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Against the Fall of Night

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1brightcopy
Edited: Mar 30, 2011, 8:30pm Top

I have a couple of questions to throw out to the crowd. Here's a series:

Against the Fall of Night

(Noisy - from the CK history I think you created this series and I know you follow this group, so I'm looking forward to hearing your point of view.)

It doesn't really contain separate books, but really expanded versions and omnibuses. The only one that could be said to contain a sequel is Beyond the Fall of Night. But that ones weird in that it contains both the original and a sequel in one book, which is not labeled as an omnibus in any way. It really seems like yet another expansion to me.

So what I'm wondering is this - is this series moot now that we have the work-to-work relationships? Most of the relationships were already set up, but I just made sure the rest were. So we have:

Against the Fall of Night
Is contained in
The Lion of Comarre & Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke

Is expanded in
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke

The Lion of Comarre & Against the Fall of Night
Contains
Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke
Lion of Commare by Arthur C. Clarke

The City and the Stars
Is contained in
Arthur C. Clarke: 2001/A Space Odyssey, the City and the Stars, the Deep Range, a Fall of Moondust, Rendevous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
The City and the Stars and the Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke

Is an expanded version of
Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke

The City and the Stars and the Sands of Mars
Contains
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke
The Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke

Beyond the Fall of Night
Is an expanded version of
Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke


I think this captures all the relationships. I made the last one an "Is an expanded version of" instead of "Contains" since Beyond the Fall of Night isn't really an omnibus of two works. There is no separate Beyond the Fall of Night work, only the work that includes the (revised?) text of Against the Fall of Night.

So, could we axe this series? The only argument I could see for keeping it is if you wanted to see all of the data on the same page. That would be a cool feature, and I'm going to post an RSI about it. But it could apply to a lot of books. It just seems this is duplicative now that we have the work-to-work relationships that provide a much more structured way to approach this problem.

2andyl
Mar 31, 2011, 5:01am Top

I agree. I think that the series facility has been pushed to the limit here. It was never meant to track expansions and multiple publications of short stories in different collections and anthologies.

3Noisy
Apr 1, 2011, 5:23am Top

>1 brightcopy:

I can see where you're coming from. The thing is that if I want to know about all the linked works in a 'series' I go to the series page (which is how I build up my wishlist). Now, say I've got Against the Fall of Night; I go to the series page and it isn't there - how do I know that there's a 'sequel' (the word is arguable, I suppose) available in Beyond the Fall of Night? The same applies for the other versions - If I've got one of those, how do I know that there's further writing set in the same universe?

I'm fairly set on keeping it as a series.

4brightcopy
Apr 1, 2011, 10:43am Top

3> I go to the series page and it isn't there - how do I know that there's a 'sequel' (the word is arguable, I suppose) available in Beyond the Fall of Night?

Go to Against the Fall of Night. Look at the work-to-work relationships section:
Is contained in
The Lion of Comarre & Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke

Is expanded in
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke
Beyond the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke
So it shows it right there.

I'm not saying your point is completely invalid or anything, as if you go to The City and the Stars, it will only list Against the Fall of Night as a relative, since The City and the Stars is only a sideways relative to Beyond the Fall of Night. But if you then clicked on Against the Fall of Night, you'd see Beyond on the relationships on that page.

It just really seems much more List-y than Series-y, doesn't it?

5Heather19
Apr 2, 2011, 9:35pm Top

andyl said "It was never meant to track expansions and multiple publications of short stories in different collections and anthologies."

That's basically how I see this. I understand the reasoning, here, but it's just not what Series is supposed to be used for. And now that we have contains/expanded/etc, I see no reason to keep non-series info in the series field.

6Noisy
Apr 4, 2011, 4:29am Top

I'll repeat my question: "Now, say I've got Against the Fall of Night; I go to the series page and it isn't there - how do I know that there's a 'sequel' (the word is arguable, I suppose) available in Beyond the Fall of Night?"

That applies for all the other 'variations' on the original story - none of them have the 'sequel' as a relationship, other than through the series listing.

7andyl
Apr 4, 2011, 5:35am Top

#6

It will be on the Work-relationships part of the page for "Against the Fall Of Night".

Just like if you look at Gone With The Wind it shows two non-series sequels. Just like if you look at The Time Machine you can see The Time Ships is a non-series sequel.

8brightcopy
Apr 4, 2011, 9:46am Top

6> As andyl and I have both said, it'd be in the w-t-w-r section. The problem here is that Beyond the Fall of Night is not a sequel, it is an expansion. I say this because the "sequel" part has never been published by itself. When you refer to Beyond the Fall of Night, you refer to both the original Against the Fall of Night + "new material". "New material" doesn't even have it's own name; it's not named Beyond the Fall of Night, that's for sure, because that's the name for the whole work containing the old and new material.

If just the new material had ever been published along and actually had a name, I'd definitely say it was a sequel. This would also make it a series. As such, it's just a single novel that's been expanded a couple of different ways and also included in some omnibi.

9andyl
Apr 4, 2011, 10:50am Top

#8

I wouldn't even call it an expansion. It is two stories printed together in an omnibus. So maybe a contained-in.

10brightcopy
Apr 4, 2011, 11:06am Top

9> Well, I might say that, if the second story even had a name or was ever printed on its own. As it stands, they just inserted the AtFoN and tacked on some material after it and printed it under a new name. That's an expansion in my book.

11andyl
Apr 4, 2011, 11:56am Top

Well except that the new material is a standalone story.

In the UK it was published as "Against the Fall of Night / Beyond the Fall of Night" with the two stories having distinct titles.

12brightcopy
Edited: Apr 6, 2011, 1:21am Top

11> Which makes it even weird, to me! They can't seem to even make up their mind if "Beyond the Fall of Night" is the entire novel with both parts, or if it's just the new part.


Speaking of which:

http://www.librarything.com/work/1953290

Is it identical to the content in

http://www.librarything.com/work/261940

?

I would combine them, but I want to make sure I'm not missing something first.

ETA: Another fun bit - ISBN 0575047658 shows up on Against the Fall of Night's editions:
http://www.librarything.com/work/20531/editions
as well as this dual-titled one:
http://www.librarything.com/work/1953290/editions


ETA: Fixed the above.

13andyl
Apr 4, 2011, 1:49pm Top

#12

I believe so. ISFDB has them as one work.

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