Magazine talk:Asimov's Science Fiction

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Contents 1 Martin Gardner 2 On Books Series 3 V1 N1 4 Mooney's Module 5 Entry Standards and Series: Asimov's

Martin Gardner

Oh for the vignette story type and another one for brief unsigned essays! I have toyed with the idea of leaving such items as shortfiction but such a designation is very likely to perceived as an error by someone else and likely changed.--swfritter 16:27, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

The fictional gloss on these is so shallow that i would prefer to list them as essays, myself. -DES ^Talk 18:30, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "fictional gloss", perhaps it's a reference to lack of plot, but that would rule out half the stories in the later years of Damon Knight's Orbit anthologies. :) IMHO, "essay" means explicitly non-fiction, and these vignettes were never that. MHHutchins 01:08, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Lack of plot, lack of character, lack of conflict, lack of significant setting. If these were storys, then so are most "word problems" in 5th-grade math texts. They are simply puzzles -- mostly good ones -- with very lightly fictionalized settings. MG did write fiction: "The No-sided Professor" for example. I would even be willing to count the various "Dr. Matrix" episodes as fiction. But these are generally under 1,000 words, and usually less than 100 of those are spent on the fictional aspect. If we added a "Puzzle" type that would be perfect. Of the types we have now, essay is IMO still better than "story".

All that said, if the consensus is to treat these as shortfiction i'll go along. -DES ^Talk 01:24, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

On Books Series

A definite yes. A look at the essay part of Damon Knight's biblio page shows the value.--swfritter 16:33, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it helps the author's summary page, but this randomly chosen pub's page looks a bit redundant. I wish there were a way to have a cleaner look to the pub's page. MHHutchins 01:17, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

V1 N1

A couple of stories are still classified as shortfiction.--swfritter 16:36, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Now fixed. They've been assigned a length designation based on page count, as the TOC shows no designation. MHHutchins 01:13, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Mooney's Module

Each episode of Mooney's Module had a specific title, and I see no reason why these shouldn't be entered, as we enter cartoon captioons. I think a series might be a good idea, be we can alsys see after entry is a bit more complete. -DES ^Talk 18:32, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I just checked out a few of 1982 issues with Mooney's Modules, and several of them were more than just captioned. But, as you suggest, we can make that decision later, since the series was relatively short-lived. MHHutchins 01:25, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The decision on whether to put these is a series can be deferred, because that can always be done from a title search. The decision on whether to enter the specific titles, if deferred, will require revisiting every pub if we decide to include them later. Therefore, deferring this decision will tend to weight the balance toward no-title in future. -DES ^Talk 01:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Entry Standards and Series: Asimov's

I've just noticed that large changes have been made to the "entry standards" for Asimov's. I've filled in Asimov's from 1998 to present using the older version which wasn't as constrained. I'm now working 1990 up, and my approach is pretty much conformal with the updated standards except for two areas. The first is the authorship for the "Letters" column. We have customarily identified this as an editorial function, so the credit is usually "The Editor" or whoever writes the responses, in the case of Asimov's, "Isaac Asimov." Letters of note identified individually (I enter no letters, since what's in and what's out is a fuzzy area). The second area where we differ is the volume numbering, the updated entry standard for Asimov's calls it out as "Vol. X, No. X (whole no. X)," which is the format in which it is entered in Asimov's TOC. When I started on the ISFDB, there was some general agreement that it should be "Vol X, No Y, Whole No Z)," since this was the most prevalent form across the magazines.--Rkihara 00:09, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I guess the Vol, Issue number thing should be decided for magazine runs on a case by case basis. The most important thing is that the standard be consistent for the entire run of the magazine. I have been doing Galaxy as Vol. X, No. Y because that is the way it appears in the magazine - although it first was mixed case and later all caps. As far as letters are concerned - the current policy allows for letters by significant people.--swfritter 01:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I find "significant people" to be fuzzy. While entering the pulp Amazings, I found letters from well known (at that time) fans, editors, a letter from Virginia Kidd before she became an agent, writers famous for non-genre works, unknowns involved in flame wars with better known writers, and so on. I personally think we should enter "all" letters, rather than trying to sort it out.--Rkihara 07:08, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I have been doing the Statement of Ownership data for Galaxy.--swfritter 02:21, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

The only standard that changed today was placing the "On Books" column into a series. Everything else was added based on what I'd been doing from the first issues up through 1984 (having assumed incorrectly that no one else had started working on the magazine.) As for the volume numbering, that's really no big deal, since it goes in the notes and is not searchable through the database. The other area Ron mentions concerns me: the author attribution for the Letters column. I've used "various", because the authors of the letters and their responses are not credited at the beginning of the column. If you look at various issues, within any letter column, you will see responses that are written by several persons: Asimov, the editor, even the assistant editor. I don't follow the philosophy that the responder is credited as the author of the letter column, but then this is the first major magazine that I've worked on. (Heaven knows Asimov's summary page doesn't need twenty years of letter colums credited to him!) I would have hoped that before taking on later issues, a person would look at how the first seven years were entered. Any issues could have been more easily resolved. Perhaps I should have updated those standards that I added today earlier, but then, as you know, it's only after working over a long stretch of a magazine's run, that an editor gets the full scope of how that magazine's contents should be entered into the database. I had no idea that anyone was working on the later issues. I've been entering the past year or so issues as they arrive. Everything in between was a mystery! Guess I should have checked out a few random issues in between. MHHutchins 03:32, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I started entering data in December and used the entry standards as I found them then. I'm working backwards since that's how my magazines are stored. On the letter column, I used the guidelines from the Edit Pub help screen, "Letter columns with embedded editorial responses should be credited to whoever writes the responses, or to "uncredited" if this is not obvious. If a work is attributed to a role, e.g. "Editor" or "Publisher", then use that name as the author, even if it you have clear evidence as to who the author really is. For example, editorials in magazines were frequently uncredited, or credited to "The Editor"; these should be entered with the Author field set to "The Editor"."--Rkihara 06:50, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out that section of the help pages, which I had somehow overlooked. It was obviously written before I got here and by someone who had not entered the hundreds of magazines that you and Swfritter have in your times here. If there had been a discussion (and it's too late to start one now) I would have argued against crediting a letter column's responder as the author of the column. Now it's a moot point. I've got so much on my plate now that I'm going to leave the pro magazines to you guys, since you've made such tremendous advances in your efforts to fill in the gaps in the ISFDB's magazine coverage. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to assist you, any missing issues or such. I'll finish up the last few issues of 1984 and you guys can take it from there. And don't hesitate to change anything in my verified records. As you know, nothing's set in stone. Again, thanks. MHHutchins 03:39, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

The help pages were set long before I got here too, and there are a lot of things in it I would have argued against if I had been here at the start. I think we're pretty much in alignment on how to enter magazines, (I have been following your(?) entry standards for Asimov's, and only commented when the new changes differed from what I considered standard practice). Please continue with the magazines when you have the time. We can also use help with secondary verification, which Swfritter and I have been doing for each other's entries.--Rkihara 07:23, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Long ago there was a brief discussion about using 'various' which I also prefer and which I actually used in a few places until I decided it was not a significant enough issue to pursue. Feel free to edit away. Once I am through with Galaxy I intend to go polish off the 60's Analog which will give us pretty much complete coverage for the significant magazines of the 50's and 60's which are my primary interest. After that I may be in maintenance mode - I having so much fun reading the mags that I would rather spend my time doing that. I wish there were more people working on the current magazines. I try to keep up with the ezines because they are cheap but subscribing to all the little mags can start costing money.--swfritter 20:51, 7 February 2009 (UTC)