From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: An imaginary conversation in the backroom ofabookstore . . . .
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 12:26:40 -0500
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Samuel Lubell" <samlubell at yahoo.com>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 12:08 PM
Subject: [WSFA] Re: An imaginary conversation in the backroom ofabookstore . . . .

>
> > >I followed the debate closely, and nowhere did Eric
> > answer the basic =
> > issue:
> > >he heavily edited the Schmitz books but they were
> > published without =
> > any
> > >real indication that they'd been changed from the
> > original.
> >
> > Luckily there is enough online comment regarding the
> > "editing" that the =
> > Baen editions will almost certainly be disregarded
> > in any decent survey or =
> > scholarly discussion of Schmitz.
>
> Of course the books weren't meant to be scholarly
> treatments.  They were meant to be (relatively)
> inexpensive mass market paperbacks so that the typical
> bookstore customer of sf would pick them up and read
> them.

I missed the discussion elsewhere, so....

1.  Schmitz was a writer of commercial fiction.  Commercial fiction gets
edited.  I strongly suspect his stories were originally edited for their
magazine appearances.

2.  Schmitz was not an outstanding prose stylist.  He *needed* some
editing.

3.  That said, if the Baen editing was "extensive," how was it applied?
Were plots changed?  Were passages cut?  Were passages extensively
rewritten?   In other words, would a casual reader have noticed these
changes -- or would that reader have felt the editing was an improvement?

--Ted White