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Re: VMs: Colour & New Book [was: VMS PDF Info]

Hi everyone,

Thanks, Barbara: I knew of the book but hadn't read the blurb...

The Unsolved Riddle of the Voynich
Manuscript
Gerry Kennedy, Rob Churchill
Our Price: £16.99

Book Description
The incredible true story of the enigmatic sixteenth-century
codex - and how YOU can help decode it.

Synopsis

[A]...

In 1912, Wilfred Voynich, an antiquarian book dealer, stumbled upon a
strange
volume, its vellum pages covered in a beautiful but unrecognisable
script
accompanied by equally mystifying pictures. The codex approximately 6 x
9 inches
has remained undeciphered from that day to this. Voynich believed the
codex to
be the work of Roger Bacon, others that the Elizabethan mathematician
and occultist
John Dee was the author. Whoever created the book which now resides at
Yale
University it remains to this day a singular enigma which continues to
defy the
best efforts of linguists, cryptologists and scholars.

[B]...

This book will be
presented
as an opportunity for the public to participate in solving the biggest
unsolved
mystery in the literary world. At the end of each chapter will be all
the research
to date which will be an invitation of the reader to get involved. The
book itself
will be a history of the book as it is known and there will be a part or
complete facsimile of the manuscript.

Curiously enough, when I last met up with them, their book pitch only really consisted of [A], and I just happened to mention that I was thinking about writing a Voynich "workbook", almost exactly on the lines of [B]. It seems hard for me to avoid drawing the inference that they've basically lifted my ideas and presented them as their own... all's fair in love and publishing, I suppose. :-o

On balance, if they can do both [A] and [B] justice (and the VMS doesn't happen to get cracked), they'll probably do OK with this project... but having talked to them for a while, I suspect their particular skills would be better applied to [A], and mine to [B]. Really, they're writing two quite different types of book at the same time, each aimed at two different market segments, but loosely glued together midchapter... so they could well come unstuck. Oh, well: you get what you ask for, I suppose. :-o

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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