1632-verse glossary of terminology

The following are some of the terms used in the 1632 series.

• 1632-verse or 1632 universe: a way of referring to and clarifying the distinction between entities or new time lines in science fiction, its subgenre alternate history, and discussions in science involving such esoteric physics as the many worlds hypothesis and parallel universes in quantum mechanics.
• Badenburg: a fictional, walled town or small city located within five to six miles (10 km) of the locus of Grantville's new home. Citizens of the town were witnesses to the Ring of Fire, and have places in many of the short stories building the societal canvas of the works. For example, some of its people owned lands supplanted by the territory of Grantville within the Ring of Fire. A series of stories in Grantville Gazette III and 1634: The Ram Rebellion explores how the economic and personal effects of such circumstances were worked out and settled between the down-timers and up-timers. Second state in the New US (NUS).
• CPoE or CPE (October 1632 – 10 October 1633 NTL): Confederated Principalities of Europe. Formed at the end of 1632 in the aftermath of the Battle of Grantville, with Gustavus II Adolphus as Captain General of the New United States, but not its monarch.
• Down-timer: any native born in Early Modern Europe.
• Emperor of the United States of Europe: see United States of Europe.
• Gazettes or Grantville Gazettes: an experimental, online magazine launched by Baen Books. (See: main article: The Grantville Gazettes)
• Grantville: a West Virginia town (based closely on the real town of Mannington, West Virginia) containing a cast of about 3,500 of the "collective protagonists" exploring the "what if" theme of what sort of changes might come about in the chaotic history of the Thirty Years' War and the resulting social and political development of Europe (and the world) if such a community of modern rural Americans landed in Europe one afternoon.
• OTL: Original Time Line, or the history of the world sans a Ring of Fire.
• NTL: New Time Line, or the history of the world from May 1631, after the Ring of Fire. NTL and OTL are long-standing abbreviations with wide acceptance amongst science fiction circles. New Time Line was coined to handle comparison of events in parallel world discussions.
• NUS or New US (by late fall 1631 – fall 1632 NTL): the New United States, located in southern and western Thuringia—a loose collection of territories, towns, and free cities led by its first state, the up-timers (Americans) of Grantville, that Mike Stearns put together in the winter of 1631–32 to oppose the effects of "the wars" raging through Central Europe.
• Ring of Fire: the label or name given to the spherical space-time bubble, three miles (5 km) in radius, caused by the Assiti shard that exchanged part of Thuringia with Grantville, West Virginia. While in the main faint and translucent, at ground level, the sphere appeared as an ephemeral (perhaps 15-second) wall of shimmering flames from the outside. Within, those near the edge also perceived something of the flames, but the effect was swamped and overwhelmed by the thunder-like sound blast that shook walls and rattled windows and fixtures like a mini-earthquake and the overwhelming blast of bright, white light that was believed by many to be a huge display of sheet lightning.
• The Prince of All Germans or The Prince of Germany or just The Prince (perhaps most common): a popular unofficial title bestowed gratefully and spontaneously by the populace at large in the areas of Germany who have benefited from the advent of the Mike Stearns influence under the NUS, CPoE, and USE governments. The title began to become widespread circa the end of the novel 1633 in the unrest that led to the USE, is mentioned a few times in The Ram Rebellion, and becomes very obvious in the early chapters of The Baltic War.
• Up-timer: any 20th-century American from Grantville.
• The United States of Europe (10 October 1633 – present NTL): the successor to the Confederated Principalities of Europe, a constitutional monarchy, the United States of Europe formed at the end of the novel 1633 during a demonstrative outbreak of nationalism triggered by news of the Battle of Wismar circa 9–10 October during protracted radio negotiations between Mike Stearns, who was appointed its first Prime Minister, and Gustavus II Adolphus Vasa, who became the new Emperor of the United States of Europe in the agreement.

References[]