"Pioneers Wanted" the heading proclaimed. Though he knew it was sheer promotional jazz, Scott felt a certain thrill, and his hands shook a little.

It described in general terms an uninhabited plant, "Conquest," circling the star Gienah in the constellation Cygnus. It was 63 light-years distant. Four small moons revolved around it, but apart from that it was quite Earthlike. Gravity was 1.03, slightly greater than that of Earth but hardly objectionable. There was more land area, less water, making the overall climate more vigorous- but so much of the land was near the equator that many more people could settle in the mild subtropics. In short, Conquest was highly habitable.

Imagine for a moment that you are on your way to becoming a successful, best-selling author. You have sold quite a few books and dozens of short stories so far in your writing career.

Now imagine that a large publisher has just started a new line of science fiction books. And that this publisher has agreed to publish your new novel as part of that series. You submit it and they tell you that they will have the proofreader re-type it while doing the editing. You agree.

And now imagine that the publisher hands your book to the proofreader and proceeds to tell him to re-write it as much as he wants, and that his name will appear as the collaborator, and you, the author, agreed to this.

Of course, you as the author were never told this ... so imagine your shock when you get a copy of your new book in your hand and it has someone else's name alongside yours!! And that the novel has been re-written and pretty much trashed. Would you be pissed? I know I would!

That is EXACTLY what happened to Piers Anthony.

The original Laser Books edition had this novel listed as a collaboration of Piers Anthony and Robert Coulson. This was a fake! The publisher told Piers that Coulson was just going to retype the manuscript to include spot corrections, but then published it in degraded form as a full collaboration.

Coulson was told, by the publisher, that he was going to be a collaborator, and his name would appear beside Piers.

Piers was going to take this to court, but was satisfied with an apology, immediate reversion of the rights, firing of the editor, and shutdown of the line of books. (The latter two were happening anyway, but Piers could have made them happen, had that not been the case.)

The fired editor in question was not Coulson, but the one arranging the whole shady deal.

And people wonder why Piers Anthony fights with the publishing industry. Well at least he is nicer than me. I would have hired someone to break some legs :-)