Night Shade edition of Fritz Leiber
Posted by:
Radovarl (IP Logged)
Date: 3 June, 2010 06:20AM
For anyone who is a fan of Fritz Leiber, and considering purchasing the recently-released collection of stories by him from Night Shade, I thought I would share the following note I sent to them about a truly singular editing fiasco I noticed in Selected Stories. Am I being excessively critical? It seems to me the height of editorial arrogance for something like this to have occurred. Maybe I am just naive... Is this the usual manner in which texts become corrupted over time? It seems unforgiveable to me.
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Dear Sirs,
Normally I don't make a habit of writing publishers to complain about poor editing, but in this case I feel it's almost a duty. I have long been a fan of Fritz Leiber's fiction, and though I already own numerous editions of his work, nevertheless purchased your recently released Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories. Aside from the somewhat lukewarm introduction by Gaiman, I have been happily skipping around randomly in the book, revisiting old favorites. A few moments ago, I began re-reading (for probably the 10th or 12th time) "Ill Met in Lankhmar". When I came to the middle of page 94, at which point Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser meet for the first (really 2nd) time over the unconscious bodies of the thieves of the guild, I was horrified when Fafhrd suggested to the Mouser that they split the loot, "Fifty-fifty?" !!!! Now, this might seem perfectly natural to someone who has never read the story before, but in every single edition ever published, including the original magazine appearance, this line reads, "Sixty-sixty?" I have always taken this to be intentional, as Leiber was a master wordsmith (and familiar with basic arithmetic) and unlikely to make a simple mistake of this sort; clearly it is meant to convey the fact that though very bright, Fafhrd at this point in his career is profoundly ignorant in the area of mathematics... Therefore I am forced to conclude that one of the editors had the appalling bad judgment to assume that this was a mistake and "correct" it, without so much as checking with someone more intimately familiar with the tale, and without the common courtesy of contemplating the possibility that the author might actually mean to write what was written! Perhaps this seems pedantic on my part, but it is very disappointing, and leads me to wonder what other "improvements" have been made to the stories in this volume.