1635: It Was A Very Good Year

1635: The Cannon Law is the eighth volume in a loose series under the overall aegis of Eric Flint (in other words, he's written some of them, he's co-written some of them, and he's edited some of them). It's another series I came to late (the dangers of being known as a book reviewer: near strangers walk up to you in coffee shops and hand you books), and, while I'm not going to drop everything to find the rest of them, I certainly won't turn them down if offered.

The basic premise of the series is that the inhabitants of the fictional town of Grantville, West Virginia, have been transported back in time to the Germany of 1632. This was, as I'm sure you'll remember, the mid-point of the Thirty Years' War, which devastated Germany as the Lutheran North, led by Gustav Adolf of Sweden, fought the Catholic South, led by the Habsburg armies of Spain and the Austrian Empire. The Americans decide to bring the benefits of twentieth-century democratic institutions, as well as some of the technology, to early modern Europe.

As the series has unfolded, it has taken on several distinct story lines; The Cannon Law is the second in the "southern" story line of what has become known as the "1632-verse."* The story takes place mainly in Rome, where Sharon Nichols, a nurse whose father had run a free clinic in West Virginia, has been appointed ambassador of the United States of Europe to the Holy See. She is remarkable in several ways: she is black, which makes her somewhat exotic; she is a nurse, which brings her great respect and admiration (the Romans refer to her as "la Dottoressa"); she is one of "the Americans," which brings a certain unease; and she is a woman who has been a successful merchant and now a diplomat, which makes her somewhat of a scandal.. Her fiancé is the Spanish soldier of fortune Ruy Sanchez de Casador y Ortiz. Also in Rome, although most carefully not connected with the embassy, are Frank Stone, with his wife Giovanna and her brothers, to set up a Committee of Correspondence, an institution modeled on any number of prototypes, with the intent to set up a school, provide a gathering place for potential revolutionaries, and to disseminate the ideas of democracy. All this is happening at a time of great tension between the Pope and His Most Catholic Majesty of Spain as the Spanish armies prepare to advance into a staging area in France, which, under Cardinal Richelieu's guidance, had withdrawn its support from Sweden and allied itself with Spain and Austria against the dangerous ideas coming out of Germany.

This is a good read, an absorbing story peopled by sometimes bizarre but believable characters (the more so if you're familiar with this period of history), giving a good feel for the times, with lots of intrigue and double-dealing -- which is all the more interesting because a lot of it really happened. And, the fiction fits so seamlessly into the history that it doesn't really matter whether it happened or not.

It's also fascinating to see how different authors approach the idea, and what their particular concerns are. It reminds me somewhat of the "shared universe" series that were popular in the 1980s and into the '90s (Janet Morris' "Hell," Robert Lynn Asprin's "Thieves' World," and C. J. Cherryh's "Merovingen Nights," for example), but on a much more ambitious scale. Fans are encouraged to contribute, and there is a series of volumes of related short fiction under the heading "Granville Gazette," much of which is appearing only online.

I'm not going to call out the bloodhounds, but I am going to keep my eyes open for others in the series. It'll be worth it.


* For an extensive discussion of the 1632 project and the ways in which it has broken new ground not only in the alternate universe subgenre of science fiction, but in the way science fiction is made, see the Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/1632_series.