1634: The Ram Rebellion
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| 1634: The Ram Rebellion | |
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| Author | Eric Flint, Virginia DeMarce, et al. |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | 1632 series aka Ring of Fire series |
| Genre(s) | Alternate history novel, though organized as an anthology |
| Publisher | Baen Books |
| Publication date | April 25, 2006 (hc) November 27, 2007 (mmpb) |
| Media type | print (hardback) mass market paperback e-book |
| Pages | 512 pages, 720 pages (pb) |
| ISBN | (hc) ISBN 1-4165-2060-0 (pb) ISBN 1-4165-7382-8 ISBN 978-1-4165-7382-1 |
| Preceded by | In publication order: 1634: The Galileo Affair (same timeline, different theatre) |
| Followed by | In publication order: 1635: The Cannon Law (only semi-related events, 1st direct sequel to the Galileo Affair [Southern Europe] thread) but has direct overlapping time relationship to the other sequels in the "main plot" thread: 1634: The Galileo Affair and 1634: The Baltic War and 1634: The Bavarian Crisis (This is most direct sequel) |
1634: The Ram Rebellion is the seventh published work in the 1632 series, and is the third work to establish what is best considered as a "main plot line or thread" of historical speculative focus that are loosely organized and classified geographically.[1] The initial main thread is called the "Western and North-Central Europe thread" (encompassing northern and western Germany, Denmark, England, France, the Low Countries, Sweden and the Baltic; the second plot line, encompassing events in Italy, Spain, the Mediterranean region, and France, the "South European thread", and this book can be considered the starting novel of the "South-Central/South-East thread" being set in southern Germany, Austria, Bavaria, and Bohemia. This geographically organized plot thread actually began in Ring of Fire in Flint's novelette "The Wallenstein Gambit" which is set in Bohemia, Austria, and Germany, which tied into stories in various Grantville Gazettes.
Contents |
The book is hard to classify as it is an oddity, as acknowledged by series creator Eric Flint in the forward; an anthology in fact, with several longer novelettes sandwiching seemingly unrelated short stories under a (hidden for a while) overarching story line that is capped off by a short novel that finally brings all the seemingly unrelated and disparate contents together in the latter part of the book.
1634: The Ram Rebellion is currently available as an ebook, paperback, and a hardcover novel.
Unlike most works in the 1632 series, much of this book is written from the standpoint of common people "in the street", including Germans trying to cope with Grantville, West Virginia, up-timers trying to cope with their new world around Grantville, and both trying to deal with the problems of two widely different cultures meeting in the new United States of Europe. These merging dynamics are the milieu shaping stories Flint felt necessary to include even though they are set in 1631—1632. Their impact extends throughout the book and into 1634, as well as across political boundaries and battle lines as the historical imperatives developed in this book extend into the direct sequel 1634: The Bavarian Crisis.
The Ram Rebellion theme
"The Birdie Tales"
The two Larkin "Birdie" Newhouse tales along with two flashback vignettes by Flint begin the Ram Rebellion book, all four set in the weeks immediately after the Ring of Fire. In the Flint stories which are sandwiched around the Birdie tales, Mike Stearns goes back to school under the tutelage of The Schoolmarm from Hell, Melissa Mailey, also known as Melissa the Hun to the students "who thought she was basically okay—Mike himself had been one of them"[2]. Stearns has a problem, he has to get a handle on likely complications from the local population, as the stories are set just a few days after he is elected as Chairman of the Emergency Committee. Mz. Mailey is true to form however and he leaves her living room carrying several very thick history books on European history in the era, and muttering under his breath, "Point three, I almost wish I hadn't".
Birdie Newhouse has an immediate problem, he's a farmer with most of his farm's arable land 300 years off and a continent away. The stories by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett explore the alien land practices and ownership of down-time Germany as Birdie seeks to gain additional lands. Land sales are rare, worse, the lawyers are in control and there are three general levels of vested interest: The tenants, have certain rights and obligations over and above monetary rent while leases are generally for three generations or the lesser of 99 years. In between the owner in fact, and the tenants is usually a monetary transaction which gives the rents to any number of claimants—depending upon the finances of the landholding family. The claimants all have a say in the farm operation to some extent, as do the occupants of the farm villages, which also have the right to disapprove or accept new co-farmers, for the land is farmed co-operatively with another set of obligations and entitlements. Birdie can't just go an buy a piece of land, he has to buy it from three different and diverse groups of people... and get them all to agree to terms. As the story notes, seventeenth century Germany was a lawyers paradise.
"Enter the Ram"
Enter the Ram is the subtitle of the second part of the work.
The Trouble in Franconia
With the example of future Grantville, a peasant revolt becomes a revolutionary movement in the fractured Holy Roman Empire south and east of Thuringia while the Machiavellian maneuvers in the neohistorical governments and various field armies now dance to counter-act those aimed at the Americans' new heartland. Up-timers, from the original USA space-time want the serfs to succeed and liberate themselves—but also know what a bloodbath the French Revolution became and various individuals act to help one and prevent the others. Avoiding that path will take all sorts of resources and efforts, and Americans from both uptime and down-time act resolutely to mitigate the problems, diplomacy to head off wars headed by authoritarians threatened by the new American ideals, and a deft appreciation of when not to fight and dangle an irresistible carrot instead.
Miscellaneous
- The Ram Rebellion spot-covers local events and a few related diplomatic discussions from a few days after the ROF (May-June 1631 in ) to October[3] in the fall of 1634—giving it the largest time footprint of the four—though narrowly focused. The short novel that concludes the work begins in late August 1633 and overlaps many of the shorter works earlier in the book. Two of the three other books set in 1634 refer to the events in the work (usually as the "troubles in Franconia") setting its canonical place in the "greater" neohistorical international politics covered in the other two works.
References
- ^ Flint, Eric (31 March 2005). "Well... It's more complicated than that (1632 Tech Manual "Essay" archived at 1632.org now)". http://1632archive.dnsalias.org/archive/1632Tech_200503/msg00113.html. Retrieved on 2007-10-21. "THE BALTIC WAR is the direct sequel to 1633. Truth be told, it's actually the second half of the same novel. I originally plotted that story as one novel, not two."
- ^ Flint, 1634: The Ram Rebellion , p. 5, in "Cookbooks"
- ^ Flint, and DeMarce. The Ram Rebellion. pp. 494 (of 496). "Magdeburg, October 1634"
External links
- 1632 novel eBook — Baen Free Library 'free' eBook version of the original novel 1632.
- 1633 novel eBook — Baen Free Library 'free' eBook version of the 1633 first novel sequel.
- Ring of Fire — Baen Books 'promotional sample chapters' in eBook format.
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- Free but partial version of the Ring of Fire anthology, the co-sequel (with 1633) to 1632.
- Baen Books 1632verse series Compendium' of all 1632verse related books with links to Baen Books 'promotional sample chapters' in eBook format, or the Baen Free Library 'free' eBook version, as applies.
| Preceded by 1633 (novel) (in plot line thread) Grantville Gazette II (in publication order) |
1634: The Ram Rebellion | Succeeded by (Coincide in time with:) 1634: The Galileo Affair and 1634: The Bavarian Crisis and 1634: The Baltic War (in plot line thread) 1635: The Cannon Law (in publication order) |
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