More about 5HC Variant texts - things half-remembered

From: Dan Rabin <danrabin at a.crl.com> Subject: Variant texts of "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 20:04:35 -0800 ... <quote> Micheal Andre-Driussi writes,

That was me, too. The Gene-Wolfe-three-novellas editions have a brief passage in the scene in the library in which the narrator finds an edition of the short stories of Vernor Vinge. This passage is absent in the original Orbit version. <unquote> Dan? Mantis? Maybe you can look into something that's bugged me for awhile. Unfortunately, the (Ace?) paperback edition of 5HC I read originally is long gone, possibly given away by my late brother, to whom it belonged; and the hardback (Scribner's?) edition I used more recently belongs to the county library, so I lack either one to consult. I recall when I read the hardback library copy, I was struck by one particular passage that I was positive had been added from the older paperback version. It was in "A Story", where the Old Wise One was explaining to Sandwalker how the Shadow Childrens' "singing" worked. In the paperback version, as I recall, he said something like "Shake your hands. Now imagine your hands gone. That is what we shake. You may call it nothing, but what you think is nothing holds all things apart. When it is gone, all the worlds are born". I seem to recall the hardback version continued with another new sentence, not present in the paperback, which indicated this "birth" would follow the collapse of the universe. (so the Shadow Childrens' "singing" vibrates Einstein's Cosmological Constant, or Fred Hoyle's C-field? <g>) Are you or any other Urthlings (Borski?) able to check that possible text variation? <quote>

Not really--I just happen in both cases to have read the version with the added passage, then the shorter version, and noted the absence of something memorable (to me, at any rate). This shouldn't be mistaken for scholarship! <unquote> hey, works for me!