Subject: (urth) Different versions of "Forlesen"

From: Dan Rabin <danrabin at a.crl.com>
Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 20:23:55 +0000

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

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 13:50:49 +0000

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=