According to the table of contents, this story occupies pp. 77-208. Thus, in this edition, it is 132 pages in length. My personal arbitrary rule of thumb for a novel is 100 + pages. In my copy of The Trouble Twisters (New York, 1977), the story occupies pp. 95-190 with one blank page between the introduction (see below) and the text and thus is 94 pages in length. Clearly, novel length is a matter of word count, not of page count.
Despite what the contents page says, a reader of David Falkayn: Star Trader finds on pp. 77-80 a peculiar short story for want of a better description or perhaps more accurately just a story summary with the heading, "PLUS CHANGE PLUS C'EST LA MEME CHOSE," while the narrative text commencing on p. 81 is headed "THE TROUBLE TWISTERS." Thus, the reader cannot tell, as far as I can see, that pp. 77-80 are meant to be understood as an introduction to the story. That pp. 77-80 do count as an introduction is affirmed by the Compiler, Hank Davis, in his general introduction to the volume. Further, each of the three stories in The Trouble Twisters has such an idiosyncratic "introduction" and the other two are explicitly headed "INTRODUCTION" when they appear in the preceding volume of The Technic Civilization Saga.
"Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose" is French for "The more it changes, the more it is the same thing." This title seems as unrelated to the "introduction" as the "introduction" is to the introduced text. However, this let's-agree-to-call-it-an-introduction-for-the-time-being can be welcomed as an extra short Technic History installment imparting information about Noah Arkwright, the unnamed first person narrator and his unfortunate auditor, Urwain the Wide-Faring. Hloch's Earth Book introductions enhance the Technic History and so do these off-the-wall Trouble Twisters introductions.
"The Trouble Twisters" is divided into numbered sections or short chapters, I-XI, so maybe, after a lunch of homemade vegetable soup, cheese sandwiches and coffee, I will reread I.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember that "introduction," and how Noah Arkwright came "near" his glib tongue came to hornswoggling that unnamed auditor and his colleagues when they invested in his "discovery." Not quite outright fraud, because they did recover their money plus a small profit, but nowhere what they had been hoping for!
Ad astra! Sean
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