Once again, alas, I need to apologize for the delay in producing this volume of the magazine. In my preface to Volume 3, I confidently predicted that we'd be able to publish the next volume in late January or February. Instead. . .
Well, here it is, in mid-April.
Again, the main cause of the delay was illness. In this case, my copy-editor got sick with this very nasty strand of the flu that's been plaguing us recently. Then, by the time she recovered, she had a backlog of other work that was more pressing than the magazine, that she had to do first.
(Which, she did. Sorry, folks, but facts are stubborn things—and it's just a fact that the income for a publisher that's generated by an electronic magazine, even a successful one like the Gazette, is always going to put it at the bottom of the priority list. Such is life. No reason we can't have fun grousing about it, of course, but do be aware that it's on a par with grousing about the weather.)
Someone might wonder why I didn't just find a different copy-editor. Picture me gasping with horror. Modean has copy-edited every single piece produced in the 1632 series since the original novel 1632 that created it in the first place. By now, there are many ways in which she knows this universe better than I do. Just to give one example, the official style sheet that I ask people to use when writing stories or articles for the magazine was produced by her, not me. I asked her to do so, which she did by systematizing what had been my semi-conscious practices in 1632 and 1633 and The Ring of Fire.
The point is this: copy-editors are important. They do far more than simply proof-read to check for typos. They are also the people who systematically cross-check the text to make sure the authors are maintaining factual, thematic and stylistic continuity within the story and (in the case of a series) from one story to the next. Continuity lapses are a problem even within a single, stand-alone novel. With a long and complex series like the 1632 series, they can become a major problem without a good copy-editor who knows the material extremely well serving as the watchdog.
I would no more casually change copy-editors for a 1632 project than I would blithely schedule the second half of major dental work with a different dentist because my regular one didn't have an opening on exactly the day I wanted. (I've had the same dentist for twenty-three years and the same doctor for nineteen. There is a reason for this.) Far better, as inconvenient as it might be, to wait a couple of months.
However, all's well that ends well, and here is Volume 4. There's even a bright side to the delay, which is that it enabled me and the editorial board to get the fifth volume put together in the meantime. Modean already has it and she tells me—told Paula, rather, my assistant editor—that she foresees no delay in getting that one ready.
So, if all goes well—which it should! it should!—we'll have Volume 5 ready for publication in two to three months. That would put us back on the triannual schedule I've been hoping to maintain all along. (No, we haven't been doing it. Our actual schedule has been closer to biannual.)
Some remarks on the contents of this volume:
Once again, I had to go through my usual dance, trying to decide which stories should go under "Continuing Serials" and which should be published as stand-alone stories. This is a dance which, as the magazine unfolds, is getting. . .
Really, really complicated.
In the end, I parsed the contents of this volume in such a way that only David Carrico's "Heavy Metal Music" fell into the category of "Continuing Serials." I am even willing to defend that choice under pressure, although—fair warning—my defense will lean heavily on subtle points covered by Hegel in his Science of Logic. (The big one, not the abridgment he did later for his Encyclopedia. So brace yourselves.)
That said. . .
Well. . .
"Poor Little Rich Girls," by Paula Goodlett and Gorg Huff, continues the adventures of the teenage tycoons-in-the-making that Gorg began in "The Sewing Circle" in Volume 1 of the Gazette and continued in the story "Other People's Money" in Volume 3.
I will stoutly insist that Virginia DeMarce's "'Til We Meet Again" is a stand-alone story; no ifs, ands or buts about it. I will also admit that, knowing Virginia, the status will last about as long as a snowball in hell. Leaving aside the suspicious appearance of the name "Quedlinburg," the presence anywhere in the vicinity of Mary Simpson is enough in itself to set off all the alarm bells. I introduced the character of the Abbess of Quedlinburg myself, in 1633—but did so at Virginia's recommendation. I should have known. . .
As for Mary Simpson, I first introduced her as a minor character in 1632 and then developed her as a major character in 1633. Since then, the dame seems to be taking over the world. She'll be a major character in 1634: The Bavarian Crisis and I can see her looming in David Carrico's series.
The same with Karen Bergstralh's "One Man's Junk." In this volume, that story is a stand-alone. Yup, sure is. That status will last until the next volume comes out. At which point the readers will discover that life goes on, for the characters in that story as with so many others.
The same will probably prove to be true, sooner or later, with most about all the other stories in this volume. The truth? The distinction I make for the Gazette between "continuing serials" and "stand-alone stories" is pretty much analogous to the distinction the law makes between first and second degree murder. The one is premeditated in cold blood; the other more-or-less happens in the heat of the fray.
There are times I think of just throwing up my hands and publishing all of the stories in the Gazette as "continuing serials." And, in my darker moments, contemplate changing the title of the magazine to The 1632 Soap Opera. That's because, like a soap opera, the characters just seem to go on forever and ever in one episode after another. Unless one of them is actually Killed Off—and then, sometimes, you don't really know For Sure–they'll keep re-appearing. Often enough, in somebody else's episode.
On the other hand, I'm not a snob about soap operas. I used to be, until many years ago my wife's work schedule required me to tape her favorite soap opera so she could watch it when she got home. Initially, I did so holding my nose—and bound and determined to watch only the first few minutes to make sure it was taping properly. This was back in the early days of VHS when I didn't trust the technology involved. (And still don't, but I admit I'm something of a technophobe.)
Before a week had passed, I found myself watching the entire damn episode! Day after day! It was then that I first discovered just how addictive soap operas could be. I'm surprised some enterprising politician hasn't tried to include them in the ongoing and glorious War on Drugs. (Whose prospects, in my opinion, were best described in Eric Frank Russell's Wasp by a disgruntled shopkeeper commenting on the military success of the Sirian Empire: "For months we have been making triumphant retreats before a demoralized enemy who is advancing in utter disorder.")
In defense of the Gazette, I will say that the characters in this soap opera are wrestling with a far broader range of concerns than the usual fare of love pining from afar, emotional misunderstandings that somehow last for years when a simple five-minute conversation could settle it, and, of course, the inevitable jealousies and adulteries. Not that the magazine avoids those, either, of course. But the characters also wrestle with political issues, religious issues, worry about their livelihoods and scheme to make a fortune or at least a decent income.
In short, the Gazette is an ongoing chronicle of the way an alternate history would actually evolve, if you looked anywhere beyond the narrow circle of Ye Anointed Heroes and Heroines. The distinction between this and a soap opera—or The World's Great Literature, for that matter—is mainly in the eye of the beholder.
Yes, sorry, it is. It is widely known, of course, that only women watch soap operas, just as only women gossip. In my innocent youth, I believed these nostrums, until a quarter of a century working in transportation and factories proved to me how ridiculous they were. You can find no better example in the world of "gossip" than what machinists are doing standing around the tool crib or truck drivers are doing at lunch tables in a truck stop. Of course, if you ask them, they will insist they are engaged in the manly art of "shooting the breeze." Just as, if you ask the electricians and millwrights in the maintenance shop who are watching daytime television while waiting for something to break down that requires their expertise, they will insist they are not actually watching the soap operas showing on the set. No, no. They are merely interested in ogling Whazzername's figure.
If this state of affairs irritates you, I can only shrug my shoulders. Don't blame me, blame Homer. To this day, the Iliad stands as one of the world's all-time great soap operas. The much-hallowed "epic" as it exists today is simply a cleaned-up pile of gossip. What it really was, in its inception, were the stories with which bards entertained the courts of Mycenaean kinglets by chattering about which gods and goddesses lusted for which mortals, their mutual jealousies, and what they did to advance their. . . ah. . . "causes."
For that matter, blame the Old Testament. Sure, sure, a lot of it deals with Sublime Stuff like the creation of the universe, etc., etc. But there are whole swaths of the books in the Bible that look suspiciously like soap opera plots to me.
It's not even peculiar to western culture. If you want to read the Greatest Soap Opera of all time, you can do no better than start the massive Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. I say "start," because you may or may not finish the multi-volume work. (I did finish it, myself. But that was after I'd learned to enjoy a good long-running soap opera.) I believe it is still, to this day, the longest epic ever written.
The word "epic," of course, is what scholars call a soap opera that was written a long time ago, which gives it the patina of respectability. They will defend their use of terms by pointing to such episodes in the Mahabharata as the philosophical discourse between Krishna and Arjuna which is separately known as the famous Bhagavad Gita.
Very sublime, the Bhagavad Gita; yes, yes, no doubt about it. It's also just one episode out of a multitude which follow (by and large) the adventures of the five Pandava brothers and the wife they share in common, Draupati. (Don't blame me! I didn't come up with the kinky stuff, although it's sure fun to read about.) One of the central adventures of which involves the sublime subject of how the foolish oldest Pandava brother lost their wife in a game of dice.
So, I figure the Gazette is in good company.
One last thing. As I said earlier, Volume 5 of the Gazette should be available within three months. We're also well on the way to putting together Volume 6. As we did with volumes 2-4, we'll make volumes 5-7 available as a three issue-package for $15, as an alternative to buying them as single issues for $6 apiece.
And—need I say it—yes, we are accepting pre-orders. You can either purchase Volume 5 for $6 or the three-volume package.
Eric Flint
April, 2005