Quote:
Originally Posted by tlc
The top couple of amazon reviews mention some censorship/alteration from the original...
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'Censorship' is used too often in place of 'edited' or 'bowdlerized'. The government didn't force changes to the book.
Sadly, 'Way in the Middle of the Air' is not as outdated as the author thought and probably should be included. I do think that once a book is published, it should be left as is. But, at any rate, the changes were made in 1997 while Ray was still alive and kicking and it is the only (legally) available e-book version.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the changes made. Only an individual purchaser can decide if the changes are too egregious:
A 1997 edition of the book advances all the dates by 31 years (thus running from 2030 to 2057). (This change counteracts a problem common to near-future stories, where the passage of time overtakes the period in which the story is set; for a list of other works that have fallen prey to this phenomenon, see the List of stories set in a future now past.) This edition includes "The Fire Balloons", and replaces "Way in the Middle of the Air" (a story less topical in 1997 than in 1950) with the 1952 short story "The Wilderness", dated May 2034 (equivalent to May 2003 in the earlier chronology).