Vol. 73, Sep 2017

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 mug beer 1 pfennig   Dreamt last night, but nothing that I remember. Just enough to [...]

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 [...]

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; [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 Light Up My World A down-timer astronomer marvels over his new twentieth century electric light-up globe. (With apologies to Johannes Vermeer.)  

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 [...]

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, [...]