Keith Laumer
Aldiboronti
and realised what a fantastic scifi and fantasy author he was. The Retief
series, the Lafayette O`Leary series, the individual novels such as Plague of
Demons. I never see any of his works in the bookshops now, but there again how
would they find room, with all the piles of Buffy, Star Trek, multi-volumed
no-brainers that it seems they have to stock BY LAW!
Do yourself a favor, go read him.
James Nicoll
If memory serves, Baen Books is reprinting some of his stuff.
ISTR mention of a three novel omnibus, one of which was _Plague of
Demons_.
Eflint46312
scheduled, and there will be more after that.
The scheduled volumes are:
January, 2001: Retief.
This contains all the Retief stories which Laumer wrote when he kicked off the
character in the early 60s. It will includes all the stories collected in
Envoy to New Worlds and Galactic Diplomat, as well as the first Retief novel,
Retief's War.
March: Odyssey
This contains two novels, Galactic Odyssey and Dinosaur Beach, along with five
other of his best adventures stories (Once There was a Giant -- the original
version, not the expanded later one -- Hybrid, King of the City, A Trip to the
City, and Combat Unit)
May: Laumer: The Lighter Side
The volume will contain Laumer's more humorous works -- keeping in mind that
Laumer's sense of humor could be pretty grim at times. There's one novel
included, The Great Time Machine Hoax, and a number of other stories: In the
Queue, The Body Builders, The Planet Wreckers, Time Trap, some others.
The fourth volume, not scheduled yet, will include his novel A Plague of Demons
and other stories with an "Alien Menace" kind of theme.
After that -- either fifth or sixth -- will be a volume entitled "Future
Imperfect" which will contain Laumer's best dystopias (of which he wrote a
number). It will include the novel The Breaking Earth (aka Catastrophe
Planet).
Since Earthblood has gone out of print, I'm probably going to reissue that
along with the other two stories he wrote with the Niss as the villains. We're
also going to reissue Planet Run, the novel he did in collaboration with Gordon
Dickson.
After that, we'll see. As always, it will depend on how well the books are
selling.
Eric Flint
Sherwood Smith
I hope it will contain the first Retief story (which I cherished,
schlepping from move to move over the decades, until some assbite
stole it off my shelves about ten years ago). Never seen it
reprinted.
rmtodd
> Will you be publishing "Diplomat At Arms"?
Yes, he will. Thanks to Baen Webscriptions, I've already got the first part
of the new Retief compilation lying on my hard disk, and here's the table of
contents:
EXTRAORDINARY DIPLOMATS (intro by David Drake)
PART I: IN THE END
DIPLOMAT-AT-ARMS
PART II: A CAREER BEGINS . . . BADLY
PROTOCOL
THE BRASS GOD
SEALED ORDERS
PART III: BUT MAGNAN'S STAR RISES
PALACE REVOLUTION
CULTURAL EXCHANGE
SALINE SOLUTION
NATIVE INTELLIGENCE
PART IV: THE GROACI APPEAR . . .
POLICY
ULTIMATUM
THE PRINCE AND THE PIRATE
THE CASTLE OF LIGHT
RETIEF'S WAR
WICKER WONDERLAND
PART V: MAGNAN MAKES GOOD!
COURIER
PROTEST NOTE
AIDE MEMOIRE
AFTERWORD
Aldiboronti
the upcoming Vance Integral Edition, which I couldn`t afford in a month of
Sundays. But that is fantastic news about Keith Laumer, they deserve to sell
like hot cakes.
Nancy Lebovitz
Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
>I'm editing a major reissue of Laumer for Baen. Three volumes are definitely
>scheduled, and there will be more after that.
>
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
@hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
Oooh, I can just picture it -
The Vance Integral Baen Edition, edited by Eric Flint, with all those
troublesome big words removed - 'cause everyone knows that books with
funny words don't sell.
I can hardly wait.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric D. Berge
(remove spaces for valid address)
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover
Breath's a ware that will not keep
Up, lad! When the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.
- A.E.Housman, "Reveille"
------------------------------------------------------------------
Ted Nolan
surprised that so many non-Laumer Bolo stories were done with no
Retief, Imperium or O'Leary stories when I've always considered
the bolos a very minor Laumer sideline.
Ted
Robert Carnegie
> On 23 Oct 2001 20:19:10 GMT, aldib...@aol.com (Aldiboronti) wrote:
>
> >Great news, now if only somebody would do the same for Jack Vance, other than
> >the upcoming Vance Integral Edition, which I couldn`t afford in a month of
> >Sundays. But that is fantastic news about Keith Laumer, they deserve to sell
> >like hot cakes.
>
> Oooh, I can just picture it -
>
> The Vance Integral Baen Edition, edited by Eric Flint, with all those
> troublesome big words removed - 'cause everyone knows that books with
> funny words don't sell.
Baen-bashing aside -
So, this gives you a bad VIBE?
Martin Wisse
I just hope somebody starts reprinting the alternate worlds/timelines
stories as well.
I love Laumer, he was one of the writers of my golden Age of SF.
Martin Wisse
--
WWFD?
Play Mornington Crescent.
-Erik V. Olson & Loren MacGregor, in rasseff.
James Nicoll
Big guns are easy to write (There's what, two basic Bolo
plots? The Bolo blows up the bad guys _real good_ and having
served its masters well but longer than need calls for, Puff
the Magic Drag^H the bolo is humanely but tragically put to
sleep). Humour is harder.
Also, I think in the early 1990s, SF humour was not seen
as selling well.
Captain Button
> In article <CXqB7.45829$B3.12...@e3500-atl2.usenetserver.com>,
> Ted Nolan <t...@loft.tnolan.com> wrote:
>>Any plans to commision new Retief stories? I've always been rather
>>surprised that so many non-Laumer Bolo stories were done with no
>>Retief, Imperium or O'Leary stories when I've always considered
>>the bolos a very minor Laumer sideline.
> Big guns are easy to write (There's what, two basic Bolo
> plots? The Bolo blows up the bad guys _real good_ and having
> served its masters well but longer than need calls for, Puff
> the Magic Drag^H the bolo is humanely but tragically put to
> sleep). Humour is harder.
At least as I recall it, the most common Bolo story is "long
forgotten/ignored Bolo destroys unexpected threat". The threat
may be new or another long forgotten/ignored entity.
--
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech," - David Brin
Captain Button - but...@io.com
@hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
Carnegie) wrote:
Actually, it was Flint bashing (referring back to his smug assertions
that "everyone knows" that books with dated dialog won't sell), and
yes, I shudder to think what Eric "Tin Ear" Flint would do to Vance.
Eric Walker
[...]
>I love Laumer, he was one of the writers of my golden Age of
>SF.
The book of Laumer's that has always been my personal favorite,
but which I never see mentioned, is _Knight of Delusions_. I
haven't read it in a long time (the year count will be
double-digit) and am almost afraid to try it for fear that I
won't find it as satisfactory as I did way back then.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
http://owlcroft.com/sfandf
Eflint46312
>From: how...@brazee.net
>Date: 10/23/01 7:02 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <Q%cB7.132378$%B.98...@bin1.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com>
>
>Will you be publishing "Diplomat At Arms"?
Yes. In fact, I decided to lead off the volume with that story, even though
it's completely different in tone and actually recounts the events toward the
end of Retief's life.
Eric
Eflint46312
>From: t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan)
>Date: 10/23/01 10:54 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <CXqB7.45829$B3.12...@e3500-atl2.usenetserver.com>
Not that I know of, Ted. But I've never discussed it with Jim Baen, so I can't
really say one way or the other. My guess is that Laumer wrote so _many_
Retief stories and the character is so closely identified with him that doing a
"spin off" would really be difficult.
The truth is that the Retief setting is ultimately a bit limited -- and Laumer
himself pretty well explored those limits thoroughly. Whereas he only wrote a
handful of Bolo stories, and the possibilities for expansion are a lot greater
to begin with.
But, as I said, that's just a guess on my part.
Eric
Eflint46312
>From: sherwoo...@worldnet.damnspamatt.net (Sherwood Smith)
>Date: 10/23/01 8:42 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <3bd53667....@netnews.worldnet.att.net>
To the best of my knowledge, "Diplomat At Arms" was only reissued once after
its initial publication, and that was in the anthology by David Drake entitled
SPACE GLADIATORS. Dave is a big fan of that story himself.
It will, as I said in an earlier post, be the lead-off story in the RETIEF
anthology I edited which is coming out this January.
Eric
Eflint46312
>From: aldib...@aol.com (Aldiboronti)
>Date: 10/23/01 3:19 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <20011023161910...@mb-cq.aol.com>
Jim Baen just gave me the go-ahead a few days ago to keep going with the Laumer
reissue, so there will be more than the three volumes currently scheduled.
(Which are: RETIEF in January, ODYSSEY in March, and LAUMER: THE LIGHTER SIDE
in May.)
I don't know yet how many volumes, but there will be at least two, and
hopefully more. Which means, hallelujah, I'll be able to get A PLAGUE OF
DEMONS back in print. I held off on that novel in the first three volumes
because I'm firmly convinced that it helps, wherever possible, to put together
these reissue anthologies with either some kind of "running thread" (as with
the Telzey and Trigger stories in the first three volumes of the Schmitz
reissue) or at least a common theme. And A PLAGUE OF DEMONS will serve as the
perfect anchor for a volume around the theme of "Alien Menace." But I was
kinda holding my breath, because if the reissue had stopped after three volumes
I would have held off what many people consider Laumer's single best work.
(Personally, I'm a bit more partial to GALACTIC ODYSSEY and DINOSAUR BEACH, but
I'll cheerfully admit it's a close call.)
Happily, however, A PLAGUE OF DEMONS will appear in the fourth volume of the
reissue. Along with:
"Thunderhead"
"Doorstep"
"End as a Hero"
"Test to Destruction"
"Greylorn"
"The Star-Sent Knaves"
I was going to include "The Long Remembered Thunder" and "The Other Sky." But
then I discovered that the current Baen edition of EARTHBLOOD, the
collaboration between Laumer and Rosel George Brown, is essentially out of
print. So Jim and I agreed that we'd put out a "Complete Niss War" volume
which would reissue EARTHBLOOD along with the other two Niss stories which
Laumer wrote.
Beyond that, we'll see. I want to issue a volume of Laumer's dystopias --
which he wrote about as well as anyone ever has in SF -- under the title of
FUTURE IMPERFECT. That would include the novel THE BREAKING EARTH (aka
CATASTROPHE PLANET) as well as a number of other stories. And since Baen has
the rights to reissue some of Gordon Dickson's titles also, we'll almost
certainly do a reissue of PLANET RUN (which Laumer and Dickson collaborated
on), which I'll "package" with several other good Laumer stories.
Beyond _that_... who knows? As always, it'll depend on how sales and
sell-through look for the initial volumes of the reissue.
Eric
Eflint46312
>From: "Eric Walker" ra...@owlcroft.com
>Date: 10/25/01 12:49 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <enfsjbjypebsgpbz...@news.cis.dfn.de>
>
>On Wed, 24 Oct 2001 12:09:30 GMT, Martin Wisse wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>>I love Laumer, he was one of the writers of my golden Age of
>>SF.
>
>The book of Laumer's that has always been my personal favorite,
>but which I never see mentioned, is _Knight of Delusions_. I
>haven't read it in a long time (the year count will be
>double-digit) and am almost afraid to try it for fear that I
>won't find it as satisfactory as I did way back then.
I'll take a look at it, Eric. I didn't initially, because after some
experience I discovered that just about everything Laumer wrote after his
stroke was sub-standard (at least by his standards). So, after a while, with a
few exceptions I just stopped reading anything he wrote after 1971. Laumer's
great years were 1959-1971, and that's what I concentrated on.
But later I discovered that KNIGHT OF DELUSIONS has a complicated publishing
history because of a screw-up by the publisher. So it may actually be
something he wrote prior to the stroke.
Anyway, I just trotted over to my bookcase and plucked it out. I'll read it
when I get a chance over the next few weeks.
Eric
Jordan S. Bassior
>The truth is that the Retief setting is ultimately a bit limited -- and Laumer
>himself pretty well explored those limits thoroughly. Whereas he only wrote
>a handful of Bolo stories, and the possibilities for expansion are a lot
>greater to begin with.
The "Retief" setting is, anyway, a subset of the "Bolo" setting. They're in the
same universe, and the Bolo stories cover a vastly greater slice of time and
space within that universe.
--
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
--
Eflint46312
>From: na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
>Date: 10/23/01 6:32 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <9r4um2$b...@netaxs.com>
l'm correcting some obvious typos. Beyond that, there are perhaps a handful of
instances where I cut a word or a phrase that obviously dated the stories and
could be done easily. The one example I can remember is a specific reference
to buying something for "one hundred dollars" which today would cost five times
that much. Since the specific sum was irrelevant to the story, I cut it out.
But such cuts are very rare. The dated character of many Laumer stories are
either integral to the stories themselves (as with DINOSAUR BEACH) or so
completely interwoven into the story that it would be impossible to edit them
out without completely rewriting the entire thing. An example is the story "A
Trip to The City," which will appear in ODYSSEY. The whole setting has a
vaguely 30s or 40s flavor to it. But there are no one or two word "triggers"
which can be cut easily. So, as I always do with something like that, I just
leave it alone.
As I explained last year in the ruckus over the Schmitz edition, I don't edit
for the hell of it. And, as I explained at considerable length, there's a big
difference between editing a "complete" version of something as opposed to a
"best of" version. A "best of" edition -- which is what the Laumer edition is
-- AUTOMATICALLY involves editing simply in the selection process. You cut
entire stories -- 100%.
The Schmitz series was different. Given that it was a "complete Hub" edition
-- and one which, furthermore, was organized along chronological lines to give
the stories the flavor of a novel series -- I had no choice but to include a
very weak story like "Poltergeist" in the mix. And very early in the mix, to
boot. So I edited it fairly heavily. (I cut about 15% of the text, all told.)
In short, each edition poses it own concrete problems. The next two volumes
I'm editing, other than Laumer and Schmitz, will be two other "complete"
editions. (Well, not counting the Anvil volume coming out in February. Anvil
is still alive so the problem doesn't arise anyway. He had complete control of
the final edition, and whatever editing I did was done with his approval.)
Those are Randall Garrett's complete LORD DARCY stories, coming out in July,
and Murray Leinster's complete MED SHIP stories, coming out in August.
In both cases, I'm editing out repetitious material. In the case of Garrett,
who wrote those stories over a period of many years, I'm simply removing the
"mandatory background exposition" from the later stories in the volume. That
background was necessary for the purposes for which Garrett wrote the separate
stories, of course, because he couldn't be sure that all the readers would know
the background. But once you put them all together in one volume, the reader
does not need to be told eleven times that Richard the Lion-Hearted did not die
from his wound at the siege of Chaluz and went on to etc etc etc. It's just
tedious. Nor do they need to be told, in story after story, that "it is
dangerous to meddle with a wizard at work."
Some people insist that there is a mystical "principle" involved here, but I
consider that simply laughable. Garrett did not write these stories as part of
a single volume. He wrote them all as separate stories, and so he included --
correctly -- material which was necessary for each story as a separate unit but
which becomes redundant when they are all put together decades later in a
single edition. That's just common sense.
With Leinster, in addition to removing the same kind of background exposition
in the later stories, there's an additional factor. It was characteristic of
Leinster in most of his longer stories that he would repeat the same material
constantly. Some people try to argue that this is "integral to his style," but
the reality is that Leinster was a cheerfully adept professional writer and got
paid by the word. So, he padded his stories with some verbiage. If you just
read one story at a time, you don't notice it that much. But when you read a
big chunk of his writing at one stretch it becomes both very noticeable and
(and least for most readers) irritating. So I'm trimming that kind of "fat"
out of the stories.
And when I say "fat," I mean it. Paragraphs which repeat, almost word for
word, material which was presented to the reader earlier in the story -- often
enough, three or four times in a single story. One of the worst examples is in
CREATURES OF THE ABYSS -- which is intrinsically a very nice story -- where, at
least a dozen times, the characters stand around and say to each other: "We're
_not_ going to say what we really think..." CREATURES OF THE ABYSS is a very
good novella which Leinster "bulked up" to make it officially a "novel." I
don't fault him for it, mind you. He had bills to pay and he got paid by the
word, and since his editors at the time let him get away with it, more power to
him. But Leinster's ghost doesn't need the cash flow any more and his estate
is not getting paid by the word anyway. So, if the reissue ever gets far
enough to reissue CREATURES (which I hope it does, because I like that story),
I will cut that padding.
There's not all that much of it, by the way, in the Med Ship stories. I didn't
make a count, but I doubt if I cut more than a thousand words out of a total of
about 170,000.
Of course, I'll get denounced for it in some quarters. Try to imagine how
little I care. As I explained last year, I am not doing these editions for the
relative handful of collectors who think every single word is critical. I'm
editing them to introduce authors who have largely fallen out of print to an
audience many of whom have either never read them or, in many cases, never even
heard of them. Those kind of readers will not be impressed by the so-called
"Leinster style." They will simply -- and rightly, by the way -- get bored by
wordage for the sake of it.
I will, by the way, be sending the edited copies matched to the originals to
Sea Wasp, so that he'll be able (if he wants to) to post a detailed review here
of exactly what I cut and what I didn't. I'm sending them to Sea Wasp, who has
been (and remains, heh) one of my most vigorous critics for the simple reason
that I trust him to be honest and scrupulous. Two words which, in my
experience, seem to be terra incognita to many others. I have no doubt he'll
disagree with what I did, but I can trust him to report the FACTS
straightforwardly and accurately. (Not to mention that he'll actually READ the
material, instead of, as so many here do, spouting off without bothering to do
so.)
Anyway, to sum up this long post, the amount and nature of the editing I do is
determined entirely by the concrete circumstances. I never edit any more than
I feel I have to. Given the nature of the Laumer reissue, that means I've done
almost no editing at all -- beyond, of course, the enormous "editorial fiat"
which is involved in selecting the stories in the first place.
Eric
James Nicoll
Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>Beyond _that_... who knows? As always, it'll depend on how sales and
>sell-through look for the initial volumes of the reissue.
His novels are pretty short by today's standards: what about
an omnibus of 'Maimed Superhuman' novels, like
SPOILERS
_The Star Treasure_, _The Long Twilight_, and so on?
Sherwood Smith
Yip!
Ted Nolan
Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>I'll take a look at it, Eric. I didn't initially, because after some
>experience I discovered that just about everything Laumer wrote after his
>stroke was sub-standard (at least by his standards). So, after a while, with a
>few exceptions I just stopped reading anything he wrote after 1971. Laumer's
>great years were 1959-1971, and that's what I concentrated on.
>
> ....
Hm, I would have put it later. As I recall, the first part of _The Ultimax
Man_, which was published in Analog as "The Wonderful Secret" was OK, while
the second part was clearly post-stroke Laumer.
And on that note, as to your earlier comment about the Retief
universe being mostly played out, I would disagree. Clearly Laumer had an
idea of someplace else he wanted to take the character. Particularly in
the, I think, next to last book (the one with the SAP etc and where Magnan
gets a girlfriend) he was trying to set up something about the importance
of Port Royal and the young boy that Retief meets. Unfortunately, by that
point, he was almost completely unreadable. (And very brave to soldier on
with a task he was no longer up to).
Ted
Nancy Lebovitz
Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
>>Subject: Re: Keith Laumer
>>From: na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
>>Date: 10/23/01 6:32 PM Central Daylight Time
>>Message-id: <9r4um2$b...@netaxs.com>
>>
>>In article <20011023063942...@mb-mi.aol.com>,
>>Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>I'm editing a major reissue of Laumer for Baen. Three volumes are
>>definitely
>>>scheduled, and there will be more after that.
>>>
>>How intensively are you editing the stories?
>
>instances where I cut a word or a phrase that obviously dated the stories and
>could be done easily. The one example I can remember is a specific reference
>to buying something for "one hundred dollars" which today would cost five times
>that much. Since the specific sum was irrelevant to the story, I cut it out.
>But such cuts are very rare. The dated character of many Laumer stories are
>either integral to the stories themselves (as with DINOSAUR BEACH) or so
>completely interwoven into the story that it would be impossible to edit them
>out without completely rewriting the entire thing. An example is the story "A
>Trip to The City," which will appear in ODYSSEY. The whole setting has a
>vaguely 30s or 40s flavor to it. But there are no one or two word "triggers"
>which can be cut easily. So, as I always do with something like that, I just
>leave it alone.
>
(....)
>Some people insist that there is a mystical "principle" involved here, but I
>consider that simply laughable. Garrett did not write these stories as part of
>a single volume. He wrote them all as separate stories, and so he included --
>correctly -- material which was necessary for each story as a separate unit but
>which becomes redundant when they are all put together decades later in a
>single edition. That's just common sense.
>
I don't mind that you're cutting some repetitious material out of the
stories, but I hope you'll do the people who care about textual accuracy
the favor of putting a note on the copyright page or having a brief
foreword or afterword.
Eflint46312
>From: t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan)
>Date: 10/25/01 9:55 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <nJVB7.54924$B3.15...@e3500-atl2.usenetserver.com>
You could be right, Ted. The problem, as you say, is that the post-stroke
Laumer just tends to be painful to read. It's like reading a third-rate hack
trying to imitate Laumer. Which is not a criticism of Laumer, by the way. The
man survived 20 years after a massive stroke and kept chugging along as best he
could. I certainly don't begrudge him the income. But there's no reason, now
that he's been dead for over a decade, to drag out all his mediocre stuff.
After a while, to be honest, I just stopped reading the later Retief stories.
If the Retief volume coming out in January sells well enough, I imagine I'll do
a second Retief volume. There are still enough good stories to make a solid
second volume. The material I used for the volume coming out in January was
everything he wrote through 1965. So that still leaves quite a bit more Retief
which he wrote before he suffered his stroke.
Eric
Eflint46312
>From: jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll)
>Date: 10/25/01 9:08 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <9r96cp$f8m$1...@panix1.panix.com>
It's certainly possible. THE LONG TWILIGHT has some problems, but in many ways
it's one of Laumer's best. I'd also like to reissue three out of the four
Worlds of the Imperium novels. (The last one he wrote, ZONE YELLOW, is really
pretty bad. So I'd just leave it out.)
It all depends, as always, on how good the sales and sell-through are on the
initial volumes. If they're good -- even decent -- Jim will undoubtedly want
to keep going. We could also do a reissue of the Lafayette O'Leary stories.
Personally, I find the humor in them heavy-handed, but... that's a matter of
taste, and lots of people like them.
Eric
Eflint46312
>From: jsba...@aol.com (Jordan S. Bassior)
>Date: 10/25/01 8:46 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <20011025094608...@mb-fl.aol.com>
Heh. I sometimes think half of _everything_ Laumer wrote was a subset of the
Bolo universe. The Bolos tend to pop up all over the place -- A PLAGUE OF
DEMONS being one outstanding instance.
Eric
Sea Wasp
I think you'd have to assume the Bolos were invented in multiple
alternative universes.
I mean, those poor Good and Evil sides wouldn't stand a chance
against Retief.
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.htm
/^\
;;; _Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at
http://www.hyperbooks.com/catalog/20040.html
Dwight Thieme
: I don't mind that you're cutting some repetitious material out of the
: stories, but I hope you'll do the people who care about textual accuracy
: the favor of putting a note on the copyright page or having a brief
: foreword or afterword.
Here's a little something for a foreword/afterword: he
wrote a superb book on model airplanes, which was a
bible of sorts for me for a number of years.
Dwight Thieme
: On Wed, 24 Oct 2001 12:09:30 GMT, Martin Wisse wrote:
:
: [...]
:
:>I love Laumer, he was one of the writers of my golden Age of
:>SF.
:
: The book of Laumer's that has always been my personal favorite,
: but which I never see mentioned, is _Knight of Delusions_. I
: haven't read it in a long time (the year count will be
: double-digit) and am almost afraid to try it for fear that I
: won't find it as satisfactory as I did way back then.
You won't be disappointed; it has a very strong whiff
of (the good) Laumer. Strongly reminiscent of DB. And
right up there with his WotI.
Martin Wisse
<t...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <20011025100421...@mb-cl.aol.com>,
> eflin...@aol.com (Eflint46312) wrote:
>
>[lots of stuff about editing practices]
>
>Data point, Eric:
>
>Part of your audience is me, and frankly you seem to be dismissing my
>importance. I'm relatively young (28), I DO know the author names in
>question, I need no handholding, and I'm interested in buying these
>reprints because it can be hard to find the "good old stuff".
>
>I unequivocally do NOT want stories edited to remove or update
>"outdated" cultural and societal references -- seemingly a favorite
>target of yours, judging by your statements. They are frequently part
>of the tone and flavor of the story. Eliding them lessens the story.
>Revising them for modernity introduces jarring anachronisms.
Hear, hear.
We're science fiction readers. If we can handle parallel worlds,
intergalactic diplomats and tanks the size of small countries, we can
handle the odd reference to olden days too.
>This shows up even in contemporary work. For some reason the editors of
>the U.S. editions of Terry Pratchett often feel it necessary to replace
>U.K. money with U.S. money. There I am, reading and enjoying British
>fiction with an undeniably British viewpoint and British speech patterns
>and so forth, and along comes a use of U.S. dollars and knocks me right
>out of immersion in the story. Alien elements have a way of doing that.
Actually...
Terry Pratchett himself made the conscious choice to use dollars as the
Ankh-Morpork currency in the Discworld novels, so it's not something the
US editors introduced.
(I don't think the US editions differ st all fromt he UK editions these
days, apart from the covers, obviously.)
Martin Wisse
--
[How to kill and humiliate the Draka]
"Oh, Lord. The Draka vs. Ally McBeal. I think we have a winner..."
John Schilling, rasfw
J.B. Moreno
> And when I say "fat," I mean it. Paragraphs which repeat, almost word for
> word, material which was presented to the reader earlier in the story --
> often enough, three or four times in a single story. One of the worst
> examples is in CREATURES OF THE ABYSS -- which is intrinsically a very
> nice story -- where, at least a dozen times, the characters stand around
> and say to each other: "We're _not_ going to say what we really think..."
Paragraphs are one thing, but..."who made this guy a general anyway".
--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
Andrew Wheeler
>
> Revising [literary works] for modernity introduces jarring
> anachronisms.
>
> editors of the U.S. editions of Terry Pratchett often feel it
> necessary to replace U.K. money with U.S. money. There I am,
> reading and enjoying British fiction with an undeniably
> British viewpoint and British speech patterns and so forth,
> and along comes a use of U.S. dollars and knocks me right out
> of immersion in the story. Alien elements have a way of
> doing that.
While I'm somewhat in agreement with your point vis-a-vis Laumer, I
think you should know that Ankh-Morpork *does* use dollars. Pratchett
wrote it that way.
(My quick reference: _Hogfather_, Victor Gollancz hardcover, p.15 --
several references to "three million dollars.")
I believe Pratchett originally used dollars as the currency so it
would sound different to his readership -- his UK readership.
--
Andrew Wheeler
Editor, SF Book Club (USA) -- speaking only for myself
"Life is a god-damned, stinking, treacherous game and
nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand are
bastards." -- Theodore Dreiser
Robert Carnegie
www.m-w.com asserts (if I read it right) that the word "dollar",
seemingly meaning simply a certain design of silver coin, comes
from German "Taler", a European prototype of such coins, which is
a contraction of "Joachimsthaler" since the coins were made in
(the town of?) Sankt Joachimsthal in the 15th century. But don't
quote _me_ on all this ;-) Banks should know more if they care...
http://mynter.org/scots.html asserts there was (at least) once a
Scottish dollar, and it's also a place name here!
Eric Walker
[...]
>www.m-w.com asserts (if I read it right) that the word
>"dollar", seemingly meaning simply a certain design of silver
>coin, comes from German "Taler", a European prototype of such
>coins, which is a contraction of "Joachimsthaler" since the
>coins were made in (the town of?) Sankt Joachimsthal in the
>15th century. . . .
That is the generally accepted, and very probably true, story.
It is scarcely uncommon in reading British books to find
references to "dollars" as, so far as I can recall, a generic
term for money--"He's just after the dollars."
Then there was the Dollar Mex, used in Shanghai in the early
20th century, which was, yes, a Mexican dollar. From a web
site:
Carl Crow, who knew more about China than we can ever hope to
learn, wrote:
"to avoid carrying around five to ten pound lumps of silver
(taels) as spending money, they introduced the Mexican dollar
and it remains the standard currency of most ports... Local
foreign banks issue paper notes payable in Mexican dollars and
prices at hotels and stores are quoted in them."
The value varied from more than a U.S. silver dollar to about
half of it, and to further confuse the issue there were also
those silver taels PLUS other dollars in circulation (which
can still be found in the free market). But everyone signed
"chits" anyway -- and no wonder!
Idle, useless data for amusement . . . .
John Andrew Fairhurst
eflin...@aol.com says...
> To the best of my knowledge, "Diplomat At Arms" was only reissued once after
> its initial publication, and that was in the anthology by David Drake entitled
> SPACE GLADIATORS. Dave is a big fan of that story himself.
>
It's also in a collection called _Cosmic Knights_ which explores the
theme of the knight from Arthur to the far future, co-edited by I Asimov,
MH Greenberg, and C Waugh. My UK edition dated 1987.
--
John Fairhurst
In Association with Amazon worldwide:
http://www.johnsbooks.co.uk/Books/Masterworks/
Classic Science Fiction & Fantasy Releases to Dec 01
John Andrew Fairhurst
t...@mindspring.com says...
> There I am, reading and enjoying British
> fiction with an undeniably British viewpoint and British speech patterns
> and so forth, and along comes a use of U.S. dollars and knocks me right
> out of immersion in the story. Alien elements have a way of doing that.
>
The currency of Ankh Morpock is dollars though. I've only got the UK
editions and Terry's never used anything else.
I don't think A-M's meant to be a British city...
Ian Harvey
"Andrew Wheeler" <andrew...@earthlink.com> wrote in message
news:3BDC5855...@earthlink.com...
> "Timothy A. Seufert" wrote:
> >
> > Revising [literary works] for modernity introduces jarring
> > anachronisms.
> >
> > This shows up even in contemporary work. For some reason the
> > editors of the U.S. editions of Terry Pratchett often feel it
> > necessary to replace U.K. money with U.S. money. There I am,
> > reading and enjoying British fiction with an undeniably
> > British viewpoint and British speech patterns and so forth,
> > and along comes a use of U.S. dollars and knocks me right out
> > of immersion in the story. Alien elements have a way of
> > doing that.
>
> While I'm somewhat in agreement with your point vis-a-vis Laumer, I
> think you should know that Ankh-Morpork *does* use dollars. Pratchett
> wrote it that way.
>
> (My quick reference: _Hogfather_, Victor Gollancz hardcover, p.15 --
> several references to "three million dollars.")
>
> I believe Pratchett originally used dollars as the currency so it
> would sound different to his readership -- his UK readership.
>
Ptypical of the man really.
Ian
Craig S. Richardson
<t...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>This shows up even in contemporary work. For some reason the editors of
>the U.S. editions of Terry Pratchett often feel it necessary to replace
>U.K. money with U.S. money. There I am, reading and enjoying British
>fiction with an undeniably British viewpoint and British speech patterns
>and so forth, and along comes a use of U.S. dollars and knocks me right
>out of immersion in the story. Alien elements have a way of doing that.
As others have mentioned, it was Pratchett himself who did this, and
on purpose. From the Annotated Pratchett File:
- [p. 26/24] "'If you mean: is this coin the same as, say, a
fifty-dollar piece, then the answer is no.'"
An American reader was puzzled by the fact that in Ankh-Morpork the
unit of currency is the dollar, instead of, for instance, something
more British, like the pound. Terry explained:
"The dollar is quite an elderly unit of currency, from the German
'thaler', I believe, and the use of the term for the unit of
currency isn't restricted to the US. I just needed a nice easy
monetary unit and didn't want to opt for the 'gold pieces' cliche.
Sure, I live in the UK, but I haven't a clue what the appropriate
unit of currency is for a city in a world on the back of a turtle
:-)..."
--Craig
--
David Collins from Burnley: 70K pounds
Luke Weaver from Spurs: 500K pounds
Matthew Etherington from Grasshoppers-Zurich: 1.2M pounds
Leyton Orient 1-0 St. Mirren in the 2003 UEFA Cup Final: Priceless
Luke Webber
news:9rk2ka$rak$1...@ucsnew1.ncl.ac.uk...
> > I believe Pratchett originally used dollars as the currency so it
> > would sound different to his readership -- his UK readership.
> >
> Actually he uses Dollars and pence in order to sound weird to everyone.
> Ptypical of the man really.
Much like Red Dwarf's "dollar-pounds".
Luke
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
<enfsjbjypebsgpbz...@news.cis.dfn.de>,
Eric Walker <ra...@owlcroft.com> spake:
> Then there was the Dollar Mex, used in Shanghai in the early
> 20th century, which was, yes, a Mexican dollar. From a web
> site:
And coincidentally, I just read Walter Jon Williams' "Broadway Johnny"
(in his _Frankensteins & Foreign Devils_ collection) yesterday, which
mentions them.
--
<a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"No one is safe. We will print no letters to the editor. We will give no
space to opposing points of view. They are wrong. The Underground Grammarian
is at war and will give the enemy nothing but battle." -TUG, v1n1
Eflint46312
>From: "Timothy A. Seufert" t...@mindspring.com
>Date: 10/28/01 12:22 AM Central Standard Time
>Message-id: <tas-4F8D7B.2...@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>
>
>In article <20011025100421...@mb-cl.aol.com>,
> eflin...@aol.com (Eflint46312) wrote:
>
>[lots of stuff about editing practices]
>
>Data point, Eric:
>
>Part of your audience is me, and frankly you seem to be dismissing my
>importance. I'm relatively young (28), I DO know the author names in
>question, I need no handholding, and I'm interested in buying these
>reprints because it can be hard to find the "good old stuff".
>
>I unequivocally do NOT want stories edited to remove or update
>"outdated" cultural and societal references -- seemingly a favorite
>target of yours, judging by your statements. They are frequently part
>of the tone and flavor of the story. Eliding them lessens the story.
I fail to see how cutting something "introduces jarring anachronisms." I do
not _add_ anything in order to "modernize" the stories other than, very
occasionally, changing a term like "microfiche" to "file" or changing "newshen"
to "newscaster." The purpose of such changes is not to "jazz up" the story,
it's simply to remove obsolescent terms which will tend to jolt most readers
and break their concentration on the story itself.
>This shows up even in contemporary work. For some reason the editors of
>the U.S. editions of Terry Pratchett often feel it necessary to replace
>U.K. money with U.S. money. There I am, reading and enjoying British
>fiction with an undeniably British viewpoint and British speech patterns
>and so forth, and along comes a use of U.S. dollars and knocks me right
>out of immersion in the story. Alien elements have a way of doing that.
Well, as several other people have pointed out, that was done by Pratchett, not
his editors. You might want to ask yourself why Pratchett did it. Just as you
might want to ask yourself why Andre Norton did the same kind of elimination of
obsolete references as I'm doing -- except she did it far more extensively.
You might also want to ask yourself why Chrisopher Anvil _instructed_ me to do
the same thing for the edition of his Pandora stories I'm editing.
I'm sorry if this upsets you. But the crude fact is that _most_ readers do not
like "dated" SF. That's why most authors will eliminate anything like that in
so far as possible when they reissue their old writings.
>I do not know how large a percentage of your market is like me.
A small percentage. That, at least, is the "accepted wisdom" among
professionals, and since they make a living at this their judgment is worth
taking as good coin. When you've got to pay the mortgage with your writing,
you tend to get a lot less sentimental and romantic than when you're playing
with someone else's income.
I do
>know that I personally will avoid your reprints and stick to the
>hopeless search for originals when you edit too heavily. As an example
>of "too heavily", I seem to recall from one of the past flamewars that
>you felt it necessary to bowdlerize smoking references away from certain
>works. That's intolerable as far as I'm concerned.
Sorry to hear that. If you feel that strongly about it, then don't buy my
editions. I have to say, by the way, that I think you are making a mountain of
a molehill. I doubt very seriously that you'd even notice the few cuts or
changes I made if someone didn't point them out to you.
But I will also be blunt with you: given that the Schmitz reissue (every book
so far) has maintained a phenomenal 80% sell-through, it is as clear as day
that my judgment on what the majority of the audience wants is accurate. I did
_not_ edit this series with the relatively small audience of "purist
collectors" in mind. I edited them to introduce Schmitz to a new audience.
That audience is not bothered by cutting or changing a few terms here and there
to eliminate obsolete references. In fact, they are far more likely to be
bothered by the opposite -- stories which keep jolting them by reminding them
how long ago they were written.
>A lesser offense would be something you just mentioned with respect to
>Laumer -- the idea of removing a reference to how much money a character
>spent on an item because that amount is now too small. That probably
>will not damage the story much in and of itself (depending on context),
>but I'm still uncomfortable with it. It doesn't lead me to have
>confidence in your judgement as an editor.
Fine. On the other hand -- God forbid anyone should introduce practical
concerns here -- my publisher is willing to entrust me with issuing volumes
which will cost him several million dollars to produce. He's willing to do
that because he _does_ have confidence in my judgment.
Why? Well, very good sales and excellent sell-through, that's why. Which
means one hell of a lot more to him (and me) that the disgruntlement of some
fans in the newsgroups. I'm sorry, Tim, but like most of my critics here you
seem unwilling to accept the fact that your own tastes are not those of the big
majority of SF readers. I'm editing a mass market popular edition, not a
collector's edition. And I make absolutely no apologies for that. Every
writer I'm editing a reissue of is a writer whose books have essentially gone
out of print -- and for many years now. Clearly enough, the hardcore
collector's audience was not sufficient to keep them going.
It makes me think: is the
>editor ashamed of when the work was written? Or does he have so low an
>opinion of his audience that he believes they cannot adjust for so
>simple a concept as inflation? If so, what else might he have done?
The problem isn't my "shame" or "low opinion" of the audience. The problem, to
be blunt, is your own arrogance. You continually insist that YOUR tastes are
the "right ones," and demand that the world as a whole must share them. If
they don't -- and they don't -- then the fault is theirs.
Sorry, but it's just a fact that the biggest strike against reissuing a story
is the fact that it's perceived as "dated." That's especially true in SF,
which is the genre that is supposed to be futuristic. There are some
exceptions, granted. Basically, those authors or stories which have achieved
what you might call "classic status." But the stories I'm reissuing have NOT
achieved such status -- which is precisely why I'm reissuing them in the first
place.
>Don't get me wrong. I don't mind some of the things you mentioned.
>Cutting repetitive exposition and padding originally written due to
>now-irrelevant market conditions is fine; I have no need to read the
>refresher course at the beginning of each part of a collected series.
>And if you're forced to include a known stinker in an anthology for the
>sake of completeness, go ahead and use the red pen -- I'd prefer to read
>it in the original form but can understand if it is cut down or altered
>to make the collection better. Just keep in mind that I and those like
>me (if any) will not like it when you go after material which does no
>more than place a story in the era when it was written. If you want my
>dollars, don't do that.
Well, sorry. I'd like your dollars, of course. But not when getting your
dollars loses me (and my publisher, who's footing the bill) the dollars of five
readers whose tastes are different from yours. And I'd estimate that's about
the percentage. (And so do such long-experienced professional writers as
Norton and Anvil.)
I realize I'll be denounced again for "demanding deference." But life is hard,
and facts are facts.
Eric
Nancy Lebovitz
Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>But I will also be blunt with you: given that the Schmitz reissue (every book
>so far) has maintained a phenomenal 80% sell-through, it is as clear as day
>that my judgment on what the majority of the audience wants is accurate. I did
>_not_ edit this series with the relatively small audience of "purist
>collectors" in mind. I edited them to introduce Schmitz to a new audience.
>That audience is not bothered by cutting or changing a few terms here and there
>to eliminate obsolete references. In fact, they are far more likely to be
>bothered by the opposite -- stories which keep jolting them by reminding them
>how long ago they were written.
>
the editing job presumably didn't cause it. I think that very few people
would have read enough of the book before buying it to have a sense of
what your editting was like. That you then got 80% sell-through on
subsequent volumes (congratulations again) proves that people liked
the books enough to keep buying them.
However, they probably bought the first book because they recognized
Schmitz' name and/or your name and/or liked the cover and/or were
intrigued by the blurb and/or were annoyed by the people yelling at
you. The later volumes were bought for the aforementioned reasons plus
possibly having liked previous books. There's no way to tell whether
your editorial tweaks helped a little, hurt a little (really, the major
issue is whether people liked Schmitz' writing), or made no difference.
possible reasons plus
lal_truckee
>>
>
> Well, sorry. I'd like your dollars, of course. But not when getting your
> dollars loses me (and my publisher, who's footing the bill) the dollars of five
> readers whose tastes are different from yours. And I'd estimate that's about
> the percentage. (And so do such long-experienced professional writers as
> Norton and Anvil.)
>
> I realize I'll be denounced again for "demanding deference." But life is hard,
> and facts are facts.
Might I point out the AC Clarke long ago demonstarted how to do what you
are undertaking -
c.f. _Against the Fall of Night_ and _The City and the Stars_
A rewrite that justly earned it's own reputation. I would assume that
its market included previous readers of AtFoN as well as new readers,
and that it earned substantial monies itself. I myself have deliberately
purchased both versions and read each with pleaasure.
The difference between the ACC rewrite and what you are doing, is you
are hiding what you do from the naive.
You may be correct that an update will sell better than a reprint, but
if you believe your work adds to the novel, why not tout the editing as
a selling point rather than attempting to slip it under the bed? Put
your name on the title page as "by Schmidt, edited and revised by
Flint". Be honest.
Carl Burke
...
> If the first book had an 80% sell-through (for which congratulations), then
> the editing job presumably didn't cause it. I think that very few people
> would have read enough of the book before buying it to have a sense of
> what your editting was like. That you then got 80% sell-through on
> subsequent volumes (congratulations again) proves that people liked
> the books enough to keep buying them.
And liked them despite the defiantly fannish cover art and titling.
(If I hadn't recognized Schmitz' name, I never would've pulled a copy
off the shelf let alone bought one.)
I bought them in order to have a solid collection of Schmitz' work,
which I couldn't get otherwise. There are some aspects to the stories
which seem different than when I first read them, but I don't know if
that's due to the editing or to the accumulated debris of 25+ years
between readings. My to-read pile is too full to do word-for-word
comparisons on those few stories I have older printings of, so I hope
that Mr. Flint hasn't taken too many liberties with the material,
and that future archivists will be able to locate the unmodified
stories for the benefit of collectors who care.
--
Carl Burke
cbu...@mitre.org
J.B. Moreno
> "Timothy A. Seufert" t...@mindspring.com
>
> > eflin...@aol.com (Eflint46312) wrote:
> >
> >[lots of stuff about editing practices]
> >
> >Data point, Eric:
-snip-
> >I'm interested in buying these reprints because it can be hard to find
> >the "good old stuff".
> >
> >I unequivocally do NOT want stories edited to remove or update "outdated"
> >cultural and societal references [...] Revising them for modernity
> >introduces jarring anachronisms.
>
> I fail to see how cutting something "introduces jarring anachronisms." I
> do not _add_ anything in order to "modernize" the stories other than, very
> occasionally, changing a term like "microfiche" to "file" or changing
> "newshen" to "newscaster."
This is exactly his objection -- the new terms are modern and seem
inappropriate (to him at least) in the story.
Did you ever read the Chip Hilton series of sport books? They have been
recently re-released, with Chip using a cell phone and logging onto the
internet. Which just doesn't fit in with the background. Like
"microfiche" to "file" and "newshen" to "newscaster".
> The purpose of such changes is not to "jazz up" the story, it's simply to
> remove obsolescent terms which will tend to jolt most readers and break
> their concentration on the story itself.
And he's saying that for him -- and by extension at least some others,
it has the opposite effect; the replacement of an obsolete term with a
modern term jolts him out of the story, because it doesn't /fit/.
-snip-
> >I do not know how large a percentage of your market is like me.
>
> A small percentage. That, at least, is the "accepted wisdom" among
> professionals, and since they make a living at this their judgment is worth
> taking as good coin.
-snip
> >As an example of "too heavily", I seem to recall from one of the past
> >flamewars that you felt it necessary to bowdlerize smoking references
> >away from certain works. That's intolerable as far as I'm concerned.
>
> Sorry to hear that. If you feel that strongly about it, then don't buy my
> editions. I have to say, by the way, that I think you are making a
> mountain of a molehill. I doubt very seriously that you'd even notice the
> few cuts or changes I made if someone didn't point them out to you.
Some people notice.
> But I will also be blunt with you: given that the Schmitz reissue (every
> book so far) has maintained a phenomenal 80% sell-through, it is as clear
> as day that my judgment on what the majority of the audience wants is
> accurate.
Or at least that it doesn't hurt -- it could be that the smoking cost
you a percentage or two.
-snip-
> I realize I'll be denounced again for "demanding deference." But life is
> hard, and facts are facts.
I don't think you're demanding deference, you are giving your reasons,
which is fine, and others disagree, but when it comes right down to it
you get to decide what gets cut and what doesn't, and they get to decide
what they buy and what they don't.
Agreement simply isn't in the cards -- at least not until we get access
to alternate universe and can observe the results of the different
decisions...
Karen Williams
> If the first book had an 80% sell-through (for which congratulations), then
> the editing job presumably didn't cause it.
I suspect that the only way to know for sure if people prefer the version
edited to replace older word usage to a version reprinted exactly as the
stories were originally were if both versions were readily available at
the same time, and to compare the sales. Since Schmitz's work had been
unavailable for some time, people may have just bought whatever was
available in order to get the stories at all.
--
Karen Williams
bra...@ix.netcom.com
Hallvard B Furuseth
>Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
>>"Timothy A. Seufert" t...@mindspring.com
>>>cultural and societal references [...] Revising them for modernity
>>>introduces jarring anachronisms.
Me too. Nor will you catch me buying an American release of an
English author, if I can get the original. Still,
> Did you ever read the Chip Hilton series of sport books? They have been
> recently re-released, with Chip using a cell phone and logging onto the
> internet. Which just doesn't fit in with the background. Like
> "microfiche" to "file" and "newshen" to "newscaster".
Which parts of the background didn't the Schmitz changes fit? I've only
read Baen editions and I did't stumble over any jarring mismatches.
Though I imagine it can make a difference if you know the old stories
and already feel that this story is against an old-fashioned background.
>> The purpose of such changes is not to "jazz up" the story, it's simply to
>> remove obsolescent terms which will tend to jolt most readers and break
>> their concentration on the story itself.
>
> And he's saying that for him -- and by extension at least some others,
> it has the opposite effect; the replacement of an obsolete term with a
> modern term jolts him out of the story, because it doesn't /fit/.
That happens, and in any case I _like_ oldies to look old, but
we who do seem to be in a minority.
>> But I will also be blunt with you: given that the Schmitz reissue (every
>> book so far) has maintained a phenomenal 80% sell-through, it is as clear
>> as day that my judgment on what the majority of the audience wants is
>> accurate.
>
> Or at least that it doesn't hurt -- it could be that the smoking cost
> you a percentage or two.
Probably. And probably it gained a larger percentage, unless most mass
market publishers don't know what they are doing. But nobody asked you
to like that. For that matter, I've never seen Eric Flint say _he_
likes that.
--
Hallvard
Hallvard B Furuseth
> Might I point out the AC Clarke long ago demonstarted how to do what
> you are undertaking - c.f. _Against the Fall of Night_ and _The City
Oh sure. "The Witches of Karres, rewritten an improved by Eric Flint."
I can just see the reaction to that one. Or if it was an un-improved
rewrite, why bother? The primarly target audience was people who hadn't
read the original version anyway.
Clarke rewrites were something else; he rewrote his own stories.
> You may be correct that an update will sell better than a reprint, but
> if you believe your work adds to the novel, why not tout the editing as
> a selling point rather than attempting to slip it under the bed? Put
> your name on the title page as "by Schmidt, edited and revised by
> Flint". Be honest.
He did. The cover says:
James H Schmitz: Telzey Amberdon
Edited and compiled by Eric Flint
--
Hallvard
Dwight Thieme
:> Actually he uses Dollars and pence in order to sound weird to everyone.
:> Ptypical of the man really.
:
: Much like Red Dwarf's "dollar-pounds".
Yeah . . . I up you "Voter-Colonel".
Eflint46312
>From: pl...@newsreaders.com (J.B. Moreno)
>Date: 10/29/01 7:18 PM Central Standard Time
>Message-id: <1f22175.1fg3a2b105j93qN%pl...@newsreaders.com>
>
>Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> "Timothy A. Seufert" t...@mindspring.com
>>
>> > eflin...@aol.com (Eflint46312) wrote:
>> >
>> >[lots of stuff about editing practices]
>> >
>> >Data point, Eric:
>-snip-
>> >I'm interested in buying these reprints because it can be hard to find
>> >the "good old stuff".
>> >
>> >I unequivocally do NOT want stories edited to remove or update "outdated"
>> >cultural and societal references [...] Revising them for modernity
>> >introduces jarring anachronisms.
>>
>> I fail to see how cutting something "introduces jarring anachronisms." I
>> do not _add_ anything in order to "modernize" the stories other than, very
>> occasionally, changing a term like "microfiche" to "file" or changing
>> "newshen" to "newscaster."
>
>This is exactly his objection -- the new terms are modern and seem
>inappropriate (to him at least) in the story.
In point of fact, with a few exceptions which I will note in a moment, I did
NOT introduce "new terms." I simply used terms which the _author_ also used.
For instance, when I changed "newshen" to "newscaster" in "Aura of
Immortality," I used the term "newscaster" because Schmitz himself used it in
the very same story.
So please explain to me how this is going to be "modern and inappropriate?"
The only exception to this rule was using modern terms -- which we kept as
generic as possible -- when the authors referred to computer technology. Thus,
for instance, I changed the term "fiche" to "file" in perhaps three instances
in Leinster's MED SHIP when Calhoun was using the ship's computer.
I defy anyone to tell me, with a straight face, that they're going to be
"jarred" by seeing a common modern term used in connection with a _computer_.
Just as I defy anyone to tell me, with a straight face, that they're really
going to notice the elimination of one sentence which specified that Trigger
received a message via a pneumatic tube in LEGACY.
Frankly, this just gets silly. An occasional clearly obsolete technical term
_does_ jar most readers. Removing it, in the sparing way that I do, takes
nothing away from the story -- and, as I said, if people hadn't been told about
it, they'd never even notice. Since they have been told -- usually by me, by
the way -- some of them insist on making a federal case out of it.
In point of fact, what I'm doing is what most authors do routinely when they
reissue old stories. Andre Norton is making far more extensive revisions of
the background in her novels than anything I've done in any of my editing
projects. And, as I said in an earlier post, Christopher Anvil INSTRUCTED me
to do it, if I found any such obsolete terms in his stories.
The reason working authors have a different attitude about this that a subset
of fans (a rather small subset, to be frank) is because they depend on their
writings for a living and they know perfectly well that most readers will, as a
general rule, be "put off" by an SF story which is obviously dated. (Yes, yes,
there are exceptions. But if these writings were included in those "classics,"
I wouldn't need to be doing a reissue of them in the first place.)
>Did you ever read the Chip Hilton series of sport books? They have been
>recently re-released, with Chip using a cell phone and logging onto the
>internet. Which just doesn't fit in with the background. Like
>"microfiche" to "file" and "newshen" to "newscaster".
That's utterly absurd. As I said before, SCHMITZ used the term "newscaster."
So how the hell is my changing one term to another term which _he_ used IN THE
SAME STORY equivalent to someone writing into a story an entirely new
technology?
The same with "fiche" and "file." This term appears a handful of times, used
casually. Where I could, I simply cut the specific reference. Where I
couldn't, I changed one word -- which _matches_ the rest of the technology
described by the author himself. That is quite different from an editor
writing in a lot of new background. The fact that some people here can't tell
the difference is not the least of the reasons that I have no confidence in
their judgement. Using the term "bowdlerization" to refer to a handful of
changes in technical terms (usually cuts, by the way, involving nothing added
by me) is an example of that. To the rest of the world, "bowdlerization"
refers to the systematic rewriting of something in order to make it
"acceptable." I did nothing of the sort, not even close. But here in the
newsgroups, a pancake is a molehill and a molehill is Mt. Everest.
>> The purpose of such changes is not to "jazz up" the story, it's simply to
>> remove obsolescent terms which will tend to jolt most readers and break
>> their concentration on the story itself.
>
>And he's saying that for him -- and by extension at least some others,
>it has the opposite effect; the replacement of an obsolete term with a
>modern term jolts him out of the story, because it doesn't /fit/.
Well, what can I say. Part of the problem here -- which has also been typical
-- is that most of my critics are simply ignorant of the stories involved. How
many times do I have to repeat, month after month, that most of these "new"
terms were actually used by the authors themselves. Schmitz used the term
"newscaster," so apparently _he_ thought it "fit."
>-snip-
>> >I do not know how large a percentage of your market is like me.
>>
>> A small percentage. That, at least, is the "accepted wisdom" among
>> professionals, and since they make a living at this their judgment is worth
>> taking as good coin.
>-snip
>> >As an example of "too heavily", I seem to recall from one of the past
>> >flamewars that you felt it necessary to bowdlerize smoking references
>> >away from certain works. That's intolerable as far as I'm concerned.
Here's an example of what I was talking about. "Bowdlerization." What a
crock. Have any of you actually READ the real Bowdler's version of
Shakespeare? Do so, please, before you start tossing the term around.
As for the smoking issue, there's something truly comical about it to me. I
smoke two packs a day of non-filter cigarettes, so I can assure you I was not
motivated by any sentiment of "political correctness." Moreover, in any
setting where smoking wouldn't cause a modern reader to be jarred out of the
story, I left it in. An example is Telzey's father lighting up a cigarette in
his own office, which is still in the story. ("Undercurrents," as I recall.)
What I _did_ cut -- perhaps three times in seven volumes totalling 1,000,000
words, which gives you some idea why I think my critics have the common sense
of a cauliflower -- were those few instances where smoking took place in a
setting which would cause a modern reader to be jarringly reminded of how long
ago these stories were written. Even then, I only did so if I could easily
remove the "episode" by cutting one or two sentences.
These smoking references have NO relationship to the story whatsoever. They
are simply what writers call "visual cues," which writers toss into dialogue as
a way of making the scene seem concrete and alive to the reader. The specific
nature of the visual cue is usually irrelevant. It can be damn near anything
-- scratching a nose, looking out a window, rising from a chair, pacing back
and forth, etc etc etc. In Schmitz's day, having a character light up a
cigarette was a standard visual cue. Today, in settings such as an aircraft
(one of the uses I cut), it's more likely to simply jar a reader and break
their concentration on the story. (When I read that passage I burst out
laughing. If _I_ lit a cigarette on an airplane and offered one to the unknown
lady sitting next to me... Sheesh. They'd probably make an emergency landing
at the nearest airport and have me escorted off the plane by armed marshalls.)
The main point is that it has _nothing_ to do with the story itself. Cut it,
and the reader simply won't notice the missing anachronism.
>> Sorry to hear that. If you feel that strongly about it, then don't buy my
>> editions. I have to say, by the way, that I think you are making a
>> mountain of a molehill. I doubt very seriously that you'd even notice the
>> few cuts or changes I made if someone didn't point them out to you.
>
>Some people notice.
>
>> But I will also be blunt with you: given that the Schmitz reissue (every
>> book so far) has maintained a phenomenal 80% sell-through, it is as clear
>> as day that my judgment on what the majority of the audience wants is
>> accurate.
>
>Or at least that it doesn't hurt -- it could be that the smoking cost
>you a percentage or two.
>
>-snip-
>> I realize I'll be denounced again for "demanding deference." But life is
>> hard, and facts are facts.
>
>I don't think you're demanding deference, you are giving your reasons,
>which is fine, and others disagree, but when it comes right down to it
>you get to decide what gets cut and what doesn't, and they get to decide
>what they buy and what they don't.
>
>Agreement simply isn't in the cards -- at least not until we get access
>to alternate universe and can observe the results of the different
>decisions...
True enough. I don't actually have any objection to people disagreeing with my
approach. I simply get ticked off when they grossly exaggerate the extent of
the editing and start tossing around ridiculous terms like "bowdlerization" or
arguing that such things as changing "newshen" to "newscaster" -- both terms
which Schmitz used himself in the same story -- constitutes the equivalent of
rewriting the entire background. The more so when, nine times out of ten, my
critics have never even read the story in question. (To the best of my
knowledge, "Aura of Immortality" was never reissued until I did it.)
So be it. If someone wants to refuse to buy a volume which reissues great old
SF stories because the editor cut a few obsolete terms here and there, they've
pretty well exemplified anew the old expression: "cutting off your nose to
spite your face."
Eric
Eflint46312
>From: Hallvard B Furuseth h.b.fu...@usit.uio.no
>Date: 10/30/01 1:43 AM Central Standard Time
>Message-id: <HBF.2001...@bombur.uio.no>
>
>Probably. And probably it gained a larger percentage, unless most mass
>market publishers don't know what they are doing. But nobody asked you
>to like that. For that matter, I've never seen Eric Flint say _he_
>likes that.
Correct, on both counts. Personally, I _don't_ like cutting obsolete terms and
references. But I can also tell the difference between my own tastes and those
of the market as a whole. It never seems to occur to my critics that I _also_
have a responsibility to my publisher, who is, after all, the person fronting
the money for these reissues. It is perfectly reasonable for a commercial mass
market publisher to expect his editor to keep an eye out for his financial
interests. A good part of the reason Jim Baen is willing to continue
supporting me in these reissue volumes -- for which I now have contracts for
something like 20, all told -- is because he trusts me not to lose him money by
indulging in either my own personal quirks or those of a small subset of the
reading audience.
That's the same reason, by the way, that I don't -- as a number of critics have
demanded I do -- write long-winded essays in the books explaining exactly how
and why I edited. (And, sorry folks, those essays _would_ have to be
long-winded. There's simply no way you can toss in casually: "Oh, I made a few
cuts here and there" without explaining exactly where and why.) That's the
kind of thing you do in collector's editions or scholarly editions. It's not
the kind of thing anybody in their right mind is going to tack onto a popular
mass market edition.
If I get the time, I am considering writing some long essays explaining exactly
what I did and didn't do as an editor and putting it up in the Baen Free
Library. That would provide those relatively few people concerned about the
issue an accessible (and free) place they could check before making a purchase.
(I already did that, by the way, with the Schmitz editing -- but it's only
available right now to people who buy the Webscriptions for that month.)
The big problem, however, is time. In addition to my editing, I've got four
novels I'm supposed to have finished by mid-summer. So I don't know if I'll be
able to get around to it any time soon.
Eric
Eflint46312
>From: na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
>Date: 10/29/01 5:32 PM Central Standard Time
>Message-id: <9rkots$9...@netaxs.com>
Granted. All of these "indices" are so rough -- and have so many variables --
that it's effectively impossible to make fine-tuned assessments. But I think
you're missing my point. If my editing had significantly upset a significant
percentage of readers, there is no way these volumes would have this kind of
sell-through. The average sell-through in SF is about 50%. Very few books
ever reach 80%, and those are usually by best-selling authors.
Did my editing "help?" As you say, there's no way to prove that, one way or
the other. Given, however, that my editing was done in line with the
much-maligned "accepted wisdom of the industry," it would seem at least that
that "wisdom" has some basis in fact. On the other hand, it is almost certain
that my editing did not _hurt_ anything.
Eric
Eflint46312
>From: lal_truckee lal_t...@my-deja.com
>Date: 10/29/01 6:20 PM Central Standard Time
>Message-id: <3BDDF23C...@my-deja.com>
First of all, the cover and the title page DO say "edited by Eric Flint." And
while the term "edit," here in the newsgroups, seems to be interpreted as "did
nothing," most people assume that an editor does a certain amount of _editing_.
Which is defined in my dictionary (as in all dictionaries) as, among other
things: "to omit, eliminate."
At least 99% of what I did was exactly that: cutting a few words here and
there. A grand total, in a reissue of Schmitz's writings which involve about
one million words, of maybe 5000 -- i.e., 1/2 of 1% of the total. To call that
a "revision" is simply laughable.
What Arthur Clarke did was a REVISION. For me to claim that what I did with
Schmitz -- much less Laumer, where the cuts have totaled maybe a half a dozen
words in three volumes -- was a "revision" would in fact be completely
inaccurate. Even dishonest.
There is only one story in the entire seven-volume Schmitz reissue which Guy
Gordon and I actually "revised," in the normally accepted sense of that term.
(Normally accepted, that is, to the world at large. I realize that a lot of
people here in the newsgroups use their own idiosyncratic vocabulary, where "to
edit" means to do nothing, and "to revise" means to edit.)
That story is "Planet of Forgetting," the revised version of which appears in
the third volume, TRIGGER & FRIENDS. We changed the name of the hero to
Quillan, to make it fit into the Quillan-Trigger cycle of tales. We added the
word "doll" here and there to the hero's dialogue, to match Quillan's
well-known slang. And we cut the original "trick ending" -- perhaps a page and
a half long -- because it would have been out of continuity with the Quillan
stories. We did nothing else, because the story as written works like a charm
as a Quillan story.
And, guess what? We retitled the story "Forget It." We put a notice in the
copyright page (facing the Table of Contents) which says: "'Forget It' is an
adaptation by Guy Gordon of a story originally published under the title
'Planet of Forgetting' in the February 1965 issue of _Galaxy_." And I spent
some time in my afterword to the volume (see p. 462) explaining what we did and
why.
So what's your beef?
I'm sorry, but the fact that some people here in the newsgroup insist on
defining terms in their own peculiar manner does not obligate me -- or the rest
of the world -- to accept that terminology. For me to claim that I "revised"
James Schmitz's writings would be false. Frankly, it would be ludicrous. I did
nothing remotely comparable to what Arthur Clarke did with his story.
Eric
Nancy Lebovitz
Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
>>Subject: Re: Keith Laumer
>>From: na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
>>
It almost certainly didn't hurt sales. It did hurt the people who want
textual reliability--some of whom are extremely unlikely to find out
that you didn't sell them quite the stories they thought they were buying.
John S. Novak, III
>Correct, on both counts. Personally, I _don't_ like cutting obsolete terms and
>references. But I can also tell the difference between my own tastes and those
>of the market as a whole. It never seems to occur to my critics that I _also_
>have a responsibility to my publisher, who is, after all, the person fronting
>the money for these reissues.
Neither does it seem to occur to you that we just don't give a flying
fuck *why* you do what you do; that you do it at all is reason not to
patronize.
It's really simple, that way.
So I check for your involvement on anthologies, and don't buy them if
I detect you, because of the likelyhood that you'll have done
something that annoys me.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
Sea Wasp
>
> At least 99% of what I did was exactly that: cutting a few words here and
> there. A grand total, in a reissue of Schmitz's writings which involve about
> one million words, of maybe 5000 -- i.e., 1/2 of 1% of the total. To call that
> a "revision" is simply laughable.
Although, as your constant gadfly, this is a somewhat misleading
number; it implies that none of the changes were significant -- one
word from every 200. In actuality, a large chunk of the editing was
contained in one or two stories, and THOSE stories, yes, I would
DEFINITELY call revisions. Extensive revisions. I know, and
understand, your reasons, but at least one of them was tremendously
affected by your editing.
I am pleased to note, however, that nothing of the kind has shown up
in any of the later material.
For those who don't know, since Eric knows I don't agree with these
sorts of edits, but nonetheless understands the reasons he has for the
ones he does, he has been kind enough to send me some of the material
in progress.
The most recent material is a collection of the Med Ship stories by
Murray Leinster. Leinster is probably best known for his
deservedly-classic short story "First Contact", which remains one of
the finest examples of that subgenre of SF ever written. Leinster
wrote stories featuring smart, resourceful main characters who solved
their problems usually by intelligent use of resources rather than by
kicking the ($#@ out of the opposition. (not that there's anything
wrong with that, either)
The Med Ship stories were ones I had not previously read, so I was in
an excellent position to judge the changes dispassionately; unlike the
Schmitz stories, which I knew and loved for years and thus had a
direct attachment to, I only knew Leinster through a couple of stories
and his general reputation.
Overall impression: The Med Ship stories are excellent examples of
classic SF, starring a main character named Calhoun whose job, as a
Med Ship pilot, is to travel from system to system with updated
medical knowledge, gather any new medical knowledge from the systems
he visits, and solve medical-related problems such as plagues. There
is one useful MacGuffin in the form of an alien creature called a
tormal (Calhoun's is named "Murgatroyd") which has some very unusual
biological features that are of particular interest to someone in
Calhoun's profession.
The Edits: The vast majority of the edits are removal of repetition
-- Leinster was paid by the word, and there are times where this
becomes extremely clear; he knew perfectly well his audience weren't
idiots, but he still repeats himself a great deal. I suspect also that
many of these stories were serialized to begin with, and so he would
do a recap at the beginning of each new section -- a recap which is
utterly unnecessary in the collected version. I, personally, don't
have any problem with these kinds of changes; they're precisely the
kind of change an editor SHOULD be doing, IMCGO, and so are acceptable
in this context.
So far, I have noted only one set of edits which I find troublesome:
the removal of references to microfilm/fiche in relation to the ship's
computer. I would have somewhat less (though certainly not NO)
objection to this if the references were to Calhoun firing up a
regular old microfilm reader and searching through the indices and so
on. However, that's not the case; from context, it seems quite clear
that Leinster had read Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" and Calhoun
is basically using a version of Bush's "Memex" gadget; the computer in
question is using microfilm as its data source and can search and
retrieve from the film according to whatever parameters Calhoun hands
it. This, to my mind, is a very interesting element. Nonetheless, I
understand that to many of the WIDER readership, such anachronisms in
the text can, and will, be jarring. While those of us more familiar
with the history of SF can appreciate such "anachronisms" as important
parts of SF history -- giving us a snapshot of what people thought of
the future -- the general readership will more likely stop dead at
such a passage. Some may not even know what microfilm IS. Those who do
will, for the most part, simply be wondering what the heck this author
is talking about. (I'm reminded of the fan who asked Heinlein why he
didn't do orbital calcs for his one story on a computer, to be told by
Heinlein, "My dear boy, this was *1957*...") To give my own personal
"perspective maker", if my handle "The Sea Wasp" was a real person, he
would be 24 years old -- well into the target market for new SF -- and
he would have grown up with calculators as common objects, personal
computers, and countless other things we take for granted now -- but
that I, only about half a generation back from him, remember being
introduced as incredible marvels of technology. So edits of this
nature may well be necessary for the wider audience; if there's
sufficient demand for a "pure" edition, I'm sure something could be
arranged.
I have more to look over, but in short, it looks to me like a
well-considered, professional editing job, with most of the edits
proper from any reasonable few, and those that aren't at least done
with perfectly reasonable logic behind them. Purists, don't bother, it
won't make our standards. However, anyone who just wants to read some
Leinster can get 'em when they come out -- 99% of the text, the
rhythm, the concepts, and the plot are pure Leinster.
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.htm
/^\
;;; _Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at
http://www.hyperbooks.com/catalog/20040.html
Bill Snyder
>But I will also be blunt with you: given that the Schmitz reissue (every book
>so far) has maintained a phenomenal 80% sell-through, it is as clear as day
>that my judgment on what the majority of the audience wants is accurate.
You think so, huh? Data point:. I bought all 4 volumes that I've
seen to date, and I wish you'd left them the hell alone. As long as
the mangling is minor, I'll settle for "in print but slightly mangled"
over "unobtainable" -- but I'd much rather have the pure quill.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
aRJay
writes
Apart from a fairly ruthless not to say genocidal attack on the "!"
exclamation mark I found it relatively difficult to spot the changes
that Eric had made on the source material that the Schmitz list had
proof read and the books that were released. It was easier to spot
differences from the Ace editions that I already had of some of the
stories, but those differences were there in the source material that
Eric used which came from the magazine versions in the main.
So for a large majority of the Schmitz stories Eric has changed almost
nothing and I suspect the same will largely be true with the other
projects that he is involved with.
The advantage for completist collector types is that there is now a new
variant to collect, not only the original magazine and the reworked Ace
edition and the rare pirated Atlantean edition where Telzey and Trigger
were both changed to male characters but now the Baen editions with the
wrong cover on volume 2.
--
aRJay
"In this great and creatorless universe, where so much beautiful has
come to be out of the chance interactions of the basic properties of
matter, it seems so important that we love one another,"
- Lucy Kemnitzer
Simon Slavin
Dwight Thieme <dbt...@krypton.bengal.missouri.edu> wrote:
> Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix1.netaxs.com> wrote:
>
> : I don't mind that you're cutting some repetitious material out of the
> : stories, but I hope you'll do the people who care about textual accuracy
> : the favor of putting a note on the copyright page or having a brief
> : foreword or afterword.
>
> Here's a little something for a foreword/afterword: he
> wrote a superb book on model airplanes, which was a
> bible of sorts for me for a number of years.
You can find clear proof in _The Ultimax Man_ that Laumer knew
lots about building gliders.
Simon.
--
http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk | I have a hunch that [] the unknown sequences
No junk email please. | of DNA [will decode into] copyright notices
| and patent protections. -- Donald E. Knuth
The French Was There.
Steve Parker
>>The book of Laumer's that has always been my personal favorite,
>>but which I never see mentioned, is _Knight of Delusions_. I
>>haven't read it in a long time (the year count will be
>>double-digit) and am almost afraid to try it for fear that I
>>won't find it as satisfactory as I did way back then.
>
>I'll take a look at it, Eric. I didn't initially, because after some
>experience I discovered that just about everything Laumer wrote after his
>stroke was sub-standard (at least by his standards). So, after a while, with a
>few exceptions I just stopped reading anything he wrote after 1971. Laumer's
>great years were 1959-1971, and that's what I concentrated on.
>
>But later I discovered that KNIGHT OF DELUSIONS has a complicated publishing
>history because of a screw-up by the publisher. So it may actually be
>something he wrote prior to the stroke.
For those interested, the publishing error was that somehow a western
ended up under the cover of _Knight of Delusions_. I have no idea who
wrote the western, as the title page and publishing info claimed the
book was Laumer.
Hey Eric:
Any chance of reprinting _How To Design and Build Model Airplanes_
(Laumer's rarest book)? Even as an e-book? It consistantly goes for
$50.00 or so on Bookfinder.
I didn't think so. ; )
That said, how 'bout _Retief and the Warlords_? By far the funniest
Retief story and the "torture" scene may be one of the funniest
chapters in SF history.
Or The Infinite Cage? Or some of his short stories?
Steve
--
My review pages have moved. The new address is
http://members.home.net/sparker9/home.html
Michael S. Schiffer
<tas-8DAB4B.1...@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>:
>In article <3BDEC1...@wizvax.net>, Sea Wasp
><sea...@wizvax.net> wrote:
>> So far, I have noted only one set of edits which I find
>> troublesome:
>> the removal of references to microfilm/fiche in relation to the
>> ship's computer. I would have somewhat less (though certainly
>> not NO) objection to this if the references were to Calhoun
>> firing up a regular old microfilm reader and searching through
>> the indices and so on. However, that's not the case; from
>> context, it seems quite clear that Leinster had read Vannevar
>> Bush's "As We May Think" and Calhoun is basically using a
>> version of Bush's "Memex" gadget; the computer in question is
>> using microfilm as its data source and can search and retrieve
>> from the film according to whatever parameters Calhoun hands
>> it. This, to my mind, is a very interesting element.
>> Nonetheless, I understand that to many of the WIDER readership,
>> such anachronisms in the text can, and will, be jarring.
>Perfect footnote material.
>Seriously.
>> While those of us more familiar
>> with the history of SF can appreciate such "anachronisms" as
>> important parts of SF history -- giving us a snapshot of what
>> people thought of the future -- the general readership will more
>> likely stop dead at such a passage.
All I can say is that that was never the type of reader I was. Not
at 10, not at 12, not at 20, and not at 33. I do have to wonder if
leaving details like that in will cost sales. Taking them out will
certainly cost one. But Mr. Flint has already made his opinions of
readers who care about things like that clear enough, so there's no
need to tread that ground again. (In any case, there's NESFA Press
and the like for me. I feel sorry for the equivalent of me at 12,
who's not going to have the same experience of discovering the
different expectations of the past. And who isn't going to be able
to trust his impressions of which bits of the old story were actually
prescient, and which were inserted by a later editor. Which is a
shame for the real bits of prediction, like the pocket phones of
Heinlein's _Space Cadet_.)
Some may not even know what
>> microfilm IS. Those who do will, for the most part, simply be
>> wondering what the heck this author is talking about. (I'm
>> reminded of the fan who asked Heinlein why he didn't do orbital
>> calcs for his one story on a computer, to be told by Heinlein,
>> "My dear boy, this was *1957*...") ...
Nitpick-- I think it was 1947, and the book was the aforementioned
_Space Cadet_. (It's conceivable that by 1957 Heinlein might have
been able to use his stature in the field to get some eager beaver
computer operator to crunch his numbers for him, since they were
beginning to be common at universities and big businesses. But in
1947, no way.)
>I just turned 28. When I was a kid discovering SF in the local
>library, they were still using microfiche catalogs. (That would
>have been sometime around 1985, I think.) Those were very last
>years of that technology, so the 24 year old Sea Wasp probably
>wouldn't have seen it if he'd gone to the same library, but I
>think the technology stuck around longer than you might expect.
The technology is still around. A third of the collection of the law
library I work at is on fiche (and a smaller part on film). It's
inconvenient to use, but it lasts forever, takes up
comparatively little space, and doesn't depend on paying an annual
fee to maintain access or require us to limit its use to students and
faculty. I'm pretty sure that my local public library maintains a
small microfilm collection, and I'm certain that big public libraries
like Chicago's do (there's still nothing better for archival
materials that get limited use and don't justify the kind of
maintenance necessary to keep a database available and accessible).
At this point I still have to show more law students (average age
early-to-mid 20's) how to use the online catalog than to use the
fiche readers (and they do get used; there are various assignments
and journal editing duties that require it). So microform can't be
as surprising or counterintuitive as all that. (The number of
college graduates with the grades necessary to get into law school
who seem to have managed their academic careers without ever using a
library catalog, now *that's* disheartening.)
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
ms...@mediaone.net
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
Ahasuerus
[snip]
> But later I discovered that KNIGHT OF DELUSIONS has a complicated publishing
> history because of a screw-up by the publisher. So it may actually be
Well, _Night of Delusions_ (note spelling) was originally published in
1972 and is Old (i.e. pre-stroke) Laumer. One of his better books, IMHO.
_Knight of Delusions_ appeared in 1982 and supposedly changed a few things
in the text, although I don't know how extensive the changes were since a
couple of encounters with Laumer's post-stroke attempts to edit his
pre-stroke books have taught me to avoid them like the plague.
--
Ahasuerus
Ahasuerus
[snip]
> His novels are pretty short by today's standards: what about
> an omnibus of 'Maimed Superhuman' novels, like
>
> SPOILERS
>
>
>
> _The Star Treasure_, _The Long Twilight_, and so on?
Are you sure you meant _Star Treasure_ and not _The Infinite Cage_? The
former was a sowehat sub-par space opera, but the latter was one of his
best "maimed superman" stories...
BTW, Eric is right about _The Long Twilight_, it was a little rough around
the edges since Laumer was trying to learn a new technique, i.e. how to do
multiple viewpoints, but it was one of his best books nonetheless.
--
Ahasuerus
Ahasuerus
[snip]
> March: Odyssey
>
> This contains two novels, Galactic Odyssey and Dinosaur Beach,
Interesting! We appear to like the same subset of Laumer's books, but you
chose _Galactic Odyssey_ over _A Trace of Memory_...
> along with
> five other of his best adventures stories (Once There was a Giant -- the
> original version, not the expanded later one [snip]
Thank God! :)
> May: Laumer: The Lighter Side
>
> The volume will contain Laumer's more humorous works -- keeping in mind that
> Laumer's sense of humor could be pretty grim at times. There's one novel
> included, The Great Time Machine Hoax, and a number of other stories: In the
> Queue, The Body Builders, The Planet Wreckers, Time Trap, some others.
There was a story version of _Time Trap_?? Also, I couldn't recommend "The
Devil You Don't" highly enough.
> The fourth volume, not scheduled yet, will include his novel A Plague of
> Demons and other stories with an "Alien Menace" kind of theme. [snip]
I hope _The House in November_ will make it!
--
Ahasuerus
Julie Pascal
"Timothy A. Seufert" <t...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:tas-5844B2.0...@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com...
> In article <20011029172932...@mb-fq.aol.com>,
> eflin...@aol.com (Eflint46312) wrote:
(...)
> > I'm sorry if this upsets you. But the crude fact is that _most_ readers
> > do not like "dated" SF. That's why most authors will eliminate anything
> > like that in so far as possible when they reissue their old writings.
>
> It does not upset me. It merely makes me regret that you and the
> authors mentioned seem to believe the audience is simpleminded.
Um...so...I'm simpleminded am I, because I don't agree with you?
I did not notice anything at all reading the Schmitz books (I've read
two of them) and that is a good thing.
Sometimes it's interesting to see how assumptions and cultural
things have changed over the years and it's a hoot when someone
types something out on a manual typewriter, scans it, and then
faxes the thing back to earth... but you know... that's what I remember
most about that particular story (the fax one). I don't remember
anything else about it because compared to the manual typewriter
and the fax the plot just failed to have much of an impact.
> > Sorry to hear that. If you feel that strongly about it, then don't buy
> > my editions. I have to say, by the way, that I think you are making a
> > mountain of a molehill. I doubt very seriously that you'd even notice
> > the few cuts or changes I made if someone didn't point them out to you.
>
> Most of the material in question would be completely new to me. In the
> case of Schmitz, I've read the few scraps that managed to get into 'best
> of year XX' and similar anthologies I've come across, and that little
> bit makes me want to find more. So there's no way I can tell how much
> liberty you've taken -- and as long as you adhere to the editing
> policies you've mentioned, I can't trust you to do no harm.
If you haven't read the original and you aren't actively looking for
anything that would be exceptionally prophetic for the year the stories
were written you are not going to notice.
> > But I will also be blunt with you: given that the Schmitz reissue (every
book
> > so far) has maintained a phenomenal 80% sell-through, it is as clear as
day
> > that my judgment on what the majority of the audience wants is accurate.
>
> You can't seriously believe that the sell-through figure is proof one
> way or another. People don't riffle through books to make sure there
> are no instances of the word "newshen" before they buy. I wouldn't
> accept a low sell-through as proof that people hated your editing any
> more than I accept this.
The sell through by the second book (whatever exactly a sell through is)
will reflect how the editing was recieved.
> Put another way, sans textual changes far more extreme than anybody
> thinks you have done so far, it's difficult to imagine that your
> important job was anything other than author & story selection, and
> packaging (to whatever extent you were involved in that part). People
> are either going to already know they want to buy that author, or
> they're going to get drawn in by narrative hooks while browsing
> (particularly the first page of the lead-in story) and decide the rest
> of the book is worth reading.
So what is your problem?
> > I did _not_ edit this series with the relatively small audience of
> > "purist collectors" in mind. I edited them to introduce Schmitz to
> > a new audience. That audience is not bothered by cutting or changing
> > a few terms here and there to eliminate obsolete references. In fact,
> > they are far more likely to be bothered by the opposite -- stories
> > which keep jolting them by reminding them how long ago they were
> > written.
>
> The purpose of my message was to give you a data point: there does exist
> some portion of the new audience which is bothered by what you are
> doing. I am not a purist collector. I just want to read what the
> author wrote.
You may not be a collector...you are a purist. That's not necessarily
a bad thing to be. To assume that anyone who isn't also a purist
is simpleminded is a bit rude, though.
> > >A lesser offense would be something you just mentioned with respect to
> > >Laumer -- the idea of removing a reference to how much money a
character
> > >spent on an item because that amount is now too small. That probably
> > >will not damage the story much in and of itself (depending on context),
> > >but I'm still uncomfortable with it. It doesn't lead me to have
> > >confidence in your judgement as an editor.
> >
> > Fine. On the other hand -- God forbid anyone should introduce practical
> > concerns here -- my publisher is willing to entrust me with issuing
volumes
> > which will cost him several million dollars to produce. He's willing to
do
> > that because he _does_ have confidence in my judgment.
>
> Bully for you.
>
> > Why? Well, very good sales and excellent sell-through, that's why.
Which
> > means one hell of a lot more to him (and me) that the disgruntlement of
some
> > fans in the newsgroups. I'm sorry, Tim, but like most of my critics
here you
> > seem unwilling to accept the fact that your own tastes are not those of
the
> > big majority of SF readers.
>
> I'm unwilling to accept that you have unerringly placed your finger on
> the pulse of the masses, or that the sales success depended upon your
> textual changes.
So what? If everyone decides that he screwed it up so badly they
won't buy the next book or the next series. If he didn't screw it up
that badly it makes little difference if his judgement was "unerring."
> > I'm editing a mass market popular edition, not a
> > collector's edition. And I make absolutely no apologies for that.
Every
> > writer I'm editing a reissue of is a writer whose books have essentially
gone
> > out of print -- and for many years now. Clearly enough, the hardcore
> > collector's audience was not sufficient to keep them going.
>
> Why the fascination with collectors? They have nothing to do with me.
> I buy to read.
Some people really are very interested in preserving the original
exactly as it was. This is valid and important, of course, but given
enough language drift and time will render stories incomprehensible
to anyone but the professor of ancient American English at the local
university.
And you haven't read the re-issues, have you? You've been arguing
the principle of keeping works unchanged as they were written because
that interests you and is important to you. And while in the abstract
it is an interesting debate, you can't escape the fact that some people
will disagree with you about it.
> > It makes me think: is the
> > >editor ashamed of when the work was written? Or does he have so low an
> > >opinion of his audience that he believes they cannot adjust for so
> > >simple a concept as inflation? If so, what else might he have done?
> >
> > The problem isn't my "shame" or "low opinion" of the audience. The
problem,
> > to
> > be blunt, is your own arrogance. You continually insist that YOUR
tastes are
> > the "right ones," and demand that the world as a whole must share them.
If
> > they don't -- and they don't -- then the fault is theirs.
>
> Please stop this strawman-building -- it's the same path you pushed
> discussion down in previous iterations.
It looks to me like that is what you were saying, whether you intended
to or not. It certainly seems like you are saying that your opinions are
the right ones and that those who wouldn't agree with you and prefer
the original text exactly as it was written even *if* they get thrown out
of the story by frequent "Oh, my, isn't that quaint," moments are deficient
in judgement.
> If you can show real evidence of a causal link between your edits and
> the Schmitz sales, let's have it.
>
> Then you can tackle the job of demonstrating that I feel everybody has
> to conform to my tastes (do I really have to reiterate that I began my
> first message with "data point"? Or make it explicit that all I hope to
> do is persuade you to look at this differently?).
But you absolutely refuse to consider that your single "data point"
might be inconsequential. And you seem to insist that anyone who
doesn't share your standards has, well, *lower* standards.
> > Sorry, but it's just a fact that the biggest strike against reissuing a
story
> > is the fact that it's perceived as "dated." That's especially true in
SF,
> > which is the genre that is supposed to be futuristic.
>
> Yes, SF is the genre of futurism. As such, if there is an issue with
> being "dated", it is with the ideas, not the words they are expressed in.
Just a single data point. I disagree. The dated *words* detract greatly
from ideas in SF stories. With apologies to Katheryn Blake (not sure
about the spelling of Katheryn there) I'll use her _The Interior Life_ as
an example. The protagonist is lobbying for computers in her children's
school. This is obviously written before many schools had any computers
at all. The *idea* isn't anything about computers but is about someone
learning to assert themselves and push though an issue of improving
education. The *idea* is not dated. Reading it, however, yanks a
person out of a wonderul story at least long enough to say, "Huh... this
was written a while ago, wasn't it."
--Julie
Margaret Young
wrote:
>The technology [1] is still around. A third of the collection of the law
>library I work at is on fiche (and a smaller part on film). It's
>inconvenient to use, but it lasts forever, takes up
>comparatively little space, and doesn't depend on paying an annual
>fee to maintain access or require us to limit its use to students and
>faculty. I'm pretty sure that my local public library maintains a
>small microfilm collection, and I'm certain that big public libraries
>like Chicago's do (there's still nothing better for archival
>materials that get limited use and don't justify the kind of
>maintenance necessary to keep a database available and accessible).
>
>At this point I still have to show more law students (average age
>early-to-mid 20's) how to use the online catalog than to use the
>fiche readers (and they do get used; there are various assignments
>and journal editing duties that require it). So microform can't be
>as surprising or counterintuitive as all that. (The number of
>college graduates with the grades necessary to get into law school
>who seem to have managed their academic careers without ever using a
>library catalog, now *that's* disheartening.)
>
>Mike
Another data point. Much of the research I have done in the last 4
years (at a number of major university libraries) has been on
micofiche or microfilm. It is, as Mike points out, long lasting,
relatively non-expensive and comparatively easy to store.
The bigger problem is students who have no idea of how to do _any_
research beyond using yahoo. One regularly has to teach one's students
how to use the library (and even _to_ use the library).
Margaret
[1] microfiche and microfilm
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@hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
>>> >As an example of "too heavily", I seem to recall from one of the past
>>> >flamewars that you felt it necessary to bowdlerize smoking references
>>> >away from certain works. That's intolerable as far as I'm concerned.
>
>Here's an example of what I was talking about. "Bowdlerization." What a
>crock. Have any of you actually READ the real Bowdler's version of
>Shakespeare? Do so, please, before you start tossing the term around.
I have. In fact, I own some copies.
And they grate on me in much the same way as your patronizing
rewriting of Schmitz's (and now Laumer's) text does.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric D. Berge
(remove spaces for valid address)
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover
Breath's a ware that will not keep
Up, lad! When the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.
- A.E.Housman, "Reveille"
------------------------------------------------------------------
aRJay
<eric_...@hotmail.com.invalid> writes
>On 30 Oct 2001 12:13:35 GMT, eflin...@aol.com (Eflint46312) wrote:
>
>
>>>> >As an example of "too heavily", I seem to recall from one of the past
>>>> >flamewars that you felt it necessary to bowdlerize smoking
>references
>>>> >away from certain works. That's intolerable as far as I'm concerned.
>>
>>Here's an example of what I was talking about. "Bowdlerization." What a
>>crock. Have any of you actually READ the real Bowdler's version of
>>Shakespeare? Do so, please, before you start tossing the term around.
>
>I have. In fact, I own some copies.
>
>And they grate on me in much the same way as your patronizing
>rewriting of Schmitz's (and now Laumer's) text does.
How can Eric's rewriting of Laumer grate on you already seeing as how it
is not yet released, surely you mean that it will grate on you when it
is released.
There are very nasty expressions for people who judge things not for
what they are but for who produced them, this one post of yours has more
than everything else you have written here has convinced me that you
deserve to be described by them.
I will not use these descriptions as they are considered not to be nice
things to say about anybody today, besides some of them would invoke
Godwin's law on this thread.
Read the .sig and try to apply it more.
Simon Slavin
> I fail to see how cutting something "introduces jarring anachronisms." I do
> not _add_ anything in order to "modernize" the stories other than, very
> occasionally, changing a term like "microfiche" to "file" or changing "newshen"
> to "newscaster." The purpose of such changes is not to "jazz up" the story,
> it's simply to remove obsolescent terms which will tend to jolt most readers
> and break their concentration on the story itself.
Sorry, Eric, but for every reference to something obsolete that
you /do/ recognise there's probably another one that you don't.
The problem is that by changing some of the references and not
all of them, you make the story /internally/ inconsistent and
that's far more jarring than a story which is /externally/
inconsistent: it suggests that the writer is incompetent instead
of just out-of-date.
The other problem is that writing-styles change. The Lensman
stories have dialogue in which sounds completely unlike the forms
of words we'd use today. That's okay when I read Smith's work:
it's full of things placed in the context of the 1940 and the
dialogue is perfectly suited to that. I read a story like that
and get into a 1940s mindset. Then along comes someone like you
and removes references which make it plain that Smith didn't know
about desktop computers and suddenly the dialogue keeps screaming
"I'm out of date." at me. I read computer printouts in the story
and think "If his brother just died of tuberculosis that printout
should be all in capitals." or "If they don't have direct
dialling in this story how come such a high proportion of the
women have jobs ?".
What myself and other people have been trying to get through to
you for months is that you are not doing what you /think/ you're
doing. We know you're trying to be helpful but it's not working.
If you don't like working on dated stories, don't: commission
some new authors to write up-to-date stories for you. If you
absolutely /have/ to change the original text say so clearly on
the cover somewhere.
People who read stories written twenty years ago expect to find
old references in them. It goes with the territory and isn't a
big problem. After all, /you/ understood the story, didn't you ?
_ berge @hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
wrote:
>In article <9ge0utoq03n2of3am...@4ax.com>, Eric D. Berge
><eric_...@hotmail.com.invalid> writes
>>On 30 Oct 2001 12:13:35 GMT, eflin...@aol.com (Eflint46312) wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>> >As an example of "too heavily", I seem to recall from one of the past
>>>>> >flamewars that you felt it necessary to bowdlerize smoking
>>references
>>>>> >away from certain works. That's intolerable as far as I'm concerned.
>>>
>>>Here's an example of what I was talking about. "Bowdlerization." What a
>>>crock. Have any of you actually READ the real Bowdler's version of
>>>Shakespeare? Do so, please, before you start tossing the term around.
>>
>>I have. In fact, I own some copies.
>>
>>And they grate on me in much the same way as your patronizing
>>rewriting of Schmitz's (and now Laumer's) text does.
>
>How can Eric's rewriting of Laumer grate on you already seeing as how it
>is not yet released, surely you mean that it will grate on you when it
>is released.
?
I've seen the change to Schmitz and suffered through Flint's drivel
about why he made them; he has *in*this*very*thread* described what he
intended to do to Laumer, and his crass and rather stupid reasons for
thinking that it is a good idea.
I don't need to wait for the books to come out to know that I don't
like what he proposes doing to them.
>There are very nasty expressions for people who judge things not for
>what they are but for who produced them, this one post of yours has more
>than everything else you have written here has convinced me that you
>deserve to be described by them.
You're an idiot.
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Berge
(remove spaces for address)
Therefore since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
o_ \ > And train for ill and not for good.
<| ' ,_|
___/_>____o)____ - A.E. Housman, "A Shropshire Lad"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Carnegie
> Personally, I _don't_ like cutting obsolete terms and references.
> But I can also tell the difference between my own tastes and those
> of the market as a whole. It never seems to occur to my critics
> that I _also_ have a responsibility to my publisher, who is, after
> all, the person fronting the money for these reissues. It is
> perfectly reasonable for a commercial mass market publisher to
> expect his editor to keep an eye out for his financial interests.
> A good part of the reason Jim Baen is willing to continue supporting
> me in these reissue volumes -- for which I now have contracts for
> something like 20, all told -- is because he trusts me not to lose
> him money by indulging in either my own personal quirks or those of
> a small subset of the reading audience.
The nasty little (open) secret that readers don't like to think about -
publishers and editors tend to be doing what they do for the money,
and not purely for Purity :-)
>
> That's the same reason, by the way, that I don't -- as a number of
> critics
"A number of critics here"?
> have demanded I do -- write long-winded essays in the books explaining
> exactly how and why I edited. (And, sorry folks, those essays _would_
> have to be long-winded. There's simply no way you can toss in
> casually: "Oh, I made a few cuts here and there" without explaining
> exactly where and why.) That's the kind of thing you do in collector's
> editions or scholarly editions. It's not the kind of thing anybody
> in their right mind is going to tack onto a popular mass market
> edition.
>
> If I get the time, I am considering writing some long essays
> explaining exactly what I did and didn't do as an editor and putting
> it up in the Baen Free Library. That would provide those relatively
> few people concerned about the issue an accessible (and free) place
> they could check before making a purchase. (I already did that,
> by the way, with the Schmitz editing -- but it's only available
> right now to people who buy the Webscriptions for that month.)
I suppose that in principle, an electronic e-text edition of a book
could easily be variorum - could include a pre-edited edition of the
text and perhaps notes on the reasons for changes - while actually
being presented, by default, as your edited text with anachronisms
elided, unless the reader presses the variorum button. But I have
no idea if there's suitable editing software to create such a work
without unreasonable effort - given that, in your commercial judgment,
the market for such a work is limited.
If no one has made a proposal to republish certain old texts commercially
_without_ editing (extremists among us could of course propose such
to Mr. Baen and he'd probably laugh in their faces), the original
texts remain, on the whole, as available despite your efforts as they
were before, in the original print editions in magazines, in dusty
second-hand stores, in quiet sections of lending libraries.
So at the worst, you're not doing any harm.
I tend not to buy overseas from Britain (and of course everywhere else
_is_ overseas, modulo a science-fictional underwater tunnel), and
I don't know whether your reprints of Keith Laumer will pass my way,
but if they do, I think - Yipe! I just checked and I seem only to have
two Laumer volumes (_Envoy to New Worlds_ and _Worlds of the Imperium_).
I don't understand it, I'm _sure_ I've read so much more. Okay, that
does it: one way or another, you're getting sales over here, even if
I have to buy from Amazon.
Nancy Lebovitz
Excellent description of why permitting period consistancy is
important, but that last point could actually be skillful sf.
I was struck by (in the NESFA collection, _His Share of Glory_),
by how many Kornbluth stories had women in responsible, technical
jobs. It was smooth, throwaway detail--none of that Heinlein
"goshwowohboyoboy, she's beautiful and she's *smart*, too!").
aRJay
<eric@_.berge> writes
Schmitz books.
Yes Eric has indeed said what he intends to do with the Laumer books, he
has also stated that as they are not to be a complete reissue the
editing will be less than that for the Schmitz.
>I don't need to wait for the books to come out to know that I don't
>like what he proposes doing to them.
>
It should be noted that Eric's descriptions of what he has done/intends
to do in the editing process look much more harsh and damaging than the
actual result of the process.
>>There are very nasty expressions for people who judge things not for
>>what they are but for who produced them, this one post of yours has more
>>than everything else you have written here has convinced me that you
>>deserve to be described by them.
>
>You're an idiot.
You're right why else would I go to all that effort to avoid coming
right out with what I was thinking but still get the message across that
I thought you were a ...
No I will not r/i/s/e/ descend to your level of discussion.
Eflint46312
>From: aRJay aR...@escore.demon.co.uk
>Date: 11/1/01 10:40 AM Central Standard Time
>Message-id: <uS8JTJAV...@escore.demon.co.uk>
(snips)
>Yes Eric has indeed said what he intends to do with the Laumer books, he
>has also stated that as they are not to be a complete reissue the
>editing will be less than that for the >Schmitz.
Establishing the facts will hopefully help -- though not, of course, with Eric
Berge. Facts have always been beneath his contempt.
Through the first three volumes of Laumer, I have done almost _no_ editing. I
didn't need to, for the simple reason that these are all "best of" type
volumes, where the editing is done in the initial selection process. You don't
_need_ to edit a writer's best stories.
In RETIEF, my "editing" was restricted entirely to two things:
1. Eliminating or correcting obvious typos.
2. Re-arranging the order in which the stories appear. Unlike Garrett's Lord
Darcy stories, where the chronological order of the stories can be precisely
determined, that can't be done with the Retief stories. But after studying
them carefully, I came up with what I think is the most probable story order.
It runs closely parallel to the publication order, but not entirely.
In ODYSSEY (volume 2, coming out in March) and KEITH LAUMER: THE LIGHTER SIDE
(volume 3, coming out in May), the only editing I did other than correcting
typos was cutting no more than a handful of obsolete terms from stories where
that would make a difference. I say "no more than a handful" simply because I
can't remember more than one such cut. And that one cut may in fact be the
only one I made. (I removed a specific reference to something costing "one
hundred dollars" that today would cost far more.) It's the only one I can
specifically remember. There certainly weren't more than five such cuts -- or,
to put it another way, a total of at most ten words in three volumes which will
contain almost half a million words.
That's the pea beneath the pile of mattresses that makes Prince Berge unable to
sleep at night...
I will stress, again, the big difference between editing a "best of" series and
a "complete" series. You simply don't need to do much editing in a "best of"
collection, because you're cutting 100% of the weaker stories. That's why
almost all of my "heavy" editing was restricted to the Hub series by Schmitz --
and almost all of it was restricted to four stories which had particular
problems. There is almost no editing in the later volumes. None at all in
Witches of Karres, and nothing worth talking about in AGENT OF VEGA (which just
came out) and the sixth volume (ETERNAL FRONTIER, coming out next September).
That will remain true for Laumer, by the way, for the foreseeable future. The
next four volumes will also contain "best of" type stories, which require
either no editing at all (beyond the initial selection, of course) or only
minimal removal of a few obsolete terms where possible.
Garrett's LORD DARCY stories (coming out in July) are a complete series, on the
other hand. So the editing was heavier. But, even there, since all the
stories are good, the cutting was restricted to removing the redundant
background exposition in the later stories. (By which I'm talking about
Garrett's "standard exposition" -- usually two or three paragraphs -- which
repeated, almost word for word, the history of the Plantagenet dynasty in every
story.)
Leinster's MED SHIP (out in August) is another complete series, so, again, I
did some editing. Most of it was removing (or, in two instances, moving from
one story to another) the same kind of background exposition. I also cut some
other repetitive passages, totalling perhaps 5-10 paragraphs, and cut some
references to obsolete technology. At a guess, I'd estimate I cut 500-1000
words from stories which total about 170,000 -- less than 1%.
As I said in an earlier post several days ago, I'm sending Sea Wasp the
original and edited copies marked for comparison. So he'll be able to see
exactly what I cut and report it here, if he chooses to. Given that he's been
one of my most dogged critics :), I figure that ought to satisfy people who
don't trust me to report the facts accurately. Sea Wasp won't agree with what
I did, of course, but I trust him to report the actual facts correctly.
Eric
PS. The Tom Godwin volume (no publication date yet) won't have any editing
either, beyond the selection. That's very much a "best of" volume. Neither
will the Howard L. Myers volume, although that might change if we publish a
second volume.
Ted Nolan
Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
>Leinster's MED SHIP (out in August) is another complete series, so, again, I
>did some editing. Most of it was removing (or, in two instances, moving from
>one story to another) the same kind of background exposition. I also cut some
>other repetitive passages, totalling perhaps 5-10 paragraphs, and cut some
>references to obsolete technology. At a guess, I'd estimate I cut 500-1000
>words from stories which total about 170,000 -- less than 1%.
>
I'm curious. I know that the Med series is a series in the sense
that it will be all the stories of Calhoun and Murgatroyd (sp?),
but as the Retief stories take place in the "Concordait" universe,
the Med storeis take place in what I've always thought of as
Leinster's "landing grid" universe. Do you have just the stories
themselves, or did Leinster leave any kind of notes and timeline
for that universe relating, say Calhoun's adventures to "Exploration
Team"? (Am I remembering right that "E T" and _Colonial Survey_
are in the LG universe?)
Ted
Eflint46312
>From: "Julie Pascal" ju...@pascal.org
>Date: 10/31/01 12:52 AM Central Standard Time
>Message-id: <9ro6p9$et7$5...@localhost.localdomain>
>
>
>"Timothy A. Seufert" <t...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
>news:tas-5844B2.0...@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com...
>> In article <20011029172932...@mb-fq.aol.com>,
>> eflin...@aol.com (Eflint46312) wrote:
>
>(...)
>> > I'm sorry if this upsets you. But the crude fact is that _most_ readers
>> > do not like "dated" SF. That's why most authors will eliminate anything
>> > like that in so far as possible when they reissue their old writings.
>>
>> It does not upset me. It merely makes me regret that you and the
>> authors mentioned seem to believe the audience is simpleminded.
>
>Um...so...I'm simpleminded am I, because I don't agree with you?
>I did not notice anything at all reading the Schmitz books (I've read
>two of them) and that is a good thing.
With one exception, I doubt very much if more than a handful of readers are
going to notice the cuts I made. That's because they are irrelevant to the
story. The one exception, of course, was cutting the ending to
"Undercurrents." Because that ending was fairly striking, a number of people
remember it.
The fact remains that the ending is completely out of continuity with the
stories as a whole. That's not just my opinion, by the way, it was also James
Schmitz's. In the preface he wrote to the Gregg Press edition of The Universe
Against Her, he explains that that ending paralyzed him for years. John
Campbell kept pestering him to write more Telzey stories, but Schmitz couldn't
do it because that ending stymied him. (What was the "mysterious purpose" for
which the Psi Service was grooming Telzey? Nobody knows, including James
Schmitz. It never comes up again in the remaining eleven stories.)
Eventually, after years had gone by, Schmitz was able to start writing Telzey
stories again -- by just pretending he'd never written that ending to
"Undercurrents."
Well, for the first time ever, I put together a complete edition of the entire
Telzey "saga." So why the hell include that little coda to the second story in
the series? (Which has nothing to do with the story itself, by the way -- it
really is purely an epilogue.)
Because it would upset some people who remembered the ending fondly? Dammit,
people, nostalgia is NOT going to keep James Schmitz in print. People who get
nostalgic about Schmitz, as a rule, belong to my generation. I'm in my
mid-fifties. To put this as bluntly as possible, we members of the "nostalgia
crowd" are going to be dead in 20-30 years. Only finding an audience in a new
generation will revitalize Schmitz's reputation -- and they _don't_ have "fond
memories" of that ending. To them, it will just seem discontinuous and sloppy
writing.
(snips)
>If you haven't read the original and you aren't actively looking for
>anything that would be exceptionally prophetic for the year the stories
>were written you are not going to notice.
That brings up a critical distinction. There _are_ some stories where the
"obsolescence" of the technology is an integral part of the story itself. The
best single example I can think of is Murray Leinster's brilliant story "A
Logic Named Joe." Trying to "modernize" that story would gut the entire story.
So I'm not planning to touch a single word in it.
But that's simply not true with respect to any of Schmitz's stories. I think
it's just ludicrous to argue that removing a single sentence which mentions a
pneumatic tube delivery of a message has _any_ effect on the story LEGACY,
beyond removing a jarring and extraneous reminder of how long ago it was
written.
>> You can't seriously believe that the sell-through figure is proof one
>> way or another. People don't riffle through books to make sure there
>> are no instances of the word "newshen" before they buy. I wouldn't
>> accept a low sell-through as proof that people hated your editing any
>> more than I accept this.
Um. Well, what can I say. Try to find a publisher somewhere who will agree
with you that an 80% sell-through doesn't tell you anything. Find one.
>The sell through by the second book (whatever exactly a sell through is)
>will reflect how the editing was recieved.
"Sell-through" refers to the percentage of books which were actually sold
compared to the number shipped. A "50% sell-through" (which is the average in
SF) means that half the books which were shipped actually got sold. The other
half were returned by the bookstores and distributors. An 80% sell-through
means that only 1 in 5 books is getting returned.
Sell-through is every bit as critical to a publisher's profit margin as sales.
More important, in some ways. A book can sell extremely well and still wind up
losing money hand over fist. We just had a recent example of that, with that
British publisher which went belly-up because of terrible sell-through on the
Star Wars novel which came out with the new movie. The sales were phenomenal
-- about 3,000,000 copies sold. The problem was that they _shipped_
13,000,000. Ten million got returned, each one of which was a pure loss.
The other thing about sell-through is that, much more than sales, it gives you
the best approximation you can get of what you can call "level of reader
satisfaction." _Any_ book can get hefty sales, if the publisher is willing to
really push it. But after the initial big push, word of mouth gets rolling --
for good or ill. And if the word of mouth is bad, sales will start dropping
off fast -- which results in a lot of returns.
Mind you, it's still a very rough approximation. And no one in their right
mind would claim that the difference between a 53% and a 57% sell-through
reflected much of anything. But it's just a fact that very few books have a
sell-through as high as 80% -- and if there were any significant "bad word of
mouth" it wouldn't manage it. That's especially true with a multi-volume
series, where word of mouth has plenty of time to build up a head of steam
(again, for good or ill).
(snips)
>> The purpose of my message was to give you a data point: there does exist
>> some portion of the new audience which is bothered by what you are
>> doing. I am not a purist collector. I just want to read what the
>> author wrote.
Um. And you think that's clear-cut? Which version of "Novice" do you want to
read, then -- the Campbell or Ace edition? There are three sentences cut from
the one in the other -- yet both of them were approved by Schmitz.
Part of the problem with this debate is that a lot of my critics seem to think
that they KNOW what the author wanted -- just by looking at what was published
and the publication date. But the truth is often far more complex than that,
especially for productive working writers. To give you an example, the three
novelettes which Christopher Anvil wrote as the "prologue" to the Interstellar
Patrol series of stories were later reissued in novel form under the title
"Strangers in Paradise." Both the original magazine and later novel versions
were published during Anvil's lifetime -- presumably, therefore, with "his
approval." And, following the simplistic logic used by many of the critics,
obviously we'd have to assume that the later version was the one Anvil
preferred.
Dead wrong. Anvil is still alive, and he made me PROMISE that if the reissue
gets as far as those stories that I would have nothing to do with the later
novel version and would use the earlier versions. The editing on those stories
was done by the novel publisher, over his objections, and he thinks they
butchered the stories. He didn't make a public fuss about it, at the time, for
the simple reason that he depended on his writing for his income and saw no
point in getting in a public pissing match with a publisher. (And, under the
contract he had, could not stop them anyway.)
My point is simply this: as editor, I will edit as sparingly as possible. But
I _will_ edit if I think there's really a good reason to do so, and I am not
going to be impressed by people arguing that I should do what the "author
wanted." The reason is because my critics have no more of an idea than I do
what the author would have _really_ wanted, if he were still alive.
To go back to my Anvil example, what would I have done if Anvil were _not_
alive? And if, therefore, he had not privately told me of his distaste for the
later edition? I would have ignored everybody's prattle about "publishing what
the author really wanted" -- because we almost NEVER REALLY KNOW with a dead
author -- and simply gauged the two versions of the stories on their own merits
and published whichever one _I_ thought was the best. (And, by the way, Anvil
is quite right -- the earlier versions are superior.)
I will be doing that with Laumer's A PLAGUE OF DEMONS. In its original
serialized version, that story has an epilogue which didn't appear in the later
novel version. So which version to use? I'm going with the later, not because
I think I have some mystical communication with Laumer's ghost but simply
because I think that original ending doesn't work all that well.
On the other hand, in most instances -- such as "Once There Was a Giant" -- I'm
going with the earlier version rather than the expanded later version which
Laumer produced. Why? Because I "know" what the author would have wanted?
For pity's sake, people, who the hell "knows" what the ghost of Laumer "really
wants"? I'm going with the original version because the later version was
written after Laumer's stroke and like most everything he wrote after his
stroke he tended to get flabby. Especially when he expanded his own earlier
stories.
In short, in every instance, the decision is being made by _my_ judgement of
which version is the best, not by playing silly games on a ouija board trying
to communicate with the spirit of a dead writer.
To use the example of my cut of the ending of "Undercurrents," given that
Schmitz himself said that ending caused him endless problems with the later
stories, I believe I could advance at least as strong an argument as my critics
that he _would_ have agreed with the cut. But, who knows?
The truth is this: if those people who keep insisting that they want a "pure"
edition got what they wanted, they'd scream bloody murder. Because a _genuine_
"definitive edition" is very expensive -- and is usually made up about
one-third of footnotes. That's why, as a rule, only university presses put
them out. In the real world, it's often simply not that clearcut what a dead
author "really" approved or wanted.
(snips)
>> I'm unwilling to accept that you have unerringly placed your finger on
>> the pulse of the masses, or that the sales success depended upon your
>> textual changes.
I did not say that I had "unerringly" placed my finger on the pulse of the
masses. In fact -- several times, now -- I have made clear that sell-through
is simply a rough approximation. But it's the best one we have -- and there
_is_ a big difference between the average and 80%. Too big a difference to be
irrelevant.
Nor, by the way, do I think the key factor was my editing as such. If there is
a key, I think it's contained in two things:
First, the reader gets their money's worth. Most reissues are, frankly,
cheapskate. Publishers just reissue the same old package -- which, by modern
standards, is slender and overpriced. The volumes I edit are both hefty and
contain a lot more stories. Ask yourself why I'm the first editor to reissue
_all_ of the Telzey stories, instead of simply 9 out of 13? Because I did the
work, that's why, instead of just slapping together a reissue of someone else's
reissue. Why are Guy Gordon and I the first editors to reissue _all_ the Med
Ship stories, and _all_ the Lord Darcy stories -- for the first time? (And, by
the way, take the time and effort to put them in their proper order.)
I may be a butcher, but I ain't a careless or lazy one. :)
Second, I try to package the stories in a way which -- as closely as possible
-- fits the modern taste in SF. Today's market is very much a novel market.
Collections of short stories, with a few exceptions, just don't have much
appeal. That was why I made such an effort to put together the Hub series in a
way which made it read like a "quasi-novel."
Okay, it's only at this -- tertiary -- point that my editing comes into play,
in the sense of cuts and textual changes. It's not an accident that, of the
four stories in the Hub series that I edited significantly, three of them
appeared in the first volume. That editing was necessary, in my opinion, in
order to make the "quasi-novel" approach work properly. Taken by itself, for
instance, the oddball ending to "Undercurrents" is not a problem. It becomes a
problem, however, when it's part of a two-volume reissue of _all_ the Telzey
stories, in which most readers will expect to see some basic continuity
maintained.
(snips)
>> If you can show real evidence of a causal link between your edits and
>> the Schmitz sales, let's have it.
Heh. Not a "causal link" which can satisfy my critics. Short of God
manifesting himself and pointing a benign finger at me, I doubt if _any_
evidence is going to sway my critics.
But, what can I say? I answer to my publisher and to the broad readership, not
the critics in the newsgroups. And I can guarantee you that my publisher
thinks that 80% sell-through means something. At a bare minimum, it's the main
reason Jim Baen gave me the go-ahead to keep reissuing more of Schmitz -- until
we've reached the point, now, where _all_ of Schmitz will be back in print.
Which, by the way, illustrates a point I made in the debate last year -- people
who think that you _first_ issue a "definitive" edition and may only then
legitimately issue an edited version, are putting the cart before the horse.
If James Schmitz ever gets a complete "definitive" edition, it will only be
because the Flint-Gordon edition proved to publishers that Schmitz was popular
enough. That's the way it works in the real world.
Eric
Jordan S. Bassior
>Because it would upset some people who remembered the ending fondly? Dammit,
>people, nostalgia is NOT going to keep James Schmitz in print. People who
>get nostalgic about Schmitz, as a rule, belong to my generation. I'm in my
>mid-fifties. To put this as bluntly as possible, we members of the
>"nostalgia crowd" are going to be dead in 20-30 years. Only finding an
audience in a
>new generation will revitalize Schmitz's reputation ...
Along these lines, I _wish_ that someone would make it possible for _good_ new
stories, possibly on a "shared world" basis, to be written in E. E. "Doc"
Smith's _Lensman_ universe. That universe was seminal to all modern space
opera, both video and written, but the original stories are very dated and as a
result many modern fans don't appreciate either their quality or their
importance to the history of the field.
I think the best basis to do a retcon on that universe would be the
speculations from _GURPS Lensman_, which has a very good explanation for the
lack of computer technology.
--
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
--
Nancy Lebovitz
Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>Sell-through is every bit as critical to a publisher's profit margin as sales.
>More important, in some ways. A book can sell extremely well and still wind up
>losing money hand over fist. We just had a recent example of that, with that
>British publisher which went belly-up because of terrible sell-through on the
>Star Wars novel which came out with the new movie. The sales were phenomenal
>-- about 3,000,000 copies sold. The problem was that they _shipped_
>13,000,000. Ten million got returned, each one of which was a pure loss.
I'm smiling with the sheerest schadenfreude--were they expecting it to
sell as well as a book about a *good* Star Wars movie?
>
>The truth is this: if those people who keep insisting that they want a "pure"
>edition got what they wanted, they'd scream bloody murder. Because a _genuine_
>"definitive edition" is very expensive -- and is usually made up about
>one-third of footnotes. That's why, as a rule, only university presses put
>them out. In the real world, it's often simply not that clearcut what a dead
>author "really" approved or wanted.
>
Have you seen the complete short fiction of Theodore Sturgeon re-issues
from North Atlantic? The one I checked has 24 pages of notes out of
386 total pages, and, imho, the notes add value. Admittedly, they
aren't about editing decisions (and I'd be curious about whether
Sturgeon junkies have any comments on such)--they're mostly histories
of the stories plus comments that Sturgeon made about them.
The books are a *little* pricey--$30 for the hardcover and $19 for the
trade paperback.
Sea Wasp
>
> Eric Flint said:
>
> >Because it would upset some people who remembered the ending fondly? Dammit,
> >people, nostalgia is NOT going to keep James Schmitz in print. People who
> >get nostalgic about Schmitz, as a rule, belong to my generation. I'm in my
> >mid-fifties. To put this as bluntly as possible, we members of the
> >"nostalgia crowd" are going to be dead in 20-30 years. Only finding an
> audience in a
> >new generation will revitalize Schmitz's reputation ...
>
> Along these lines, I _wish_ that someone would make it possible for _good_ new
> stories, possibly on a "shared world" basis, to be written in E. E. "Doc"
> Smith's _Lensman_ universe. That universe was seminal to all modern space
> opera, both video and written, but the original stories are very dated and as a
> result many modern fans don't appreciate either their quality or their
> importance to the history of the field.
Unfortunately, I have a horrible vision of many ATTEMPTS to do
something in the Lensman universe and all of them failing. I love Doc
Smith. I would, in an emotional way, love to try writing something in
his universes.
But, to use Smithian terms, I don't think I have the jets to swing
that load. A proper Lensman book SHOULD be written in Smith's style,
or else you have to find some way to write the story that somehow, by
a miracle or your own innate genius, evokes the same sense of wonder
and heroism that his writing evoked in its day without having to use
his now mostly unappreciated lavender prose. About the only author I
can think of who might be able to pull it off would be Vernor Vinge.
>
> I think the best basis to do a retcon on that universe would be the
> speculations from _GURPS Lensman_, which has a very good explanation for the
> lack of computer technology.
Oh, most certainly it's a good explanation. Not the ONLY one, but a
good explanation and one that allows a modern gamer to play in the
universe without constantly suffering the headache of "WHY???".
GURPS is not the system I'd have chosen for the universe, but Sean
got the background and voice dead on.
Jordan S. Bassior
>Unfortunately, I have a horrible vision of many ATTEMPTS to do
>something in the Lensman universe and all of them failing. I love Doc
>Smith.
I've seen some bad ones too. The saddest was David A. Kyle's trilogy, which had
some seriously good ideas, but just lacked the energy to drive them.
>I would, in an emotional way, love to try writing something in
>his universes.
Many would.
>But, to use Smithian terms, I don't think I have the jets to swing
>that load. A proper Lensman book SHOULD be written in Smith's style,
>or else you have to find some way to write the story that somehow, by
>a miracle or your own innate genius, evokes the same sense of wonder
>and heroism that his writing evoked in its day without having to use
>his now mostly unappreciated lavender prose.
I think that copying Smith's style verbatim is a bad idea (though I do like
some aspects of it). What's more important is to imbibe the _spirit_ of wonder
that runs through his universes.
>About the only author I
>can think of who might be able to pull it off would be Vernor Vinge.
I could see that. Um, I guess what I'd most like to see would be for the estate
to authorize an anthology or two, a la the _Man-Kzin Wars_ series, the best of
which could wind up turning into novels or series of novels. You'd need
editorial coordination though.
Sea Wasp
And what EDITOR would you trust with the ability to properly judge
and oversee the creation of new Lensman stories (or new Skylark
ones... or new Lensman-Skylark ones [the Third-Stage mind problem: How
Do You Stop Blackie DuQuesne When You Are Not Richard Seaton?]?
Charles R Martin
> Eric Flint said:
>
> >Because it would upset some people who remembered the ending fondly? Dammit,
> >people, nostalgia is NOT going to keep James Schmitz in print. People who
> >get nostalgic about Schmitz, as a rule, belong to my generation. I'm in my
> >mid-fifties. To put this as bluntly as possible, we members of the
> >"nostalgia crowd" are going to be dead in 20-30 years. Only finding an
> audience in a
> >new generation will revitalize Schmitz's reputation ...
>
> Along these lines, I _wish_ that someone would make it possible for _good_ new
> stories, possibly on a "shared world" basis, to be written in E. E. "Doc"
> Smith's _Lensman_ universe. That universe was seminal to all modern space
> opera, both video and written, but the original stories are very dated and as a
> result many modern fans don't appreciate either their quality or their
> importance to the history of the field.
There actually was at least one written while DOc Smith was alive --
it was a cover story in Analog during the big-paper phase.
> I think the best basis to do a retcon on that universe would be the
> speculations from _GURPS Lensman_, which has a very good explanation for the
> lack of computer technology.
It would sort of screw up "Vortex Blasters" but I'd just as well see a
modernized Lensman wolrd just get rid of that.
--
Our enemies are never villains in their own eyes, but that does not make them
less dangerous. Appeasement, however, nearly always makes them more so.
-- Don Dixon
______________________________________________________________________________
Charles R (Charlie) Martin Broomfield, CO 40N 105W
Flash Sheridan
>Jordan S. Bassior wrote:
>> Along these lines, I _wish_ that someone would make it possible for _good_
>> new
>> stories, possibly on a "shared world" basis, to be written in E. E. "Doc"
>> Smith's _Lensman_ universe. That universe was seminal to all modern space
>> opera, both video and written, but the original stories are very dated
>> and as a
>> result many modern fans don't appreciate either their quality or their
>> importance to the history of the field.
> But, to use Smithian terms, I don't think I have the jets to swing
Or at least with a modicum of respect for his, and his characters, values
and mores, which I've previously argued makes it unlikely that anyone
would publish a serious attempt. But September 11th may have changed our
ideas of what counts as dated; I suspect that now early Haldeman, for
instance, might seem much more dated than early Heinlein.
I'll have to bow to Mr Flint's claims elsewhere in this thread about
the marketability of allegedly dated fiction; but I will note that it's an
unfortunate concession to an uneducated and undiscerning readership.
Almost by definition, education consists of reading literature written by
people from different times with different attitudes. And I will point
out that Shakespeare and Homer both still seem to be selling well.
--
<LI><a href="http://pobox.com/~flash">Flash Sheridan</a>
<LI><a href="http://pobox.com/~spug">Stanford PalmPilot User Group</a>
Jordan S. Bassior
>And what EDITOR would you trust with the ability to properly judge
>and oversee the creation of new Lensman stories (or new Skylark
>ones... or new Lensman-Skylark ones [the Third-Stage mind problem: How
>Do You Stop Blackie DuQuesne When You Are Not Richard Seaton?]?
I guess we can't really hope that the Arisians, or the Kinnison Children, could
do the selection for us? ;-)
Jordan S. Bassior
>Or at least with a modicum of respect for his, and his characters, values
>and mores, which I've previously argued makes it unlikely that anyone
>would publish a serious attempt.
What's so horrible about "his, and his characters, values and mores" that
nobody could possibly publish stories containing them?
Sea Wasp
I'm afraid one of the few beings we could have reasonably entrusted
with the responsibility, our Gharlane of Eddore, has passed from this
Plane of Existence.
Whether anyone else is out there that we could even start to agree
upon, I don't know.
J.B. Moreno
> "Julie Pascal" ju...@pascal.org
> >> You can't seriously believe that the sell-through figure is proof one
> >> way or another. People don't riffle through books to make sure there
> >> are no instances of the word "newshen" before they buy. I wouldn't
> >> accept a low sell-through as proof that people hated your editing any
> >> more than I accept this.
>
> Um. Well, what can I say. Try to find a publisher somewhere who will agree
> with you that an 80% sell-through doesn't tell you anything. Find one.
Of course the sell-through is proof of something -- but is it proof of
the quality of the writing or the quality of the editing?
You've pointed out several times that in the later books you did almost
no editing, was the sell-through on those books /less/ than the books on
which you did heavier editing?
--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
Joe Slater
>>The truth is this: if those people who keep insisting that they want a "pure"
>>edition got what they wanted, they'd scream bloody murder. Because a _genuine_
>>"definitive edition" is very expensive -- and is usually made up about
>>one-third of footnotes.
na...@unix1.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>Have you seen the complete short fiction of Theodore Sturgeon re-issues
>from North Atlantic? The one I checked has 24 pages of notes out of
>386 total pages, and, imho, the notes add value.
[...]
>The books are a *little* pricey--$30 for the hardcover and $19 for the
>trade paperback.
Or, for that matter, the excellent volumes put out by NESFA - may its
shadow never grow less!
I just finished the _From These Ashes_, the complete short SF of
Fredric Brown. This volume is of immense merit, both immediate and
historic, because it collects the stories in the same place for the
first time - and presumably does so in the original form. I don't know
what they did when there was a variance between the magazine form and
the original collections; I don't much care. The sort of nit-picking
variation tracking that Eric refersx to is typically done in the case
of people like Twain and Dickens, where there's a lengthy manuscript
path and publication history. The fact that something of the same was
done for Sturgeon was gratifying and surprising, but it wasn't really
*necessary*.
The fact is that NESFA's books remove any genuine need to do any
further collections - they have the real, the genuine article. In
contrasts, Bane's (*) editions are of no historical value. I suspect
the changes are made to extend copyright - or perhaps they are made
for no good reason at all, and merely represent a marking of
territory, are a way of urinating on the original material.
For Eric to imply that there is no middle ground between a 24-volume
critical edition and his own EZ2read abominations is distinctly
annoying. I hope that one day Bane's actions will be seen for the
crime which they are, much as Ace's previous actions in regards to
Tolkein are an eternal black stain to that company's reputation.
jds
(*) They almost make me sic.
--
Joe Slater was but a low-grade paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must
have come from the crude hereditary folk-tales which circulated in even
the most decadent of communities.
_Beyond the Wall of Sleep_ by H P Lovecraft
Sam Lubell
Trigger and Friends volume one story was completely rewritten to be
about a completely different character than the one Schmitz wrote
about (and for that matter, wasn't originally a hub story). That, to
my mind, goes far beyond the bounds of an editor.
However, the choice wasn't/isn't between the edited versions and a
unedited pristine version. The choice was the edited version or
nothing (some of the Schmitz stories had never been republished, even
some Telzey stories even though this was his most popular work). And
given that choice I didn't even hesitate before buying the Flintized
Schmitz books.
Sam Lubell
wrote:
>Just a single data point. I disagree. The dated *words* detract greatly
>from ideas in SF stories. With apologies to Katheryn Blake (not sure
>about the spelling of Katheryn there) I'll use her _The Interior Life_ as
>an example. The protagonist is lobbying for computers in her children's
>school. This is obviously written before many schools had any computers
>at all. The *idea* isn't anything about computers but is about someone
>learning to assert themselves and push though an issue of improving
>education. The *idea* is not dated. Reading it, however, yanks a
>person out of a wonderul story at least long enough to say, "Huh... this
>was written a while ago, wasn't it."
Nope. I'm an education policy analyst in RL so I know that the issue
of computers in schools continues to be highly debated. Books like
_Failure to Connect_ and Clifford Stoll's book (I think called
Computer Delusion) have pointed out that computers aren't doing
anything to improve student achievement.
Also, while just about all schools have computers, most still have
outdated computers. Apple IIs are still in use in some schools
believe it or not along with pre-Pentium PCs.
The fun thing about education is no controversy is *ever* settled.
There are even those saying we never should have abandoned the
Latin-based curriculum.
Richard Horton
> We just had a recent example of that, with that
>British publisher which went belly-up because of terrible sell-through on the
>Star Wars novel which came out with the new movie. The sales were phenomenal
>-- about 3,000,000 copies sold. The problem was that they _shipped_
>13,000,000. Ten million got returned, each one of which was a pure loss.
Just to nitpick, I believe this wasn't a novel but another sort of
tie-in book. The publisher was Dorling Kindersley, and I think it was
some sort of book that was very expensive to produce (a pop-up book,
or a paper model book, or something like that), which probably
exacerbated the problem.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Julie Pascal
"Sam Lubell" <lubell...@bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:3be4557c...@nnrp-corp.news.cais.net...
> On Tue, 30 Oct 2001 22:52:56 -0800, "Julie Pascal" <ju...@pascal.org>
> wrote:
>
> >Just a single data point. I disagree. The dated *words* detract
greatly
> >from ideas in SF stories. With apologies to Katheryn Blake (not sure
> >about the spelling of Katheryn there) I'll use her _The Interior Life_ as
> >an example. The protagonist is lobbying for computers in her children's
> >school. This is obviously written before many schools had any computers
> >at all. The *idea* isn't anything about computers but is about someone
> >learning to assert themselves and push though an issue of improving
> >education. The *idea* is not dated. Reading it, however, yanks a
> >person out of a wonderul story at least long enough to say, "Huh... this
> >was written a while ago, wasn't it."
>
> Nope. I'm an education policy analyst in RL so I know that the issue
> of computers in schools continues to be highly debated. Books like
> _Failure to Connect_ and Clifford Stoll's book (I think called
> Computer Delusion) have pointed out that computers aren't doing
> anything to improve student achievement.
I said, "This is obviously written before many schools had any
computers at all." I did not, even remotely, say that improving the
technology available to students is no longer an issue.
The *idea* presented in the story I was talking about *as I understood it*
was about the protagonist learning to assert herself and achieve some
measure of personal efficacy. Had the idea been (primarily) about
technology the *words* would still be noticably dated. The ideas,
in either case, would not be dated.
And, IIRC, I was responding to a claim that ideas get dated and
that words do not get dated.
> Also, while just about all schools have computers, most still have
> outdated computers. Apple IIs are still in use in some schools
> believe it or not along with pre-Pentium PCs.
>
> The fun thing about education is no controversy is *ever* settled.
> There are even those saying we never should have abandoned the
> Latin-based curriculum.
I know people who follow a classical approach to education. Teaching
latin is quite popular among some segments of the homeschooling
community. It is also followed in some classroom schools, though
they tend not to be compliant with state requirements. (I guess learning
declinations leaves no time for health class, or something.)
--Julie
Julie Pascal
"Nancy Lebovitz" <na...@unix1.netaxs.com> wrote in message
news:9s11gm$3...@netaxs.com...
> In article <20011103011757...@mb-cp.aol.com>,
> Eflint46312 <eflin...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >Sell-through is every bit as critical to a publisher's profit margin as
sales.
> >More important, in some ways. A book can sell extremely well and still
wind up
> >losing money hand over fist. We just had a recent example of that, with
that
> >British publisher which went belly-up because of terrible sell-through on
the
> >Star Wars novel which came out with the new movie. The sales were
phenomenal
> >-- about 3,000,000 copies sold. The problem was that they _shipped_
> >13,000,000. Ten million got returned, each one of which was a pure loss.
>
> I'm smiling with the sheerest schadenfreude--were they expecting it to
> sell as well as a book about a *good* Star Wars movie?
I saw the short trailer for the new one this morning. :-)
--Julie
Joe Slater
>I dislike cuts/edits on principle and I especially dislike how in the
>Trigger and Friends volume one story was completely rewritten to be
>about a completely different character than the one Schmitz wrote
>about (and for that matter, wasn't originally a hub story). That, to
>my mind, goes far beyond the bounds of an editor.
>
>However, the choice wasn't/isn't between the edited versions and a
>unedited pristine version. The choice was the edited version or
>nothing
This is not the case. Someone else would have republished the stories
- look at the huge amount of reprints which have appeared over the
past few years, reprints which attempt to accurately transcribe the
original stories. Baen has done the SF community a great disservice by
making a *real* reprint economically unviable.
jds
Robert Carnegie
At a guess, those books' orders from stores would be based on how
the first books sold, and readers' purchases likewise. Stores and
readers bought the later books because the earlier books worked.
If (I forget) we're talking about a series where the "best stuff"
(editing notwithstanding) is put out first, then expected sales,
print run, orders, and actual sales of later volumes would reasonably
be expected to be less.
aRJay
<joeDEL...@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au> writes
>lubell...@bigfoot.com (Sam Lubell) wrote:
>>I dislike cuts/edits on principle and I especially dislike how in the
>>Trigger and Friends volume one story was completely rewritten to be
>>about a completely different character than the one Schmitz wrote
>>about (and for that matter, wasn't originally a hub story). That, to
>>my mind, goes far beyond the bounds of an editor.
>>
>>However, the choice wasn't/isn't between the edited versions and a
>>unedited pristine version. The choice was the edited version or
>>nothing
>
>This is not the case. Someone else would have republished the stories
>- look at the huge amount of reprints which have appeared over the
>past few years, reprints which attempt to accurately transcribe the
>original stories. Baen has done the SF community a great disservice by
>making a *real* reprint economically unviable.
>
discussions is no doubt appreciated I have to disagree with a few points
in your post.
Someone else would have republished *some* of the stories, NESFA might
have published most if not all (however with all due respect their books
are not the likely choice of the new reader of SF), the various
Masterworks reprints and the like would have reprinted _Witches of
Karres_ and possibly some of the others but not all of them.
Now I think you are being disrespectful to organisations like NESFA, who
I would suggest to be the most likely [1] candidates for such a reprint,
who are not motivated by economics and whose cost models are very
different from purely commercial publishers.
I would also like to know how the existence of one edition makes a
different one economically unviable (sic.), or are you suggesting that
an accurate transcription of the originals wouldn't sell?
This is all assuming the rights to produce such editions were available.
[1] This is after Baen themselves of course seeing as they have the
rights as well as all the originals that Eric and Guy worked from. I
realise some contributors to this thread would not approve of Baen
releasing such an edition but that would of course be shear prejudice.
Eflint46312
>From: t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan)
>Date: 11/2/01 11:54 PM Central Standard Time
>Message-id: <eELE7.5070$yl.2...@e3500-atl1.usenetserver.com>
From everything I can tell, the "landing grid universe" is not really a common
universe. Leinster simply used the same specific technology in a number of
stories (and series, such as the Med Ship and Planet Explorer series), but
other than the landing grid technology itself there doesn't seem to be any
overall unifying framework.
Laumer did much the same thing with his beloved Bolos, which pop up in all
kinds of stories which would be difficult -- even impossible -- to reconcile as
being part of the same universe.
Eric