User talk:Speculativism

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I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Stonecreek 08:31, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Help! magazine

Thanks for your submission. Alas, I have to reject it, as non-genre magazines aren't included per se in ISFDB, only single issues that contain speculative fiction are allowed (that's why the listing for this magazine is only fragmentary) - and then only the spec fic content. So, if you have any knowledge of sf in a specific issue, please do enter that issue. Thanks anyway, Stonecreek 08:36, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

On a second thought (as I still have the submission on hold), what was your source for the two issues that you mentioned? We (or rather me, if you allow) could enter those two, but its mandatory to state a source for the data, unless one is able to enter them firsthand. Stonecreek 10:50, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I'm putting together a list of individual speculative stories in "HELP!" magazine and checkable sources. I'll get back to you when it's complete. --Speculativism 14:57, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, I can do two issues and/or give some help in editing the magazines and putting them into a series. If you wanna do more, it's better to start with a specific issue (that's how it'd be done anyway). An example could be Omni, April, but be sure to check the binding and other data. Stonecreek 15:33, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

OK great. Here's what I have about the first two issues then: HELP! Issue 1 contained a reprint of:

Title: Hunting Problem ISFDB Title Record # 45871 Author: Robert Sheckley

HELP! Issue 2 contained a reprint of:

Title: The Liberation of Earth ISFDB Title Record # 41211 Author: William Tenn

These are both listed in the reference book "The Warren Companion - The Definitive Compendium" David A. Roach, Jon B. Cooke, published by TwoMorrows Publishing, 2001, isbn:189390508X

There's a jpg of the relevant page here:

For further confirmation both of these issues are viewable in the Internet Archive at: https://archive.org/details/Help1960s and the names of the two files are:

7 Help! v1 01i [Warren] (Aug 1960) (Missing Pages 9-10, 57-58)

and

8 Help! v1 02 [Warren] (Sep 1960)

and thanks for your help with this.

--Speculativism 19:37, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

====Oh yes, the binding is, I think, called "bedsheet". The same size pages as OMNI. The whole magazine ran for only 26 issues between 1960 and 1965.

--Speculativism 19:40, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much! I have entered the first issue. Please take a look at it, if all is as you would have entered it (there was also the Serling story to be found). Please submit any relevant changes.

Would you like to get more involved (adding other issues, establishing a magazine series)? Ask here or on the Help Desk for any information you need. Thanks again for that magazine! Stonecreek 20:22, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Editor field should be entered as "Editors of Help!" based on the ISFDB standard concerning non-genre magazines. Mhhutchins|talk 05:24, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

This turns out (without knowing the majority of issues) as that this ia a genre magazine: the texts seem also to be reprints of speculative fiction. Stonecreek 09:57, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Just because it reprints spec-fic doesn't make it a spec-fic magazine. Looking through the scans convinced me of that. It's a satire/humor magazine, like Mad magazine for adults, a kind of forerunner to National Lampoon. If this is a spec-fic magazine, then so is Playboy which published original spec-fic quite regularly during the same time period as Help!. If we were to deem Help! as a spec-fic magazine, then all of its contents are eligible for entry into the database. If you're not willing to go that far, then the editor credit should be changed back. Mhhutchins|talk 15:04, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, the difference to the other magazines mentioned is that it published sf and most of the other contents seem to be speculative in content as well. A rough estimate provides one with 1.65 times the relevance for ISFDB as Omni, for which much of its non-sf contents aren't speculative at all. Stonecreek 11:09, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

I think "Help!" is in the genre of humorous satire but the editor and creative people involved had a strong leaning toward the speculative. There is a slight problem with classification insofar as "speculative" is not a closed system but actually has blurry borderlines leading into fantasy, science fiction, satire, horror and so on. "Help!" touches upon a whole bunch of genres which, in turn, touch upon the speculative. However the main thrust of the magazine is humorous satire. --Speculativism 21:33, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree that this is the way it shines into anyone's eye, but the fiction titles (which seem to be speculative throughout) also appear as the anchor titles and take about the half of each issue (even more than that), which isn't that far away from a regular 'pure' genre magazine, if you consider that lots of such a magazine isn't filled by fiction at all but by ads, editorials, essays, reviews, listings and artwork. Stonecreek 13:23, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

If you're not going to consider the opinion of the person who created the record, perhaps you will that of several well-known bibliographers in the field, none of which list this title as a speculative fiction publication in their reference works: Donald H. Tuck, Mike Ashley and Marshall B. Tymn, William G. Contento and Stephen T. Miller, and John Clute and Peter Nicholls. If you believe this is a spec-fic periodical, you should enter all of its contents into the database, not just the fiction. If not, then you should consider bringing the issue before the community to form a consensus of opinion. Mhhutchins|talk 18:22, 11 March 2016 (UTC)