FOREWORD
"...all at once, and nothing first, just as bubbles do when they burst." Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), The Deacon's Masterpiece, or, the Wonderful One-hoss Shay: A Logical Story.
“Eternity isn’t time that goes on forever. It is a place without time, where everything is all at once. Everyone knows that.” Salome Piscatora, verh. Kastenmayer (1593- ), “The Woman Shall Not Wear That” in: Things Could Be Worse.
If, for some random reason, you have picked up this little volume titled Things Could Be Worse as your first introduction to the universe of Eric Flint’s 1632 series (also known upon occasion as the Ring of Fire), you’ll need a bit of introduction to what is happening.
The West Virginia mining town of Grantville, a sphere of territory extending three miles from its center in all directions, along with its approximately 3500 residents, arrived in the middle of largely Lutheran Thuringia, Germany, in April 1631, courtesy of a science fiction device named an Assiti Shard. As the town had no Lutheran church, as German refugees from the Thirty Years War flooded into the town, the local Landesherr, Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, saw his duty. For more background, you may go read “The Rudolstadt Colloquy” (set in April 1633) in the Grantville Gazette I anthology from Baen Publishing. After the end of that story, having consulted with the consistory of his territorial church, the count proceeded with the building of St. Martin’s in the Fields on land he owned just outside of the Ring of Fire, along the road leading to his little capital city of Rudolstadt, and appointed Ludwig Kastenmayer as its first pastor.
Since this series is alternative history rather than fantasy, things do not occur instantaneously. You make the acquaintance of Our Fictional Protagonist a year after the colloquy. He is not a hero of romance, but rather in his mid-sixties, born in Saxony, a Lutheran of the Phillippist ilk who endured the controversies with the Flacians there until, being on the losing side, he had the luck some twenty years prior to the “Grantville miracle” of being appointed to a parish in the Thuringian town of Ohrdruf, located in the extinct County of Gleichen, where he remained until called to Grantville. He comes accompanied by his pragmatic wife, whose given name of “Salome” was quite popular at the time, having nothing to do with the dance of the seven veils (the name of that woman is not in the biblical narrative, but rather transmitted by Josephus) and everything to do with the “righteous Salome,” wife of Zebedee and mother of the disciples James and John. He also arrives with numerous children from two marriages, the eldest aged thirty and the youngest a toddler.
The various seventeenth-century intra-Lutheran theological controversies follow him from both Saxony and Ohrdruf into the culturally and ecclesiastically diverse town from the future.
Most of the stories collected here were originally published in the Grantville Gazette and were separate and independent. Consequently, they are not a sequential narrative, but overlap chronologically.
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For quick reference, here is a chronology of some of the mainline events in the changed history of Europe that has resulted from the Ring of Fire, and to which the characters in the stories make passing references, without explanations, because they are happening in the background of their preoccupations within their own lives.
Late 1634, pan-Lutheran theological colloquy in Magdeburg
4 March 1635 assassination of Dreeson and Wiley in Grantville
June 1635 USE transition from Stearns to Wettin administration
Summer 1635 plague epidemic on the western borders of the USE
June 1635 start of Gustavus Adolphus’ campaign against Saxony and Brandenburg
September 1635 John George of Saxony, his wife, and one of his sons killed in the Vogtland
October 1635 Gustavus Adolphus seriously injured in battle at Lake Bledno and doesn’t make sense for four months; Oxenstierna and the reactionaries
Late November through December 1635 Grantville quarantined for a measles epidemic
February 1636 Gustavus Adolphus recovers significantly; death of Oxenstierna
Summer 1636 USE transition from Crown Loyalists to Piazza FoJP administration
Summer 1636 Ottomans invade Austria
When you read these stories, please understand. Basically, they are not sequential, but rather simultaneous. From Sabina Ottmar’s flashback to coming into Grantville in 1631 to the dedication of Countess Catharina the Heroic Lutheran School in the spring of 1637, they span the time thus far covered in the mainline books of the 1632 series. However....
However, the characters in these stories are not involved in great USE imperial or international political events. Most are not even directly involved in politics on the level of the State of Thuringia-Franconia (SoTF). Those events do, at some remove, affect them. They do not, by and large, affect those events. Their lives and primary concerns are local.
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The core portion of “Pastor Kastenmayer’s Revenge”[1] starts and ends in April 1635 with Pastor Kastenmayer’s thinking about the events of the previous year. However, the action takes place between April 1634 and April 1635, with a couple of mental flashbacks to even earlier events, so this story should be read first. The seven individual mini-stories contained in it overlap with one another.
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“The Woman Shall Not Wear That”[2] starts in summer 1634 and ends on Christmas Eve of the same year. It is simultaneous with the “middle” chronology of “Revenge.”
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“Or the Horse May Learn to Sing”[3] starts during Christmas vacation 1634 and ends in late August 1635, so the first part is simultaneous with the latter part of “Revenge.” The 1632 series has numerous other stories involving the Reverend Albert Green, by other authors, particularly Terry Howard, which have appeared in the Grantville Gazette.
“The Truth about That Cat and Pup”[4] starts in January 1635 and ends in September 1635. It overlaps with the latter part of “Revenge” and is essentially simultaneous with “Horse.” For this collection, I have split the story as published in the Grantville Gazette into two parts, with a new story inserted between them.
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“Clothed with the Imperishable” is a new story, not previously published, set in April-May 1635. Chronologically, it occurs in the middle of both “Horse” and “Truth.” Those who are curious about how Phillip Gribbleflotz and Dina Kastenmayer met, as well as Pastor Kastenmayer’s reaction to the improbable match, should read Kerryn A. Offord, “The Doctor Gribbleflotz Chronicles, Part 3; Doctor Phil's Distraction,” Grantville Gazette #8, or Chapter 16 in in Kerryn Offord and Rick Boatright, 1636: The Chronicles of Dr. Gribbleflotz (Baen Books, 2016), before moving on to this story. Ideally, readers should read Kerryn’s story first whether they are curious or not. The ladies of the Fortney, Kubiak, and Drahuta families who appear in this story have been introduced in other of Kerryn’s Gribbleflotz stories published in the Grantville Gazette and also appear in the Chronicles.
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The other previously unpublished story, “Things Could Be Worse,” starts in May 1635 and concludes in March 1636. The earlier part overlaps somewhat with “Horse” and significantly with “Truth.” The major part of the action takes place in early November of 1635. For background concerning Neustatter’s European Security Service (NESS) and its activities, the curious should read several of Bjorn Hasseler’s stories that show interaction between his characters and others that appear in the stories in this book. For example, the original group of employees generally attend church at St. Martin’s in the Fields. They eat at Cora’s City Hall Café. In “A Cold Day in Grantville,” Grantville Gazette #40, the date being 14 Nov 1634, Neustatter excommunicates Pankratz Holz.
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“Waking Up in Heaven”[5] begins in February 1636 and ends in November 30, 1636.
“Angels Watching over Me”[6] takes place in May 1637 and concludes the Pastor Kastenmayer sequence. His widow, Salome Piscatora, and his children will reappear in the future in Kerryn Offord’s Dr. Gribbleflotz sequence.