Thin Air by George E. Simpson and Neal R. Burger

[garygibsonsf]

I don't know how many, if any of you, remember this book from the early Eighties, but it's a terrific little sf thriller that I still remember and still own in paperback. I just stumbled across it as a newly released ebook on Kindle by one of the authors and grabbed it. I have a feeling I'm not the only one with fond memories of this. Amazon link.

Product description:
"It's a mystery that dates back to World War II--what happened to the USS Sturman and its crew. For Naval Investigator Nicholas Hammond, the search will challenge him…and the answers will, like bodies floating on the ocean, chill him.

It begins with a man waking, screaming. A series of memories have shaken him, "something to do with the Navy." For another man, his child-like drawings of men holding hands in frightened unity shatter his sanity. What both men share is fear.

Enter Hammond, cocksure and independent, assigned to find the link between these incidents and the disappearance of the Sturman. Was it a last act of war from a defeated enemy, or was it something more sinister…an experiment gone wrong from within?

Fast-paced, intricately plotted, THIN AIR is a thriller that defies time."

[KentE]

As chance would have it... over on the Freebies forum, member Fbone just posted a Neal Burger collaboration you might be interested in:
http://www.amazon.com/Fair-Warning-ebook/dp/B0083AWLRY

Free in the USA for now, at least.
KentE

[Mike L]

Thanks for that, KentE. I'm planning to read Fair Warning .

Mike

[NightBird]

Thanks for posting, Gary and KentE.

Three of their other books are available at Amazon also. It may be worthwhile watching Fictionwise for these, as they are published by Ereads and FW still sells them. Might get a good deal with a coupon. That said, I am getting Blackbone now as it looks really good.

[ATDrake]

Thin Air has now shown up in the Fictionwise weekly new releases section as DRM-free MultiFormat, and you can get it using this week's 40% off coupon which stacks on top of the 15% first-week discount if interested.

[Critteranne]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Thin Air has now shown up in the Fictionwise weekly new releases section as DRM-free MultiFormat, and you can get it using this week's 40% off coupon which stacks on top of the 15% first-week discount if interested.

Thin Air is now available through Open Road Media.
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B...w_myk_ro_title

A lot of the reviewers are complaining about spelling and grammatical errors. That makes no sense to me as all the Open Road Media books are reprints of previously published (and thus usually well editied) books, often from big publishers and big name authors. Has anyone else read this edition? Could there be scanning errors or other conversion errors? Or could they be talking about another book? Are they just confused? Or could they be posting nonsense, trying to vote down the book?

FWIW I glanced at the sample, and it looks fine, but I didn't proofread the whole thing.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Critteranne

A lot of the reviewers are complaining about spelling and grammatical errors. That makes no sense to me as all the Open Road Media books are reprints of previously published (and thus usually well editied) books, often from big publishers and big name authors. Has anyone else read this edition? Could there be scanning errors or other conversion errors?

FWIW, I've previously bought Open Road reprints of some of my favourite authors which happened to carry some fairly serious non-obvious defects, such as the edition that randomlysmushed words together throughoutthe book.

Or the one where the opening paragraph of the next scene was appended to the end paragraph of the preceding scene, again throughout the book, which is something that a casual reader who'd never read it before might not have caught.

Admittedly, those were with titles that were released years ago and possibly their workflow has improved (however, I never did get an Amazon notification that my copies were now fixed, and there seems to be no available update for my versions in my Kindle account).

So, given the apparent age of the book, and the likelihood that ORM might need to have a little more quality control in the proofreading area before making their releases, it's entirely possible that at some point, there were conversion errors that got overlooked (and possibly still remain).

That said, if Thin Air had been a Fictionwise title, it's likely that Open Road got it via their acquisition of the old E-Reads imprint, and the latter generally had quite decent versions of the books they put out, though for all we know, ORM may have decided to order a re-scan or whatever.

[Critteranne]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

FWIW, I've previously bought Open Road reprints of some of my favourite authors which happened to carry some fairly serious non-obvious defects, such as the edition that randomlysmushed words together throughoutthe book.

Ack. That does sound like some sort of conversion error. A reallyannoying one, too.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Or the one where the opening paragraph of the next scene was appended to the end paragraph of the preceding scene, again throughout the book, which is something that a casual reader who'd never read it before might not have caught.

Admittedly, those were with titles that were released years ago and possibly their workflow has improved (however, I never did get an Amazon notification that my copies were now fixed, and there seems to be no available update for my versions in my Kindle account).

I haven't received an update notification about anything for ages. I had to check Manage Your Contents and Devices to make sure Automatic Update was still turned on. And first I had to check Help to find out where that option was.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

So, given the apparent age of the book, and the likelihood that ORM might need to have a little more quality control in the proofreading area before making their releases, it's entirely possible that at some point, there were conversion errors that got overlooked (and possibly still remain).

That said, if Thin Air had been a Fictionwise title, it's likely that Open Road got it via their acquisition of the old E-Reads imprint, and the latter generally had quite decent versions of the books they put out, though for all we know, ORM may have decided to order a re-scan or whatever.

Even E-Reads had their glitches now and then. I once bought a Western reprint (Chet Cunningham) from Fictionwise (an eReads book) that had this weird random error throughout. The incorrect word was followed by the correctly spelled word -- as if someone had corrected misspellings in the new edit, but the original orignla word had been left in. (The original was printed in the 1990s, so who knows what the original file was, or if they had to scan the text.)

I let them know, and they thanked me, checked it again, and let me know that the corrected text was now available. But by then, I had finished the book. Anyway, I told them it was more interesting with the typos.