{"id":305,"date":"2005-03-30T14:13:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-30T20:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/?p=305"},"modified":"2005-03-30T14:13:00","modified_gmt":"2005-03-30T20:13:00","slug":"two-cents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/2005\/03\/30\/two-cents\/","title":{"rendered":"Two cents"},"content":{"rendered":"

It occurs to me that it is not really fair of me to make glancing reference to the ongoing Simak and Leiber reprint programs without actually ennumerating what I think is wrong<\/em> with them. Well. I think both writers are important to the history of the field, and each has a body of work that could still reach a reasonable sized audience. I also think that they are in great danger of being forgotten by all but the cognoscenti, and that what is needed is an evangelical approach to their work that will take them to a new, younger audience. <\/p>\n

So, what’s happening? Well, Seattle-based small press publisher Darkside
\nPress<\/a> is publishing their collected works in multiple volume sets (an announced twelve volume set for Simak and an unannounced no. of volumes for Leiber, but three volumes have been published to date). Darkside’s books all sell for approximately $US40.00, are restricted to print runs of 400 – 500 copies, and have fairly uniform black and white dustjackets. They are, and this is just a personal opinion, extraordinarily ugly books. That in itself isn’t a terrible problem. The problem is that they are costly and go out of print quickly. They are not books that will preserve the legacy of the writers in question, they will simply pass through, pick up a few sales and disappear forever.<\/p>\n

What should happen? Well, first, someone should publish a definitive selected stories for both writers. I believe NESFA<\/a> considered at least one of these projects, but really someone like Tor or Ace would be best. With a good selected stories in print, you could then produce an omnibus of the three or four most important novels. That way, Simak and Leiber might actually continue to be read, and even have a chance of attracting a larger readership. Just my two cents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It occurs to me that it is not really fair of me to make glancing reference to the ongoing Simak and Leiber reprint programs without actually ennumerating what I think is wrong with them. Well. I think both writers are important to the history of the field, and each has a body of work that … Continue reading Two cents<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-imported-from-older-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathanstrahan.com.au\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}