Ring of Fire (anthology) - Premise of The Series

Premise of The Series

The series heralds a new kind of writing, blending both shared universe and collaborative fiction writing in large series fiction. As in other shared universes, the stories are set in a milieu shared with other writers, but usually it's done with other author's stories being set safely somewhere off to the side of the main story threads. Flint demonstrated that a series could be successfully written by ignoring convention, and deliberately asking the other writers to share in creating the main threads and plot lines of the milieu. The first two novels in the series, 1632 and 1633, were written contemporaneously so that story threads started in one novel could intermingle and generate matching action or background in the other, and vice versa.

Flint is on record saying that large portions of 1633 were adjusted drastically, even thrown out and rewritten as later submissions to the 1632 series impacted the various and diverse story threads. For a fuller look on this literary development see Assiti Shards series. For the fullest enjoyment of all three books, it is best to read them in the order 1632, Ring of Fire, and then 1633. Interchanging the last two has a relatively minor cost to understanding and in appreciation that can be avoided.

Flint has stated that he intends that short stories featuring major characters, or establishing points that will be important in future novels will be collected into the Ring of Fire anthologies, and that The Grantville Gazettes anthologies will feature the stories of characters that don't establish new background for the novels. However, many of the characters or events become more important in retrospect than either the author or editor expected, so this rule is fairly weak.