Tuesday, June 30, 2009

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.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice to have you back. Please consider again the idea of an errata list at the end of the last volume of the series. This is an unfortunately necessary feature of many complete-works projects, given that humans are involved. Such a list would greatly benefit from the proposed production order; that is, it could be completed while the final volumes (mostly letters that likely wouldn't have errors that subscribers could detect) are in preparation. So again, please tell those of us who are so inclined how you want us to notify you of errors (presumably in some standard format to make production easier), as well as a deadline for their placement at the end of the last volume.

Zarf said...

I agree with JJGarsch on both points --- it is very nice to have you back at the blog, and it would be brilliant to have a brief errata list at the end of the last volume in the series. The Virginia Edition is the definitive printing of RAH's work, and it would be in keeping with the effort to note (and correct) those minor errors that have crept into the printing.

cliff said...

I agree that an errata segment would be great--but the best news of all is the rapid progress being made on finishing the series. Can't wait to re-experience these books!