Editing Mannington, West Virginia (section)

==In popular culture==
Mannington is the model for the fictional town of [[Grantville (1632 series)|Grantville]] in [[Eric Flint]]'s best selling [[1632 series|''1632'' series]] of [[alternate history]] novels: ''[[1632 (novel)|1632]]'', ''[[1633 (novel)|1633]]'', ''[[Ring of Fire (anthology)|Ring of Fire]]'', ''[[The Grantville Gazette]]'', and other book-length and shorter works.<ref>''[https://locusmag.com/2016/12/eric-flint-remaking-history Eric Flint: Remaking History]'', Locus Magazine, Issue 671, page 10. December 2016.</ref>  The ''[[1632 series]]'' has evolved into a large-scale experiment in [[collaborative fiction]] and has attracted considerable interest from other best selling writers, including [[David Weber]] and [[Mercedes Lackey]].<ref>[https://1632.org 1632 Author's Manual]. Retrieved 2021-10-19.</ref><ref>[https://www.baen.com/interviews/intdemarce Interview with Virginia DeMarce]. Baen Books. March 2006. Retrieved 2021-10-19.</ref> The premise of the series is that, in about April 2000, irresponsible aliens (accidentally) exchanged a sphere with a radius of about {{convert|3|mi|km|spell=in}} centered on Grantville with an equally sized chunk of [[Thuringia]] from 1631, plunging the town into the midst of the [[Thirty Years' War]].<ref>[https://www.baen.com/1632.html 1632]. Eric Flint. Baen Books. February 2000.</ref>

Mannington continues to be used as a detailed model for the series in order to determine realistically what resources and skill sets the town of Grantville would bring to the past.<ref>[https://marioncvb.com/eric-flint/ Grantville Gets Transported Back To 1632]. Marion County Convention & Visitors Bureau. July 31, 2020. Retrieved 2021-10-19.</ref> Flint has stated, "The town of Grantville is very closely modeled on the actual town of Mannington. There are rules that I require everyone to follow when they write in the series. One of them is that it if it wasn’t in the town of Mannington in 2000, you can’t have it in Grantville. The one cheat I had to do was that I needed a power plant. The power plant is about 15 miles away, in a town called Granttown, so I just sorta moved it over. That’s the only real cheat.”<ref>[https://locusmag.com/2016/12/eric-flint-remaking-history/ "Eric Flint: Remaking History"] December 4, 2016 ''[[Locus (magazine)|Locus]]'' magazine website</ref> The fans and writers of the [[1632 series]] have held at least four conventions in Mannington. The fourth was held on August 4&ndash;6, 2006.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20101103004922/http://www.1632.org/community/minicon2006.html Mini-Con 2006. Kim Mackey. Retrieved 2021-10-19.]</ref>