Ring of Fire » (Reprint)

Eric Flint is a new master of alternate-history science fiction. His 1632, prequel to 1633, received lavish critical praise from all directions and enjoyed high sales. His first novel, Mother of Demons, was picked by Science Fiction Chronicle as a best novel of the year. He has also shown a powerful gift for humorous fantasy adventure with Forward the Mage and The Philosophical Strangler, which Booklist described as "Monty Python let loose in Tolkien's Middle Earth." With David Drake he has collaborated on five novels in the popular "Belisarius" series, the next of which will be The Dance of Time. A longtime labor union activist with a degree (Phi Beta Kappa) in African history, he currently resides in Indiana with his wife Lucille.

The battle between democracy and tyranny is joined, and the American Revolution has begun over a century ahead of schedule. A cosmic accident has shifted a modern West Virginia town back through time and space to land it and its twentieth century technology in Germany in the middle of the Thirty Years War. History must take a new course as American freedom and democracy battle against the squabbling despots of seventeenth-century Europe. Continuing the story begun in the hit novels 1632 and 1633, the New York Times best-selling creator of Honor Harrington, David Weber, the best-selling fantasy star Mercedes Lackey, best-selling SF and fantasy author Jane Lindskold, space adventure author K. D. Wentworth, Dave Freer, co-author of the hit novels Rats, Bats & Vats and Pyramid Scheme (both Baen), and Eric Flint himself combine their considerable talents in a shared-universe volume that will be a "must-have" for every reader of 1632 and 1633.

Publishers Weekly

Readers who enjoyed editor Flint's novels (1632; 1633) of a West Virginia town transported by a black hole back in time to Germany during the Thirty Years War will appreciate how neatly the other authors' tales in this strong anthology dovetail with Flint's series. For instance, the aging hippie of Mercedes Lackey's "To Dye For" has already played an important role in 1633. Other stories lead into Flint's forthcoming novel, The Galileo Affair, while still others provide major plot threads for this volume's concluding novella, Flint's "The Wallenstein Gambit." Following their editor's lead, individual contributors concentrate less on the impact that the displaced Americans' technology makes than on how their ideas-and ideals-inspire those newly exposed to them. Thus we see a young priest embracing the ideas of a Vatican Council over 300 years in his future as a solution to the sectarian violence of his era (Andrew Dennis's "Between the Armies"), while young Germans take to baseball as a means of pushing themselves beyond themselves (Deann Allen and Mike Turner's "American Past Time"). Flint and his followers never forget that history is more than just kings and heroes. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.