From: "Talarican" <exultnttalarican@mindspring.com>
Subject: (urth) More about 5HC Variant texts - things half-remembered
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2000 12:52:33 

From: Dan Rabin <danrabin@a.crl.com>
Subject: Variant texts of "The Fifth Head of Cerberus"
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 20:04:35 -0800 ...


<quote>
Micheal Andre-Driussi writes,

>I vaguely remember some talk about possible diffs between "5HC" novella in
>ORBIT and 5HC, but I can't recall if it was just speculation or somebody
>had actually gotten down to doing the work of looking.

That was me, too.  The Gene-Wolfe-three-novellas editions have a brief
passage in the scene in the library in which the narrator finds an edition
of the short stories of Vernor Vinge.  This passage is absent in the
original _Orbit_ version.
<unquote>

Dan? Mantis? Maybe you can look into something that's bugged me for awhile.

Unfortunately, the (Ace?) paperback edition of 5HC I read originally is long
gone, possibly given away by my late brother, to whom it belonged; and the
hardback (Scribner's?) edition I used more recently belongs to the county
library, so I lack either one to consult.

I recall when I read the hardback library copy, I was struck by one
particular passage that I was positive had been added from the older
paperback version. It was in "A Story", where the Old Wise One was
explaining to Sandwalker how the Shadow Childrens' "singing" worked. In the
paperback version, as I recall, he said something like "Shake your hands.
Now imagine your hands gone. That is what we shake. You may call it nothing,
but what you think is nothing holds all things apart. When it is gone, all
the worlds are born". I seem to recall the hardback version continued with
another new sentence, not present in the paperback, which indicated this
"birth" would follow the collapse of the universe. (so the Shadow Childrens'
"singing" vibrates Einstein's Cosmological Constant, or Fred Hoyle's
C-field? <g>)

Are you or any other Urthlings (Borski?) able to check that possible text
variation?

<quote>
>Wow, great detective work!

Not really--I just happen in both cases to have read the version with the
added passage, then the shorter version, and noted the absence of something
memorable (to me, at any rate).  This shouldn't be mistaken for scholarship!
<unquote>
hey, works for me!



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