Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 12:28:01 -0500
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: An imaginary conversation in the backroom ofabookstore . . . .
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

>samlubell at yahoo.com 02/04/03 12:08PM
>> >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.

Mass market editions don't have to be scholarly - just honest will do.

>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.

Well, only if one had purchased them as they came out - sort of like =
Stephen King's serial novel "The Green Mile".

Total cost to get the six Baen volumes: $52.86, before sale (or use) =
taxes.

But certainly spending "relatively" small amounts over a longer period of =
time is easier to deal with than one large lump of cash.  And that is a =
problem with ominbus editions like those from NESFA.

>
>I love NESFA press books, I've bought (too) many of
>them and probably will pick up more at Boskone
>(probably the Brown novels).  But there's no way I
>could have afforded them back when I was a
>teenager/young adult.  The Flint editions at least got
>the stories reprinted (as I said, some of them were
>never reprinted) and in a format that modern readers
>can afford.

Would love to see a Worldcon panel on The Way To Edit, with Flint, Patrick =
Nielsen Hayden, David Hartwell, amongst others  Now, that would be fun . . =
. <g>

mjw