Iver P. Cooper
Iver P. Cooper, an intellectual property law attorney, lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife and two children. Two cats and a chinchilla rule the household with iron paws. Iver has received legal writing awards from the American Patent Law Association, the U.S. Trademark Association, and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and is the sole author of Biotechnology and the Law, now in its twenty-something edition. He has frequently contributed both fiction and nonfiction to The Grantville Gazette.
When not writing (or trying to get an "orange blob" off his chair so he can start writing), he has been known to teach swing dancing and folk dancing, or to compete in local photo club competitions. Iver adds, "I can't get my wife to read my fiction, but she has no trouble cashing the checks."
Iver's story "The Chase" is in Ring of Fire II
Fair or Foul, Part 3: Meteorological Observation Networks
In Flint, 1633, Chapter 14, Jesse tells Jim, "We need someone to organize a weather service. . . ." In Huff and Goodlett, "High Road to Venice" (GG19), set in 1634, Merton Smith of TransEuropean Airlines calls up the weather service and he has weather information from...
Fair or Foul: Part 2, Observing Pressure and Wind
Barometric Pressure The barometer measures air pressure. A local fall in air pressure can indicate the approach of a frontal system with associated bad weather. Pre-RoF Baroscopes. While the down-timers do not have barometers, they do have a baroscope (which...
Fair or Foul: Part 1, Observing Temperature, Humidity, and Precipitation
Our up-time characters are in Little Ice Age Europe now, and hence neither their experience with twentieth-century American agriculture nor their limited literature on twentieth-century European agriculture are a completely reliable guide as to what crops will grow...
Between East and West
Fall, 1634 Gulf of Cadiz, Spanish Coast The wind was from the southwest as the fishing boat Estrella del Este approached the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. On their right stood the town of Sanlucar de Barrameda, at which the great ships of the flota, the...
Life at Sea in the Old and New Time Lines, Part 4: Lights Across the Waters
In part 3, I talked about deck, cabin, and hold illumination. But there's also a need for lighting by which the ship sees what lies around it, and is seen in turn. Lighting may also be used for communication, ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore. Running lights...
Life at Sea in the Old and New Timelines, Part 3: Shipboard Lighting and Fire Prevention
The enclosed decks of ships were man-made caves, and were it not for openings in the hull and decks, or artificial lights, they would have been as dark as night, even in the daytime. At night, of course, the sailors would be dependent on moonlight or even starlight if...
The Tower of Babel
Grantville, 1635 Federico Ballarino took an appreciative sip of the Thuringian Gardens lager. It had been a long day; his train from Magdeburg to Grantville had suffered a breakdown, costing him two hours. When he finally arrived, he dropped his gear off at...
Life at Sea in the Old and New Time Lines: Part 2, Keeping Dry (and Afloat)
In Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, the sailor Penelon tells the story of a crisis at sea he had survived. His ship had pitched heavily for twelve hours, scudding under bare poles in a gale, and finally sprung a leak. Penelon continues: “All hands to the...
Resources
1632.org hosts everything ELSE about the 1632 series.
