Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2020 November 04 • Wednesday

A funny thing happened to me on the way to reading Walter Tevis's The Man Who Fell to Earth. I noticed this paragraph:

“It just happens that this is 1988. And 1988 is an election year. The President is already campaigning for a second term, and he has it on good authority—did you know that Watergate changed nothing—nothing—the President uses us, in the CIA, to spy on the other party?—that the Republicans are going to turn this whole business into something like the Dreyfus case if we don’t either bring adequate charges against you or turn you loose with profuse apologies all around.”

So what's so remarkable about that? Well, it's the Watergate reference. You see, The Man Who Fell to Earth was originally published in 1963 and 1963 was still the copyright date on the edition I read. 1963 and then copyright renewed 1991, by Tevis's second wife. But Tevis died in 1984.

So that was kind of interesting. And so while in lockdown I re-read that edition of The Man Who Fell to Earth, a Del Rey Impact trade paperback, while simultaneously reading the true first edition, the Fawcett Gold Medal paperback original. paperback

Here's how the above paragraph looked in the Fawcett Gold Medal edition back in 1963:

“It just happens that this is 1976. And 1976 is an election year. The President is already campaigning fo a second term, and he has it on good authority—did you know that the President uses us, in the CIA, to spy on the other party?—that the Republicans are going to turn this whole business into something like the Dreyfus case if we don’t either bring adequate charges against you or turn you loose with profuse apologies all around.”

So you can see the differences there. And there are differences on almost every page of the two editions.

You can see all of them here.

But here are some of the more significant changes, such as the paragraph presented above, which is found on page 127 of the Fawcett Gold Medal edition and page 188 of the Del Rey Impact edition.

On page 23 of FWM you get:

Oh Lordie, Pick A Bale Of Cotton! Oh Lordie... Next to him at the bar a girl, breastless beneath the red leather jacket of the “New Beats,” was talking to a sad-eyed Negress about the “structure” of poetry[…]

While on page 29 of DRI this becomes:

Oh Lordie, Pick A Bale Of Cotton! Oh Lordie... Next to him at the bar a white girl was talking to a sad-eyed girl about the “structure” of poetry[…]

(On page 30 of DRI the disappeared red jacket shows up.)

Here's a paragraph from pages 36 and 48, respectively, of the FGM and DRI editions:

He had watched American, British, and Russian television for fifteen years. At one time his superiors had planned to make contact with the Russians, since they were more technically advanced than the Americans, more likely, by themselves, to reach Anthea first; but the more various American economy, as well as the freedom of movement possible within the country, had finally decided them in its favor. They had collected a huge library of monitored and recorded television broadcasts, and by the time, thirty years ago, when America had begun continuous television broadcasting, they had already deciphered most of the subtleties of the language from FM radio broadcasts.

He had watched American, British, and Russian television for fifteen years. His colleagues had collected a huge library of monitored and recorded television broadcasts, and by the time, forty years ago, when America had begun continuous television broadcasting, they had already deciphered most of the subtleties of the language from FM radio broadcasts.

And from pages 70 and 100, respectively:

Logarithms to the base twelve. And what else?
He stood up and took his cup to the stove for more coffee. While the brown pill was dissolving he tried to piece together Newton’s conversation of the day before—that weird conversation on the log at lakeside—and to discover, if he could, whether or not he was reading too much into Newton’s words, whether he was stupidly mistaking a crackpot genius for a man from Mars. You pays your money and you takes your choice....

Logarithms to the base twelve. And what else? And what else?

Pages 76 and 108:

The head gained a voice, saying, “...why it is that, as we approach the year of anniversary, that year emblazoned on the hearts of all free men, the year, my friends, the year of our Lord 1976, the two hundredth anniversary of the United States as a free and independent nation[…]

The head gained a voice, saying, “... of the United States as a free and independent nation[…]

Pages 115 and 163:

In one such speech his name had been mentioned. They would hardly risk brainwashing him. They were hardly going to have plenty of difficulty in keeping him from coming to trial, in explaining their motives for holding him.

In one such speech his name had been mentioned. The word “cover-up” was used several times.

This is an interesting cut here, pages 139 and 202:

What had they done to him? Had they only blinded him? For a moment he thought, in wonder, of Orwell’s hero of 1984—only eight years from now, that would be—Winston Smith at the end of the torture, his mind and body destroyed, sitting in a bar and drinking free Victory gin, waiting for the government to put a bullet in his head.

What had they done to him? Had they only blinded him?

There are numerous small changes, the two editions being set in different years, thus altering amounts of money as well as ages of characters and other lengths of time. Instead of "LP albums" you get "quadraphonic albums" and instead of a "multi-directional speaker system" you get an "octaphonic speaker system".

Stuff like that, and lots of "house style" changes as well as some good old-fashioned typos.