The Story So Far . . .
by Walt Boyes
Welcome back to the wild and woolly seventeenth century! In this edition of the Gazette, we bring you some talented writers with unusual stories that will surely entertain you.
In “Goodbye” Thomas Scot shows us a new journeyman—and the journeyman does what journeymen are supposed to—he journeys. We get a good look at how crafts work in the down-time world.
Bjorn Hasseler’s “The Observer” is about an unusually perspicacious young woman who simply notices things other people do not. If her religion permits, the Grantville Police want her to join their crime squad. Will she? She solves the case of the graffitied lockers very quickly. What else will she do?
In Michael Lockwood’s “The Freeman’s Oath” a New England colonist needs to decide whether he can legitimately agree to sign an oath of obedience to the French.
Tim Sayeau’s “Cremonensis Faciebat 1632, or Body and Scroll: the Luthier’s Tale” describes the way the up-timers and down-timers are affected by the butterfly effect. One of the great luthiers (violin makers) of Italy journeys to Grantville and reads about the luthiers of Cremona, including one Stradivarius. Will Stradivarius be born?
Jackie Britton Lopatin writes a sequel to her story about invisible dogs, “The Visible Dogs of Grantville” which is so secret we can’t tell you about it except to say that it involves camouflage paint.
Iver Cooper gives us a nonfiction article about blue dye—a very rare material in Early Modern Europe.
Kristine Katherine Rusch gives us an elegy for her lost friends and mentors starting with Gardner Dozois, who died recently.
And Mike Watson delivers a tale of the fantastic, “The Enigma of Charlie Peabody” in which a small Midwestern town confronts a very strange fellow.
Finally, we’re introducing a new feature. We’ll be talking about the latest releases from Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire Press in “What’s Hot Off the Press.” We hope you like it, and are moved to get the books and enjoy reading them.
So, please have your “E” ticket in your hand as you climb into the car, and keep your hands and feet inside. It’s going to be an interesting and challenging ride.