Preface
Eric Flint
This is the ninth anthology of stories from the electronic magazine The Grantville Gazette that Baen Books has published, and continues the “best of” format we’ve maintained since Volume V. The first four volumes were directly taken from the same volume of the electronic magazine, which we could do in those early days because we were only producing the magazine at infrequent intervals. But once we started coming out with the magazine on a bimonthly basis beginning in May of 2007, that became impossible.
As has been true with every Baen edition of the Gazette, one story in the anthology—two, in Volume VII—is a new story written by me that has never appeared before. I always write the story after the cover illustration has been done, and base the story on that illustration. As has also proven to be true with every Baen edition of the Gazette since we shifted to the “best of” format, the number of issues from which we select stories continues to expand:
Grantville Gazette V (from issues 5–10)
Grantville Gazette VI (from issues 11–19)
Grantville Gazette VII (from issues 20–30)
Grantville Gazette VIII (from issues 31–45)
And this volume contains stories from issues 46 to 64. The reason for the expansion was the same in each case: The magazine has been so successful that we’re still scrambling to catch up.
As of the publication of this anthology in July of 2021, the magazine is up to ninety-six issues. Or, to put it another way, we’re still more than thirty issues behind the magazine with these follow-on Baen paper editions.
I’d whine about it, but that’d be silly. A problem brought by success is still a problem, but it doesn’t begin to compare with a problem produced by failure. I know—I’ve dealt with both in my life. One type of problem requires you to do some work. The other just plain sucks.
The Ring of Fire project is now more than twenty-one years old. The first and founding novel in the series, 1632, was published in February of the year 2000. So far, at least, our problems have just required us to keep working. I will be delighted if that continues.
—Eric Flint
February 2021