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Heinlein Archives Put Online
RaymondRuptime writes "Good news for fans of the late SF master Robert Heinlein, 2 months after his 100th birthday celebration. Per the San Jose Mercury News, 'The entire contents of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Archive — housed in the UC-Santa Cruz Library's Special Collections since 1968 — have been scanned in an effort to preserve the contents digitally while making the collection easily available to both academics and the general public... The first collection released includes 106,000 pages, consisting of Heinlein's complete manuscripts — including files of all his published works, notes, research, early drafts and edits of manuscripts.' You can skip the brief article and go straight to the archives."
Personally, I'd rather we tackle the issue of "collaborations" with aging popular writers. Is there some sort of old-folks home where we let Lackeys prop up ex-best seller senile octogenarian authors whose "hair is gray but eyes are still green" so that younger talentless hacks without the ability to come up with an idea on their own get to "help" gramma write another book so that her grandkids can buy another Mercedes with the royalties?
/Off to write a Harry-Potter-on-Darkover mashup...
I've even seen one edition that touted itself as being "FROM THE MIND OF [AUTHOR HERE]" which I can only interpret as "gramma could only drool and reminisce about the time she was six and her pet cat blouncy used to get in 'ever so much trouble' so we nodded, patted her head, and ran with that idea as inspiration for another Darkover book." Actually, it wasn't the Darkover series, but you get the idea.
Sadly, neither practice is likely to end soon. The vast majority of readers are either too stupid to see past the marketing gimmic or idiodic fanfic enthusiasts who are just waiting for that call from the author's agent telling them that the Harry-Potter-on-Darkover mashup they wrote is just the thing that could sell.