Communications

Just a quick update on my recent purchase. I am about half way though 1634: The Baltic War and enjoying every turn of the page. I won't go into details yet until I've finished, but I can give you the gist of the alternate world it's set in. Before I do, I must state that it's important that you don't rationalize the issue but just  accept it and continue on. In many alternative histories, the causative event can be absolutely silly or completely crazy, but it's wise just to move past that and increase your 'suspension of disbelief' factor. Here we go then. The modern US mining town of Grantville is transported to the middle of Europe and dumped into the past maelstrom that was known as the 30-Years war. So now you have a group of people with strong ideas of democracy and all the modern freedoms we have, dealing with the autocratic and 'blinkered' rulers of one of the most intolerant periods of history. Their adaptation to their new reality and how the surrounding princes and 'movers and shakers' deal with these 'magicians' from another world makes for a major clash of ideologies and personalities. The series of books in this world starting with 1632 are well written (in the main) and make you want to always see 'what's next'. I like that. I recommend going to the dedicated website and exploring the world of this altered time in detail. In other news, remember I found an historical Blackader (not Blackadder) during my reading of Blenheim? Well, I wrote to Rowan Atkinson and received this reply: 'The character of Blackadder was not named after anybody - although many references to people with that surname have been discovered since. Pure coincidence. Kind regards'. Wasn't that nice - thanks Mr. Atkinson.