User talk:Jonschaper

Welcome!

Hello, Jonschaper, and welcome to the ISFDB Wiki! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• Help pages
• Help:Getting Started
• What the ISFDB Wiki is for
• ISFDB FAQ
• Help:Screen:EditPub#General contents - Warning and a note on how to update a publication's contents
• Wiki editing help - Tips on how to use the wiki-specific features when editing wiki pages.

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! -DES ^Talk 04:34, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Creating Pseudonyms

I note you have already submitted to edits to create pseudonyms, which I reviewed and approved. At the moment, it is very tedious and awkward to undo or reverse a pseudonym relationship, and so these should be done with care, both to be sure that the two names really indicate the same persons, and to determine which should be the canonical name on the ISFDB. See Help: How to record a pseudonym for details.

Also, once a pseudonym relationship has been set up, it is normally desired to make all titles published under the pseudonym into variant titles. See Help:Screen:MakeVariant#Marking a title record so that it's a variant title of, or a pseudonym for, a title that does not exist yet in ISFDB. I have done this for the pseudonyms you have already submitted.

Thanks again for your contributions. -DES ^Talk 06:04, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

How did you find the wiki?

We have had some problems in the past at the ISFDB with new editors not finding the wiki pages for some time. We have recently made some software changes designed to make this easier . You found the wiki quite promptly. Would you mind letting us know how you found it?

Also if there is anything that would make editing or using the ISFDB easier in your view, please do speak up. The Community Portal is a good place to mentions such issues. -DES ^Talk 06:07, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I can't remember exactly how I found it. I was checking out some of the links at the left side then noticed the message about edits possibly requiring responses at the top of the pending edits page. :Jonschaper 22:21, 20 July 2009 (UTC)jonschaper

Ooh, I'd forgotten we'd even added it there! That's one of the more subtle changes we've made. We've been trying BIG messages on every submission type we could think of. Glad you found this part of the ISFDB, however you found it, though. Welcome, again! BLongley 23:19, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Larry Todd vt of Larry S. Todd

Do you have information that Larry Todd is the same person as Larry S. Todd. The first one only has three records, author of Cobalt-60 and credit as a cover and interior artist of one book. There's a strong possibility that these are two different people. Is there anything mentioning the author of Cobalt-60 as born in 1948 in Buffalo NY? There's no bio in this book (which I verified). Also, we have credits for "Lawrence S. Todd" too. We have to be careful in assigning pseudonyms because they can't be broken. At the moment, the only resort is to delete all of the records and enter them again with the published credits. Thanks. MHHutchins 04:03, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi I can't recall all my research, but to give an idea: According to ISFDB, "Larry Todd" and Vaughan Bode worked together on Cobalt 60. I knew from my collection that both "Larry S. Todd" and Vaughan Bode did work for Galaxy during the mid to late 1960s, so that suggested to me it was more than a mere coincidence of name. Doing some research into this, I found this webpage (http://lambiek.net/artists/t/todd-larry.htm) which verifies that, before working together on "Cobalt 60", "Larry Todd" and Vaughan Bode met while both were contributing to Galaxy. I also noted that the scanned cover for "Dr. Atomic" on this webpage lists "Larry Todd" as "Larry S. Todd". I then tried to determine how accurate the Lambiek page was. I cannot verify what they say about "Larry Todd" contributing comic work to Galaxy (all the "Larry S. Todd" contributions to Galaxy I have seen were prose), but I know from my collection that they published comic work by Bode (the "Sunpot" serial). I also confirmed that "Larry S. Todd" has done underground comix for Last Gasp (as has Vaughan Bode), which confirms not just the tie between those two, but his background as an artist. Amazon verified that "Larry S. Todd" wrote "Dr. Atomic", etc., so I decided the Lambiek webpage was at least largely reliable. Having concluded that "Larry Todd" and "Larry S. Todd" are the same person, I therefore also decided to submit the biographical data from the Lambiek website to "Larry S. Todd". Jonschaper 04:56, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable deduction. I'm going to approve the submission to create a variant. Thanks. MHHutchins 15:39, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

William J. Warren Jr. vs. William R. Warren Jr.

I have checked the actual issue and he is credited as "William R. Warren Jr.". "William J." appears to be a data entry error. Jonschaper 23:03, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Theodore L. Thomas' Leonard Lockhart Stories

Although Campbell had a tendency to list these as special features or articles, they are satirical short stories about the workings of patent law complete with fictional situations, characters, dialogue and items up for patent consideration. I double-checked the two issues I've submitted edits for. I believe they also all fit into the "Patent Office" series, but I'll have to take a closer look to see if it is recurring characters (i.e. an actual series) or just the same theme. I have more of these in my collection, but I don't believe they have made the move from Canada to Australia with me yet so I probably can't check them yet. Jonschaper 23:03, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

The Astounding Adventures of Isaac Intrepid

I put a temporary hold on your changes to Analog Aug. 79 - The Astounding Adventures of Isaac Intrepid and notified the moderator who verified one of the publications involved, so they can be aware of the change and help massage any strangeness in cleaning up this error (and I agree there was an error). Thanks for bringing it to our attention! - Cheers - Kevin 05:42, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Unmerging pub records from a title record is NOT A GOOD THING, as there are several bugs associated with the action. (The function should be removed until the bugs have been worked out.) But there's a better way to do this: remove the title record from the pub record. This is done with the "Remove Titles from This Pub" function located at the publication level. Don't touch my verified record for Analog, August 1979. I just checked again and it's correct. It looks like the title in the December 1980 issue might be incorrect (it's not paginated like the rest of the issue), but you should contact the record's verifier (TPI) to double-check his copy. I have that issue but my copy is missing from where it should be, which leads me to believe I've checked this problem already and failed to put it back in the right place. In the meantime, Kevin, the submission should be rejected. Thanks. MHHutchins 13:50, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Submission rejected as described above. Thanks Kevin 03:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

S.A. and Scott Stolnack

Locus lists them as one person (as "Scott A. Stolnack")

Jean Marie Stine / Jean Stine / Hank Stine

Hank Stine had a sex change and became Jean Marie Stine. I've made Jean Marie Stine the parent because that is the name she is listed under now by Wikipedia, and it is the name she chooses to go by and has been active under for a while. Jonschaper 23:07, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm a little dubious about this one, because it looks to me as if most of this author's work was published before the sex change, and has been issued under the name Hank Stine (And then there is the possibility of confusion with G. Harry Stine, who was often known as Hank, i understand). Given that Pseudonym assignment is currently quite tedious to undo, I'd like a little more discussion and research on this before going ahead, so i have these on hold.

Note that Wikipedia's rules favor current names rather more strongly than we do, particularly for still living people. I also see that Wikipedia has no indication of when Stine changed her sex. -DES ^Talk 23:46, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Please see ISFDB:Community Portal#Stine Pseudonyms. -DES ^Talk 23:51, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Cover: Sinister Barrier

You edited this cover art record to change the name of the artist. Unfortunately, that isn't the way to make such a change. Instead You must edit the publication record, and change the cover artist there. This will automatically adjust the cover art record. However, a word of caution. Please be reasonably sure that the artist was actually credited on the publication in the way you intend to enter. Or if, as in this case, the art is not credited/attributed on the book itself (according to the existing note) that you are cahnging to a clearly preferred (canonical) form of the artist's name. See Help:Screen:EditPub#Artist and Help:Glossary.

I am going to reject this edit, and let you decide whether to edit the publication or not. -DES ^Talk 00:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

The same issue applies with editing interiorart records -- this should normally be done by editing the publication instead. And the same warning about checking how the art was credited in the actual publication also applies. -DES ^Talk 00:11, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

In this case the publication is Fantastic Adventures, January 1953, which has been verified by User:Swfritter who is active, so it would be advisable to check with him first. -DES ^Talk 00:15, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Cheers Jonschaper 00:16, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry. I missed the part about checking with Swfritter before I submitted the edits based on the Helpdesk discussion. I've sent him a message. Jonschaper 05:29, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Jerry Sohl Title Merges (7th Order and Ultroom Error)

Hi. I realised as soon as I submitted these that I should have made these variant titles, not merges. Sorry, still getting used to the system. If you do not see this message first I'll unmerge them then go the variant title route. Jonschaper 00:46, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I was just coming here to warn you that this was probably incorrect. I will reject the submission. To get a moderators attention, particularly to ask for a post to be rejected, post on the Moderator noticeboard. It won't always work, but should often. -DES ^Talk 01:00, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Hope to have all my own bugs worked out soon Jonschaper 01:04, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The Veiled Woman by Mickey Spillane

By changing the author credit of this title record from Mickey Spillane to Mickey Spillane and Howard Browne, you will be changing how the story is credited in all three pubs in which the story appears. If you have a credible source that Howard Browne was the co-author of this story, you should make a variant of the record, and note your source. At least one publication in which the story appeared has been verified as being credited to Spillane only. We don't want to change the title record for the story, because the magazine record would be changed as well. Variant creation would be the method to use here. I'll reject this submission and will await the new one. Thanks. MHHutchins 02:54, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I can't recall where I first heard this (I was disappointed to learn my original Spillane in Fantastic might not be one). There are numerous references (online indexes, etc) that note this story was ghost written or based on an outline by Spillane, such as http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/spillane.html I'm not sure if any are particularly authoritative, but it is very widespread. This page contains an excerpt from Howard Browne's Incredible Ink which is probably the most detailed and accurate (although dramatic) background of how the story wound up in its final form, and authoritative (assuming the text is indeed an excerpt of Browne): http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/archives/200012/0068.html I note it doesn't go as far as other sources in claiming it was ghost written by Browne but still gives credit to Spillane. Is this sufficient?

Re entering the date, I wasn't (and still am not) quite sure of the best way to go about this. As per Browne's account, Spillane wouldn't really be a pseudonym but a co-writer, thus my attempt to add him as second author, but I failed to consider it would make the credits read differently than they appeared in their publications. I assume the final product should be a credit saying something like "by Mickey Spillane and Howard Browne (as by Mickey Spillane)". Could you give me a bit of a walkthrough? Jonschaper 03:27, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. If you're here for long (and we hope you've been bit by the ISFDB bug and stick around awhile), you'll be doing this on a regular basis.

1. Go to the original title record of The Veiled Woman.
2. On the left-side menu you'll find a function under Editing Tools called "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work". Clicking this will lead you to an edit screen.
3. This screen has two areas for each of the ways you can create a variant title. In the upper half you'll find a field to enter the record number of an existing title of which you wish to make this a variant record. In the bottom half you'll find several fields to create a variant when one doesn't exist. This is the part you'll be using. You will click on "Add an Author" and a field will appear in which you'll enter "Howard Browne". Then clicking on "Create New Parent Title" will send the submission to the moderator who must approve it.

After the submission is approved and a new record is created you'll need to update this record to show the source for the information in the record's notes field. Then take a look at how the story appears in the first magazine appearance. The author credit for this record will match exactly as you describe it. Good Luck. MHHutchins 04:07, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Stephanie Smith / Stephanie A. Smith

Note, both of them wrote "Blue Heart" (one in Asimov's, the other a reprint in an Asimov anthology) and reviews for the New York Review of Science Fiction. Jonschaper 03:32, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I'll need to pull out my copy of the Asimov's which contains the original publication to verify that the middle initial wasn't used. After that I'll approve the pseudonym creation, BUT it appears that the co-editor of this anthology and this interview is Australian, so is not the same Stephanie A. Smith. You can make variants of the other records (the short story and the two reviews). Then we'll figure out how to disambiguate the two Stephanie Smiths. Thanks. BTW, your original comment here should have been made on the Moderator Noticeboard or the Help Desk. I have most of the editor's talk pages on my watch list, so I saw that you'd added this comment to your page. Some moderators might not have seen it, so would not have known you were referring to a submission in the moderator queue. Thanks again. MHHutchins 04:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Noted. Jonschaper

I've accepted the submission making "Stephanie Smith" into a pseudonym of "Stephanie A. Smith", but also made it into a pseudonym for "Stephanie Smith (editor)" (couldn't think a better way to disambiguate). I've also created variants for each of the title records so that their credits appear on their separate pages. Thanks. MHHutchins 03:20, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Sladek's Parodies

I'll be making various appearances of Sladek's parodies of other writers variants of each other. Just to explain my choice of parent, instead of using original appearances where the stories are written pseudonymously, I'll use the version that includes the pseudonym in the title since that's how they're more frequently published. Jonschaper 04:19, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm holding these until I can figure out what has happened with some of the titles. It appears that there's been some unwarranted merging instead of variant making. For instance this title record supposedly appears in one of my verified pubs (Light Years and Dark), and it does, but not credited as shown here. I'll get back with you once I've straightened out those titles that are in pubs that I own. BTW, do you have a copy of The Steam Driven Boy or The Best of John Sladek? I'm going to contact the verifier of the last pub to get some clarification. Till then... MHHutchins 05:12, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

No, I don't own those collections, but it makes sense to me that they would list the titles in that manner. When some of these stories first appeared in places like F&SF they would, e.g. list R*y Br*db*ry (stars replacing vowels) as the actual author of a Ray Bradbury parody by Sladek, and not actually credit Sladek (I have some but not all of these for reference). When these parodies are reprinted, Sladek tends to get author credit, but the "pseudonym" is then included as part of the title to make it clear who is being parodied (since the "author" isn't referenced in the story itself). Thus the variations in title. I notice that if you follow some links there are pages for the parodied authors but no titles listed under their names. It looks like someone, to get around giving Sladek all of these names as pseudonyms, might have created parents of variant titles and left the fake authors unmarked as pseudonyms or something along those lines. Jonschaper 05:38, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

It appears that the credits for the original publications were changed in order to avoid making "R*y Br*db*ry" (and others) into pseudonyms for John Sladek. I don't agree with that approach and will get with the original verifiers to determine if the records should reflect the titles and credits as published (the general ISFDB policy.) There was a submission (for "The Sublimation World") in which you created a variant of the same title and author credit. You probably meant to create a variant with the one that has the author credit in the title. I'll go ahead and reject that one, and hold the others for further discussion. Thanks. MHHutchins 14:29, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Sladek's "Calling All Gumdrops!"

Research has shown that the record without the exclamation point is in error, so I'm going to reject the submission creating a variant. I'll merge the two records into one title record showing the exclamation point. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. MHHutchins 14:13, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Marge Simon pseudonyms

I'm holding all of the Marge Simon pseudonym creations because I believe you may have chosen the wrong name to be credited as the canonical name. You can see that on her personal website she chooses "Marge Simon". Here's another website in which she calls herself "Marge Simon". It might appear to make sense having the full name as the canonical name, but in most cases, that's not true. If you don't agree, please bring this to the community board, and we can determine if there's a consensus among other editors for one name over the other. Thanks. MHHutchins 02:37, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I have no strong preferences and will be happy to go along with your decision. I noticed her using both the long and short name on her website. The deciding factor for me was that the long name ties all the variant names together, and the locus index I used to double-check that all the variants were the same person has her listed in the heading as SIMON, M(argaret) "MARGE" B(allif), then as "SIMON, MARGARET BALLIF (continued)" on subsequent pages http://www.locusmag.com/index/s680.htm Jonschaper 02:48, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Locus tends to favor the full name, but their first listing gives you the idea that they're trying to get as many variations listed as possible. Also Locus merges all records without designating what name was used for each story. I'll reject the submissions, and if you like I could create the pseudonyms giving "Marge Simon" as the canonical name. Or if you have time, you may do them yourself. Thanks. MHHutchins 05:48, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem, I'll submit the edits, probably tomorrow (likely another slow work day). Jonschaper 05:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Wilmar Shiras

Before I make a non-reversible creation of a pseudonym for this one-off appearance, I'm checking with the verifier of the pub to make sure this is a true variant of the author's name. Will get back with you. Thanks. MHHutchins 02:43, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Cheers. A question re procedure for future reference: Is it the general preference for editors to check with verifiers themselves then submit the edit, or should editors usually assume the verified record is correct and leave it for moderators to double check with verifiers? (Or are preferences too individual for a rule of thumb?) Jonschaper 02:52, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

It's always best to assume that the verified record is correct, unless you have the pub in hand and you're positive there's an error in the record. If it's a major change, you should always contact the original verifier to ask them to check their pub against information you may have, before you submit an edit to update or change the record. If you're just adding a link to a cover image, most verifiers don't care to check it before it's submitted. After awhile you'll learn what details are major, which are minor, and which are crucially important not to mess with (like changing the titles or author credits of content records!) Then you'll know whether to submit before or after notifying the verifier. You'll find that some verifiers are more or less casual about changes than others. You'll also learn that some verifiers are no longer active (check the "User Contributions" link on their talk page for their latest post.) If they've not been around awhile, ask on the moderators page for guidance on major edits. MHHutchins 05:57, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

The original verifier has informed me that there was no middle initial credited in his pub, so I've allowed the creation of the pseudonym. I've also gone ahead and create a variant for the title in question. Thanks. MHHutchins 15:28, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Sheckley's Hunting Problem

Research shows that the record titled "The Hunting Problem" was a mistake and should have been simply "Hunting Problem". I changed the first title record then merged it with the other one. So I'll reject the submission to make a variant. Good catch there. MHHutchins 05:43, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Conrad's cover art credits

I'm holding your submission which wants to change the cover artist of this issue of Beyond Fantasy Fiction from "Conrad" to "R. Conrad" based on the artist's signature. If there were no other credit than that, the submission would be accepted. But your note states that it is credited to "Conrad" which trumps any signature on the work itself. Although I couldn't point directly to any hard and fast rules about art credits, I fall back on the ISFDB standard that we have to record how the piece is credited in print. If a piece is not credited but it can be identified through signature, we can then credit it to the canonical author regardless of how it's signed.
I accepted the submission making "Conrad" a pseudonym of "R. Conrad" because there's enough evidence that they were the same person, having done covers for the same periodical. With that done, we can now make variants of the "Conrad" pieces so that they will transfer to R. Conrad's page. What scares me is that there is a "Rupert Conrad" who has one cover credit during this same period, and I may have been mistaken accepting the submission making "R. Conrad" the canonical name. The reason we have to be cautious about assigning pseudonym/canonical relationships is that we don't currently have the ability to break them. Thanks. MHHutchins 14:08, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I'll keep this in mind for future reference. Cheers Jonschaper 22:40, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

The submission changing the cover art credit has been rejecting. Thanks for understanding. MHHutchins 14:08, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Variants may be typos

I'm holding a couple of your submissions making variants, because there's a good possibility that they may simply be typos. The first wants to make this into a variant of this. Tomorrow I'll pull out my copy of IASFM with the story to make sure the spelling is correct. The other submission wants to make Mechanical Mice into a variant of The Mechanical Mice. According to Locus the first title should be "The Mechanical Mice". I'll do more research on each title. Thanks. MHHutchins 05:57, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Cheers. I also had suspicions, especially with "triptich" given the widely accepted spelling is "triptych", but I noticed it was verified twice. Jonschaper 06:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

The title of the first story (in Asimov's) was a typo. I'm waiting to hear back from the verifier of the other printing of that title. I'm also going to correct the entry of the EFR story (based on the Locus1 listing), and merge it with the other title record. So that submission will be rejected. Thanks. MHHutchins 17:54, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Almost simultaneously, while correcting the first, I was told that the second was also a typo. So everything has been merged, and I'll be rejecting that submission as well. Thanks for catching the error. MHHutchins 18:00, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Richmond's "Prologue to an Analogue"

I'm holding the submission changing the author credit for this title record. There are currently four verified pubs that give the author only as Leigh Richmond. I'll leave a note on the verifiers' talk pages, but I can't imagine four people making the same mistake. It's possible that Walt was an uncredited co-author, but that will have to be dealt with by creating a variant, not by changing the way the story was originally published. I'm also holding the submission making "Prologue To...an Analogue" a variant of this title, which it most definitely is. Let's get the credits for the first record cleared up first. Thanks. MHHutchins 16:08, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Good catch. I probably did jump the gun. I know Walt and Leigh cowrote most of their stories, but I shouldn't have automatically relied on the one crediting both. Jonschaper 03:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to reject the submission as every verified confirmed that only Leigh is credited in their publication. I've left another note from the verifier of the Walt & Leigh Richmond collection to see how it's credited there. Once that's been confirmed I'll see whether a variant should be created. Thanks. MHHutchins 03:30, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Merging of serials

Concerning your submission to merge the records for The Onslaught of Rigel by Fletcher Pratt: It is current ISFDB policy that different serializations of a title not be merged. Most of the time it is not possible to know if an particular serialization has been abridged, expanded, revised, etc. So just to be on the safe side, we leave the records separate and unmerged. Thanks. MHHutchins 04:44, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

I noted that both publications are described as a "complete novel", and both are from Wonder Stories (the 1950 one appeared in a Wonder Stories annual). Should they perhaps be treated as novellas as opposed to serials? Maybe Swfritter who verified the 1950 appearance should weight in? Cheers. Jonschaper 04:52, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Considering that the title was republished by the same company increases the chances that the two records are identical, but I still think we need to keep them separate.

The handling of "complete novels" in magazines as serials is a practice that began before I came here (a serial in one issue? isn't that a contradiction in terms?) I can't begin to explain the rationale for doing so. No, I could try, giving us both a headache, and wind up not helping either of us. If any mag guys are reading this, and can give a short simple explanation, please help Jonschaper and me out. Thanks. MHHutchins 05:06, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

The Oval Portrait

I reviewed your submission that aimed to create a Variant Title relationship between three versions of The Oval Portrait Titles and found that the Titles were in fact identical, so I merged them instead.

By the way, one thing to keep in mind is that the "Check for Duplicate Titles" option in the navigation bar on the left ignores existing Variant Titles (VTs) when it checks for duplicates. In this case the 1842 version of the Title was a VT while the 2008 and the 2009 versions were not, so it only found the last 2. Once I noticed that the 1842 Title was a VT, I used Advanced Search and searched on "The Oval Portrait", which let me merge all 3 Titles quickly. Ahasuerus 03:10, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Since the one version was a variant I wasn't aware I could just merge the other verions without also making them variants first. I assumed it would come up as a conflict. Jonschaper 03:40, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

As it happens, the software did have trouble merging regular titles with variant titles a few years ago, but the problem has been since fixed. When merging a regular title with a variant title, you are now given the choice of retaining or dropping the link to the parent (so-called canonical) title. When merging two (or more) variant titles that point to different canonical titles, you get to choose which canonical titles the resulting merged title will point to.

One thing that the software will warn you against is merging two titles that exist in the same publication (usually a collection/anthology) since it can cause problems. The proper way to do that is to remove one of the titles from the publication first, then merge them. Ahasuerus 10:52, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Editorial (Other Worlds, February/November 1956)

I see that you have found an incorrectly entered editorial, "Editorial (Other Worlds, November 1956)" by Ray Palmer, which should have been "Editorial (Other Worlds, February 1956)" instead. It also happened to be a Variant title of "Editorial (Other Worlds, February 1956)" by Raymond A. Palmer, so perhaps you weren't sure how to change it and decided to Unmerge it first. However, in this case you could have just changed the title from "November" to "February" and everything would have fallen into place. That's what I did and it seems to look fine. When you get a chance, could you please double check that everything is OK? Thanks! Ahasuerus 02:58, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks good, I've just edited them to add to the series. Jonschaper 06:12, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Dedication by Offutt

I think we should just go ahead and merge these two records, instead of making one the variant of the other. The record of the only verified copy (second printing) states that the piece is titled "Dedication - A Special Word" only in the TOC. It's not likely that Zebra used different plates for this second printing, so it's a good bet that the first printing had the same title on the piece itself. Thanks for catching this. MHHutchins 03:23, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Kim Newman's The Other Side of Midnight

I wonder if we should simply merge these two records. This one only exists as an award nomination record holder, and only this one has any pubs connected to it, all without the subtitle ("Anno Dracula 1981"). If we merge the two then the award nomination will transfer to the merged title record. Do you know of any pubs that may include the subtitle? Thanks. MHHutchins 00:14, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I wondered if it should be a merge too, but doing a google search it often comes up with the subtitle. The Anno Dracula subtitles are a bit of a convention with the series, but since I don't have a copy handy I'm not sure if it actually appears on a title page anywhere or if the subtitle was added to conform with that convention. Jonschaper 00:27, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Only one of the pubs has been verified, so I'll ask if the title can be re-checked. If it turns out to have the subtitle, I'll allow the submission. If not, we'll merge until someone comes along who can verify one with it. Looking at the OCLC record for the first appearance (The Vampire Sextette), they show it without the subtitle. I'll hold the submission until we hear back from the verifier. Thanks. MHHutchins 01:43, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I see a general reluctance to merge "award" titles with "actual" titles, often as the year differs. I think Al had a default assumption that annual awards were always for the previous year, so this award is for a 1999 title because the award was in 2000. The Stokers don't seem to have that rule, but it might be nice to revisit all the awards and point out where this assumption is wrong: although there's also the problem of when an award was for a pair of variant titles. :-/ BLongley 21:31, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, there is a long-neglected page here if people want to take on such work. BLongley 21:31, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Mystery Play

You have a update to this. Shouldn't it just be deleted as a graphic novel? Dana Carson 10:21, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I suppose, if that's the policy. I have no objections. Cheers Jonschaper 11:02, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Creating series for magazine columns

I've accepted your round of submissions placing some title records into series. One thing to keep in mind when creating a series is to make sure that the it doesn't already exist in another form. For instance, you created a series "The Vivisector (Science Fiction Review)" when "The Vivisector" was already in use, and "The Eyrie (Weird Tales)" when we have "The Eyrie". The only reason to add the magazine's title in the series is to disambiguate generic titles. So "Book Reviews (Amazing Stories)" was good. But something as distinctive as "The Den", "The Eyrie" or "The Vivisector" should be able to stand on its own. Another thing to remember is that many of the magazines have Wiki pages which will let you know if a series has been created for their columns and regular features. No one has taken on Weird Tales yet as it will be quite a big project. I'll make the changes to bring some of the new series in line with current series. Once a series is created it can't be deleted, but there's a few workarounds (like re-naming them when a future series arises.) Thanks for all of your efforts. MHHutchins 04:02, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Cheers Jonschaper 04:57, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Monteleone's "Time Enough (for)(to) Love"

Two submissions (which are identical) want to merge this record with this one retaining the title of one ("Time Enough to Love") and the date (0000-00-00) of the other. I think we need to keep these separate and make them variants. All my research shows that the story was titled as shown in both publications. Contento and Ashley's index corroborates the title in Fear Itself and OCLC corroborates the title in Fearful Symmetries. Neither have been primary verified, so until then we'll leave them as shown. I'm going to reject the submissions and make the two titles variants of the same story. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. MHHutchins 16:15, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Sorry about the double submission which I did in error Jonschaper 00:03, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Rickert's "The Girl Who Ate (the) Butterflies"

You want to change the title of The Girl Who Ate the Butterflies to "The Girl Who Ate Butterflies". When a title is in a verified pub, an editor should make an inquiry of the verifier to determine if a mistake may have occurred. I'll notify the verifier of this pub to see if he can check the spelling of the title. In the meantime I'll hold the submission. Thanks. MHHutchins 04:39, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

The record was incorrect and your submission has been approved. Thanks. MHHutchins 17:13, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Pangborn's Davy series

Re: your submissions that want to place the two stories that became part of Davy into the series "Davy World". I feel that the series "Davy World" shouldn't really be a subseries of "Tales of a Darkening World" as their only connection is that they appeared as a series in Roger Elwood's Continuum series. They are actually no different than the stories Pangborn placed in Terry Carr's Universe series, so they should be in the same series and no subseries is necessary. It also breaks up the series "Tales of a Darkening World" on Pangborn's summary page, because the "Davy World" subseries only contains short stories, while the main series includes three novels and a collection. So I'll accept your submissions but revert all of the "Davy World" stories into the "Tales of a Darkening World" series. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. MHHutchins 03:35, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Cheers. I was thinking along similar lines Jonschaper 03:46, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Effinger Series

Oops. The series already existed under another name. Jonschaper 03:50, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll reject the Eldres submission and place "Another Dead Grandfather" into the Sandor Courane series. Thanks. MHHutchins 04:13, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The Blind Pilot

I accepted your submission to add Nathalie Henneberg as the co-author of this title and then realized I should not have. Most of the pub records have been verified showing only Charles as the author. What we should do is to merge it with the record that credits both authors. That way the pub records will reflect the credit as published as well as show that it was co-authored. Thanks. MHHutchins 03:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Merging non-matching records

Before submitting merges for non-matching title records, it's a good idea to contact the pub's verifiers (when there are any) to see if they could check the pubs first. If you haven't heard back in a few days, you can make the submission and let one of the moderators determine if the merge is proper. I'm holding your submission to merge this title with this one until I hear back from one of the verifiers for whom I left a message. I agree that they should probably be merged, but I think the singular "Field" is correct, not the plural one that you chose. Thanks. MHHutchins 03:42, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Noted Jonschaper 03:48, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Just heard back from the verifier who confirms that it should be "Field". I accepted the merge but changed "Fields" back to "Field". Thanks. MHHutchins 04:22, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Millard - Vanished Civilizations vt

Hi, I've rejected your submission 'cos it would have made the essay a variant of itself. I suspect you might have clicked the wrong "Submit" button on the vt page. ...clarkmci/--j_clark 06:20, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Cheers. Second attempt submitted. Jonschaper 23:08, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Making variants of existing records

A time saver that you may not have been aware of: When making variants it's a good idea to check to see if the parent record already exists. If it does, you place the record number of the parent record in the upper portion of the variant creation page. If it doesn't, you use the bottom portion of the page to create a new parent record. The poems that were under "Howard Phillips Lovecraft" already had existing records under "H. P. Lovecraft", and could have been made into variants with one submission. We will now need to merge these newly created parent title records with the existing ones, doubling the number of submissions required to move the "Howard Phillips Lovecraft" records over to the "H. P. Lovecraft" page. MHHutchins 03:51, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Noted Jonschaper 03:52, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Dark of the Moon

You made a submission to remove a title from Dark of the Moon but no record was specified. I'll have to reject the submission and ask that you resubmit. Thanks. MHHutchins 04:12, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I just noticed that two content records are marked "delete" in the page numbers. Are these the ones you wish to remove from the pub? MHHutchins 04:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

That's right. They're duplications of the title within the collection. I submitted them again so hopefully that came through correctly. Cheers Jonschaper 04:20, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Nope, same problem. After choosing "Remove Titles from This Publication" you're presented with a list of all titles in the pub. You must check the boxes of the title(s) you wish to remove from the pub. If no boxes are checked, the submission will show no titles so it can't be approved. Well, it could be approved, but nothing about the record will change. MHHutchins 04:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I know I checked the boxes the second time (and I'm pretty certain I did it the first) so it looks like it might be a software problem. Maybe the changes were submitted before and they somehow became marked as "delete" instead of actually being deleted, and that's preventing them from being properly checked? Jonschaper 04:29, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I duplicated the submission and had the same problem. It may have something to do with the number of records in the pub (an extraordinary number for this particular pub.) Let's just let it go for now, and I'll report the bug. Thanks. MHHutchins 04:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all Jonschaper 23:34, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

This might be related to Bug #2830311 Can't remove more than 199 Titles from a Publication -DES ^Talk 01:20, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Bug confirmed and fixed locally. The fix will be deployed to the live server with the next patch. Ahasuerus 01:29, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The two "delete" Titles have been removed from the publication now that the software has been fixed on the live server. Ahasuerus 21:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Mrs. / Mrs Rinaldi's Angel

I'm holding your submission to make a variant based on the use (or non-use, rather) of a period following a title. I personally feel that a variant is not required and that the two should be merged. British publishers often drop periods in titles (Mr, Mrs, Dr) and I can't say if there is a stated policy on how it should be handled here on the ISFDB. I'll ask on the community page before rejecting or accepting the submission. Thanks. MHHutchins

Thanks. My preference was for a merge, but I noticed that both forms (with or without "full stops" as the British and Aussies call them) have been used in titles and figured trying to pick one over the other would open a whole new can of worms, but choosing one would make for cleaner pages and consistency for title searches. Jonschaper 01:07, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Nothing much came from the discussion, so I'm going to merge them since we are in agreement. MHHutchins 05:53, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Updating author records

When adding or updating data for author records, use the same format for dates as you enter pubs: YYYY-MM-DD, otherwise the system is unable to read the data. Thanks. MHHutchins 00:22, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Kiernan's "In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888)"

Both records were slightly wrong, and should be the same in all publications (according to OCLC records). I merged them into this record. I'll notify the verifiers of the change. (Even Locus has it wrong, giving the date as 1988!) Thanks. MHHutchins 05:17, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Checking for pre-existing titles

Here's a quick and easy way to see if a variant may already exist: Go to the David H. Keller summary page (the pseudonym). You see only one title listed, so it should be made into a variant...but how can you know if a variant has already been created? Click on "Show All Titles" in the Editing Tools menu. You'll get a page showing all the titles under this pseudonym. If "variant" is in the Variant column, that means this title has been made a variant and that it no longer appears on the pseudonym's summary page. Looking at David H. Keller's titles, you'll see all but one has "variant" in the Variant column (the one title that still appears on his page.) But look again, and you see another record with exactly the same title already exists. So check the boxes for the two titles, and click on "Merge These Titles". I'm going to reject the submission creating a new variant which would require another submission to merge it with the existing variant. Hope this helps. Thanks. MHHutchins 05:46, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Jonschaper 06:15, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Clansman of Fear merge

Hi, please reject this for now. I notice from the cover scan of Science Fiction Adventures that they used the title "Clansmen of Fear" there. Jonschaper 04:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Variants based on possible typos

I'm holding a submission which wants to make "One Life in an Hourglass" a variant of "One Life, in an Hourglass". There is only one publication of the first title and it's in a verified pub. Before making a submission to create a variant, it's a good idea to request that the verifier double-check his pub to determine if a variant is necessary. It may have been a typo. I've contacted the original verifier to see if he can help us. Please feel free to do the same if a similar situation comes up again. Most verifiers will be glad to answer any questions, and if they are unable to, they'll let you know without biting your head off. :) Thanks. MHHutchins 00:00, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

"Sweet, Savage Sorceror" by Friesner

I should not have accepted the submission which merged this record with this one, before communicating with the verifier of this pub. I've reversed the merge and set it back up as a variant until we hear back from the verifier, to whom I've left a message. I apologize if I'm beginning to sound like a broke record, but it's best to talk with verifiers before making submissions which will effect verified pubs. Please read Making changes to verified pubs. I made the mistake of approving it before checking to see if there was a verified pub involved, for which I apologize. I've got that issue of Amazing stored away, and if we don't hear back from Rkihara in a couple of days, I'll dig out my copy. Thanks. MHHutchins 04:00, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

No apologies necessary. Mea culpa. Jonschaper 04:47, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I pulled out my copy of that issue and the story is titled "Sweet, Savage Sorcerer". Thanks. MHHutchins 16:39, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Ted White = WIlliam C. Johnstone

I wasn't aware of this pseudonym, but it makes sense. What is the source for the information? Thanks. MHHutchins 03:23, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

In his intro notes to "A World of One's Own" in the Oct 77 Amazing, Ted says he wrote the first story in this series, "Breaking Point", which appeared in a "1970 issue" under the name "William C. Johnstone", and says to read that issue's editorial for an explaination why he used the pseudonym. He wound up preempting the editorial with an extended lettercolumn though. Jonschaper 03:36, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Straight from the horse's mouth. Thanks! MHHutchins 04:04, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

BTW, you placed the original title record into the series, which will not show up on the parent author's (White's) summary page. You should place the parent record into the series, and remove the variant record, otherwise both will show up on the series listing. Thanks. MHHutchins 04:07, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Ellipses

When entering titles that have an ellipsis, the help page states An ellipsis should be entered as the sequence "space", "period", "space", "period", "space", "period". If the ellipsis is in the middle of the title, it should be entered with a space after it as well, prior to the start of the following word. So the title of choice when merging would be "Testing . . . One, Two, Three, Four". I've corrected the record. Thanks. MHHutchins 00:53, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Held submissions

I'm holding several submissions which I'll get back with you about tomorrow. Tonight I'm going to take a break. Thanks. MHHutchins 02:19, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi, just in case you need any explanations --

Meet the Author: The notes for "Martian Quest: The Early Brackett" notes that the publication credits it as first appearing in the June 1941 Amazing, but should actually read July 1941, confirming it is the same article. I thought it safe to assume it's a variant given the collection's editors wouldn't need to include "Leigh Brackett" in the title to specify the author as in the magazine, plus the verifier's careful notations

Submission approved. (A variant created from the assumption that both verifiers correctly titled each piece.) MHHutchins 16:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Sword of Rhiannon: this is an attempt to merge its appearances in various editions of Aldiss' "Space Opera" -- please let me know if the preference is for "excerpt" to appear in the title or notes, if I didn't use the best method, etc

Submission approved. (A moderator can't tell from the submission screen which titles are being merged, and I didn't know if the novel title was involved here.) MHHutchins 16:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

The Editor: I noted many of Ben Bova's editorials for Analog appear here

This is entirely a personal choice here, but I don't think pseudonyms should be created for such generic author credit. It's possible to move credits into an author's page without creating pseudonyms: just create variants for each piece (you'd have to do this anyway to get the pieces onto the true author's summary page.) I'll approve this, but you have to agree to create variants for all of the records, then remove the series from each variant credit and place the parent records into the series. MHHutchins 16:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

The Weathermakers: In its appearance in Analog it is noted to be an excerpt from the novel of the same name -- ditto above re preferred method for noting excerpts.

Submission accepted, with additional info in the notes about contradicting sources. MHHutchins 16:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Mr. Mergenthwirker's: this is an attempt to classify this as a chapbook as per the verifier's notes and scan of the publication http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?MRMRGNTHWR1957 presumably from before the creation of the "chapbook" category

In this case you should add a chapbook title record to the publication record, which it is currently missing. Open up the pub record, choose "edit this pub", go down under "Content" (skip the current shortfiction content record) and choose "add title", in the fields create the title record for this pub (completing the title and author fields, and under entry type choose "Chapterbook", leave the other fields blank). This method leaves the shortfiction content intact. If I accepted the submission, the content record would become the title record, and the pub record would have no contents. Because this content only appears in one pub, it really wouldn't make a difference about which method you use. By doing it the way I describe above, you wouldn't have to worry if the shortfiction appeared in any other pub. This way you'll get into the habit of converting these contentless chapterbooks into container records. Hope this all makes sense. MHHutchins 16:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

If you are unsure whether a chapter book is properly formed, try cloning it. If the chapterbook title record is missing, the software will report that it is not in a clonable state. Then you can hit the browser's back button, edit, and add the chapterbook title record. -DES ^Talk 04:18, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

The title entry in this publication entry already appears to be separate from the title entry for its appearances elsewhere (there are duplicate entries with different dates). In this case should I just change the classification of the title entry to "Chapterbook" or are there additional steps that should be taken to connect the two title entries? Thanks Jonschaper 23:46, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

If you change this title record to a chapterbook, you would still have to do another edit adding a new shortfiction content record to the pub record. That's two submissions. Doing the steps I describe above would accomplish the same thing in just one submission. As I also state above, you should get into the habit of repairing chapterbooks this way so that you don't have to worry if the shortfiction record appears in another publication. If it did, you'd be adding a chapterbook as a content to all publications in which this shortfiction was published. (And if you create a new shortfiction content record, you'd have to check to see if it already exists in the database as content in another publication, and would have to merge records if it did.) MHHutchins 05:47, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Cheers Jonschaper 02:45, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I have no problem with rejecting adding Bova as a pseudonym for editor. I'm happy to just go with the variants. Jonschaper 03:43, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. MHHutchins 05:47, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Dates in author data

When adding or updating dates in author data, you should use the same format as title and pub records: YYYY-MM-DD. I accepted the submission for Abel Grimmer, so you could see how the system handles year-only entries. Thanks. MHHutchins 06:10, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Submissions on hold

I'm holding three submissions (two to merge interiorart records, and the other making Adkins into a pseudonym of Dan Adkins), pending the outcome of a discussion that I've started on the moderator noticeboard. Feel free to add your opinion to the discussion. Thanks. MHHutchins 05:17, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to approve the pseudonym creation for Adkins, but hold off creating variants. During the discussion there arose a possibility to write software that could mass move records from a pseudonym to a canonical author's page.

About the interiorart: because the stories and their accompanying artwork were reprinted by the same company that produced the original publication, there's a better chance that these are the same pieces, so I'm going to approve the merge. Ordinarily, it's not a good idea to merge interiorart because of the different ways in which interiorart is credited. Thanks. MHHutchins 19:25, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Cheers. Good news about the software. I was putting off many variants at any rate. Moving listings for the likes of Tom Easton vs Thomas Easton would try even the most patient. Am I correct it would be manually operated? An automatic system would probably be bad for things like house names or "The Editor"... Jonschaper 22:23, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The current (still vague) plan is to create a new option that will let a user create VTs for a given Author's Titles, e.g. take all of Emsh's titles and make them into VTs of Ed Emshwiller. We are still mulling it over. Ahasuerus 00:48, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Janet Fox/Alex McDonough

I have approved your Janet Fox changes, but her Wikipedia article hasn't been updated in a while and I can't seem to find a source for her death date. Do you happen to remember where you found it? TIA! Ahasuerus 00:48, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi, on some of the Wikipedia biographies there is a box at the top right that has space for a photo, DOB, place of birth, death date, etc. As in this case it sometimes contains information that hasn't been added to the regular text. Cheers Jonschaper 00:55, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see! Well, the good news is that the last edit that added the date of death looks legitimate, but the WP editor who added the data is responsible for only one edit. It may have been a friend or a relative who decided to create an account just to enter the dates, but it may have also been a clever vandal. Hm, wish we had another source... Ahasuerus 01:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

No luck finding an obit just now (coincidentally another Janet Fox died earlier that same month in Long Beach) Jonschaper 01:10, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I would expect Locus to cover the death of a mid-list author, but I don't see anything about Fox/McDonough on their Web site. SFWA doesn't list her as a member, so I wouldn't expect them to post an obituary. Hm... It may be safer to remove the date of death until we have an independent confirmation. Imagine the embarrassment if she is alive and well! Ahasuerus 01:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I've submitted the deletion of that date and added a note about this under her bio page Jonschaper 03:58, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Approved, thanks! Ahasuerus 04:01, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

A link to her obituary has now been added to Wikipedia so I'll edit it back in Jonschaper 02:49, 15 January 2010 (UTC) OH, already done.

Alexa Hayes's "Vampire Beach"

I changed this publication to "8888-00-00", which shows up as "unpublished", rather than approving your Publication Deletion submission. This way your comments about the iBooks collapse and Alex Duval's possible authorship will be preserved for posterity :)

We try not to use 8888-00-00 too often -- Help states that "8888-00-00 ... is reserved for well known examples" -- but sometimes it's the most convenient way to record what we know about an announced-but-never-published book. It also helps prevent future editors from entering the same data from Amazon or other online source. Ahasuerus 03:51, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Pseudonym Susan Alice Kerby/Elizabeth Burton

I recreated the Pseudonym after I deleted the titles, but then realized your submission of the title deletions would have undone the Pseudonym anyways. Once all the titles with Susan Alice Kerby's name disappeared so did the Pseudonym. What did you have in mind with this author? If I can help fix this let me know. Thanks!Kraang 03:56, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I created the pseudonym before I noticed that all the titles under the Kerby name were orphans and were listed under Burton at any rate and not variants. Jonschaper 04:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Aspects of a Psychopath

Rejected the deletion as this, from the website you cited, is a horror story (whether psychological or beasties in the night) and we do do horror. If this goes.... Stephen King, Koontz.... Thanks! ~Bill, --Bluesman 02:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Cheers Jonschaper 02:25, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Allan Ahlberg

Your first submission added "Croydon, London, England" & "1938-00-00" to Allan Ahlberg[1], your next submission will change it to "Leicester, England" & "1944-00-00". Is the second submission correct or an error? Thanks!Kraang 03:59, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Oops. Thanks for catching that. Croydon is correct. I must have been distracted then entered the information for his wife (both are listed together in the same Wikipedia article). Jonschaper 04:08, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks!Kraang 04:38, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root

I have approved merging the two Cover art Titles for this anthology, but there is another outstanding submission that proposes adding a Wikipedia link. Unfortunately, the Title record that it aims to modify didn't survive the merge, so we will need to create another submission modifying the existing Title. More importantly, did you mean to add this URL to the Cover art Title or to the main Anthology Title, which already has one? Ahasuerus 05:20, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks -- I only would have intended placing the link on the main title page, so it looks like no further steps are necessary Jonschaper 23:36, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Zapped, thanks! Ahasuerus 02:39, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Neverwhere

I approved the submission that merged the Cover art records for the Avon edition of Neverwhere, but the result looks iffy. Moreover, the two Cover art records associated with this publication can't be easily merged. I think this is a side effect of the problem with the way collaborative Cover art records are created, but I need to examine the software to see what's going on. For now, we should probably abstain from merging collaborative art credits... Ahasuerus 03:23, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, and so noted. I WAS a bit puzzled as to why the co-credits seemed to be showing up differently for the two publications... Jonschaper 04:15, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Jo[h]n Bye and dates in Fantasy Tales, Autumn 1989

Hi, I've placed your proposed changes to Fantasy Tales, Autumn 1989 on hold while I ask you about this. The submission includes a change to Wayland's Smithy of the author's name from "Jon Bye" to "John Bye". I see that Locus credits that poem to "Jon Bye" and, in fact, credits that same author name spelling to "The Farthing Lord" in Fantasy Tales #15 1986. I also found a citation in a Google Books scan of The Supernatural Index that also spells the name "Jon". Are you working from a physical copy or from some other source? Would you double-check that change? --MartyD 02:59, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm also wondering about dates in the submission. You left the publication's date as 1989-10-00, but then you removed the month from "Wayland's Smithy", and you gave the new INTERIORART records all monthless 1989-00-00 dates as well. Given the other changes, did you mean likewise to remove the month from the main pub's date? Or was omission of the month on the new records an oversight? Thanks. --MartyD 02:59, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I'm working from the physical copy. Re the poem, the author is listed as "Jon Bye" in the table of contents but as "John Bye" on the story page. My understanding from somewhere is that the story page overrules. Since it looks like "Jon" is correct I'm happy to leave it as that or go and change it back after edits. I was going to remove the month from the main pub but it was highlighted in yellow so I understood I would be unable to edit in that manner. Again, let me know if I'm incorrect as I'm happy to go back and change that to match the rest. I tried to figure out where the "October" date came from in the first place, but the publication itself only gives "Autumn" as the date. Cheers Jonschaper 04:31, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the explanations. Since our friend Mr. Bye's bibliography contains no other stories, and that one isn't in any other pubs, it can go through. I will raise the question of pseudonym vs. recording the misspelling in the notes. The story isn't anywhere else, so changing the spelling doesn't affect any other pubs. As for the dates, there are actually two more: the one on the publication itself (which you didn't edit, but could have), and then the one on the main title (the thing in yellow). The title's date needs to be edited separately. I will approve your submission and then fix those two dates to match your other changes so that the whole thing's consistent. Thanks. --MartyD 11:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm happy to change "John" back to "Jon" now that my previous submission with all the other changes went through. My thinking is that it might be best to just add a note about the apparent misspelling on the story page (you raise strong evidence that this is what happened), so in the case that Jon's other titles get entered they'll all be listed together without the need to treat the one misspelling as a pseudonym. I'll defer to your judgment on this Jonschaper 10:34, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I saw, and just approved. The R&S discussion sort of died out, but the precedent for treatment of the titles seems logical to extend to author credits as well. In my opinion, the way you have it now is best. --MartyD 11:33, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Cheers. Just read through the discussion. To me, it is important to look at the reason why a rule exists in the first place; namely, if someone knows nothing more about the author or artist than what's in the book in front of them, they can type the name as printed in the book into the ISFDB search bar and wind up directly on the correct page or find a link in the variant name taking them to the correct page even if the publisher completely screwed up the spelling. But when the name is misspelled in one prominent place and spelled correctly in another very prominent place (like the TOC) the hypothetical reader who is determined to look up the name and whose first search doesn't work certainly isn't facing a dead end. I think someone unfamiliar with Jon Bye is just as likely to come across and enter the spelling in the TOC as the one on the first page of the story, and rules about choices between conflicting spellings come more strongly into play when a canonical or correct spelling of the name is unknown. Jonschaper 11:59, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

PS, besides which, if someone winds up creating entries for Jon Bye's other works and knew nothing about the "John Bye" error, lord knows how long it would be until someone created a link between the two. Jonschaper 12:04, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Length of "Vampire Village"

I approved your merge for Vampire Village, but I noticed you changed the length from novelette to shortstory. I'm not a lengthist, but I figured I should ask you about it. Locus has it as novelette (which may be where the length originally came from, and it could certainly be wrong). 12 or so magazine pages is pretty long. Can you estimate the word count to double-check? Thanks. --MartyD 12:01, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Fantasy Tales is barely large enough to be considered a trade paperback and is typeset more like a regular book than a magazine (it comes down to a judgement call if it is a magazine or anthology series -- the regular features like letters, reviews, semi-regular publishing schedule, etc, make me prefer the former). There are 39 lines per page. An estimate of 14 words per line is generous (I think it's more like 11). The text of the story starts slightly less than half way down the first page (22 lines), and ends less than half way down the last page (17 lines) and there's a full page illustration, so there's really only 10 full pages of text. At 14 words per line (likely an overestimate) that would come to 5460 words total. Even at 19 words per line (most definitely an overestimate) that would still come under 7500. I definitely have to disagree with Locus on this one. Jonschaper 10:19, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, pretty clear. Thanks for checking it. --MartyD 11:26, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Reviewer-less review in Weird Tales, Spring/Fall 1989

This review of Up There and Other Strange Directions ended up with no reviewer in your recent submission. There were many others, all by John Gregory Betancourt, but I didn't want to make an incorrect assumption that the omission wasn't intentional.... Thanks. --MartyD 11:45, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that is indeed Betancourt. I'll send in the correction Jonschaper 12:08, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Fantasy Tales - Mucho Confuso

I prrocessed the new magazine and updates and created a wiki page. The updates to this issue and this issue have to be modified to add Editor records and remove Anthology records. I also deleted the Anthology records since they were orphans. It might have been better to have updated the existing magazine entries and this one rather than changing the anthologies - we have now lost the anthology entries which apparently were valid (there seems to have been multiple publications) and are left with two empty magazines which should probably be removed. Yoicks!--swfritter 16:36, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, sorry for any difficulties.

To explain why I made the "anthology" versions disappear: Fantasy Tales was originally published solely as a magazine in the UK. From the late 80s, beginning with volume 10, they began publishing 2 editions of Fantasy Tales: the US edition (by Carroll and Graff), and the UK edition (by Robinson), complete with different ISBN numbers. I understand that the two publications were otherwise identical in content and format, but I didn't want to make that assumption and edit the US editions accordingly. Both editions carried on the same numbering as the earlier UK-only editions (a volume number and issue number), starting with Volume 10, Number 1. This number (1 etc.) is listed, absent volume number, on the spine, and that would be where the numbering for the "anthology" entries (e.g. Fantasy Tales 1) would have come from, but as per the indicia that issue is officially titled "Fantasy Tales, Autumn 1988, Vol.10, No.1". So there are a lot more issues of Fantasy Tales from before this period, but I'm only familiar with the issues that were more widely distributed.

I am not familiar with the format of Fantasy Tales before or after this period, but while both US and UK editions were being published it was at first thin but with dimensions slightly larger than a paperback (sort of like the current Analog but typeset more like a trade paperback). Quite notable is the fact that for these early issues it notes under the title that it is a horror and fantasy "magazine", which shows the intent of the editors. From the 5th issue of this volume onward the page number increased, and since it was no longer as thin as a digest this gave it more of a book-like appearance (which likely explains why the earlier issues had already been entered into ISFDB as magazines, and these later ones as anthologies). The note about it being a "magazine" was also dropped, but otherwise the format, numbering, titling (as per the indicia page), artwork, contents, etc, remained the same. In other words, there was not a third, anthology edition, just the 2 UK and US editions continuing with a larger page count and the same editorial policies. The publications I used to make the edits were the UK editions containing the identical publisher, identical ISBN, etc., as the "anthology" entries that had already been made, which is why I edited those instead of the US editions of those same issues. The changes to page numbering I made only reflected the rules for magazines vs books as I understand them (i.e., counting covers and other pages which were otherwise not counted, so you wind up with a number divisible by 4 instead of, say, 115). I strongly hold the opinion that every issue of Fantasy Tales from this period, including those which were entered as "anthologies" are properly classified as magazines because it has all the features of a magazine (reviews, letters, editorial, dated titles, semi-regular publication, etc), far moreso than iffy publications like New Worlds Quarterly, and even calls itself a "magazine" for several issues.

The Fantasy Tales entries were a bit of a mess overall (some issues just had entries for the UK edition, some just for the US edition, some for both; some were classified as magazines, some as anthologies; and all were in different stages of completeness) and I thought I was taking the simplest route to cleaning them up, so I apologise if I was mistaken (I hadn't considered that changing the classification would have weird effects). I suppose an alternative would have been to delete the "anthology" entries and create the magazine entries from scratch.

I'd like to continue work on cleaning up Fantasy Tales and am of course open to suggestions on the best way to go about it. Do I, e.g., merge the US and UK editions, or does something else happen with magazines? Cheers Jonschaper 05:48, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you have a good plan to clean up the mags of one edition. The UK editions can be replicated later from the US editions. Treating them all as magazines seems like a sensible plan even though some have ISBNs. Since you have a good record of following through on projects I will leave it to you. It does not take long to remove Anthology records and and add Editor records. I will try to prioritize your entries when I see them in the queue.--swfritter 14:13, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I've updated the magazine page with placeholders for every issue including ones that haven't been entered yet. I've updated the Spring 1989 issue (AKA the May 1989 issue -- I think the "May" date is from Amazon or something) but since my copy is still in Canada I can't finish fine-tuning it (artist credits, etc). I'll link it into the magazine page as soon as my edits are approved. My remaining issues are: 1) I'm not sure what to do with this title as I do not seem to be able to change it to a magazine. I've submitted edits to remove reference to the anthology from the publication's contents -- does that make a difference? 2) Once this is done, do I merge the US publications with the matching UK publications? Thanks Jonschaper 02:17, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

You will have to use the Export Content function to populate the UK pubs. Research time! You could also use that functionality to populate the US issues from UK pubs. If you feel uncomfortable with any method you use feel free to go back the simplest method. I figured this was a great chance for you to get an idea what was under the ISFDB hood.--swfritter 14:44, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Fantasy Tales Autumn 1990

A 'blank' submission came through for the above, as in no changes?? I rejected it only because there was nothing there to accept. Possibly a glitch? FYI ~Bill, --Bluesman 03:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Read the above, then tried to unmerge the title and delete the title record and it STILL shows as an anthology!! You may have to create a new record from scratch as a magazine and then delete the 'anthology' and its title record? I can see now why nothing came through in the edit. The title record is what generates that part of the contents. Nothing you do on an edit of the publication record can get rid of it or change it. ~Bill, --Bluesman 03:20, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure what the sequence of events was, but I changed the Anthology Title to EDITOR and now everything looks OK.

The rule of thumb is that 'normal' pubs have one (and only one) Title of the same type, i.e. a Novel pub has one Novel Title, a Collection pub has one Collection Title, a Chapterbook pub has one Chapterbook Title, etc. Magazine pubs are different in that they have an "EDITOR" Title. Other than that, they are very much like any other pubs. It would probably make sense to change the name of the EDITOR title type to "Magazine" to make it consistent with other title types, but it would involve a fair amount of work. Ahasuerus 03:38, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks all Jonschaper 03:45, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Weirdbook submissions

The submissions for the issues of Weirdbook have been accepted, but I added the cents (as $6.00) to all three price fields and removed the numbers in the ISBN field to the note field, assuming it was the ISSN. Also check the piece by A. Arthur Griffin in this issue. It's listed as an omnibus. Thanks. MHHutchins 07:27, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

• Hi, my mouse must have strayed up a bit when I meant to click on "poem". I'll note the other entry styles for future issues. Cheers Jonschaper 09:16, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Magazine sizes

Concerning Weirdbook. Quarto is not among the valid sizes listed in Help. Help is a little too restrictive on this matter so I generally consider it OK to use other bindings that are commonly used; and there are many examples throughout the system that do not follow the standard. It is possible some other moderator might get picky about this.--swfritter 15:24, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to be picky, but I've been using "quarto" for the past three years for all magazines and fanzines that are approximately 8.5 x 11 (letter-size). Among many are Locus, SF Review, Delap's, Fantasy Review, Thrust, Cosmos, Vertex, Fantasy Book, Twilight Zone, even an earlier issue of Weirdbook. I was going to use it when I started entering NYRSF, Science Fiction Age, Realms of Fantasy, etc. This is the standard Locus1 uses, and that's where I picked it up. No moderator mentioned that it wasn't a valid size, and I continued using it. I've never went to the list of valid sizes on the Help page. It's good to finally find out! I see now I should have been using "bedsheet", if I'm looking at it correctly. And how is "A4" different from "bedsheet" except for a fraction of an inch? One's American and the other's European? Doesn't seem right. MHHutchins 19:02, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I actually picked up the "quarto" by looking at existing entries for Weirdbook, but I'll keep that in mind. Cheers Jonschaper 22:20, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

I've never understood "quarto" or "bedsheet". A4 and A5 I understand for paper-sizes, and therefore for fanzines created from such, and they are different from "letter" size, as anyone that has had to use Microsoft Office to print things in the UK will understand. But those aren't "bindings", just "sizes". I feel strongly about "pb", and why it should never be confused with "tp" or anything else, but the rest of the formats are something I'll happily listen to and leave blank if they aren't explained clearly. ;-) It's actually audio-books I find more messy. BLongley 23:04, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

"Bedsheet" was one of the two popular magazine formats in the late 1920s/early 1930s, the other one being, of course, "pulp". Not only were they larger than pulps, they tended to use better quality paper, so some 70-85 years later, my bedsheets are in better shape than my pulps. Campbell tried to revive the format in the early 1960s, but it didn't work out. Ahasuerus 00:28, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Ellipsis

There are a couple of titles in this pub that have them. Help indicates that they should be entered with a space after the title and spaces in between the dots. No big deal, but I usually modify titles when I come across them during an editing session.--swfritter 15:28, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Weirdbook 23/24, 1988

I changed the name of this issue from "Weirdbook, 1988" to "Weirdbook 23/24", based on the standards for titling an undated (no month or season), but numbered issue. This is up to debate, because "1988" is also stated on the cover. I just felt having the numbers on the title conveys more than just the year, because the record is dated 1988 anyway. How is it dated on the colophon or the table of contents? (I have a copy of this, but will have to dig through a few boxes to find my Weirdbooks. ) I also added a link to the cover image. 00:05, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

The head of the TOC says "Weirdbook 23/24 1988" (no colon) as compared to the other issues which state e.g. "Weirdbook 21: Autumn, 1985". "1988" is listed on the top of the cover where e.g. "Autumn 1985" would appear. The spine (something most issues don't have) says only "Weirdbook 23/24" and "Ganley". Cheers Jonschaper 00:24, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Come to think of it, it would probably be a good idea to include both number and year on those issues which feature both on the cover, e.g. Weirdbook 23/24, 1988 and Weirdbook 20, Spring 1985. Ganley always prominently displayed the issue number, so it makes sense to keep it in the title, unlike some magazines that place the issue number in tiny print somewhere inside the issue. I don't even think he dated an issue until #19 as Spring, 1984. What do you think of the idea? MHHutchins 00:32, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I was planning on including the numbering in notes when I got back to the titles for some more fine-tuning, but your suggestion makes some sense as a carry-over from his earlier titling, etc. Jonschaper 00:38, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

This bristles up against certain magazine standards, but between the two of us, we can build a good case for this exception to the rule. Thanks. MHHutchins 00:41, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Charles S. Fallis pseudonym

Hi! The pseudonym already exists for C. S. Fallis[2]. Was Charles Fallis[3] the intended author? Thanks!Kraang 03:02, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Oops, my error. I must have gotten overzealous entering Weirdbook related pseudonyms. Cheers Jonschaper 00:56, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I'll reject it and create the correct pseudonym. Thanks!Kraang 01:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Essay title in Weirdbook 16

Just checking, is Foreward in Weirdbook 16 really with an "a", vs. "Foreword"? --MartyD 12:19, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, it should be "Foreword" Jonschaper 21:47, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Weirdbook 12 (11?)

Approved [this] but should the title be "11" instead of "12"? You kept the image, which is of "eleven" and added new content "Editorial Remarks (Weirdbook 11)". Typo? ~Bill, --Bluesman 17:22, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, it's 11. I went to bed about a minute later and thought "did I just do that?" Cheers Jonschaper 20:03, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Been there, done that.... "one more edit then bed!" Cheers! ~Bill, --Bluesman 20:09, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Questions about Here Are Ladies

Hi. I accepted your submission of Here Are Ladies, but I have a couple of questions for you.

• Where did you get the 1918 publication date? I found this Google Books scan, and it shows 1913.
• I don't have time to read it this morning, but a quick skim of the collection makes me wonder if it is really spec-fic and should be included? Unfortunately, the Rules of Acquisition are silent on how to treat largely non-genre collections containing one or two SF pieces, where the collection is not by an author "over a certain threshold". It may be more appropriate to use a note in "The Threepenny Piece" title record. On the other hand, this is very similar to general interest magazines, so maybe leaving it the way you have it and including a note that only the SF story/stories are included is an appropriate way to go. Care to bring this up on Rules and Standards Discussions?

Thanks. --MartyD 11:55, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I based the submission on the description from the editor's intro to "The Threepenny Piece" in F&SF which suggested it was largely a collection of stories and poems based upon Irish folk and fairytales, but quickly looking at it on Project Gutenberg I agree, it does not look particularly SF, so it's probably best to leave it as a note. Jonschaper 23:47, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Submission to delete the collection was accepted. I followed this up by deleting the title record for the collection and the duplicate title record for "The Threepenny-Piece". Mhhutchins 00:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

On the Verge -- publication type?

Hi. I've placed your proposed addition of On the Verge on hold to ask you: I see you submitted it as a novel, but various sources I can find suggest it is a collection of short stories. I don't know how official this site is, but it seems to confirm that the publication is a collection. OCLC likewise. What do you think? --MartyD 12:07, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I entered this based on a mention in an F&SF "Recommended Reading" and pulled up additional information here, but looking more closely it is obviously a collection. I'm assuming it is sf based upon its inclusion in Recommended Reading and having noted his other entries here. Jonschaper 23:54, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again. I'll try to be more careful re similar references to publications. Jonschaper 23:59, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I converted it to a collection and added the titles listed on Open Library / OCLC / LOC. I also moved the illustrator credit from the notes to the Artist field. --MartyD 12:32, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, pre-coffee. I left the illustrator credit in the notes and added an Interiorart record. --MartyD 12:36, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Land With Sphinxes

Should "Land With Sphinxes" in these three pubs[4] be "Landscape With Sphinxes"? Thanks!Kraang 03:13, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi, yes they should -- it's already listed as such in a verified copy. Did I click on the wrong one when I submitted the merge? Jonschaper 03:18, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Clicked on the right one, was just checking. Thanks!Kraang 03:34, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Susie v. Suzy McKee Charnas

The only record giving credit to "Susie" is not verified, and according to the Locus Index, it should be "Suzy". I think we should consider this a typo and correct the spelling. That way we don't have to create a pseudonym and a variant. What do you think? Mhhutchins 22:07, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I see you're working on other titles in Midnight Graffiti. Are you working from a copy that you will be verifying? Mhhutchins 22:10, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I'm working from a physical copy and I actually "corrected" that entry from "Suzy" (as it was previously entered) to "Susie" in accordance with the spelling in that issue. I'll likely get around to verifying several titles including this one once I get around to doing some more careful proofing when I have time to go through them at a more leisurely, uninterrupted pace away from work or toddlers. I was actually going to update some more issues, but my daughter decided it was critical that I read an In the Night Garden book to her RIGHT NOW. Jonschaper 00:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I'll approve all submissions regarding this issue of the magazine. Mhhutchins 00:14, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Richards' A New Alice...

I accepted the submission changing the interior art credit of this pub to "Anna M. Richards, Jr." but wonder why the author credit remains "Anna M. Richards". The cover credits the story and illustrations to the same person. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:45, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I just made some edits to "Anna M. Richards, Jr" which might clarify: according to this the illustrations to the book were done by Anna Matlack Richards' daughter Anna Richards Brewster under the name Anna M. Richards, Jr. A quick google search seems to verify this. In fact it looks like the reverse error sometimes occurs and the writing is misattributed to the daughter who only illustrated the book. The alternative to this being a variant credit for Jr's illustrations is that this one edition contains illustrations by the mother instead, but I doubt it. Jonschaper 03:59, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not a matter of who did what, it's how the work is credited in the publication. Without primary verification we have to go by secondary sources. According to the OCLC record, the illustrations are credited to "Anna M. Richards". If we have determined that the art is by the daughter, the pub record should still indicate who is credited. Then we can set up a variant and it will be displayed thus: "A New Alice in the Old Wonderland • interior artwork by Anna M. Richards, Jr. [as by Anna M. Richards]". Mhhutchins 04:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Gotcha. I'll edit it back to non-Jr and create a variant. Have to run for now though, work suddenly came up...Jonschaper 04:39, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I went ahead and created the variant, and left a note so that anyone who can physically verify the pub will check to see how the illustrations are credited in the book itself. (Just in case OCLC and the cover is incorrect.) Thanks. Mhhutchins 05:07, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Madame Fears the Dark contents

I found this Supernatural Fiction Database entry and this Encyclopedia of Fantasy entry with some more titles for Madame Fears the Dark. --MartyD 11:14, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll add some of the info when I've got a bit more time. Cheers Jonschaper 08:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Alibrarian verified pubs

This editor has not been active for a long time and non-responsive for even longer. Feel free to make any changes you wish to their pubs; still a good idea to post those changes to their talk page.--swfritter 15:32, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Jonschaper 08:34, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

"Untitled" interior art

Have a WeirdBook 11 submission on hold. You want to change two works currently with a title to "Untitled". Though neither work may have a title or caption, or may not be linked to a particular story, "Untitled" is not the way to go. Practice is to use the title of the publication, and if there are multiple pieces, to number them. In this case the two would end up as Weirdbook 11 [1] and Weirdbook 11 [2]. I'm assuming the pieces don't tie to a particular story? What this accomplishes is that when you open up Sandercombe's page there won't be a bunch of "Untitled" works. Each will show the pub that it appears in. Cheers! ~Bill, --Bluesman 15:27, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Same with Midnight Graffiti, June 1988. In this case the generic would be Midnight Graffiti (June 1988) [1], [2], [3], etc. ~Bill, --Bluesman 15:30, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, some illos in Weirdbook do accompany stories and some don't, but due to layout it is hard to tell until you read the accompanying stories, and these ones turned out not to be. The Koszowski drawings in Midnight Graffiti are illos unrelated to essays on the same pages. I'm happy for those edits to be changed or rejected as necessary, and will keep the convention in mind in the future. Thanks Jonschaper 22:20, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I'll accept them both as it's easier to change them than re-do from scratch. I'll do the Weirdbook 11 pair and let you do the Midnight Graffiti. Using copy/paste they really don't take long. Cheers! ~Bill, --Bluesman 23:14, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Weirdbook 11 / Eleven

Hi. I'm out of moderator time this morning, so I did not do anything with your Weirdbook 11 changes (hopefully someone else will be available to work with it soon, rather than waiting for me to get back to it 22 hours from now). But I notice while you're changing the pub title from "11" to "Eleven", your interiorart title changes leave "11" while renumbering them. Should these get the same "11" to "Eleven" change, too? Figured I'd mention it in case you want to do something about it. --MartyD 12:46, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I changed the "11" to "Eleven" to match how it is written on the cover and indicia (after noting that's how other issues using the spelled out number were done). I left the interiorart the way they were first entered so it would look less bulky, and I figured someone looking up the publication from the artists' pages would only need to follow the link instead of search for the title. I'm happy to change it though if there are any objections Jonschaper 22:36, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm an engineer, so consistency appeals to me. But I have no objection -- I was only asking in case it was an oversight. --MartyD 12:26, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I've accepted the submissions, but wanted to know if you're certain that the art pieces do not illustrate the stories they are within. It seems illogical otherwise, but I don't have the issue to check. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:54, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I originally entered all the illustrations named after what appeared to be their accompanying stories and poems, but after reading through that issue over the past week it became clear that they didn't always match. Some art (like Hjort's illustrations for his own stories) clearly match the story, but I think what Ganley often did instead of hiring artists was buy unsolicited art from the public then later try to match it with stories with similar scenes (an editorial listing rates supports this). Wherever there was a tenuous connection, I left the credit as is, but for example there's one drawing of a woman with a man's severed head (which had apparently been in Ganley's private collection for years according to his editorial) which has nothing to do with the story it's with. Jonschaper 22:36, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Twilight Zone columns

Thanks for entering data for these issues of Twilight Zone. You may have noticed that there are at least two columns (Films by Wilson and Books by Sturgeon), that have the same title in each issue. In order to disambiguate these title when they appear on the author's summary page, we will append the name of the magazine and issue date. For example "Other Dimensions: Books (Twilight Zone, April 1981)". Do you plan on adding the remaining issues of the title? That was one of my planned projects, but I would gladly turn it over to you. I have a complete run and can do a backup verification on those issues that you enter. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:50, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, that actually hit me after I entered the first few issues and I was planning to go back over that (I also just noticed a typo). At present I own slightly over half the series and it'll take me a while to go through those (especially since, as you might note from a few magazines I've finally gotten around to verifying, I seem to wind up doing them in stages), but if you want to work on other projects for now I'm happy to continue working on what I've got. One thing I'm trying to work out is which of Sturgeon's reviews to enter since they range from about one throwaway sentence to several paragraphs and everywhere in between without being divided into a "review" section and a "briefly noted" section like other reviewers do. Jonschaper 22:56, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Please continue to enter those you have, regardless of the length of time it make require you to do them. There's no hurry, and it would be provide me with the motivation to complete the title. As for Sturgeon, I would personally include all titles reviewed at any length, short or long. If it's a casual reference to an earlier book, just to present a context, then the title can be omitted. Mhhutchins 00:02, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

LOL The thing about those casual references is that they are sometimes longer than the book being reviewed (three-fifths of a sentence vs two-fifths). At any rate, I'll work my way through his columns as you recommend. Jonschaper 00:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

PS, should broadcast date be used for the publication date for scripts from various episodes? Another thing I've been doing is entering each artwork only once. I notice the tendency (in the early issues at least) to use one drawing for the story's title page then reproduce details from that same piece on other pages, or have one piece of art that bleeds out in a long line over multiple pages. Jonschaper 23:39, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Dating screenplays and teleplays can be tricky, and I'm not sure if there's any reference to them in the help pages. I think they should be dated when the work is first published, not aired. Most of the teleplays in TZ were published there for the first time, so I see no reason not to date them the same as the issue. Concerning the art, one record is sufficient. If you're certain that it's a detail of another piece, I feel there's no need to create a new record. Other editors might disagree, so you might want to bring this up for a Rules and Standards discussion involving those editors who have greater experience in entering magazines into the database. Thanks. Mhhutchins 00:02, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Petronius, yet to be born, death already known!

Check out how the system "adjusted" the dates you provided for Petronius. Perhaps try it with leading zeros??? Mhhutchins 03:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

LOL Done. Looks like people in the future will be short-lived. Jonschaper 04:41, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Arkadi Vainer and Twenty-Four Hours With the Moscow Police

It turns out that the Vainer brothers' Twenty-Four Hours With the Moscow Police was a police procedural (who would have thunk?) with no SF elements, so I have deleted the publication and the title. Since it was their only title/pub, the Author records disappeared as well. Sorry about the time spent on digging up their bio data, but sometimes it's the only way to find the dross :) Ahasuerus 04:20, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

No problem, as you mention that's one of the reasons for digging up data. It's also a way to pass slow periods at work, and while I was digging I did get the nagging suspicion that it was a procedural but I failed to come across a description of the book so I'm glad to see you did. Jonschaper 03:04, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Twilight Zone questions

Hi. A couple of questions about your recent Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine submissions:

• In November 1981, should TZ Screen Preview: Halloween II be an ESSAY instead of SHORTFICTION, if it's a movie review? All of the others (search All Titles for "TZ%Screen Preview") are ESSAY.

• In December 1981, I would be inclined to add "(Twilight Zone, December 1981)" to the end of the A Note from the Publisher... to which you added the elipsis. I notice we're not consistent about what form of the title is used in the parentheses for different issues of this magazine, and we don't seem to be doing it at all on the instances of the publisher's note. The same title/author combination is used in TwiZone8400401 and GRTSMGZN391982, and there are more instances of the non-elipsis form: TwiZone8300301, TwiZone8300304, and TwiZone8600601. Given all that, I think we should distinguish, and since a couple of "Other Dimensions" instances already use "(Twilight Zone, December 1981)" in that issue, I'd be consistent with that.

Thanks, --MartyD 13:03, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for catching those. As I've been adding info I've been trying to introduce some consistency, especially when essay series come to light. I'll eventually get around to entering data for about half the issues so by then there should be far more consistency, but that's down the road. With the use of elipses I've been following the printed text. Jonschaper 22:52, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

"Asterites" series?

Hi. I've put your two submissions on hold that would assign a series "Asterites" to the Sanders variants of Industrial Revolution and "What'll You Give?". From where did you get that series name? I have not been able to find any such reference anywhere. (It seems to me that if these were to be assigned a series, maybe it should be "Flying Mountains".) Thanks. --MartyD 02:09, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, unless works published under different names appeared in different series, you should assign the series to the parent (canonical) titles instead of to the variants. Otherwise, only some instances of the title will show up when you look at the series bibliography. --MartyD 02:12, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I just read the stories over the past couple days, noted they were connected and took "Asterite" from the name members of that society called themselves. After reading your message and looking up your title I assume the stories in Tales From the Flying Mountain are all from that connected series. I have no strong preference for series name and see the advantage of using one that comes from the collection's name. Jonschaper 03:06, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Not that any of these are "official" sources, but I found [5] using "Flying Mountains series" and [6] characterizing a set of his future histories as "Flying Mountains". So if you like that idea, cancel your submissions (which are on the variants anyway) and make the edits on the parent/canonical titles. Thanks. --MartyD 10:51, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Done. Cheers Jonschaper 23:13, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I approved them all. Do you know if the Interludes are each standalone pieces, if they are six parts of one piece, or if they are something else? I am mostly just curious (I was thinking about whether they should individually be in the series or if there is some more appropriate way to treat them). --MartyD 01:25, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I wasn't entirely certain how to handle them either since unlike some of the other stories they were obviously written for the collection. I noticed that the Epilogue is specifically described as a "two page short story" here which suggested to me that the epilogue, interludes and prologue are somehow separate from it. Jonschaper

Yes, I saw that. I also saw that Prologue is classified as SHORTFICTION, so I assumed it may be similar. See this discussion about the handling of a "braided" story -- a single story broken into pieces and used to tie other stories together. I was thinking that approach might be better for the interludes, if it applies, but I do not know what the interludes are. --MartyD 11:28, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll try contacting one of the verifiers of the collection. Cheers Jonschaper

(Unindent) Most interesting. I like the idea from the "braided story" discussion, but really don't know what this one story should be called. The present splitting away of the Prologue and Epilogue is just plain wrong, despite being so titled in the book. There is one flow, one arc through all the pieces, Prologue/Interludes/Epilogue are just one long meeting. Unfortunately there isn't one main recurring character [though a few do appear in more than one story] to hinge the series on [Missy Blades seems to be the focus of the 'braided' story and is in one story, her parents in another]. Inventing a title seems wrong, using the collection title [maybe minus the 's' on Tales???] might be the best way. Consistent. Or the full title with a bracketed addendum, like we do for (excerpt). There's enough to warrant a length of novelette, over 40 pages. Of course this pre-supposes creating one entity in the contents, which goes against the way the material is presented, not only in the TOC but in the text. Not keen on TFTFM: Prologue; TFTFM: Interlude 1; etc. either, but it might be a way to go. How would all eight parts get linked in that possible scenario? Like a mini-collection. I can't think of any way the DB can group eight short-fictions into one longer short-fiction. A mini-omnibus...¿¿? [kidding!!] This would be a beaut on the Standards page! ~Bill, --Bluesman 00:10, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Help:Use_of_the_SERIAL_type#Other_uses has another idea that might work here. The parts could be represented as installments of a serial. Or a variation on that, I suppose these pieces could be made a sub-series (w/Prologue as #1 through Epilogue as #8). I will ping the participants in the earlier discussion to see if they have suggestions borne of experience. --MartyD 10:01, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

First, we have worse solutions to similar problems in the database. Compare the Zelazny story in this pub and that one (The Wild Cards series is a true cornucopia of different solutions to problems). I have been told that the level of detail for entering contents is often left to the editor, but I think there should be some form of guideline. In this case I think it should be something like "If the sections can stand on their own as stories, they should be entered seperately, if not, they should be as one entry, explained in the (title)notes", but that's my opinion. When I verified my edition of Tales of the Flying Mountains, the prelude/interludes/epilogue were there as they are now, and I left them as they were. I would do it different now, probably as Bluesman suggested, one entry as Tale of the Flying Mountains, explained in the notes (probably after a heavy discussion on the rules and standards page). The addition of (serial) to the title is an interesting idea. I think that would make things clearer. --Willem H. 12:35, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea of creating one record if the story is continuous regardless of how many parts there are. The note field can be used to explain how it's presented in the book. I don't like making it into a serial, as all parts appear in one publication. I say this knowing it wasn't how I entered the braided stories in the Wild Card anthologies, but there was/is no standard for such oddities. Perhaps this discussion should be moved to the Rules & Standards page? Mhhutchins 13:54, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Pending edits

I put a couple of your submissions on hold while I ask Michael H. about them. --MartyD 11:05, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Marty, please proceed with accepting the submissions as discussed on my talk page. Thanks for checking with me. Mhhutchins 19:28, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the sanity checks. --MartyD 20:54, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

proposed Corman the Carp deletion

I agree with you it's not science fiction, but it's not clearly covered by the rules of acquisition, either. In fact, if you consider the specific exclusion of Animal books for very young children, i.e. books for preschoolers which depict simple scenes from animal life featuring anthropomorphized animals, this would then appear to be NOT excluded, as it's clearly not preschooler level or depicting "simple scenes". I think you should bring this up on the Community Portal and see what other people have to say before we go ahead and delete it. --MartyD 10:19, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Cheers Jonschaper 22:53, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Does the "Carp" fly a spaceship or have any special powers? I've approved lots of crap from PublishAmerica in the past only because it meet our criteria for inclusion, if this one has any spec fic elements I'd hold my nose and leave it in. :-)Kraang 01:39, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually if it weren't for all the talk about ready and willing cows, it seems to lack the usual PublishAmerica stilted or purple prose and looks like it might make a cute kids book. But other than fish "talking" to each other, nothing SF that I can tell. I've started a conversation in Rules & Standards. Jonschaper 01:49, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. I approved the deletion. --MartyD 10:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

[The] Destinies of the Stars

Hi. I put your submission that would make Destinies of the Stars a variant of The Destinies of the Stars on hold. It looks to me like the first one is mistaken and should have "The". See Contento's list. If you agree, I will reject your submission and merge the two instead. Thanks. --MartyD 10:09, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, go ahead and reject. Cheers Jonschaper 23:32, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Done and merged. Looks good. Thanks. --MartyD 00:59, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Art Chantry

In your edit to Art Chantry, according to Help:Screen:AuthorData, the ", Jr." should be omitted from the Legal Name. I am not an expert on author naming and have come to this party late, so I don't know the reasoning behind doing it that way. If you feel it properly should be included, you might ask on the the help desk or rules and standards. --MartyD 00:21, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, just noticed your post here. I'm not sure of the reasoning either since I don't think the legal name listing effects search results, and the "Jr" helps distinguish between two definitely existing people (vs "Capt." which usually wouldn't), but since there's no Art Chantry Sr. in the database I won't bother challenging. Cheers Jonschaper 01:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Holds on deletions

I've placed five submissions for deletions on hold, all by or with contributions by Art Spiegelman. Most of the titles have been reviewed in either Locus or F&SF, which may account for their appearance in the db. I'm not familiar with Spiegelman's work other than Maus, so I'm not in a position to decide if the pubs should be deleted based on the threshold test. (Because it's a fantasy, I believe Maus should be included but I'm one of the few who believes a novel told graphically is a valid form of speculative fiction.) If the pubs are deleted, we would have to delete their title records, which would break the links to the reviews. We can repair the pub records for those reviewing pubs by deleting the reviews and making them essays. I personally don't feel the titles' inclusion compromises the rules of acquisition to a great degree. (This one appears to be a fantasy based on the synopsis given.) If we keep them another one should probably be changed from NONFICTION to COLLECTION. Feel free to bring this up for a discussion on a community page. I'll keep the submissions on hold until a decision is made. Thanks. Mhhutchins 01:47, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, on the basis of your arguments I'm fine with you rejecting the submissions. I also strongly feel a graphic novel can be a valid form of speculative fiction. I imagine the reason for the restriction for excluding graphic novels absent other factors is the whole slippery slope of there then being a basis for including the vast majority of comic books published, thus threatening to turn this into a comic book database. Jonschaper 22:49, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

You're right on point about the argument for not including graphic novels. A few have slipped in (by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman) and I would argue against their deletion with the following: if a science fact book by a scientist that occasionally writes spec-fic is allowed, why not permit a record for a graphical work of fiction by a writer that is well-known in the spec-fic field. That usually shuts down the argument. I'll reject the submissions. Thanks. Mhhutchins 00:17, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

The Fungus That Ate My School

Sorry about all the rejects, after seeing the first delete I cleaned up that author and anyone else linked to him. Last year I cleaned up the 2004 & 5 submissions which had hundreds of these book.(plus anything linked by author & publisher) I wiped out so many of these "The Fungus That Ate..." books that it put me off mushrooms for a month! :-)Kraang 03:25, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

No problem at all. I thought it looked a bit borderline if anything. Jonschaper 03:30, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

If you find anymore of these borderline authors let me know. I'd say 90% are gone now but there are more hiding here and there. Thanks.Kraang 03:37, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The Fairies Collection #2

Hi! The pubs are already in the database and this audio version is for sale, so I'm going add the correct authors and change it to an omnibus. This is the finished work[7].Kraang 01:27, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. My 2 year old daughter's obssessed with Tinkerbell so she'll be happy. Jonschaper 04:15, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I'll send the delete submission to reject bin. Thanks!Kraang 01:39, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Lunchbox and the Aliens

Sorry, as annoying as children's books are, I think Lunchbox and the Aliens is "in", so I've rejected your proposed deletion. I will fix up the record. --MartyD 10:15, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

No problem, and thanks Jonschaper 23:38, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

View from a Distant Star by Shapley

I corrected the author's first name from Howard to Harlow, based on info from OCLC. Thanks. Mhhutchins 05:06, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Entering roman-numeraled pages

I corrected the page count of the submission for this pub. Instead of a comma, the plus sign [+] should be used. Thanks. Mhhutchins 05:09, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Same here. Mhhutchins 05:11, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Cheers, will keep in mind Jonschaper 05:15, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Deletion of The Paperback Art of James Avati

This record was created because of the significance of the publisher (Donald M. Grant) in the speculative fiction field. Its inclusion is borderline at best, but one of those I believe that warrant an exception to the rules. If you disagree, the issue can be discussed with other editors on the Rules and Standards page. I've placed the submission to delete on hold. Thanks. Mhhutchins 05:24, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

No problem. Go ahead and reject my submission Jonschaper 05:55, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

"Anonymous" vs. "unknown"

Just a note that "Anonymous" is reserved for cases, to quote Help:Screen:NewNovel, when "a work is credited to "Anonymous"". When the author is pseudonymous and the real author is unknown, we use "unknown". Just one of those quirks :-) Ahasuerus 05:05, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind Jonschaper 05:16, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Author change on Bound for Mars

Hi. I have your proposed change of "Arthur Ballou" to "Arthur W. Ballou" on the title record Bound for Mars on hold, only to ask what you intend. I poked around a little and found the Library of Congress entry has the "W.". I noticed you did not also change the author on the pub record, so I wasn't sure if you were trying to correct the attribution or intended to make a variant. Thanks. --MartyD 10:02, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi, sorry about that. I was trying to correct the attribution. As far as I could find there was no instance of the book being credited to Arthur without the "w" outside of a Locus listing. Jonschaper 04:51, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

No problem, I just wanted to be sure of your intent. I approved it and also added the "W." in the pub's author. --MartyD 18:13, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Three of Hearts

I approved your fix to the author on Three of Hearts, but the trailing "(An Avon Camelot Book)" in the title caught my eye. I'm thinking this is not SF, although I guess Duey is "over a certain threshhold." See the blurbs on Amazon. Any objections to my making it non-genre and fixing the title? --MartyD 10:26, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Ha ha. Joke's on me. Just found your NONGENRE change. Never mind! :-) --MartyD 10:27, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Un Fiasco de Bruja variant

I had to reject your variant submission involving "Un Fiasco de Bruja". Both titles involved are gone. Looks like Kraang deleted one pub + title by that name. I can't tell what the other title was, but I assume its fate was similar. Please pursue it with him if you want/need more details. Thanks, --MartyD 09:52, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi, that's fine by me. It was one of those really borderline title kiddie books that I won't really miss. Jonschaper 22:50, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

It was one of those 32 page 4-8 year old/pre-school books, heavily illustrated as was everything else by this author. The other title was the English version. Usually the few books I delete are only a drop in the bucket of what's out there for these children's authors and they mostly appeared in 2003/4.Kraang 01:27, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Your submisison for Mr. Munchausen

I have placed this on hold, because it includes a link to a cover image on Wikipedia. Wikipedia (and all other Wikimedia projects) have a very firm policy against outside sites directly linking to images on their servers. They call this "bandwidth theft" and get really peeved about it. (Offending sites may be blocked from all access to wikipedia.) In general we should only link to images on sites that have explicitly given us permission to do so. See Help:Screen:EditPub#ImageURL and ISFDB:Image linking permissions for more details.

In this case it looks like the solution will be to put a copy of the image on the ISFDB server. I will probably approve the submission and promptly change the image URL after i double check the license terms on the wikipedia source.

See Help:How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki when doing this yourself.

Thank you for contributing. -DES ^Talk 14:46, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I have uploaded a copy of the cover image to the ISFDB server. (I edited the image to improve its brightness). I have approved your submission and changed the IMAGE URL field to point to the ISFDB copy. The publication record may be found here. Please check it, and mark it as verified it if it is correct. A gain thank you. -DES ^Talk 15:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Cheers

They Sent a Boy by Thames/ Lesser

You placed this title record into the Johnny Mayhem series. However that was the record for publication under the pseudonym C. H. Thames. When there is a variant title, things generally work better if the parent record is placed in the series, so i have removed that record and instead placed this record recording authorship by Milton Lesser into the series.

Thanks for your contributions. -DES ^Talk 15:46, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, my oversight. Jonschaper 22:48, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Beware the cat - he may appear at varous times in various time streams

Even more confusion and a little elucidation while seeking wisdom.--swfritter 19:14, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Multiple Wikipedia links ...

... are not supported by the software, I am afraid, so I had to choose just one for Flora Eldershaw. Ahasuerus 03:10, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Cheers. I'll add the second one as a website for both authors Jonschaper 03:40, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

"Saturnian Celia" merge

Hi. The dates involved in your proposed merge of 741833 and 74314 caught my eye. I did a little poking around, and it looks like the Magazine of S&SF publication in 1957 describes it as excerpts from a letter written in May, 1774. I couldn't find any evidence that it was published before 1957; did you? --MartyD 10:10, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I sort of relied on the pre-existing entry for a publication date, but on second thought it's unlikely to have been published the same year it was written. There are collections of his letters (e.g. here), but I'd probably have to dig out my copy of that issue to look up the text and verify where that particular letter is included. The earliest date I've found for publication of his letters is 1842. Jonschaper 00:29, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Mhhutchins struck out with Tuck, but Swfritter found Contento claims it appeared in a 1903 collection; he further suggests keeping the 1774 is ok with a note, so I think I will go that route. --MartyD 00:05, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, Swfritter beat me to it and did an update and merge in parallel, so I'm forced to reject your merge submission because it's already done. Apologies for having taken so long. --MartyD 00:13, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

No problem at all Jonschaper 00:25, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Leon E. Stover 2001 essay merge

You proposed to merge two essays "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Science of Man: Apeman, Spaceman ---Or, 2001's Answer to the World's Riddle" both by Leon E. Stover.

In general, when an essay (or a story or a book) has appeared under two different titles, we don't merge them, we instead make one a variant title of the other. The exception would be where one entry is just a mistake, and was never actually published under that name. But in this case the version you proposed to drop ("Science of Man:...") appears in a verified pub.

Do you have reason to think that it did not in fact appear under that title? Or is there some other reason for the merge?

I have the merge on hold, pending your response. -DES ^Talk 03:01, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi, sorry,I thought I entered that as a creation of a variant. This must be the result of losing an hour of sleep thanks to daylight savings on a Monday morning after recovering from a cold the night before. Thanks Jonschaper 04:43, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

No problem. I'll reject it and let you do the variant. -DES ^Talk 04:57, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

proposed Zebrowski legal name change

Hi. I put your proposed Zebrowski legal name change on hold. It looks to me like his legal name may actually be "George Thaddeus Zebrowski", the Anglicized version of "Jerzy Tadeuz Zebrowski". Someone's changing his name is not the same as someone's using a different name. Can you find anything definitive pointing one way or the other? --MartyD 12:19, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi, no. The version of the name I submitted came from the F&SF webpage and it seems like their criteria for listing something as a "real" name changes (sometimes it's as insignificant as listing the married name when the writer usually uses her maiden name). Since it doesn't shed much more light on Zebrowski I have zero objection to that being rejected. Jonschaper 08:35, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I finally had time to look around some more. I'm pretty convinced his name changed, and the Anglicized version is his legal name. So I did reject it (and I changed "T." to "Thaddeus" in the existing legal name). --MartyD 12:46, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

"The Cheery Soul"

I see that you would like to change the date of this title from 1942-12-27 to 1942-12-24. However, the proposed Note reads "Originally published in The Listener, 12 December 1942", so shouldn't the new date be 1942-12-12? Ahasuerus 05:43, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for catching that. It should be 24 December 1942. Jonschaper 09:38, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks! Ahasuerus 15:01, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Re: cartoon and dates in submissions

The change discussed here. If you are making a new entry to an existing pub you don't have to enter a date. It is picked up automatically from the publication date. Thanks.--swfritter 14:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

"The Mask of Demeter" vs.

I see that you have added a note, "Translated by Willy Ley" to this story by "Cecil Corwin and Martin Pearson" (aka Donald A. Wollheim and C. M. Kornbluth). Since the story had been originally written in English, presumably no translation was required. I wonder if the note was supposed to be added to "When the Devil Took the Professor" by Kurd Lasswitz, which appeared in the same issue of F&SF? Ahasuerus 04:46, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi, sorry about that. Jonschaper 05:08, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

No worries, fixed! Ahasuerus 05:27, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

I did indeed mean to add that note to Lasswitz' story but my mouse aim must have been off. Jonschaper 05:08, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

They say that on the Internet no one knows whether you are a dog, but this mouse aiming incident suggests that you are probably not a cat ;-) Ahasuerus 05:27, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

proposed Breque pseudonym

Hi. I've put your proposed Breque pseudonym on hold. Do you have the magazine in which the only title to the dash-less version appears? I notice there are several other reviews in the same magazine, all using the dash, so I'm wondering if the dash-less version is just a data entry typo. Even if it's not, I'm thinking this isn't worth a pseudonym and we could just correct the spelling on the title and add a note about it in the pub. I will do a little research. --MartyD 11:50, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I think Bill Longley was entering contents of this issue from an index of several issues. Perhaps he can help. Otherwise I suggest just changing the credit of the non-dash review. Mhhutchins 17:42, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the non-dash author was from the reviewer initial-key lookup in the Index of issues 1-10 of the SFRA series - so a tertiary or maybe even quaternary source. I've fixed that, it can be corrected if we ever find the primary. BLongley 19:22, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. Author's gone, and I've rejected the moot submission. --MartyD 23:37, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

C. Corwin

The credit is used for a poem in this issue of F&SF. Is the record incorrect or is the pseudonym directed to the wrong canonical name? Thanks. Mhhutchins 01:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I understand "Query for Doc Richardson" was actually written by M. C. Cosley under the pseudonym of "M. Corwin", not "C. Corwin" -- I've asked Rkihara as verifier to check the credits. The "C. Corwin" appears to have led to some confusion about it being written by C. M. Kornbluth, who used the pseudonym of "Cecil Corwin" and contributed a short story to the same issue. There is only the one title for "C. Corwin" so that should be removed as a pseudonym. Jonschaper 02:04, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll accept the submission to remove the pseudonym once Rkihara confirms that the record is incorrect. Thanks. Mhhutchins 02:11, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Correction was made in the author credit. Once the last record of an author is deleted, the author no longer exists in the database. When that happened the submission to remove the pseudonym became moot, causing the system to require a hard reject in order to delete the submission from the queue. Thanks for finding this and bringing it to our attention. Mhhutchins 18:20, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

The Little Place

You want to merge this title with an identical one, but you chose to remove the note about first publication. Did you mean to do this? Mhhutchins 02:07, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I added the footnote mostly as a bit of a placeholder/reminder until I could add the short story to the publication and merge the two appearances. Jonschaper 02:12, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

B. Traven

You wrote an initial "Bibliographic Comments" on the identity of B. Traven. In working on resolving our pseudonyms with those listed in Locus1, I did some additional research on the author, which I have summarized in updated Bibliographic Comments. Part of my conclusion is that regardless of what his birth name was, his final name is fixed by his death certificate, that's the name we should use as his "legal name" in the ISFDB, and that name is reasonably well established. As such I've update his legal name to "Traven Torsvan Croves". Since you are clearly interested in this subject, I'd appreciate it if you could take a look at what I've done. Chavey 21:04, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in responding -- I was in Bali the past couple weeks. I'll take a look when I've got a chance, but I doubt I can bring any additional expertise. Cheers Jonschaper 23:12, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Changing review dates

All of the submissions to change the dates of the review records in this pub could have been done in one submission, by updating the pub record. Keep this in mind if you come across another pub that has undated review records. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Web page addresses

Just a note that the data in Web Page fields has to start with "http://" or else the link will point to a non-existent page on the ISFDB server :-) Ahasuerus 06:22, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Approved edit for Satellite Februry 1957

Assume you meant to notify me once the edits were accepted. The stories in question were probably the original content before I edited the record. A little serendipity as I also noticed the first three 1957 editor records were not in a series.--swfritter 16:42, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Analog 1965-01

Replaced the Visco scan for your verified here. Hauck 16:43, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Analog 1964-12

Replaced the Visco scan for your verified here. Hauck 16:45, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Analog 1963-12

Replaced the Visco scan for your verified here. Hauck 16:48, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Analog 1963-10

Replaced the Visco scan for your verified here. Hauck 16:50, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation of similar titles or magazine columns

When disambiguating titles, you should give add the title of the magazine parenthetically. Just adding the date doesn't do enough. I'm going to accept the submissions, but add the magazine titles. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:30, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I should add a thanks for finding these. The disambiguation should have been done by the person who entered and/or verified the issues. Mhhutchins 03:33, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

No problem Jonschaper 03:34, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

"Thirteen to Centaurus"

In the original publication of this story, there were only two illustrations by Finlay (I'm holding a submission to merge the second piece), but in the reprint there are three pieces. Can you check to confirm this? I've been very careful in merging these interiorart records to make sure that the reprint matches EXACTLY the original publication, even to the point of making sure the pagination matches. In the case of this story, the second piece appears 17 pages after the first in both the original and the reprint. In the reprint the third piece appears 5 pages later, but not at all in the original. If you can confirm the third piece, I'll ask the primary verifiers to the original to recheck their issues. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:54, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi, the third illustration appears on the back cover of the original publication. During that period both Amazing and Fantastic published an illustration of one of the stories on each of their back covers that was distinct from the interior illustrations. It's a full page illustration, which accounts for the extra page taken up by the story in the reprint. Cheers Jonschaper 00:10, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Weird Tales

I have a submission merging this 1964 cover art record with this 1979 record]. Both are for the same book from the same publisher, but they are not the same. I've googled the 1979 book and here's what it looks like. I'm going to reject the submission. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:48, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Ned Hadley's artwork for "The Avengers"

In the original magazine publication there were 14 pieces, numbered blank, 2, 3...14, according to ISFDB standards. In the reprint the pieces are numbered blank, 1, 2,...13, but are not in sequence. Do you have a copies of both printings and confirm the correspondence of all the pieces between the two publications? It would probably make sense to first place the reprints in order before merging anything. What do you think? I'm holding all the submissions merging any of these records. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:56, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I hadn't noticed the skip in numbering and totally agree -- I must have gotten lazy after matching most of the other Sol Cohen reprints. Once the numbering is corrected in the original they match perfectly with the spacing though. Jonschaper 00:37, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

All right. Then, you'll have to cancel the submissions, update the pub record correcting the titles for the interior art records, then make new submissions that merge the matching titles. Or I can do it all, and save you from having to wait between acceptance of the submissions. Your choice. Mhhutchins 01:53, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I've cancelled and updated. Jonschaper 02:10, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Accepted, but the appendix [1] will have to be dropped at the time you merge the first piece. BTW, I've grown to absolutely detest the practice of not adding an appendix to the first piece of art when there are multiple interiorart records for a story. I see absolutely no reason why it should not be a part of the title. And it really helps to make clear that the story has more than one piece of art illustrating it. Without it you'd have to look at the pub record to see if it's the first or only piece. An interiorart record without a number would mean there's either only one piece illustrating the story or the verifier has chosen to create only one record for all of the pieces illustrating the story. I didn't mean to take up space on your talk page, just had to get this off my chest. Thanks. Mhhutchins 02:20, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Windfall

Changed author from Catherine Crook de Camp to Catherine C. de Camp as per title page in this pub. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hauck (talk • contribs) .

Amazing Stories, November 1968

I have a submission to update this record, but there are not differences between the submission and the current record. What were you trying to change? Mhhutchins 20:40, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

The listing for Leon Stover's article is entered twice in the publication and appears as two identical entries Jonschaper 22:35, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

You can't remove a content record by updating the pub record (as I said above, the submission shows no change in the record). You have to use the "Remove Titles from This Pub" function under the Editing Tools menu. Once the content is removed, you'll need to delete it or merge it with the identical one. It doesn't matter which method you use. Thanks. Mhhutchins

Hi, I gave it a shot and received this message "MISSING TITLES (please report to moderators): •507511" Jonschaper 23:39, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

This looks like one of those records that popped up a month or so back with the same bug. I'll ask Bill Longley to join the discussion. He worked on a few of them. Thanks. Mhhutchins

Orbit, Jul-Aug 1954

I added cover art credit to this issue, based on a credited reproduction of the artwork in an article in Science Fiction Age, March 1993. Mhhutchins 22:11, 23 December 2011 (UTC)