Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond #4, March/April 2024
“Fire on the Mountain” by Bjorn Hasseler
“A Knight’s Tale – Therapies” by Edith Wild
“Another Country Heard From” by Jack Carroll
“The Birds of the Muses” by Iver P. Cooper
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
[Editor’s note: The following is offered by Tangent reviewer Mike Bickerdike as a guide for those not familiar with this magazine’s concept. Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond is a magazine comprising stories set in the late Eric Flint’s “Ring of Fire” or 1632 alternate-history universe. For those unfamiliar with the books, the essential concept is that the town of Grantville in West Virginia became transported (by cosmic accident) from our present day to northern Germany in 1632 during the 30 Years War. The book series extends to dozens of novels. The short stories in this magazine are set within that framework.]
In “Fire on the Mountain” by Bjorn Hasseler, arson threatens the lives of high school students living in dorms near the transported town. The investigation into the crime involves threatening notes left at the dorms and the disappearance of two students.
With a cast of characters including law officers, firefighters, security officers, forensics specialists, and a profiler, this is essentially a police procedural. The speculative content consists mostly of the contrast between the cultures of Germany in the 17th century and the United States in the 21st century. Fans of crime fiction will best appreciate it. An introductory note states that this story takes place between two consecutive chapters of a novel, so readers unfamiliar with the full work (such as the present reviewer) may find it difficult to fully grasp the situation.
“A Knight’s Tale – Therapies” by Edith Wild also involves high school students. The main character arrives at her family estate with a friend, only to wind up in the middle of an armed invasion. Badly wounded by gunfire, she struggles to find a way to escape. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that her friend suffers from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, making movement difficult and painful.
The story starts slowly and quietly, with ordinary high school activities. It also ends very suddenly. This extreme variation in the pacing of the story makes for an odd reading experience. The desperate situation of the two students creates a great deal of suspense. Again, however, one feels that one needs to be more familiar with the background of the entire series in order to fully understand what’s going on. (I didn’t know why the invaders were intent on killing everyone in the estate. Perhaps this was part of the Thirty Years’ War, but this is not made clear.)
In contrast to the violence in the first two stories, “Another Country Heard From” by Jack Carroll is a peaceful tale. Dutch businessmen contact engineers in the transported city, hoping to take advantage of their project to improve the primitive state of radio.
There isn’t really any conflict in this story, with the engineers and businessmen negotiating openly and honestly. An introductory statement reveals that this brief tale exists mostly to explain why the Dutch had radio technology in an earlier novel. As such, it is little more than a footnote or an anecdote.
As a change of pace, “The Birds of the Muses” by Iver P. Cooper does not involve the transported city, but instead a luxury cruise ship that winds up in the Mediterranean not long after the death of Alexander the Great. With the aid of a local courtesan, one of the passengers comes up with a plan to transport bees from Greece to Trinidad, where other passengers have set up a colony. Complications ensue.
Without descending into farce, the story maintains a light tone, as various misadventures occur during the struggle to transport the bees safely. The author obviously knows a great deal about both modern and ancient beekeeping, and the resulting work can be thought of as hard science fiction, in which the science is apiculture. The characters, whether from our own time or the age of Alexander, are appealing.
Victoria Silverwolf had never read anything in the Ring of Fire universe before.