough ink to make their use plausable. And Flint has certainly opened his book up to a global scale with the introduction of French pursuits in the New World and England vis-a-vis Cromwell. For addicts the series possibility could go on for decades.

Has Baen books published any books by Tom Godwin. I am talking about "Cold Equations", "Space Prison" ("Survivors"?) and the sequal to "Space Prison".

Mike