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--- alternate_history:163x [2009/02/14 05:01] – created david bar elias
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-**163x**
+====== The 163x (Ring of Fire) series ======
 A series of novels and stories, originally created by Eric Flint, dealing with the (fictional) 20th century West Virginia town of Grantville being thrown, through time and space in a "Ring of Fire" caused by an alien artifact, to Thuringia during the Thirty Years War.
+Flint and the large and active fan community (who, between them, keep up a frequent e-published "Grantville Gazette")  have closely based Grantville on the (very real) town of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannington,_West_Virginia|Mannington, WV]], going to the lengths of looking at census records and other reports to find out what types of people and what technology would be in the town at the time of the ISOT.
+Flint wrote //1632// with the specific intent to praise "the common folk who built this country and keep it running," who in most science-fiction and alternate history novels, he says in the afterward, "hardly ever appear. If they figure at all, it is usually as spear carriers—or, more often than not, as a bastion of ignorance and bigotry."  He also criticizes "the pervasive cynicism which seems to be the accepted 'sophisticated' wisdom of so many of today’s writers" and shows the residents of Grantville acting nobly and successfully - beating off multiple attacks on the town within a year of the ISOT, while opening the franchise to German refugees.  In later works, however, the alternate history community widely believes Grantville's continued successes to be implausibly depicted as they go on to found the quasi-republican United States of Europe under the rule of a quite friendly Gustav Adolph.  Nonetheless, the first book - at least - is considered by many a very good novel.
+----
+=== See Also ===
+**[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:1632_series|Index of the series on Wikipedia]]**
+**[[http://1632.org/|1632.org]]** - The series' fan community.
+The first three books were available as free e-books; as of February 2013, they seem to have been taken down.  But you can still **[[http://www.baenebooks.com/p-379-1632.aspx|read the first several chapters]]** of //1632//.
+----
+==== Navigation ====
+**[[List of AH Media and Works on the Wiki]]**
+**[[alternate history:alternate history|Alternate History Topics Section Main Directory]]**