Peter Anghelides: “And apart from Terry Nation, himself a good friend of Paul’s, who better than the man who played Avon himself to reveal the character’s history?"

The recent BluRay announcement has really re-ignited my B7 fandom!

I've got the original novel on my bookshelf. I've not read it for years, but back in 89 I remember it being not to shabby.

I'll admit it isn't Shakespeare

Actually, at least some of it is. Three words of the title, to be precise!

I can remember waiting with anticipation for the novel to come out, and being quite excited to get it, and admiring the dust jacket. It wasn't a bad novel, and I enjoyed it for the most part, but it wasn't B7 enough to scratch that particular itch.

It was known to friends of mine as Avon: A Terrible Novel.

Very true, Joe. I think I remember Paul telling us that he had a different title in mind but the publisher had a different idea.

Do you remember what his original title was?

Will it be edited to make it better or will it be the original book?

huh, I never thought Shakespeare would've seen a tiger but I guess they had them in sad zoos or something

In my experience, Big Finish are often fairly light on the editing process. Maybe they don't want to interfere with the 'flow', are overworked or just plain lazy, but it's a vital part of making things readable, and NEEDS DOING.

It does!

People will take what they assume is the Post-Modern stance of not interfering with the intentions of the artist. Bollox! What they really mean is that they're too stupid or too lazy to do things properly, or, more likely, both. Personally, I've been post-Post-Modern since the 1980s...

All the basic science mistakes to which Paula alludes above are corrected in the edited copy. Some of the comments are extremely amusing and are, occasionally, accompanied by little sketches demonstrating why something cannot be so. The editors put a lot of effort into making the book a win for PD. It would be nice at some stage to see that work rewarded. And I say that with the best of care for the man himself, as did they. It's not fun seeing his work slagged off when the issues were all easily rectified. Other fanfic writers get their worked "beta-ed". He did also, only all that worked was ignored.

I read novels regularly that I want to get to with an editor's coloured pencils. Again, all I can say is, slack and indifferent publishers.

Included in my bundle is a letter to Paul from another of the original readers which includes much advice that was ignored on the publisher's say-so. The novel would have been far better if some of that and the editors' advice had been followed.

As a professional editor, I have a hard time reading fandom novels sometimes because I often find numerous grammatical discrepancies and punctuation errors.

I find this to be increasingly the case in more mainstream works too. It's frustrating as it pulls you out of what you are reading. I think there are a couple of couple of reasons for it, one being that publishing in general is under a lot of cost pressures due to the increase in online reading (blogs, news websites, Horizon, etc) or indeed watching or listening (no need for a book or newspaper on the train). This loss of newspapers and magazines has reduced the demand for sub editors, and the places where they could learn their trade. This is coupled with a heavier reliance on software to correct errors, to cut proofing costs, all in service of tighter margins and smaller budgets.

I also think there is a growing proportion of non-'native English' speakers in Western countries, which has a variety of impacts. Without having that daily, lifelong, ingrained usage of English, their formations aren't always correct, but it's that old conundrum of the fluidity of language and the imposition of grammar, etc. Australia screens a lot of US TV and movies, and it was clear to see how that influenced the way people spoke - 'dollar bills', ANZAC 'cookies', etc - but it's also clear now how the tide has shifted now mainstream media audiences are so small and most people get their content online, from across the world. The influences are more diverse and what would once be more localised as Jinglish or Singlish (etc.) have more reach into the common corpus.

One other factor, which I don't understand, is how readily people seem to adopt phrases and pronunciations which are different, as if they are uncertain and defer to what they hear. An old one is that in meetings, for a long time now, I hear people say "I'm going to talk to the presentation". Twenty years ago we would have said, "You're an idiot. You talk to the audience, about the presentation. This is nonsense usage." I am staggered that this has been adopted by adults who were taught basic English in school. More recently, I hear the pronunciation of 'distributing' or 'distributed' in a changed form everywhere. It seems as if, overnight, everyone was reprogrammed from saying 'dis/tributed' to 'distrib/uted'. I cannot account for it, and it is genuinely jarring.

That would be very interesting to see, and the editor's comments you mention.

I found the idea that someone had put the effort in to edit Paul Darrow's manuscript and this was just ignored quite depressing. I can still recall the sense of disappointment when reading the novel when it first came out particularly as it was so expensive (the equivalent to £41 today according to the Bank of England inflation calculator)! Perhaps Cult Edge could be persuaded to publish a revised edition with all the edits.