NOTICE ABOUT OUR REPRINTS OF TOM & HUCK'S ORIGINAL ADVENTURES
The decision to work with Mark Twain’s immortal Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn characters in new stories actually predates Super Science Showcase. Before I’d fully figured out the SSS concept, a lot of the stories and characters that would eventually become a part of SSS I was exploring in various writings, mostly in personal freewriting and developmental workshops. From the beginning, the idea was always to use Tom & Huck as a means of encouraging young readers to explore classic literature. My original idea was to create new Tom & Huck adventures where the duo crossed over with other classic literary characters, much in the tradition of the Newton Wold Family, or Alan Moore’s oft-imitated League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. My thought was that maybe by creating a Marvel-esque connected universe between Tom & Huck and other classic characters-- like H. Rider Haggard’s Allan Quartermain, or H.G. Wells’ the Time Traveler, or Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, for instance-- then at the very least I could help expose young readers to these classic characters-- and perhaps even turn a few on to exploring their original (and much better) works. (Note that this concept hasn’t been abandoned, and we hope to release our first novel in this now titled Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn: Famous Companions series next year.)
When the opportunity to make a Super Science Showcase film arose as a means of introducing five of the original seven SSS series, it was quickly obvious that a segment featuring Tom & Huck would make a great addition, but the budget, schedule and length restrictions for each segment wouldn’t allow us to make something that used the characters in such a setup heavy scenario as crossing them over with other literary characters, so instead co-writer Wilson Toney and I turned to creating an original Tom & Huck story, set in their hometown of St. Petersburg in “Tom Sawyer Runs the Gauntlet,” which Michael Williams would go on to direct as part of the first SSS anthology film. That brief period of time we spent in Twain’s world was a lot of fun, and I felt the story came together well enough to encourage me to develop more stories with Tom & Huck in their native “universe”, and as of this writing, the SSS team has developed two additional films and three additional short stories for the Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn: St. Petersburg Adventures series, with plans for more.
The idea of reissuing Mark Twain’s four original Tom and Huck novels-- published between 1876 and 1896-- was around from the start, when still the crossover concept. The thought was that by making the original books available as part of the same series, we would encourage readers to find these originals if they liked our modern day tributes. Once we decided to explore Tom & Huck’s home “universe” as well, this idea of doing reissues became even more paramount, as our Tom & Huck stories seek to stick closely to Twain’s established “canon” and therefore take a lot of backstory and details from the four books, as well as the unpublished, but mostly finished, “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy”-- and in some ways we’ve done so better than Twain himself, since following strict continuity rules is more a 21st Century trend than a 19th Century consideration, and occasionally he fumbled with (or just disregarded) his own internal continuity.
As the reissues became more likely, we were then forced to confront another difference between the 19th and 21st centuries that remains a point of controversy about Mark Twain’s work-- his use of period accurate language. Well, that’s not so much what the problem is-- frankly, it’s because of his casual and frequent (yet accurate) use of the word “nigger.”
Obviously there have been many opinions written on how this fact affects these seminal works as educational options for modern day young readers-- and those opinions vary and still remain controversial.
Our decision to reissue these works aimed at younger readers completely unabridged was made for a number of reasons, but primarily it was because, despite the pain and discomfort many will feel when encountering the word (and other insensitive words, like the uses of “injun” or “half-breed”), the books are honest, realistic depictions of what this society looked like and sounded like during this period of time, and seeing it accurately portrayed is important. A society built on racial inequality and prejudice was a very real circumstance for many Americans for a very long time, the effects from which we still feel today-- this is not a predicament that existed in some fantasy universe, nor is it something that happened really all that long ago-- and it’s important for young people to understand this. To alter or ignore Twain’s original text, I felt (as do many), would be whitewashing history, and would undermine the impactful commentary and satire Twain was trying to create, especially in his vital (and most frequent “offender”) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
I decided that if we were going to take on Twain’s world-- something he likely would not have approved of anyway, as he was notoriously against the public domain-- we at least owed it to him to do so in service of his works-- and if we were going to depict Tom & Huck’s world in a more “modern-friendly” light, we also had to do that in service of the more realistic depictions of 1840s America that Twain presented. So releasing these SSS branded re-issues completely unabridged, I felt, was the best way to do that.
Obviously like most great works of art, these works-- as fun as they can be-- are not simply lighthearted, carefree fares. They were provocative in their day, and remain so. Readers should be ready for this, going in. And if not quite yet-- put them on the shelf. But don’t leave them there forever.
Lee Fanning
October, 2019
When the opportunity to make a Super Science Showcase film arose as a means of introducing five of the original seven SSS series, it was quickly obvious that a segment featuring Tom & Huck would make a great addition, but the budget, schedule and length restrictions for each segment wouldn’t allow us to make something that used the characters in such a setup heavy scenario as crossing them over with other literary characters, so instead co-writer Wilson Toney and I turned to creating an original Tom & Huck story, set in their hometown of St. Petersburg in “Tom Sawyer Runs the Gauntlet,” which Michael Williams would go on to direct as part of the first SSS anthology film. That brief period of time we spent in Twain’s world was a lot of fun, and I felt the story came together well enough to encourage me to develop more stories with Tom & Huck in their native “universe”, and as of this writing, the SSS team has developed two additional films and three additional short stories for the Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn: St. Petersburg Adventures series, with plans for more.
The idea of reissuing Mark Twain’s four original Tom and Huck novels-- published between 1876 and 1896-- was around from the start, when still the crossover concept. The thought was that by making the original books available as part of the same series, we would encourage readers to find these originals if they liked our modern day tributes. Once we decided to explore Tom & Huck’s home “universe” as well, this idea of doing reissues became even more paramount, as our Tom & Huck stories seek to stick closely to Twain’s established “canon” and therefore take a lot of backstory and details from the four books, as well as the unpublished, but mostly finished, “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy”-- and in some ways we’ve done so better than Twain himself, since following strict continuity rules is more a 21st Century trend than a 19th Century consideration, and occasionally he fumbled with (or just disregarded) his own internal continuity.
As the reissues became more likely, we were then forced to confront another difference between the 19th and 21st centuries that remains a point of controversy about Mark Twain’s work-- his use of period accurate language. Well, that’s not so much what the problem is-- frankly, it’s because of his casual and frequent (yet accurate) use of the word “nigger.”
Obviously there have been many opinions written on how this fact affects these seminal works as educational options for modern day young readers-- and those opinions vary and still remain controversial.
Our decision to reissue these works aimed at younger readers completely unabridged was made for a number of reasons, but primarily it was because, despite the pain and discomfort many will feel when encountering the word (and other insensitive words, like the uses of “injun” or “half-breed”), the books are honest, realistic depictions of what this society looked like and sounded like during this period of time, and seeing it accurately portrayed is important. A society built on racial inequality and prejudice was a very real circumstance for many Americans for a very long time, the effects from which we still feel today-- this is not a predicament that existed in some fantasy universe, nor is it something that happened really all that long ago-- and it’s important for young people to understand this. To alter or ignore Twain’s original text, I felt (as do many), would be whitewashing history, and would undermine the impactful commentary and satire Twain was trying to create, especially in his vital (and most frequent “offender”) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
I decided that if we were going to take on Twain’s world-- something he likely would not have approved of anyway, as he was notoriously against the public domain-- we at least owed it to him to do so in service of his works-- and if we were going to depict Tom & Huck’s world in a more “modern-friendly” light, we also had to do that in service of the more realistic depictions of 1840s America that Twain presented. So releasing these SSS branded re-issues completely unabridged, I felt, was the best way to do that.
Obviously like most great works of art, these works-- as fun as they can be-- are not simply lighthearted, carefree fares. They were provocative in their day, and remain so. Readers should be ready for this, going in. And if not quite yet-- put them on the shelf. But don’t leave them there forever.
Lee Fanning
October, 2019