They Must Be Russians

цитата

Meanwhile, the British text has further oddities. As well as changing the now legendary ''Vorga, I kill you filthy'' to ''Vorga, I kill you deadly'', the Sidgwick & Jackson editor modified ''Help, you goddamn gods'' in Foyle''s very first speech to ''Help, you Heels.'' A few pages later, ''lousy gods'' and ''sweet prayer-men'' become ''Heels'' and ''sweet Heels''. As might be expected, people seem to prefer the version they were raised on and can debate at length whether straight blasphemy is more or less effective than the alternative of British Understatement.

Our UK editor also thoughtfully changed ''twenty-fifth century'' to ''twenty-fourth century'' throughout, while leaving the prologue''s one actual date (''the 2420s'') untouched. There is a mysterious cut in the publicity interview on jaunting, omitting a paragraph of great interest to inmates of Gouffre Martel ... I suppose the editor didn''t want to publish information that might help the criminal classes. Was it respect for religion that led to Bester''s correct ''Skoptsy'' (or Skoptsi) being disguised as ''Sklotsky''? Worst of all, the crucial repetition of the ''Gully Foyle is my name'' jingle near the very end of the book is lost in Britain -- jettisoned along with the disposable info-dump sentence that reminds us who the Scientific People are. But I''ve always rather liked the circular hall of the Scientific People with (at least in the Penguin edition) its ''doomed roof''.»