Chapter 12: lines we have…segment with:
. . . Shakespeare; and Bird . . .
Ben, leavethe damn charts-
“Pollard? What would you do?”
<NOTE: line(s) missing here at page break?>HERE’S POSSIBLY OUR PROBLEM. IS THERE MATERIAL MISSING HERE?
“I’m sure you have,” he said. “Use Sol.”
That’s what it says in my version. I’ve got the omnibus, Devil to the Belt, so if it’s missing something, it’s missing in that version too.
Nothing missing in mine!!
Mine says…
Ben, Leave the damn charts-
…all on one line like that. Not broken up. The Shakespeare bit is on one page and then at the top of the next it starts with “Ben leave the damn charts-” then a return and “Pollard? What would you do?” . Maybe there was an accidental hard return triggered by whatever scanned it or in that printing of it that broke up that line, but that is all the text that is there at least. Mine was the Warner Books 1992 printing.
Oh, never mind. I see what you’re saying now and mine reads the same way and it does look like something is missing there but it was always missing there as far as what I own. I guess with all of this ebook editing you’ll start to find the occasional old oversights.
Here is how it looks:
http://yfrog.com/0kimg0333aoj
I second philosopher77 and sweetbo: It seems that what’s missing really is missing. Or if it was meant that way I’m failing to make sense of it.
Just for another data point:
I’ve got a paperback (Questar / Warner) edition (“First printed in paperback: June, 1993 / 10 9 8 …”) and what it’s got is:
Middle of page 268
… Shakespeare, and Bird…
/Ben, leave the damn charts–/
“Pollard, what would you do?”
“I’m sure you have,” he said. “Use Sol.”
“Or Pell. Or Viking. …”
Ditto for mine: NEL English paperback from 1993 – laid out as:
… Shakespeare, and Bird …
Ben, leave the damn charts –
“Pollard , [and so on]
all on one page, no breaks
OK…great. Ben can be elliptical, and the scanner queried it.—just checking. 😉
I think it actually makes sort of sense, but I’ll give it a close once-over.
Ben, leave the damn charts –
is what Bird used to say to Ben, in Heavy Time, when he wanted Ben to learn from history and the people around him, not just the numbers. Ben is remembering Bird, and what Bird most wanted to teach him — how to be a human being, living and responding to others with both feeling *and* smarts.
So no, nothing’s missing!
THanks for that! I’m doing Hellburner after an ellipsis of my own, back to about 1988, and while I do remember certain texts almost verbatim after a decade or so, 1975-1980 is starting to surprise me now and again.
It was I who scanned that chapter and inserted that query, so perhaps I had better explain. My copy of Hellburner is the NEL UK hardcover edition, 1992. At this point in the text, on my first reading (and probably every subsequent one), I turned the page, read the top line (“I’m sure you have..”), and then flipped back to check that I hadn’t turned over two pages at once.
I may be a little more literal-minded than the average reader, and as CJ says, Ben can certainly be elliptical.
Actually, Parsifal, and thank you—it’s been an excellent transcript—one bennie of doing this re-read myself is the chance to see how the very elliptical language of the Belters plays to a reader—just occasionally I need to slip in a tiny ‘pointer’ or ‘clarifier’ that won’t alter the read in the least, or likely even be noticed, but it can make sure of the interpretation of who/what/where. If it’s not clear from context I can improve the context. Inventing a dialect has its pitfalls. 😉
Ah! I know what might not have been clear to folks (particularly with a page break right there).
The line, “I’m sure you have,” he said. “Use Sol.” is spoken aloud by Ben, in answer to Porey’s *earlier* phrasing of his question (before Ben’s reverie): “That’s very good, Pollard. What would you suggest we do about it?” Ben is being elliptical here… and also, not deigning to respond to Porey’s redundant repetition of the question. The sense of Ben’s answer is, “I’m sure you have [suggested this already yourself, sir, to these idiots who think cheesy recorded randoms are the same thing as real live rocks in your path]. . . Use Sol.”
Funny thing is, in all the years I read this book, I was never confused about who said what, or what Ben *meant*, until I tried to analyze it!
I’m that way about much of CJ’s work. When I read it, it makes perfect sense. Try to explain exactly what’s happening in a scene to someone else, and suddenly I get very confused!
(And how does our illustrious host wish to be referred to in these posts? CJ, Ms. Cherryh, All Glorious Leader, or some other title?)
CJ’s good.
“Try to explain exactly what’s happening in a scene to someone else, and suddenly I get very confused!
”
😆 Ask my copyeditors. You will understand I got so tired of writing STET [‘let it stand as I wrote it’] for the copyeditors I had a ‘stet’ stamp made. 20 times on one page is the standing record. One of the nicest compliments I got was from Jim Baen, who, on The Paladin, said he’d had the manuscript lousy with yellow query postits…until he slipped out of editorial mode and began reading the story as a reader. And then he went back and pulled off all the yellow tabs but one. He was right on that one tab, sure enough. 😉
But you can also see how delicate it can be, and why there are actual page proof galleys—or ought to be: a page break can make a difference in a read, as here. And of course in e-books, with flowable type, you can no longer guarantee the position of a page break, except in pdf—so you just have to be readable. 😉
What Levanah10 said!
CJ,
Since I’m at my parents for Christmas, I was able to get my original paperback (1993), which has the same exact text as printed above.
Is Ben trying to say that they are already doing what he would do, which is to use Sol and the Belt, hence the familiar pattern in the sim which isn’t truly random? Maybe you can make it clearer in your eBook, but it certainly didn’t detract from my enjoyment 🙂
Merry Christmas!
– S
Great, Sandor. I think you’re right. Thanks! And Merry Christmas!
The way I have always read it is that the sim guys used Sol’s ‘rhythms’ as a basis for the random targets (Ben says “I can /feel/ the ramdoms” about four lines up from there); the Belters have become so attuned to the homestar that it isn’t random at all. So the rest makes sense, too: “would you like to see Tripoint?”
#
Never had trouble with that one, actually.