Virginia Edition Updates

2012-02-03T14:57:00.000-08:00

It is February!

I know, I know, I skipped January, but only because I was hoping to have the best update I could give - that we were finished. It turned out we weren't so my procrastinating has slipped into the next month.
However, I do have good news - we will be doing no more read-throughs of the books!
In turn this means that all we have left to do is to review layout and previously submitted lists of edits.
Depending on the speed with which Windhaven applies the last two lists (or so) of edits we have going, we should sign off on the text by close of business Monday.

These are some of the unique things included in this last set (which in a large part are also the reasons it has taken longer):
The last volume of correspondence - which some of you may be anxiously awaiting - and is 648 pages long
The two volumes of screenplays - which have never been printed in this arrangement before (there is a Subterranean Press edition that contains some of them) - totaling 1166 pages
Tramp Royale - has been out of print since the mid 1990s and includes an awesome picture, which I am refusing to tell you about b/c it will ruin the surprise - @ 336 pages
A updated version of Requiem - which includes new tributes - 384 pages

As you can see there is still a lot to read and some of it is probably brand new (unless you have been thoroughly trolling the archives).

On a side note - in first reading through The Rolling Stones and information about it, it was pointed out that Star Trek's "Trouble with Tribbles" episode gave a nod to Heinlein for using something very similar to Martian flatcats. Earlier this week in reading through one of the tributes in Requiem, someone remembered Heinlein saying that he didn't invent them either so it was ok from his perspective.

Does anyone know where RAH got the idea from? (I do have the recollected answer, but I want to know if anyone else knows.)

2011-12-08T14:49:00.001-08:00

2011 is almost finished and so is this lovely collection.

Today I sent in the last full round of edits for Letters 3
AND
I just got in the next round of Screen Writing 1, which puts our current standing at:

Vol. 41 - (the elusive) Letters 3 - last set of edits have been sent in, need to be applied, and needs permission to print
Vol. 43 - Tramp Royale - needs permission to print
Vol. 44 - Screen Writing 1 - last read through, apply, quality control, apply, and needs permission to print
Vol. 45 - Screen Writing 2 - send in last edits, which need to be applied, then quality control, apply, and permission to print
Vol. 46 - Requiem - quality control, apply any edits, then needs permission to print

Sean and I are splitting SP 1 (Screen Writing 1) and hope to have this round finished by COB on Monday. At which point, I hope we have Requiem and/or Letters 3. Close of business Tuesday should see us with 2 books ready to print (minus the official permission form), maybe 3.

The screenplays have been a hassle. Most of them have not been typeset before, which left a lot of room to design a readable book, but also a lot of open questions. We have tried to stay close to the patterns and formats, while adjusting text and layout to make them internally consistent. It meant a lot of word juggling for Andrew, who has been working pretty much solo in New Hampshire.

This overdue update written, I am going to get reading!
Hope to write soon with more completions to report.

Status Update

2011-11-21T13:19:00.001-08:00

As you all may be aware from the shelf space the collection is already taking up we are coming to the end of this very long quite bumpy road. The last five volumes need to be read over or just have the last set of edits checked and will go to the printer soon.

We (Sean and myself) just got in the fully updated Screen Writing 2 and are diving in. I wanted to share a piece of it with you.

From Crater Base One - "Nothing Ever Happens--"
The television has below it a more numerous group of controls than are found on a livingroom set; this is intended to be a closed-circuit system whereby the Director can see, from his desk, any of many scenes inside and outside Crater Base One. A single power knob plus a long row of push buttons conspicuously numbered and/or lettered is sufficient to simulate this. It is assumed that a repeater with parallel controls is located in his private dining-living room, and another at his bedside; thus the Director can see, from the three places where he spends most of his time, every major activity he directs. Cutting in the video pickup also cuts in 2-way teletalk . . . and it may be assumed that the video is 2-way, also, for this is 1988.

As we all know, 1988 of course had two way t.v.'s. At least now we have touch screens and video chat on our phones and computers. Dear Mr. Heinlein, sorry we took so long.

Don't worry you aren't missing vol. 41

2011-09-29T14:49:00.000-07:00

This edition of the blog is to reassure everyone that you are not missing volume 41.
Volume 41 was not ready to go to print with the preceding 4, while volume 42 (Farnham's Freehold) was.
It will be printed and shipped with the last set of books.
You read correctly, the last set of books!

On our current schedule, updated this week, we should have all material turned over to the printer by mid to late October. This means the books should ship in November and be in your hands for the holidays.

Volume 41 - Letters 3 is undergoing a quality control check, and will be turned back to WH for final corrections tomorrow.
Volume 43 - Tramp Royale is at WH to have proofreading edits applied, then it will come here for a quality control check.
Volume 44 - Screenplay 1 just got turned back to WH after its 2nd proofread and needs those edits applied. We are also working on getting some pictures from the set of Destination Moon to include in this volume.
Volume 45 - Screenplay 2 was also just turned in to WH, but from its 1st proofreader, and will come here next.
Volume 46 - Requiem is going out this week for its 1st proofread.

On another note here is an interesting Heinlein mention:

AUGUST 15, 2011

BARACK OBAMA MUST BE A ROBERT HEINLEIN FAN! Robert Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”

Barack Obama:

“We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again,” Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. “But over the last six months we’ve had a run of bad luck.”

Fan, instantiation, whatever.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 10:00 pm

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/126252/

2011-09-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

After much difficulty with the latest batch of covers, an issue with a graphic, and a small issue regarding wire transfer fees, we are just about ready to ship the next 5 volumes! Once the payment is transferred for the second half of the current 5 books, they will be sent to the warehouse/shipping department at Transcontinental and shipped out to you.

The cover of Letters 1 was a hassle. The digital version of the icon looked like this:

The black area is where the gold foil is stamped. However, the stamping process tends to spread or bleed, leading to :

Which is mostly a gold blob. I spent several hours trying to clean up the digital so that the negative space was increased such that the gold wouldn't over run too much of it leading to distortion.

Clearer right? Well, the gold stamping was resilient so the printing company just decided to invert the image:

And hurrah! you can tell it is a face, but it is supposed to match:

So I had to half invert the image so that the scalloped edge was gold not the space around it:

This is the final icon, it just took us days to get there.

So as it stands these books are finished printing and should ship from the warehouse to you around the 16th of September.

The remaining 5 books are as follows:

Vol 41 - Letters 3 - final edits to be applied, followed by quality check, then to printer

Vol 43 - Tramp Royale - final edits to be applied, followed by quality check, then to printer

Vol 44 - ScreenPlay 1 - undergoing 2nd proofread here, then same as above

Vol 45 - ScreenPlay 2 - undergoing 1st proofread with some work being done on the last pages at Windhaven, edits to be applied,

Vol 46 - Requiem - to be set (but it should be fast)

Order of events:

Right now SP 1 and SP 2 are in proofreaders hands and WH is working on the end of SP 2.

Following that WH will apply the edits to L 3 and send is here for a control check, it goes back to WH for polish then off to the printer.

While we have L 3 WH will set Req and send it out to its 1st proofreader.

Then WH will apply they last round of edits to Tramp and send it here.

(During this time both SPs should be turned back into WH with comments, at which point I will try and schedule the remaining 3 for the next set of passing back and forth.)

Publishing is a chaotic business.

2011-07-18T07:47:00.000-07:00

We have NEWS!

Today I will finally send in the last of the permission forms, which means 5 more books will begin printing. I know this has taken quite a long time, but these are some of the larger volumes and most of the material has never been published before.

A lot of time consuming double checking, while necessary, delayed the release of these volumes. For example, do you know what a mustache trainer is? or do you think he meant mustache strainer? While most of the original letters were typed (on a typewriter), some of them were hand written. The deciphering of both is complicated by the fact that the archives are not necessarily in chronological order or necessarily arranged by name and that the scanning process leaves much to be desired. Maybe there will be an effort to stream-line the collection more, albeit a daunting task.

For those of you who are not aware yet - Sean is back at the office helping with the proof reading, etc. His presence means we should be able to move double time on the last 5 books. That is right - THE LAST 5 BOOKS. We are almost done for real.

In appreciation of your patience and belated acknowledgement of Heinlein's birthday, we will be sending everyone some posters based on Heinlein's novels. There are 6 different posters. Blow is the one of Glory Road. The poster layout was done by Eric Gignac and the original paintings were done by Steven Hickman.

We will get started on mailing these out after the current 5 books are fully turned over to the printer.

The status of the last 5 books is a follows:

Volume 41 - Letters 3 -- is here and I am just about finished with checking potential errors against the archived sources.

Volume 43 - Tramp Royale -- is here and Sean is just about finished with it.

Volume 44 - Screenplay 1 -- should be ready for its first proof read.

Volume 45 - Screenplay 2 -- should be typeset this week.

Volume 46 - Requiem -- is waiting on the index for the collection.

We hope to get these 5 turned over to the printer by the end of August. In order to do so I had best get back to work.

Yes, I realize it is April.

2011-04-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

I have had updating this blog on my list of things to do since a week or two after I last updated it.

Now for the follow through.

As you are all well aware we have 10 books left to go in this long lived collection of 46.

Here is the current standing:

Nonfiction 1 - through 3 proof reads including mine. (If you are not familiar with the origin of The Door Into Summer, it is found in this volume and I really liked it.)
Nonfiction 2 - I got this volume last week and just reached the halfway point before I finally started this long awaited update.
Letters 1 - Sean Thompson is back part-time and is do our 3 proof on this volume. (He thinks he will be done with it by the end of this week.)
Letters 2 - I am waiting for a call back from Andrew and Nancy at Windhaven as to when I can see this book. (Actually, it probably will go to Sean.)
Letters 3 - this one had a little trouble at the first proofreader, but may be back at WH (see comment above).
Farnham's Freehold - Already through all three passes and back at WH for final edits to be applied.
Tramp Royale - is working through some last typesetting issues - like discussions on including the map tracing the Heinleins' journeys around the world.
Screenplay 1 - transcribed, still needs typesetting.
Screenplay 2 - this one is still on my to do list for transcribing since some of the pages are almost impossible - see image below.
Requiem - We have decided to add a table of contents for the whole collection here - so until we are almost finished this one sits on the side lines.

I would like to poll you all on several questions (if you would like to respond):

[I will also send this out in email to all subscribers. Please suggest questions you think may be helpful towards a goal of understanding the demographics of the Heinlein community.]

Age
In which country do you reside?
If USA, which state, if not skip?
Gender
What industry do you work in?
How did you hear about the Virginia Edition Collection?

Internet
Print advertisement
Word of mouth
Heinlein Centennial
Other – please specify

Sean and I were also asked to work on a travelling Heinlein exhibit to be used both in more traditional museum installments, but also for trade fairs and the like. I would appreciate some ideas for exhibits. Here are some I have come up with so far:

The poem “Dance Session,” Virginia Heinlein’s skates, a letter from RAH to VG with a doodle of her ice skating
Manuscript of article: “Appointment in Space”/ “All Aboard the Gemini,” Popular Mechanics May 1963 (turned to page 112 or after)
Photograph(s) from the archives of the V2 launch, Article “Journey of Death”
Heinlein’s computer with a MS or letters or something
Heinlein’s camera with original photos and blow-ups thereof
Props and photos from Destination Moon - specifically the picture of Ginny and RAH on set (although I think we only have a newspaper clipping), include the article “Shooting Destination Moon”
The Rolling Stones TV script for Star Trek: “The Trouble with Tribbles.” (Opus #92?), props or shots from the episode
Heinlein’s Hugo’s along with copies of MS or paperback or hardcover of the winners and a description/background of the Hugos

So I figured out what happened

2010-12-23T09:22:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-30T12:13:00.000-08:00

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:

Creating a Genre
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
New Worlds to Conquer
Glory Road
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?

2010-10-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-19T07:17:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-26T13:38:00.000-08:00

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:

The Future History of Robert Heinlein, Volume 1
The Future History of Robert Heinlein, Volume 2
Friday
The Number of the Beast
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (my very first Heinlein)
Sixth Column
Job: A Comedy of Justice
To Sail Beyond the Sunset
Expanded Universe
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

In Which Your Humble Correspondent Deciidedly Does Not Die For Anybody's Sins

2009-07-08T12:03:00.000-07:00

Friday has been reviewed and carefully sent away to have revisions implemented before it goes through prepress. Future History 1 came in well ahead of schedule--though I'm due an update on scheduling for the following volumes sometime today so we'll see how that goes--and I am currently working through # of the Beast.

Normally, as recurring readers may be aware, I keep my humble opinions to myself. I am simply the technician striving to bring you a quality product, no vain talking head I!

That said, I would like it known that I am currently reading through # of the Beast. Again. For what I believe is the ninth time. I have read the apocrypha, the Panki-Barsoom ending which, to my mind, calls up the ending of The Puppet Masters and is far superior to the published Beast ending in that it, y'know, has an actual ending. The conclusion *concludes.* Perhaps structure is simply madness in a post-modern world, I hesitate to comment as it was the...absence of substance or structure which once upon a time led me to decide against the topless towers of the English academe.

A quick search of # of the Beast turns up 16 uses of the word "teats," 11 uses of "nipples," and 2 uses of "Spung!" to describe nipples coming erect. I didn't think to search for "breasts" or any other terms. I think I'll write a "# of the Beast Unabridged Summary (Abridged)" as I go along to keep myself sane.

My point being, I'm reading this again. For you. Oh dear me.

PS: I'd like to draw people's attention to www.heinleinnexus.org which started yesterday--07/07/09, Heinlein's 102nd birthday--where a number of Heinlein afficionados are making an effort to centralize all the muck that's fit to rake about Heinlein. I encourage everybody to take a look, maybe toss in some content contributions or the like.

PPS: The absolute best way to get my attention is to email me at sean dot thompson at dula dot com

2009-06-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

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.

The New Year

2009-01-13T13:26:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-16T09:56:00.000-08:00

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 saw a sign offering a free lunch so I wrote TANSTAAFL on it.

2008-10-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-10T09:33:00.000-07:00

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...

Of BombShells and Shelters

2008-08-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

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.

Unscheduled extra

2008-08-07T10:32:00.001-07:00

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.)

2008-08-04T13:43:00.000-07:00

I am back from vacation, nothing has exploded, the Earth still proceeds along its orbit, and, frabjous joy, Transcontinental has not exploded at the hands of alien aggressors.

Which is to say, Transcontinental is still on track to deliver books as of August 15th. They're a professional company with plenty of experience in these matters, but, nonetheless, we want to hear back as to how they perform. If books are delivered in poor form or the like, please let us know as soon as possible.

We have decided to grant archives access to all Virginia Edition subscribers. Those people who already have accounts will get access as soon as we set it up, those who don't will receive access when the letters volumes print and ship next year.

I have been reading through the printer text of Stranger in a Strange Land for the first time since middle school and it's a strange experience. First, I'm amazed I missed how directly Heinlein was poking fun at the Scientologists--I plead youthful ignorance, I won't let it happen again--but, more than that, I hadn't realized how influential the book had been on my own development until rereading it and finding rational arguments and methods that I've used time and again.

What about the rest of you? Any examples of Heinlein's influence in your life?

Happy Trails

2008-07-14T17:24:00.000-07:00

We now have a confirmed ship date of August 15th. I realize this is not as soon as we might have preferred, but there we are. We also have a signed agreement with Transcontinental that the books will be ready for shipping on that date against a default of fifteen percent of the printing fees for those volumes (which would result in a modest refund to each of you). Presumably everybody watns the books in hand as much as I want them there, but feel free to hope for either outcome as you prefer.
Now, everything seems to be in place, my filing is up-to-date, there are a few things still extant, but they'll hold for a couple of weeks. I am claiming my two weeks vacation during which I shall read on hilltops in the park, enjoy the fresh swampy smog air of Houston, see family, all those lovely things. What this means for all of you: Hopefully, nothing. As of this weekend, I have gotten confirmation from every subscriber for address and some form of contact information--hurrah!--so there should be no worries about having the books shipped properly. If any emergencies crop up between now and, let's say, the 29th, please contact my office at 713-861-3600. I intend to keep my email checking to a minimum, hopefully no more than once every two to three days, but I will be checking if you want to try to get through. Compliments and niceties will be printed out for my scrapbook while complaints and death threats will be archived pending my inevitable return.
While I'm rambling on, I would like to take a moment to address our shipping arrangements for the first set of books. In the interest of saving some time and getting things out a bit faster, we're opting to bear the extra expense and have the first set shipped directly by Transcontinental. They are a rather large printing company with quite a lot of experience in the field. Nonetheless, we want to be informed if there are any problems with the packaging or books as they arrive. I'll reiterate this in roughly a month--Happy Bastille Day, incidentally--but if there are any problems, don't hesitate to contact us immediately.

Sean Thompson

2008-07-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

I've been emailing updates to subscribers for the last month and so just realized that independent observers might want to know what's happening. Okay, I'll admit, I forgot about the blog for a little bit.

To summarize all of the updates--which I've cut and paste below--we worked with Transcontinental to figure out why they were having a problem with the hot stamping of covers, decided on a solution, and it is now being implemented. Transcontinental was out for two days on civic holiday--their celebration of gaining independence as I understand it--and are now back, working on the last two stages before shipping--each stage was originally estimated as taking two-three days each for, presumably, a remaining four to six business days before the books are ready to pack and ship--and are getting me a final ship date.

It's the end of the day and I haven't gotten a date from them yet so I'll go ahead and post this and then edit it when I receive an actual date.

To All,
Our Transcontinental prepress contact has organized a meeting with the printing plant managers for Monday to figure out where the problem with the covers lies. We'll find out if it's on their end or ours.
In either case, here's what needs to happen at this point:
If it turns out that there's just no good way to get the iconography onto the leather and have it look good, I'm going to cut our losses, stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, as it were, and restrict the iconography use to the title pages from here on.
If we can get the icons to turn out nicely--and that would be such a gratifying end to this chapter--we'll have the series logo and the volume logo on the top and bottom of the spine, respectively, keep the cover simple and neat, and that will be that.
When I hear back about the meeting results, I'll let everybody know how that influences where things stand.

I apologize for all the delays that have taken place. Everything else is proceeding along smoothly, once we work this out, there should be no more foreseeable delays between ow and the publication of the last of the books.

Sincerely,

Sean Thompson
Virginia Edition Publishing Company

To All,
Our Transcontinental prepress contact has organized a meeting with the printing plant managers for Monday to figure out where the problem with the covers lies. We'll find out if it's on their end or ours.
In either case, here's what needs to happen at this point:
If it turns out that there's just no good way to get the iconography onto the leather and have it look good, I'm going to cut our losses, stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, as it were, and restrict the iconography use to the title pages from here on.
If we can get the icons to turn out nicely--and that would be such a gratifying end to this chapter--we'll have the series logo and the volume logo on the top and bottom of the spine, respectively, keep the cover simple and neat, and that will be that.
When I hear back about the meeting results, I'll let everybody know how that influences where things stand.

I apologize for all the delays that have taken place. Everything else is proceeding along smoothly, once we work this out, there should be no more foreseeable delays between ow and the publication of the last of the books.

Sincerely,

Sean Thompson
Virginia Edition Publishing Company

To All,

The stamping test was successfully carried out at Transcontinental's
facilities. They believe that they've done a superior job with this
batch and are overnighting the samples to me. They will arrive
tomorrow and I will then be able to give yea/nay approval on the work.

Sean M. Thompson

Hello everybody,
Okay, I've received and reviewed the results of the stamp test and I have to agree that it definitely looks better--Transcontinental actually took the time to do the test on seven different materials so we could have a spread to choose from. At the moment, I think we're best going with the matte finish on the original material, but I want to get Mr. Dula's rather more worldly perspective before I rush the decision out the door. Art is out of the office and so I'm going to try and talk with him either over the weekend or first thing Monday to see what he thinks before I let Transcontinental know our decision.

Have a good weekend,
Sean Thompson

Dear Homeown--Bookowner,
After review, it does seem that Transcontinental can do a much better job at stamping than their originally hired contractor. We are sending them updated cover files and will receive a response with an estimated ship date which I will pass on to each of you. As the volumes ship, I will send the tracking number of your package to you.
Also, I have sent queries to everybody to confirm your mailing address. If you are reading this message, but have not a) seen a message from me to confirm your address or b) bothered to respond, please contact me by the end of the week to help ensure your books can actually reach you rather than being stranded in postal limbo.

Best wishes to all,
Sean Thompson

Hello all,
First, I'd like to thank everybody for their kind words and patience over the last month or so, it is very much appreciated and makes my job far more pleasant than it has to be.
Second, we've got the cover files in to Transcontinental so they should have everything they need to press forward. I haven't gotten confirmation back yet because apparently today is a civic holiday of some sort in Canada/Quebec. The last estimate I received for how long the remaining steps will take was two to three days per step for two steps (printing the covers, binding the text into the covers) for a total of four to six days before they're finished and ready to ship. I've asked to receive an updated estimate to confirm that and will pass it along once I receive it. After that step is through, the books will be packed and shipped and tracking numbers will be sent out to each of you.

Best wishes,
Sean Thompson

2008-06-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

I realize it's Friday again, but I wanted to have actual progress to report:
Our artist was delayed in his return from vacation and didn't get back to town 'til today--if I hadn't been able to get hold of him today, I was going to try to get help from an artist I know of here in Houston, fortunately, however, that is not necessary. He's back in town and we're talking with the printers to work out what needs to be changed. Ideally, we'll know what requirements we have to meet by the end of the day today, Fraser will fix up the work for the first books, we'll continue onwards and confetti will fall from the sky.
I will post again as soon as we have confirmation from the printer that everything is A-OK and the covers are being printed.

Also, everybody should have received an email or letter from me to confirm contact information. If you haven't, please email me (sean (dot) thompson (at) dula (dot) com) and let me know. It occurs to me that you might want confirmation that I've received your reply so I will send confirmation of receipt to everybody.

2008-05-27T14:30:00.000-07:00

It seems that the best course of action right now is to just wait for Fraser, the artist, to get back from his vacation on Monday. Once he's back, we'll be able to patch up this last snafu without too much muss and everything can continue onward.

Two Windhaven-related notes: After speaking with Nancy Hanger, I realized that the schedule we had them on for the second books was theoretically doable, but inordinately tight. As such, I'm going to revise our earlier timeline and push everything back one month so that the second set of 17 books gets all the attention it deserves. I feel this is an acceptable delay which will greatly benefit the final set.

On another note: In my last post, I had no intention of indicating that Windhaven was dedicating anything less than its full attention to the Virginia Edition. They've been putting in an extraordinary amount of time and effort on these books and we couldn't manage this at all without them.

I don't have time to do it today, but I have pictures of a subscriber's replica office from Destination: Moon that I have permission to post on here. It's pretty cool for the Heinlein fans out there--I'm assuming that's most of you.

Updated

2008-05-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, after talking to Transcontinental, it seems that the original approval we received on the stamps was somewhat erroneously given. Luckily! Luckily, all the other work is done and the actual stamping process is only a day or two in length. We're raising the artist posthaste and, with any luck, this will resolve itself rather quickly.

2008-05-19T13:15:00.001-07:00

First, I would like to proffer an apology for not posting on Friday. My birthday was Thursday and my family surprised me by flying in from England to see me and I needed to properly show them about.

On to business:
I still haven't gotten a response from Transcontinental so far as the hold-up with the first set of volumes. I have a number of outstanding queries with them at the moment that haven't been answered. Transcontinental has been fantastic throughout the process so far, so I can only presume that they're being swamped and that explains why they haven't been able to respond as promptly as normal. They have a national holiday today and tomorrow we're supposed to have a conference call and, rather than make any guarantees, I'll report back on what comes of that.

On positive business news, we were speaking to Windhaven and it seems that the proofing and typesetting department have gotten through the set-up and teething of the process, have ramped production up to about full-speed, and we now have dates for when each set of books will be ready for printing.
The second set of books--volumes 8-23, 16 volumes--will be ready as of the start of September.
The third set of books--volumes 24-35, 12 volumes--will be ready as of the start of December.
The fourth and final set of books--volumes 36-47--will be ready as of the start of March, 2009.

http://heinleinprize.com/rah/thisibelieve.htm
We found a disc with a copy of Heinlein reading "This I Believe" for Edward R. Murrow. It's now hosted on the Heinlein Prize website, just click on the link to hear the master read the piece.

I'm going to try to include one tangential piece at the end of each of these, some interesting aspect of Heinleinia or something interesting that people have done with Heinlein's works. I think it'd be a simple, yet pleasant, addition.

2008-05-12T13:23:00.001-07:00

I'm going to do a largish post on Friday--when I believe I'll have a plethora of news-worthy offerings and a few neat pictures to share.

One note I was told about today: The original TC print run got started with the wrong paper used for the tip-in/serialization page and so that may cause a slight delay, however we may be able to circumvent that by shipping the first sets to customers as soon as they're ready rather than waiting for the full run to complete. I'll know one way or another n the next couple days, in any event.

2008-04-21T19:04:00.001-07:00

All is going as planned.

I wish I had a cat to stroke while I said that. The following will have to do.

2008-04-14T16:32:00.000-07:00

Today has been consumed by accounting.

Also the post office. Friendly advice: Don't go to the post office around April 15th if you don't have to.

Everything is still on track for the May 14th date. I'll try and get together a rough and tentative time table for the rest of the project in the next week or two.

DRUMROLL

2008-04-08T15:32:00.000-07:00

*ahem*

We have a ship date--the day on which the printer will have the books ready--of May 14th--the day before my birthday, oddly. I will check with Apogee and see what sort of average turnaround time we're looking at from there to get the books into people's hands.

Irony tastes strangely like Velveeta

2008-04-07T14:32:00.000-07:00

So I had to go out of town for part of last week and wound up without internet access come Friday. I believe this is at least a little ironic. But I'll steel myself against such ferrous and base assaults on my precious nobility and boron 'til the bitter end.

We've been shifted to a new contact point at Transcontinental--which, I must admit, was not a foreseen event, but we seem to have gotten through the transition hurdles and they have all of our files and corrected files, genotypes, phenotypes, hair and blood samples, and I'm expecting to hear back in the next day as to what the ship date will be on the first set of books. I will post that information here as well as emailing it to everybody in a test of the mailing list.

2008-04-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

I was going to make an April Fool's post telling you we'd found the Nehemiah Scudder stories, but I realized I'd be mailbomb angry after having something like that pulled. So consider yourselves almost fooled.

I'm going to move substantive posts to Fridays 'til I miss another day. EIther way, I'm not expecting terribly event-heavy posts most weeks for a while.

2008-03-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

Either my immune system has decided we're no longer friends or Houston has become a swirling cesspool of allergens. Both are possible and, potentially, self-reinforcing. Especially in the adipose-connected, PCB-rich, ozonated swamp that I love to call Houston.

So far as items directly related to the Virginia Edition:
There was a problem--now resolved--with the resolution and detail of the icons. It's no longer an issue, but that ended up pushing the final date back by about two weeks.
Blue lines have been reviewed and returned.

As I promised a week or so ago, here is the status report on the Heinlein Archives as prepared by Deb Rule:

We're pushing forward very hard toward completion with the online
Archives currently 90.4% complete and online.

There are 182,091 pages of documents and photos online. 19,228 pages
remain to be added, of which 5789 are photographs. The remaining page
total may vary as Geo just discovered a duplicated file of over 2000
pages. He's working to reconcile those two files now. You can see Recent
Additions at:
http://www.heinleinarchives.net/upload/index.php?act=viewDoc&docId=8

The online Heinlein Archives has 151 registered users from at least 10
different countries. While the majority are from the US, we have 8 users
from Canada, 3 from France, 2 from Japan, plus others from Italy,
Brazil, Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK, and Bosina & Herzegovinia.
These are registered users--the site stats show visitors from numerous
other countries around the world.

We also have several users at the US Naval Academy from Herb Gilliland's
class.

The most popular item to order is Heinlein's First Scrapbook and Photo
Album, with Opus 52: A Spaceship Navy second. Destination Moon files,
and Blassingame Correspondence are also popular. There are a number of
academics regularly and thoroughly using the Archives (as paying
customers).

Most frequent searches are done on Stranger in a Strange Land, Moon is a
Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

Since the Archives launched there have been 103,000 visits with almost 2
million individual page hits. February had 8857 visits. January had
12923 visits.

In the last month we have updated/upgraded the DORA document processing
interface in several regards--it now supports multiple source document
directories to better balance disk space distribution in a large
collection, plus a watermarking failure of a single page will no longer
halt the entire process; it now 'fails gracefully', substituting the
single (very rare) troublesome image yet completing the order. We're
also exploring a shopping cart upgrade that would include features such
as gift certificates and coupons.

2008-03-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

It isn't really within the scope of this blog, but, nonetheless, I'd like to wish safe passage to Arthur C. Clarke. The world is poorer for his absence.

Grade 19! The 19th highest grade there is!

2008-03-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

Transcontinental is shipping me fabric swatches so I can decide what color the ribbon/bookmark should be. I feel strangely like I'm married. In addition, the printer proofs are, for lack of a better word and love of alliteration, being printed and shipped to us so we can review and sign off on them to avoid any end-game errors.

As near as I can tell, the website is fully functional and when people order, they should be receiving automatic notification of success. I've also got recurring payments set up so I can just go in and turn them on for everybody who needs them.

That's all I've got at the moment that's really related to the production of the books. In a couple of days, I plan on posting the report Deb Rule sent us about the Heinlein Archives.

Sing to me, O Muse

2008-03-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I'm an oddity, but two of my favorite moments in literature are the introductory lines to the Odyssey and the Illiad, Sing to me of the Man of Twists and Turns, sing of the Rage of Achilles. The confluence of the history divined from the muse, the confluence of story and mythos, always made me shiver.

In any event...

Our files for the first volumes were uploaded last week, but it looks like the icons we had done were *too* detailed so we're scrambling to...unrefine...them. It's a shame, but we'll still be able to use the full versions, so it should all still work out.

Having spoken with Transcontinental, international shipping will come to two hundred fifty dollars (as opposed to the, apparently, one thousand Meisha-Merlin was charging).

As always,

--S

2008-03-05T15:04:00.000-08:00

I was about to walk out the door when I realized that I hadn't updated on Monday.

(I apologize for my brevity, but there's something rather pressing to which I must attend)

In terms of wonderful news for all, the first set of volumes have been successfully uploaded to the Transcontinental Mass Transit servers. What ho! Also, as of today, counting drafts, we have spine art for each of the volumes completed.

Also, we've got recurring payments working on the website so anybody who had a Meisha-Merlin account and still owed money after the change-over can sign up for the "Returning Subscribers" option to get into the system and I'll adjust it to charge the appropriate amount. This seems like a far more sensible solution than setting up a unique option for each person.

To make up for the death of information, on Monday, I will update again and include some of the neat statistics Deb Rule has supplied us with about Heinlein Archives usage.

Be Wary of Setting Precedents

2008-02-25T11:12:00.000-08:00

Here we are again on a rather beautiful day in Houston--we get about ten of them a year and so it's difficult to resist the temptation to go sit on the deck for a few hours. Alas.

All of the refunds have been sent out as of Friday and should be arriving within the next two days. I abhor doing mass mailings; we're not really set up to do them and, due to some bastardized offspring of Murphy's Law and the Peter Principle, our machines all seem to seize up when I ask them to start printing mailing labels. Nonetheless! those are complete.

We have an ETA of between April 14th and 18th for the first set of VE books--Volumes 1-7. In addition, the second set of books--Volumes 8-19--are beginning to hit second pass proofing, so things are moving along nicely.

I checked on what kind of leather "Taratan II" is meant to be and received the following description from Transcontinental:

Taratan II is a bonded leather. Lido grain is one of the embossing patterns available in the Taratan II bonded leather. It is made by a company named Cromwell. The thickness is 0.35mm.

I've received an acceptable number of initial responses concerning a Virginia Edition version of Variable Star, all of whom also seemed interested in getting Bill Patterson's Biography of Heinlein as well. In a month or so, I'll start putting out feelers on the status of those and do a more formal inquiry to the subscribers about whether or not they'd want the volumes.

Until next time

2008-02-20T14:26:00.000-08:00

I want it known, if you are responsible for working on the HP 8100DN, your job is as incomplete as the infernal machine currently jutting out behind my chair.

The wheel keeps turning...

2008-02-18T13:16:00.001-08:00

...but that only matters to the ones on the rim.

Frabjous joy (Have I already used that line? Alas.) Okay, I've got a basic printing timeline from Transcontinental. Everything will be ready to be bound as of March 19th. The time between March 19th and completion of the first books depends on a few options I confirmed this morning and so we should have a final date for that in the next couple of days.

Beyond that, volumes 8-13 and 15-19--Stranger in a Strange Land, How to be a Politician, Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, Farmer in the Sky, Between Planets, The Rolling Stones, Starman Jones, and the Star Beast--have been scanned and will be moving to the proofreading part of the process. Volume 14 (Red Planet) was delayed due to shipping problems. Uncountable, unspeakable, unholy shipping problems. Books will be moved along and completed at the rate of 3 to 4 a month. If we assume a bare minimum, we'll be seeing the next twelve completed in four months--about June--and at flat-out rates, we'll have 'em in May or so.

We'd originally planned to do volumes 1-10, 11-22, 23-34, 35-46 (roughly). The original volume 8 was lost to redistribution, volumes 9 and 10 needed more work done, and two volumes of screenplays have been added. Now our first two print runs will be volumes 1-7 and then 8-19. I'll double-check, of course, but I believe the best course of action hereafter will be to print 20-33 and 34-47 together. (I'm also open to all of your thoughts on the matter.)

Due to clerical and administrative delay, the refunds did not go out last week. I have everything I need now, however, and will be sending them out today and Wednesday. Frankh, don't worry, I'll make sure your leaves with the first batch.

More than a few have asked me whether or not Variable Star would be included with the Virginia Edition. Our plan is not to include it as, though it is based on Heinlein's outlines, it is not Heinlein's writing. Nonetheless, given what appears to be reasonable interest, I *might* be able to start talking with a few people to see if we can get the rights to print a copy of it in the same format as the rest of the Virginia Edition.

If we did do this, it would be an add-on you could choose to purchase. Before I do any of this, however, I'd need to know how many of you would actually be interested in purchasing the volume. (It'll likely be a little while before I find the time to make inquiries, but go ahead and either respond to this post or to my email.)

Also, Donato has completed his work on the painting and is just awaiting an address to which he should send the plate. I'll keep you posted on the status of that as it develops.

I believe that's all for today.

Ad Astra

2008-02-11T12:33:00.000-08:00

To those who have requested to receive money in lieu of books, we will begin sending those out starting Wednesday. If, for some reason, there is a delay in a person's account, I will contact them directly and let them know what's happened.

I may have mistaken the type of leather being used--I copied the exact name from the Transcontinental quotes, it may well be an in-house name--so, when we're uploading all the files, I'll ask for a common name.

We're currently waiting for somebody to finish rechecking the reflow of Time Enough for Loved--ETA for completion being today or tomorrow--and I'm double-checking to see if there's any reason we can't have the higher-res version of the VE logo on the book's title page. I am not currently aware of any other obstacles to going to print.

2008-02-08T14:24:00.000-08:00

Today's title is blank in honor of transparencies, the unsung heroes of the classroom.

The website is now nearly completely functional. We've had transactions run successfully and I've been able to add a basic ordering option, but I'm apparently not nearly as technically brilliant as I thought and thus need our beloved webmistress's* help to set up options for people who need to make multiple payments.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but a number of Heinlein's screenplays were found and will be published as a two-volume set by Shadow Press. These volumes will also be included in the Virginia Edition.

One side of this is that all the material for Volume 8: Destination Moon will be included elsewhere in the edition. As such, we're going to get rid of it as a discrete volume, move them all up a stage, and move from there. We're going to send Shadow Press all the pictures we have from Destination: Moon so that they can create a much nicer production than might otherwise have been the case.

Talk to you all Monday (though it may be a bit of a quickie).

A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.

2008-02-04T09:14:00.000-08:00

I would like to apologize to Zarf--tentatively termed My Number 1 Fan--for the lack of updates last week. There's been a whole lot of work without a whole lot of tangible results. (The intangibles, however, are off the charts.) Nonetheless, in all seriousness, sorry Zarf. And everybody else.

Our current status isn't especially different now than it was last week--when I asked Nancy to put together the layouts, I must, rather sheepishly, admit that I forgot to send her the graphic files we'll be using. This delay's rather entirely on me.

Of course, I realize I should also mention, while this business is being taken care of, progress is still continuing on future volumes--I need to get a status update and then I'll be able to post with the current progress on said volumes. Just so you know, we're not ramming our head into a brick wall.

The offer deadline came and went. I spent a lot of last week contacting those people who hadn't yet responded to make sure that nobody got left in the cold. (On a tangential note: I was unaware that Texas A&M had a science-fiction collection. I'm going to have to make a trip up to see it some weekend or another.)

As of this point, I've run an offer by the Exclusive Edition subscribers as to what we want to do for them and everybody seemed amenable to that solution--if you're an Exclusive Edition subscriber and *didn't* get the offer, please email me at sean (dot) thompson (at) dula (dot) com--and so all that really remains is for us to write a more formal agreement to mail to those subscribers.

I need to check with Donato to find out about where he is with the painting, I don't believe he expects to take too much longer to finish it. I'd like to take a moment to voice my appreciation for the complementary work he's doing on the piece. I believe it indicative of a dedication to one's art and work that's too often lacking.

In addition, my major task for the day: Getting the bloody shopping cart on the website to be fully functional. At this point, I believe, our beloved webmistress--long may she reign--has done all she can towards setting things up and we're at the point where I have to sort through the last of it. But sort I will! And now I'm rambling because I despise setting these galvano-mechanical monstrosities up.

Once again, I apologize for not updating last week. I will try (emphasis on 'try') to post again Friday to make up for it.

2008-01-23T13:30:00.000-08:00

I didn't quite make it to the posting stage on Monday and, while work is calling, I figured everybody'd be happy with at least a quick post to let you know I'm thinking of you. Yes, even you.

Upon realizing that our files for Time Enough For Love had no proper fonts embedded in the files--the reason for the Italics problem in that volume, a solution to which I've been chasing like my own tail, is that a, so far as I understand it, fake italic font had been created and so the printer's computers couldn't recognize it, substituted their own and that caused the spacing to go hay-wire--we're going to have somebody apply a new font--the one we'll be using throughout the books, will look the same--and go through to make sure there are no reflow problems as a result. That should take about a day or two all told.

2008-01-14T10:43:00.000-08:00

I've been back in the office for about a week now and it's time to start keeping my promise of weekly updates. Every Monday, I shall set aside a little time to update everybody on the events of the past week and expectations for the coming week to make sure everybody knows about where we are.

Virginiaedition.com no longer looks like something that crawled out of the Atlantic Dead Zone. It still needs a little work on a few things, but it is looking rather respectable.

With a little snooping, I've managed to get hold of the font styles used by Transcontinental and applied to the Meisha-Merlin volumes and I'm double-checking to see if I can get hold of the exact ones Meisha-Merlin used when they created the original files. Thus we should be good to go in and fix the errors that have been noted in the originals without completely messing everything up.

The image at the top of the post is what we drummed up to be the official "Virginia Edition" icon, however we may have to change/replace it as it seems that one might not work particularly well with Transcontinental's printing.

I need to pick out the fonts for use for the text on the spines and covers of the books--I'm so excited, it's almost like picking out drapes!--and sign off on the layout. Once I have that done, we should be good to send the books for prepress and printing and I'll have a lovely little timeline for when the first books will be printed.

Work has also begun on the juveniles. I'll double-check to see where we are on the production for those and when we can expect to have them ready for printing.

We're nearing the February 1st deadline we set in the letter and while the majority of people have responded, we still have a substantial amount of people who haven't responded so I'm going to begin calling directly to make contact with these people.

This doesn't apply to many, but we don't have the email addresses for a few of those who ordered the Exclusive Edition. I believe we have phone numbers for all of the people whose email we don't have so I'll be setting time aside to call them, but, if you've ordered the Exclusive Edition and haven't received an email from me, please contact me as soon as you have a chance.

That's all I can think of at the moment so I will bid you all adieu, ad espera, ad astra (I don't speak Latin, cut me a break) while I go and make sure my home isn't destroyed by a gas leak.

2008-01-08T07:23:00.001-08:00

I'm afraid that I came down sick and as a result have been rather completely out of the loop for the last week and a bit. Please bear with me as we resume normal broadcasting service.

Icons

2007-12-26T11:07:00.001-08:00

Happy Holidays to all. I'm popping back in to work for a moment and found these wonderful images ready to go. I'll post 'em a few at a time.

Double Star

Destination: Moon

Beyond This Horizon:

In my defense, I was going to post Friday

2007-12-18T08:49:00.000-08:00

Hello one and all,
By now, it seems that most of you have seen the letter in some fashion or another--I've received responses from about half the subscribers at this point, mainly positive response, which is a plus.
I was going to update Friday and got sidetracked by trivium--and I dearly wish I meant grammar, logic, and rhetoric. *ahem* Regardless, I found out we actually have access to Meisha-Merlin RAH's quickbook client lists! This simplifies things so very much so I've been spending a wee (not really) bit of time organizing our files so we've got full contact and subscription info on everybody. As painful as this is to do over a long stretch of time--physically, mentally, anthropomorphically--it's so very convenient to have a full break-down of everything on-hand in a single centralized location. I still hate doing it, though.
While it means we can't get the poster ready for Christmas, I've decided to let Donato take the time to work on the painting so it'll look nicer. I've also checked into it and we can get a special cut of the poster that'll be the exact right size without too much difference in the price.
Jeff Cook is going to take one last look through volumes 1-8 for us, which I certainly appreciate him taking the time to do. As for volumes 9 and 10, I'm personally uncomfortable with the state of The Past Through Tomorrow volumes as they stand. Rather than just tossing them forward, I've decided to send them through another round of proofing. I will be unabashedly--and probably undesirably--forthright and admit I'm feeling slightly tremulous at the moment; there've been rather a lot of comments about things that have gone wrong and I'm being a few steps more cautious than might normally be the case.
Fraser Sandercombe has been making icons to go on the spines of each of the books so they'll be more readily identifiable at a glance. They're rather nice; I'll upload them at the end of this. We've got two choices for Stranger in a Strange Land, so let me know which you prefer--I think the first one is better, personally.
I was going to update on Friday, but ended up consolidating our client info 'til 7 at night and decided to wait 'til this week. I'll be going to visit Family Friday-Sunday, Monday-Tuesday is Christmas and then, assuming I've managed to get everything into a simple, self-sustaining set-up, I very much plan to take two weeks off and be back around the 4th or so. Expect no real updates during that time period, though I will have access to my email if you have specific questions that desperately need answering.
I should be able to eke out the time to finish consolidating the subscriber info at which point I'm going to send out a mass e-mail (Don't worry, I'll BCC) just to double-check that they all work. If we've communicated via that email in the past, don't feel compelled to respond.

And now the pictures!

Edit: Okay, I can't actually upload PDFs--apparently!--so I'm going to see about getting jpegs or some such from the artist to upload.

Second Edit: Betsy asked if there was a way to contact me on the net. My work email is sean dot thompson at dula dot com.
I'm not entirely sure why the Meisha-Merlin website has *changed* to include credit card processing. I was under the impression that they were shutting down their site, but I'll check into that.
As for the new site, the new coding got patched up appropriately, I found the time to write the content, and at the moment Kevin Murphy is supposed to be updating it all and is turning it back over tomorrow. We purchased both virginiaedition.com and virginiaedition.net to host the site--as God is my witness, please, please, please do not visit those just yet. We've put up a flimsy shell of nothing but text so we can show it to the people we're getting our merchant account from. It is a hideous monstrosity and viewing it will yield nothing except unhappiness and lonely nights.

2007-12-04T12:15:00.000-08:00

The world is filled with interesting facts. For example, did you know that neighborhood post offices don't have IRCs (International Reply Coupons) and so you've got to go to the main city branch? So it is in Houston, in any event. Another interesting fact: Office Space was not a work of fiction, printers really will tell you there is a paper jam when there is no paper jam. When there is a paper jam, printers will lie to you and tell you the jam is on the right side of the printer when, in fact, it is on the left.

All of which is to say that, after hours of struggling with the world's most accursed machines--finally bear-wrestling it into submission where it now weeps at my feet--the letter/update has been successfully mailed to everybody and, barring those outside of the US, should arrive by week's end.

For those who are especially anxious, I present the full text of the letter--less the papercut potential--for your perusal.

*ahem*

December 2007

Dear Virginia Edition Subscriber,

On June 29, 2007, the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust sent you a letter discussing the proposed transition of publication of the Virginia Edition from Meisha-Merlin to the Heinlein Prize Trust. From the responses we received, it seems that a large number of subscribers did not receive our letter, so we are enclosing a copy for your information. If you did not receive the June letter and have not spoken with us about it, please feel free to contact us at your convenience.

In the June letter, we stated that volume seven would be published sometime in September, however, as we examined the situation, we found that the Virginia Edition, as begun by Meisha-Merlin, was economically unviable. While the Trust wanted to move ahead as quickly as possible, we realized that rushing into this project could easily doom the entire enterprise and we might never see a completed Virginia Edition. As a result, we have spent the intervening months examining how best to ensure the continued production and completion of the Virginia Edition as a quality set of books.

The Trust received no royalties from the subscription payments received by Meisha-Merlin. While the Trust has no legal obligation to honor contracts subscribers made with Meisha-Merlin, the Trustees do feel morally compelled to do everything within their power to ensure that the original Virginia Edition subscriptions are honored. Taking over the production of the Virginia Edition would create a potential liability to the Trust of over a quarter-million dollars. Since the Trust is a non-profit organization, this potential liability has complicated our business planning. On advice of our attorney, the Trust has organized a new company, The Virginia Edition Publishing Company(VEPC), to take over production of the Virginia Edition.

After taking many factors into account, the VEPC chose to completely republish the Virginia Edition. The new Virginia Edition will be in full leather, will be serialized from 1-2000, and will not have artwork or slipcases.

The respected and experienced folks at Windhaven Press have contracted to scan, typeset, and proofread the text. Bill Patterson will reprise his role in organizing Robert Heinlein's letters, fiction, and non-fiction within the volumes. The leather-bound sets will continue to be printed by Transcontinental Printing, and Apogee Books will handle marketing and distribution. Printing and distribution of the books will be done in groups of volumes. The first group of ten volumes will be printed in the first quarter of 2008. Following that, the VEPC expects to release ten additional volumes every three to four months, completing the Virginia Edition by the first quarter of 2009.

The Virginia Edition Publishing Company is making the following offer to all current Virginia Edition subscribers: Subscribers may return their books to VEPC and receive a full refund of the monies paid. Alternatively, subscribers who elect to retain their subscription at the original subscription price may keep the original six slipcased volumes and will receive a new complete set bound in leather at no additional cost. They will also receive posters of Heinlein artwork that the Trust has commissioned, and a poster of the painting originally designed for the Virginia Edition slipcase. Subscribers to the clothbound version will receive a free upgrade to leather; subscribers to the leather version will receive an entire second leather bound set at no additional cost, which they can keep, or donate to a library or school.. Exclusive edition subscribers will receive further communication from VEPC on this matter. Please send VEPC your response and confirm your contact details in the enclosed envelope. VEPC’s offer expires February 1st, 2008. After February 1, 2008, subscribers who have not made an election will be entitled to retain the books they have received in full satisfaction of the subscription price paid. Additionally, after February 1, 2008, the price of the Virginia Edition may fluctuate with the market.

We understand that you have all committed a substantial amount of money to the Virginia Edition and that the aforementioned problems have made this a trying time for everyone. We thank all of you for the patience you have shown while we have worked to ensure that we will not be subject to the issues that have plagued the Virginia Edition to date.

The Trust and the Virginia Edition Publishing Company invite each of you to share your thoughts and feelings about the Virginia Edition with us and the VEPC. The VEPC has established a blog at virginiaedition.blogspot.com to keep subscribers updated with the status of the Virginia Edition. If that does not provide enough information or does not adequately address your concerns, please feel free to contact Sean Thompson of the Virginia Edition Publishing Company at sean.thompson@dula.com or 713-861-3600.

Sincerely,

Arthur M. Dula
Trustee of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust

J. Buckner Hightower
Trustee of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust

James M. Vaughn, Jr.
Trustee of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust

Sean Thompson
Manager of the Virginia Edition Publishing Company

A Lengthy Post of Predetermined Girth

2007-11-29T15:16:00.000-08:00

Hello all,,
I will begin by addressing the most recent points raised in posts before moving on to the meaty part of the update:

a) Contact with the subscribers:
A good point was raised about contacting the subscribers more regularly, perhaps using the email they registered when they opened their accounts. I see no real problem with doing this--I could send out an initial email and offer the option to unsubscribe to keep from pestering people. I feel rather sheepish admitting it, but I hadn't considered that possibility.

I am checking to see if there will be any way to tie this blog--or some form of blog format--to the new website for the sake of convenience. (Until then, blogspot supports atom feeds so simply visit virginiaedition.blogspot.com/atom.xml and you can choose to use firefox's live bookmarks to automatically see updates or import the address into a feed program of your choice and you'll be automatically updated.) I've no idea how much trouble there would be in embedding all of that, but we'll find out!

Some seem to feel that we've been ignoring, perhaps intentionally, subscribers, but I'd like to assure you all that that is not the case. We've sent letters to everybody at the addresses provided to us and we're honestly perplexed at how many have gone astray. When we get contacted by people that didn't get a letter, we're taking down their addresses and correcting them if they're off. If the next mail-out doesn't work, we may have to resort to rather excessive methods to try and get proper communication lines going. Regardless, we are not intentionally trying to shut people out or give them the cold shoulder. We have no reason to do so and, honestly, pretty much everything we're doing--and part of why this has taken so long--is with each of you in mind.

b) Time Enough for Love
Jim Bob, thank you for pointing out the error in the poem. We'll fix that.

On which note, we have a list of errors to fix, but if you have spotted errors in the first six volumes, please feel free to let us know.

c) The Next Three Weeks
As I've mentioned, we're sending a letter to the subscribes detailing what's going to be happening. Right now, I'm waiting to get confirmation back that there's nothing dramatically wrong with it before sending it out and, as such, it's likely to post on Monday. As soon as I do get confirmation, though--hopefully tomorrow morning--I will post the text here so that you, loyal readers, will be able to read it in advance.
The next few weeks should be the last of the chaotic times and see the following happen:
a) Website set-up properly
b) Books 1-10 to printer for prepress with printing to begin with the New Year
c) A poster of "Heinlein's World" (the Donato painting meant for the spine of the first twelve books) printed and sent to all the original subscribers. (On which note, while I'm looking at printing options, the painting is rather wider than tall such that a single print would probably end up having bleed on top and bottom--caption "Heinlein's World" on bottom, probably set the painting against a starscape. Would anybody prefer having two half-posters (the left half and the right half) that could be put together to form the whole painting?) My hope is to have that to everybody by Christmas.

Once all of that is done, most everything should proceed regularly and smoothly 'til the ~~bitter~~ sweet end.

Once again, I would like to thank all of you for the astounding patience that you've shown throughout this process. It speaks well of you.

Desperately Trying Not To Be Tacky

2007-11-18T21:41:00.000-08:00

Let us imagine that information comes to me as a trickling spring--rather like an hourglass in a way--of quantum water. It comes slowly and isn't entirely sure whether it exists or not at any given moment. (Yes, I've probably just made a dozen quantum physicists weep.)

Nonetheless, charging right along.

To update information:
We ran into a hold-up with volumes 9 and 10. My original understanding was that they would be ready about the start of November so we could have the first print run done by December 15th and everybody could have a nice extra gift under the tree. (Our Christmas tree was always rather sparsely populated so the idea appealed to me.) As it stands, for reasons I won't go into unless everybody displays a particularly keen interest in the details, those won't be complete *until* the 15th. (9 and 10 are caught up in the transition between (edit)proofreaders and typesetters;* subsequent volumes will proceed at a production rate of about four a month with ten printed every two and a half months--add a couple of weeks either way for wiggle room.
Our choice has been to either go ahead and start with volumes 1-8 or wait for volumes 1-10. I must admit, I'm giving in to my personal sense of aesthetics here. By waiting for the first ten volumes to be finished, that gives us
a) time to have icons devised for the book. The icons will go on the spine and help identify each book at a glance.
b) We can start the new books with the new year and end with the closing of the year.

Also, somebody asked when we were planning on talking to all the subscribers about what's happening. We're going to send out another letter the week after Thanksgiving--as it seems a number of people didn't get the original, we're going to include a copy of that as well. In addition, the day we mail it, I will post a copy of that letter here. It will include the details of our new operating arrangements and the details for all original subscribers.

*I originally said "Copyeditors" here. I do apologize, I keep confusing the term "copyeditor" with "proofreader" and "typesetter."

Website: Where's Neal Stephenson's Metaverse?

2007-11-13T07:22:00.000-08:00

We finally got the glitches out of the website design and I got to take a peek--sans any real content--and it's lookin' pretty swanky. I'll post links shortly.

Website Wittiness goes here

2007-10-18T21:30:00.001-07:00

On the note of the website, as I understand it, there's one last bit of coding that's been giving the designer trouble and as soon as that's taken care of, we can load everything on to the HPT websites. Ah, if only I had world enough and time...

PS: I'm not the biggest Natalie Portman fan, but I still think it was rather a shame that her head was shaved in V for Vendetta.

Global Warming: Loquacity hath its price

2007-10-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

The various contracts are all largely finalized, we're reviewing our production schedules with both Windhaven and Transcontinental so everything will flow together nicely. Right now, we're doing a final cost analysis to find the best place to set the new price and then we should be able to knock that first domino over.

Also, my last post received the following question:
If the Trust doesn't have our money, who does? How is the production of the new version being paid for, if not with our money? And how will the Trust break even or better if they have no money from any of the subscribers? I must have missed a memo somewhere; sorry if these questions have been answered before.

On the first point, we're investigating. As for the rest of it, the Trust is having to bankroll everything out of pocket. We're currently doing a cost analysis to figure out how much we have to charge to have any hope of breaking even. On their own, things aren't too bad and we can offer a pretty good deal and still hope to break even with a fair margin of comfort. Of course, we're also having to account for offering the original subscribers refunds. It's making a substantial dent in our comfort zone--particularly as the majority of subscribers paid in full up front--but, as I believe I've said, we feel it is a necessary step to maintain the goodwill of the community.
To summarize: We're looking for the money. We're paying out of pocket and aiming for a price that'll let us pay subscribers back as needed while still not hurting the Trust's stability.

Adjectives, adverbs, ad hominem, oh my!

2007-10-11T05:51:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I'm horrendous at keeping track of time when I'm busy. Poor internal clock. Perhaps I should take a leaf from Mieville's page and have one grafted onto my arm. A portable clock, as it were. I could watch it.

It has been five weeks since my previous substantive post and it seems that something is long overdue. I'm afraid that most of our developments have consisted of the pebbles that form an avalanche, none really seemed quite worth reporting on their own.

We've a contract with Windhaven now and I'm expecting a production schedule from them any day now. Once we have the production schedule, I can talk with Transcontinental--incidentally, we've signed a contract awarding them the full 46 volume print-run in return for a discounted rate--to work out a printing schedule. Ideally, we would like to print about ten volumes at a time to minimize certain associated costs. The last thing we need before we can settle on a final price is determine what our storage costs are going to be; it *looks* like Transcontinental has a fairly cheap storage system set up, we just need to confirm the size of their storage skids.

We're pressing ahead with all of this on the one hand, on the other, we're trying to find out what it would cost to produce a set of slipcases and so on for original subscribers. Features which, in aggregate, are not feasible, may be conceivable when done for a small group of subscribers and we would like to see what we can do in bringing what you will receive closer to parity with what you ordered.

I've seen a sample of the new VE website and it looks like it will be quite attractive. I'm told that the designer is ironing out a bug of some sort--despite my best pretenses, I am not a technical person.

On a final note, there are a few things that I should clarify which, I believe, will also cut down on the number of nasty letters I'll receive.

The first is that the Trust does not have your money. Any of it. We've never received any of it and so it is not in our possession. We are offering refunds, out of our own pocket, because we feel that we possess an ethical obligation to help protect the investments of those who purchased the Virginia Edition. It is not a particularly light burden, but one that seems incumbent upon us to bear.

Secondly, if we've taken several months to get to where we are now, it is because we're attempting to plan out everything we can to ensure that once we begin actual printing and marketing again, we can be reasonably certain that the Virginia Edition will be able to stand on its own, will not be diverted off into any terribly dark alleys, won't bully other limited editions, and will not prove a financial burden to the Trust which would dearly love to at least break even on this venture.

2007-10-02T11:31:00.001-07:00

Just so you know, I haven't forgotten any of you. We should be able to deliver the final details--y'know, give or take--early next week.

2007-09-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

In reference to one question asked of the last post, we don't actually have more information on the status of the previously printed volumes yet, I meant "Keep reading..." in a general sense.
To clarify, however, we are contractually obliged not to sell the books individually or in any way except as a complete set. This may mean we will have to request the original volumes be returned at our cost, naturally, but we'll have to see if that's necessary (also entirely leaving aside the question of how easily we will be able to make people return books...)

You call it a grain transport, I call it a rail gun.

2007-09-04T07:50:00.001-07:00

Today--several days late, I admit--I reveal what we've been working on with regards to the Virginia Edition and why there've been such delays. I'll be completely straightforward and honest and all I ask is that you read through to the end.

In taking over the publication of the Virginia Edition, the first thing we've had to do was to check on the financial status that had been left to us. Without delving too deeply into the details, matters were less than peachy-keen. One of the major roadblocks that we ran into was that the pricing of the edition--both production cost and selling price--was untenable. For those interested in an example, the slip cases that come with each book cost significantly more than the books themselves.

The Heinlein Trust's main goal in publishing the Virginia Edition is to create a quality set of the works of Robert Heinlein that can be afforded by most people and which will thus serve to ensure the availability and further the legacy of Mr. Heinlein. It is with that in mind that we are initiating the following changes in the set:

In order to reduce both production cost and selling price, we will no longer be producing the slipcases for the set nor do we intend to gild the edges of the pages. We are also removing the artwork by Donato from the spine--as we have acquired the rights to the painting that was to be used for the first set of twelve books, we would like to produce a poster of the full painting for all of the current Virginia Edition subscribers. In place of the artwork, we will print the title of the book on the spine and front cover.

On a somewhat brighter note, we will be eliminating the cloth-bound edition and printing entirely in leather at a significantly reduced price. We would like to let all the current customers keep the six volumes they already have, however we're investigating to see if we'll actually be allowed to do so. Keep reading for more information on that.

As starting these changes with volume 7 would result in a severely mismatched set, we are going to reprint the first six volumes--and take a little time to make sure some of the errors from those volumes are solved--when we next go to print. (That, incidentally, is the reason volume 7 hasn't been published when I said it would, when we realized we might be reprinting, we put it on hold.) In the interim, we've also managed to ready volume 8 and get substantial work done on volumes 9-12. Depending on how much longer our talks with the printer go (see below), we'll be printing at least 8 volumes.

This is still subject to change--for reasons I'll go into later--but we expect the new VE price to be in the $1800 dollar range. As this is below the previous cost of the cloth edition--and even further below the cost of the leather edition--we will be issuing refunds equal to the difference between the new cost and the old cost. If you've been on a subscription plan, we'll either reduce your total number of payments or reduce the size of the payments.

Refunds:
We are currently investigating to see if there's any way that we can carry the burden of producing a limited print-run of the original version of the Virginia Edition--sans Donato artwork--for the original subscribers and for the Exclusive edition subscribers, however, if we cannot, or if you're simply infuriated with the blasphemy that we're perpetrating and want no part in any of it, we will offer a full refund of your money in lieu of the new set of books.

Other details:
We are currently contracting with Windhaven Press--a small editing group that has had experience with Heinlein's works--to continue the editing for the project. Under this set-up, we hope to move through the editing process quickly and efficiently. Assuming no major problems crop up, our optimistic goal is to have the editing and layout work done by around January, pessimistically by April or May. Once the lay-out work has been completed, we can print any that hadn't yet been printed--we're hoping to print in at least sets of six every few months--and subscribers could have a full set by the end of next summer.

One of the few remaining hurdles we have to face right now is nailing down some of the details with Transcontinental Publishing--we've gotten a few sets of conflicting numbers and so we're looking to see where the error lies there--and that's been a factor in some of our delays.

We are also considering replacing the publication of "Grumbles from the Grave" with "Requiem" edited by Yoji Kondo. I've spoken with Mr. Kondo and he was excited about the possibility. Our rationale for considering the change is that "Grumbles from the Grave" follows several volumes of Heinlein's personal correspondence and including "Grumbles" would be largely repetition and so "Requiem" might be a welcome substitution.

At this time, I would also like to take a moment to recognize the work done by Bill Patterson. Bill Patterson is the official Heinlein Scholar and he is putting a lot of his time and effort into acquiring our source texts, putting together introductions, and sewing together the letters of correspondence, collections of non-fiction and short stories.

'tis all for now.

Send love and hate mail to sean (dot) thompson (at) dula (dot) com or leave comments on the blog. We really do want to hear from you, your feedback is important as we proceed.

In Reference to Responses

2007-08-23T07:33:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I said that I would not be revealing my hand and it has been pointed out that--fairly, I believe--that at the least I should make an effort to post at least once a week anyway to let people know what's happening, even if that is subject to change.

I believe I properly expressed the reasons for my reticence in revelations, but in any other position, I would be starving for information of any kind and so what I propose to do is to make at least one weekly post on the events of the past week with the caveat that what I say/post is still subject to change. As of now, that's the best offer I can reasonably make without being forced to retcon myself down the line.

EDIT: The new Virginia Edition website is currently being produced and scheduled to go online around the very end of August or start to mid-September at which point we will finally be able to take down the Meisha-Merlin page on the Virginia Edition.

Also, Fred asked about contact information and I would highly suggest sending questions to sean (dot) thompson (at) dula (dot) com. That is my email address and while I'm going to start reviewing two of the main Heinlein email accounts to make sure that things don't get missed, it'll be much easier--and probably more swiftly responded to--if you write to my email directly.

The Internet Has Many Abandoned Alleyways. This Is Not One of Them

2007-08-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

Realizing that it's been several weeks since my last post, I wanted to check in and make sure everybody knew that I hadn't forgotten about you, we've just been very busy trying to finalize all the arrangements that need to be made. I've been holding off on revealing too much because there have been bits and pieces that were in flux and I realized it might be a tad frustrating to see things mentioned which were later not done--if you keep up with the video game industry at all, we'll call this the Molyneux Fable Effect.

Thus, as much as I hate to disappoint, I will not be revealing my hand today in the hopes that I can make a full and dazzling report about two weeks hence when I hope to have the final status report of this Interregnum period.

Buzzword: Progress (Until the Luddites attack)

2007-07-25T22:13:00.000-07:00

I thought everybody would appreciate a quick update on our current status.

Volume 7, as it has been ready to go, and is merely awaiting our final decision. Thank you all for bearing with us as we press forward with this.

Volume 8 (Destination: Moon) is nearly ready to be sent in for an estimate.

Volume 9 (The Past Through Tomorrow Part 1) is being proofed and we expected it to be ready by the end of August.

Volume 10 (The Past Through Tomorrow Part 2) is going through the initial proofing stages and Bill Patterson is preparing his introduction. Hopefully, this volume will be prepped and ready by the end of September.

Volumes 11 (Stranger in a Strange Land) and 12 (How To Be A Politician) have been scanned in and should be ready for proofreading. Assuming everything continues on schedule, these should be ready in October and November.

Also, somebody raised the following question: I am curious if the quality of the books, i.e., acid free paper, etc., is going to continue with the rest of the books in the series.

Yes, we do intend to maintain the same quality of book that has been enjoyed previously.

Lensman Clarification

2007-07-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

I feel I should clarify an error I made in the first post. Meisha-Merlin has not declared bankruptcy. They are merely unable to fulfill their obligations to the Trust. I apologize for any confusion which may have resulted from my error.

Times of Change and Change of Time

2007-07-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

It's been a bit longer between updates than I'd hoped.

I blame Sasquatch.

Question: Do you still intend to offer the limited "exclusive" Virginia editions to the current subscribers?

The Exclusive editions will continue to be provided to those who have ordered them. As I write this, I understand that we have sold all twenty of the exclusive editions. The Trust was the organization providing the memorabilia and we are more than happy to continue providing the exclusive edition to those who have ordered it. On that note, those who ordered the exclusive edition should have received or will shortly receive a copy of the program book from the Heinlein Centennial.

We're one step away from formally incorporating the new entity that will be responsible for the Virginia Edition, we're just waiting for Trustee approval and we'll be up and running, rather like a well-tuned piano.*

In other news, we're holding off one more week on publishing volume #7. We understand that everybody is impatient to get the next volume and see the next piece of the painting--I hear Snape kills Voldemort--however while speaking with the printer, we found something we believe could be amazing for all of the subscribers. I don't want to say too much in case it doesn't go as planned, so I'll leave you with that tantalizing tidbit.

*I am aware that, under normal circumstances, pianos do not run.

Commentary and Riposte I

2007-07-04T16:07:00.001-07:00

Question: With whom are you affiliated? Are you with Meisha Merlin RAH, or with the Heinlein Prize Trust? Other? Will you be at the Centennial to answer questions?

I am an employee the Heinlein Prize Trust. Meisha-Merlin is now a defunct organization; further progress on the Virginia Edition will be handled by a new corporation set up and guaranteed by the Trust. I will be at the Centennial along with Buckner Hightower, one of the Heinlein Trustees. We will be available throughout the Centennial to answer questions and I believe Mr. Hightower intends to have a question-and-answer session on Saturday or Sunday.

First Steps: Excitement Abounds

2007-06-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

My name is Sean Thompson; I'll be the center of operations for ensuring the publication of the Virginia Edition. This blog will serve to keep the Heinlein community updated on the latest progress concerning the Virginia Edition.

I will try to keep this posted and updated on a daily basis--or as often as warranted--and will address any questions I receive in the comments section. This blog isn't meant to be an entirely one-way window; we want to hear from you with your questions, comments, concerns and ideas.

To summarize the events of the past few months for those who are unaware:
Meisha-Merlin, the publishers who won the contract for the Virginia Edition, went bankrupt sometime after publishing the sixth volume. Due to their inability to continue activities, the Trust has stepped in to ensure the continuation of the VE. There was an unavoidable delay while we evaluated the status of the project and determined what the best course of action was. As I write this, volume 7--Beyond This Horizon--is at the printer and we expect it to be ready in the next two months while volumes 8, 9, and 10 are currently being proofed.

Ad Astra