The Anaconda Project

The Anaconda Project novel is the eleventh full length work of the popular shared universe Ring of Fire book series (also known as the 1632 series) but only the second solo novel of the twenty-six works by milieu creator-editor Eric Flint. The storyline is deep backplot developed in Eastern Europe parallel to the West European focus of prior works, and he introduced the work as something he has longed to get back to doing (solo novels) despite the success of the other works in the extensively co-written series, for which he also serves as gate-keeper of the series canon, and editor. As of 2012, the book is still being serialized in The Grantville Gazette magazine and has not yet been published separately.
Background
Flint is also co-author of all the long fiction in the series. It is the seventh of the eight novels in the series which, characteristically for science-fiction or alternate history, is predominated by short canonical fiction, in the main the long book length Grantville Gazettes, which are canonical e-zines first and mostly—future print versions will be "best of" book collections, though Grantville Gazette IV is scheduled in hardcover for 2008. The series suffered a lengthy delay and time lag between print releases in the 2004-2006 period because of the inability of the two busy best selling lead writers to synchronize schedules and writing windows—which in turn held up other works in the series lest plots be spoiled. This work, released in e-published form only, signals the end of the bottle-neck. It is the direct sequel to the novelette . In the latter, the famed general Albrecht Wallenstein comes to Grantville for medical attention after being shot near-fatally by at extremely long range during the Battle of Alte-Vista, which ends the lead novel.
In the tradition of Dickens, sections of "The Anaconda Project" appear in separate issues of the Gazettes, and must be purchased separately, to continue the story.
Place in the series
The Anaconda Project is a direct sequel to the 2003 novelette (TWG) which began neohistorical story expansion toward and into the Eastern half of Europe, the so-called Eastern European thread, and the novel begins soon after the (late 1633) close of The Wallenstein Gambit which began the long anticipated plot thread, about which fan complaints have been growing increasingly impatient.
The beginning deals directly with the Jewish jeweler-protagonist of TWG, who is made General by king , the new king of Bohemia—he'd asked to consider doing what he could to avert the infamous massacres of Jews in Eastern Europe at least three times, and Prime Minister Stearns then cut a deal with Wallenstein who claimed as the novelette began, that he could avoid the pogroms. The book title refers to a military operations map with phase lines, color-coded for dating showing conquest of adjacent regional small dynastic states of 1630's Eastern Europe, the total outline of which snakes eastwards from Bohemia—resembling nothing else so much as a giant Anaconda to Roth.
The neohistorical timeline divergences from our up-time written history become stark as this opens act II: Wallenstein, a peasant who became famous as a ruthless but extremely capable mercenary general in the Old Time Line, but becomes king of Bohemia, which he wrestles (part of The Wallenstein Gambit prequel) from Ferdinand III who was also king of Hungary; and the heir apparent of the pious Ferdinand II, the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor who was the leading force behind the devastating Thirty Years' War. In the neohistorical timeline Ferdinand II is succeeded by his son much sooner, and Ferdinand III emerges as a much more pragmatic ruler with his eye on the main enemy, the Ottoman Empire threatening his South and Eastern dynastic holdings compared to his unbendingly religious Roman Catholic father. With the succession some of the critical impetus behind the Thirty Years' War disappears.
This and other key divergences grow extremely obvious by the end of most of the novels set in 1634 (Four, all more or less running concurrently with one another and with this novel). At the end of 1634: The Bavarian Crisis Ferdinand III succeeded his father as "King of Rome", the predecessor and prerequisite office to being crowned Holy Roman Emperor—whereas in our historic timeline Ferdinand II and III continued on for years undisturbed in their offices outlined previously—so the repressive anti-protestant Habsburg policy remained in place; as prequel to this work in another key divergence, as his dying act Ferdinand II revoked the Edict of Restitution, a major underlying "secular" (Greed) reason underlying the causes of the Thirty Years' War, creating another departure point for the alternative speculative history.
Publication information
First electronic printing, serialized beginning September (Vol 12), November (Vol 13) and continuing January 2008 in (Gazette vol 15).

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