The first edition of Chthon, published in 1967, had a brief Author’s Note. The second edition, published in 1975, did not. The third edition, published in 1982, was missing a good deal more, including ten pages of text covering the death of the Minionette and the two-monsters scene. The publisher hadn’t sent me a copy, so I didn’t know until three years later when an Australian reader sent me some really stupid questions that turned out not to be stupid at all: what happened? The fourth edition, published in 1987, restored most of what had been lost, and of course I sent an autographed copy to the Australian reader. This may be considered the fifth edition, in 2000, which I trust is complete. The first edition made a fair run for genre awards, as I recall placing third on both the Nebula and Hugo lists for its year, and I think the critical consensus was that I never matched its quality since. Especially not after I became a fantasy bestseller. Hell hath little fury like that of a critic who sees a writer make it big. But it is also true that my later characters did not have the twisted meanness of Aton, so did not relate well to the needs of critics. There would later be three sequels: Phthor (1975) by me, Plasm (1987) and Soma (1989) by Charles Platt, who was once one of my editors. Thus readers who like this realm may follow it further, though I have to say that when it comes to following a brutal theme to the end, the last two can become intense; even I winced on occasion when reading the Platt sequels. One genre fan accused me of “crossing the line”—that is, behaving unethically—because one of the Platt sequels was copyrighted in my name, to protect my setting. Apparently he thought that meant I was getting all the money from Platt’s novel, which was hardly the case. I also had trouble with the publisher, and got blacklisted for challenging dishonest statements of account; I still have grudges to settle, because of course it should have been the perpetrator punished, not the victim. Later the bad editors got displaced, and I returned, and in a triumph of delicious irony the same publisher made me a bestseller in fantasy. Thus the story of this novel is larger than the novel itself.