The original draft of Bridge Birds by Barry Hughart is available (by permission of the author) online at http://www.massmedia.com/~mikeb/hughart/features.htm.

Bridge of Birds won the 1985 World Fantasy Award for best novel and the 1986 Mythopoeic Award for best fantasy. Subtitled as "A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was," Bridge of Birds is a magical, funny and touching tale of Number 10 Ox, an earnest and innocent young man, and Master Li Kao, a degenerate scholar with "a slight flaw in my character," and their attempt to find a cure for a mysterious illness striking Number Ten Ox's village. This is one of my favorite novels ever, and I'm hardly alone, with 148 out of 166 reviewers on Amazon.com giving it 5 stars.

Note: the draft differs considerably from the final book - Number Ten Ox only makes a brief appearance (the story is told from the perspective of Li Kao instead), and scenes cut from the final draft that later appear in the sequels are included in this version.

It's very interesting (I read through it after it was mentioned on rec.arts.sf.written) for those who've read all three books.

Hopefully interest in it will result in the publication of the long-awaited _The Dancing Girl_....

William

Actually, a new omnibus edition is about to be released by Subterranean Press, since The Stars Our Destination edition is virtually impossible to find: (http://tinyurl.com/yr6rd5). Unfortunately, according to Barry Hughart's own foreword, "Will there be more? I doubt it, and it’s not because of bad sales and worse publishers. It’s simply that I’d taken it as far as I could. Oh, I could come up with more ingenious plots and interesting characters and so on, but the Ox/Master Li format had become just that, a format, and no matter how well I wrote I’d just be repeating myself. "

Interestingly, in light of the subject of this thread, the deluxe edition will include not only a leatherbound copy of the three Master Li novels, but a separate paper copy of the original draft.

I've just send Subtereanean an e-mail to ask them if the omnibus will also be available as e-book; they don't say so on their site (as far as I can see), but it never hurts to let them know there's an interest in an e-book version.

I will post their reaction in this thread.

OK, this was fast. I already got a reply of Subtereanean. They don't hold the "e-rights" to the set, so I guess I'll have to contact mr. Hughart himself. More later...