Beyond Jack Vance discussion

Howdy all. Noticed today that there's a subtle but still significant difference in how a certain paragraph is written in two different omnibus editions of The Book of Dreams.

My first thought was that one of the two editor teams — presumably based on input from Vance himself —decided to go with an "original" version of the paragraph that was found in an older edition of the book, but that's just a wild guess; my google/ISFDB research hasn't turned anything up, and I don't have access to the text of other editions at this time. Whatever the reason is, though, I'm pretty sure it wasn't unintentional.

Anyone have any idea what the reason might be?

Comparison:

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- The Demon Princes omnibus (2005 SF Book Club / SFBC 50th Anniversary Collection, ISFDB record: 290568, scanned version available for borrowing on archive.org):

All averred, and so was formed the noble troop, destined to perform deeds and feats to surpass all those of yore or hence.

- The Demon Princes omnibus (2012 Spatterlight Press/Vance Integral Edition/Vance Digital Edition, ISFDB record: 742776):

So all averred, and so was formed the noble troop who were destined to perform deeds and feats to surpass all those of yore or hence.

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Spatterlight uses texts generated by the people who created the Vance Integral Edition. Hundreds of volunteers pored through Vance's manuscripts and restored his original prose, reversing the changes that had been made by editors over decades. Some of the edits had been stylistic. Others had been to shorten to fit into available space.

Hey, Matthew. Yes, that much I know, but very much appreciated. Your comment made me realize that I could have been much clearer in my question, which was written in haste for some reason.

Also, I could have done a better job while looking into it earlier by taking a closer look at the project website rather than relying on google.

Here is what I think is probably an accurate high-level summary of what led to the changes I was asking about, found at integralarchive.org -> The Vance Integral Edition -> The Reconstruction of the VIE Texts by Alun Hughes (bolding mine):

...Some of the most useful evidence is the setting copy typescripts. These are the typescripts which were used in the production (typesetting) of the published edition, and they are especially useful because they contain copy-editor's and proofreader's changes marked up so that it is possible to see what's going on and who changed what.

...Another advantage of setting copies is that they provide good evidence that the typescript in question was the author's final draft. In a number of cases we have late typescripts or carbons, not setting copy, where it's reasonable to suppose that its counterpart top-copy or carbon was the basis for the published edition.

...Texts restored from such typescript evidence included: The Killing Machine, Durdane, Araminta Station, The Face, The Book of Dreams, Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight, The Green Pearl, Throy, and The Narrow Land. In these cases close comparison with published texts might be necessary to glean evidence of late textual changes.

Projects as ambitious and impactful as this happening even once in a given generation is pretty remarkable. If, down the road, some other person or group were to decide to undertake something similar, whether similar in form and scope or just something like an article, it would be comforting to know that there exists detailed documentation about specific changes made by the Vance Integral Edition team such as the above. After all, future scholars and researchers would presumably be facing similar challenges in having to reach back into history to piece together facts the best they can, just as the VIE editors apparently had to do when they tackled difficult decisions about different versions of Vance's text. One would hope that those editors learned from their experience and elected to preserve some sort of detailed record.