Remaining inconsistencies in New Millennium Editions 1-3

[Nix]

That's unfortunately not completely unrealistic when it comes to cancer. The metastases being tiny doesn't change that there were multiple, and having metastasized at all for many types of cancer upon discovery gives a life expectancy of a few months. Yes, this was less than a month, no, that is not outside of reasonable expectation for how cancer operates.

It's not outside unreasonable expectation unless lengthening that period was the climax of the previous book. Are we supposed to believe that the cancer would have killed her in a week or something, absent Nita's intervention, or that Nita's intervention had no effect at all? Because I can't really see any other interpretations, and both of those are rather depressing -- yet Nita never considers either of them, since in the pre-timeline-rewrite world she did win her mother some time, with probably half a year to a year lying between the two books.

[Tuttle]

That's unfortunately not completely unrealistic when it comes to cancer. The metastases being tiny doesn't change that there were multiple, and having metastasized at all for many types of cancer upon discovery gives a life expectancy of a few months. Yes, this was less than a month, no, that is not outside of reasonable expectation for how cancer operates.

[Nix]

I just spotted a particularly appalling consequence of the reset timeline: it cheapens probably the most harrowing of the books so far, The Wizard's Dilemma. In the new timeline, this takes place in late September 2009 -- but the next book, A Wizard Alone, takes place in January 2010, by which point Nita's mum has been dead for 'weeks'. Are we seriously supposed to believe that that tumour killed Betty in a month despite being blatted hard by Nita at the end of the book, and despite not really having metastasized much yet? (There were metastases, but they were tiny: only Nita's wizardry could spot them at all). Did all of Nita's work mean so little? At the end of that book, they think she has "more than enough time to say our good-byes". Am I meant to believe that a time period of less than a month counts as that?

No. Just no.

By this point I am actively ignoring the 'time fixes'. They're clearly hideously wrong and match nothing in the actual books. I'm willing to believe the 2007/2008 start, but the rest... just no.

[Nix]

I wonder whether the original editions needed re-entering via OCR (or some such technology) before the NM editions could be produced from them, and that's where the typos you've found crept in?

I wondered that, too, but while there are a few errors of that sort ("did not care to nave the Song enacted just now" DW p88, and notably in the strings of 1s Spot emits when the motherboard is talking to it for the first time, a good few of which have become l's, particularly where they appear inside words, e.g. p1ge has turned into 'plge'), the vast majority are not of that variety -- but possibly the frequent typographical problems involving missing spaces after ellipses in A Wizard Abroad and run-together words in all four books are OCR errors too, since OCR often misses spaces, in which case the majority of errors would be OCR errors.

Some of the errors look like the source was unproofread content -- i.e. they look like ordinary, plausible typos e.g. "Need anything from met?" from Dilemma p10, or 'pocket of time space' rather than space-time from p11 of the same. I don't know how to interpret cases where italics run on too long ("And there was her phone, on the table", p75, wrongly italicized): I guess it was an ebook conversion error, putting a closing tag in the wrong place. The same applies to the two missing chapters (!) in High Wizardry, whose titles were simply set in bold: a tag was used but it was the wrong one. Some are the results of epub -> mobi conversions hitting the limitations of mobi: the computer text in High Wizardry is set in small caps, for instance, but mobi can't do small caps so some of it just ended up looking like ordinary running body text, in lowercase even when it was at the start of a sentence. (Most was converted to italics, but some was missed). Some are conversion errors where discretionary hyphens were mistakenly converted into hard hyphens, leading to words like "every-thing" (p61, HW) or "lan-guage" (p76) or even "com-uter" (p87) which struck a word with a typo in it!

But the missing words and letters and transpositions are just weird, particularly given that they often occur in regions of text that were not changed from the original. e.g. High Wizardry p19, "The last time she'd held it, it had looked like a well-worn kid's book from the library. When she'd borrowed it, had read like one." (missing 'it', present in original), or "To Nita Timeheart had lat that point ooked like a bright city", DW p164, which brings Unseen University's Librarian to mind: I'm sure he's in Timeheart!

Not all the errors are typographical. In several places consistency errors have been introduced, rather than being fixed. The new HW gives the practicingotential ratio as 1:100 and the potential:nonpotential ratio as 1:10, then says that this means there are 654,000,000 wizards in the world. The old text had the latter ratio as 1:3 and the total number of wizards as 16,400,000-odd. I can't figure this one out: it's not that someone multiplied instead of dividing, because the new figures are insanely wrong unless the Earth has a population in the hundreds of billions now. It looks like someone forgot to factor in the practicingotential ratio at all. (The correct figure, assuming a global population of 6.5 billion, which is, uh, old and needs updating for the new timeline, is 6.5 million.) [Edited to remove babbling which was based on an error of my own and led to a figure ten times too low! sigh.]

One new typo I love. p49 of High Wizardry mentions that Tom's phone has a 'sharger cradle'. This should be a word, dammit! Probably for those charger cradles that are so delicate and/or shoddily built that if you once drop them on the floor they erupt into shards...

[Lazy Leopard]

I wonder whether the original editions needed re-entering via OCR (or some such technology) before the NM editions could be produced from them, and that's where the typos you've found crept in?

[Nix]

Hi Nix!

First off, welcome, and great first post! Thanks for sharing your findings. I was entertained by the typo about the Lone Power creating Timeheart.

Personally, I love finding (or being shown) typos and correcting them, so it would be fun at least for me to see your whole list of typos. That is a lot of work, though; I can see why you wouldn't want to do it!

It is a bit crazy, particularly given that I'm tracking punctuation problems too (ellipses not followed by a space are particularly common). The Wizard's Dilemma appears to be relatively typo-free, so possibly the problems are concentrated in the first four books (really, books two, three and four), but there are so many of them (in excess of 300) that I'm thinking of building a database just to track the damn things to let me output them by position in book or by class-of-error (typo, transposition, dateline messup, etc). One of those would have to be I-don't-believe-this: e.g. Kit's dad being a pressman at a printer's was plausible in the 1980s and just barely plausible in 2000 but, er, that profession is more or less extinct and Kit's dad is not visibly unemployed. Do hot-metal galley presses even exist outside of museums any more?

(I also, I'm afraid, don't believe the new timeline, although it makes more intrinsic sense than the "don't think about it" silent slide into the future of the old timeline. Not only are there conversion problems, e.g. at least half a dozen places where references are made to Nita having had wizardry for two to five years, when, uh, according to the timeline she's only had it for one... not only that, but it's unbelievable despite that: it's too compressed, as others have noted. All of books one to four happened in one year? Plus frequent references to a lot of *other* stuff that wasn't novelized? Nita would be dead of exhaustion by book four!)

The timeline would have made a great deal more sense if it had started in 2006 rather than 2008 and then run forward at about a year per book. That's what I thought was going to happen before I bought the books -- that would have left it back at the present day by A Wizard of Mars. Instead, it's all been jammed into two years! Of course you would then have the problem that Kit and Nita would be having a terribly slow adolescence from the physical point of view, but, hey, that does actually happen to people.

There are some definite improvements in High Wizardry, in particular, and I whooped in geeky joy to discover that the 'cancer viruses' had been replaced with cancer cells in Dilemma without changing their essential, ah, self-justified viciousness, but I'm not sure the sheer typo density makes up for it. You pretty much need the originals of the first few books too, or you'll be very confused in several places where whole chunks of sentences were accidentally excised...

[EricG1793]

Hi Nix!

First off, welcome, and great first post! Thanks for sharing your findings. I was entertained by the typo about the Lone Power creating Timeheart.

Personally, I love finding (or being shown) typos and correcting them, so it would be fun at least for me to see your whole list of typos. That is a lot of work, though; I can see why you wouldn't want to do it!

Jesami, thanks to you for posting as well! I was also entertained by your comment about MP3 players not playing tapes.

I have to wonder who was responsible for adapting the original editions for the New Millennium -- apparently not DD. It sounds like it was pretty sloppy. I never really thought it would be worth buying/reading the new editions, and from what you're all saying here, I think I'm better off!

[Nix]

I can agree with the 'needs proofreading': I'm doing a complete read of the NM editions now, comparing with the originals to determine if a typo is 'original' or not, and, wel,l there are a lot of new typos in here: I'm wondering if these were made from the text of the original editions before proofing or something.

I'm in the middle of A Wizard Abroad, and the worst so far for typos is High Wizardry, which has on the order of sixty errors -- one every couple of pages -- and some missing pieces of sentences and sentences converted into word salad by unintended textual moves: it even apparently has fewer chapters than the paperback because, uh, two chapter headings haven't been recognized as such or populated in the table of contents.

The worst single typo so far has to be one in A Wizard Abroad, though, where a crucial missing 'not' makes it appear that the Lone Power had not affected this world but had instead created Timeheart (whoops!).

I'm not sure what to do with the resulting giant typo list once it's done: I'd post it here, but it's huge...

Regarding the timeline, yes, it's definitely still a bit flawed, though much more consistent than it was, and seems to pass *awfully* fast: that first year must be the busiest in the history of wizardry. At least there's a nice long gap of most of a year between High Wizardry and A Wizard Abroad but unfortunately Nita then goes and says (in the first chapter) that it had been "only two years, no, two and a half now" since she'd found the manual, which makes her sound distinctly amnesiac!

Still, it's nice to revisit the world again, and the *intended* changes are definitely for the better.

[Jesami Soji]

[dorotheia]

Heh, I recant. After reading the New Millennium Edition of The Wizard's Dilemma, I am forced to recognize that Nita and Kit are at the right ages for that book. It think most of the changes really nailed that particular time of life, so now I wouldn't change anything. It's done.

Although I am still a bit bothered by HW, which seems to take place after a lot of time during which Nita and Kit have done "normal routine wizardry" and established how they work as partners. Is four months enough time to do that? After some more thought I can see why HW would need to follow so closely to DW, though: Dairine looked awfully close to taking the Choice even then.

I wonder when the Feline Wizardry books take place on the new timescale? The first one must come some time before TWD at least (it's the one with the dinosaurs in Central Park).

And I agree about the other issues pointed out as well. The whalesark one always bothered me in particular, and the wizard's relationship to technology in HW as well... Especially since in just the next book, it's mentioned that Ronan has to memorise everything (I'm still kinda confused how he manages that! Is it like the peredixis?)

Yes. I agree.

...Millman appears in AWAl, WH, W@W (over the phone, because he arranges for the kids to skip school for mental health reasons, as I mentioned earlier). I'm not sure if Nita is still seeing him during AWoM (I think so -- just not as much), but her sister's counselor gets switched to him (I think, it's been a while since I read that book) or to another counselor and Dairine seems to do better with that arrangement (Yay!).

[96bookworms]

AWAl: New Millennium Edition is not published yet, but Nita's Mom has to have had

WH took place during spring break. I'm reading that now.

It was during AWAl that Nita was seeing Millman*. In WH, the family seems to be on its way towards normalcy, but the pains are still there (such as Nita's memories of shopping with her mother after they run out of food and she is elected to make the shopping list since her dad has no idea what to get).

*I don't recall whether or not Millman was in W@W or his role in in it. Perhaps he was speaking to Dairine at that point still? I believe Dairine said she was going to be seeing Millman towards the end of AWAl, or perhaps in the beginning of WH. There are mentions in WH of Nita's dad talking with Millman when it comes to his language and his attitude towards the exchange when he tells Nita that she should go.

WH is during spring break, as Eric said. W@W is still in Spring Break, heading out of it. Remember, Nita and Kit had to head home early from their part of the exchange, due to the...incident...on Alallu. That's why Ske'ret, Roshaun, and Filif are still at the Callahan's at the start.

I think that Nita might still see Millman occasionally, if she's having a rough patch, or maybe even just in the halls at school. Also, at least at my school, guidance counselors can be pretty involved in academic matters as well (she would probably see him for class scheduling, etc.) And if she needed a special favor, he would be the one that could pull it off.

And I agree about the other issues pointed out as well. The whalesark one always bothered me in particular, and the wizard's relationship to technology in HW as well... Especially since in just the next book, it's mentioned that Ronan has to memorise everything (I'm still kinda confused how he manages that! Is it like the peredixis?)

[Lazy Leopard]

There's also a huge difference between individuals. One 13-year-old might easily look and behave in a way that'd get them mistaken for someone a couple of years older, or a couple of years younger. Different up-bringing, different climates, different cultures, all can affect the perceived level of maturity. So, of course, can different diets and living standards. Modern Western diets in particular seem to cause children to start puberty earlier. Any generalisations are bound to trip over the range of variations...

[Tuttle]

There's a huge difference developmentally between "A few months before 12" and 13, or even almost 13. That's a time where people go through rapid changes, and even a year's difference really is a large one.

Putting it in terms of school grades, you looking at 5th grade to 7th grade. That might be an easier way to think about it. Think about how drastic people change in those years, and how drastic schools expect you to change.

From the point of view of someone who works with students, people really do mature quickly as they are heading into puberty and what I can expect from them changes. The younger students - 4th and 5th grade, are ones who are much more creative, much lower focus, much faster reward needing, much more everything is a game oriented, while one step up in age (6th, 7th, 8th) you start getting into designing and building things instead, more complex ideas combining, more step by step thought working without prompting when it should be used, and so on.

Working with people those ages, no, I agree, there is a larger difference than you'd expect.


As for the bullying, no really, people are bullied, people are abused, its not all taken care of. It'd be better if people weren't. It's not that good. It's not that adults are bad, its that reality is reality. It's that humans do bad things. It's that its not really as good as you want to think it is. People get hurt. People don't believe that people get hurt or that its as bad as it is even when they care. People don't say anything even though they're getting hurt for various reasons. It happens.

[EricG1793]

AWAl: New Millennium Edition is not published yet, but Nita's Mom has to have had some

WH took place during spring break. I'm reading that now.

It was during AWAl that Nita was seeing Millman*. In WH, the family seems to be on its way towards normalcy, but the pains are still there (such as Nita's memories of shopping with her mother after they run out of food and she is elected to make the shopping list since her dad has no idea what to get).

*I don't recall whether or not Millman was in W@W or his role in in it. Perhaps he was speaking to Dairine at that point still? I believe Dairine said she was going to be seeing Millman towards the end of AWAl, or perhaps in the beginning of WH. There are mentions in WH of Nita's dad talking with Millman when it comes to his language and his attitude towards the exchange when he tells Nita that she should go.

[dorotheia]

Soooo. Trouble with the time stamps, huh? For my part, I can't evaluate something unless the information is spread out in front of me so I can see it. It's kind of a summary of the remaining timeline trouble. Sorry if this is boring; but, just in case you're interested, you guys might as well have a look:

Taken from the Errantry Concordance:

Dairine's birth: October 20, 1997
Nita's birth: April 16, 1995 (wow, my birthday is freakishly close to hers)
Kit's birth: August 25, 1995*

* I guess Kit didn't skip a grade... Unless he went to kindergarten when he was six and got bumped up immediately.

SYWTBAW: May 2008 (late seventh grade - Nita is thirteen, Kit is twelve, Dairine is ten going on eleven)
DW: July 2008
HW: August 2008 (beginning eighth grade, Kit turns thirteen at the end of the month)
<rough year skip>
AWAb: Mid-July early August 2009*
TWD: Late September 2009 (Nita and Kit are high school freshmen - Nita is fourteen, Kit is fourteen, Dairine is almost twelve)

...

AWAl: New Millennium Edition is not published yet, but Nita's Mom has to have had someRe the bullying dialogue: ...As for the adults: yes, bullying must be stopped as soon as possible; but sometimes attempts to quash it backfire badly, leading adults to treat it extra hesitantly and cautiously. Particularly parents, who have no power and authority over anyone but their own kid, and mostly only out of the classroom at that: they basically have to go through the school to help their kids when issues evolve between their kids and their classmates. How long does it take for them to realize that is what is necessary? "Is this bad enough?" they ask themselves. "Is it just a phase? I know I got through that time, but is it time to ask for help for my kid?" Shame will delay any request for assistance. If they intervene directly in some way, then probably the bully's parents would jump all over them and accuse them of overkill or harassment or something. And things get worse. Can you blame them for grasping at straws for advice and reacting slowly? At the beginning of SYWTBAW, Nita's parents are caught in the headlights, and she knows it.

Actually, everyone is floored by this situation. I think this is realistic. No matter how much we talk about it as a "problem," nobody I've heard speeches from is confident about the steps that should be taken to solve it besides "take it to the grown-ups." Unless kids know that they will be taken seriously, and also know exactly how their claims will be investigated and what kind of steps can be taken to protect them, they won't do that. Somebody is going to get hurt as time passes, but thinking about the best solution takes time. And just because you've had training in something doesn't mean that you necessarily have the skills to deal with the situation it was for, especially if the training was sloppy or overly hypothetical. People who can easily spout "the" acceptable reaction to any hypothetical situation still choke when faced with the real life situation. In essence...yes, I think this is still a relevant issue to this generation, and not one that I think is misrepresented. Even if SYWTBAW does not depict how people should react, it is the way we often do, whatever other safeguards have been put in place.

And, in the end, giving Nita the power and the tools to solve her own problem is still the best in the end.