RE: Revised Science Fiction books?Should I keep the original or buy the revised edition?
Alvin Eriol > March 1st, 2023, 03:21 PM
Is anyone saying why the book is being revised, or in what fashion?
We are just now seeing books by Dr. Seuss and now by Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, etc) being diddled with, to appease some Leftist sensibility or other, but Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, and that particular book (haven't read it, BTW) don't seem likely to be prominent targets for such, at least not at this point.
Tere are other reasons SF/fantasy novels and short stories get revised. Tolkien famously revised The Hobbit decades after it was published, in order to preserve continuity with The Lord of the Rings - and he even contrived an "internal" explanation for doing so! (In the 1st version, Bilbo Baggins didn't come clean about the fact he found the Ring and didn't play the Riddle Game fair, but instead claimed he won it from Gollum. In the post LotR version, Bilbo told the truth about how he acquired it and gained Gollum's emnity.) The short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," by Philip K. Dick was expanded into a full-length novelization of the movie adaptation Total Recall.
There are always corrections of clumsy editing errors (one of my faves, The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe, in one paperback printing contains a doozy that mystified me for the longest), but those seldom are considered true "revisions".