A self-styled "obsessive-compulsive," Dean Koontz likes to get things just right -- including his books. He reworks each page dozens of times ("I'm mortified if there's a comma error," he says). Perhaps the most startling evidence of his pursuit of excellence, however, is his approach to the reissuing of his vast pseudonymous backlist.
Beginning in 1985 with Berkley's reprinting of Shattered, initially published by Random in 1973 under the pen name K.R. Dwyer, Koontz has arranged for a steady reprinting under his own name of his better pseudonymous books, while letting his lesser work, both pseudonymous and self-attributed, fall forever out of print. But, in 1994, he took the extraordinary step of revising one of his backlist novels before it was reissued. The book was Invasion (1973), originally published under the byname Aaron Wolfe and reissued by Ballantine as Winter Moon, by Dean Koontz.
"I did not intend to rewrite it to the extent that I did," Koontz explains. "I went in thinking, `I'm just going to spruce it up.' I set up a new opening situation, and I thought, `My God, I can't do the rest of the material now because the opening situation is so strong.' But I was still lying to myself halfway through that I was going to use most of the original book. I ended up not using a single line. But it's still, in a way, the same book, which fascinates me."
But what of Invasion itself? A first-rate science fiction thriller, it is now out of print and lost except to the fortunate few who have retained or collected a copy. Koontz defends his decision to leave the novel in limbo: "I don't think the world of literature is in a state of mourning because they can't get the original."
Since 1995, Koontz has revised each pseudonymous backlist title reissued under his own name, including the Leigh Nichols novels The Eyes of Darkness and The Key to Midnight for Berkley and Prison of Ice, initially published by Lippincott in 1976 under the pen name David Axton and reissued in 1995 by Ballantine as Icebound. He also reworked Demon Seed for its 1996 Berkley reissue.
Koontz admits that one motive for revising his old work "is ego, no question." It's important to note, however, that he is under no contractual obligation to rework these reissues and he gets no extra money for doing so. He contends that the primary reason for revising is that the originals "are not quite adequate, and if readers are paying eight bucks for the paperback, it's not right, it's not right." He has a point: Each new version has raced up bestseller lists, primarily on the strength of his name -- but each displays a veteran's mastery of storytelling.
Koontz's final words to PW on the subject? "John Fowles rewrote The Magus, so I can rewrite Prison of Ice, come on."
