So. Your Humble Blogger has developed a pattern with the novels of Mr. John Scalzi. I borrow them in hardback from the library, and then I purchase them in paperback. Or so I have done with two of his novels; Old Man’s War and The Android’s Dream. One would think that his publisher, Tor, would be happy with that little arrangement. After all, a library that has the new hardback snapped up is likely to purchase the next one, or perhaps even two copies of the next one. And, of course, it’s good for them that I eventually make a purchase. Right? Right. And for all that I complain about Tor, they do (and I think I have mentioned this enough times) publish a lot of books I like, and that’s a wonderful thing for them to do.
So it was a disappointment, a grave disappointment, to discover that the paperback edition of Dream is a piece of shit. Unutterably lousy. The sort of thing that I am used to seeing only from Simon&Schuster and its subsidiaries, who exist with their readership in the sort of mutual contempt that has given publishers a bad name. Well, mainstream publishers. Thomson is way ahead on the other side. Anyway, the margins are miniscule, the page images are planted willy-nilly on the paper, to make the miniscule margins even more annoying, and if I’m not mistaken, they have managed to introduce several new typos into this edition. I will say that the pages are mostly at the right angle; I’m surprised they aren’t all aslant, because I know that’s one of the things that you have to keep an eye on if you are at all interested in keeping an eye on things, which Tor must not have been.
I know, printing is hella expensive, and a smallish concern has to cut corners where it can. But seriously—until this whole sorry episode fades from memory, I will check the publisher before I buy a cheap paperback, and if it’s Tor, I will think twice and three times. Already, I have decided that when I feel like rereading The Ghost Brigades, I will get the hardback out from the library again rather than spend my money on a Tor paperback. Which means, not that anyone should care, that I am unlikely to read the book again for several years, because I don’t swing by the library’s shelves on the way from the bedroom to the bathtub.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.