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posted by LaminatorX on Friday March 13 2015, @09:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the tale-of-two-stories dept.

What do science fiction classics like Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle, Simak's City, and Sturgeon's More Than Human have in common? Each of them is a "fix-up" - a novel constructed out of short stories that were previously published on their own. "This used to be one standard way to write a science fiction novel—publish a series of stories that all take place in the same world, and then knit them together into a book," says Charlie Jane Anders. "Sometimes a great deal of revision happened, to turn the separate stories into a single narrative and make sure all the threads joined up. Sometimes, the stories remain pretty separate but there are links between them."

The Golden Age science fiction publishing market was heavily geared towards magazines and short stories. And then suddenly, there was this huge demand for tons of novels. According to Andrew Liptak this left many science fiction authors caught in a hard place: Many had come to depend on the large number of magazines on the market that would pay them for their work, and as readership declined, so too did the places in which to publish original fiction. The result was an innovative solution: repackage a number of preexisting short stories by adding to or rewriting portions of them to work together as a single story. There's also something kind of beautiful about a novel in stories says Anders. You get more narrative "payoff" with a collection of stories that also forms a single continuous meta-story than you do with a single over-arching novel—because each story has its own conclusion, and yet the story builds towards a bigger resolution. Fix-ups are a good, representative example of the transition that the publishing industry faced at the time, and how its authors adapted concludes Liptak. "It’s a lesson that’s well-worth looking closely at, as the entire publishing industry faces new technological challenges and disruptions from the likes of self-publishing and micro-press platforms."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Saturday March 14 2015, @08:35AM

    by Ryuugami (2925) on Saturday March 14 2015, @08:35AM (#157684)

    I'd check out yours but sadly ever since that guy was thrown in jail for CP for having a manga I won't go near those with a 39 foot pole, sure the story itself could be fine but if there is even a single ad in there for another manga that some judge decides "looks lolita"? Its CP here in the states.

    Yeah, the laws in the US are quite insane. Even here in Japan they're slowly increasing the pressure and every now and then try to ban the god-damn drawings. IIRC it's not because the politicians think it's wrong, but because they're worried about their international image or something. Someone should tell them that that ship has sailed a long time ago :)

    Anyways, from the wikipedia page:

    The [manga] series is licensed for an English language release in North America by Dark Horse Comics.

    Following the release of the manga, Gonzo produced a thirteen episode anime series that uses the same characters and settings, but a different story from its source manga. (...) The series is licensed for English language release in North America by Geneon Entertainment

    An original video animation (OVA) entitled Hellsing Ultimate has been produced by Geneon. It follows the manga storyline more closely than the anime series. (...) In North America the first episode was released on December 5, 2006, and as of October 28, 2014 all ten episodes have been released.

    I don't remember this particular series having either children nor porn in it, so you should be safe in any case, but there are USA versions available.

    While the story is not all that dark and brutal (it's aimed at "young adults"), I'd recommend it if only for the scene of an army of neo-Nazi vampires invading London with a fleet of combat zeppelins (it almost makes sense in context). Not-really-a-spoiler alert: they get annihilated by the resident vampire. Also, that part is not present in the original anime, only manga and -- I think, didn't get around to watching it yet -- OVA.

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  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday March 14 2015, @09:18AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday March 14 2015, @09:18AM (#157692) Journal

    The truly insane part? ZERO proof of anything is needed, as all it takes is a judge deciding that character "looks lolita" and BAM, its CP. Doesn't matter if the character is a 400 year old vamp, hell it doesn't even matter if the character has been drawn for so many years that if it were treated as a real person they would be pushing 50, nope all that matters is some judge thinks they look even a single day under 18. Its caused all kinds of crazy shit, I remember some porn star having to fly in from like Brazil just to testify "I'm 34" because some douchebag judge decided "flat tits equals CP", just fucking batshit.

    Just be glad you don't live here dude, as I lived through Ronnie raygun and the moral majority and even THAT wasn't as hard fascist right as BOTH parties have gotten now, we got so many Ayn Rand cockbags that take actual glee from kicking poor people in power I'm just waiting for that "let 'em eat cake" moment. Of course the rest of the world should probably be getting ready to wet themselves as the last time we had a very nationalistic hard right military loving country flame out? It ended a decade later with over 100 million dead and THEY weren't sitting on a mountain of nukes or a giant fleet of floating death. Mark my words there will be some nasty shit come down in the next decade, this whole country is running on IOUs and jingoism and as we saw from Japan in the 30s that is a BAD combo.

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