Cover Story » Nonfiction

Editor's Preface

Written by Eric Flint

First, I need to apologize for the long delay between the publication of Volumes 2 and 3 of the magazine. That was due to several factors, only one of which—my own heavy writing schedule this past summer and early fall—was predictable. The others involved illnesses to two key people involved in the work, and the recent decision by Baen Books to issue a paper anthology which will contain about one-third of the material that had originally been planned for this volume. That decision, while it was one I welcomed, required us to do another round of story selection and editing. (The current working title for the anthology, by the way, is 1634: The Ram Rebellion. I hope to have it turned in by the middle of next year, in which case it should be published sometime in 2006.)

Fortunately, however, the material for Volume 4 is already put together and needs only the final rounds of editing and copy-editing. So there shouldn't be the same long delay between publication of this volume and the next. It should be available sometime in late January or February.

People who've read the first two volumes of the Grantville Gazette will notice that I've added a section entitled "Continuing Serials." In this section, I'm placing those stories whose episodes are clearly and definitely not stand-alone stories. In this issue, we conclude the short novel "An Invisible War," which was begun in Volume 2, and we continued the episodes of Enrico Toro's "Euterpe." (Episode 3 will appear in Volume 4 or 5.)

I readily admit that there's a very gray area involved here, because some of the "stand alone" stories in this issue either continue a story thread begun in an earlier story—as, in this issue, Gorg Huff's "Other People's Money" continues with the story begun in "The Sewing Circle," which appeared in Volume 1—or are beginning a new one. An example of the latter is David Carrico's "The Sound of Music." The story that David begins here will continue. The immediate sequel is entitled "Heavy Metal Music" and will appear in Volume 4, ...