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FIRST_THINKS_FIRST
October 14, 2002
I was just thinking about
Gregory Benford's habit of This is not a new
re-writing after publication. thought with me. BENFORD
Let's try to make the call, (Certainly not a
thumbs up or thumbs down? first thought.)
And re-writing post-
publication is not a
First example: new thought from Benford...
Benford wrote a number of shorter
pieces that were later glued E.g. I understand
together into the novel that Walt Whitman re-
"In the Ocean of Night". wrote "Leaves of Grass"
Some of them were clearly chunks many times.
of the work in progress that
Benford packaged up as stand-alones. In the science fiction
world, expanding a popular
One short in particular was pretty short into a novel is a
clearly an independant work long common enough practice.
before he had any thoughts of the
novel. In the "Jewel-Hinged Jaw",
Delany muses on the
I'll need to look up the differing virtues of
title some time. I think Zelazny's "He Who Shapes"
it appeared in Galaxy (and and it's expanded form
if I remember right, that "Dreammaster".
was it's sole publication).
He decides to recommend
that people read both,
the short form first,
then the long form.
SPOILERS
Is that true in
the general case?
Not a bad rule
of thumb: read
the works in the
order the author
wrote them.
Tracing the movement
of a mind...
The short story was fairly simple
in conception. Astronaut makes a
"first contact" with an
intelligent alien space probe, (I don't remember what
and engages it in dialog dodge was used to get
around the language
The character of the astronaut problem... probably
isn't very thoroughly fleshed the probe picked up
out, nor do we know much about english from studying
his life -- I think his wife is broadcasts for ages).
mentioned, but only mentioned.
But despite this
spare framework, Or perhaps
the dialog with *because*
the space probe of it?
is astoundingly
powerful.
The probe was evidentally
not intended to be conscious,
this is just a by-product of
it's complexity. It spends
centuries in isolation between
stars:
"Sometimes I scream
in the night."
A similar situation --
with much of the same
dialog -- occurs in the
novel "In the Ocean of
Night".
It works.
It's a very good book.
But it doesn't quite have the same
spooky, disturbing quality as the
dialog in the short story.
The more complex framework,
the heavier characterization,
the multiplication of themes...
Something
robs
distracts
wears
just a little
too much.
Second example:
The novel "Across the Sea of Suns" was
written as a follow on to "In the Ocean I guess this is now
of Night". called the
"Galactic Series".
I have no reservations at all
about this book. If I sounded Myself I'd prefer a
luke warm about "In the Ocean name more like
of Night", let me make up for
it with effusive praise for "The Watery Heavens"
this novel.
Or maybe
Nigel Walmsley is getting old,
nearing the end of his career, "Flushed by the
and yet he manages to win the Gods"
a place on an interstellar
expedition, traveling with a
large crew -- in an environment
much like an O'Neil style space
colony -- to a number of nearby
star systems.
Walmsley is greatly respected for his
experience, but he chooses to remain
something of an outsider in shipboard
politics, and despite lip service paid
to his wisdom, his opinions are usually
discounted in the heat of the moment.
He continually plays Cassandra to the
unresponsive ears the crew, who are all
lost in a kind of "group think", always
in danger of degenerating into a mob.
The central problem is that the
truth of what's really going on
is much too bleak for most people
to want to believe... humanity is
begining to encounter an extremely Yes, similar
powerful "machine" civilization Saberhagen's
that's hostile to all forms of "Beserkers".
biological life, with little hope Except that the
of sucess in the conflict. Beserkers win.
I suspect, but don't
One of the few science fiction novels know, that Benford
about an older protagonist. was thinking about
the Fermi paradox.
One of the few stories of
interstellar travel that does Q: Why haven't we seen
not cop out and postulate some evidence of extra-
sort of super-science faster-than- terrestrial intelligence?
light technology.
A: Because something is
One of the few "tragic endings" killing them.
in Science Fiction, and one of
the few I've seen anywhere that
works perfectly: Later novels in the
series deal with
At the close of the novel the humanity struggling
catastrophe has happened, the as a conquered people,
humans are losing, Walmsley barely surving as
and his partners are stranded rats in the walls.
and almost certainly about to
die, and yet... "for some
reason, he smiled."
Because he's been vindicated. In interviews,
He has no solution, but he did Benford says
grasp the problem before everyone that this has
else did. to do with his
background as
Because he's lived his life on a Southerner.
his own terms, and managed to
keep his hand in the game Southerner's
against pressure to retire and regard themselves
relax. as a conquered
people, or so
What better finish for an he says.
explorer, than to die in the
unknown seas of an alien
planet?
And what better ending
has a science fiction
novel ever seen?
Or *any* novel for that matter.
I typically have problems with
"Tragedy", but here it all works, TAKEN_LIGHTLY
everything that people say about
The Tragic -- sad, but uplifting,
life-affirming, ennobling -- all
makes sense to me here.
So then Benford rewrote it.
What I've been describing here is
the first edition hardcover version
that I originally read.
There are newer editions out in
paperback which I don't own, but
flipping through them in the
stores, I see that the ending is
completely different.
I gather that Benford decided he
wanted to keep writing about Walmsley,
and instead of doing a cheesy surprise
resurrection he decided to prepare
the way for it.
By messing with the
ending of a total
masterpiece.
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