Preface
Eric Flint
1637: The Coast of Chaos is a hybrid volume, similar to 1634: The Ram Rebellion. It’s not a novel, since it consists of a number of stories written by several different authors. But unlike a traditional anthology, where the stories have no relationship beyond perhaps a broad theme (Cats on Mars, for instance), all of the stories in this book are connected to each other. Taken as a whole, the stories depict different aspects of the same dramatic center: the seizure of New England from the English colonists by France, and the ways in which the native and European populations react to that and deal with it—and deal with each other.
The volume begins with a short novel by myself and two of my frequent partners, Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett. Our story stands a bit to the side of the others, since it is centered on the New Netherlands, the colony established by the Low Countries in what is modern day New York City, Albany, and the Hudson Valley and its environs. The reason we start there is because what happens in the New Netherlands—which includes their negotiations with the United States of Europe—sets many of the parameters for the rest of the volume.
The reason I chose to develop this portion of the Ring of Fire series in a somewhat unusual narrative framework is because I thought it would help capture one of the key themes in the way the series depicts the impact of the Ring of Fire on the New World, especially North America. Unlike the history of that continent following its discovery by Europeans, in this alternate universe the developments are far more complex and chaotic. You don’t have a few great European powers fighting each other until, by the mid-eighteenth century, Britain comes to dominate the continent. Nor do you have the huge wave of immigration from the British Isles that very quickly overwhelms the native populations.
Instead, there are many different (and much less powerful) centers of European influence, which includes Danes and Netherlanders and Swedes and different groups of the English as well as the French. And the indigenous populations are able to respond to the European encroachment on the continent in more effective ways.
It’s something in the way of a literary experiment, but that characterization can be applied to the series as a whole. I think it works quite well and I hope you enjoy the volume.