1632/Ring of Fire series: Is Grantville having a net positive or net negative effect?

Neshomancer

Neshomancer

So as I've read the series, which I personally enjoy, mainly for the political maneuvering, I couldn't help but wonder if Grantville isn't doing more harm than good. Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands are obviously better off, however things are not so rosy in other places. France is in the middle of a civil war, The HRE is gone early and the Turks have taken Vienna. An anti-Pope has risen and Spain has overextended itself. Not to mention countless other changes.

In short, Grantvillle means well, but I'm concerned they might be doing more damage than they realize and are making things worse. What do you guys think?
 

TheScottishMongol

Banned
Depends on how you define good or bad, and what you consider Grantville's "fault".

Like, do you consider Grantville directly responsible for the French civil war, or did it arise through butterflies caused by the ISOT? That's a rather philosophical question!

Furthermore, while civil wars are messy, could this one not result in a fairer, more prosperous France? The HRE may be gone, but will it really be missed? Vienna has fallen to the Turks, but will they retain it, and would they be worse masters in the long term than the Austrians? Spain has overextended itself, but that seems like their problem, and again, should we particularly worry about them? Are these things really worse than the endless dynastic wars of OTL? And so on.

While Grantville has massively disrupted Europe, it might be too soon to tell if its net effect is good or bad. On the balance, the lives they save through introducing modern medicine might vastly outweigh any wars that resulted from their introduction of modern ideas.
 

assasin

I'm still a couple books behind so I don't know the exact details. But you need to remember it's the thirty years war. Spain and France were on schedule to fubar each other within the decade. Plus OTL Spain was also in the midst of plague and a major financial crisis. Things were going to shit long before Carlos the bewitched. Austria is worse off. But Bohemia avoids the suppression of Czech culture, Poland has an opportunity to reform their elections (and stop the partition a hundred years down the line), and there's not going to be regular wars within the Empire any more. It's a helluva lot better.
 
Worffan101

Worffan101

Modern medical science alone will be a massive net positive IMO. And the wars aren't that much worse than the OTL 30 years' war; granted they showed up late in the game, but uptimer tech does seem to have massively cut down on the length of wars, which is really good for the citizenry.
 

RamscoopRaider

Donor
Better, as said modern medical science being introduced far early. Add in modern agronomy, transportation methods, all sorts of productivity and efficiency enhancers. Standard of living is going to rise fast, life expectancy will climb, deaths form disease and famine are going to sink like a stone. Grantville is going to at the very least cut in half the time it takes to go from the 17th to the 21st century and all that results. And I would say that outweighs anything else that happens in the grand scheme of things
 

WeissRaben

A negative in the short term, but a massive positive in the long term, for the reasons outlined by RamscoopRaider.
 

Strategos' Risk

Also they came back at the height of our civilization, at the end of history pre-9/11. The sky’s the limit for those uptimers. They never had to witness the decline of empire. So they would be able to provide an almost utopian vision of the future rather than our much more conflicted present.
 

TheScottishMongol

Banned
Strategos' Risk said:
Also they came back at the height of our civilization, at the end of history pre-9/11. The sky’s the limit for those uptimers. They never had to witness the decline of empire. So they would be able to provide an almost utopian vision of the future rather than our much more conflicted present.
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2019 Grantville would lead to a very different outcome than 1999 Grantville.
 

TheScottishMongol

Banned
herkles said:
Curious how are these series of books?
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They're pretty good and surprisingly underdiscussed on this forum! I suspect this is because there are many books so there's a bit of a barrier to entry, but I think that's good, because it allows the writers to really explore the Ring of Fire and its repercussions.

Now to be fair, the books can vary in quality a bit, but this is due to the collaborative nature of the setting, and some of the co-authors have really elevated Flint's writing imo.
 
theg*ddam*hoi2fan

theg*ddam*hoi2fan

Strategos' Risk said:
Also they came back at the height of our civilization, at the end of history pre-9/11. The sky’s the limit for those uptimers. They never had to witness the decline of empire. So they would be able to provide an almost utopian vision of the future rather than our much more conflicted present.
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TheScottishMongol said:
2019 Grantville would lead to a very different outcome than 1999 Grantville.
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Strategos' Risk said:
Almost dystopian-ly different, depressingly, in my view. How do you imagine it?
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One idea I toyed with a while ago - and would like to write - is that instead of Grantville, the transported town is a Swedish one from the present day. I discussed it in a thread with a few others, and we actually came to the conclusion that a Swedish town might be better-equipped than Grantville, because (a) National Service means that most men will have done time in uniform and (b) the Swedish Home Guard. One poster reckoned that a mid-sized town might have a company of them present, together with weapons and vehicles...
 

mattep74

Neshomancer said:
So as I've read the series, which I personally enjoy, mainly for the political maneuvering, I couldn't help but wonder if Grantville isn't doing more harm than good. Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands are obviously better off, however things are not so rosy in other places. France is in the middle of a civil war, The HRE is gone early and the Turks have taken Vienna. An anti-Pope has risen and Spain has overextended itself. Not to mention countless other changes.

In short, Grantvillle means well, but I'm concerned they might be doing more damage than they realize and are making things worse. What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

They took Vienna, but the army was pretty much destroyed thanks to Grantvilles tactic of WW1 trenches in a later battle
 

Orcot

I'm curious is it realistic that the germans around grantville (not to mention all the head of states) are pretty okay that the people from grantville are protestant?
Also certain technologies like radio and plains would be so alien to them that not only would they not understand it but they would refuse to learn it at they would see it as witchcraft. Also theirs a suspiciously small language barrier. Also do they not share their medical technology for free? that would seem extremly un american maybe they share out those finished products but they would not tell people how to make them I believe.
Also the grantville population does not speak latin that would be like a today scientist claiming that he can't read it doesn't show much confidence
 
theg*ddam*hoi2fan

theg*ddam*hoi2fan

Orcot said:
I'm curious is it realistic that the germans around grantville (not to mention all the head of states) are pretty okay that the people from grantville are protestant?
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Flint's whole schtick is that the local population are so fed up with the war that they honestly don't care about Protestant or Catholic much anymore, given that they've been victimised by mercenaries on both sides.

Orcot said:
Also certain technologies like radio and plains would be so alien to them that not only would they not understand it but they would refuse to learn it at they would see it as witchcraft.
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Not really. Making basic crystal sets is fairly easy - you could train anyone to follow basic instructions. And another thing about the series is they reckon people of the era were far more intelligent than one might give them credit for - that once they know something's science rather than magic, they'll be able to catch on.

Orcot said:
Also do they not share their medical technology for free? that would seem extremly un american maybe they share out those finished products but they would not tell people how to make them I believe.
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Eric Flint's very leftist.

Also, it's a major plot point: by giving their medical tech out for free, they're protecting themselves by nipping any pandemics in the bud. If they just leave Europe on its own, then they run the risk of getting illnesses among their population, mutations, etc. But by giving it out? No pandemics.
 
Worffan101

Worffan101

RamscoopRaider said:
Better, as said modern medical science being introduced far early. Add in modern agronomy, transportation methods, all sorts of productivity and efficiency enhancers. Standard of living is going to rise fast, life expectancy will climb, deaths form disease and famine are going to sink like a stone. Grantville is going to at the very least cut in half the time it takes to go from the 17th to the 21st century and all that results. And I would say that outweighs anything else that happens in the grand scheme of things
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Not to mention that Grantville has introduced ideas like "Genocide is bad" and "Don't be mean to Jews" and "Don't spread smallpox blankets to Native Americans"--not everybody may agree with those at first, but the idea of "murdering people over religion/skin color is bad" is at least circulating on a large scale with the backing of a significant portion of the population of a major world power.

Also, Grantville has significantly shortened the conflicts they've been involved in, by being so lethal that military leaders are unable to maintain campaigns for as long as they did in the OTL 17th century due to ruinous casualties to their armies. Which has IMO significantly reduced civilian casualties even if you include the Ram Rebellion; and Grantville is very strongly against the medieval practice of "foraging" (raiding local farms for supplies for the army), which further reduces civilian losses.
herkles said:
Curious how are these series of books?
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Quite good, IMO. I think the peak is probably 1633 or 1634: The Baltic War, because of David Weber's involvement tempering Eric Flint's, shall we say, Jacobin instincts, and Flint's naked socialism tempering Weber's "'Murica, Military, and the British Monarchy are the three Ms that are all the good in the world" instincts.
 
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