Different versions of "Forlesen"

I just finished reading "Forlesen" in Orbit 14, its original appearance. Compared with the version in Gene Wolfe's Book of Days as reprinted in Castle of Days, this first published version is missing the encounters with Abraham Beale and with Mr. Fleer. I would guess that the shorter version was cut down from the original submission, based on the several references to the "Bet-your-life" game in the shorter version, a game that gets a somewhat explanatory mention in the longer version that is absent in the shorter. I wonder if he got paid for the missing ours... -- Dan Rabin

Dan Rabin, Wow, great detective work! I don't recall ever hearing about this difference. Are you going to continue in this vein of textual differences? I vaguely remember some talk about possible diffs between "5HC" novella in ORBIT and 5HC, but I can't recall if it was just speculation or somebody had actually gotten down to doing the work of looking. If you didn't already know, Galactic Central's "Urth-Man Extraordinary" (UMX) only has one entry under Textual Variations, and it deals with the diffs between FREE LIVE FREE published by Ziesing, Tor, and the UK edition. So in my copy of UMX, I'm writing down your notes on "Forlesen," and looking forward to any further findings. =mantis=