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

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/

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.

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.

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:

1. 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.)
2. Nonfiction 2 - I got this volume last week and just reached the halfway point before I finally started this long awaited update.
3. 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.)
4. 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.)
5. Letters 3 - this one had a little trouble at the first proofreader, but may be back at WH (see comment above).
6. Farnham's Freehold - Already through all three passes and back at WH for final edits to be applied.
7. Tramp Royale - is working through some last typesetting issues - like discussions on including the map tracing the Heinleins' journeys around the world.
8. Screenplay 1 - transcribed, still needs typesetting.
9. Screenplay 2 - this one is still on my to do list for transcribing since some of the pages are almost impossible - see image below.
10. 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.]

1. Age
2. In which country do you reside?
3. If USA, which state, if not skip?
4. Gender
5. What industry do you work in?
6. How did you hear about the Virginia Edition Collection?
1. Internet
2. Print advertisement
3. Word of mouth
4. Heinlein Centennial
5. 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:

1. The poem “Dance Session,” Virginia Heinlein’s skates, a letter from RAH to VG with a doodle of her ice skating
2. Manuscript of article: “Appointment in Space”/ “All Aboard the Gemini,” Popular Mechanics May 1963 (turned to page 112 or after)
3. Photograph(s) from the archives of the V2 launch, Article “Journey of Death”
4. Heinlein’s computer with a MS or letters or something
5. Heinlein’s camera with original photos and blow-ups thereof
6. 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”
7. The Rolling Stones TV script for Star Trek: “The Trouble with Tribbles.” (Opus #92?), props or shots from the episode
8. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your slightly less confused and vaguely comforted Project Manager

More books

Hello All,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hugos?

I have a research project for you all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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