Apparently all of the books in the Man-Kzin Wars series (including the most recent volume, XI) are in print, with the exception of volume IV. This has been the situation for years – when I wanted to read the book, several years after its initial publication, i had to go to a used book store to get a copy. It’s not particularly rare, in the sense that you can get a copy through the internet used book services pretty cheaply. But I have to wonder – why is only thisd one, of all the books in the series, out of print for so long? Did one of the authors offend Larry Niven, or something?
What? Still no replies? I’m gonna bump this up so it doesn’t die just yet.
Dammit, look inside the cover of any of the Man-Kzin Wars books. Every one of them is still in print, except this one. Howcum?
Now you’ve got me curious. The fourth books contained two stories: The Survivor by Donald Kingsbury and The Man Who Would Be Kzin by Greg Bear & S.M. Stirling. Kingsbury and Stirling have stories in other volumes of the series that are still in print, so if there were issues with an author it presumedly was Bear.
A quick online search doesn’t reveal any information about any dispute between Bear and Niven. The only connection I could find between them was that they served simultaneously as advisors to the board that selects the Heinlein Award for the World SF Convention. So apparently they can be in the same room.
It looks like “The Man Who Would be Kzin” is reprinted in the in-print The Best of All Possible Wars, so Bear isn’t the problem. It comes down to Kingsbury and “The Survivor”, then.
It’s entirely possible that this is due to some weird legal problem, rather than a personality clash. I don’t mean to imply that somebody’s bickering or dislikes are necessarily at the root of this. I’m just curious why this volume has long been missing from the lineup. It’s kinda like selling a set of encyclopedias without the “G” volume.