Laser Books

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Laser Books was a line of 58 paperback science fiction (SF) novels published from 1975 to 1977 by Canadian romance powerhouse Harlequin Books. Laser published three titles per month, available by subscription as well as in stores. The books were limited to 50,000-60,000 words. They were numbered as a series, though each was a standalone novel. All the covers were painted by fan favorite Kelly Freas, a winner many times over of the Hugo Award for Best Artist.

The project was an attempt by Harlequin to duplicate the success they'd had in the romance market by publishing SF novels with clockwork regularity, consistent packaging, and contents that, depending on your point of view, were either reliable or predictable. The editor of the series was Roger Elwood, who at that time was already a controversial figure in the SF community for having strip-mined the anthology market.

The Laser Books line was not a commercial success, in part because SF readers don't consider predictability a major virtue, and in part because it published too many books, too quickly, and far too indiscriminately. Quality varied hugely from book to book. Perhaps the best of them was Blake's Progress by R. Faraday Nelson.

Colorful stories are still told in the SF community about Laser's strange marketing and editorial practices. To date, no one has systematically collected the authors' anecdotes about their experiences. A few of them follow:

1. Thomas F. Monteleone's Seeds of Change was Laser Books' inexplicable choice of lead-off title. It was Monteleone's first novel, and while it wasn't terribly good, neither the book nor the author deserved what came next. Laser Books issued Seeds of Change in vast quantities in a free promotional "collector's edition" that was shipped by the carton to anyone who asked. Small regional SF conventions were sent enough to give several copies each to everyone in attendance. Come Sunday morning, copies would be scattered like popcorn on the consuite floor. This unwanted manna provoked a great deal of derisory comment, as did the book itself. Normally, weak first novels vanish without a trace, or are never published at all. Young Thomas Monteleone suffered the mortification of having his first novel publicly mocked and scrutinized in detail, in a blaze of publicity. (Demonstrating considerable strength of character, he continued to write, and has gone on to become a respected author of supernatural thrillers.)^{[citation needed]}

2. Piers Anthony's But What of Earth? was badly mistreated. Elwood had problems with the manuscript. At that time, Anthony was already an established writer, presumably capable of taking editorial direction. But instead of asking him to rewrite and correct the manuscript, Elwood turned the whole thing over to Robert Coulson, another Laser Books author, for a wholesale reworking of the text. Coulson was credited as Anthony's co-author on the cover of the book. Piers Anthony found out about this when he received his first finished copies. He was outraged. To make matters worse, Elwood cravenly described Coulson's activities to Piers Anthony as "copyediting", even though that degree of interference with the text is far beyond anything freelance copyeditors are allowed to do. (Old editorial dodge: faced with an author who's incandescently angry over deleted chapters, renamed characters, and other editorial-level alterations, say "Oh gosh, look what the copyeditor did, what a pity it's too late to change it back.") Piers Anthony has been denouncing the iniquities of copyeditors ever since. Many of his fans now believe that publishing houses casually allow freelancers to do terrible things to manuscripts. A restored version of But What of Earth?, interlarded with Anthony's splenetic footnotes and comments, was published years later by Tor.

3. Tim Powers was a talented but as-yet-unpublished writer. His friend K.W. Jeter told him about a new line of paperbacks called Laser Books. Their rates were bad, but they'd give you a contract on the basis of three chapters and an outline, a thing most publishing houses are loath to do with a first-time writer. He wrote two books for Laser. The text of the second, An Epitaph in Rust, was editorially munged. The alterations were ill-judged, in places downright stupid. Powers did his best to repair the damage in galleys, but when he saw his first finished copies, he discovered that most of his corrections had been ignored. Years later, another house published a restored version of the text.