A subscriber (or two) pointed out to me that, email announcements to subscribers notwithstanding, I have not updated this blog in ages. Not quite the best of things considering this is meant as a window in for prospectives and the like. To keep from posting an absolute sea of text—from c to shining c—I'll aim to post several updates over the course of the week until we've got everything up to speed.
We lost a fair bit of time due to a series of unfortunate events that befell Windhaven, but they've recovered and are working towards the following schedule.
We will be printing the remaining books in two tranches. The first will go to the printer at the end of August and the second will go to print about mid to late January. At the start of July and December, I will confirm mailing addresses and instructions for each of you. We've decided to rearrange the print order somewhat as well. Volumes 22-47 will be as follows:
The Future History of Robert Heinlein Vol. I
The Future History of Robert Heinlein Vol. II
The Number of the Beast
Friday
Job: A Comedy of Justice
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
Creating a Genre (Fiction compilation)
Sixth Column
Podkayne of Mars
Expanded Universe
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
New Worlds to Conquer
Glory Road
The Puppet Masters
Farnham's Freehold
Tramp Royale
Requiem
Heinlein Century
Nonfiction #1
Nonfiction #2
Letters 1 (Heinlein - Campbell Correspondence)
Letters 2
Letters 3
Screenplay #1
Screenplay #2
The nonfiction, letters, and screenplay volumes are all shaping up to be fairly hefty volumes and we felt it would be more aesthetically and functionally pleasing to collect these volumes towards the end rather than have them sandwiching the smaller volumes. At the same time, this allows the volumes to transition from the fiction volumes to the autobiographical Tramp Royale to the collections Heinlein Century and the nonfiction and letters at the end in a manner similar to reference papers.
Below follows the schedule we have at present for the completion of the of the next tranche of books. This is intended to leave a fair amount of wiggle room and we believe it not unreasonable that we will be able to move somewhat faster than this.
Future History Vol 2 (Complete)
6/12 - The Number of the Beast
6/25 – Friday
7/21 - Job
7/23 - Sixth Column
7/24 - The Cat Who Walks Through Walls
7/29 - To Sail Beyond the Sunset
8/3 - Future History, volume 1
8/7 - Podkayne of Mars
8/12 - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
8/14 - Expanded Universe
8/18 - Creating a Genre
8/18 - New Worlds to Conquer
8/20 - Glory Road
8/31 - Farnham's Freehold
We will go to press with each volume we have ready by August 15th. We readily expect to manage the first eleven of these, however we believe it's reasonable to think we'll be able to manage several more for the deadline. More information will be forthcoming as it is available.
The Number of the Beast and Friday have arrived from Windhaven—Friday arriving a week early, in fact—and we seem to be progressing well at this point.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The New Year
A recurring question has been How was the order of the books decided on? The answer is that Meisha-Merlin worried that subscribers--who, under MM's plan, were to receive one book every two months and would have the complete set sometime in 2099 (Actually, somewhere in 2012; Mayan prophecy, anybody?). They worried that subscribers (who were paying between $50 and $75+) would stop their subscription as soon as they had the big name volumes like Stranger in a Strange Land or Starship Troopers. (Why anybody would shell out that kind of money for what would be an obviously incomplete set, I have no idea. Of course, on that note, if that was their goal, I don't know why they'd front-load the set with (what I consider) the major volumes.
Nonetheless...that was the legacy we had inherited with commensurate files. Had it been a project of the Trust to begin with--allowing for our capacity to invest in this project over a longer term than Meisha-Merlin could as a small commercial entity--I should like to think we'd have ordered them as chronologically as possible--making exception for the collections of course--and then released all of the books at one time. To critical acclaim. While doves dropped confetti from above and beautiful women lei'd me. Hmmm...perhaps not, but that's the gist of how we came to the book order we have.
The New Year dawns on us and, with it, what is intended to be my last year with the Heinlein Trust. We're still talking with Windhaven to get a new schedule prepared. If we can't find a way to make up the missing month, the end of the project will be pushed back a commensurate amount, but should still be on track for completion this summer. I'll keep you posted as I get more information.
The fine folk at Transcontinental caught an error in one section of Red Planet that will need to be repaired. I've told them to go ahead and fix it--they'll get me a more specific quote shortly--but, since all of the books are bound and then shipped together, it'll result in a push-back of the ship date. Until I get the quote, I can't even give a valid estimate. (On the basis of the size of the error, my hope is that it won't make more than a week or two's difference, but I have absolutely no basis for saying that whatsoever.)
I have a really cool announcement about an unrelated project the Trust is taking part in. I've wanted to announce it for well on a month now and I still don't have the clearance. Just to share that with y'all. (Y'all is a perfectly valid grammatical construction, taking the place of the traditionally neglected and non-existent second person plural.)
One of the people at the UC-Santa Cruz library--where the Heinlein Archives are located--tossed Heinlein's Hugo (for Starship Troopers or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I can't recall offhand and I'm not leaving my heater behind to go check) into a box with no cushioning and the lucite rocket shattered in transit. Thanks to the help o the people that run Worldcon, we're getting a replacement via their production folk.
The main reason I'm writing this particular post--aside from a pressing desire to work on something extremely simple and straightforward for a moment--is that one of our subscribers is the University of California -- Riverside (Home to one of the largest science-fiction collections in the world (or so I'm told). As you may or may not be aware, California's economy is less than magnificent at the moment and library budgets have been frozen. Their books are around half-paid for at the moment and I'm reaching out on their behalf to ask if anybody would like to help contribute to the cost of their set. I will check with the Trust to see if it might be willing to sponsor a portion of the remaining amount--perhaps a matching grant system?--however if anybody is interested in contributing to their account, please contact me at sean (dot) thompson (at) dula (dot) com.
Nonetheless...that was the legacy we had inherited with commensurate files. Had it been a project of the Trust to begin with--allowing for our capacity to invest in this project over a longer term than Meisha-Merlin could as a small commercial entity--I should like to think we'd have ordered them as chronologically as possible--making exception for the collections of course--and then released all of the books at one time. To critical acclaim. While doves dropped confetti from above and beautiful women lei'd me. Hmmm...perhaps not, but that's the gist of how we came to the book order we have.
The New Year dawns on us and, with it, what is intended to be my last year with the Heinlein Trust. We're still talking with Windhaven to get a new schedule prepared. If we can't find a way to make up the missing month, the end of the project will be pushed back a commensurate amount, but should still be on track for completion this summer. I'll keep you posted as I get more information.
The fine folk at Transcontinental caught an error in one section of Red Planet that will need to be repaired. I've told them to go ahead and fix it--they'll get me a more specific quote shortly--but, since all of the books are bound and then shipped together, it'll result in a push-back of the ship date. Until I get the quote, I can't even give a valid estimate. (On the basis of the size of the error, my hope is that it won't make more than a week or two's difference, but I have absolutely no basis for saying that whatsoever.)
I have a really cool announcement about an unrelated project the Trust is taking part in. I've wanted to announce it for well on a month now and I still don't have the clearance. Just to share that with y'all. (Y'all is a perfectly valid grammatical construction, taking the place of the traditionally neglected and non-existent second person plural.)
One of the people at the UC-Santa Cruz library--where the Heinlein Archives are located--tossed Heinlein's Hugo (for Starship Troopers or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I can't recall offhand and I'm not leaving my heater behind to go check) into a box with no cushioning and the lucite rocket shattered in transit. Thanks to the help o the people that run Worldcon, we're getting a replacement via their production folk.
The main reason I'm writing this particular post--aside from a pressing desire to work on something extremely simple and straightforward for a moment--is that one of our subscribers is the University of California -- Riverside (Home to one of the largest science-fiction collections in the world (or so I'm told). As you may or may not be aware, California's economy is less than magnificent at the moment and library budgets have been frozen. Their books are around half-paid for at the moment and I'm reaching out on their behalf to ask if anybody would like to help contribute to the cost of their set. I will check with the Trust to see if it might be willing to sponsor a portion of the remaining amount--perhaps a matching grant system?--however if anybody is interested in contributing to their account, please contact me at sean (dot) thompson (at) dula (dot) com.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
To all and moondry,
I may start writing down my thoughts as I go back over each of these books. In many cases, this is the first time I've read one of these books since I was ten or eleven and it's remarkable to consider how much of the material I really failed to grasp. There is a great deal of material one misses simply through lack of context. Or, in another vein, the impact of a given book changes with time. Notably, as I read "Methuselah's Children," I am better able to engage with Slayton Ford's dilemma in dealing with the Families--particularly his reflection on the time it takes a man to become educated, to become known in his field, etc. I imagine that in another thirty odd years I'll have an all too great an appreciation for the dimming of the senses as well and perhaps it'll be time to take yet another glance through that book. (This, incidentally, is why updates become more sporadic during busy times, it's far too easy to philosophize with the Heinleinia and while away time better spent on productive affairs.)
After a great head-run through the bluelines to get them reviewed by the deadline, we are still on-track for our ship date of January 23rd for volumes 8-21.
I've finally received the artwork for Donato's "Heinlein's World" so I can take the steps to get that made into a poster for the subscribers--we'll definitely have enough made for ye current subscribers and, depending on Art's preferences, we'll probably go ahead and print another few hundred--the economies of scale on these things are absurd, as you increase the number printed, the price per unit plummets.
As of this past weekend, we have, in hand, all three of the letter volumes, both of the nonfiction volumes and both of the short fiction volumes. Effectively, the only thing we still need at this point are Mr. Kondo's files for "The Heinlein Century" when that's completed and the files for the Screenplay volumes from Subterranean Press.
I would like to take a moment once again to thank Bill Patterson for all the work that he's done to help us get all of this together. I think he's done quite a good job and that these volumes will be a substantial positive addition to the Virginia Edition.
So far as the subsequent sets--and since we moved the Future History volumes to print with Set 3, we've got one set of fourteen and one set of twelve books left to go before completion--I found out last week that, apparently, Windhaven did not have the introductions for the set 3 volumes and that was preventing them from doing the book layouts and thus from doing any work on volumes 24 onwards. This was not mentioned to me until I had sent repeated requests to find out what was happening with those volumes. While, normally, this might inspire a more than passing disquiet on my part, I am told that it will be possible to make up for the lost time without disrupting our printing schedule. As such, I will wait until I have had a chance to go over this with Windhaven and get an updated schedule. At that point, I will post it here. And there will be much rejoicing.
There have been a couple of issues with our billing system--affecting, at most, three or four people--which I've been researching and hope to have dealt with within the next week or so.
Once the New Year begins, I'll speak with Deb and Geo Rule--who manage all our website information--about a) updating our website with new and wondrous things (more the former than the latter) and b) the best way to go about setting Archives access for all subscribers so that Geo doesn't have to spend forty hours manually creating access codes.
When this project is completed, I have a strange desire to ask Art Dula if we can print a single book, any book, so that I can enjoy a simple project.
I may start writing down my thoughts as I go back over each of these books. In many cases, this is the first time I've read one of these books since I was ten or eleven and it's remarkable to consider how much of the material I really failed to grasp. There is a great deal of material one misses simply through lack of context. Or, in another vein, the impact of a given book changes with time. Notably, as I read "Methuselah's Children," I am better able to engage with Slayton Ford's dilemma in dealing with the Families--particularly his reflection on the time it takes a man to become educated, to become known in his field, etc. I imagine that in another thirty odd years I'll have an all too great an appreciation for the dimming of the senses as well and perhaps it'll be time to take yet another glance through that book. (This, incidentally, is why updates become more sporadic during busy times, it's far too easy to philosophize with the Heinleinia and while away time better spent on productive affairs.)
After a great head-run through the bluelines to get them reviewed by the deadline, we are still on-track for our ship date of January 23rd for volumes 8-21.
I've finally received the artwork for Donato's "Heinlein's World" so I can take the steps to get that made into a poster for the subscribers--we'll definitely have enough made for ye current subscribers and, depending on Art's preferences, we'll probably go ahead and print another few hundred--the economies of scale on these things are absurd, as you increase the number printed, the price per unit plummets.
As of this past weekend, we have, in hand, all three of the letter volumes, both of the nonfiction volumes and both of the short fiction volumes. Effectively, the only thing we still need at this point are Mr. Kondo's files for "The Heinlein Century" when that's completed and the files for the Screenplay volumes from Subterranean Press.
I would like to take a moment once again to thank Bill Patterson for all the work that he's done to help us get all of this together. I think he's done quite a good job and that these volumes will be a substantial positive addition to the Virginia Edition.
So far as the subsequent sets--and since we moved the Future History volumes to print with Set 3, we've got one set of fourteen and one set of twelve books left to go before completion--I found out last week that, apparently, Windhaven did not have the introductions for the set 3 volumes and that was preventing them from doing the book layouts and thus from doing any work on volumes 24 onwards. This was not mentioned to me until I had sent repeated requests to find out what was happening with those volumes. While, normally, this might inspire a more than passing disquiet on my part, I am told that it will be possible to make up for the lost time without disrupting our printing schedule. As such, I will wait until I have had a chance to go over this with Windhaven and get an updated schedule. At that point, I will post it here. And there will be much rejoicing.
There have been a couple of issues with our billing system--affecting, at most, three or four people--which I've been researching and hope to have dealt with within the next week or so.
Once the New Year begins, I'll speak with Deb and Geo Rule--who manage all our website information--about a) updating our website with new and wondrous things (more the former than the latter) and b) the best way to go about setting Archives access for all subscribers so that Geo doesn't have to spend forty hours manually creating access codes.
When this project is completed, I have a strange desire to ask Art Dula if we can print a single book, any book, so that I can enjoy a simple project.
Friday, October 24, 2008
I saw a sign offering a free lunch so I wrote TANSTAAFL on it.
Hello All,
I look at the date for the last post and realize that it's been far too long since I've written on here and I do apologize.
As I believe I've mentioned--if only to the current subscribers--a hurricane hit Houston and we lost power, structure, and sanity for about two weeks or so. Most of my time since then has been taken up with catching up the lag both here at the office and elsewhere--a delay exacerbated by illness on the part of Nancy Hanger of Windhaven. We're about one week past where I wanted to have the second set ready to go, but the only ones left for me to work through are the Future History volumes, How to be a Politician, and Time for the Stars. I plan on getting through most of the Future History this weekend, How to be a Politician Monday/Tuesday and Time for the Stars as soon as I read it.
On a tangential note: It's been interesting reading through all of the juveniles--as much as I pray it be a long while before I have do so again--after a while they start to run together into a haze of PDF pages. When I first read Farmer in the Sky, for example, I didn't pick up on the English-Irish tension between the scouts when trying to name their troop. Then there are the recurring themes I didn't quite pick up on until I had to read all of them back to back--f'r example, that every boy in these stories was completely oblivious to the existence of the opposite gender or the use of the phrase "So? Skip it" and so on and so forth.
Bad news: After ten odd months, neither Scribners nor I have been able to track down the copyright holders for the illustrations in the juvenile volumes and, due to US copyright law with regard to orphaned works, we simply can't legally print them. This has been the first time I've ever seen the illustrations and I'm rather upset that we won't be able to include them.
Bill Patterson has been doing good work and has finished assembling the non-fiction and short story volumes and the volume of Heinlein-Campbell correspondence. He's currently working on the last two volumes of correspondence at which point we'll just need to keep trucking through the remaining twenty-four volumes with resolute good cheer.
As soon as I finish with the books from set 2, I'm going to go ahead and have the posters with the art from the original edition printed up and I've got a few ideas for some neat extras I'd like to try sending out, we'll see how that fares.
We've established archives access for those folk who ordered the old exclusive edition and we'll aim to extend that to all subscribers starting around the new calendar year.
--SJ
I look at the date for the last post and realize that it's been far too long since I've written on here and I do apologize.
As I believe I've mentioned--if only to the current subscribers--a hurricane hit Houston and we lost power, structure, and sanity for about two weeks or so. Most of my time since then has been taken up with catching up the lag both here at the office and elsewhere--a delay exacerbated by illness on the part of Nancy Hanger of Windhaven. We're about one week past where I wanted to have the second set ready to go, but the only ones left for me to work through are the Future History volumes, How to be a Politician, and Time for the Stars. I plan on getting through most of the Future History this weekend, How to be a Politician Monday/Tuesday and Time for the Stars as soon as I read it.
On a tangential note: It's been interesting reading through all of the juveniles--as much as I pray it be a long while before I have do so again--after a while they start to run together into a haze of PDF pages. When I first read Farmer in the Sky, for example, I didn't pick up on the English-Irish tension between the scouts when trying to name their troop. Then there are the recurring themes I didn't quite pick up on until I had to read all of them back to back--f'r example, that every boy in these stories was completely oblivious to the existence of the opposite gender or the use of the phrase "So? Skip it" and so on and so forth.
Bad news: After ten odd months, neither Scribners nor I have been able to track down the copyright holders for the illustrations in the juvenile volumes and, due to US copyright law with regard to orphaned works, we simply can't legally print them. This has been the first time I've ever seen the illustrations and I'm rather upset that we won't be able to include them.
Bill Patterson has been doing good work and has finished assembling the non-fiction and short story volumes and the volume of Heinlein-Campbell correspondence. He's currently working on the last two volumes of correspondence at which point we'll just need to keep trucking through the remaining twenty-four volumes with resolute good cheer.
As soon as I finish with the books from set 2, I'm going to go ahead and have the posters with the art from the original edition printed up and I've got a few ideas for some neat extras I'd like to try sending out, we'll see how that fares.
We've established archives access for those folk who ordered the old exclusive edition and we'll aim to extend that to all subscribers starting around the new calendar year.
--SJ
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Over the past month or so, I've been carefully nursing the project along to ease us over any particular kinks that might arise and so I am happy to publicly announce that the first seven books are now in customer's hands ready to be enjoyed.
For those interested in the books, we will be updating the website with images of the books as soon as I have a chance to show them to the Trustees of the Heinlein Trust--who are currently out of town. Another update that will be mentioned on the site: We will be processing new orders at the end of each month. That is, all orders placed during a given month will be shipped at the end of that month.
As for our current status--which one and all are eager to hear about: The next set to be published will be volumes 8-23: The Future History of Robert Heinlein Volumes 1 and 2 (originally The Past through Tomorrow), Stranger in a Strange Land, How to be a Politician, Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, Red Planet, Farmer in the Sky, Between Planets, The Rolling Stones, Starman Jones, The Star Beast, Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars, Citizen of the Galaxy, and Have Spacesuit -- Will Travel.
By the end of the week, the first nine will be done and ready. The other seven volumes are in varying stages of completion, but we still seem to be on track for our original goal of having them to the printer by early- to mid-October. When I have a moment, I'll get an updated quote from our TransCon Rep so far as the estimated time for the books to be printed and shipped--though, rest assured, it should prove considerably shorter than was the case with the first seven.
Slashdot recently linked to the following item: http://kk.org/ct2/2008/09/heinleins-fan-mail-solution.php
It's an amusing form response the Heinlein's sent out in response to fan mail. It's worth a glance and a chuckle. An enterprising individual might also consider that this and similar items could be found within the sweeping reach of the Heinlein Archives...
For those interested in the books, we will be updating the website with images of the books as soon as I have a chance to show them to the Trustees of the Heinlein Trust--who are currently out of town. Another update that will be mentioned on the site: We will be processing new orders at the end of each month. That is, all orders placed during a given month will be shipped at the end of that month.
As for our current status--which one and all are eager to hear about: The next set to be published will be volumes 8-23: The Future History of Robert Heinlein Volumes 1 and 2 (originally The Past through Tomorrow), Stranger in a Strange Land, How to be a Politician, Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, Red Planet, Farmer in the Sky, Between Planets, The Rolling Stones, Starman Jones, The Star Beast, Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars, Citizen of the Galaxy, and Have Spacesuit -- Will Travel.
By the end of the week, the first nine will be done and ready. The other seven volumes are in varying stages of completion, but we still seem to be on track for our original goal of having them to the printer by early- to mid-October. When I have a moment, I'll get an updated quote from our TransCon Rep so far as the estimated time for the books to be printed and shipped--though, rest assured, it should prove considerably shorter than was the case with the first seven.
Slashdot recently linked to the following item: http://kk.org/ct2/2008/09/heinleins-fan-mail-solution.php
It's an amusing form response the Heinlein's sent out in response to fan mail. It's worth a glance and a chuckle. An enterprising individual might also consider that this and similar items could be found within the sweeping reach of the Heinlein Archives...
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Of BombShells and Shelters
I may have mentioned this before, but one of my favorite written lines is from Lewis Carroll in The Walrus and the Carpenter when the time has come to talk of many things, "Of cabbages--and kings--"
But on to relevant matters:
Things are *still* proceeding along and the books seem on track to be ready by the end of this week for shipping starting early next week. Clearly, this means the world is ending and I must go hide in my bunker with the emergency scotch supply.
In all seriousness, though, matters look positive.
In regards to my previous query about Podkayne of Mars:
We will be printing the volume in a manner similar, I believe, to that done by Baen recently. It will be printed with the original ending and an appendix will follow with the edited version that was originally published. We have correspondence which indicates that Mr. Heinlein was not pleased at having had to change that section of the work.
Also, for those who may have been wondering, it was decided to publish the extended Stranger in a Strange Land that Ginny released following Heinlein's death.
But on to relevant matters:
Things are *still* proceeding along and the books seem on track to be ready by the end of this week for shipping starting early next week. Clearly, this means the world is ending and I must go hide in my bunker with the emergency scotch supply.
In all seriousness, though, matters look positive.
In regards to my previous query about Podkayne of Mars:
We will be printing the volume in a manner similar, I believe, to that done by Baen recently. It will be printed with the original ending and an appendix will follow with the edited version that was originally published. We have correspondence which indicates that Mr. Heinlein was not pleased at having had to change that section of the work.
Also, for those who may have been wondering, it was decided to publish the extended Stranger in a Strange Land that Ginny released following Heinlein's death.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Unscheduled extra
I'm going to chat with Art and perhaps a few others on the idea, but I'm also curious as to the general tide out there:
Somebody asked which ending of Podkayne of Mars we intended to use. Of those of you that know the difference between the published and original ending, which do you prefer? (I'm intentionally not mentioning my thoughts or Heinlein's written thoughts on the matter, this is just to query the pool, as it were.)
Somebody asked which ending of Podkayne of Mars we intended to use. Of those of you that know the difference between the published and original ending, which do you prefer? (I'm intentionally not mentioning my thoughts or Heinlein's written thoughts on the matter, this is just to query the pool, as it were.)
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