Tuesday 17 October 2017

An Aspect Of The Reading Experience

I can assure you from experience that the physical condition of a copy of a book makes some difference to the reading experience. I own old, battered, torn, faded copies of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol and The Shield Of Time and also newer, barely used copies of the same editions but nevertheless regularly reread the older copies in order to preserve the newer ones for as long as possible.

I look forward to receiving The Complete Psychotechnic League not only because it will be complete and might also have new Introductions or other additional material but also because the Baen Books volumes are old and faded.

I gather that this new "complete" edition is to be published in three volumes whereas I think that two longer volumes would have been more appropriate. See here. And the misleading word, "League," could have been removed from the title. Nevertheless, this will be a new reading experience quite apart from the fact that, like The Time Patrol and The Technic Civilization Saga, these new collections will include fiction by Anderson that many of us have not read before.

10 comments:

David Birr said...

Paul:
One warning on those new editions: sometimes the text is different in some "minor" but occasionally jarring ways. There may be a statement that this was done to "update" the science for greater accuracy, OR the change may be given no justification whatever, not even a spurious one.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

DAvid,
Have you read THE COMPLETE PSYCHOTECHNIC LEAGUE, Vol I?
Paul.

David Birr said...

Paul:
No, I was just offering a general statement, based on such discrepancies I've seen in new editions of other authors' work. The "update" notice occurred in two of C.M. Kornbluth's books, *The Syndic* and *Not This August*. A couple of omnibus editions of Andre Norton series had modifications in phrasing that didn't change the meaning at all and, so far as I could tell, served no purpose. The changes were slight, but disrupted my enjoyment, given that I was familiar enough with the texts I already had to spot that they WERE changes.

S.M. Stirling said...

I just got that myself.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

I am waiting for a Christmas present!

Sean M. Brooks said...

Gentlemen,

I too have Baen Books reprint of THE PSYCHOTECHNIC LEAGUE, and it is simply a reprint of the same collection printed in the 1980's. I'm enough of a PA fan that I don't mind, but unrealistic expectations need to be avoided.

What I AM hoping for is that Baen Books will include in the reprinted collection the two Pyschotechnic stories not included in the earlier collection: "The Green Thumb" and "The Acolytes."

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
It is definitely described and advertised as complete.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I suspect it will be merely a complete reprinting of the earlier collection. But maybe I will be wrong!

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
It is advertised on the 'net as containing previously uncollected stories.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Good! Has someone at Baen Books stumble across my article "The Uncollected Works Of Poul Anderson" and noticed that, for reasons unknown, no one has republished "The Green Thumb" and "The Acolytes," with the other Psychostechnic stories? Maybe!

Sean