Hey, Ginjer Buchanan at Ace Books,

[agoodwinsmith]

so hi; I'd like to ask you a question.  Why aren't you republishing the Alexei Panshin Starwell, Thurb Revolution, and Masque World books, and giving us the final fourth promised book, The Universal Pantograph, the publishing of which was disrupted by conflicting personalities between the author and the then editor/person/whoever?  Surely enough time has passed to have healed some of these wounds.  And we have to act soon, or the author won't be in a position to assist.

Seriously, I had these books packed for ten years (not my choice, way too much moving and lack of steady employment, and whatnot), and now that they are unpacked again, I have read them all again and enjoyed them again as much as before.

Seriously, when I first found them in second hand stores, I hunted for fresh new copies to buy as my own.  No such luck.  Since so many people are writing in similar vein (but I don't think as well), surely these books would sell like hotcakes.  *Do* hotcakes sell?  I don't know - but these books would.  If nothing else, you would tap the market of people like myself who are nursing crumbling paperback copies.

And we were about to get to Nashua, and see Louisa and Gillian again, and everything.

Pretty please?  Consider the possibility?

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I cannot help but notice that when Jim Baen, then at Ace, reprinted the trilogy the fourth volume did not materialize and if the primary issue was who the editor was, that would seem to have been an ideal opportunity to do it. Indeed, there's nothing stopping Panshin from making it available from the same source as his other books.

The evidence at hand does not suggest to me that the MS exists.

Since so many people are writing in similar vein

Who?

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I've taken a while to reply because I think you are asking me what genre, and I think I am not talking genre but rather type or style, which may take some explaining.

I think the Starwell series are fun little books with interesting people doing things that are interesting enough that I want to know what happens next, and that are set in reasonably interesting worlds that probably work.

Yes, I know the science is very not. Not anything sciencey at all, since the idea that ships from other planets arrive on a daily schedule is rather quaint and somewhat trains & steamers.

Books that I think have a similar flavour are Doorways in the Sand by Zelazny, and most of the Bertie Wooster books by Wodehouse, some of Heyer's regencies that she wrote during the 40's & 50's. Mostly just lighthearted viewing of people and their foibles.

One of the books that I thought was trying for that touch was the Amber Benson that I read, plus another book called Dime Store Magic by I don't know who because I didn't finish it. And the books just fell flat. For me the issue is that the people are not interesting enough, and the things they do are driven by a movie-script pattern (if we've had an up scene, it must immediately be followed by a down scene, yergh), not because they, as their characters have been written (or not), would actually react that way.

I can't think of any others off the top, but I do know that I get especially annoyed if there has been some reasonable world building (Amber Benson), and it gets pissed away on characters so boring and unrealistic that they can be slipped under the door.

I confess that I don't care whether or not the science works. But the human beings had better behave the way human beings behave.

And ... I thought I had read something that that particular person was one of the issues regarding the missing fourth book. Yes/no?