I think Peter has a very good point. It is bad enough not being able to make the con, without finding out afterwards that this also excludes you from being able to purchase two products. One of which appeared in such stupidly small numbers that we couldn't have afforded it anyway. Not all Gloranthaphiles are rich, and some of us have to schedule purchases when we can afford them, not when Greg decides to stick the only copy on e-bay.
I'm not against having beautiful editions - I was responsible for the Western Mythic Maps book, after all, which is genuinely the most beautiful Gloranthan book ever produced. *grin* But that was produced in enough numbers that everyone who wanted a copy got one, at a set price. At the time, Issaries said they would make those maps more widely available - three years on, we're still waiting, and Issaries has ceased to exist.
There's an awful lot of Gloranthan material that has only ever been made available to a select few. The Gloranthan Encyclopaedia. All those bits on the old GTA site. All the Lunar books. Now the 2nd age books. Some of it I've got my hands on, some I've seen, some I've only heard of. And that's speaking as someone who has put a lot of time, effort, and money into tracking down such things. A lot of material is going to take time and effort to get into publishable form, even by the standards of an unfinished work. But a lot has already been collated, and then restricted to a vanishingly small number of people. Why?
So, I'm with Peter here. Lets see an end to this elitism. At the moment we're getting vague promises to make most of the material available, in some form, eventually, next year. Instead, how about a clear commitment to make everything available as soon as possible, starting with the books that are already bloody collated and typeset?
Cheers,
Graham
-- Graham Robinson graham_at_... Albion Software Engineering Ltd.
Powered by hypermail