 The book went unsold for many years, until Platt (who had read the manuscript much earlier while working at Avon in 1972) persuaded Bester to allow him to get the book published by a small press; Platt suggested the change of title and Bester agreed.Arthur D. Hlavaty, a former editor of "The New York Review of Science Fiction", described it as "a mimetic novel called "Tender Loving Rape", which was posthumously published with its title minimally but cleverly emended to the less offensive "Tender Loving Rage".It is a hologram of his career