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Typo hunt

The time has come again to play "hunt the typo" in one of my books ...

In January or thereabouts, Ace will — at last! — be publishing "The Jennifer Morgue". If you stumbled over a typo in the Golden Gryphon hardcover edition, please post a comment. Ideally give me a page number or some quoted textual context around the typo that I can search on ...

The deadline is October 7th.

(Note: there is no need to report typos in the British paperback, which went via an entirely different production pathway; I'm just after errata from the US limited edition hardcover, which is where the DTP files for the US trade paperback edition are coming from.)

16 Comments

1:

Not exactly a typo, but you might want to add the abbreviation "PFY", as used in the additional story, to the glossary. It would look neat there amongst SIS, CIA, et al.

2:

Here are the things I noted:

1) p. 194 (bottom of page) "a reversed image of the one I sketched in the sand around the hire car". On page 140, he draws the diagram around the towel on the beach.

2) p. 225 (bottom of page) "Andy shakes his head." "Andy" should be "Alan" (Alan Barnes is sent with Mo)

3) p. 230/231. On page 230, Bob grabs the slide of the gun with his left hand and punches with his right hand. Later on in the paragraph, the gun goes off and Bob complains about the skin being torn off his right hand. Then the gun barrel is back in his left hand ("I'm facing a half-rotted zombie with a gun barrel in my left hand"). He then says "I grab the butt with my right, which is dripping blood". Finally, on page 231, he notes again that his right hand is bleeding, followed immediately by "Memo to self: do not make a habit of gripping the slide of an automatic pistol while it is being fired", which implies that he was gripping the slide with his right hand.

I hope these prove useful.

3:

John @1: that's an easter egg, not a recognized acronym for a security agency.

Neil: thanks!

4:

Charlie, I have the SFBC twofer -- want me to skim? They usually just downsize from the original.

5:

Marilee: no, the SFBC one ain't going to be usable. (I don't have a copy to hand for looking stuff up in.) What I need are typos in the GG hardcover, which I can then look up, and check for in the page proofs Ace sent me, and then notify Ace if they're stil present.

6:

Page 142 refers to "Erzabet" (as in Bathory). I don't know from Hungarian orthography, but the web seems to like "Erzsebet" (accent on the middle "e" if you like), with "Erzebet" as a second choice.

7:

And also: p155: "...with his sense of self-righteousness entitlement undented." Missing "and" or superfluous "-ness"?

8:

Not exactly a typo but on page 4, Clementine is MORE than 200 feet long. On page 6, Clementine rumbles to the surface of a pool just UNDER 200 feet long.

9:

No ebook for this one yet, I gather? (Sorry about the off-topic.)

10:

David: the British ebook edition is available (albeit with DRM) by way of Orbit. Golden Gryphon don't publish ebooks at all (they're in the limited edition hardcover market). Ace will presumably do a DRM-infested ebook in due course, once the dead tree edition ships.

11:

pg10 third line from bottom: twice as fast as they paid it out ->payed?

pg51 para2 l4: delegates, or quietly drooling over their complementary notepad. ->complimentary

pg119 para5 l9: "By the way, it's Professor O'Brien -> Dr. O'Brien. Unless Mo's exaggerating or she still retains her American faculty position.

12:

Oh well, DRM is the way of the ebook world (Baen notwithstanding). So we'll see if this time I can manage to buy it. Recently I had a really bad experience with 2 ebook sellers, which really, really, didn't want to get my money for Anathem. Let's just say that, sometimes, you can spend more time dealing with their baroque interfaces than obtaining the bits from ... less legitimate places. At least if you pay for it, it should be simpler than getting it for free, nein?

13:

David: DRM punishes the obedient but not those who break it. And in the long run, it trains the obedient to violate license terms. So it's bad.

Interestingly, some of my recent book contracts contain legal boilerplate saying that I'm not allowed to do things like encourage my readers buy a dead tree edition and then feel free to download a warez copy of my books. So I'm not suggesting you do that. But I think I'm allowed to say that I think such contractual terms are silly.

14:

Page 4: "It's a huge steel derrick, painted gray to resist the corrosive effects of miles of seawater." Gray is a particularly useful color for resisting corrosive effects, then?

It's easy to understand your getting sucked into writing the next Laundry novel, since I can't wait for it either. By the way, does "A Colder War" bear any relationship to the Laundry stories? Probably not, but in any case Cthulhu seems to bring out the best in you.

15:

Brian @14, for many years, rust-resistant paint was either red or gray. These days, you can buy it in all kinds of colors, but the prices for those are definitely aimed at the backyard.

16:

p 201, 4th paragraph: "I'b on you're sibe" you're should be your.

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This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on October 1, 2008 11:42 AM.

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