1636: The Kremlin Games by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett
Cover art by Tom Kidd
Cover design by Jennie Faires
Published by Baen Books
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
Years ago, when Eric Flint first opened his Ring of Fire universe to collaborators, I became excited about the possibility of writing a story set in Russia, since I had a strong educational background in Russian language and history. He strongly suggested that I focus on the very small story of a relatively minor person, because he had some very specific plans for that area of his fictional universe.
My own efforts ultimately stalled, but I was delighted when I heard this book was coming out. I'd finally get to see the big picture of what was happening in Russia as a result of the transposition of the West Virginia mining town of Grantville (based loosely on the town of Mannington) to Germany during the Thirty Years' War.
It's the story of the Gorchakovs, a curious and forward-looking family who send an embassy to Grantville, and who have a research complex they call the Dacha just outside of Moscow where they are trying to put into practice some of the things they're reading about. And its the story of Bernie Zeppi, a down-on-his-luck young man who used to be an auto mechanic, until the Ring of Fire put an end to that line of work. Then he tried soldiering, and got PTSD for his trouble. Now he's drifting, trying to hang onto a job that will earn his keep, until Vladimir Gorchakov decides he needs to bring a real live uptimer back to Russia to help with the efforts at the Dacha. Being at loose ends and not needed anywhere else, Bernie's as good a choice as any.
From a narratological perspective, it makes complete sense -- the Russian characters belong to a society very alien to the average American science fiction reader, and are going to be very difficult to identify with in the way that is necessary to get invested in a work of fiction. Even someone who is reasonably familiar with contemporary Russian culture is apt to find quite alien the mindset of characters from the Russia that existed before the reforms of Peter the Great. However different the mindset of a West Virginia hillbilly may be from that of the average suburbanite, there are still enough commonalities to bring that knowing smile to the lips of the average reader.
Take for instance certain cartoons that are familiar cultural references in our world. When Bernie discovers that his two principal handlers are named Boris and Natasha, he finds it immensely funny in a way that is absolutely bewildering to the Russians. But it will bring a smile to the lips of a reader who is familiar with certain classic cartoons -- and with the Cartoon Network and Internet video streaming introducing classic cartoons to new generations of viewers, it's not just going to be readers of a certain generation who get the joke.
When Bernie sets off for Moscow, he's still a man without any real direction. He answers questions when they are posed to him by the various researchers at the Dacha, and often comes to an acute realization of the limitations of his own knowledge. That leads to a flurry of letters between him and his old girlfriend back in Grantville, with some astonishing results as she expands her correspondence to include the Czarina Evdokia, introducing this august lady to such concepts as nylon stockings and feminism.
But Bernie is still a man without a real purpose in life, beyond just keeping going. All that changes when news comes in from Moscow that the city has been stricken by a disease they call "slow fever." Bernie insists on going to see what is happening, and witnessing the suffering of the ordinary people changes him, particularly when he realizes this is almost certainly one of the diseases that have been banished from his old world thanks to public sanitation efforts and modern sanitary sewers.
He starts by insisting that all drinking and cooking water be boiled, and that those who tend the sick must wash their hands between patients. Strange concepts for the Russians, but because Bernie is one of the miraculous uptimers, they accept his mandates as best they can. Even the peculiar drink he puts together to rehydrate the victims, a sort of downtime imitation of the Gatorade he drank when he was a high school football player, is accepted as if it were divine writ.
But Bernie knows that all these measures are just reacting to the problem. The real solution lies in preventing the infective agents from getting into people's drinking water in the first place. Which means developing a system of sanitary sewers to take waste away from the sources of drinking water.
Although Bernie's seen plenty of indoor plumbing while growing up in Grantville, he's not a plumber, so he doesn't know a lot of the whys and wherefores behind the way plumbing is put together -- or some of the details usually hidden within the walls. As a result, his first attempt to put together a modern bathroom at the Dacha proves to be a disaster. The drains clog and back up, and worse, vile smells rise from the fixtures.
A few more letters back and forth with people in Grantville introduces him to the idea of the drain p-trap and the soil vent stack, which will keep the noxious sewer gasses out of the house and instead allow them to escape into the air above the house. Actually putting those diagrams into practice is going to take a lot of trial and error, since much of the actual detail of how to build is passed from master plumber to apprentice in the learning process.
And there's a lot of other interesting material coming in from Grantville, just the sort of things that get minds like those at the Dacha excited. As in, trying to do a dozen projects at once excited, even when they barely have the resources for one. Until Bernie decides that the best way to solve some of them is to import a working internal-combustion engine -- namely the one in his car, which has been on blocks since the Ring of Fire.
It's arranged easily enough, but someone decides that such a valuable object should have its own uptimer to shepherd it on its journey. And of all the uptimers they could pick, they have to pick one of the worst. Cass Lowry used to be one of Bernie's circle of friends in high school, but was never a close one. He always had big plans, but whenever one of them fell through, he always started blaming his circumstances, or someone else -- anyone and everything except himself.
Which is never a recipe for success --- much as I disagree with Eric Flint's politics, I have to note that he has no use for blame-shifting and scapegoat-seeking in any character in a book with his name on it. To be certain, Cass may be able to get some goodies at first by cozying up to people in positions of power, especially the rivals of Bernie's patrons. And skill with a pump-action shotgun in the middle of a battle against bandits doesn't hurt when it comes to building a reputation. But Cass can't see when he's in a hole, and as a result, he keeps digging and ends up alienating many of the very people he most needs as allies.
And he's going to need them as social change leads to social upheaval. Human beings can be extraordinarily flexible -- it's our great evolutionary advantage. But human societies can assimilate change only so fast, and the more rapidly change comes, the more alienated the conservative factions are apt to become, particularly when they see change as eroding their authority. At first the Patriarch Filaret is able to spin things in a positive way so that the arrival of Grantville in the past is seen as an act of God that reaffirms the correctness of the Orthodox Church. But as continued technological innovation begins to change the way people do things on a practical level, it creates the sort of pushback we also see in 1636: The Saxon Uprising. Much as Axel Oxensternia takes advantage of the power vacuum when Gustavus Adolphus receives a head injury in battle, various reactionary forces in Russia are quite happy to take advantage of the perceived weakness of Czar Michael, to put him under house arrest in a manner reminiscent of what was done to another Michael during the 1991 coup in our own world's Soviet Union.
And like Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, Czar Michael will not remain helpless and isolated for long. However, even when he is rescued from his "protectors," it is just as clear that nothing is ever going back to the old ways any more than it was in the Soviet Union after the coup failed.
Although the ending resolves the threads of this particular book, it's pretty clear that it's only the beginning of a much longer story of social upheaval. And yes, there is another book in this series: 1637: the Volga Rules.
Review posted June 18, 2019.
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