Talk:A Honeymoon in Space

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Differences between the serial and novel

Marcus Rowland added a passage about how the Mars part of the story differs between serial and novel version. The added content was as follows:

The abbreviated version in Pearson's Magazine omits the Martian's use of English, with Zaidie reacting to their perceptions of his behaviour, but is otherwise very similar.

I think noting the differences is a pretty good idea if we can do it for the entire story, but not if we only do it for some of it. I'm not sure what the best way to do it in the article would be—options include appending it at the end of the summary of each part of the story as was done here, using {{efn}} templates where needed, and dedicating a separate (sub-)section to it. I think it's worth noting that the secondary literature doesn't really talk about the differences apart from the beginning of the story being excised for the serial version, so it's not crucial to include this information if we go by their judgment (the novel version appears to be generally considered to be the "definitive" version). This also means that it would likely be necessary to rely on the WP:Primary sources for this—which I think should be okay as it is plot summary, but it gets a bit borderline since it is comparing two different primary sources, which might be considered to fall on the wrong side of acceptable uses thereof. TompaDompa (talk) 03:08, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay replying, I've been very busy with other things. I'll try to get this sorted but it probably won't be until well into December. I think that World of the War God is the only story that differs so much between the magazine and book versions: the editor of the magazine changed the paragraph order (which is why they get the guns ready before discussing the possibility of hostile life on Mars) and I think made three or four cuts, the language one was the most obvious change. I compared them when I was writing it up as an RPG setting in the nineties, when I have a bit more time I'll try to find my notes or go through the stories again. Marcus Rowland (talk) 23:33, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Ah, you are the Marcus L. Rowland of Forgotten Futures, then? TompaDompa (talk) 14:35, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Apologies for the long silence. Yes, I'm the author of Forgotten Futures, and a lot of the imagery in that (and in a Call of Cthulhu adventure I wrote for Chaosium a few years earlier) came from Stories of Other Worlds.

I just checked this and realised that it's the novel that has the weird editing, not the magazine story - my apologies, it's about 30 years since I wrote the RPG setting and put the books on line and I was remembering it wrong.

In the magazine version they talk about the Martians possibly being hostile and the need for weapons before setting them up. In the book they set the weapons up then talk about possibly needing weapons (which should have come first) a couple of pages later. It looks like a typesetter put some paragraphs in the wrong order. If the novel was actually published first someone did a sloppy job of proofreading it, then the magazine editor noticed the problem while setting up the pages and put it right.

The part about the Martians speaking English is a separate issue; if the novel was first it must have been cut by the magazine. I think it was actually the right decision, since none of the other aliens they encounter speak understandable languages, but I'm obviously not the author. Maybe the idea of them speaking English was to make it clear that the Martians really were hostile, but it really wasn't a good way to do it. Marcus Rowland (talk) 02:29, 1 January 2025 (UTC)