Read Me First…
The Story So Far…
Welcome once again to the rollercoaster that is the 1632 Universe. The cars are starting so keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times as we take our tour of the universe that Grantville created. This month, we’re featuring nonfiction, with articles by Iver Cooper, Walter Hunt, and Jack Carroll, as well [...]
1632 Fiction
Chafing
Drahuta Residence, Bamberg, USE Julie always entered her residence with a certain suspicion. From a husband who enjoyed wearing his cavalry armor to the dinner table to a house that could, sometimes at the same time, hold the world's greatest mathematician and a worldwide sensation who was currently on medication for that, the Drahuta [...]
A Printer’s Dream
Amsterdam September, 1633 Louis Elzevir noticed a shadow over his shoulder as he finished the last bit of goldwork on the exquisite, red-leather bound tome he had been laboring over for weeks. The twenty-nine-year-old journeyman had slaved over this volume; everything from the typesetting, to the printing of each page, to the bookbinding was [...]
Blood Brothers
Winter, 1635 Near Modern-Day Rhode Island Fast as Lightning in the Sky watched the person he hated most in all the world approach him from the long line of snow-covered trees. He gnashed his teeth against the cold and reflected on his feelings. Perhaps hate was too strong. He hated no one. But this [...]
Continuing Serials
Letters From Gronow, Episode 4
Magdeburg From the Journal of Philip Fröhlich 25 March 1635 Sunday Breakfast– Fasted Lunch- 1 sausage 2 pfennigs 1 winter apple 1 pfennig 1 wheat roll 3 pfennigs Supper– 1 cup sauerkraut 2 quartered pfennigs 1 . . . We're really sorry, but this is only available to up-to-date paid subscribers. Perhaps [...]
SMC, Part 3
XI Late February, 1635 The Reservation The pilot plant consisted of several buildings: the chem plant where the primer compound was made, the primer plant where the compound was added to the cups to make a finished primer, and the brassworks that made the primer cups on one small production line and the [...]
1632 Non Fiction
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 shows pressure change without quantifying it). The earliest form was actually Drebbel's perpetuum mobile; [...]
Freemasonry in the World of 1632
Almost since the beginning of the Ring of Fire Universe, readers (and writers) have speculated about potential activities by social and fraternal organizations in Grantville and how they might continue to operate in the seventeenth century. In particular, the Masonic Fraternity could have made the journey back in time and sought to function in the [...]
1636: Land Radio Communication in Europe
In "Marine Radio in the 1632 Universe" (Grantville Gazette 52) and "1636: Marine Radio in the Mediterranean" (Gazette 66) we explored the possibilities for communication across salt water. We also considered, briefly, a few overland paths of special interest to the Navy and commercial shipping interests. Here, we'll turn the focus to communication across land. [...]
Columns
Notes from The Buffer Zone: The Shifting World Order
I can't get used to it, no matter how much I try. I really can't. I'm constantly astonished by the fact that the rest of the world has fallen in love with superheroes, magic, and space opera. I watch late night talk show hosts squee over plot twists in Game of Thrones, and I marvel. [...]
This Issue’s Cover- 73
This Issue’s Cover – 73 Light Up My World A down-timer astronomer marvels over his new twentieth century electric light-up globe. (With apologies to Johannes Vermeer.)
Time Spike
The First Cavalry of the Cretaceous, Part Five: Charge!
The Drained Sea The First Cavalry of the Cretaceous and their accompanying foot soldiers made good time across the wide flats of the former sea bottom, pausing at the usual rest stops to water the horses, then pressing quickly on. Occasionally they saw the large, reptile-like beasts of the present age roaming in the [...]
Universe Annex
The Company Dick
In a drug-induced fog, my head pounding, I woke flat on my back in an unfamiliar, windowless place. With a herculean effort, I managed to lift my head. The room was without furniture except for the mildewy, armless, too-short sofa across which I had been dumped, and off an end of which, like dead weights, [...]
Resources
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