Re:Drake's The Tank Lords (was Re: 121st Marine Reaction Co.)

At 1:46 PM -0500 8/19/97, Christopher Weuve wrote:
>Is it the novel _Rolling Hot_, or a short story by the same name?  My
>copies
>at home, but I didn;t think they were the same.  Of course, I could be
>way
>wrong.
>
>Drake's books can sometimes be confusing, because there is a lot of
>double-
>dipping.  For example, first we had collection of short-stories and
>background
>interludes called _Hammer's Slammers_.  Then the short story "The Tank
>Lords"
>was published, in Pournelle's _There Will Be War_ series, IIRC.  The
>_HS_ was
>reissued with "The Tank Lords" added to it.  Now there is a new book,
>_The
>Tank Lords_, which not only includes "The Tank Lords" AND the
>interludes from
>the original _HS_, but it also incliudes "Rolling Hot", which may or
>may not
>be the sum contents of _Rolling Hot_, which I'm now beginning to think
>may not
>have been a novel but a collection of three novellas or so, one of
>which may
>have been called "Rolling Hot".  [For extra credit, diagram the above
>sentence. <grin>]
>

As near as I can tell,The Tank Lords contains the same text as the
novel (released in softcover) Rolling Hot. RH is very definitely a
novel, sort of an abridged coming-of-age book in the same vein as
<I>The Red  Badge of Courage. Although that may be saying a bit too
much for Drake. I consider it to be a complete novel, with three major
interludes. We have:

1) The Camp

2) The Bridge  [bonus points if you know who wrote this]

3) The Battle

As written, neither section can stand as a short story but they are
long enough for novellas. I think the book (RH) would do better
serialized, than in three seperate packages.

I do have a bone to pick with "The Tank Lords." Typos, typos, typos. A
great bloody lot of them. Most definitely more than in the original
publications. In this age of computers, how on earth did they manage to
introduce... introduce ! errors into the printing process ? The only
thing I can think of, is that someone OCRd the original texts, and then
spell checked the thing. What a mess.

Michael Carter Llaneza	  http://www.hypnotic.com/
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1991-1950
Devolution is very real to me.

Whenever I hear the "Odd Couple" theme, I get this image of Dennis
Rodman borrowing Marge Schott's toothbrush.