“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

- Mark Twain

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A cautionary tale: How an off hand joke can end with a garage full of hard back books.

Once upon a time, there was a publisher who decided to replace the N-word with “slave” in Huckleberry Finn.

Gabe tweeted that we were publishing a version that used the word “robot.”

Things got out of hand…

We made a Kickstarter.
As a joke.*

We’re a comedy duo and we had a cute idea for a video. But it went a little viral. And the next thing we knew we’d made five times our goal. So now we HAD to make a book. And because we’re never smart enough to be lazy, and because we know some amazing talented people it could be, like, a real one. Not a lazy search-and-replace print-on-demand job. Hard back. Professionally designed and copy edited. With pictures and everything…

* The book is definitely complicated and it should be approached that way. It is both a fiercely anti-slavery work of genius while at the same time it indulges in the racist minstrel show characterizations of people of color Twain loved. Simply changing the book, like some publishers have done, and thinking that addresses racism is what Tom Sawyer does to a fence.

Denise Devine took the original illustrations...

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And replaced the people of color…

 
 
… with robots.

… with robots.

Designer Lee Thompson made it look gorgeous…

 

We even cut a trailer…

 
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Now our garage is filled with boxes of books.

Help us clean out our garage.