Wapsi Square Forum

FreeFlier wrote:

scantrontb wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote:The Pun Jar would like a word with you, but it's currently arguing precedence with the extremely cranky ghost of an SF author.

DANG!... i didn't know he died in 93!... that sucks, i was hoping for more Bolo's and Retief stuff.

I knew, but had only "recently" learned that it was that long ago.

There are some "new" Bolo books out, and I think the authors did a pretty good job.

Seems like one is The Road to Damascus . . . seems like it was John RIngo and Linda Evans . . . Yes.

--FreeFlier

My brother wrote at least one or two bolo stories, too.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:

scantrontb wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote:The Pun Jar would like a word with you, but it's currently arguing precedence with the extremely cranky ghost of an SF author.

DANG!... i didn't know he died in 93!... that sucks, i was hoping for more Bolo's and Retief stuff.

He was not ... pleasant .. to know in his later years.

Last i encountered him was in '83 - after his stroke, he became increasingly cranky and difficult to deal with.

A friend who chaired a convention had a story about him dumping his plate on the restaurant floor and declaring that he could shit better scrambled eggs.

What happened to him was indeed a great and terrible shame.

I was disappointed when he ceased writing, sorry when I heard he'd been taken ill, excited when I learned that he was writing again... and when I read his newer works, I was even sorrier to find myself feeling that he should have retired instead. His stroke seemed to have wrecked his ability to tell a coherent story... there were serious continuity errors, and his tongue-in-cheek story-telling style became a parody of itself. Unfortunately, he never seemed to recover.

If you want to study an example... read the original short story "End As A Hero" (it's in the "Nine By Laumer" collection, which I cannot recommend strongly enough), and then read the padded-out novelette of the same name published years later after he started writing again. To put it bluntly: the seams between the original core of the story, and his later efforts show... badly... they make the stitches on Frankenstein's Monster look trivial by contrast.

The short stories in "Nine...", the earlier Retief stories, and his pre-stroke novels (including the Imperium trilogy, and "A Trace Of Memory") are still some of my favorite SF writings of that decade or so. He deserves to be remembered for them, and excused for what came later.

I think even Ambassador Grossblunder would agree.

(and thank you, AFF, for catching the reference. )

A classic example of what happened after the stroke is The Stars Must Wait, and expansion of "Night of the Trolls" (a bolo story, sort of, incidentally), in which there have apparently been at least two expansions/rewrites that contradict each other and then contradict the contradictions.

I can't believe Baen published it without cleaning up the mess.

(Especially given that what Eric Flint did for them to the works of James Schmitz amounted to more posthumous collaboration, with major rewrites and cuts, than "editing".)

The Stars Must Wait was not a very good story, IMO . . . I think it sold primarily on his name.

--FreeFlier

FreeFlier wrote:The Stars Must Wait was not a very good story, IMO . . . I think it sold primarily on his name.

--FreeFlier

ONLY ojn his name.

"Night of the Trolls", OTOH, is pretty good.

And a lot shorter.

AnotherFairportfan wrote:I can't believe Baen published it without cleaning up the mess.

I've had a couple of my favorite authors become big and well-known enough that, apparently, their publishers decide they no longer need editing... and I stopped reading them because OH MY GOD DO THEY NEED EDITING.

One of mine doesn't so much end a story as stop writing . . . so far it's tolerable.

--FreeFlier

FreeFlier wrote:One of mine doesn't so much end a story as stop writing . . . so far it's tolerable.

--FreeFlier

I've always phrased that as "She didn't know how to end it so she did."

Warrl wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote:I can't believe Baen published it without cleaning up the mess.

I've had a couple of my favorite authors become big and well-known enough that, apparently, their publishers decide they no longer need editing... and I stopped reading them because OH MY GOD DO THEY NEED EDITING.

Used to work at a small shop that did composition for genre and popular lines, among other things. We worked on the Jackie Collins books.

When sales took a dive, her publisher rejected her next manuscript, saying it was not in fit condition for publication. She filed a big noisy lawsuit, arguing that it was just as fit for publication as everything else she had submitted.

I expect she was right. They just quit paying for cleanup.