Ring of Fire II
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Baen Books Prepublication Ring of Fire II cover art.
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| Author | Eric Flint |
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| Cover artist | Tom Kidd |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | 1632 series |
| Genre | Alternate history, science fiction |
| Publisher | Baen Books |
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Publication date
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January 2008 |
| ISBN | (2008 hardcover) |
| OCLC | 82864474 |
| 813.0876608 | |
| Preceded by | 1634: The Bavarian Crisis |
| Followed by | Grantville Gazette IV |
Ring of Fire II is a 2008 anthology created by editor-author-historian Eric Flint. It is the second anthology in the 1632 series following after Ring of Fire (2004).
The initial Ring of Fire book was a notable departure in that it heralded a new era in writing series fiction by being set in an authors' milieu shared with other writers, but especially and uncharacteristically by doing so without the control of the milieu creator, its author. Flint, in explanation, has self-styled himself as something of a gambler; he demonstrated that by deliberately asking the other writers to share in creating the main threads and plot lines of the milieu so that this work and the large second full novel in the series, 1633, were written contemporaneously.
Flint is on record that large portions of 1633 were adjusted drastically, even thrown out and rewritten as later submissions in the collected stories in Ring of Fire impacted the various and diverse story threads. For a fuller precis on this interesting and historic literary development see Assiti Shards series.
Flint's e-book preface refers to this work as being a prequel to his own short novel (below), but the title does not agree with the credited work on 1632.org's timeframes spreadsheet.
The story focus on four former mercenaries who worked for Count Tilly before being exempted on good behavior and becoming horse traders in Grantville. While returning to Grantville following a horse trade in France, the traders encountered a foreign mercenary army contingent preparing to attack Grantville's allied city, Badenburg. They also observed that the mercenaries are equipped with American Civil War era equipment and doctrines that they had somehow acquired from modern history books. The traders and with help from the American militia made several skirmishes against the army before finally eliminating them.
A story by Bradley H. Sinor about the birth of tabloid journalism in Grantville. The plot structure begins with a suggestion that it might be a tale of investigative journalism, but it ends with a humorous twist. There are tight connections between this story and "The Wallenstein Gambit"
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