Reading Wednesday: Two Free Portal Fantasies I Couldn’t Get Through

[rachelmanija]

1632, by Eric Flint.A chunk of a modern American town, including the entire local chapter of Mine Workers of America, is mysteriously transported into 1632 Germany. What those people need are red-blooded Americans with lots of guns

Comments

[sartorias]

Stray: maybe if you skip up to when the aliens get her? (If you already did that, then maybe this one just isn't your cuppa.)

[rachelmanija]

I read well into where the aliens get her. Endless pages of not quite understanding the language, being a lab rat, being bored, sort-of interacting with people she has no personal interest in and whom I can't tell apart. I read about 15 pages past into the part where she discovers her psychic power, then decided that if that didn't interest me, nothing would.

I think this one just isn't for me.

[sartorias]

If you do try another, I suggest Medair, which has a different vibe altogether--more epic in feel, slightly elegiac. Could be this author just isn't for you.

(With you on the Flint, found it totally unreadable, though it sounded like something I'd love.)

[rachelmanija]

I think what I struggled with the most was the combination of no relationships (I don't mean romantic - I mean that Cassandra wasn't emotionally connected with anyone in any way) and no dialogue. Is Medair different?

[naomikritzer]

I was in the right mood for 1632 because I read the whole thing and enjoyed it. And then I read 1633. And after that I'd have had to pay for them or track them down at the library plus there was piles of it and I was a little mystified by the order...so that's where I stopped

[movingfinger]

Was it Brian Daley who wrote the kind of ur-work (although possibly Poul Anderson or L. Sprague de Camp started this, or even Mark Twain) in which a Vietnam-era American tank crew are transported to fantasyland? I just remember the cover. There was a tank.

[axolotl9]

There's a short story from the 1950s called something like "Hawk Among the Pigeons" in which a jet fighter is transported back to World War I

[tool_of_satan]

I don't see anything matching that on Daley's ISFDB page.

[phantom_wolfboy]

You are thinking of Daley's The Doomfarers of Coramonde in which a Vietnam War APC is summoned to fight a dragon. It helps that is from our world and time. He was trying for a tank.

[robby]

Ha! I finished 1632, but am guessing there are sequels, which I don't care about. As I recall in 1632, one of the guys, years ago, had luckily buried an illicit .50 caliber heavy machine gun in the woods. Of course they dug it up and put it to good use. This sort of gun stuff is almost a genre of its own. I read another similar story, where a cargo trailer that *just happened* to be transporting a large shipment of single shot shotguns was transported with them into the past. Just the thing for a low-tech age, don't you know?

[marfisa]

Yeah, what to do when you run out of ammo for your futuristic-by-contemporary-standards guns would be a major problem for this type of story. I read the book years ago and don't really recall what Flint did about it, but he takes a pretty nuts-and-bolts procedural approach generally to how the characters cope with the lack of tech support/"there's no more where that came from" problem inherent in suddenly being plunked down in 1632 with only whatever supplies already happened to be in the geographical area that got transported. So there's probably some major story thread I've forgotten in which the chief twentieth-century badasses in charge assign somebody to start smelting ore and making bullet molds, etc., so they can eventually produce makeshift replacement ammunition for their massive pile of modern weapons.

[robby]

Much of the story thread was how to sustain the tech advantage that they had. They had a machine shop and power source (natural gas?) and eventually had union factories up and running.

If you like hard science fiction, check out The Martian, which details the challenges of a man abandoned alone on Mars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Andy_Weir)

[axolotl9]

Actually, they quickly decide that they need to dial back the tech to something that can logically be made in the 17th century, then move forward from there as they can build back toward the 20th century base. So, starting with black-powder muzzle-loading rifles using minié balls, and fabric-cartridge ammunition for artillery pieces which Gustavus Adolphus had already standardized for his army

[egelantier]

Mike spoke through tight jaws. "I'm not actually a cop, when you get right down to it. And we haven't got time anyway to rummage around in Dan's Cherokee looking for handcuffs." He glared at the scene of rape and torture. "So to hell with reading these guys their rights. We're just going to kill them."

...wait, so these are real quotes? not parody? because, lol.

this is somehow reassuring to know that horrible portal books are not the sole purview of new russian fantasy, no lie. i mean, it's still not as bad as most of nowadays traditionally published stuff, BUT STILL.