Talk:Fix-up

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[edit] Problems

There are two serious problems with this article: First, the term itself is not used outside of science fiction; and I would not say that the "concept . . . exists outside science fiction" but that the practice does. The citations at http://www.jessesword.com/sf/view/264 make the development of the term clear. Second, the list of SF fix-ups is much, much longer than it needs to be. I would think that five or six examples (starting with van Vogt's) would suffice. A third item is that the list of proposed non-SF fixups mixes collections of linked short stories (Winesburg, Ohio) with items that might be considered fix-ups (Go Down, Moses--though The Hamlet is a better Faulkner candidate). A fix-up involves revision to improve or impose continuity or unity on a set of separately composed or published items; a story-cycle places the original items in a single volume; an episodic novel is composed as a set of incidents or units intended to be read as a whole. Thus one needs to know the publishing history to determine fix-up status. RLetson 18:31, 26 January 2007 (UTC) `


I don't think that by the definition stated, Asimov's Foundation series counts very much as a "fix-up". It was intended to be a serial from the start; true, it was only published in collected book form a while later, but it was serial and chronological in its original magazine publication, and no doubt needed very little "fixing up" to fit together into three books, even if the first few Foundation novels do read like collections of much shorter works (due to the future-history, multi-century scope of the series, though, this can be seen as not necessarily having been unintentional). Again, it's true that they weren't specifically written for book form originally, but the definition given here implies that the stories in any given "fix-up" need considerable editing to make sense as a cohesive whole as a novel, and that they weren't originally say, a three-part series or a story and its direct sequels. I could be wrong about this "fix-up" definition, but if I am, it makes me wonder if the intro might not still need some tweaking to make it absolutely clear what the difference is between a novel originally published in serial form, and an actual "fix-up".
However, I would say that definitely Asimov's I, Robot book counts. It's referred to as both a "short story collection" and a "novel", depending on who you're talking to, but usually called a "novel" by the publishers, due to the fact that it's really nine different early Robot series stories edited so that they appear in a logical order, with the inserted framework of an interview with Susan Calvin. Stories which, coincidentally, were not originally intended to be anything more than what they were: different short stories that happened to share the concept of a positronic robot and some characters and organizations (like Susan, or U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corp.), and of course, the Three Laws of Robotics (or the assumption of something very like them). Yet, oddly enough, that is the ONLY one of the "fix-ups" or alleged fix-ups that I know of by Asimov that isn't on this list. Huh.
Anyway, why would you say there is any difference between "the concept (if not the term) exists outside of science fiction" and the statement "the practice (if not the term) exists outside of science fiction"? They essentially say the same thing in this instance, especially with "clip show"'s article linked right next to it. The concept is of a particular practice, was my understanding, even though the term is apparently specific to SF. The article actually already says the term is not used outside of SF, even though the concept is. A rose by any other name...
Although, I'm probably going to edit the sentence to jive with what the rest of the article, and its link to clip show, both imply: that science fiction book publishers and book/short story authors aren't the only ones that have done it in the literary form (seeing as there are "mainstream fix-ups" listed), and that similar (but not identical) things can be found in other media, such as television, but that the term "fix-up" is fairly exclusive to printed SF.
On an almost completely unrelated side note... this actually gives me an excellent idea for being able to finish some of the longer things I'm working on right now, because with some of them, I know where I'm going and have some scenes and vignettes I want to do, but am used to working "beginning to end" (and then going back and relentlessly editing it anyway). Perhaps going out of order a little wouldn't be so horrendous, and I might, you know, actually get something done. *snerk!* By the way, I hope you don't mind that I put the Talk page stuff under a header. It looks less clunky that way to me (I also tagged it for a couple of WikiProjects while I was at it). Runa27 22:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)