User talk:Ahasuerus/Archive/2008

Situation with pseudonyms

Can you please check out this discussion with Roglo and advise how to proceed from here? I'm holding two of the submissions, but accepted the first two without much deliberation. Thanks. Mhhutchins 12:11, 2 Jan 2008 (CST)

Hell's Pavement

Correct cover? BLongley 08:10, 5 Jan 2008 (CST)

That's the one, thanks! Ahasuerus 15:13, 5 Jan 2008 (CST)

Future wiki and editor series

Now that's a wiki jam-filled with information. But the Editor series is looking a little wacky. --swfritter 22:13, 10 Jan 2008 (CST)

The Future Editor series looks wacky because at one point I began breaking it up into a bunch of sub-series, one per title, and then remembered that we have no way of ordering sub-series within a superseries, so I was making things worse :( Adding a new field, "Order number within the parent series", to the series table is something that has been on the list of things to do for a long time, but no such luck so far. Ahasuerus 22:19, 11 Jan 2008 (CST)

I believe Mike Christie was working on Fantastic Universe, Infinity, and Venture and half way through the bibliographic tasks. I also notices that many of the issues looked like this without a length for the stories. A legacy from the past? In any case, I could use a break from Futurian madness and want to make sure there is no reason why I shouldn't tackle these relatively more relaxing challenges since they seem to have lied fallow for awhile.--swfritter 22:13, 10 Jan 2008 (CST)

I don't think there are any pressing issues in the Futurian land, although I will do a bit more reshuffling once I am feeling better and can think straight again. As a general rule, mixing and matching different tasks seems to be the best way to avoid burnout. There is often satisfaction in completing mini-projects, but longer ones can become stressful unless one takes occasional breaks :) Ahasuerus 22:19, 11 Jan 2008 (CST)

Eyes of the Overworld

One of your books is on the bad ISBN list: Eyes of the Overworld. I suspect 0671832921 is correct rather than 0617832921, but can you please double-check when you get a chance. BLongley 09:43, 12 Jan 2008 (CST)

Sure, will do! (But it will have to wait until mid-February...) Ahasuerus 12:41, 12 Jan 2008 (CST)

You seem to have the last two entries on the "ISBN fields that don't start with '#', and aren't 10 digits long" (snappy title, eh?) list as well, so please add The Other Foot and In Deep to your ever-increasing to-do list (although I hope these will be as fast to come OFF the list as they are to put on!). Manor Books and Leisure Books seem to be especially beyond our psychic bibliographic abilities. :-( BLongley 16:58, 13 Jan 2008 (CST)

To Do list updated. And I am sure it will start shrinking any century now :) Ahasuerus 20:32, 13 Jan 2008 (CST)

The Eyes of the Overworld was one of the first pubs that I verified when the Verification feature was added in 2006 and it needed a second pass anyway. The ISBN situation is peculiar: it has "617" on the spine, but the ISBN on the copyright page is, as you guessed, "671". All fixed now :) Ahasuerus 23:46, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)

My editions of The Other Foot and In Deep were published in 1971 and 1972 respectively. My attempts to derive working ISBNs from the SBNs on their spines were clearly unsuccessful, so I have changed them to the catalog IDs displayed on the covers. The SBNs are documented in the Notes field and if anybody has more luck converting them to ISBNs, more power to him :) Ahasuerus 23:57, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)

Coincidentally, I got my "In Deep" today and I seem to have been robbed of one whole (but very short) story - is "The Handler" worth tracking down elsewhere? (I also passed up on an "Eyes of the Overworld" thinking I already have it, but I'm not so sure now... Multiple Verifications are needed soon, my memory can't cope with the increasing discrepancies between my "Have Verified" and "Have Got" lists!) BLongley 16:58, 13 Jan 2008 (CST)

Well, like many/most Damon Knight stories from his middle period it contains a commentary on the human condition and the commentary is rather bitter. If you like Knight or if you happen to come across the story elsewhere, it's worth reading since it's short and punchy, one of his better efforts. BTW, it occurs to me that Knight and the recently discussed Lem had quite a bit in common: exceedingly bright boys who never grew up and could act like major jerks at times. Ahasuerus 20:32, 13 Jan 2008 (CST)

I'm accumulating more Knight and Lem than I've read before, but they haven't bubbled to the top of the "To Be Read" pile yet. I think I'd read more Lem if I found more "Pirx", and may yet bump Knight up the pile as there's a lot of short stories even I can find time for. I think one major difference might be that I've never read a Lem story from a T-shirt, whereas I have with Knight ("Eripmav") - now there's a binding type we probably haven't got yet! BLongley 14:23, 14 Jan 2008 (CST)

I think the consensus opinion (for what it's worth) is that Knight wrote quite a few good stories and novellas in the 1950s and 1960s, but always seemed to have trouble with novels. As far as Lem goes, the Pirx stories were fairly solid and The Invincible was another solid effort. However, he was at his most playful and creative in the The Cyberiad/Robots' Fables universe and in some Tichy stories. A darker and more bitter side of the same creativity can be seen in Memoirs Found in a Bathtub and The Futurological Congress, whose style of paranoia is similar to some of Dick novels (Lem was a big fan of Dick's work).

One word of caution is in order, though. There is a great deal of difference between Michael Kandel's translations of Lem's stories and everybody else's. The former range from excellent to brilliant, while the latter tend to be mediocre at best. The difference is particularly striking when the story is heavily dependent on Lem's dexterous use of the language, which is the case in roughly half of his output. Ahasuerus 22:31, 15 Jan 2008 (CST)

That would explain why I never finished Solaris then. :-/ BLongley 12:35, 16 Jan 2008 (CST)

Search the Sky

Correct cover? And as you seem to have the 1977 Bantam edition too, can you shed any light on why the title record says it was revised in 1977 by Baen, and your/our pub says it was revised 1985? Was someone suffering temporary Bantam/Baen/Ballantine Blindness? BLongley 16:12, 15 Jan 2008 (CST)

Well, considering the fact that Jim Baen didn't start his own company until 1983, it's probably fair to say that there was no "1977 Baen edition" :-) I will check my 1977 edition in mid-February, but I am pretty sure that the changes were not made until 1985. That's when Pohl went back and rewrote a bunch of old Pohl/Kornbluth collaborations to "update" them for the 1980s. I'll add it to my list of things to do, though. Thanks! Ahasuerus 17:57, 15 Jan 2008 (CST)

Walkers on the Sky

I've added an image to your verified publication. The odds are really high that your copy has the same cover as mine. Marc Kupper (talk) 16:34, 19 Jan 2008 (CST)

Looks right, but I will double check on February 16, when I have access to my collection. Thanks! Ahasuerus 16:44, 19 Jan 2008 (CST)

Space Gypsies

I've added a cover image to your verified publication. It's pretty likely this is correct as I think only one cover was ever used.

I also updated the comment from "Stated first printing of the first edition. Original paperback." to "First printing that states "First Avon Printing, June 1967" and "This Avon edition is the first publication in any form of Space Gypsies."" Marc Kupper (talk) 10:21, 20 Jan 2008 (CST)

Looks right, I'll add it to my list of things to check on February 15 :) Ahasuerus 12:11, 20 Jan 2008 (CST)

Is there a place to request changes?

I'd like to request that verification/edits should have a link to take you back to the publication or better yet the title after completing the change. Holmesd 22:30, 20 Jan 2008 (CST)

There's already a feature request on file for that. It's item 90107 on ISFDB_Feature_List. Marc Kupper (talk) 20:20, 21 Jan 2008 (CST)

Thanks, Marc! :) Ahasuerus 20:22, 21 Jan 2008 (CST)

Data Consistency/Short Fiction-Novel Mismatches

When you get a chance, would you be able to run the script for this list using the latest backup? Most of them have been fixed, but I was wondering how well. Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mhhutchins (talk • contribs) .

Sure, I'll rerun the script later tonight (travel gods willing)! Ahasuerus 17:15, 22 Jan 2008 (CST)

I have rerun the script and posted the new table at the top of the page. It still needs to be reconciled with the pre-existing table since I am out of time tonight :( Ahasuerus 23:59, 22 Jan 2008 (CST)

Binary Stars #1

I've started verifying my paperback anthologies and came upon this one that you've previously verified. Concerning the interior artwork by Freff, do you think that having a record for each of the two pieces (under the names of the stories they illustrate) would make a more "solid bibliography" of this publication? (Sorry, I just read that term used by Al in his description of his "Intended Order of Work" and thought it was a rather neat description of our attempts here.) :-) Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:16, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)

Also, the book is titled Binary Star No. 1 on both the cover and the title page. Binary Star #1 is used only on the spine. Sure, it's nitpicking, but then no nit leaves unpicked in this database. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:48, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)

I can't check the book until mid-February, but both points seem to be quite reasonable based on my recollection of the series. Also, I seem to recall that Binary Star #5 was changed to Binary Star No. 5 in a similar fashion a few days ago. As far as nitpicking goes, that's what we do here and, by golly, we do it well! Ahasuerus 19:08, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)

Good. So did you want to wait until next month, or should I just go ahead and make the changes? Mhhutchins 20:01, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)

Sorry, I should have been more clear! Please go ahead and make the changes when you get a chance and I will add it to my list of things to check on 2008-02-16 in the unlikely event that I have a different printing. Thanks! Ahasuerus 04:34, 26 Jan 2008 (CST)

No. 1 is fine based on my copy. I also verified No. 3 and then, based on my copies of 1,2,3 and 5, changed all Anthology Titles to use "No. N" instead of "#N". I don't have No. 4, but OCLC lists it as "Binary star no. 4", so I think it's a safe guess. Ahasuerus 17:48, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)

Wizard's First Rule (note on wrong talk page?)

I think you may have left the note for this reject on the wrong page. It should have been Holmesd's not Valmet76's. :-)Kraang 22:29, 26 Jan 2008 (CST)

Big oops! <blushes profusely> Thanks for catching it! :) Ahasuerus 22:45, 26 Jan 2008 (CST)

Past Master

I've added an image to your verified publication. It should be accurate as what's visible in the Amazon image seems to match what you entered. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:21, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

Oh yes, I remember those dogs well :) Thanks! Ahasuerus 04:17, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

Date of an OCLC record

I recall awhile back seeing a pub where you noted the date the OCLC record was created (can't remember exactly which one at the moment.) Where does this appear in the OCLC record? I've looked all over and just can't find the date. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:18, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

It's the "Entry" field in the full OCLC record. For example, the record for "Captain Future's Challenge" has the following fields:

Captain Future's challenge / Edmond Hamilton
1967
English Book : Fiction 128 p. ; 18 cm.
New York : Popular Library,
Libraries worldwide that own item: 15
Find Items About: 	Hamilton, Edmond, (max: 3)
Title: 	Captain Future's challenge /
Author(s): 	Hamilton, Edmond, 1904- 
Publication: 	New York : Popular Library,
Year: 	1967
Description: 	128 p. ; 18 cm.
Language: 	English
Series: 	Popular Library ;; 60-2430;
Genre/Form: 	Science fiction. 
Class Descriptors: 	LC: PS3515.A42516
Responsibility: 	by Edmond Hamilton.
Material Type: 	Fiction (fic)
Document Type: 	Book
Entry: 	19780705
Update: 	19960322
Accession No: 	OCLC: 4024628
Database: 	WorldCat

thus the entry date is 1978-07-05, last updated on 1996-03-22. Of course, what eventually became Worldcat didn't start until the 1970s, so any "entry" date for books published prior to the 1970s is useless, but it helps with more recent releases. Does this make sense? Ahasuerus 19:17, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

I don't get the "full OCLC record" when I search on Worldcat.org. This is what I get when I search for your example. Do I have to register at Worldcat or is there another site for full OCLC info? Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:43, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

Ah, I see what the problem is! The Worldcat.org interface works OK for quick searches and has a few nice features, but it doesn't show you the full record, most notably the "Author" and the "Responsibility" fields, which roughly correspond to our "Canonical name" and "Pseudonym" fields. To quote Sources of Bibliographic Information:

• You can access the data in this catalog in the following ways:
  • Public WorldCat interface is a beta Web interface available for free since August 2006. Only a few basic bibliographic fields per record are available via this interface and there is no Z39.50 access as of mid-2007. User-submitted reviews have been enabled.
  • FirstSearch is another Web interface to the WorldCat catalog and it shows all fields in each bibliographic record. FirstSearch access is provided to OCLC's subscribers, primarily libraries. Some subscribers have chosen to make it available on the Web for free, but there is no guarantee that it will remain available indefinitely.

The second interface is a little clunkier since you have to enter the search string first and then click on Worldcat when a list of databases appears, but once you are in, you can use various powerful search capabilities by experimenting with the "Search" (and "Sort") buttons. Have fun exploring it, there is quite a bit of juicy data there :) Ahasuerus 22:58, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

Broken link

The link to the original version of ISFDB:Policy on your user page is broken (it goes to http://isfdb.tamu.edu/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Policy). I am not clear if you wanted it to go to the current policy page (in which case a simple wiki-link is probably best) or to an archived version of the original (In which case i don't know the correct URL). -DES ^Talk 10:51, 30 Jan 2008 (CST)

Thanks for the heads up! "isfdb.tamu.edu" used to redirect to "www.isfdb.org", so we used them interchangeably for a long time, both in Wiki URLs and in the Python code that links the ISFDB application to the Wiki. Then, some time in mid-2007, TAMU changed something on their side (reverse DNS or some other TLA) and all kinds of links got broken. I think we have mostly fixed them by now, but a few isfdb.tamu.edu stragglers remain and we put them out of their misery as we find them :) Ahasuerus 11:30, 30 Jan 2008 (CST)

You are welcome. I will change any such links in the wiki that I notice. -DES ^Talk 11:43, 30 Jan 2008 (CST)

Ahasuerus, since you seem to be getting sharp at the database stuff why not scan the wikitext for any stray references to isfdb.tamu.edu? Marc Kupper (talk) 03:25, 8 Feb 2008 (CST)

I took a stab it it using wget and grep and cleaned up the more important pages. There's still about 100 pages but many of those are bug reports, archives, and talk pages. It's getting late for me but these pages are left. I just go into edit mode, and search for tamu.edu. Some of these may already have been cleaned. I was also removing the {{protected}} tags and unprotecting pages as I saw them.

• ISFDB:Help desk
• Creative Commons License
• ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard
• ISFDB:Rules and standards discussions
• ISFDB:Verification requests
• ISFDB Feature List
• ISFDB talk:Beta
• ISFDB talk:Community Portal
• ISFDB talk:Policy
• Talk:Bibliographic Rules
• Talk:ISFDB Downloads
• Talk:Rules and standards discussions Marc Kupper (talk) 04:46, 8 Feb 2008 (CST)

We could certainly clean up a lot of these links, but I suspect that many of the pages listed above should be simply archived. I haven't done as much archiving as I'd like to in the last few months due to other commitments :(

As far as unprotecting Wiki pages goes, it's easy to find all protected pages in the Protection Log, but I don't know of any way to perform mass unprotection, so it may take a couple of man-hours to clean things up. Ahasuerus 11:04, 8 Feb 2008 (CST)

Columbia Publications Chapbooks

When you were doing the 1940's Future run did you by any chance happen to add these chapbook titles? The Voice Commands and The New Life. I am currently entering the missing 1940's Science Fiction titles from secondary sources and this is where they first show up. Any problem merging magazine titles with chapbooks?--swfritter 21:30, 7 Feb 2008 (CST)

That's right, I entered all 6 of them at the time I was doing the "Futures": "Martian Martyrs", "Valley of Pretenders", "The Machine That Thought", "The New Life", "The Voice Commands", and "Rhythm Rides the Rocket". I have a couple of these pamphlets squirreled away somewhere, but I doubt I could easily find them to do physical verification. I have a complete run of Science Fiction and it's readily available, but I am not sure I will have enough free time to Verify all issues when I am in town over the Presidents' Day weekend. I was thinking that the Marvels or the Fantasy Books would be more doable.

Unfortunately, there is no support for "Publication series" yet, so these pamphlets are not linked except in the Notes field at this time. I am sure it's OK to merge the Title records. Thanks! Ahasuerus 23:04, 7 Feb 2008 (CST)

P.S. The reason I am 99% sure that the stories were reprinted verbatim is that the ads in my Futures explained that Lowndes was getting a lot of fan mail requesting certain back issues. Since Columbia had no back issues left and was not in a position to print more, they identified the most frequently requested stories and reprinted them as chapbooks. Hence the conclusion that the likelihood of any textual changes was very low. Ahasuerus 23:41, 7 Feb 2008 (CST)

I did merge a couple of them and it seemed to work fine. Of course, like half the stories in these mags, they were pseudonymous so I also had to merge the variants. I have worked up another Google spreadsheet for the pre-fifties titles and noticed there are a number of titles for which we have no coverage that I can verify from both Day and Contento. It has been by number one priority to enter missing titles and these will be one of my priorities. The Google spreadsheets can be published automatically when they are updated and I would like to post the addresses someplace so others can view our progress or perhaps even participate. Bibliographic Projects in Progress is I guess the best place?--swfritter 12:49, 8 Feb 2008 (CST)

We could create a new Project page for this "magazine reconciliation" project, but it will probably need to be advertised on a more popular page like the Community Portal. Not everybody checks Recent Changes and even fewer people seem to have "Bibliographic Projects in Progress" on their Watch list. Ahasuerus 13:03, 8 Feb 2008 (CST)

That sounds like a good idea. It will give me room to explain the entries and also a place for people to place specific questions or comments.--swfritter 13:10, 8 Feb 2008 (CST)

Quick Link to Issue List

Look at Amazing Stories. I have placed an {Issue List} link there that takes the user directly to the list. Would this mess up any future plans? Good Idea? Run it through Community Portal?--swfritter 19:07, 9 Feb 2008 (CST)

It looks at best useful and at worst harmless, so I would just mention it over on the Community Portal as an FYI. There is a good chance that magazine support will be revamped at some point in the future because the current EDITOR/Wiki system is so cumbersome, but I don't think that an extra link like that would cause any problems. Thanks! Ahasuerus 19:12, 9 Feb 2008 (CST)

Laumer's House in November

I've updated the date of publication of your verified copy of this edition. Also added a note about source of date. Mhhutchins 12:17, 10 Feb 2008 (CST)

Nice to see that the gutter code project is bearing fruit! :) Ahasuerus 13:12, 10 Feb 2008 (CST)

SFBC edition of Nova 2

I've updated your verified copy of this pub with the month of publication, and adjusted the note field accordingly. I also added the cover graphic, but since I don't have this edition can you check to see if the cover matches? Thanks! Mhhutchins 21:12, 11 Feb 2008 (CST)

Hm, I verified my Novas just a few months ago, but for some reason I don't recall this cover. I should be able to check on Saturday - thanks! Ahasuerus 21:57, 11 Feb 2008 (CST)

Checked -- the cover is correct. Ahasuerus 16:33, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)

Alan Dean Foster's Mission to Moulokin

I've updated your verified edition of this pub with the month of publication, cover art and adjusted the notes accordingly. Mhhutchins 14:19, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)

That's the one -- the gutter code matches yours. Ahasuerus 17:03, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)

Roy Rockwood -- going onward?

I have now entered all the Roy Rockwood titles that are included in the "SF Bookshelf" at PG. A number of other works are listed in worldcat/OCLC, and skeleton entries could be made from that source. Ads included in some of the PG HTML versions would allow placing some of these titles into series. Do we normally create titles and publications from that sort of source, with nothing more? -DES ^Talk 12:20, 19 Feb 2008 (CST)

Yes, we do create records based on secondary sources, including OCLC, but when we do, we record where the data came from in the Notes field. OCLC data is derived from roughly 10,000 library catalogs and some librarians are better at cataloging than others. Also, in Roy Rockwood's case series data can be found on the Fantastic Fiction web site. They also have cover scans, which we have permission to link to. By the way, are you familiar with the back door to the complete Worldcat/FirstSearch catalog, which is documented over on the Sources of Bibliographic Information page? Ahasuerus 13:49, 19 Feb 2008 (CST)

I've been going into Worldcat through the first link on the Sources of Bibliographic Information page -- I understood the text to mean that one had to have some sort of special account via a library or use the second link. Is that incorrect? -DES ^Talk 15:25, 19 Feb 2008 (CST)

Basically, you have to have access to a library system that is hooked up to the FirstSearch service provided by OCLC. Not all libraries purchase this service from OCLC since it's pricey. The ones that do generally make it available either to their own librarians or, in some cases, to their on site patrons. A few (very few) libraries -- like the one linked on the Sources of Bibliographic Information page -- make the service available on the Web so that anybody could use it. I am not sure whether OCLC knows about this, but if they don't, it's possible that if and when they find out about it, they may ask these libraries to shut the service down since they may be losing money because their premium contents is now available for free on the Web and anybody can access it. And I clearly need to rewrite the relevant section of the page to make it clearer :) Ahasuerus 17:45, 19 Feb 2008 (CST)

Also, I have been unable to determine, from oclc records, what the binding type is. Can you tell me how a volume is indicated as being hc, tp, or pb there? I find typically a page count number, and a single measurement in cm (often 19 or 20), and it is not at all clear to me, even after reading through help on MARC records, how to determine the binding from those records. Any advice is welcome. -DES ^Talk 15:25, 19 Feb 2008 (CST)

"18cm" is pretty much always a mass market paperback. "19cm" is either a small tp/hc or a British pb, which tend to be a bit taller. 20+ is either a tp or a hc, but distinguishing between tps and hcs can be tricky. Sometimes OCLC will print "(pbk.)" next to the ISBN, which is self-explanatory, but if they don't, then it's time to check other sources. Price is not always a reliable indicator, but it can help. If the book was published pre-WWII, it's almost always either a hardback or, in some cases, a pamphlet since paperbacks didn't take off until WWII -- first in the UK, then in the US. The worst case scenario is that you have to leave the binding field blank and record the volume size in the Notes field.

Hey, nobody said investigative bibliography would be easy! :) Ahasuerus 17:45, 19 Feb 2008 (CST)

Thanks, this will be helpful. Perhaps some of it should be in a help page somewhere?-DES ^Talk 18:48, 20 Feb 2008 (CST)

Most British paperbacks are about 17.5cm by 11cm, and count as "mass market" in US size terms. Blame rounding errors for the "18cm" entries? Or Amazon.co.UK for even more variations like "17.8 x 10.4" - in practical terms, I have no qualms about grouping US MMPBs with UK "PBs", I don't have to adjust shelf sizes to mix them. BLongley 16:33, 21 Feb 2008 (CST)

"Trade Paperback" is a term we've imported from the US, it seems, and doesn't actually reflect the UK market at all. It just means "Bigger, more expensive, paperback" to us. 19.5cm by 12.5cm seems common, 20cm by 13cm too. You could probably reverse the definitions of "Trade" and "Mass Market" editions for the UK - only a true bookshop will sell the hardback, trade paperback and then the paperback editions: the supermarkets will often sell hardbacks and then trade paperbacks but not bother with the ("mass-market") paperbacks as the margins have got too low by then. The UK publishers have got some internal terms to note too - e.g. "A Format", "B Format", and NO, they don't match the Wikipedia definitions. :-( But basically, UK TPs are notably taller and deeper and a bit more expensive than the pb, and annoy me as that near-inch difference spread over an entire bookcase could be the difference between me getting another shelf in or not. And particularly annoy me when some authors (Iain M. Banks and Jasper Fforde) only seem to be available in TP format. If you want me to be arbiter on TP versus PB for UK pubs, feel free to send me the books and I'll tell you how much they please my shelves. ;-) I'm happy to return the favour with the accursed "Library Bindings" that nobody has yet explained to me satisfactorily... :-( BLongley 16:33, 21 Feb 2008 (CST)

Some UK books go through all 3 (large, regular, small) usual sizes in paperback; e.g. I've seen all 3 sizes of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and The Algebraist has both large (same as hc size) and regular paperback UK editions, which both would be recorded as tp. (I see I'll have to add the large one to ISFDB.) --Roglo 03:37, 22 Feb 2008 (CST)

True, there are occasional "same size as hardback" paperbacks but I think a lot of these are book club editions - poor quality versions of the hardback that only sell because they're out at the same time as the hardback - the official trade paperbacks are far better. (Still annoying though.) But I don't think it's a common format: I normally see hc, tp, pb as the usual progression. (If it's worth multiple printings of course!) The only "same size as hardback" I've ever owned was an Omnibus which would have been painfully thick if done in normal ("A format") paperback size. BLongley 13:07, 22 Feb 2008 (CST)

I've got a few "same size as hardback" and they look just like hc but without the 'hard cover' glued on. Some have even pages sewn, so they are easy to rebound. And they are sometimes called 'trade paperbacks' by their publishers (on verso of t.p. of one such book from Gollancz, 2002) or called 'C-format' (The Algebraist). They were sold on Amazon UK, in non-UK bookshops and sometimes at airports. I don't think I've ever seen them in London's bookshops such as Waterstones or WHSmith (but Bookends had them). --Roglo 07:53, 24 Feb 2008 (CST)

We have a Help:How to page, which has pointers to more specialized Help pages. If another editor's explanation looks useful and the information is unavailable elsewhere in the Help system, please feel free to create another "How To" page and link it from the main "How To" page. Take a look at Help:How to parse data in library catalogs, which I created a few minutes ago, for an example. Also please feel free to ask any questions you may have about OCLC/WorldCat/FirstSearch and/or other library catalogs of interest to SF bibliographers. I should really spend some time adding this information to Help in case something happens to me, but there are always a thousand competing priorities... Ahasuerus 00:22, 21 Feb 2008 (CST)

I'm pretty bad at editing help pages too, but feel I can provide useful UK information at times - feel free to put anything I say, anywhere here, somewhere findable and useful. I'm not good at guessing what IS going to be useful, and even less at organising it - but apparently some of the things I've said in "What if Bill gets hit by a Bus tomorrow?" brain-dump speeches for major organisations are still being passed around 10-15 years after I spoke them and someone else wrote them down. Of course, those were in the days of "Bill's leaving, he'll speak to you, PLEASE take lots of notes" and in these World-Wide-Wubbish days everyone may assume I've said it all anyway. I haven't, and am always open to direct questions. BLongley 17:01, 21 Feb 2008 (CST)

Fantasy Book & Others

I assume (and hope considering the notes for V1, N1) you have all of these. I have five of them if you are missing any. I think I've got the pre-50's issue list pretty well straightened out. It lists all the issue documented in Ashley's "The Time Machines" plus another column to indicate the titles in Day. I have been putting in Captain Future using two sources. The only other Day titles we are missing are Fantastic Novels, Fantasy Fiction/Fantasy Stories (1950), Out of This World Adventures and Scientific Detective Monthly/Amazing Detective Tales. Captain Future, Fantastic Novels, and Fantasy Book seemed like the most important ones to me. Ashley also lists The Shadow and such marvelous titles as Terence X, O'Leary's War Birds but they are not too high on my priority list. Unless you want to do them from the mags I am planning on doing Fantastic Novels from secondary sources fairly soon. If you have anything to add to the spreadsheet let me know and I will give access to you or anyone else who might have data to add.--swfritter 18:37, 20 Feb 2008 (CST)

I do have the "Fantasy Book" issues from 1947-1951 (7 in one easily accessible place and one in a difficult to access place), although I am missing nine 1980s issues. The problem, as always, is my "collection time" or lack thereof since I am back on the road as of this afternoon and won't see my collection again until mid-March. I hoped to enter another issue or two on Wednesday morning, but our editing tools were borked and then I had to leave. Always something :)

I think it's great that you are entering Captain Future, Marvel, Science Fiction, etc from secondary sources. The fact that I own all of these issues but don't have time to enter/verify more than a few per month has been very frustrating, but the curse of the Wandering Jew is not easily broken. At this time it looks like I may be wandering until at least the end of March and, more likely, the end of May (and possibly beyond). Getting all Titles in the database is an excellent start and addresses the ISFDB "incompleteness" problem that people on rec.arts.written occasionally complain about. Which reminds me that I need to post about Dissembler's lack of "paranormal romance" coverage and how we can rectify it soonish... Ahasuerus 00:45, 21 Feb 2008 (CST)

Binary Star #1

In your verified pub you list the editor as "uncredited". In the forthcoming books column "The Aleph" from Galileo Magazine #9, the editor is given as Terry Carr. The column lists the same price, date, and publisher as your pub, and correctly lists the two works contained in the anthology. Is this a sufficiently reliable source to change the pub record? "The Aleph" was mostly based on advance info from publishers, but included lots of mini reviews, so someone was reading advance copies of actual books for it. -DES ^Talk 00:21, 25 Feb 2008 (CST)

Actually, there is an added twist here. You were looking at the publication record and we don't have pseudonym information captured at the pub level, we just record publication level data "as is". However, if you click on the Title link for Binary Star No. 1, you will see that it is a variant title of Binary Star No. 1 edited by James R. Frenkel and if you click on Frenkel's name, you will see that he is currently credited as the editor of all 5 Binary Star anthologies. A quick online search finds a fair amount of evidence that he indeed edited the series, e.g. there is a copy of Binary Star No. 3 signed by Frenkel for sale or the attribution in the 2001 Locus Index. Still, there is no harm in adding a Note at the Title level about a different attribution in Galileo. The more sources, the merrier! :) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ahasuerus (talk • contribs) .

Oops, on rechecking my source, I was off by a line, and Galileo credits Frenkel. -DES ^Talk 00:51, 25 Feb 2008 (CST)

Better yet :) Thanks for checking! Ahasuerus 00:56, 25 Feb 2008 (CST)

Use record number to link to mags?

I noticed that your entry for Fantasy Book v1, n1 uses the pub id to link to the mag instead of the tag. Am I right? Seems to make more sense since the tag can be changed. Entered v1, n1 Mystic Magazine and picked up the id from the sql generated by approving and that worked. Wave of the future?--swfritter 18:14, 29 Feb 2008 (CST)

The Tag field was something created in the antediluvian past (1996?) and used by outside sites to link to ISFDB publications. That was long before we started using SQL, so row IDs were not available. I am unaware of any currently active sites linking to us using Tags and, as you note, they can be changed manually, so I figure internal IDs are safe, if not safer, to use. Unlike Title records, Publication records can't be merged, only deleted, and the IDs are not re-used when a pub record is deleted, so it's a pretty safe approach. Hopefully :) Ahasuerus 23:11, 29 Feb 2008 (CST)

If we someday convert all our wiki references to use publication IDs, then we can do away with the tag altogether. Alvonruff 07:44, 1 Mar 2008 (CST)

Uh-oh! I've been linking the titles selected by the SFBC to their listings on the SFBC publisher pages -- and using the tag ids, not the pub ids. The tag ids are the ones that come up in my address window, and that's what I've been copying and pasting for the URL of the links on the SFBC publisher pages. If this is wrong, I'll have to change A LOT of links. What's the simplest way to get the pub id? The only way I've been able to get it is from the advanced search page under publication search. Or does this only concern mags? I knew that tags could be changed, but it never occurred to me that they could possibly be eliminated. Is Al's method of conversion to pub ids an automatic process or will they have to be changed one by one? I'll stop linking until something more definitive has been established. Thanks. MHHutchins 15:53, 3 Mar 2008 (CST)

You can also get the pub_id when you create or update the pub. It is in the generated SQL text when a pub submission is approved. The Fantasy Book entry was the first time I had seen a pub id used for linking purposes.--swfritter 18:21, 3 Mar 2008 (CST)

Most of the titles that I'm linking from already have pubs, but there are a few that I have to update. In any case, it would be too much trouble to "update" unnecessarily just to get the pub id. Doing the advanced search method would be easier. MHHutchins 18:42, 3 Mar 2008 (CST)

And you need to remember to grab the id - thanks for the tip on being able to grab them with advanced search.--swfritter 20:20, 4 Mar 2008 (CST)

Thrilling SF, Summer 1969

I was glancing through those issues of Thrilling that you've been verifying and noticed this oddity in the Summer 1969 issue. Is the artwork for "Descending" on page 2 and the story on page 89? MHHutchins 21:21, 24 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Peculiar, isn't it? There is a squarish looking blurb in the right corner which explains that the picture illustrates the Disch story. My guess is that Cohen didn't have the space for this full page picture in the magazine proper and used it on the front end paper. Either that or he didn't feel like spending additional time/money on the fep :) Ahasuerus 22:00, 24 Mar 2008 (CDT)

I supposed he felt that since he owned it and didn't have to pay again to use it, he was gonna put it in there regardless of the integrity of the art and the story! Thanks for clearing that up. MHHutchins 22:34, 24 Mar 2008 (CDT)

And checking the next 8 issues, I see that he used the same stratagem in 4 of them! Worse, he began concentrating on recycling Amazing's 1940s/early 1950s cra^H^H^H stuff starting with the 14th issue :( Ahasuerus 22:42, 24 Mar 2008 (CDT)

The man obviously wasn't reading what he was reprinting. With 40+ years of stories to draw from, every issue of the Ultimate reprint digests should have been, well, amazing. Even on their own, the Cele Goldsmith years were a treasure trove. I eventually plan to create a Wiki page for the remaining Ultimate digests. Do you think combining them on one page would be a good idea? The nine titles had only one to six issues. MHHutchins 19:12, 25 Mar 2008 (CDT)

After reading the first two issues of Amazing Stories for 1953 and subjecting myself to entering data for a number of Ray Palmer publications I would have to say that, with the exception of the early issues of Fantastic, the Cele Goldsmith years provided the only true treasure trove. It was truly a pleasure to update the late 50's issues. Her predecessor, Paul W. Fairman, was the epitome of mediocrity.--swfritter 20:55, 25 Mar 2008 (CDT)

As far as I can tell after a few minutes of googling around, Cohen began reprinting older and inferior stories to save money. In August 1967 SFWA pressured him into signing an agreement to pay writers for any reprints although Amazing apparently owned the "second rights" and didn't have to pay anything for reprints. But then Cohen tried to ignore/obfuscate the agreement and presumably he found it easier to get away with it when reprinting older stories. Ah, the joys of dealing with publishers!

Re: combining the remaining Ultimate digests goes, I am sure there is no harm in trying it. It will be easier to explain their (often convoluted) relationships that way and if we decide that the page is too busy, we can also split it up later. Ahasuerus 23:32, 25 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Fantasy Books

All but v1n2 and v1n5 are in the database. Looking at Tuck I notice there were actually 3 different editions of each issue with the newsstand edition being distributed in California. Issue three mentions that there were different covers for different editions of issue two. Make all the changes you want. Hopefully you will have some different editions and the issues I don't have. Just got all nine issues of Lowndes' "Famous Science Fiction" on ebay. Luckily somebody topped out $4.00 under me. I'll crank them into the system as soon as they arrive. Helps make up a little for missing out on getting all 36 issues of "Magazine of Horror" which had a set price - somebody beat me by a few minutes. And just got December, 1935 issue of "Wonder Stories" for $1.41 - quite worn but all there. There is a positive side to recessions. --swfritter 20:12, 26 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Thanks, I'll see what I have on Saturday! Looks like I will also get to spend some quality time with my collection Thursday-Saturday next week; I'll poke around to see what I can enter during that 3 day period.

P.S. Careful with Ebay hunting; it can be as addictive as (and more expensive than) any other sport! :) Ahasuerus 20:33, 26 Mar 2008 (CDT)

My new rule: Set my maximum price and don't change it. Almost paid way too much for the one issue of Fantastic Story Magazine I don't own the other day - thankfully I lost and when somebody else notices how much that issue went for there will probably be five more copies show up for sale. Oh, if you happen to have the April, 1958 issue of Amazing Stories handy we can finish the bibliographic tasks for 1951-1960. Neither Rkihara or I own it and I can't find a copy on the internet. Maybe somebody is collecting Ed Valigursky art? or maybe somebody is a Rog Phillips collector?--swfritter 20:47, 26 Mar 2008 (CDT)

My Amazing digests are neatly organized, so I should be able to check it easily. As far as Rog Phillips goes, I remember paying $6 (?) to complete my collection of his books and thinking that I must be the only Rog Phillips collector on this planet... Ahasuerus 20:58, 26 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Yes, the only one on this planet. The other one is living on one of the moons of Jupiter. I suppose the stories he wrote as Sanandana Kumara are your favorites. He was a very capable writer but like one of my favorites, Milton Lesser (the recently deceased Stephen Marlowe), it takes a little work to dig out the gems from the millions of words both wrote.--swfritter 14:45, 27 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Admittedly, neither one was a consistently good writer any more than Silverberg was a good writer in the 1950s, but there are times when you see a flash of something that makes you wonder whether they may have evolved the way Silverberg did. Of course, Lesser did sort of evolve, just not in the same field. And speaking of Rog Phillips, who is this rog phillilps guy in Amazing Stories, February 1953? :)

Rkihara would have caught that one - I think we all need at least three people looking over our shoulders. Entering known names in lower case is great for finding typos plus it frees up one hand for holding place in the magazine. In my stacks of recent acquisitions from the last year are a number of his books - the Chester Drum novels are terrific. He also did some romances and Jakes-like historicals but I don't thank he ever sank to doing pornography like Silverberg and Ellison and so many others who lost their source of income as result of the magazine extinction event of 1958. His Columbus novel probably had the most critical success but it is a difficult read.--swfritter 16:03, 29 Mar 2008 (CDT)

P.S. Fantasy Book, Vol. 1, No. 2 entered and the Wiki's price data updated based on the editorial. I have also corrected the spelling of The Machine-God Laughs (Part 2 of 3) in No. 3. Once I finish entering Vol. 1, No. 5, we should have all the contents covered and then we just need to reconcile the editors' pseudonyms :) Ahasuerus 15:06, 29 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Great. Crawford certainly has the publisher's record for most uncompleted serials in his magazines. Six or seven of them - and I think at least one or two never saw a complete publication in any format. P. Schuyler Miller's "The Titan" would probably have been considered one of the ten best of the 30's if it's full publication hadn't been delayed to the late 1940's.--swfritter 16:03, 29 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Vol. No. 5 has been entered and an Editor series has been set up. I have also double checked Vol. 1 No. 3: price ($0.25) added, the page number that "Blurb" starts on changed from 26 to 27, Chad Oliver's letter added, the way The Well of the Unicorn is credited in the review stated in Notes, "The Book Shelf" attributed to Lilith Lorraine. Interestingly enough, "Lilith" is spelled "Lillith" in some other issues; we'll need to check all of them and set up variant titles. I'll try to do the missing Amazing next and then double check as many Fantasy Book issues as I can before I have to head out tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 20:23, 29 Mar 2008 (CDT)

I have double checked the rest of the issues (except the last one that I can't seem to be able to find and may not even own -- the horror!) and added notes throughout. I think we are in a pretty good shape, although Crawford's magazines tend to be rather quirky, so it's hard to be sure. For example, why would they print "Lilith Lorraine"'s first name with three "l"s in two separate issues? Oh well, as you said, Crawford had pretty bad luck and never fully broke out of the semi-prozine ghetto. He explained in one of the later issues of Fantasy Book that he secured a deal with a national distributor before he started the magazine, but then the distributor promptly collapsed and he was left with lots of copies of No. 1, no way to distribute then and a completely messed up publication schedule.

I have also done Amazing 1958-04-00, which turned out to have a unique title. All previous Amazings were known as Amazing Stories and all subsequent ones were published as Amazing Science Fiction Stories. This one appeared as Amazing Science Fiction, so I had to reshuffle some EDITOR records. Hm, now that I have checked Tuck, he claims that the March issue was also called Amazing Science Fiction. I can't check it right now since I have to run, but I'll pull up the issue on Thursday unless you get to it first :) Ahasuerus 22:55, 29 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Must be what makes the April issue collectible. For March it is actually Amazing Science Fiction on the cover and Amazing Stories on the table of contents. Table of contents text for April? Our standards generally indicate that we should prioritize inside data but also give us wiggle room so I will change it so that it is consistent with other sources. The title eventually changes back to Amazing Stories in 1960. I have generally used the generic title 'Amazing Stories' for columns no matter what variations there are to the the actual title. In this case I don't think doing so creates much ambiguity. The title is so commonly referred to as 'Amazing Stories' that it might even cause some people to think an essay is from a different magazine. The generic title is being used with Analog essays where there are so many unusual and lengthy permutations to the title.--swfritter 15:42, 30 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Sounds like a reasonable approach! (I am reunited with my collection, but need some R&R before I can start working on verifications.) Ahasuerus 13:49, 3 Apr 2008 (CDT)

I've added links to the cover art for those issues of Fantasy Book (6 of the 8) from Phil Stephensen-Payne's website. Please check to see if they're the correct images. MHHutchins 23:45, 29 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Thanks, will do when I am back to civilization on Thursday :) Ahasuerus 08:41, 30 Mar 2008 (CDT)

The 6 scans that you linked last week do match my copies. I have also confirmed and linked the other two issues that you can find on Phil's site you follow his More Images link, so we are all set now. Thanks! Ahasuerus 13:49, 3 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Noticed that the "The Machine-God Laughs" in issue #4 was entered as 2 of 3 instead of 3 of 3 (probably by me). Must have had a case of Crawforditis. Fixed. Luckily I was doing a dupe check for a Festus Pragnell story in Famous Science Fiction when the duplicate serial titles caught my eye.--swfritter 15:41, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

The Invaders

We've crossed on another series of TV novelizations, "The Invaders" including our old friend Peter Leslie that we met in the U.N.C.L.E. series. I don't know if you have more to add, but:

1. Did I get the right cover for your verified pub here?
2. Do you have any idea why Rebellion (1935) by John W. Campbell, Jr. is in there?
3. Do the "Parts" in my UK version match your US version for this title?
4. Apart from the above, do the numberings make sense?

No hurry, I know you're away for a bit. BLongley 13:29, 31 Mar 2008 (CDT)

1. The cover scan does match the cover on my copy, thanks!

2. "Rebellion" belongs to a totally different Campbell series, The Machine; I have now moved it there. By the way, some well meaning editor has messed up Campbell's Mightiest Machine series by merging 3 variant titles of The Mightiest Machine novel. I will need to pull up a bunch of backup files next week to find out what the original attributions were.

3. The three parts in the US version have the same titles as the three parts in the UK version.

4. 1 and 2 certainly make sense. The fact that Army of the Undead and The Night of the Trilobites are both entered as #3 seems puzzling.

BTW, the Wikipedia article needs to be cleaned up at some point to eliminate numerous errors in the "Books" section. Ahasuerus 21:24, 3 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for 1 and 3 comments: I hope I didn't cause/approve 2 (unlikely as I don't recall seeing that title before now). BLongley 17:27, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

As for 4 - well, I actually LIKE to cause some confusion over series while we don't have multiple series support, I think it might encourage people to go and click the Wiki link and see what the real information is. (I constantly get confused over the series view as I never know whether it should be actual or pseudonymous versions that should be in it - I don't mind too much either way so long as we get to the real book eventually.) I left The Girl From UNCLE in the same sort of state - there is no "definitive" series as both the US and UK series are incomplete when you view them overall. But I'm open to workaround suggestions if you have any. BLongley 17:27, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Well, eventually the Series page will use the same display logic as the Summary page, at which point variant titles will be displayed correctly and we won't have to worry about any of this. For now, I usually add the canonical title to the series and remove series information from any related variant titles. This approach helps make the Series page look good, but it also makes it impossible to see Series data in any collections/anthologies that use the variant title. There is no silver bullet, I am afraid :( Ahasuerus 23:34, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

And for the unnumbered comment - no, I not going to edit Wikipedia for anything more than the most trivial of corrections, I don't have time to defend edits there. It currently looks as though owning the book itself isn't going to be enough, you'll need to quote a book that describes the book you actually have... :-/ BLongley 17:27, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

I feel your pain! In late 2005-early 2006 I spent well over 6 months building up various Wikipedia articles and by May 2006 my watch list was over 700 articles long. At some point I realized that I was spending more and more of my Wikipedia time "protecting" existing text instead of improving articles and gave up. As it happened, Al had just finished migrating the ISFDB to Python/MySQL, so I had my hands full testing the new version of the ISFDB software anyway.

Our relationship with Wikipedia is admittedly a strange one. We link to their Author and Title articles, but based on prior experience we half expect them to be messed up. Oh well... Ahasuerus 23:34, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Amazing April 1958

Don't forget ellipses need spaces.

Oops! On the plus side it's trivial to write a one line script that finds all "..."s in the database. Ahasuerus 21:49, 3 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Also per the above discussion about using actual title of individual mag or canonical title to modify column. I slightly prefer canonical in this case. I might also note that the title of the April issue is "Amazing Science Fiction" but the columns have "Amazing Science Fiction Stories". Substituting Andre Norton's name: Many other leave the pseudonym and I have followed that practice if it matches lexically - I might note that there are three other reviews for the title that match the North variant. Fingers crossed!!! when we can link titles this may not matter although we still have the problem of which title to link to. Also noted that the letter column is credited to "The Readers". The documentation sort of keys off the editor replies and I, and many others, would use uncredited in this case although I have always been tempted to do as you have done.

Now you know why the OCLC catalogs have so many duplicate entries even though the OCLC has very detailed guidelines for data entry: no two librarians enter the data the same way no matter how many pages of standards you throw at them ;-0 In this case the column was signed "The Readers", so I entered it verbatim; we have but a few dozen titles attributed to "Readers" and "The Readers", so it should be relatively easy to change to "uncredited" if/when we decide to clean it up. Ahasuerus 21:49, 3 Apr 2008 (CDT)

"One of Our Cities is Missing": Most of the "complete" novels published in this span are right on the borderline with a number of them actually being complete novels. Some of them even have font and line count changes midway through the stories. Good candidate to check out my word count spreadsheet.

And the illos come in all shapes and forms to make things even more "interesting" :( Ahasuerus 21:49, 3 Apr 2008 (CDT)

I know you were in a hurry (hope you didn't forget your luggage) but the Chandler story still categorized as shortfiction.

Thanks, fixed! I'm sure we'll write another one line script at some point, one that finds all "sf"s in the database. Ahasuerus 21:49, 3 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Just to prove that people will always do nearly everything differently - I noticed that you used the day to sort the Editor series while I generally use the month. Two or three more passes through the magazines and we might start looking good.--swfritter 15:13, 2 Apr 2008 (CDT)

I think I re-used the pre-existing sorting logic in this case since I was in a hurry. No worries about the luggage, though; after a couple of centuries on the road, it becomes second nature :) Ahasuerus 21:49, 3 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Speaking of Rog Phillips

Rkihara found Rog Phillips Bibliography by E. T. Kemp. Interestingly is has this entry

• Aug 1947 So Shall Ye Reap! (n) [complete novel] [serial]

Since I just added at least 10 (mostly pseudonymous according to Contento/Miller) Phillips stories that were in Mystic Magazine I will probably contact him. I am kind of curious how much data he may have gotten from The ISFDb.--swfritter 15:20, 2 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Well, Kemp is using Contento's convention for designating novellas ("na") and novelettes ("nv"), so I suspect that Contento's indexes (including Miller/Contento) were his first source. We can always ask, of course :)

Gamma Cleanup

I have found Gamma Vol. 1, No. 1; still looking for #3. #5 verified and the publication month corrected -- there was some kind of confusion between #4 and #5, but all cleaned up now. Fritch's pseudonyms straightened out and an EDITOR series set up. Lots of unrelated Title merges for Fritch et al to make their biblios more consistent. Ahasuerus 22:38, 3 Apr 2008 (CDT)

P.S. Vol. 1, No. 1 done. No. 3 found and will be entered on Friday. Could you please check what Ashley says about the former's publication month? Tuck mentions "mid-1963" and "July" in two different places, but if No. 2 was published in July, then No. 1 presumably appeared earlier in the year. TIA! Ahasuerus 01:38, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Looking at the other sources:

• #1: Ashley & Contento/Miller both say July.
• #2: Ashley & Contento/Miller both say November.
• #3: Ashley & Contento/Miller both say June.--swfritter 12:25, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Thanks! I have changed the dates of all stories in No. 2 from 1963-07-00 to 1963-11-00 and corrected the Note field. Also, does your copy have an "Everybody out There Likes Us . . ." department on page 68? My copy is missing pp. 69-70 due to what appears to be a typographical error, so it's hard to tell what's going on. Ahasuerus 23:08, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Yes. I will put it in there. I think the reason I did not it in on the first pass is that is mostly a number of one line blurbs by Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Boucher, August Derleth, and others. It is essentially advertising and contains little information of value or interest.--swfritter 13:36, 5 Apr 2008 (CDT)

As far as Vol. 2, No. 2 goes, does your issue have "Remember . . .", an uncredited essay on page 2? I see that you entered "Hans Off in Free Pfall to the Moon" as "shortstory by unknown [as by E. A. Poe ]". As far as I can tell, it's an abridgment of Poe's "The Unparalleled Adventure Of One Hans Pfaall" -- see the full text at http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/gsr/hpfaall.htm or Gutenberg. Do we want to enter it as such? Also, does the title of "Don't Touch Me, I'm Sensitive" have a comma on page 106? My issue doesn't, although the comma does appear in the table of contents entry. Finally, I have entered No. 3, so Gamma should be in a reasonably good shape now :) Ahasuerus 23:08, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

"Remember . . ." is little more than a paragraph that basically tells us what we already know from the cover - the is a Special Outer Space Issue. Will add it. The E. A. Poe story contains some exact wordage. Contento/Miller lists it as a pseudonymous work without supplying the name of the actual author. Make E. A. a pseudonym of Edgar? and then a variant title with explanatory note? or add a note to title in parenthesis.? No comma for Stamer's story - I will change and note that the TOC entry and the page headers have a comma.--swfritter 13:36, 5 Apr 2008 (CDT)

I think our best bet is to make "E. A. Poe" into a pseudonym of "Edgar Allan Poe". Unfortunately, we already have it set up as a pseudonym of "unknown", which can't be undone at this time, so we will end up with a bifurcated pseudonym, which will be a little misleading, but oh well. A variant title with "(abridged)" in the title seems preferable since it will make it easier to find/adjust it once we have support for abridgments. If we knew who abridged the story, we could make it a collaboration the way E. Nesbit's YA abridgments of Shakespeare's plays are currently set up, but no such luck. Ahasuerus 19:06, 5 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Well I guess we could make the collaborator "unknown" and then that assignment would make some sense.--swfritter 19:50, 5 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Excellent point! And as an added bonus, we can now claim that we had planned it all along! :) Ahasuerus 20:45, 5 Apr 2008 (CDT)

That was fun-making a variant title a variant of another title. Now all I have to figure out is a way to make "Deadly City" by Ivar Jorgenson (from If) a variant of "Deadly City" by Ivar Jorgensen (credited that way when anthologized) which is actually a pseudonymous story by Paul W. Fairman. The Jorgenson credit was apparently a typo but Silverberg later went on to use the Jorgenson form.--swfritter 16:47, 6 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Data Consistency/Non-fiction-Novel Mismatches

I've finally finished the "Data Consistency/Non-fiction-Novel Mismatches". When you get a chance can you do a new run to see what's been missed or is new. Thanks :-)Kraang 22:24, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Thanks a lot, I'll run the script against the next backup file, which should be ready some time on Monday :) Ahasuerus 23:08, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

I have re-run my script and updated the page. It looks much better now, except for the ubiquitous Stevenson. Ahasuerus 01:57, 10 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Space Plague

You verified Space Plague but I'm wondering if it's The Space Plague.

I have a copy of an earlier edition which has Space Plague on the cover and spine but The Space Plague on the title page. I remember reading this as a teenager and the story never left my mind. Marc Kupper (talk) 08:19, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up, I will check it on the 19th when I have access to my collection! Ahasuerus 08:24, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it was The Space Plague after all. I have updated the pub and merged the two variant Titles. I have also updated the publication record for the first Avon printing to indicate that the source of the publication date was Tuck (and zapped a double negative in the process :-) Thanks! Ahasuerus 18:20, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

P.S. And yes, it's a memorable novel, probably Smith's second best after The Brain Machine, although it's hard to compare the two because they are so different. Too bad he had to stop writing after TBM because of a coronary, a new job and all those other pesky RL things. If only he had not called it The Fourth R, which apparently contributed to the book's abysmal sales because it happened to approximate the name of a completely unrelated religious show, perhaps he would have had enough money to continue as a writer. TBM seemed to open up a whole different direction in his writing career and he tried to pick up where he had left off after he finally retired, but his retirement proved to be very short. Every time somebody says "Oh, sure, I may do it when I retire and have more free time", I think of George O... Ahasuerus 18:41, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

The Green Girl

I added the cover image[1] and it looks like it should be right. Here's a link to the back cover[2], they don't write them like this any more!Kraang 12:42, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's the one. There were quite a few over the top uber-pulp SF covers in the UK in the 1950s, but the US market tended to be more subdued, so this one is an oddball. One heck of a nice scan, my copy hasn't survived the last 55 years nearly as well! Ahasuerus 18:01, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Highways in Hiding

Correct cover? BLongley 18:38, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

That's the one, thanks! Ahasuerus 22:55, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Publisher:Tandem

I see you started this page. I've added a bit more data and some examples. I'm tempted to separate "Tandem Science Fantasy" , "Tandem Fantasy" and "Tandem Sci-Fi" imprints as best I can (I have quite a few), link them all to parent "Tandem", which would link to its parent of "Universal Tandem". If that works then people can add the Tandem-Target imprint (I've some of those too) and eventually explain the Universal-Tandem magazine structure and all the other worm-cans. BLongley 20:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Basically I need a smallish British publisher I own many examples for, with some useful imprints and interesting parents, to use as an example: there's not many I can find that don't require messing with someone else's verified pubs in the long run, but if I can work WITH someone that's already researched an area it'll be easier to show the proposed structure, the sort of details people want recorded against each level, how the links should work, etc. Tandem looks comparatively easy compared with Sphere, Orbit, Panther, Granada, Grafton, etc, but if you'd rather I didn't qualify your OCLC data with sub-imprints, there's still plenty of other possibilities for me to look at! BLongley 20:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Tandem looks like a reasonable guinea pig to perform unspeakable publisher experiments on. I'll be happy to help in any way I can (which may be limited to trawling OCLC and the 95 UK libraries that I can search), but won't we be limited by the fact that we can't set up publisher relationships within the database yet? We can certainly create a web of Tandem-related links in the Wiki, but I thought the ultimate goal was to add "variant publisher names" to the database? Ahasuerus 23:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I've no idea what Al's ultimate goal is - I'm thinking more of Publisher/Imprint hierarchies than variant publisher names, and canonical formats for each name. But so far Al hasn't really got series working and my envisioned publisher hierarchy would be similar. If it's to be merely "variant publisher names" and regularization isn't enforced, we're going to have problems with multiple Wiki pages for the same underlying entity: but if the Publisher Wiki pages move to become database fields that would be alleviated, e.g. we don't fill in all the author details on every variation of an author's name. Hmmmm.... maybe I should mock-up an example elsewhere first rather than try and demonstrate my ideas with Wiki links: a tree-view would show it more clearly, for the first stage at least. Later problems will be showing transfer of ownership of imprints, publication history across several imprints, etc. BLongley 17:50, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm curious as to where this publisher project is headed. ISFDB publication records are being used to capture what's stated in publications with the publisher field being the weakest in terms of reliable/consistent data. Is it "Avon Books" (103 pubs), "Avon Book Co.", (6 pubs) or "Avon Publishing Co." (3 pubs)? (hint - trick question!) I suspect there would need to be a second round of verification with a focus on publisher names and documenting or verifying "division of" or "imprint of" - perhaps narrowed to publications that can be dated very reliably so that a data point such as "A Fawcett Gold Metal Book published by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. New York" can be used. That pub is Oct-1983 and per Wikipedia Ballantine Books acquired Fawcett Books in 1982. Considering Fawcett Gold Metal and paying extra attention to pubs does someone then document/track track when the logo changes from a hanging ribbon with rectangular gold badge to the round badge, to the large U shape that contains "FAWCETT / Gold Metal" which then shrunk between 1975 and 1983? It's these sorts of issues that make me curious as to where the publisher project is headed as it clearly could scope-creep to something huge but I'm not sure what the log term value is. Marc Kupper (talk) 07:31, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I hope there really WASN'T a 'Gold Metal' imprint as I've corrected a few of those to "Gold Medal"... :-/ I HAVE documented Logo changes at times, it could help date publications, but that's not a priority of mine and can wait until I have a few more scans uploaded (and maybe higher-res scans of JUST logos stored on an ISFDB server). I like the Hierarchy idea as it can reduce the number of records to deal with - one record can cover a name from when it was an independent publishing house, through several changes of ownership, absorption into different divisions etc, usage, differing logos, Catalog Number series & ISBN ranges, etc. That's a bit separate from "what's actually recorded on the pub" as the time-lag between actually ownership changes and what appears on the books themselves can be YEARS. This is why I think imprint is useful, but would also like publisher on each pub. "What's actually recorded" is often going to get messy as spine, cover, logo, copyright page, title page may all say different things. So far, I'm finding ISBN and Publisher Searches very useful for spotting data-entry errors, and start-dates too, when we have that data for a publisher. Imprints and Sub-imprints influence my buying: E.g. I can't just buy "Panther" books and get what I want, I need to know if they're Panther Science Fiction: but I could buy "Tandem Sci-Fi" quite happily and mostly ignore "Tandem Fantasy". At this level we could almost replace imprint with Publication Series though, except that we'd have to maintain it for each printing. BLongley 12:31, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry - “Gold Metal” was my typo (I hope). There is a "Heavy Metal Magazine" with a smattering of pubs and some of them have images that confirm that spelling. Using the proposed series logic for publishers sounds like a good idea. It seems that as more tools come on line that people will pay more attention to the publisher name spelling/formatting and that that area will get cleaned up and also gets me thinking about ways to link the DB to the wiki so that we could do something like a publisher name change or merge and it would know about and take care of the wiki pages. I was on a site yesterday and saw that the guy doing it had fixed up the wiki's "talk" tab to link into forums software so there seems to be a trend to wiki+other thing integration. Marc Kupper (talk) 17:49, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

host-tracker.com seems to be usable again

I know in the past ISFDB was monitored using http://host-tracker.com and from ISFDB:Operations it looks like you discontinued it. With the switch to a new hosting service it seems this tracking service can be used again. I personally use http://www.pingplotter.com but that's something that runs from a personal computer rather than a web site. I like it as it's a graphical tracert plus ping -t meaning you see where in the connection between you and a site there was an outage. Marc Kupper (talk) 06:21, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

My free Host Tracker account has been continuously active, but it stopped working for us back in August. At the time I thought that it was related to certain changes in the way Host Tracker handles free accounts, but then we moved to the new server and I began getting notifications again. Perhaps you are right and TAMU did something to their network in August 2007 which prevented Host Tracker from getting accurate information, but that doesn't explain why I stopped getting weekly/monthly summary reports. Most peculiar!

Oh well, the service seems to be working again, so I'll go ahead and update ISFDB:Operations.

As far as Pingplotter goes, I remember using it in the 1990s when the internet was slower and less reliable. It was a simple, useful and stable product and it's good to hear that they are still around! Ahasuerus 23:13, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Tag comment on your User page

Yours is worth watching. Tags haven't exactly been overused. One of the Essay subtypes I would like to see is 'filler' but until then I was thinking about using tags to mark such inconsequential material. I might also start doing the same thing for the much desired shortfiction subtype 'vignette'.--swfritter 22:41, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Tags are a potentially versatile tool, but keep in mind that they can be added/edited/deleted by any registered user without moderator oversight. So far it has resulted in occasional tag duplication, e.g. "vampires" vs. "vampire", and funky tags like "This is not SF but a good read", but nothing serious. However, if we start using the tag system for serious work, there won't be anything preventing a malicious user from registering and wiping out most of our tags before anybody even notices. Something to discuss on the Community Portal, perhaps? Ahasuerus 23:03, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I've almost wiped out a few of my own tags when adding other tags. It's an easy mistake.--swfritter 23:56, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Yup! The tag system was really an after thought that Al coded in a day or so. We may want to review and improve it before we ask editors to spend much time on it. Ahasuerus 01:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

And actually no real substitute for implementing more reliable and organically logical changes.--swfritter 20:45, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, a user can only modify their own tags. A tag is a 3-way tuple: {title, tag, user} so a particular use can only wipe out tags created by that themselves. Alvonruff 21:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Well at least you can see I haven't had the nerve to attempt to wipe out anybody else's tags. That piece of information opens up potential possibilities. It even provides a potential for tagging the titles that I own without having to worry about anyone messing with the tags; although before doing that although I think we should decide if it is an acceptable concept. Thanks!.--swfritter 21:50, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that's good to know! I wonder, though, if it may be prudent to let moderators modify other editors' tags, e.g. to merge "vampires" and "vampire" or to remove tags like the aforementioned "This is not SF but a good read". Also, we don't have a way to view all tags in the database unless you use "Add Tag", do we? Ahasuerus 03:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I see Al has sneaked in a new search option for tags. No sign of a way to merge yet though. BLongley 12:52, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, one step at time! :) Ahasuerus 03:30, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Where else would you find this information?

See my note about MariAn Cox. Just by chance I happened to read her letter in "Startling Stories" this morning.--swfritter 18:42, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

There is a lot of useful information in the pulps, from editorials to "loc"s. Unfortunately, it's usually buried under multiple layers of inconsequential stuff and few people have access to it... Ahasuerus 03:36, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Changes to verified pub If August 1967

Made the following changes: Credited both cover and interior art to Morrow since that is the way he is credited. If any of the artwork had been signed Gray Morrow, as is most often the case, I would have used his full name for interiors. Replaced note about editorial credit with boilerplate I am using for many other issues - I get the fun task doing the pseudonym and series thing for a bunch of these. I am not all that confident about the pseudonym assignment of Pohl as The Editor for 'Hue and Cry'. Judy-Lynn Benjamin is the Associate Editor at this time and I kind of wonder if she might have done a lot of this type of work. Probably not a big deal - the mere fact that their is a pseudonym assignment in and of itself indicates a certain ambiguity about authorship.--swfritter 22:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks good! I think I verified that issue when somebody requested to have a particular story verified and it happened before we had the current set of standards in place. Ahasuerus 03:38, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

I actually browsed the wiki for some time before trying to edit, but found the information to really not be that helpful. As far as I can see, I just enter my French editions as publications with their French titles. I'm not sure what to do about collection data, though (French paperback publishers religiously number all volumes, and these numbers are fairly well documented).

As an aside, and while I'm on it, what of preface-type and semi-biographical material? (As with the foreword of L'Arbre des possibles and the commentary Asimov traditionally adds between short stories in his anthologies.) Circeus 04:22, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I can add a lot of data for Werber alone (not to mention other French language authors and translations): I own several of the books myself, and I can access most major French-language catalogues (e.g. the Quebec provincial library, the BNF...) and look up other websites, so expect a lot of French-language material. as to your comments

• Yes, "Gerorges" is (obviously) a typo. I don't remember whether I remembered to include Kamir as the translator, but it is accurate.
• I wasn't clear what I was supposed to do for them, so I don't really mind, as the title can be different (I didn't know at the time) for publications.
• Thanks for that. How am I normally supposed to point that a separate book should be a publication elsewhere?
• I'm not too clear what you mean with this one, honestly...

Circeus 02:39, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Pocket ed. of Eyes of the Overworld

I added cover art to your verified edition of this title, but the cover adds "The" at the beginning of the title. Does the title page drop the "The"? MHHutchins 04:51, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the book has escaped from the stacks and I have no idea where it may be at the moment. I will check another place on Sunday night when I am on the road again, but if I can't find it in the next 24 hours, it may take it a while to re-surface :( Ahasuerus 02:49, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Luckily, the book has re-appeared (I told it not to go clubbing on weekends!) and there is a "The" on the title page as well as on the cover. I suspect that the Title record was "The"-less at one point and all Publication records created via "Add Publication" inherited the defect. Fixed now -- thanks! Ahasuerus 15:54, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Circeus' submissions

I saw you were working with this new editor's submissions, but when a few had sat in the queue for awhile I thought I'd take a look. After approving them (you've done well training him/her), I took a look at the Werber page and noticed the Ants trilogy, and created a series. Then I saw you had started doing the same thing. Oops. (And I'd screwed up the numbering of the series according to the Wikipedia page!) I'll back off for now and let you continue mentoring Circeus. My familiarity with French and French SF is somewhere out there beyond Pluto. :) MHHutchins 03:34, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

No worries, I am sure we'll straighten everything out eventually, we always do :) The only problem is that I am trying to do a bunch of verifications today since I will be on the road starting later this afternoon and, to make things even more interesting, I am under the weather. When it rains, it pours, as it were ;-) Ahasuerus 15:58, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Les Dieux

Actually, I noticed afterward that I might have mixed between the two books (argh!), so I think it'd be better if you rejected that contrib altogether. I'm going to resubmit these books (which follow the Angels books) now. It's not easy for me to adapt to a moderated system.

It's actually sort of a mess. I haven't yet quite figured out why many databases list the titles as preceded with "le cycle des dieux vol X". I think those were partial jackets that covered the book at sales, but the text is nowhere on the cover or inside the book (except in the list of "other titles by this author"), so I'd rather leave it out in the database. Circeus 17:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

linking omnibus to parts

Is there a reason from what I did that the different parts of the Trilogie des fourmis omnibus do not link to the original publication? (I could list first page from not having the physical book in hand. I'll try to find in at the library.) Circeus 05:26, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

The only field which is auto-merged with identical pre-existing data is the Author/Editor field. Thus, if you submit a new novel whose author is "Bernard Werber", the software will not create a new Author record for yet another "Bernard Werber", but will file the novel under the current "Bernard Werber" author. However, the same is not true re: Titles; the software doesn't merge newly entered Title records with pre-existing Title records which happen to have an identical title. This is due to the fact that authors often re-use the same title on short stories, novels and collections and auto-merging them would be asking for trouble.

One corollary of this software behavior is that you need to manually merge newly entered Title records with any pre-existing duplicates, in this case Les Fourmis, Le Jour des fourmis, and La Révolution des fourmis. This is only moderately inconvenient when dealing with omnibus editions of multiple novels like La Trilogie des fourmis, but it can be a real pain when entering multiple editions of collections/anthologies. This is why we added a "Clone This Pub" option to the "Publication Listing" screen. "Cloning" copies not only Publication level information like the page count and the ISBN to the new Publication record, but it also copies all of the original Publication's contents, which makes life vastly easier :) Ahasuerus 05:49, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea what cloning is supposed to do here o__O. (at least I remembered to check your previous message to find how to merge those duplicates; that screen reminds me of the work merging at LibraryThing. I'm going to become very good friend with it ^___^) Circeus 05:57, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, suppose you have entered a hardcover collection with 15 stories in it. The submission has been approved and you are now ready to enter the paperback version of the same collection. If we didn't have Cloning, then you would have to re-enter the same 15 stories and then manually merge them with the 15 stories in the hardcover edition. Doesn't sound like fun, does it? With Cloning, however, all you have to do is to pull up the Publication record for the previously approved hardcover collection, click on "Clone this pub", change the publication level data like price, page count and ISBN and submit. The Cloning process will preserve all the stories so that you don't have to re-enter and merge them! Ahasuerus 06:11, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, okay. Will keep that in mind when I enter other publications of L'Arbre des possibles et autres histoires ^__^ Circeus 06:18, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Interior art

I just added an illustrated one. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to track all of the full pages illustration (2 by short story), but did not the page numbers, so if I need to add them afterward, you can tell me. Circeus 21:27, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Our Help is fairly lenient in this area. Here is what Help:Screen:NewPub says about Interior Art:

• There are three ways in which this can be used. First, if a single artist does all of the interior art for a book (e.g. Pauline Baynes for many of the "Narnia" editions), then a single content entry, without a page number, is appropriate. If each story in a collection, anthology or magazine is illustrated by one artist, the artwork can be indexed with a single entry for each artist and story. For example, the December 1956 issue of Infinity Science Fiction contains the story "My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon" by Milton Lesser, which is illustrated by Stallman. The story starts on page 5 but the first piece of artwork is on page 9. In this case there is only one illustration for the story, but if there were multiple illustrations a single entry would still suffice. The page number given is the page number of the start of the story in this case; the title is the title of the content item being illustrated. An alternate option is to enter the first page where artwork appears. Page 9 would also be acceptable in the above case. It is also acceptable (but not required) to enter all pages where multiple artwork appears in a story. [...] The multiple pieces of artwork should not be merged. If the illustration has a separate title or caption, document in the illustration's Notes field. The third way to use this entry type is to capture illustrations that are not attached to individual stories, or to capture illustrations of stories which are illustrated by multiple artists (a rare situation). In these cases each entry indicates a specific illustration, and the page number is the page number of the illustration itself. Illustrations not attached to a story are given a title of "Untitled".

Generally, we tend to enter one Interior Art record per book. Magazine editors are typically more thorough and enter each illustration separately, primarily due to the fact that magazines are mostly illustrated by multiple artists while books are usually illustrated by only one artist.

By the way, have you seen this question that I posted on your Talk page a couple of days ago:

• Also, do we know what Albin Michel thinks of other Web sites linking to their image library? Some sites, e.g. Wikipedia, consider it bandwidth theft and reserve the right to block anybody who links to their images directly. We have a list of sites that we have received an explicit permission to link to, including Amazon and Visco, and we list them in the "URL" section of the Help:Screen:NewNovel. Would you happen to know of a way to ask Albin Michel whether they would mind if we linked to their images directly?

Ahasuerus 23:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: Images, I'll probably keep to a note about each story having two full-page illustrations, given that there is alwready a record between artist and book, and recording the images separately is probably unnecessary.

Re: Albin Michel (and Livredepoche.com, which is ultimately owned by Hachette if I understand properly), I've always been very much of the belief that if you can't be bothered to protect your stuff from direct linking by technical means (which are easy to apply), then linking is fair game (with a few caveats such as images hosted specifically for use elsewhere, such as icons for web communities, but that's a bit outside the discussion). Albin has contact forms on this page. For the Livre de Poche collection/imprint (whatever it is. LGF does not appear to have anything else), it is here.

Circeus 03:21, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that is not legally correct. Also, rememeber that wheh the ISFDB uses an image url, the image is served from the host, but is displayed on our page. Some places that don't object to ordinary links do strongly object to this. For example, wikipedia (and other wikimedia sites) object so strongly that they will block all links from any site that they find doing it, because it costs them bandwidth without giving them people who see their site. As big as they are, that might possibly be a problem for them.-DES ^Talk 03:41, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

As David points out, some sites are quite unhappy about this type of "deep linking" and, as a general rule, we prefer to tread softly and err on the side of caution for fear of jeopardizing the work of hundreds of our contributors. Besides, deep inside, we are really nice folks and never kick puppies :-)

Thanks for the contact information, we'll give it a shot shortly. Here is to hope that they understand English! For now, I will approve your outstanding submissions and keep the images. If we get a definite "no" from either source, it will be easy to find "their" URLs and move them to the Notes field. Thanks! Ahasuerus 03:55, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm a translation student. I'd be more than happy to translate your boilerplate stuff to French. Circeus 04:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks! In the past, it was usually individual editors who would send ad hoc requests to various Web site administrators and get their permission to link to their images. However, going forward, it would be probably easier to have a standard "deep linking request" form letter, which we would could then translate into French and any other language that we may need. As an added benefit, we can make double sure that the form letter makes it very clear what kind of linking we intend to do, which may help avoid misunderstandings down the road. Let me re-post this discussion over on the Community Portal and see what we can come up with... Ahasuerus 04:52, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Gadget Stories

What is the problem with submission 972503? The book title and list of contents are taken from the VIE web site page, and confirmed in OCLC. The ISBN, OCLC #, LCCN, and page counts are taken from the OCLC/first search detailed record. I plan to do title merges as soon as this is approved, which is why I did not bother to set the story pub dates. The story length codes are based on the word counts on the VIE web site. What am I missing? -DES ^Talk 17:41, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I meant to approve the submission and leave you a note earlier today, but after working 20 hours yesterday, I decided to take a nap, which took a little longer than expected <sheepish grin>

The only issue with the submission is that Help:Screen:NewNovel states that "Hyphenated words have the first letter after the hyphen capitalized", which affects "Sanatoris Short-cut" and "The Sub-standard Sardines". I have approved the submission, but we will need to either change these Titles' capitalization or discuss changing Help since the current directions are admittedly questionable. Thankfully, it's easy to find all hyphenated words in the database, so even if we decide to change Help, it shouldn't be too big a deal. Ahasuerus 18:46, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem. I'll adjust the titles as indicated. If the rule needs to be discussed, it can always be brought up over on Rules & Standards. Thanks. -DES ^Talk 19:34, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks good! It would be nice to organize all VIE books into a series, but, unfortunately, we don't have software support for "Publication series" at this time and I don't think we could use a regular Series since some VIE-published books belong to legitimate Title series. Oh well, one of these days...

And BTW, as you may have already noticed, your nomination has passed, congratulations again! Ahasuerus 01:38, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes I noticed. Thank you. As to the VIE books, I am at least noting their order in the set in notes, so that if we ever support publication series, or multiple overlapping title series, we have the data. -DES ^Talk 15:47, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Leiber's Green Millennium

Please verify the spelling of the title in your verified copy of this title. Like several editors I "added a pub" to the title which was incorrectly spelled as The Green Millenium. I've changed my verified copies but there are several more verified copies that I want the original verifier to check out. Thanks. MHHutchins 19:55, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I can't check at the moment since I am on the road again, but according to my catalog, I don't own a tp edition of this book and I am yet to verify the pb edition that I do own. Hm, I wonder if the software was momentarily confused and made me the verifier even though somebody else was actually responsible? Oh well, I'll double check on June 14 and leave Al a note if this is indeed a case of crossed wires. Thanks! Ahasuerus 03:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I think I know what's going on here. I came across this pub when I was on the road over a year ago, before we had Transient Verifications, and verified it. The title was indeed Green Millennium as you can see in WorldCat, which helpfully provides a cover scan that matches my memory of the cover. I have corrected the spelling, undone the primary verification and checked the Transient Verification checkbox. Looks like we are all set for now :) Ahasuerus 19:13, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

It looks like "Primary (Transient)" may be my one lasting contribution to the database, long after all my Primaries have been replaced by Project Gutenberg Holographic reproductions of the originals. Glad to see it of use to someone again! BLongley 22:22, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

It may be too early too tell -- give it a few more years and then we'll see. In retrospect, my "one lasting contribution to the project" was convincing Al in 1995 that individual editions needed to be recorded separately, but its long term impact wasn't obvious at the time :) Ahasuerus 23:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm still waiting for the rift in the space-time continuum that will allow people to go back and convince Al that the ORDER of Co-authors should be preserved. Not for my benefit: I don't really care which way round the Brothers Hildebrandt are credited, and Jeanne and Spider Robinson don't look as if they're going through a messy divorce or anything: but it seems to be a common complaint. I'm dreading the arrival of the Random Hachette Bertelsmann Etc Encyclopedia of SF that way which tells us exactly what the books SHOULD have been recorded as published by though. BLongley 23:03, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Easy enough to fix. Just keep making bogus entries of the title until one comes out with the names in the order you want. Do a merge on that one with the original title and select the order you want. Then do an unmerge on the bogus title and delete it. Not anywhere as much work as cloning a magazine although if there are three or more authors it might take a while.--swfritter 23:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The Reefs of Earth

I've updated your verified publication but left it in the queue for your approval. Not shown in that pub-update is I'd already added a cover image. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:42, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Something else to add to the notes is that the back cover does not have an ISBN bar code but has space for one. This was a practice used during the late 1970s and before 1980 when bar codes were introduced. The advertising pages are undated but one of the items offered is The 1978 Dune Calendar which presumably dates this to late 1977 to mid-1978.

One curious aspect is at the bottom of the Herbert/Dune list is Survival Run by Roger Zelazny ISBN 0-425-03123-3 $1.25. It did get published, but as Damnation Alley and while not verified in ISFDB yet it seems to exist as five AbeBook sellers have it with one seller's testament to quality being "Bottom corner has been chewed on by a dog." I added a VT for Survival Run. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Interesting! I will check my copy on June 14 to see if the whole run had the Survival Run ad. Also, once Al has added that long awaited new field for "printing number", we will have to generate a list of all publications with a "non-00" date and then separate the ones used to indicate the printing number from the ones that give the actual publication date. Considering how many Amazon.com imports use the latter, we may want to bring lots and lots of aspirin :-) Ahasuerus 01:58, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

BTW, do we want to change the date of the vaporware Title from 1977 to 8888? Ahasuerus 03:00, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I'd forgotten about the 8888 - that worked perfectly. I got a bag of books from a library sale this morning including a Nov-1977 copy of Damnation Alley that's a movie tie-in edition. I did not spot any references to Survival Run. They did have a "movie poster" before the title page and it says "From the novel by Roger Zelazny." This publication though is 0-425-03641-3 at $1.75 while the Survival Run advertising is for 0-425-03123-3 at $1.25.

Investigative bibliography -- by far the best kind! :) Ahasuerus 19:11, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

The Reefs of Earth re-checked and, sure enough, it mentions Survival Run :) Ahasuerus 03:37, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

The non-00 dates that I have added should be easy to spot as all of them have the same comment meaning the update statement to populate the printing # and to clear out the -DD can just do it for those pubs where the note includes the text "the printing date ... for this edition." I don't think I've ever varied the wording. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see! Yes, that will makes things easier, although the "printing number" project will be of necessity time consuming given the sheer number of changes. Ahasuerus 19:11, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to buy me some more magazines! No printing numbers. An oddity today - Joyce Carol Oates ebook "Wild Nights" - at the end were sequential book numbers indicating printing: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. My assumption is that the ebook was ripped from the setup files for the 10th printing but who knows?--swfritter 19:50, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

But wouldn't a "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1" number line just indicate the first printing? Ahasuerus 06:04, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Right you are. And I had to track down in the Community Portal archives this link which we should probably have on one (or more) of our Help pages. Perhaps Publishers and/or here Sources of Bibliographic Information?--swfritter 19:37, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Sources of Bibliographic Information looks like a good place to add this URL to -- in addition to Help, of course. You can never have too many useful URLs :) Ahasuerus 01:05, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm tempted to compile "ISFDB Book Editing for Dummies" and sell physical copies - maybe with a secret bonus prize for the first person to enter such a publication here correctly. ;-) I'm sure such a pub could go through at least three editions per year at the current rate of change, it could be quite lucrative. "ISFDB Magazine Editing for Dummies" would of course go through even more versions per year, but perhaps it could come out as a Serial? ;-) BLongley 22:25, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Letters

Still debatable, of course but it's hard to resist when a Bob Silverberg letter pops up. I noticed the letter in the Fall 1954 Fantastic Story Magazine uses the headline supplied by the editor. I thought about doing the same thing myself but ended up with the standard format, like 'Letter (Fantastic Story Magazine, Summer 1952)', because I thought it might be easier to find such entries if there is ever support for letters. I finally thought of an interesting compromise. Best of both worlds? Worst of both worlds?--swfritter 19:59, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

(Just jumping in here.) If I understand what you're doing, I'd prefer a colon after the "Letter (location)" title. Otherwise, seems like a good idea to me. -- Dave (davecat) 21:40, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

We should probably come to an agreement on how to enter these if someone is inclined to do so, as there are dozens if not hundreds of letters entered into the database already. I think the letters will become more important as lifetime collections, such as the ones published by Haffner, have been referencing and reprinting many of the more important letters in the appendices to these works. I tidied up volume 1, and verified volume 2, of the collected Jack Williamson, but made no attempt to link up the reprinted letters with their associated pubs, as we have no standard for entering these.--Rkihara 23:27, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

It does look like a reasonable compromise. Something to bring up over on the Standards page? Ahasuerus 01:03, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

There are actually 1359 instances of "Letter (". Many of them from fanzines. I would say that common use has made the inclusion of letters, and the requirement for a standard, a little less debatable. Windows Vista and Lenovo and Rescue and Recovery are my curse of the day. It's no fun trying to read the upside down authentication key on the bottom of a laptop and then type the characters in. M's look an awful lot like W's. Now all I have to do is spend the next 12 hours watching all the automatic updates install. Glad I've got my dependable old XP machine.--swfritter 21:40, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I lean towards inclusion of letters by SF notables, but of course this does mean a lot of rework. Some prolific letter-writers may turn out ONLY to be known for their letters, some may turn out to be pseudonyms of BNFs, some will be authors anyway. I'm hiding my fanzines until I run out of other things to do though. Predicted date: 3rd June 2115. Vista may be usable by then. BLongley 22:37, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I am trying to do one fanzine a week. They can be a true challenge especially when the editor credits himself in three different ways.--swfritter 14:31, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Verified Pub The Most Thrilling Science Fiction Ever Told, Summer 1968

Is Goulart's story "The Yes-Men of Venus" or "The Yes Men of Venus?" It is the latter when it first appeared and I think most of the Ultimate reprints were photocopied.--swfritter 19:35, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Good question! I will check on Friday night when I have access to my collection. Ahasuerus 16:28, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

The Most Thrilling version is blissfully hyphen-free. Not sure if I missed this fact when I verified the magazine in January or whether it has been since corrupted by a bad merge. (I'll see if I can search the big MySQL backup for any merges involving this record tomorrow.) Also, I have a copy of the DAW edition that Bill verified a year ago and I have double checked that it's indeed hyphen-enabled. Ahasuerus 03:09, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks.--swfritter 14:04, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I have checked the master backup file and I can see that Michael entered the data correctly in January, but it has since been merged and unmerged by him, myself and Ron, and the audit trail is not clear on what exactly happened when. Oh well, perhaps we will have better tools when (and if!) Al implements the history feature. Ahasuerus 01:39, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Entropy in action.--swfritter 17:03, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to veified pub Amazing Stories, January 1964

Verified in the good old days on December of 2006. Editorial now credited to uncredited instead of Goldsmith - Lobsenz often wrote the editorials although he usually signed them. Changed mag date from 1964-00-00 to 1964-01-00. Changed review dates from date of publication of books to date of review - glad that standard changed. Changed length of "Speed-Up" to Novelette - only 25 digest pages. Changed artist "Skeleton Men" from uncredited to St. John - he signs a later illustration which I also added - and in the process had to process a duplicate name entry for J. Allen St. John with stray pubs attached. Added illustrations for "The Happiness Rock" including back cover. Added review link for "Three in One". Entry from magazine spelled correctly but the title of the book in the database is "3 in 1". I have a copy of the pub and it is "3 in 1" on the cover but "Three in One" on the title page - something more to fix.--swfritter 19:02, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! (And boy, how things change! :-) Ahasuerus 19:18, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

And I would like to thank you and Bill for all the fine help with both the issues and wiki for "Fantastic Novels Magazine". I've only got four more to go and have recently acquired all four issues of "Cosmos SF & Fantasy" from 1977 which I plan to do next.--swfritter 19:29, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Glad to hear my activity actually helped - I hate typing (although you'd never guess that from my Wiki posts I guess) so I like it when I can just copy'n'paste'n'correct things into order, and I hate empty titles and missing entries in series. I'm not THE expert in ANY general subject here, so I'm glad my bored wanderings into other areas actually help rather than hinder at times. BLongley 20:00, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

All improvements, no matter how small, are good improvement and, besides, "bored wanderings" are better than "work hard on one area for months and burn out" :) Ahasuerus 04:56, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Changes to Your Verified pub, Amazing Stories, December 1976

Inserted cover image. Added illustration on p.25, department title to Benford's essay, and shortened "Gregory" to "Greg" as on title page. Added series link to the editorial.--Rkihara 18:14, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks! Ahasuerus 21:51, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Future Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1942

How many Ns in "Ackerman" here? It looks like there's a typo or a missing variant as we have "Henry Andrew Ackermann" too. BLongley 21:31, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Oops, I was missing the second "n" there! Good catch, thanks! Ahasuerus 00:40, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

3rd printing of Tanith Lee's Don't Bite the Sun

In case you want to update this pub: according to Locus #225 (September 1979), this edition was published in August 1979. MHHutchins 21:24, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Also, it was reviewed in the September 1979 issue of Asimov's. MHHutchins 21:26, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Date added, first printing corrected (DAW Collectors' No. 184 as opposed to No. 194) and Marc notified since it's a DAW book. Thanks! Ahasuerus 22:52, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to veified pub Star Science Fiction January 1958

Added mostly uncredited interior artwork - I think all of which is by Powers but did not make that leap of faith. Also changed page count to 132 to account for covers - really wish we had some kind of standard for indicating whether page 1 of a magazine is the cover or not.--swfritter 17:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks! Ahasuerus 02:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Authorship of "The Crystal World" Pratt or Clark?

Both have letters in the March 1953 issue of Startling Stories. Clark claims almost total authorship of the article but Pratt indicates that although that is mostly true, the the original ideas came from the authors. So I guess our attribution of Pratt as a pseudonym of Clark is mostly accurate.--swfritter 18:34, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Yup, it was a rather strange case considering that the two people involved were fairly high profile and the conflicting attributions were easily noticeable. Perhaps we could add a note to the Title records clarifying what each author had to say on the subject? Ahasuerus 02:10, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Did that also. A monumental issue which could affect the future of the world.--swfritter 13:12, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Merril collection

The Merril collection is local for me, so if you ever want me to check anything let me know. Before it was moved and renamed it use to be known as "The Spaced Out Library" and was located on the UofT campus. If I had computer access would I be able to submit data under my other non moderator name or is that name linked to my home computer?Kraang 02:48, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think any user ID is linked to any particular computer, unless you have stored your pw on the computer and forgotten it. I have logged in on this moderator account form at least 4 different computers, and had done so before it was a mod account. I edited wikipedia on the same account from multiple computers, including ones at libraries and cyber cafes, and we are using the wiki software for our security, as I understand it. -DES ^Talk 15:09, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

That's right, you can sign on to ISFDB from any computer. The only gotcha is that the Safari browser used to have login problems -- which may have been fixed -- so check the version of the browser that their computer has installed. Ahasuerus 23:14, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Verified pub Amazing Stories December 1976

The title is listed as Amazing Stories although the tiny print on the TOC is Amazing, the big print on the TOC is Amazing Science Fiction Stories (which Contento uses), and the cover and spine are Amazing Science Fiction. Rkihara is working through these titles and I am not sure what convention we are going to end up using. Also, this is one of the issues where a cigarette ad insert is included in the page count. The page count is currently 132 but the last inside page is 132 so the back cover pages are technically not counted.--swfritter 16:31, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I saw this discussion on another Wiki page earlier this week and decided to leave it in your capable hands :) BTW, I should have access to my collection for the rest of the month, so if you would like me to verify some missing issues/lacunae, now would be a good time to take care of them. Ahasuerus 20:03, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

James Rock's Who Goes There

At the heading of Baird Searles' review of this pub in Asimov's, January 1980, he gives the following prices: $23.95 for the cloth edition and $10.95 for the paper edition. Hope this helps. MHHutchins 23:55, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, added! Ahasuerus 00:11, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Star Guard

Does your verified Star Guard have a Lin Carter essay? See my G-599 edition of Star Guard for notes about this. Marc Kupper (talk) 03:47, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Nope, no Lin Carter anywhere in site, although "Introduction: The Mercenaries" is preserved. Ahasuerus 04:30, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Pseudonym merger?

How do you put a pseudonymous work entered separately under its original author? this is, as far as I can tell, a Christopher Priest work. Circeus 03:30, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

That's right, Priest used to sign his name "Chris" back in the mid-1960s. Actually, he still uses "Chris" privately, just not in print any more.

All you have to do in this case is click on the Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work link under "Editing Tools" on the left, change the name in the "Author1" field from "Chris Priest" to "Christopher Priest" and click on the "Create New Parent Title" button. Once the submission has been approved, this Title record will disappear from the "Chris Priest" page (which will become blank) and appear on the "Christopher Priest" page. While waiting for the submission to be approved, you can also make "Chris Priest" into a pseudonym of "Christopher Priest" by clicking on the Make This Author a Pseudonym link on the Chris Priest page and entering "Christopher Priest" in the "Parent Name" field. The reason we do Author pseudonyms separately from pseudonymous Titles has to do with ghostwriting, self-collaborations and other weird beasts :) Thanks for editing! Ahasuerus 04:28, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Lewis Shiner's Frontera

I added cover art to your verified copy of this title. MHHutchins 20:46, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

And this cover to John Shirley's Eclipse Penumbra. MHHutchins 04:02, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

And this cover to John Shirley's Eclipse Corona. MHHutchins 04:05, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try to check today, but I am traveling this weekend and there is a chance I may not be able to get to it until Monday-ish... Ahasuerus 16:54, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I have all of the same editions that you verified, so I'm pretty sure that they're the cover art. Just wanted to give you a heads-up that your verified records had been updated. Thanks. MHHutchins 18:10, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Also added cover to Sladek's Roderick. MHHutchins 19:45, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I see that cover says Volume 1 of the TRILOGY. Any idea what the three may be, as I only know of two? BLongley 22:55, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

The US (Timescape) edition of Roderick omits one-third of the original British edition. Seems that Timescape had planned to split the two-volume British versions into three publications. The second half of the story (Roderick at Random) was published in the UK in 1983, at which point the Hartwell/Timescape program was being dismantled by Pocket, so not even the second of the planned trilogy was ever published. MHHutchins 15:20, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

All three covers match what I have -- better late than never! :) Ahasuerus 01:48, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Novelets of Science Fiction

Correct Cover? BLongley 19:40, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Pretty much, although it must have spent too much time out in the sun since the cover on my copy is much more vibrant. Ahasuerus 02:07, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Jack Vance's The Book of Dreams

I added the cover art to your verified edition of this title, and a record for the frontispiece by Jack Gaughan. MHHutchins 20:26, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks about right, but I am traveling this week and will check the details over the weekend along with the other ones. Ahasuerus 22:30, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I have checked my copy and everything matches. Thanks! Ahasuerus 01:37, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Creating a new verification source

Can you take a look at this discussion, and tell me what I'm doing wrong in trying to create Bleiler78? Does my role as a moderator allow me to change/add to the reference list, or can only an administrator do it? Thanks. MHHutchins 01:25, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I might add that David left a message on Al's page a few days ago about his failed attempt, but there's been no response. MHHutchins 01:29, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

In theory, moderator privileges should be sufficient. I have tried creating a couple of Reference Sources and there was not error message, but the changes didn't take hold either. Something for Al to look into, I am afraid :( Ahasuerus 04:37, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I stopped getting the error messages after I filled in URLs for all entries above Primary (Transient). (Those took, although they have little obvious value.) There is a gap in ID numbers there, which i suspect is part of the problem. -DES ^Talk 05:03, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Blue Moon

Correct Cover? Also, I've got an intact copyright page in mine, and I'm afraid it still doesn't give an artist credit. BLongley 00:21, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up! I will check as soon as I can, fiendishly busy at the moment. <Wanders off muttering something incoherent.> Ahasuerus 03:53, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Finally found it -- and yes, it's the same cover. Thanks! Ahasuerus 01:35, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the Binder link

This is a case where we I wish we could lock the data after it's fixed up.--swfritter 17:19, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, some kind of Title level moderator-visible warning in addition to the current Publication level "This pub has been verified!" warning would be nice to have. I don't recall if we have a "new feature" request for it; if we don't, we may want to create one. For now, I find that adding copious Title level notes helps editors/moderators to avoid accidentally merging/approving similar Title records, but pseudonymous/variant Titles are harder to protect. Ahasuerus 21:39, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Once I've got them straightened out I will probably put a boilerplate note in each title and variant title record. Might be interesting to insert a huge graphic message into the the note or perhaps even a video with a BEM in full attack mode.--swfritter 16:49, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Gutter code search

I know you're not often close to your collection, but when you get a chance could you record the gutter code for the SFBC edition of Nova 1? I'm hoping to fill in the gaps for gutter codes in the SFBC listing. Thanks. MHHutchins 02:42, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Done! Also changed "Mary and Joe"'s Title year and added notes, something that I was going to do when I first verified the book. Ahasuerus 20:52, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Mary and Joe still bugs me. Why the huge gap between copyright date and our first printing date? Who is "Harold Ober"? I'm almost tempted to put up a small financial reward for the info, except that small financial rewards are uneconomical internationally. The usual way around that seems to be offer a T-Shirt as a prize - has anyone got the ISFDB T-Shirt design available yet? "I contributed to the ISFDB, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt" is easily done, but after Al's nice home-page ISFDB headers from old magazines I suspect we could do better graphically. So long as we don't add "Fair Use" justifcations around every image... ;-) BLongley 23:59, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Harold Ober Associates is an agency that has been representing various writers since 1929. According to the Web site, "Harold Ober became a literary agent at the Paul R. Reynolds Literary Agency. By 1908 he was representing such authors as Dane Coolidge, Jack London and H.G. Wells", so the SF connection goes way back. I assume that they represented Mitchison in the 1960s, but her estate is not on the list of authors currently represented by HOA. Ahasuerus 00:06, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

According to Mike Ashley, it was taken from "Memoirs of a Spacewoman": [3].Jefe 21:26, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, added! Ahasuerus 22:25, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Changes to you verified pub "Dynamic Science Stories" April, 1939

Made these changes. Changed publisher from "Western Fiction Publishing/Red Circle Magazines" to Western "Fiction Publishing Co. Inc, a Red Circle Magazine" which more clearly reflects the text on the cover and title page - I am tempted to do the Popular subsidiary publishers the same way. Changed page count to 116 to account for back cover pages. Credited artwork for "Prison of Time" to Jack Binder instead of uncredited - his signature is clearly legible. My magnifying glass also reveals Jack Binder's signature in the lower right hand corner of the illustration for "The Stronger". The Paul illustration is signed only Paul but the isfdb credit is Frank R. Paul. Did not change, just mentioned in notes, but will leave it up to you if you think it should just be Paul. Fully spelled out April rather than the abbreviation Apr in the mag title and also hyphenated rather than slashed. Made Otto the sole author for the Eando Binder pseudonym. Down to the driblets of the sadly few pre-50's pulps in my collection. Another Ed Earl Repp story. I think it is time for a reassessment of his contributions to s-f history.--swfritter 18:39, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Changes to "Science Fiction" (actually Future, July 1943): None. What a difference a year makes in pub verification.--swfritter 19:25, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! And yes, Dynamic was one of the guinea pigs early in the process, so a lot of things have changed since I verified them. Ahasuerus 17:35, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Novelets of Science Fiction (again)

I have a Bluesman edit to your verified Novelets of Science Fiction on hold as you verified 1963-00-00 and Bluesman is adding a note "first printing July 1963, from copyright page." It struck me as curious and either you missed the July or had some reason to date this as 1963 but not 1963-07.

"(again)" is because there's an earlier thread by this name. Marc Kupper (talk) 02:03, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up! I have checked my copy and it does indeed have a "First printing July 1963" line in a smaller font. I guess I need new glasses again... Ahasuerus 03:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

spam filter

Please take a look at User talk:DESiegel60#Spam filtered. Thank you. -DES ^Talk 19:12, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Majestrum

Oops - I thought put a couple things on hold and was re-looking at them. I wondered why I put http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/mod/dumpxml.cgi?1038600 on hold, approved, and then realized that was the one you had on hold... Of course, I'd already cleared the browser window meaning I don't know the old field values though we can dig that out of a db backup.

I don't see a note about this on either yours or Jprucher's page and so don't know what triggered the hold. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:55, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

No harm done! I put the submission on hold a couple of hours ago before I went scanner hunting :)

The reason that I decided to do more research on this pub is that Jeff wanted to add a bonus story to is. This is not unusual in and of itself, but the publisher (Night Shade Books) made me stop and think "Hm, these guys have been known to add bonus stories to limited edition version of their books; I wonder if Jeff's copy is one of those beasts?" And sure enough, the publisher's page says "The limited edition will be signed by Hughes and will contain bonus material. Limited to 125 copies." I'll need to leave Jeff a message and do more research, but I am coming down with something again, so I should probably go in hibernation instead. Let me point him in the right direction... Ahasuerus 01:30, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

My copy (or rather, my local library's copy) is the trade paperback, not the limited edition. The bonus story is an excerpt from Hughes's next novel in the series, so I assume it's additional from the 2006 editions. The news page on Hughes's website certainly suggests that he either hadn't started or wasn't very far into the next novel ("The Spiral Labyrinth") when he turned in "Majestrum", so I think this is a safe assumption. According to this discussion board and Hughes's own website linked above, the limited edition contains a 9,000-word story called "Sweet Trap". So I think it's safe to assume: a limited edition, not currently in ISFDB, that includes the story "Sweet Trap" (either in one volume or as a chapbook, which they've done for bonus material for at least one other limited); a trade hardcover with nothing extra; and a trade paperback, published a year later, with an excerpt from the next novel in the series.Jefe 18:50, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I am still sick, so can't do much that requires thinking, but please feel free to add the other versions :) Ahasuerus 22:26, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Ping

When you have a chance (or when you feel better, which i hope is soon), please take a look at recent threads on Rules and standards discussions‎, particularly Rules and standards discussions‎#Publisher edits: Location prefixes and Rules and standards discussions‎#Publisher edits: verified pubs. Your views would be welcome. -DES ^Talk 01:56, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I have been trying to follow these threads, but things are changing very quickly and I suspect that I won't be in a position to make a meaningful comment for another day or two. Perhaps I could add something simple tomorrow morning, though. Clearly, I should have read the fine print in the warranty when I got this body... Ahasuerus 02:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Titus Groan

My mistake, I cloned the record and accidentally left in that field in. Fixed. Gilgamesh 10:12, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Company Of Glory

Was about to do Transient & Currey Verifications on TCMPNGLR1975 and thought I'd bring out the magnifying glass and see if I could find an artist's signature and I did!! V(incent) Di Fate directly under the chin. Did not enter it yet, thought you might look and make sure I'm not blind. Sometimes a squiggle and a signature aren't all that different.--Bluesman 21:58, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It certainly looks like V. di Fate - adjusted accordingly. Good eyesight! :) Ahasuerus 00:25, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

User:ND

I see that you approved several submissions by User:ND including one that I had placed on hold (In Tryst). This is apparently a non-genre novel, and i don't think this author (who seems to have written entirely for ebook publishers that seem to be on something close to a self-publication basis) crosses the "threshold" at which non-genre titles should be recorded.

I also note that you created a variant title, which has type NOVEL, while the parent is NONGENRE. It seems to me that if the parent is non-genre, the VT record should be so listed also. Have I misunderstood?

Please take a look at my comments on User talk:ND, and react if you see fit. -DES ^Talk 05:56, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Wow, we left messages for each other - at 1:56am EST, no less -- at the exact same moment! :) Again, sorry about the cross-approval, I put that submission on hold while I was doing research, not realizing that you had it on hold as well.

You are quite right that both Titles should be NONGENRE, I'll need to go back and correct that. As far as the "certain threshold" question goes, well, she has written over 30 books, 90% of them speculative, so I wouldn't begrudge her 3 romance novels, but, of course, the threshold is anything but "certain", so it's subject to interpretation :) Ahasuerus 06:01, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Have any of her novels been published by major publishers? Or by serious advance-paying minor publishers, like Wildside? I don't feel that ebook-only publishers, or self-published works, should count towards the "threshold". -DES ^Talk 06:05, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Nimrod Hunt

Added $C price to BKTG15967 . As with this book and a few others (not many, yet) the book released in Canada has been totally printed in the US and still bears the US$ price on the spine. On the cover, that price has been "blocked out", in this case with a grey rectangle, and the Canadian price is beside that rectangle, also in grey. Does this constitute a separate pub?--Bluesman 18:16, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

If it's something that the distribution company did, then the answer is probably "no", but you may want to ask User:Kraang, our resident expert on all things Canadian, or perhaps post on the standards page. Ahasuerus 20:20, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I am also Canadian, with maybe 80% of my collection from here... so I wrestle him for the "resident expert" title???--Bluesman 04:09, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

There may be another contestant -- I've seen a number of Canadian pubs today from User:Jayembee. Check out the talk page and recent edits. -DES ^Talk 04:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I personally would make it a separate publication as then someone can mark it as verified. Someone else with a copy where the USA price is not grayed out could then verify the pub-record for that "edition." It gets stickier, in the literal sense, which the publisher does a change by applying a sticker. I suppose though the same logic hold true in that you'd make a separate pub record for the sticker-priced version and of course would document that it's sticker priced. When possible, I've peered underneath the sticker to document the original publication though don't recall ever doing a double verification for both the original and stickered versions. We had a thread in the past couple of months where the publisher manufactured blank publications, as far as the price went, and applied stickers for either the USA or UK markets. Copies of the publications also show up where the original sticker has been removed.

I'm not sure if we can detect if a book is priced by the distributor vs. publisher. Marc Kupper (talk) 05:39, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's true that it can be hard to tell whether the price was grayed out by the publisher or by the distributor, but let's take it one step further. What happens when the sticker is applied by individual bookstores? I have seen the same UK-published books sold by different US/Canadian stores and the "sticker price" could be substantially different. Should we record every price ever used by every bookstore then? And if the answer is "No", then how do we tell whether the sticker was added by the bookstore or by the distributor? At least when the publisher does it, we can record the fact that there is no price printed on the book itself, but anything that was added after the book was manufactured (stickers, graying out, etc) seems to be too uncertain to create multiple Publication records for. Something to discuss on the Standard page, I am sure... Ahasuerus 17:02, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Usually it's easy to tell that a sticker is from a store though it does bring up if a store reports the "list" or "retail" price along with their sale price if that's sufficient for reporting a cover price to ISFDB. Obviously the pub-notes would need to explain the source. I'd tend to go with "yes" on this as I'm already cloning pub records to add versions with current list or full prices from Amazon. When I add the note crediting Amazon I also date it so that people will know when that price was active. FWIW - Amazon has a paid-for service where they will report on the price history for their records. -Marc Kupper|talk 04:29, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Ping2

Please take a look at Rules and standards discussions#Third example changes. I think I have managed a better version of the Cover Image Data template. I would like some feedback on this version, if you have a moment. This version has a link to the publication on the "edition" parameter, but no link if no publication record number or tag has been provided. -DES ^Talk 14:58, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

To Live Again

Think the signature on the cover of TLVGNCBCLZ1978 is ALEXANDER; he/she has done at least four Silverberg covers (maybe five... just added an Ace edition of Time of the Great Freeze and now think that cover is by this artist as well).--Bluesman 04:02, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Checking my Berkley edition of The Masks of Time, the style and the signature appear to be the same, so it's almost certainly "Alexander", who, in turn, is likely Paul Alexander. Good catch, thanks! Ahasuerus 04:16, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Binary Star #4

I started to leave a note about editing contents, etc. at User_talk:Jayembee#Binary Star #4: Legacy/The Janus Equation but see you are working on this though I'm not sure what you are doing. -Marc Kupper|talk 23:33, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, Marc, we managed to collide in a rather tricky area. My intent was to do something drastic -- in this case delete a newly verified pub -- so that this new editor would be forced to check his/her submissions and see a rejection with a pointer to the Talk page. Ahasuerus 23:46, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

No problem - usually what I do, particularly with new editors, is to approve the update using shift-approve which kicks me over to a new window. I then edit the publication with the first change being to undo the author name changes and to add-title the new record. The reason for the shift-approve is it's easy to flip back and forth looking at the old submission and the new edit to copy/paste the corrections. My thinking is that ISFDB should work the way people think it should work. The editor did what seems reasonable. Anyway, I see Jayembee has given you more projects. :-) -Marc Kupper|talk 00:01, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely, the software shouldn't force editors to jump through hoops and perform arcane magic incantations to get everything right! Unfortunately, "it is what it is" and we are still a long way from domesticating it... Ahasuerus 00:25, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

SF Published in 1973

I added this entry earlier, and you appear to have been the reviewer for it. I was just double-checking/verifying the entries for Joanne Burger that I added, and noticed this wasn't in her summary bibliography. I searched on the title and discovered that while the publication record has her name properly as "Joanne Burger", the author record resulting from the above search says "Joanna Burger". Not sure how that happened, but I suspect it's something I shouldn't monkey with myself. Jayembee 10:45, 2 November 2008 (UTC) Jayembee

Good catch! The underlying issue here is that all "New Novel/Non-Fiction/etc" submissions create two records when they are approved. The first one is for the new Publication and the second one is for the new Title. Publications are records that describe specific editions of each book, including how many pages they have, what the binding is, who the publisher was, when the edition was published, etc. Title records, on the other hand, represent the text of the book, which doesn't change from edition to edition (except when it does, but that's a separate can of worms), so each Title record has fields for things like synopsis information, when the book first appeared, what series it belongs to, and so on.

The fact that a single "new" submission creates both records on your behalf is convenient, but if the book you are entering is a later edition, the date of the created Title record will be wrong. Once the submission has been approved, you will need to go back and re-edit the created Title record to reflect the date when it first appeared. Similarly, there is no way to enter Synopsis and Series information in the New Publication form, so you have to wait for it to be approved and then edit the newly created Title record directly.

What happened in this case is that I saw your typo in the submission and corrected "Joanna" to "Joanne", but I only did it for the Publication record and not for the Title record, so the two got out of sync. The "Summary Bibliography" page shows only Titles, so this Title appeared on the page for "Joanna Burger", but not for "Joanne Burger". Now that I have corrected the typo in the Title record as well, everything is back to normal.

See, I told you that the software is not entirely intuitive! And we have barely scratched the surface :) Ahasuerus 17:36, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Change to your verified pub Vortex Science Fiction Vol. 1, No. 1

In my eagerness I modified the date of publication and story dates to July base upon Ashley. I noticed that it was verified and was thinking that I had done the verification. To my mortification I noticed that you had done the verification. Contento actually puts issue#1 in January and Issue #2 in February - Ashley puts the second issue in December - I assume they are both guessing and I would have more confidence in their guessing if they were closer together. Both put the Spring issue of Space Science Fiction Magazine in March so perhaps it would be alright to change that one?--swfritter 21:10, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Hm, that's peculiar! I wonder if it may be worth checking Tuck and then sending Bill Contento an e-mail to see where he got his data from? Ahasuerus 22:10, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Tuck says 2 issues, not dated (1/1 & 1/2, 1953) with the numbers being vol and issue #'s so neither of them got the data from there. In his discussion Ashley specifically states that the second issue did not appear until six months later - he reasons that there were probably financial issues.--swfritter 22:25, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like Ashley knows what he is talking about, so I agree that we could change the dates to match his book. I also think that it may be useful to send Bill an e-mail so that we could synchronize our data and help people who enter "Vortex Science Fiction Volume 2" in the Google search box. Ahasuerus 22:32, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Tuck also lists the Spring issue of Space Science Fiction as being a March date so they may have picked up that data from him - or they may have all looked at a calender and noted that Spring usually starts somewhere around March 21st. Of course, the Spring date is likely the off-sale date so it could have been on the stands as early as three months before. The last email address I have for Contento is contento@best.com from 2004. Same as the one you have? Any other similar situations you can think of before I send an email?--swfritter 18:57, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

That email address was still working as of Aug 2007. But his site has moved since then and the new one suggests wgcontento(at)gmail.com instead. BLongley 19:10, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks!--swfritter 19:14, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I typically send Bill updates as I come across discrepancies and/or have questions. I have found that trying to "bundle" them is too much work and, with everything else going on, things tend to fall through the cracks, but perhaps your memory is better than mine :) Ahasuerus 19:55, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Idylls of the King and a Selection of Poems

You approved this probably about the same time I put it on hold. Frankly i find it very hard to consider any of the content to be SF, adn i would be inclined to delete it. Please note my msg on User talk:MA Lloyd‎. -DES ^Talk 04:01, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, another collision :( My reasoning was that "Idylls of the King", which occupies most of the book, is a classic retelling of the King Arthur legend, so I figured it would be "in". The Kraken deals with the legend of the infamous sea monster and is also rather speculative. "Tithonus is about immortality. "Ulysses" is based on Greek mythology and mentions Troy and Achilles, but is not otherwise terribly speculative. The rest I would have to look up, but I think the book itself is safely "in" on the strength of these 3-4 Titles. Whether we want to delete the rest of the poems, should we find that they are mimetic, is something to consider once we review their contents tomorrow. Thankfully, Tennyson is not hard to find online :)

Unfortunately, MA Lloyd hasn't been seen on the Wiki side since August 2007, so we may have to make these decisions without him. Ahasuerus 04:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Norton's Forerunner: The Second Venture

Can you take a few moments to check out this discussion? I've placed the submission on hold, so feel free to take over. Thanks. MHHutchins 05:19, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The Sinful Ones

I've submitted an edit for the copy of this book that you verified. I've added the cover artist as Michael Whelan. The cover is signed with a W in a circle on the briefcase that the man on the left is holding. This is consistent with Whelan's signature on other works. --Gloinson 03:46, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I've put this on hold for you to look at. The Whelan connection makes sense, I belive it's appeared on the DAW covers and was credited to him.Kraang 03:58, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

That's the one, approved, thanks! Ahasuerus 05:13, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Cover credit problem

I noticed that the 2nd Ballantine printing of Niven's ALL THE MYRIAD WAYS, which you verified, has a problem. The copyright page says the artist Rick Sternbach which you verified. The problem is that the copyright pages of the 3rd & 5th printings, which have the same art, credit Dean Ellis, which in my opinion is correct. (By the way, Dean Ellis also did the 1st printing but with a totally different image.) I would have just changed this but I wasn't sure what should be done. Change the artist entry and leave a note? Or just leave it and note the problem. So does correct information trump the printed word?Don Erikson 05:27, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Hm, interesting! However, before we start changing data, let's make sure that we have the same covers. I have uploaded mine -- could you please check and see if it's the same as yours? Thanks! Ahasuerus 05:40, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's the same cover.Don Erikson 18:28, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I have added a Note and also made this Cover Art record a Variant Title. Unfortunately, the way the software currently works, Variant Titles for cover art (and cover art only) are not shown on the Publication Listing page or on the Title page, but at least the Cover Art record no longer appears on Rick Sternbach's Summary page and does appear as a variant title on Dean Ellis. Hopefully, this is an uncommon occurrence and we won't have to invent a whole separate set of rules to address it! : ) Ahasuerus 05:23, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Weapon Shops/ Gateway to Elsewhen

Just did a Transient and Currey on WSIGTE1954 and since my copy has clean covers, I changed your note to say"No artists credited; no signature(s) visible." Cheers! --Bluesman 20:46, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Approved, thanks! Ahasuerus 05:01, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Software glitch?

Please take a look at Submission #1056926 and the related thread at User talk:Bluesman#Weapon Shops of Isher. It looks as if there was a software glitch here, perhaps in Bluesman's browser, perhaps in the iSFDB interface. Would it help in tracking things down to leave this submisison on hold until soemone has a chance to look at it? I know once it is approved or rejected it is gone. I would normally ask Al, but he seems to be completely off-line at the moment. Please advise. -DES ^Talk 01:39, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

C. W. Kelly

Cover/interior artist C. W. Kelly is a pseudonym for Ken W. Kelly. It comes from miscrediting his name from his signature. His signature can be found here. Note how much the first K looks like a C. This signature matches the signature on the cover of Eons of Night which credits him as C. W. Kelly in the book itself (as does the whole Baen Robert E. Howard series). Anyway I'm not sure how to combine the two records and was hoping you could look into it. Thanks. --Gloinson 03:26, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

That's a better scan than we currently have. Can we persuade you to donate to our Signature Library? BLongley 19:37, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, folks, awfully busy tonight, will get back to you as soon as I can! Ahasuerus 02:10, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Things are looking up tonight, I have almost 15 minutes for the ISFDB! To address the "C/K. W. Kelly" business, the optimal course of action depends on what we decide to do here. If the artist is credited as "C. W. Kelly" in a book (a la Baen's REH series), then I think we want to credit him that way and treat the resulting Cover Art records as variant titles. After all, if somebody examines these books and tries to look up "C. W. Kelly" on the internet, we want to have a record on file that will point them to "K. W. Kelly". On the other hand, if the only source of the misattribution is the (admittedly misleading) signature, then I would be inclined to enter the correct name in the publication record, although I can see how this could be argued either way. Ahasuerus 03:32, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, been away for a bit. The baen series definitely credits him as C.W., so the former route is probably the way to go. --Gloinson 00:14, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan! Ahasuerus 04:03, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Thrills Incorporated - You don't own the complete run?

Maybe an Aussie editor will show up. Looking at Tuck I notice that a number of stories were cribbed from U.S. authors. Contento/Miller documents a few of them. Guess they would be candidates for "based upon" linkage.--swfritter 00:32, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Old Oz magazines/paperbacks are a bizarre tapestry of US reprints and some truly horrible originals. I have a number of them, purchased in Sydney/Melbourne/Canberra as well as over the internet, but I never completed my collection, primarily because I could never get really excited about the contents. Ahasuerus 04:09, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

And, oh boy, am I excited. I am now missing only one issue of Mystic. Got 3 issues for 99 cents plus $2.50 s/h. Wish the Shaver Mystery would show up in a cheap edition. I think he was on to something.--swfritter 01:48, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations, that's an excellent deal! Now to get that last (June 1959) Satellite issue :) Ahasuerus 04:09, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Even if I had it it would be out!!! since it purportedly only exists in galley form. Although, I guess the trashcan issue of Science Fiction Plus would be in??? I think I paid too much for those issues of Mystic.--swfritter 20:59, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Ace pb of Norton's Knave of Dreams

Thought you'd want to mention in this pub's notes that it's listed as a March 1977 publication in the book listings of Locus #200 (March 1977) (which was published very late in April 1977.) MHHutchins 05:49, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Same thing with your verified edition of Star Guard, also a March 1977 release (Ace reprinted 8 titles by Norton that month!) MHHutchins 05:58, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

That seems a lot - does Locus say why? I'd guess 25th Anniversary of her first SF novel under that name, but I don't know if the month would be right. BLongley 19:04, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Done and done, thanks! As far as Ace goes, they were constantly reprinting Norton's books in the 1970s, so perhaps it was just an attempt to get better rates from the printers by ordering more copies all at once rather than spreading the orders across 6-18 months? Ahasuerus 02:44, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

This was typical for Ace around that time. In January of the same year they reprinted 7 titles by Burroughs, and in February they reprinted 6 titles by Silverberg from the late 50s and early 60s. MHHutchins 05:30, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Simak's The Trouble With Tycho

Your verified edition of this title is in the September 1976 Books listing in Locus #194 (September 30, 1976). MHHutchins 01:03, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Updated, thanks! Ahasuerus 01:53, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Star Guard

Just a heads up, Don added the cover artist for this pub[4] :-)Kraang 02:04, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Yup, the F-in-a-box is there, although it took me 20 seconds to find it :) Ahasuerus 03:02, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Bob Shaw's A Wreath of Stars

My copy of this edition gives the publication date as 1977 at the bottom of the title page. Just wondered if you may have missed it. Locus #198 (January 30, 1977) also gives the publication date as January 1977. Thanks. MHHutchins 20:33, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh boy, I managed to screw this one up royally by not marking it properly in the catalog, so the only way to find it would be by going through a few thousand hardcovers that are kept in the same general area :( Do you mind taking over verification on this one? Ahasuerus 03:19, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. But do I have to pull out that ugly book again? Doubleday really sucked when it came to cover art in the 70s. MHHutchins 05:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Just one of the many perils of genre bibliography: ugly cover art, disintegrating and/or flaky pulps, inconsistent middle initials, illegible signatures, tentacled monsters from the fourth dimension... Well, maybe not from the fourth dimension. Ahasuerus 16:31, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Silverberg's Next Stop the Stars

Locus #199 (February 1977) corroborates your guess that this edition was published in 1977. They give February as the month of publication. MHHutchins 21:31, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Adjusted, thanks! Ahasuerus 03:16, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Non-Responder?

Am I right in assuming MA Lloyd falls in this category? Looking at his talk page I noticed that seems to be the case so have not yet posted a message to him about an approved Asimov anthology for which the contents have not yet been merged. Probably be simpler to do the merges myself and tell him what I did.--swfritter 01:06, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The irritating thing in this case is that MA Lloyd did respond a few times in 2007, but has apparently since forgotten about the Wiki's existence. Most of his submissions are OK, but I don't think he fully understands how pseudonyms work, so he keeps re-submitting MakePseudonyms -- until they get through moderation -- instead of setting up Variant Titles. Oh well, we'll clean them up once we can delete Pseudonyms, whenever that may happen . . . Ahasuerus 01:47, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

There is a MAlloyd on the Steve Jackson Games forums. http://forums.sjgames.com/member.php?userid=5798

he also posted on usenet and the interests seem to fit. Dana Carson 20:43, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Approval of Blueman's edits of my verified pubs

I went ahead and approved the two submissions of Bluesman that edited my verified pubs. One changed the page number of a story and the other added one. Both were correct. Thanks for placing them on hold for me to check out. MHHutchins 22:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good, thanks! Ahasuerus 22:33, 26 December 2008 (UTC)