1637: Dr. Gribbleflotz and the Soul of Stoner

A 17th-century alchemist confronts modern science with unintended and amusing results. Another sparkling addition to the multiple New York Times best-selling Ring of Fire alternate history series created by Eric Flint.

THE ALCHEMY OF INVENTION

Phillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz, the world's greatest alchemist and a great-grandson of Paracelsus — and a Bombast on his mother's side — had been a man history forgot. But when the town of Grantville was transported by a cosmic accident from modern West Virginia to central Germany in the early seventeenth century, destiny gave him a second chance at fame and fortune — and this time he doesn’t intend to blow it!

The world's greatest alchemist does not make, ahem, mere household goods. But with suitable enticements, he might be persuaded to create baking soda, and then baking powder, so that the time-displaced Americans can chow down on their biscuits and gravy. An alchemist he remains, but with his relentless quest for the quinta essential of human nautre, Gribbleflotz plays a central role in jump-starting the seventeenth century’s new chemical and marital aids industries — and perhaps bringing on a scientific revolution three centuries before its time!