Legacy
The book generated an unusual amount of fan involvement. When first contemplating a sequel, Flint decided to throw open the universe—perhaps instigated by reception of fan-fiction on 1632 Tech Manual—and invited other authors to help shape the series milieu and fictional canon and began putting together the anthology Ring of Fire.
The market for anthologies in fiction is but a small percentage of the market for novels, and the alternate history genre is a smallish niche to begin with—leading publisher Jim Baen to "hold up" the Ring of Fire collection to see if the series would get a boost from New York Times best selling author David Weber, who had just contracted to do five novels with Flint. Flint had to set aside several planned projects (the Assiti Shards novels were in outline form at the time) and do some additional co-writing with Weber as Ring of Fire gestated.
The anthology stories leaned on the large novels 1632 and 1633 and vice versa, creating the characteristic interdependence of short fiction in the series (now numbering in the dozens of canonical works of all kinds—and now consisting of ten books plus forty-two Grantville Gazettes, only the first five of which have been published as traditional print published books. The other thirty-seven Gazettes are available as e-books (available either individually or by subscription).
Read more about this topic: 1632 (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word legacy:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)