Copyedits Galore!
Posted on April 10, 2006 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
The copyedited manuscript for The Android’s Dream, which comes out in October or November, and which is not related to the Old Man’s War universe. It does not appear to be as violently marked-up as The Ghost Brigades had been, which makes me feel better about myself as a writer. I like turning in work that doesn’t make a copyeditor cringe in fear.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I really enjoy this particular book, which is just fast-moving and fun and full of action. It may ruin my reputation as a purveyor of thoughtful science fiction, however. As I was saying to someone a few days ago, it’s good I got nominated for the Hugo and Campbell now, because once people read the first chapter here, devoted as it is to a rather extended fart joke, I will never get nominated for anything ever again. But you know what? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that it’s the best-written chapter-long fart joke in the history of science fiction literature. Someone prove me wrong, here.
I dunno. I kinda like the one in Charlie’s Homecoming a lot, although it’s one of the many things they butchered in the movie.
I believe the lost classic was in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” where Mike and Manny start discussing humor and which leads Mike to analyzing Mannies personality and coming up with the perfect humor for him; fart jokes. It got edited out for space considerations.
Have you caught the fart-joke related episodes of the new Doctor Who (they played on the SciFi channel the last two weeks).
And, for that matter, have you seen the new Doctor Who at all?
Neil in Greenville
You’ll be in good company. One of Benjamin Franklin’s books is titled, if I recall correctly, “Fart Proudly.”
Yeah, but Franklin was never nominated for a Hugo after he wrote that, was he? You see where I’m going with that.
Neil in Greenville: Actually, I have the 1st season of Dr. Who on DVD — they were originally going to be released this month, but then SciFi Channel decided to show the episodes and the DVD release was bumped until June (I think). But by that time I already had the screen DVDs.
Yer blog’s cool, I’m linking you if that’s OK.
I enjoyed your reading of the chapter at ConFusion, and look forward to the rest of the book. :)
One of the Monty Python members wrote a science fiction novel with a robot who analyzes twentieth century humour, but I can’t recall what the book was called or if there were any fart jokes…
Hey, Roger Zelazny spent half of the first chapter of LORD OF LIGHT setting up a horrible pun, and still won a bunch of awards after that. And most people even think of LOL as his best work.