Grantville Gazette III

Grantville Gazette III

Grantville Gazette III hardcover and paperback release book covers showing Anne Jefferson posing for four Dutch and Spanish Master Artists amidst the "Siege of Amsterdam".
Author	Eric Flint, et al.
Cover artist	Tom Kidd
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	1632 Series Also known as the Ring of Fire Series
Genre	Science fiction, Alternate History
Publisher	Baen Books
Publication date	eb: October, 2004 hc: January, 2007 pb: June 2008
Media type	E-book & Hardback & Paperback
Pages	hardcover: 320 pages paperback: 464 pages
ISBN
Preceded by	in the anthologies sub-series: Grantville Gazette II in publication order: 1635: The Cannon Law
Followed by	in the anthologies sub-series: Grantville Gazette IV in printed publication order: 1634: The Baltic War

The Grantville Gazette III is the third collaborative and the fourth anthology in the 1632 series edited by the series creator, Eric Flint. It was published as an e-book by Baen Books in October 2004. It was released as a hardcover in January 2007, and trade paperback in June 2008 with both editions containing Flint's story "Postage Due".

The illustration on the e-book cover is Judith Slaying Holofernes (Naples Version) by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1653), painted circa 1612–1613. Gentileschi was the most prominent female artist of the period, and is referred to in the novel 1634: The Galileo Affair, and appears earlier in the overall series timeline when she sends her daughter to Grantville in "Breaking News" in the anthology Grantville Gazette V. The Biblical episode involving Judith and her maidservant killing the Assyrian tyrant Holofernes was an immensely popular theme for painters and sculptors of the Renaissance and the early modern era.

This story might well be considered a continuing serial by Eric Flint, as it follows the trend set from the outset in Grantville Gazette I's "Portraits" wherein Anne Jefferson is cast as the common model for five seventeenth century master painters as Stearns hatches a plan to count another subtle-coup under the radar screen of the down-timer political opponents with their willing co-operation. As with his release of directions via Jefferson on how to make an antibiotic (See "Portraits" and culmination of the plot in 1634: The Baltic War), the politicians opposing the republic of the United States of Europe and democracy of the State of Thuringia-Franconia have no concept of the attack unleashed via the popular psyche.

In this the third installment of the Nurse's Amsterdam tale, Jefferson sits for Peter Paul Rubens a second time—during or shortly after a Stearns visit to the "siege of Amsterdam"—but also as part of the Stearns scheme at the same time, for "the unknown" young master painter-to-be Rembrandt and the resident Dutch portrait masters, the brothers Frans and Dirck Hals. Meanwhile, Special Forces Captain Harry Lefferts appears in a scene suggesting skulduggery and underhanded dealings with a specific reference to Frans Hals need for money and a Frenchman willing to outbid others in the Netherlands.