I’m not exactly sure what prompted the following story. It was a fairly normal workshop, by all accounts, but at one point last night, Powers launched into what, I believe, is possibly the best story I’ve ever heard. Or, at the very least, the best story about the writing world that I’ve ever heard. So I’m going to now “go into” the voice of Powers, in an attempt to recreate the story as accurately as possible….

But let it be known that this is not, or in no way should be construed as, an accurate reproduction of the ACTUAL words that Powers’ said. It’s a dramatic recreation, if you will, for effect…

“So I got my hands on a German version of one of my books. And I noticed that at one point in the book, the typefaced changed for a couple of pages, then when back to the normal typeface. I wasn’t sure if it was just a printer error or not. So some time later I had someone who actually read German take a look at the book.

So at the point in the book where the hero gets off the phone and says to another character, ‘She’s tied to a railroad track, we only have ten minutes, let’s go,’ and then the jump a car and take off.

But where the typeface changes, this version goes, ‘She’s tied to a railroad track, we only have ten minutes,’ and the other character says, ‘But do we have time for soup?’ ‘Well, what kind of soup?’ ‘Maggi Soup.’ ‘What kinds do we have?’ ‘All 12 delicious flavors.’ and it continued like that for a bit before returning to the story.

So I checked another one of my German books and the same thing was there. Then I called William Gibson, who had the same German publisher, and asked him if he had ever seen different typeface in any of his books released in Germany, and the exact same thing had happened in Neuromancer.

Now my point here isn’t that I object to the advertisement being inserted, but that if you want it in there, let me write it. Plus, it was always inserted at a moment of really high tension, and one character would say, ‘But do we have time for soup?’ Wouldn’t it make more sense to just put it in a place where it looks natural?”

And a few minutes with google shows that it must have been a fairly common practice for this particular publisher. I’d be interested to know if,

A. It was only done with sci-fi and fantasy writers?

and,

B. If anyone, anywhere, has a catalogue of all the books/editions that this was done in, cause that would be something worth collecting.

Tags: Tim Powers

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 4:44 pm and is filed under Absurdity of Life, Post, Writers, Authors, Various Wordsmiths. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.