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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hypersmurf" data-source="post: 3342555" data-attributes="member: 1656">Interesting how the ending can totally change the story.I came across an example of this recently, when I discovered that David Gerrold's "Starhunt (Previously published as Yesterday's Children)" was not, in fact, the same as Yesterday's Children.Starhunt's plot, summarised:[sblock]Interstellar war; old rickety warship with a captain who's essentially been put out to pasture, and an eager firecracker of a first officer who's yet to see combat.  Their patrol route is supposed to be a 'milk run', but they've detected a hint of a sensor trace of an enemy ship, and the first officer convinces the captain to go in pursuit.After weeks of chase, the engineer starts to suspect that the sensor trace is in fact just interference from mismatched components; there's no ship after all.  At one point, we have a scene where the first officer smashes the sensor officer out of his chair, and begins obsessively running and rerunning search patterns.The captain finally declares enough is enough, and they head back towards the base; as the engineer predicts, the sensor ghost reappears, this time following them.  The first officer continues to drill the crew relentlessly.When they're nearly back to base, and everyone but the first officer has stopped believing there was ever an enemy ship at all, it swoops in and attacks, but thanks to all the drilling, the crew win the engagement despite the surprise.[/sblock]In the original, Yesterday's Children:[sblock]The story ends with the first officer sitting in the sensor officer's chair, running his plots over and over in vain, as the sensor officer lies on the floor bleeding...[/sblock]It really changes everything that comes before, having that ending different...-Hyp.</blockquote>

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