The Grid

Virginia DeMarce created The Grid (Grid_1_July_2021), which contains the names and relationships of all the people who came through the Ring of Fire. See “The Many Halves of Grantville” in the author’s manual to understand why. She asks that we state emphatically: THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. WE MADE THESE PEOPLE UP! DO NOT EVER UPLOAD THIS TO THE INTERNET AS IT COULD BE MISTAKEN FOR REAL GENEALOGICAL DATA.

Now that we’ve established that, you may consider these fictitious persons real for the purposes of the 1632 universe. Canon states that only up-timers from the grid are to be used in fan fiction if you expect to have it published. If you are writing something just for your own amusement with zero expectation of ever being published, you can have a battalion of Marines with arms and armament, stopping in Grantville for a pack of cigarettes at the moment of the Ring of Fire.

Please Note: The grid is no longer maintained by Virginia, that duty has passed to the GridMaster (gridmaster(at)1632andbeyond(dot)com). We appreciate Virginia’s years of service.

The Basics

Up-timers are people who were alive in 2000 before the Ring of Fire and came back to 1631. Down-timers are pretty much all the other people. In general, children who were born after the Ring of Fire and have at least one up-time parent are considered up-timers as well.

Uptimers

Anything in the Grid is, loosely speaking, canon. You can’t change it unless you somehow show that it was in error. For example, 1632 clearly gives Irene Flannery’s age in 1632. Her birth year in the Grid did not match. The Grid was corrected. Errors like that are beyond rare. You can add to the Grid, within reason, such as by providing additional information on education, marriage, and jobs. The Grid is great as inspiration for your character.

Here’s an example: Irene Flannery was a single woman, parents deceased, working as a rural school teacher for many years, married later in life – per The Grid. She received a back-story of being infatuated with Hollywood as a young woman in the Great Depression era. That ended up with Irene deciding to get a scooter (Vespa) after Roman Holiday was released in the 1950s. It would have been a very uncommon choice in West Virginia in the 1950s, but she had some disposable income (no kids) and it would have been cheaper to operate than a car, allowing her to save money commuting when the weather was nice. If The Grid hadn’t dictated her career, when she married, and her parents death when she was young, those elements of her backstory would never have come together in that way. (For anyone who is looking – no, Irene’s Vespa hasn’t made it into a story yet. It will. The teenage boy who inherited her house wasn’t impressed by the old Vespa in the garage so it’s been left there.)

You can use a character without claiming them, but if someone else claims them, you they essentially have the rights to that character as long as they keep their claim. That means that if you wrote an entire book and they write a short story that says that characters was somewhere different, doing something different, during that time period, then you have to rework your book, possibly getting a new character which changes family members and creates a whole mess.

Just claim the characters you need for key points in your story. Secondary characters probably won’t need to be claimed, and tertiary ones almost certainly won’t.

You want to claim your preferred characters (especially up-timers!) as soon as you know you want them. And if you change your mind and don’t need them, or are finished with them, set them free for another author!

Down-timers

At this point, you may be wondering if The Grid is only for up-timers. No! They are all there, but some authors choose to record their down-time characters. By default, they remain with the creator indefinitely. In practice, if an author stops being an active part of the 1632 community, they can be claimed by someone else. If they are still living, the polite thing to do is to contact the creator (if you can), but you can also ask the Gridmaster to do it for you, or to simply make the call that a character has been abandoned.

Sometimes, a character has a walk on with a few lines and nothing more but a different writer sees more potential. Again, ask the creator. Many times they are happy to hand over a character, or share ownership. Irene Flannery is an up-timer, but she had one paragraph in 1632. Bethanne Kim later wrote an entire book based around her – Mrs. Flannery’s Flowers – and didn’t stop there. Eric was tickled to see Irene fleshed out like that.

This is a shared world. It’s perfectly fine to have a cameo with someone else’s characters if they are in a time and place, doing a thing, that is already established for them. Having someone stop in to the Moss & Little Cut Rate Pharmacy and talk about their prescription with either Mr. Moss or Mr. Little (provided it’s before he moves to work at Leahy) doesn’t require any particular authorial approval, for example. Having one of them decide to join a new social club or take a trip would.

Finally, there are characters created by someone who has died, including (obviously) Eric. Those have different fates. For all authors except Eric, you will need to explain how you want to continue their storyline or use them in another story. Continuity is important, as is respect for the original author’s vision.

For Eric, his major characters have been assigned with Editor as the claimant. They can only be used with approval from the Editor-in-Chief. Some (up-timers, mostly) are released and have no claimant, allowing them to be freely claimed. The rest can be claimed, upon request, but expect to be asked questions about how you will use them. The original author’s vision needs to remain in place. You can’t take them in a radically different direction.

Download a ZIP file of the Grid

All_The_Up-Timers_6_February_2022 This zip file contains the latest Grid information in two formats:

  • CSV export of selected data (opens in Excel)
  • MS Word DOC Listing of all up-timers who arrived down-time, plus children born since with at least one up-timer parent.

Starting with the January 2018 version, the Grid has been updated to include ethnicity.

Send an e-mail to The GridMaster (gridmaste(at)1632andBeyond(dot)com)or ask in the 1632Tech conference on Baen’s Bar to reserve a grid character. Include in the request your real name or a stable, non-changing nom de plume with a given and surname, or they will be ignored.

Grid Notes

The Grid contains some information about some characters up through the latest scheduled books. Please don’t bother going through it for snerks (roughly speaking, spoilers), as you may find an unclaimed character whose story only you can write.

From mid-2012 Virginia relinquished responsibility for maintaining the grid. The GridMaster is now responsible for canonizing stories and handling character claims. The grid program will no longer be run, so characters will no longer be moved around automatically, and marriages, births and deaths will now only occur when an author writes the story and turns the information in to the Gridmaster (see below).

Veteran Status (recorded in the Grid)

Veteran status is in accordance with the US Census 2000 question 20(b) and does not mean that a person served on a given battlefield. It indicates what period of history they served in the military (branch not specified unless developed by an author. Likewise, specialization is not determined unless developed by an author.

These are the questions about military service from Census 2000, question 20(b):

When did this person serve on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces? Mark a box for EACH period in which this person served.

  • April 1995 or later
  • August 1990 to March 1995 (including Persian Gulf War)
  • September 1980 to July 1990
  • May 1975 to August 1980
  • Vietnam era (August 1964–April 1975)
  • February 1955 to July 1964
  • Korean conflict (June 1950–January 1955)
  • World War II (September 1940–July 1947)
  • Some other time

Throughout the grid, for the sake of simplicity, the annotation WVNG also can be interpreted to include the concept USAR.

Recording Canonization:

The Grid Master will not enter your data into The Grid until your story or article (for non-fiction) is published (canonized), but you can send it to him in advance for review – but be very clear with him if it’s for review. He is very detail oriented and catches quite a few errors for things like using (or not using) patronymics.

The easiest way to capture the Grid information for your story is to create a clean Excel file, copy the headers from The Grid, and fill in the data for any new characters you create. The most critical cells are name, birth year, birthplace, and profession. Of course, death year as well, if they died. Any additional information, including spouses and children, is helpful. You will also need to copy the name column and birth year for any existing characters you use.

The last step before you submit is to add your story information in the “Canonized” column. It should have your name, the story name (as used in publication – which could change after you submit it), and where it is published. This could be a book or it could be the magazine. If you have previously published stories in the Grantville Gazette and wish to go back and submit them for the Grid, they are listed as (GG#X).

LastName, FirstName Story Title (1632#X)

New Information, Including New Families

If you create a new family, add a column to the far left. Their relationships will need to be added to The Grid. This is primarily for down-timers, but also for up-timers marrying and having children.

The easiest way to show the relationships is to use DM (Darling Mother), DF (Darling Father), DS (Darling Son), and DD(Darling Daughter). If you create multiple families, use DM1, DM2, etc. so that each family has a different number attached to it. This can mean that there are multiple DD1s or DS2s (etc.), which is perfectly fine and normal. A family may even have more than one DM or DF, if there was a second marriage. Just make sure the marriage years are clear so The Grid can capture it correctly.

If you use existing characters, especially up-timers, you will need to clearly note any new information such as new clubs, marriages, job changes, education, etc. The easiest way to do that is to change the font color for those cells, or highlight them. Please note that you cannot change information that is already in The Grid.

If you send the information to the Gridmaster for an advance review, make that very clear so he does’t start entering data into The Grid only to need to change it later. When the issue is finalized, he will send an email to confirm nothing substantial has changed. After the issue goes live, he will update the Grid.

Mistakes

We’re human. It happens. If you see a mistake, let the Gridmaster know. There may be a reason it’s okay, but you may have caught an actual error. If it’s an actual mistake, he’ll fix it.