Hay youse guys, I'se is litrit two...

So, Highlander's been flexing his lit-peen on his blog lately, and I realised that I can do that too.

I'm pretty sure I haven't mentioned them on my blog before, but there is a series of alternative history novels written (mostly) by Eric Flint. The first is titled 1632, and, oddly enough, that number corresponds to the year the book is set in, 1632 AD. The premise is that, through some at-the-time undetermined cosmic mishap, a small modern-day West Virginia mining town is transposed with a section of light woods from the Thuringia region of Renaissance Germany, smack in the middle of the Reformation, at the height of the Thirty Years War.

With whacky results.

The odd thing is, I was in a Waldenbooks, looking for some older S.M. Stirling titles (Draka series), and one of the salespersons suggested 1632 to me as a possible alternative that I might enjoy. After devouring it, I returned to the store a few days later to snap up all remaining titles they had. And yes, I mentioned to the lady on duty on that visit that the sale was due to a referral by one of her people, so hopefully they got an attaboy.

One of the coolest things about this series is that fan input has led to further developments in the 'main storyline'. Eric invited people to contribute short stories set in his new timeline, published the best of those in a couple anthologies, and then adopted several of the characters as lead players in future works in the series. I'm not sure if Mr. Flint realised it when he made the invitation, but incorporation of these disparate viewpoints has actually made the source work stronger by allowing it to better reflect the theme I believe he's been pushing (Melting Pot Democracy = Good, Totalitarianism = Bad).

Anyway, I highly reccommend the series.