So I figured out what happened

There has been a lot of confusion in the last 3 weeks or so as to the arrival of the next 5 books.

I now have some information for you all which should clear up the situation.

Volumes 32 through 36 have been printed and are at the shipping facility.

However, they have not been shipped to you yet due to a staffing change at the printer/distribution center. Instructions were lost in the shuffle and our new agent at the distribution center and I were apparently talking about two different things.

I was inquiring on behalf of several subscribers regarding their tracking information for this latest shipment (for those travelling: as they wanted to be sure their box wouldn't sit outside for too long, and for those concerned that the promised books hadn't reached them yet). As a result a very small portion of the subscribers' books have been shipped already. Most of them haven't.

It turns out none of your books have been lost in the mail - in fact most of them haven't made it to the mail yet. Myself and Andre, our sales representative from the printer, are very apologetic. This seemed to be a pure miscommunication.

The resultant is that they have pick-ups scheduled for today (Dec 23) and tomorrow (Dec 24), but, due to the heavy volume of shipping this time of year, the books will not arrive by Christmas.

Once again sorry for the anxiety this may have caused some of you. The books are printed and should be on your way soon (for real this time).

Your slightly less confused and vaguely comforted Project Manager

More books

Hello All,

I hope those celebrating the North American tradition of Thanksgiving had a very nice one.
On behalf of the VE, we are welcoming in the holiday season with another shipment of books.
This is a smaller shipment, but I wanted to make sure everyone knew we are still here and still making progress (albeit slowly). There will be 5 books in this shipment:

1. Creating a Genre
2. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
3. New Worlds to Conquer
4. Glory Road
5. Puppet Masters

We had a little hold up with some of the icons on the covers - the files the printer had could not be expanded, but kept small they just made gold blocks on the front of the book. We were able to resolve this and the proofs I have seen look good! Hopefully you will be seeing tracking information soon.

We are making progress on the remaining books. I now get to try my hand at transcription since the source file for one of the upcoming screenplays is a scan of a scan of a typewritten manuscript and transcribing software doesn't like it. (10 pages done about 200 to go.)

If you have not received at posted letter from VE recently please email me (leahmccarrick @ virginiaedition . com). The goal was to provide each of our current subscribers with a statement of account and to verify that no one is missing any books (and also to confirm mailing addresses and contact information).

That is all for now.
Let me know when you get your books.

Hugos?

I have a research project for you all.

I have seen several different articles give different numbers on the amount of Hugo Awards
Heinlein received.

The Virginia Edition website says he won 6.
IMDB reports only 4.
In going through The Hugo Award website I think I have uncovered 7.

Five for Best Novel:
Farmer in the Sky (awarded retroactively in 2001 for 1951)
Double Star (won in 1956)
Starship Troopers (won in 1960 and which I just watched the movie for last night for the first time)
Stranger in a Strange Land (won in 1962)
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (won in 1967)

One for Best Novella
The Man Who Sold the Moon (awarded retroactively in 2001 for 1951)

One for Best Dramatic Presentation
Destination Moon (awarded retroactively in 2001 for 1951)

I ask readers to check-up on this and report any confirmations/comments.

Also, (and probably more important to many of you) we are looking into printing 5 of the last 15 books in time for the holidays. The remaining 10 will be printed in the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2011.

In addition

For those in the Washington D.C. area:

William H. Patterson, Jr. will be the featured speaker
at a book forum hosted by the Cato Institute on October 21st
regarding the recent release of his Heinlein biography -
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1 (1907-1948): Learning Curve

For more information:
http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=7559

A super delayed update

In the months since I wrote you last (sorry). We have made some progress toward getting the last 15 ready to print. As a reminder we have the following books left to print:

• 32 - Creating a Genre
• 33 - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
• 34 - New Worlds to Conquer
• 35 - Glory Road
• 36 - Puppet Masters
• 37 - Non-Fiction 1
• 38 - Non-Fiction 2
• 39 - Letters 1 - Correspondence between RAH and one of his publishers John Campbell
• 40 - Letters 2
• 41 - Letters 3
• 42 - Farnham's Freehold
• 43 - Tramp Royale
  
• 44 - The Screenplays of RAH 1
• 45 - The Screenplays of RAH 2
• 46 - Requiem

The first 5 are just about finished, just requiring some final touches before being given official permission as print-able.
Nonfiction 1 is with the second proofreader.
Nonfiction 2 and Letters 1 are finished with their first proofreads.
Letters 2 is with the first proofreader.
Letters 3, Farnham's Freehold, and Tramp Royale are being typeset.
Both the Screenplays just received better versions of files that need scanning.
Most of Requiem is scanned or typeset, but this book will be the last to be finished with setting because we will be putting the index of all the pieces included in the VE in this volume.


Out of the 5 that I edited over the summer (the same 5 that are ready to print) I think The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress was my favorite, although some of the short stories in Creating and New Worlds are really good too.


I should have the first of the non-fictions later this month.


We are beginning to see some new subscribers come on board due to at least two factors.
The major contributor is probably Bill Patterson, who just released the first volume of his Heinlein biography. I have just sent him some material to distribute at the various press events and panels he will be participating in. Another possible source of instigation is our recent presence (as a poster) at the International Astronautical Congress, which was held in Prague the last week in September.


Quite on the publishing front,
Leah

To the Virginia Edition world

My apologies once again for not being a good blogger.
However, here we go with another update.

We are moving along with the next 15, not as fast as I would like
as I do more jobs for Mr. Dula along side the VE.
This last week was spent trying to collect all of the financial
for VE and have it ready to present it to our main funders this
past weekend.

We have an intern for the summer, who is doing work for the Heinlein
Prize Trust and for VE when his brain fries from too much data entry.
He has done proofreads for 2 books so far. I am going to be reviewing
them this week as I need to sign off on them any way.

On another note, if any of you feel you have received volumes not up to the standard
please let me know. We do have extras from each print run, however they are limited
in number. Please keep requests to the most substandard volumes. I have complained
to Transcontinental and so far we have sent out a couple replacement books.

The next set of books I hope will be back up in quality to what we have come to expect
from Trans. The next books are a little rearranged - I believe I mentioned this in an
earlier post. We are moving all of the material for Heinlein century into other volumes.
HC's table of contents included some selected RAH pieces and several tribute articles
from space industry and naval personnel. The RAH pieces are going into corresponding
volumes and the tributes will be placed into an extended version of Requiem.

While doing some inclusion discussion with Bill Patterson and Windhaven our editors,
I was introduced to an RAH letter from 1973 (a letter Heinlein wrote to Niven and
Pournelle about Mote in God's Eye before it came to have that title). Heinlein use FYI :)
This prompted me to try and find the oldest recorded use of the initialism - which
apparently was in 1941 when a radio show aired under that name. I still found it
interesting as my presupposition was dashed about the Internet age being the source
of most acronyms and initialisms, useful or not.

Enjoy your reading, hope to have more information for you soon,
Leah Ott

The Books are coming, the Books are coming

Two things first:
My apologies for not keeping up with the blog - I am not a habitual blogger yet, but will work on it. Also, my boss had me focus on another project for a couple of weeks, leaving limited time for VE.
Second:
Thank you all for your words of appreciation and encouragement!

Now for the important news -
THE THIRD SHIPMENT OF BOOK IS ON ITS WAY
We had some delays relating to how long I thought it would take to get all of the official permission forms on file with both our editors and our printer. There was a week delay because the "Rasin" colored ribbons that serve as the page markers for this lovely collection were out of stock with the printer's supplier. We did not want to use a similar color since this is a limited edition collector's set. I also wasn't sure how "similar" the color would turn out to be. The ribbons did come in and shipping was completed by the printer Thursday April 29th. This means that while relying on various postal services the books should be in your hands this week!!! Hip-hip hurray!!!


As to the current status of the remaining volumes.
At different time we have posted the inclusion or not of a volume called Heinlein Century. We are still debating on the on or off status of this volume. I will let you know as to whether this remains a separate volume or whether we incorporate the material into the other volumes (specifically the Letters volumes and the Non-fictions). The current leaning is to take to pieces and incorporated them rather than try and pull enough pieces, with duplication, to have enough material for a 47th volume.

Creating a Genre is getting its last edits added to the text.
I am currently in process or reading through/editing The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which makes for a confusing edit since Loonies don't use standard American (or British) grammar. This volume also introduced me to Simon Jester :).
I also am in possession of New Worlds to Conquer and Glory Road.
- I am getting married in about 3 weeks and so will definitely be out of touch for about two weeks. However, while I am home I will be trying to complete The Moon and at least one of the others.

We are having some organizational complications with the Screenplay, Letter, and Non-fiction volumes. As you might imagine these are the most difficult to set up in a pleasant, readable fashion. We, Bill, Nancy, Andrew, and myself, are working to tie up all loose ends and get these volumes, a significant portion of the remainder, ready to be proofread as soon as all issues are resolved.

Some of you queried about a contact address for VE issues - the link on the VE website for contact should forward emails to me, but for a more direct address use:
leahmccarrick @ virginiaedition dot com

Once again thank you for following along :)

Changing of the Guard

Greetings to all those following the Virginia Edition Updates.

My name is Leah and I have taken over most of the Virginia Edition concerns while the previous fearless leader, Sean, has moved on to bigger, better, and more torturous things - namely law school.

I have heard some whispers about the project and finally figured out how to log into and update this blog that was started by my predecessor.

Let me bring you all up to speed on what has happened since July, 2009.

I began working for the Virginia Edition in October and we are just about to go to print with the next ten books. Four of these books were prepared and edited by Sean as is reflected in his last entry. The other six were my first foray into the world of RAH. The list of books shortly to be printed are:

1. The Future History of Robert Heinlein, Volume 1
2. The Future History of Robert Heinlein, Volume 2
3. Friday
4. The Number of the Beast
5. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (my very first Heinlein)
6. Sixth Column
7. Job: A Comedy of Justice
8. To Sail Beyond the Sunset
9. Expanded Universe
10. Podkayne of Mars

The hand-off of responsibility and health issues with our editors have contributed to the silence on the VE front. Today I found out just how much it costs to print just one chunk of this collection. I was a bit staggered (which as I write that phrase seems mistaken somehow, but fitting). But finding out the prices means we are very close to actually printing them - hopefully within the next week the files should head to the printer (as long as we get some copyright issues resolved).

I'm off to write some reminder emails that were brought to my mind as I let you know what we were up to over here. I hope this give you an insight into the project for the time being. I'll write again soon.

The New Sean - Leah