Book Review: Grantville Gazette VI (Ring of Fire) by Eric Flint
Imagine being whisked a few hundred years into the future, and when you asked someone what was going on in the world they handed you a copy of the local paper. No, not the New York Times - I'm talking about a LOCAL paper, like the little community paper in your hometown that gives the high school basketball scores. Of course since it's hundreds of years in the future it would be a holographic paper delivered by a robot in a flying car. You would get just enough of the big picture to make you wonder. A few questions might get cleared up, but a whole lot of new ones would take their places.
As a new arrival in Grantville, I was left feeling a little that same way on my reading of Grantville Gazette VI. The stories are generally well-crafted; entertaining and erudite. But they are follow-up stories, tales of events already underway - in short they are very like news articles that presume a least a basic knowledge of current events.
Several of the authors do fill in portions of the back story, so that by the time I had reached the halfway point I had a least a minimal understanding of how the 21st-century town of Grantville, WV had landed in 17th-century Europe. There were still a lot of unanswered questions, but it was more like reading the news from a new town, rather than in a different language. But one nagging question did remain throughout my reading.
The residents of Grantville, U.S.E. have obviously decided to ignore the age-old axiom regarding time-travel: never try to alter past events in order to influence the future - your actions can have unforeseen and unwanted consequences. They freely share their knowledge of past history and future technology, seemingly without any qualms about the impact on their ancestors/descendants. Have they no doubts as to the consequences, or has that issue been resolved in previous volumes? Inquiring minds want to know!
The different authors cover a wide range of topics, some more ably than others. I would recommend that readers know the full story of Grantville and the Ring of Fire before undertaking this follow-up feature.
No comments:
Post a Comment