#michael andre-driussi

[autolabrum]

Finished second read of Claw of the Conciliator. Spoilers abound below.

Read in the compilation volume shadow & claw published for Tor Essentials. Second read of the novel; made use of Michael Andre-Driussi's chapter guide for the series.

In terms of quality of writing and exploration of thematics, it does feel to me that this is a big step up from the first novel, and Wolfe takes some big swings (a couple of which don't work out, though most do). The primary tension I observed here is between the short view, where we see a plethora of individuals that feel differingly fossilized in their particular times, and the long view, where Severian's occasional broader teleological perspective must lead him eventually to instigating broad and destructive change.

Much of the contents of the novel explores a variety of relations between individuals and their finite relationship to time. The creatures of the cave are unable either to understand or to escape their physical predicament, and who Severian positions temporally and evolutionarily (this episode inherits both the good and the bad from its clearly Lovecraftian inspirations). Vodalus and his retinue are obsessed with the past, to the point of ritualizing their cannibalism so as to gain access to something and someone that has been destroyed. This grasping attempt to remove themselves from their temporal predicament, and the ways in which Vodalus fails to do so, is the source of the first of two uses of a relevant refrain: "That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin" (Chapter I), emphasizing the petrification of the individual relative to the much broader time scales to which the narrative gestures. That Severian is able to seemingly carry out a much more successful transfer of memories than any of Vodalus' retinue makes clear that he has some amount of access to time unavailable to others (this is in alignment with his perfect memory giving him perfect access to the past). Even the Cumaean is restricted to only exploring the time in which her life will elapse (notably contrasted with not only the alien being she communes with but the undine, creating a resonance between this finite/infinite divide and the terrestrial/celestial divide).

Jonas is likely the most potent example of this, in that he is an individual who has been dramatically removed from the time in which he should be fossilized. It is this shock (admittedly along with his injuries) of both the familiar yet corrupted name and the bastardized story of Theseus that leads to his mental degradation; he cannot continue to exist in this version of the universe. Like the light in Father Inire's mirrors, he has sped too far ahead, and can only slow down and exit the narrative, in fact through those same mirrors. He is even memorialized (I think) in the play as the character of the statue, who loses a love and is condemned to his loss: "Thus stone images keep faith with a departed day, Alone in the desert when man has fled away" (Chapter XXIV). Jonas reminds us, as the brown book quotes from Francis Bacon (as identified by Andre-Driussi), that "These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient" (Chapter XXVIII).

There are several points at which Severian begins to grasp at a solution to this petrification within time. Early in the novel, before consuming Thecla's flesh, Severian begins to philosophize on his own death: "I saw how little it weighed on the scale of things whether I lived or died, though my life was precious to me. And of those two thoughts I forged a mood by which I stood ready to grasp each smallest chance to live, yet in which I cared not too much whether I saved myself or not" (Chapter IX). This double mood, created essentially out of a cognitive dissonance, strives to reconcile the finite with the infinite (note here that Severian is a Christ-like figure, who references an incarnated and finite version of the infinitude of God). Dorcas' understanding of the Conciliator accords with this attitude, who "once took a dying woman by the hand and a star by the other, and from that time forward he had the power to reconcile the universe with humanity, and humanity with the universe" (XXVI).

Jolenta, though her rape intersects these themes with Severian's misogyny in a manner that is clumsy at best (see post here), does offer a perspective on his beginnings towards succeeding in this manner. As she begins to die, he begins to feel some amount of legitimate compassion for her (an off-putting but important process), until at her death he repeats the refrain he had said of Vodalus at the beginning of the novel: "[Jolenta's body] had been washed clean of beauty. In the final reckoning there is only love, only that divinity. That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin" (Chapter XXXI). Although it has taken the removal of the illusory beauty that sparked Severian's misogynistic rage towards Jolenta, he does seem to experience some real level of empathy, and to feel (perhaps for the first time towards another) the extreme weight of the finitude of life. He has, through the claw and through his own hatred, failed Jolenta, and now her life is concluded, extant within time and immutable. I am entering the terrain of the series that I really don't remember very well, but I hope that this perspective improves his attitude in the coming novels.

[halucygeno]

The 2017 Bulgarian translation of Roadside Picnic is bloody weird as fuck, what the hell?

Ugh, I've been procrastinating writing this for months now, but I'm feeling inspired, so here goes.

This all started around mid-2023, when I decided to get a Storytel subscription and listen to Bulgarian audiobooks in preparation for a Bulgarian language course I'd take during the holidays. One of the first books I listened to was my all-time favourite, Roadside Picnic - but immediately, something was off.

Specifically, the way the narrator pronounced the name of the town Harmont. He called it "Marmont".

This isn't a mistake or dialectical thing - no speaker of Bulgarian would see "Harmont" and read it as "Marmont". And if you're familiar with Roadside Picnic's turbulent publication history, "Marmont" should be setting off alarm bells in your head. This altered name was used in the infamously butchered version of Picnic included in the Unintended Meetings anthology. To quote Michael Andre-Driussi's essay "Searching for the Worst Edition of Roadside Picnic":

"[...] I found hints that the problems with the Unintended Meetings edition were less about censorship and more about sloppy editing: the town’s name “Harmont” was inexplicably changed to “Marmont,” and the name of a stalker gang was altered from Warr to Fan (or “BaPP” to “BeeP”)."

Unintended Meetings came out in 1980. Yet there I was, listening to an audiobook from 2019, supposedly based on a 2017, updated translation of R.P., and they were STILL calling it "Marmont"?

When I finally got to Bulgaria for that language course, I went to a book store and bought a copy to see what was actually written in it - "Хармонт" or "Мармонт". And it was written correctly - "Harmont". I thought to myself "huh, must be some mistake with the audiobook" and put it out of mind.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and I decided that a good way to practice my Bulgarian pronunciation would be to read the book out loud to my grandma, who offered to correct my mistakes. So we started going through it, and very quickly, I found myself repeatedly surprised by entire paragraphs, entire SECTIONS that I didn't remember hearing or seeing before.

Now, to be clear, I know this book almost by heart. I've read the 1977 Antonina W. Bouis English edition, the 1974 Irena Lewandowska Polish edition, and listened to audiobooks of the 2012 English translation by Olena Bormashenko and 2015 Polish translation by Rafał Dębski. Not to mention, I had just finished listening to the Bulgarian audiobook, supposedly based on this very translation by Milan Asadurov. Across different languages and different editions, I had experienced the book about 5 times, maybe more; there's no way I would simply forget whole paragraphs of dialogue or description. Yet there I was, seeing completely new sections, none of which can be explained as a "quirk of translation".

I've gone through the book and tried to compile all the major alterations I could find. All Bulgarian has been (poorly) translated into English by me, and the new sections are in bold font and coloured red.

Chapter 1:

When Redrick describes what an "empty" is to the audience:

. But there's still something between them, undoubtably some sort of force, from what I understand. Something binds them together. As if someone took a glass tube, plugged up both ends with copper disks, and then the tube disappeared somewhere, but took off in such a way, that the disks stayed in place, as if the tube was still there. You can place such an "empty" on a shelf — and it's a heavy bastard, weighs six kilos and a half — so you place it, that is, on the shelf and push the upper disk, and it falls, let's say, like a can of orange juice of which you only see the lid and the bottom. And the disks stay still, as if they're two wheels on an axis, and you even feel like you can see some semblance of that axis, but there's nothing there, it's all a trick of the eye... . No, boys, it's a pain to describe this thing to someone who hasn't seen it, but it's really quite simple to understand on sight, especially once you look at it enough to finally believe your eyes.

Same section in the 2012 Olena Bormashenko translation:

. And despite this, there must be something there, a force field of some sort, because so far no one’s managed to push these disks together, or pull them apart either. . No, friends, it’s hard to describe this thing if you haven’t seen one. It looks much too simple, especially when you finally convince yourself that your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you.

When Redrick talks about Kirill's work on the empties:

. Actually, Kirill's been struggling with these "empties" for more-or-less an entire year already. He has four of them. There were three, but the other day they brought him another. The Vulture Burbridge found it in the "House without a roof". A patrol caught him, the "empty" was transferred to us, while he's been thrown in jail. So what? We had three, now we have four. We could have hundreds of them, it's all the same! Each one is identical and no one will ever figure them out. But Kirill hasn't stopped trying. He's gotten it into his head that they're some sort of magnetic trap — be it a hydromagnet, gyromagnet, whatever, some magnet — advanced physics. I know nothing about that sort of thing. But he's exposing them to a bunch of things in accordance with this hypothesis, as one should. Thermally, for example, he heats them up to crazy temperatures in an electric furnace. Chemically, say, he pours acid on them and smothers them with various pressurised gases. Besides this, he tries crushing them in a press or running electricity though them. No matter what he does, it hasn't yielded anything yet. Only thing he's managed is to completely exhaust himself. Actually, he's a funny guy, this Kirill. I've been dealing with these academic types for a while now. When something doesn't go their way, they become irritable, rude, start snapping at you, shouting at you, and you get this temptation to clobber them in the mug. Kirill isn't like that. He just wilts, his eyes start beaming sorrow, like those of a sick dog, he even gets teary; whatever you say to him — he doesn't hear it; he wanders around the lab, bumps into furniture, whatever he gets his hands on, he puts in his mouth. Found a pencil — hop, it's in his mouth. Found some plastilin — into his mouth it goes. Puts things in his mouth and chews. And he asks me wistfully: "Why — he says — is it inversely proportional, do you think? It can't be — he says — inversely. It should be directly..." . So we're standing in the storage room. I look at the way he's gotten, how red his eyes are and start to feel extremely sorry for him.

Now, from the 2012 Olena Bormashenko translation:

. Anyway, Kirill’s been struggling with these empties for almost a year now. I’ve worked for him from the very beginning, but I still don’t get what he wants with them, and to be honest, I haven’t tried too hard to find out. Let him first figure it out for himself, sort it all out, then maybe I’ll have a listen. But so far, one thing is clear to me: he’s absolutely determined to dismantle an empty, dissolve it in acid, crush it under a press, or melt it in an oven. And then he’ll finally get it, he’ll be covered in glory, and the entire scientific world will simply shudder in pleasure. But for now, as far as I know, he’s nowhere near this goal. He hasn’t yet accomplished anything at all, except that he’s exhausted himself, turned gray and quiet, and his eyes have become like a sick dog’s—they even water. If it were someone else, I’d get him totally wasted, take him to a great girl to loosen him up a bit, then the next morning I’d feed him more booze, take him to more girls, and by the end of the week he’d be A-OK—good as new and ready to go. Except this sort of therapy wouldn’t work on Kirill. There’s no point in even suggesting it; he’s not the type. . So, as I said, we’re standing in the repository, I’m looking at him, the way he’s gotten, how his eyes have sunk in, and I feel sorrier for him than I can say.

This one is a huge change. Redrick openly, and very aggressively, accuses Kirill of having told someone about their expedition plan:

. I think everything through and even feel slightly relieved that I won't have to go into the Zone. Then it suddenly clicked in my head, what had happened. When I saw Kirill, I immediately told him: . — Don't mess with me! Do you have any idea what sort of problems you can get me into?! . He winced and became all startled. I immediately realised, that he understood nothing. . — What happened? — he asks — What are you saying? . — Did you tell anyone about the garage? . — About the garage? No! Why? . — Nothing. Goddamn it — I say. — Your orders? . — We go and declare the route. . — What route? . Naturally, that pissed him off. . — What do you mean "what route"?! Our route through the Zone. . — Why? — I say. — Who says were going to the Zone today? Evidently, he figured out what was happening at that point. He took me by the elbow, brought me to his office, and sat me down at his desk while he plopped down on the windowsill next to me. We smoked a cigarette each. Silence. Then he cautiously asks: . — Did something happen, Red? . Eh, what do I tell him? . — No — I say, — nothing happened. Yesterday, I lost twenty bucks playing poker with Mr. Noonan. He's like a machine, the bastard. And I had a straight... . — Wait — he exclaims. — did you change your mind or something?. That's when I lose it. I'm not playing games with him. . — Yes, — I say, — changed my mind. You're a real claptrap. Snitched on me. I trusted you with this, and you had to go blabbing to the whole town. Even the people from security heard about it. — He started waving his hands to signal that I've got it all wrong, but I finished my thought. — If that's how you do things, then don't rely on me. Not that it matters, since from now on, fat chance I'll say anything when I'm around you. . I rattled all of this off and went silent. He, on the other hand, got his miserable look back, and his eyes again became like that of a sick poodle. He inhaled convulsively, lit a new cigarette with the butt of the previous one, and quietly said: . — Believe me, Red, I didn't say a word to anyone. . — Alright — I say. — If you insist it wasn't you, then it wasn't. . — I haven't even told Tender anything. I got him a permit, and I haven't even asked him if he's coming or not... . I smoke in silence. To laugh or to cry, the man understands nothing. . — Listen, Red — he says unexpectedly. — Are you sure that it was this garage that alerted them? It's not as if you have a spotless track record! . — What difference does it make?! — I say. . — Just know that I didn't snitch on you! Do you believe me? . — I believe you - I lied to calm him down. . But he didn't calm down. He jumped from the windowsill and started pacing back and forth around the office, murmuring to himself: . — No, buddy, I can see that you don't believe me! Why don't you believe me?! Your distrust towards me won't give you anything, I tell you... . He looked at me strangely somehow, jumped from the windowsill and began walking across his office. He runs around while I sit, smoke and keep quiet. I feel sorry for him, of course, and I'm kicking myself that it all turned out so stupidly. Way to cure someone's melancholy.

Note that Kirill jumps off the windowsill and starts pacing around the office twice. This makes me think that Milan Asadurov had, for whatever reason, stitched together an early draft of this scene with the final version we see in all other editions. Why? It's so much worse!

The ENTIRE vibe and character dynamic of this scene is much better in the Bormashenko translation:

. I think all this through and even feel a bit of relief that I don’t need to go into the Zone today. Except how am I going to break it to Kirill? . I tell him straight out. “I’m not going into the Zone. Your orders?” . At first, of course, he just gawks at me. Eventually, something seems to click. He takes me by the elbow, leads me to his office, sits me down at his table, and perches on the windowsill nearby. We light up. Silence. Then he asks me cautiously, “Red, did something happen?” . Now what am I supposed to tell him? “No,” I say, “nothing happened. Well, I blew twenty bucks last night playing poker—that Noonan sure knows how to play, the bastard.” . “Hold on,” he says. “What, you mean you just changed your mind?” . I almost groan from the tension. “I can’t,” I say through my teeth. “I can’t, you get it? Herzog just called me to his office.” . He goes limp. Again misery is stamped on his face, and again his eyes look like a sick poodle’s. He takes a ragged breath, lights a new cigarette with the remains of the old one, and says quietly, “Believe me, Red, I didn’t breathe a word to anyone.” . “Stop it,” I say. “Who’s talking about you?” . “I haven’t even told Tender yet. I got a pass for him, but I haven’t even asked him whether he’d come or not . . .” . I keep smoking in silence. Ye gods, the man just doesn’t understand. . “What did Herzog say to you, anyway?” . “Oh, not much,” I say. “Someone squealed on me, that’s all.” . He gives me a funny look, hops off the windowsill, and starts walking back and forth. He’s pacing around his office while I sit there, blowing smoke rings and keeping my trap shut. I feel sorry for him, of course, and really this is rotten luck: a great cure I found for the guy’s depression.

([Jan 18th, 2025 edit] I'M TOO TIRED, SO I GAVE UP ON WRITING THE REST OF THIS. SORRY! BELOW ARE A FEW NOTES ON OTHER POINTS I WAS GOING TO COVER)

-- [When the emigration agent tries to convince Redrick to leave Harmont, Redrick complains about the cultural atmosphere of a few European countries, saying that he definitely wouldn't want to move to Europe.]

-- [In chapter 2, when Red and Burbridge run into a resurrected body in a cemetery inside the zone, Redrick briefly considers that the figure might be Creon the Maltese, tailing them after they turned down his offer to join the expedition. He quickly dismisses this as very unlikely.]

[Jan 18th, 2025 edit] Oh, I guess I should try to hastily conclude this somehow:

Months after I initially wrote this, I believe I've tracked down two potential candidates for the Russian edition where these passages originate from. Milan Asadurov, in his translator's note (which I took a crack at translating into English), claims he was working from "the version of '...Picnic' specially prepared by Boris Natanovich for the 2003 release of their collected works".

Checking fantlab.ru, which has a lot of details on the publication history of Picnic, it turns out there were actually FOUR Strugatsky anthologies released in 2003. I managed to find two of them online, and they didn't contain the altered passages. So I managed to narrow down the potential source of this weirdness to these two editions: one published by Амфора, and one published by ОЛМА-ПРЕСС.

I was even thinking about asking around in Russo-phone circles and seeing if I can buy these two editions somewhere, but it seemed like a huge hassle and I quickly forgot about the idea. Any Russian fans of Picnic seeing this, could you help out?

(And I still have no idea why the Storytel audiobook used an earlier edition of Asadurov's translation with the stupid "Marmont" mistake! AGHH!)

[Jan 27th, 2025 edit] Ok, apparently this is common knowledge in Russia — I just researched this extremely poorly

Uh, never-mind, it wasn't the 2003 edition at all. The original text actually originates from this 1989 edition. According to Boris Sturgatsky, this was a draft version of the story that Arkady sent to the publisher because he didn't have the final version on-hand:

"Для данной публикации использован текст повести «Пикник на обочине» в редакции, заметно отличающейся от других публикаций. По словам Бориса Стугацко��о, данное издание «… было (промежуточным) черновиком повести, который АНС сунул некогда издателю за неимением под рукой соответствующего чистовика». О том, что это черновик, в издании не указано. [...]"

This Strugatsky fan-site, (ran by a Maksim Gushin) further corroborates the story:

"В 1989 году в издательстве «Юридическая литература» вышел двумя изданиями под разными обложками авторский сборник с «Пикником на обочине», текст которого значительно отличался от всех ранее и впоследствии опубликованных вариантов — это было обусловлено тем, что Аркадий Стругацкий (вероятно, по ошибке) передал в издательство один из черновых вариантов."

...and even links to a .pdf of this original, draft version, so you can look at all of its strange quirks if you wish.

Sorry for having researched this so poorly, and accidentally spreading misinformation. I have no idea why Milan Asadurov cited a 2003 edition, when this version was published in 1989. Maybe the draft was mistakenly used once again in 2003? Or maybe Asadurov just got the two editions mixed up? Who knows.

Again, apologies for the shoddy research.

[bryan-aiello]

#114 Andre-Driussi, Michael

On episode 114 of Origin, Michael Andre-Driussi a US science fiction author and scholar best known for his work on and Gene Wolfe ‘and Jack Vance and The Jizmatic Trilogy. Visit www.bryanaiello.com for links to subscribe.

https://bryanaiello.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Michael-Andre-Driussi-115.mp3

On episode 114 of Origin, Michael Andre-Driussi a US science fiction author and scholar best known for his work on and Gene Wolfe ‘and Jack Vance and The Jizmatic Trilogy.

Visit www.bryanaiello.com for links to subscribe.

On episode 114 of Origin, Michael Andre-Driussi is a US science fiction author and scholar best…

[crazymeds]

Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series (The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel’s Saga, Rhialto the Marvelous and the tribute collection by other authors Songs of the Dying Earth) is set millions of years in the future and were a profound influence on the development of Dungeons and Dragons.  You’ve got space travel, human colonization of the galaxy, genetic engineering, summoning of demons, aliens, magickal artefacts, compulsion spells, you name it. 

Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun series (Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, The Citadel of the Autarch, and The Urth of the New Sun) is also set in the far future.  Even more literary than the Dying Earth series, but with less of a swords and superscience vibe.  Other than the generation ship in The Urth of the New Sun and some later-written books in related series.

Both series are wonderful for people who love obscure words, or those who wish to expand their vocabulary with something other than a word-a-day calendar.  A really good dictionary is sufficient for looking up words in Vance’s works.  Unless you have access to an OED or have a fantastically large vocabulary, you may want to get a copy of  Michael Andre-Driussi ‘s Lexicon Urthus to help decode the plethora of obscure words that Wolfe uses.

@collapsedsquid as a corollary to being able to Do Science to magic, I have always wanted someone to take an urban fantasy setting like the Dresden Files or Harry Potter (or even a Medieval Stasis Fantasy like Game of Thrones) and project things forward a few centuries or millennia, and tell a story which is SF and fantasy at the same time. Like, we have laser guns and Mars colonies and spaceship battles, and also secret wizards and faeries and shit.

[autolabrum]

Finished second read of The Shadow of the Torturer.

Read in the compilation volume shadow & claw published for Tor Essentials. Second read of the novel; the first dozen chapters with the assistance of the Rereading Wolfe podcast, before I decided that it is really meant for a third read or later, at which point I switched to using Michael Andre-Driussi's chapter guide for The Book of the New Sun.

Very little can be said about the book as a whole that has not been said before; Wolfe's words are perfect, his tone ingenious, his depth of vision extraordinary, his narrator ambiguously memorious, his belief in the legitimate and equivalent personhood of women lacking. That said, there are two specific images that particularly stand out to me in this volume. Spoilers below.

Early in the novel, swimming in the Gyoll, Severian's experience of drowning seems a potent warning of the narrative and especially the language to come.

I dove beneath [the nenuphar's] crowded pads as I had done a thousand times. I did not come up. Somehow I had entered a region where the roots seemed far thicker than I had ever encountered them before. I was caught in a hundred nets at once. My eyes were open, but I could see nothing--only the black web of the roots.

Later in the book, Wolfe utilizes a single word that gives an impression of how apt this experience is as a precursor to reading the rest of the novel: xenagie. I did not know the meaning of this word, so I checked the Oxford English Dictionary, where it does not appear. Wiktionary sheds some light on this omission: the word is French, and translates to syntagma. I also did not know the meaning of this word. Wiktionary specifies that xenagie refers to syntagma (Greek phalanx of foreign mercenaries) which makes sense within the context Wolfe uses it, but this is not the primary meaning of syntagma, which has come linguistically to refer to a syntactic unit within a text. It also has distinct semiotic and biological meanings. Wolfe here uses a French translation of an Greek military word that is now primarily used by linguists. We will never know what he hopes we would have found here, if there is some secret second or third causes for this particular usage in this particular location. It is necessary to tread water when reading The Book of the New Sun. Wolfe's words are beautiful, yes, but they are treacherous, and one cannot allow oneself to become caught in the historical, pseudo-historical, and post-historical nenuphars of his language that will drag a reader down to be drowned in the river of death.

If this passage and word elucidate the horrifying extent of the deep history that Wolfe creates, another passage serves to identify its equally unsettling limitations. Dr. Talos' play is a triumph in its evocation of extraordinary imaginative objects, but

Triumphing in all this, he yet failed. For his desire was to communicate, to tell a great tale that had being only in his mind and could not be reduced to common words; but no one who ever witnessed a performance--and still less who moved across his stage and spoke at his bidding--ever left it, I think with any clear understanding of what that tale was. It could only (Dr. Talos said) be expressed in the ringing of bells and the thunder of explosions, and sometimes by the postures of ritual. Yet as it proved in the end it could not be expressed even by these.

We readers are not the only ones lost in the text. Wolfe wanders these passages, hoping to spark in us some recognition of his many messages, knowing that to tell us would be to betray a disbelief in our ability, and to show us requires greater than his own (or perhaps anyone's) abilities. The world he held in his mind is so totalizing it can only be inaccessible; he is Ultan, wandering around in a library of information so complete as to be useless, helping how he can those travelers that pass by looking for something. Of course he poses the work as a translation of some future text; it is in fact a translation of his own mind, a molding of English (a language so saturated in history and loanwords that it is perhaps uniquely equal to his 'post-historical' world) into an approximation of his vision, which must itself be limited.

Our reach exceeds our grasp.

[autolabrum]

The Sword of the Lictor

Spoilers herein

Read in the compilation volume sword and citadel published for Tor Essentials. Second read of the novel; made use of Michael Andre-Driussi's chapter guide for the series.

Many of my favorite episodes in The Book of the New Sun, but the prose unfortunately parallels the stark, bare setting change, and loses some of the lushness I so adored in the first two volumes. Dorcas' exit is I think well executed, but unfortunately most of the other women in this section lack her (or even Jolenta's) depth, and some come across as particularly misogynistic (and racist) caricatures (see Pia). Generally, Wolfe's understanding of race and specifically indigenous peoples comes across as pretty awful in this novel, even beyond the rare passage that can be seen as remotely redemptive (perhaps Severian mistaking the heirodules prejudicial assessment of humanity as particular to race or class is meant to display some absurdity of racism, but it is difficult to be sympathetic to a novel with such totality of prejudice, even if the prejudice can be seen as a universal delusion of the societies presented).

In terms of structure and contents, the book presents a compelling narrative of the dissolution of the many layers of Severian's identity and the vertigo that comes with such a baring. Severian is like the alzabo with its multiple layers of contradictory and resonant, true and false identities and motivations; he is like heirodules with their masks upon masks, obscuring radiance with hatefulness and hatefulness with humanity; he is like the Claw, with layers of gemstone built up over the biological and legitimate center; he is like the Urth itself, caked in its layers of conquest, of science, of religion, of the suffocating weight of history that gave Freud nightmares about the city of Rome; he is like an onion. Severian has layers.

The process of The Sword of the Lictor is the delicate process of the stripping of these layers, the removal of all that is false to lay bare truth. He could be a true torturer, and in fact lays out a perfectly coherent thesis of their existence and justification (III), but he cannot; he saves Cyriaca and his cloak and boots become as a costume to him, and a layer is shed. He could be an archetypal man, man as animal, like the zoanthropes and like the settlers among their broad expanses of otherwise unpeopled nature, but he cannot; he wants "to be a particular person" and must seek "the mirror of other persons, which would show me that I was not as they were" (XXVII). He could be a child, projecting onto or taking from little Severian, or even retreating into his perfect memory of who he once was, but he cannot; little Severian is dead, and although his past self is not "dead", he is "vanished", distributed among the layers of history and self by "the mercy of the Increate, whose mercy indeed confounds and destroys us" (XXIX) (after all, "the past cannot be found in the future where it is not" (VI)). He could be a hero, as he is to the islanders he leads into battle, a noble swordsman fighting off oppressive forces, but he cannot; his sword is shattered, and the souls of its victims released.

The two most compelling alternative options by which Severian could recreate a distinct and particular self are represented by the dual figures of Typhon and Baldanders. Typhon, an egotistical emperor who gives Severian the opportunity to conquer Urth. However, Typhon is sacrilegious, and profanes the power of the Claw and the Increate, and so Severian kills him. Baldanders offers instead a path towards rationality and (purportedly) dissemination of knowledge. It is not only his sacrilege, in his hatred and disbelief of the Claw, but his cruelty to the islanders that puts Severian off of this track.

Throughout the text, Severian's most consistent experience is that of vertigo. The strange geometries are not as in the House Absolute, clever but decipherable; they are impossible. The recurring fear of being pulled into the sky, just as when Severian first drowns in the Gyoll gravity seems to invert, is particularly potent, but the topology of the novel gives an extreme sense of disorientation and acrophobia. There is, however, a real solution offered to this vertiginous quandary. Rationalism is thoroughly discarded, as a "net, in which human minds become enmeshed whenever the subject is one in which no appeal to fact is possible" (XXXVIII). Instead, as the layers of stone surrounding the claw are shattered, just as Severian's many identities and recourses are eliminated, it gives him a distinct impression. Orthogonal to rationality and to ego, just as the disorienting heights of the mountainous setting are orthogonal to the largely flat, traversable plains of the previous novel, is obedience (this orthogonality relation is made explicit in the text, as the Claw cannot be approached materially "any more than the indefinite multiplication of horizontal distance could be made to equal vertical distance" (XXXVIII)). This is the critical feeling that the claw gives, a "happy obedience to I knew not what, an obedience without reflection because there was no longer anything to reflect upon, and without the least tincture of rebellion" (XXXVIII). This is the obedience Severian has repeatedly believed himself to give through various acts of service and oaths, but only here does he finally feel it truthfully, without ego, induced by the power of the true, uncovered Claw. It is, almost ironically, the very obedience instilled in him during his now abandoned but still recollected time as a torturer: he tells us one of the secrets of the guild, "only that we torturers obey ... No one truly obeys unless he will do the unthinkable in obedience; no one will do the unthinkable save we" (XXXI). Wolfe plays his hand, reveals why his redeemer, his conciliator, must have been raised as a torturer. It is only in the performance of what one must perform, in the absence of ego and fear, that the will of his Increate can be fully carried out.

[crazymeds]

Cf. Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series.

Essential for fully appreciating the New Sun series is Michael Andre-Driussi’s Lexicon Urthus.  It’s less expensive than an OED.

I love Dark Sun and Conan, but never heard of Gene Wolfe. What's the scoop?

Gene Wolfe is our greatest living fantasy author. 

I don’t make that statement rashly or lightly. He is in that category of writer who is worshiped by other science fiction and fantasy writers but who is less well known among the general public (another example of this is Cordwainer Smith, who, thankfully is starting to be reprinted and rediscovered). 

Gene Wolfe’s major work was the Book of the New Sun, which is about the desolate, resource drained and abandoned Earth in an impossibly distant future where people live a primitive existence at the end of time among the ruins of millions of years of societies that had technology people no longer understand, where even the sun is dimmed and red. The societies are ancient and ossified in oriental splendor like the Byzantine Empire, except they’re surrounded by mutants and aliens, and the Earth (Urth) is a backwater, and only the very rich still have contact with other planets. Our hero is Severian the Torturer, a morally gray executioner who is more than a bit of a liar (Gene Wolfe loves fiction relayed by unreliable narrators). The narrative conceit is that it is a first-person novel FROM the future, as opposed to a novel ABOUT the future, so like with Dune, you’re immersed in a rapid-fire alien world that becomes clearer only with time, but still remains immensely cool and mysterious…what Lord of the Rings would be if Tolkien intentionally never published the Silmarillion. 

You ever hear that joke about how the Velvet Underground was enormously influential in a way out of proportion to the number of people who went to their gigs, so the only explanation is that every single person who went to their shows immediately formed a band? Well, Gene Wolfe is like that for tabletop game designers. Not only was Wolfe’s New Sun a huge inspiration to Dark Sun, but Monte Cook did his version of a new sun like setting recently. I’ve often wondered, but never been able to prove, that Gene Wolfe had an influence on Eternia and the Masters of the Universe, where people fight with swords and it seems fantasy-esque but every so often someone has like a laser spear or energy whip, or a weird fishman mutant shows up. 

[autolabrum]

Finished Citadel of the Autarch

Spoilers below. Read in the compilation volume sword and citadel published for Tor Essentials. Second read of the novel; made use of Michael Andre-Driussi's chapter guide for the series. I won't immediately move on to a first read of Urth, although I'll come back to it eventually. Very good series, but I need a break.

Leaning towards this as my favorite volume of the series. Not so much of a particular through-line that stood out to me as in the others, so here are some assorted thoughts.

On the subject of women: this book seems to work significantly better than the previous ones. Foila and Daria feel significantly more real than most of the other women in the books, and Dorcas retrieves some of her reality in her brief appearances and mentions (I am particularly happy to have seen Wolfe's quote that, when Severian expresses his feeling of betrayal by all women (II), he "means that men want to be loved more than any other thing is loved, and that though they may occasionally attract such love, they never have the power to hold it" (Andre-Driussi, p. 67), which confirms for me that though Wolfe's own misogyny sometimes shows in the text, Severian's is intentional and distinct, and actually interesting). The presence of Thecla especially solidifies in this volume, and her interjections feel often more legitimate and distinct than Severian's, and their love feels significantly more realized ("I clasped my heart's companion to me, and felt myself clasped. I felt myself clasped, and clasped my heart's companion to me" (XXV)).

I am particularly fond of the story competition. I tend to favor tales within tales, and the broad literary range Wolfe evoked in these stories was a delight. Melito's tale is reminiscent of Chaucer as well as Aesop; Hallvard's grasp of sagaic tone is compelling (my wife, my children, my children, my wife is a particularly resonant motif); Foila's Bretonic quest has many of the strangely-gendered qualities of Marie de France. I was particularly interested in the tale told by Loyal to the Group of Seventeen, which reminded me of the Egyptian poem The Eloquent Peasant. Would be curious to know what kind of ancient Egyptian poetry Wolfe had in his known library.

Severian's compassionate self is finally achieved to a much greater extent here than in any of the other novels. Two passages come to mind, of his contemplations on empathy with the dead at the end of XXVI (echoing the end of Joyce's The Dead), and of Triskele as "the ambassador of all crippled things" (XXXI). Wolfe's language about disability in the passage is a product of its time, but once one considers the actual message, that Severian is able to not only accept the legitimacy of disabled people, but to embrace his own disability by the novel's last sentence. The overwhelming impression, to my mind, is one of great compassion, and while Wolfe fails sometimes (his racist/racializing tendencies often leak into this volume), he sometimes succeeds greatly.

Probably the most interesting thread I noted was a couple of brief moments connecting different associations to plants. There is certainly the claw, a rose thorn, carefully positioned so that the burning rose motif early in the series culminates in the connection to the burning bush of Moses, the lowly briar through which God communicates, and thus Severian's realization that all ground is holy, that all thorns are Claws. Beyond that, two vegetal images seem connected to me. In chapter VIII, the Pelerine tells Severian that "every person, you see, is like a plant. There is a beautiful green part, often with flowers or fruit, that grows upward toward the sun, toward the Increate. There is also a dark part that grows away from it, tunneling where no light comes" and then elaborates that "it is the roots that give the plant the strength to climb toward the sun, though they know nothing of it". Then, in chapter XVII, Ash says that "my house strikes its roots into the past", recalling the image described by the Pelerine, but also the image of the tendrils of the nenuphars. As in shadow, we see the past in its impossible complexity as a series of knotted, writhing roots, that, though they are crucial to the growth of the organism, can catch and tangle, and drown unsuspecting children who spend too much time underwater. Ash is perhaps such a victim, who lives in a world that can no longer grow, and can only look to its roots for the beauty of the past. When Severian removes him from his home, he is exactly "some scythe, whistling along the ground, [that] sever[s] the stalk from its roots", so that "the stalk would fall and die, but the roots might put up a new stalk" (VIII). The creation of the future, to Wolfe, is destructive, as is any choice in that it eliminates the potential futures the other choices represents. But to get caught in the roots, to consider too carefully what might have grown out of the decided past, is dangerous. It is perhaps successfully achieved by the mysterious "first Severian" (although the extent of Andre-Driussi's theorizing seems presumptuous to me), but this is itself a careful pruning, so that Severian, or the New Sun, is a worker in the garden of the universe.

[halucygeno]

The 2017 Bulgarian translation of Roadside Picnic is bloody weird as fuck, what the hell?

(This is a copy of a something I wrote on April 22, 2024. Apparently, if you set a "private" post as "public", it uses the original publication date, so it gets completely buried when you search for it in the tags. I've made this copy for visibility.)

Ugh, I've been procrastinating writing this for months now, but I'm feeling inspired, so here goes.

This all started around mid-2023, when I decided to get a Storytel subscription and listen to Bulgarian audiobooks in preparation for a Bulgarian language course I'd take during the holidays. One of the first books I listened to was my all-time favourite, Roadside Picnic - but immediately, something was off.

Specifically, the way the narrator pronounced the name of the town Harmont. He called it "Marmont".

This isn't a mistake or dialectical thing - no speaker of Bulgarian would see "Harmont" and read it as "Marmont". And if you're familiar with Roadside Picnic's turbulent publication history, "Marmont" should be setting off alarm bells in your head. This altered name was used in the infamously butchered version of Picnic included in the Unintended Meetings anthology. To quote Michael Andre-Driussi's essay "Searching for the Worst Edition of Roadside Picnic":

"[...] I found hints that the problems with the Unintended Meetings edition were less about censorship and more about sloppy editing: the town’s name “Harmont” was inexplicably changed to “Marmont,” and the name of a stalker gang was altered from Warr to Fan (or “BaPP” to “BeeP”)."

Unintended Meetings came out in 1980. Yet there I was, listening to an audiobook from 2019, supposedly based on a 2017, updated translation of R.P., and they were STILL calling it "Marmont"?

When I finally got to Bulgaria for that language course, I went to a book store and bought a copy to see what was actually written in it - "Хармонт" or "Мармонт". And it was written correctly - "Harmont". I thought to myself "huh, must be some mistake with the audiobook" and put it out of mind.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and I decided that a good way to practice my Bulgarian pronunciation would be to read the book out loud to my grandma, who offered to correct my mistakes. So we started going through it, and very quickly, I found myself repeatedly surprised by entire paragraphs, entire SECTIONS that I didn't remember hearing or seeing before.

Now, to be clear, I know this book almost by heart. I've read the 1977 Antonina W. Bouis English edition, the 1974 Irena Lewandowska Polish edition, and listened to audiobooks of the 2012 English translation by Olena Bormashenko and 2015 Polish translation by Rafał Dębski. Not to mention, I had just finished listening to the Bulgarian audiobook, supposedly based on this very translation by Milan Asadurov. Across different languages and different editions, I had experienced the book about 5 times, maybe more; there's no way I would simply forget whole paragraphs of dialogue or description. Yet there I was, seeing completely new sections, none of which can be explained as a "quirk of translation".

I've gone through the book and tried to compile all the major alterations I could find. All Bulgarian has been (poorly) translated into English by me, and the new sections are in bold font and coloured red.

Chapter 1:

When Redrick describes what an "empty" is to the audience:

. But there's still something between them, undoubtably some sort of force, from what I understand. Something binds them together. As if someone took a glass tube, plugged up both ends with copper disks, and then the tube disappeared somewhere, but took off in such a way, that the disks stayed in place, as if the tube was still there. You can place such an "empty" on a shelf — and it's a heavy bastard, weighs six kilos and a half — so you place it, that is, on the shelf and push the upper disk, and it falls, let's say, like a can of orange juice of which you only see the lid and the bottom. And the disks stay still, as if they're two wheels on an axis, and you even feel like you can see some semblance of that axis, but there's nothing there, it's all a trick of the eye... . No, boys, it's a pain to describe this thing to someone who hasn't seen it, but it's really quite simple to understand on sight, especially once you look at it enough to finally believe your eyes.

Same section in the 2012 Olena Bormashenko translation:

. And despite this, there must be something there, a force field of some sort, because so far no one’s managed to push these disks together, or pull them apart either. . No, friends, it’s hard to describe this thing if you haven’t seen one. It looks much too simple, especially when you finally convince yourself that your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you.

When Redrick talks about Kirill's work on the empties:

. Actually, Kirill's been struggling with these "empties" for more-or-less an entire year already. He has four of them. There were three, but the other day they brought him another. The Vulture Burbridge found it in the "House without a roof". A patrol caught him, the "empty" was transferred to us, while he's been thrown in jail. So what? We had three, now we have four. We could have hundreds of them, it's all the same! Each one is identical and no one will ever figure them out. But Kirill hasn't stopped trying. He's gotten it into his head that they're some sort of magnetic trap — be it a hydromagnet, gyromagnet, whatever, some magnet — advanced physics. I know nothing about that sort of thing. But he's exposing them to a bunch of things in accordance with this hypothesis, as one should. Thermally, for example, he heats them up to crazy temperatures in an electric furnace. Chemically, say, he pours acid on them and smothers them with various pressurised gases. Besides this, he tries crushing them in a press or running electricity though them. No matter what he does, it hasn't yielded anything yet. Only thing he's managed is to completely exhaust himself. Actually, he's a funny guy, this Kirill. I've been dealing with these academic types for a while now. When something doesn't go their way, they become irritable, rude, start snapping at you, shouting at you, and you get this temptation to clobber them in the mug. Kirill isn't like that. He just wilts, his eyes start beaming sorrow, like those of a sick dog, he even gets teary; whatever you say to him — he doesn't hear it; he wanders around the lab, bumps into furniture, whatever he gets his hands on, he puts in his mouth. Found a pencil — hop, it's in his mouth. Found some plastilin — into his mouth it goes. Puts things in his mouth and chews. And he asks me wistfully: "Why — he says — is it inversely proportional, do you think? It can't be — he says — inversely. It should be directly..." . So we're standing in the storage room. I look at the way he's gotten, how red his eyes are and start to feel extremely sorry for him.

Now, from the 2012 Olena Bormashenko translation:

. Anyway, Kirill’s been struggling with these empties for almost a year now. I’ve worked for him from the very beginning, but I still don’t get what he wants with them, and to be honest, I haven’t tried too hard to find out. Let him first figure it out for himself, sort it all out, then maybe I’ll have a listen. But so far, one thing is clear to me: he’s absolutely determined to dismantle an empty, dissolve it in acid, crush it under a press, or melt it in an oven. And then he’ll finally get it, he’ll be covered in glory, and the entire scientific world will simply shudder in pleasure. But for now, as far as I know, he’s nowhere near this goal. He hasn’t yet accomplished anything at all, except that he’s exhausted himself, turned gray and quiet, and his eyes have become like a sick dog’s—they even water. If it were someone else, I’d get him totally wasted, take him to a great girl to loosen him up a bit, then the next morning I’d feed him more booze, take him to more girls, and by the end of the week he’d be A-OK—good as new and ready to go. Except this sort of therapy wouldn’t work on Kirill. There’s no point in even suggesting it; he’s not the type. . So, as I said, we’re standing in the repository, I’m looking at him, the way he’s gotten, how his eyes have sunk in, and I feel sorrier for him than I can say.

This one is a huge change. Redrick openly, and very aggressively, accuses Kirill of having told someone about their expedition plan:

. I think everything through and even feel slightly relieved that I won't have to go into the Zone. Then it suddenly clicked in my head, what had happened. When I saw Kirill, I immediately told him: . — Don't mess with me! Do you have any idea what sort of problems you can get me into?! . He winced and became all startled. I immediately realised, that he understood nothing. . — What happened? — he asks — What are you saying? . — Did you tell anyone about the garage? . — About the garage? No! Why? . — Nothing. Goddamn it — I say. — Your orders? . — We go and declare the route. . — What route? . Naturally, that pissed him off. . — What do you mean "what route"?! Our route through the Zone. . — Why? — I say. — Who says were going to the Zone today? Evidently, he figured out what was happening at that point. He took me by the elbow, brought me to his office, and sat me down at his desk while he plopped down on the windowsill next to me. We smoked a cigarette each. Silence. Then he cautiously asks: . — Did something happen, Red? . Eh, what do I tell him? . — No — I say, — nothing happened. Yesterday, I lost twenty bucks playing poker with Mr. Noonan. He's like a machine, the bastard. And I had a straight... . — Wait — he exclaims. — did you change your mind or something? . That's when I lose it. I'm not playing games with him. . — Yes, — I say, — changed my mind. You're a real claptrap. Snitched on me. I trusted you with this, and you had to go blabbing to the whole town. Even the people from security heard about it. — He started waving his hands to signal that I've got it all wrong, but I finished my thought. — If that's how you do things, then don't rely on me. Not that it matters, since from now on, fat chance I'll say anything when I'm around you. . I rattled all of this off and went silent. He, on the other hand, got his miserable look back, and his eyes again became like that of a sick poodle. He inhaled convulsively, lit a new cigarette with the butt of the previous one, and quietly said: . — Believe me, Red, I didn't say a word to anyone. . — Alright — I say. — If you insist it wasn't you, then it wasn't. . — I haven't even told Tender anything. I got him a permit, and I haven't even asked him if he's coming or not... . I smoke in silence. To laugh or to cry, the man understands nothing. . — Listen, Red — he says unexpectedly. — Are you sure that it was this garage that alerted them? It's not as if you have a spotless track record! . — What difference does it make?! — I say. . — Just know that I didn't snitch on you! Do you believe me? . — I believe you - I lied to calm him down. . But he didn't calm down. He jumped from the windowsill and started pacing back and forth around the office, murmuring to himself: . — No, buddy, I can see that you don't believe me! Why don't you believe me?! Your distrust towards me won't give you anything, I tell you... . He looked at me strangely somehow, jumped from the windowsill and began walking across his office. He runs around while I sit, smoke and keep quiet. I feel sorry for him, of course, and I'm kicking myself that it all turned out so stupidly. Way to cure someone's melancholy.

Note that Kirill jumps off the windowsill and starts pacing around the office twice. This makes me think that Milan Asadurov had, for whatever reason, stitched together an early draft of this scene with the final version we see in all other editions. Why? It's so much worse!

The ENTIRE vibe and character dynamic of this scene is much better in the Bormashenko translation:

. I think all this through and even feel a bit of relief that I don’t need to go into the Zone today. Except how am I going to break it to Kirill? . I tell him straight out. “I’m not going into the Zone. Your orders?” . At first, of course, he just gawks at me. Eventually, something seems to click. He takes me by the elbow, leads me to his office, sits me down at his table, and perches on the windowsill nearby. We light up. Silence. Then he asks me cautiously, “Red, did something happen?” . Now what am I supposed to tell him? “No,” I say, “nothing happened. Well, I blew twenty bucks last night playing poker—that Noonan sure knows how to play, the bastard.” . “Hold on,” he says. “What, you mean you just changed your mind?” . I almost groan from the tension. “I can’t,” I say through my teeth. “I can’t, you get it? Herzog just called me to his office.” . He goes limp. Again misery is stamped on his face, and again his eyes look like a sick poodle’s. He takes a ragged breath, lights a new cigarette with the remains of the old one, and says quietly, “Believe me, Red, I didn’t breathe a word to anyone.” . “Stop it,” I say. “Who’s talking about you?” . “I haven’t even told Tender yet. I got a pass for him, but I haven’t even asked him whether he’d come or not . . .” . I keep smoking in silence. Ye gods, the man just doesn’t understand. . “What did Herzog say to you, anyway?” . “Oh, not much,” I say. “Someone squealed on me, that’s all.” . He gives me a funny look, hops off the windowsill, and starts walking back and forth. He’s pacing around his office while I sit there, blowing smoke rings and keeping my trap shut. I feel sorry for him, of course, and really this is rotten luck: a great cure I found for the guy’s depression.

([Jan 18th, 2025 edit] I'M TOO TIRED, SO I GAVE UP ON WRITING THE REST OF THIS. SORRY! BELOW ARE A FEW NOTES ON OTHER POINTS I WAS GOING TO COVER)

-- [When the emigration agent tries to convince Redrick to leave Harmont, Redrick complains about the cultural atmosphere of a few European countries, saying that he definitely wouldn't want to move to Europe.]

-- [In chapter 2, when Red and Burbridge run into a resurrected body in a cemetery inside the zone, Redrick briefly considers that the figure might be Creon the Maltese, tailing them after they turned down his offer to join the expedition. He quickly dismisses this as very unlikely.]

[Jan 18th, 2025 edit] Oh, I guess I should try to hastily conclude this somehow:

Months after I initially wrote this, I believe I've tracked down two potential candidates for the Russian edition where these passages originate from. Milan Asadurov, in his translator's note (which I took a crack at translating into English), claims he was working from "the version of '...Picnic' specially prepared by Boris Natanovich for the 2003 release of their collected works".

Checking fantlab.ru, which has a lot of details on the publication history of Picnic, it turns out there were actually FOUR Strugatsky anthologies released in 2003. I managed to find two of them online, and they didn't contain the altered passages. So I managed to narrow down the potential source of this weirdness to these two editions: one published by Амфора, and one published by ОЛМА-ПРЕСС.

I was even thinking about asking around in Russo-phone circles and seeing if I can buy these two editions somewhere, but it seemed like a huge hassle and I quickly forgot about the idea. Any Russian fans of Picnic seeing this, could you help out?

(And I still have no idea why the Storytel audiobook used an earlier edition of Asadurov's translation with the stupid "Marmont" mistake! AGHH!)

[Jan 27th, 2025 edit] Ok, apparently this is common knowledge in Russia — I just researched this extremely poorly

Uh, never-mind, it wasn't the 2003 edition at all. The original text actually originates from this 1989 edition. According to Boris Sturgatsky, this was a draft version of the story that Arkady sent to the publisher because he didn't have the final version on-hand:

"Для данной публикации использован текст повести «Пикник на обочине» в редакции, заметно отличающейся от других публикаций. По словам Бориса Стугацкого, данное издание «… было (промежуточным) черновиком повести, который АНС сунул некогда издателю за неимением под рукой соответствующего чистовика». О том, что это черновик, в издании не указано. [...]"

This Strugatsky fan-site, (ran by a Maksim Gushin) further corroborates the story:

"В 1989 году в издательстве «Юридическая литература» вышел двумя изданиями под разными обложками авторский сборник с «Пикником на обочине», текст которого значительно отличался от всех ранее и впоследствии опубликованных вариантов — это было обусловлено тем, что Аркадий Стругацкий (вероятно, по ошибке) передал в издательство один из черновых вариантов."

...and even links to a .pdf of this original, draft version, so you can look at all of its strange quirks if you wish.

Sorry for having researched this so poorly, and accidentally spreading misinformation. I have no idea why Milan Asadurov cited a 2003 edition, when this version was published in 1989. Maybe the draft was mistakenly used once again in 2003? Or maybe Asadurov just got the two editions mixed up? Who knows.

Again, apologies for the shoddy research.