Monday 2 December 2013

Hoka: A Late-Night Reconnoitre Of The Text

In Poul Anderson's and Gordon R Dickson's Hoka (New York, 1985), the text starts on p. 11 and ends on p. 240. It is preceded by:

the cover (see image);
the blank inside of the cover;
an illustration (p. 1);
a blank page (p. 2);
the title page (p. 3);
the publishing and copyright information (p. 4);
that occasional sort of second title page which is merely the title without authors' or publisher's names (p. 5);
another blank page (p. 6);
a three page Prologue that could have fitted onto two (pp. 7-9);
a third blank page (p. 10).

It is followed by:

a thirteen page Afterword by Sandra Miesel (pp. 241-253);
another blank page;
a list of other works by Poul Anderson;
a list of other works by Gordon R Dickson;
the back cover.

Between the beginning and the end of the text, I counted thirty full page illustrations and one blank page. Thus, the text comprises 199 pages of larger type than in the previous volume whose page count for the text is 167 but including a few partly blank pages. Illustrations, present in the first volume, have become more prominent in the second.

We are mainly interested in the content of a book but it sometimes of interest also to consider it as a physical artifact.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Hi, Paul!

One thing I appreciated about the illustrations found in the later collection called HOKA! was that they were more realistic than the ones seen in EARTHMAN'S BURDEN. That is, I thought the Hokas drawn in the second book more realistic and plausible than the drawings seen in EARTHMAN'S.

Sean