Space War Blues

Book cover.

Space War Blues is a science fiction novel by American writer Richard A. Lupoff. It is a fixup of several previously published pieces, the longest of which, "With The Bentfin Boomer Boys On Little Old New Alabama", (afterwards “WTBBB”) first appeared in Harlan Ellison's 1972 anthology Again, Dangerous Visions. In his introduction to the novella, Ellison wrote: "It is so audacious and extravagant a story that it becomes one of the three or four really indispensable reasons for doing this book. Frankly, had no other story than this one been written for A,DV — the book would be worth reading."[1] The story appeared on the final Nebula Award ballot for Best Novella of the Year.

History

Lupoff wrote the book over a period of almost eleven years. He began writing “WTBBB” in 1967, submitting the first three chapters of the 36000 word novella to Harlan Ellison. With Ellison’s encouragement, Lupoff expanded it to the 38000 word version which was turned in to Ellison in February, 1969. Henry Morrison, Lupoff’s agent, submitted this version to Dell, who became interested in publishing “WTBBB” as a possible stand-alone “slim” novel. Lupoff’s contract with Ellison prohibited any prior appearance of stories slated for Again, Dangerous Visions, and along with the delay in A,DV’s publication, the deal with Dell fell through.

In 1973, Lupoff wrote a pair of stories which, while directly related to each other, were tangential to the main storyline of "WTBBB". These stories, "After the Dreamtime" and "Sail the Tide of Mourning", were published in two sequential volumes of Robert Silverberg’s original anthology series New Dimensions. Both stories were on the final Hugo Award ballot of their respective years, and "Sail the Tide of Mourning" was on the 1975 Nebula Awards ballot. Another story, "The Bentfin Boomer Girl Comes Thru", closer in style to "WTBBB", was published by Ted White in Amazing Stories magazine. These pieces are inter-twined throughout the novel (see Contents below for a chapter-by-chapter breakdown.) After a succession of editors at Dell, a 70000 word version of the novel was finally published in paperback in June, 1978 with a hardcover reprint two years later by Gregg Press, aimed primarily at libraries.

According to the author's preface in the first edition, Lupoff was very open to changes in the book's content and title (first New Alabama Blues, then New Alabama Spacewar Blues, and finally Space War Blues, when the cover designer complained that the title was too long.) A manuscript reader for Dell described the book as "unutterable bilge" and claimed the only intelligible part was a little prefatory note by an imaginary "Uncle Dudley." When Jim Frenkel, the last of the four Dell editors who worked with the novel, asked Lupoff to remove the "Uncle Dudley" sections, he readily agreed.[2]

Frenkel wrote about the novel’s style in his introduction to the hardcover reprint: “…there are no fixed rules of grammar, spelling, or punctuation in the book, save for the unwritten rule that the inconsistency in all of the above is recognizably different and consistent within each narrative thread…”[3] The thread with the greatest divergence from standard English is the “WTBBB” sections. For example:

’nifykin look outha portole sreely pretty, sreely pretty, lookna Port Upotoi swinging roun thole mudball, thole goodole place, it’s maybe not the prettiest place na whole universe but nobody ever said it was, it was home though m that counted frole lot that swat Leander Laptip saw outha portole:[4]

These divergences are apparently an attempt to represent (orthographically) vernacular English of the southern states of the USA.

Publishing history

Publication of the various sections:

Note: Chapter 10 (“Our Own Little Mardi Gras”) was previewed in Heavy Metal, August 1977.

Contents

The narrative voice of the chapters formed from “After the Dreamtime” was changed from first person to third

References

  1. ↑ Ellison, Harlan. “Introduction to WTBBB”, Again, Dangerous Visions, Doubleday, 1972: 671.
  2. ↑ Lupoff, Richard A. "And I Awoke — Was This Some Kind of Joke?", Space War Blues, Dell, June 1978: 27-33.
  3. ↑ Frenkel, James R.. “Introduction” Space War Blues, Gregg Press, May 1980: v.
  4. ↑ Lupoff, Richard A. Space War Blues, Dell, June 1978: 220.
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