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WORLD OF CHANCE

FIRST EDITION

• Rich & Cowan, hb, ?, Jun 1956, 160pp, 9/6d (?) {as WORLD OF CHANCE} {Levack: Bound in blue paper boards with silver lettering and spaceship logo on the spine. 'First published 1956' on the copyright page. No date on the title page. Tim Underwood has seen a copy bound in green cloth with heavy boards and a metal eyelet at the top end of the spine. It is not known if this was a library edition from the publisher or a privately rebound copy.}

HISTORY

    Philip K. Dick's first true science fiction novel has a complicated publishing history, appearing in two versions; one called SOLAR LOTTERY in the United States and one called WORLD OF CHANCE in the United Kingdom. Originally Dick had named the novel QUIZMASTER TAKE ALL but this was changed by ACE…

    During the SMLA's dealings with Ballantine, the other publisher's and ACE (to publish SOLAR LOTTERY), a copy of the original manuscript was sent to England where it was picked up by Rich & Cowan, a hardcover sf publisher. Dick had worked with Rich & Cowan before when they published his first anthology, A HANDFULL OF DARKNESS. But before Rich & Cowan were ready to publish it they wrote to SMLA asking for a rewrite. But Dick, having gone over the manuscript twice already and not wanting to do it again, wrote to Scott Meredith on May 16, 1955 that "they can have a copy of the ACE edition, which will be out in a day or so. They can print from that."

    Apparently though, from Rickman's research, they didn't. Rickman believes that they edited down the original first manuscript of QUIZMASTER TAKE ALL themselves, butchering it in the process. But this may not be correct. In an interview with Richard Lupoff Dick says,

They bought SOLAR LOTTERY, my first novel, and brought it out as WORLD OF CHANCE. But they brought it out in a truncated form. They insisted that a great deal be deleted from it. I did, in fact, make a different version of SOLAR LOTTERY for them. It's quite different from the U.S. version.

    So anyway you look at it we cannot be sure at the moment which draft was used for WORLD OF CHANCE and who, if anyone other than Dick, did the butchering. As to exactly how this was done we must refer the reader to PKDS#21: "What The Quizmaster Took," by Gregg Rickman. In this special issue of the Philip K. Dick Society Newsletter Rickman does an involved study of the differences between the British WORLD OF CHANCE -- for such did Rich & Cowan title it on its publication in 1956 -- and the ACE SOLAR LOTTERY. These differences are sometimes extensive as well as significant.

See: SOLAR LOTTERY

OTHER EDITIONS                                     For Cover Pix Click Here

			UKSFBC, hb, 26, May 1957, ?, 4/6d (?) {as WORLD OF CHANCE; Rich & Cowan text} {Levack: "Bound in peacock blue paper boards with blue lettering formed by putting a red background on the spine. No date on the title page. '... produced in 1957 by the Science Fiction Book Club...' on the copyright page."}
1959 Feb			Panther, pb, 785, 156pp, 2/6d (?) {As WORLD OF CHANCE; Rich & Cowan text}

SEE: SOLAR LOTTERY

Collector's Notes

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