User talk:Kraang/Archives/Archive01

This is an archive of old discussions from User talk:Kraang. Please do not change it.

Thebes of the Hundred Gates - price

Regarding Thebes of the Hundred Gates which you added you had the comment "300 limited, with dust jacket numbered & signed 1-300. price not on cover." I'm wondering, if the price was not on the cover then how did you know the price? Ideally we only enter data into ISFDB that's stated in the publications and when we enter something from another source we'll put in the notes what the source was. If you reply to this it's ok to reply on your own talk page in this section and I'll notice it. Marc Kupper 20:37, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

Thebes of the Thousand Gates

Marc, i made a note in the my book about the original price, so i must have found it some place but i don't recall where.The printing & other info is at the back of the book.For now remove the price & i will see if i can find it again.Kraang 21:26, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

Something that could work is you could add a note that the price is not stated in the book but that you paid $30 for and note any details that come to mind such as where you got it from, when, etc. The comment might jog someone else into remembering where you'd get the price from. BTW - does your copy have an ISBN noted on the copyright page or elsewhere in the book?

Also - I looked on Abebooks and one seller says there were 900 copies of which 300 are signed. Does your copy say anything about this? If so, that'll be useful to add to the note. (note - I generally don't add things to ISFDB unless it's about something stated in the publication meaning that just because someone out on the Internet says something does not qualify it for inclusion in an ISFDB listing).

Another dealer has a leatherbound copy and says it's one of 75 copies and that they got it directly from Pulphouse Publishing.

Finally, there were 10 copies "Red staff leather on boards, gilt stamped spine & cover, signed by author in blue ink on half-title page, one of ten copies printed but not for sale, issued without a dustjacket." Curiously, that one may have an ISBN - 113151744X while the others don't seem to.

I used clone-publication to add the leatherbound copies. Marc Kupper 01:11, 22 Jan 2007 (CST)

DAW List

Hi - I saw your question about "what to do about DAW publications" on Mike's page. Please e-mail me using the hopefully spam safe http://marc.kupper.googlepages.com/contact and I'll send a copy of the spreadsheet to you that is used as part of ISFDB:DAW. Thank you. --Marc Kupper 02:49, 24 Jan 2007 (CST)

Changing publication records

Please be careful about overwriting the data in an existing publication's record. The usual practice is to locate a record that matches your publication the best, use clone-publication, and edit the new copy to match your publication.

For example, it's a common publisher practice to keep the same ISBN and to change the price. Thus with Behemoth: Seppuku I ended up accepting your edit, doing a clone-pub to create a new record, and editing the original record to change the price back to $25.95. If you know that $25.95 could not possibly have existed then go ahead and delete the publication.

With Frankensteins and Foreign Devils you changed the ISBN from 1-886778-04-4 to 1-886778-03-5 and added a note about “ISBN on back cover is wrong, correct ISBN on publishers page.” In this case I would have the note state exactly which ISBNs are where. Google for the “wrong” ISBN, 1886778044, finds it on several sites meaning people are using it in the belief it’s the correct ISBN.

In fact – it may be worthwhile to clone that record, to set its ISBN to 1-886778-04-4 and to add a note saying the ISBN on the back cover but that it’s the wrong one. If you know why it’s the wrong one then add that to the note. This way you have all bases covered in case someone comes along with a copy of the book and see that we don’t have a record for 1-886778-04-4.

The publication fields that are generally safe to overwrite/edit are

• Fields that are blank meaning the data had not been filled in yet.
• Year - many ISFB records only have the year but not the month. Technically 00 in the month is a "blank" meaning it had not been filled in yet.
• Pages - The publisher provided values are usually a few pages higher than what's seen in the book as they are counting the unnumbered pages before page 1 and we don't count those.

The remaining fields should only be edited only if you can be certain if the ISFDB record is for your exact printing of the publication and the data in ISFDB does not match the publication. Marc Kupper 23:25, 24 Jan 2007 (CST)

Re:Frankenstein & Watt-Seppuku

Marc, Still learning my way around. The orig. isbn came up in red as bad sum check.I will clone the current listing & put the backcover isbn in, then change note to refer to good # on pub. page.Watt-Seppuku: Since the price was higher it could be 2nd printing, my copy is 1st. there is probably no 2nd printing but i see your point.I will bear this in mind in the future.Generaly on the hardcovers i don't note printings because the are usually 1st & would only note 2nd , does this seem like the way to proceed? Or should i be consistent with the pb & note it as 1st.Just for future reference all my entries are from primary source.The book at hand.:)Kraang 21:58, 25 Jan 2007 (CST)

No problem Kraang - I took an interest in the story and added the contents, plus took a look at the ISBN situation and decided to edit the record with the bad ISBN using "#1886778044 / 1-886778-04-4." The leading # tells ISFDB it's not a valid ISBN and I used both the unhyphenated and hyphenated forms so that someone doing an ISBN search will find the record.

BTW, since you have a copy - is Timothy Szczesuil credited as an editor on the title page?

On the printing # thing. Generally I note what's stated in the books. If it says first printing then I make a note of that. Note that this is a tricky area because many publishers will say something like "First printing: July 1993" and leave it at that. In that case all we know is the first printing date and we don't know for sure this book is the first, or a later printing. It's getting better in that most publishers use a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 (or the reverse) number line. Sometimes with hardcover books you will see "First edition" stated and that usually always means "first printing" but check for the number line as they might forget to remove the words "first edition" on 2nd or printing.

In summary - We enter into ISFDB what's stated in the publication and if something is missing that is normally present we make a note of it so that others can tell the record was entered/checked against a physical copy of the book rather than random Internet junk. Marc Kupper 23:29, 25 Jan 2007 (CST)

Marc, Timothy P. Szczesuil is credited as editor.Kraang 19:26, 26 Jan 2007 (CST)

"The Moon Maker" by A. Train

If you you can't get the box for the second author to pop up, it suggests that you don't have Javascript enabled or that there are problems with the browser :(

As far as entering the other titles that are listed on the book's cover, that's not a very good reliable method, I am afraid, primarily due to what is known as "vaporware" these days. A publisher may announce a book and then never print it or they may even go out of business. This happens way too often for us to be able to rely on dust jacket and similar announcements. on the other hand, if you want to post the advertised titles here, on your Talk page, we could cross-check them against Melvyl, Tuck, LOC, Reginald, etc and see if they were actually ever printed. Thanks! Ahasuerus 21:38, 26 Jan 2007 (CST)

Children of the Atom/Frease

For Children of the Atom you entered the artist as "Frank Kelly Frease" -- I believe this typo has been made on books so I approved it, but I wanted to check in with you on it. If that's a typo on your part could you correct it? Otherwise it would be good to add a note on that pub saying it was a typo on the publication itself. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk) 22:27, 26 Jan 2007 (CST)

Brian Aldiss Re:Starship

Marc, i have the 1st printing should i edit the placeholder record or clone it and make a new entry?Kraang 20:44, 29 Jan 2007 (CST)

I assume you mean this publication? Sure, that would be great plus you can delete the placeholder note. BTW - could also please enter in the notes how Signet stated this was the first printing? I'm thinking of setting up pages for each publisher where we could document details on just what a first vs. later printings look like but first need to collect reliable data. Thank you. Marc Kupper 22:34, 29 Jan 2007 (CST)

The Coming of the Terrans

Kraang, you had a minor typo in the page number in your submission of the G-669 edition of "The Coming of the Terrans", so I corrected it from my copy. When I did, I noticed a couple of other things I thought I'd mention. One is that the cover artist is actually credited just as "Morrow", so we only enter that for the artist name, not "Gray Morrow". "Morrow" is effectively a pseudonym for "Gray Morrow".

Another is that there is a line-drawing frontispiece, that counts as interior art, so I entered it as such, with "uncredited" as the author. (It looks like Schoenherr to me, but it's unsigned.) There's also a separate foreword, which I've recorded too. That goes in as an ESSAY.

The last point is the story titles. I'll leave a note on the community portal about this, since I'm not sure how to handle it myself; the stories have dates prepended to their titles. I'll let you read that note rather than repeating it here. Mike Christie (talk) 22:39, 1 Feb 2007 (CST)

The Ugly Little Boy

I noticed you tried to flip the author names around. Unfortunately, ISFDB does not maintain the author order and you will discover that on each edit of a title or publication that the author list will rearrange itself. There is already a feature request in the queue for ISFDB to preserve the order. Marc Kupper (talk) 15:45, 4 Feb 2007 (CST)

Marc, i went back and had a look at the title, my intention was to only change the asimov/silverberg novel which was an expansion of the 1958 shortstory by asimov. The title is now listed as a novel & all the 1958 shortstory listings have changed to the 1992 asimov/silverberg collaboration, this was definitely not my intention."sorry" Can you fix it, i'am hesitant to tinker and make things worse.Kraang 16:28, 4 Feb 2007 (CST)

No problem – it looks like the real problem was that there were not separate title records for the shortfiction vs. novel versions of the story.

• The first thing I did was to look up the title and see that there is indeed just one at record 11853.
• Inspection shows that nearly all of the publications are magazine/anthologies that include what must be the shortfiction version of the story. I decided the first fix would be to edit the title to change
  • Remove Robert Silverberg as an author
  • Change the date from 1992-00-00 to 1958-09-00
  • Change the type from NOVEL to SHORTFICTION. The storylen was already nv which is the code for novella I believe.
• I hit [Submit Data] and without bothering to approve the first edit yet I went to the original title record and clicked on “Unmerge Titles” in the left navbar.
  • I click/checked the last three items as they seem to be the expanded Asimov/Silverberg work.
• I then did [Submit Merge] and from the moderator screen approved the title edit and unmerge.

• Now back on title 11853 I hit refresh and see that the shortfiction title looks ok.
• The unmerge has created three new title records and so I did an advanced search for The Ugly Little Boy and realized had I been a little bit sharper I would have done the unmerge first and then the edit-title. The reason is I see four shortfictions by Asimov. Had I done the unmerge first I would have seen one shortfiction and three novels. Not a real problem but it created an extra step.

• I click/check the three titles that are dated 1992/1993, merge them, and approve the merge. Now I have title 346231 and hit edit-title to:
  • Add Robert Silverberg as an author
  • As it’s a well known story I did a check on wikipedia and discovered it has a page which I copy/pasted to the Wikipedia Entry field. The wikipedia article also mentions that the original magazine appearance was under the title Lastborn and that there is a UK printing of the Silverberg expansion titled Child of Time. This is beginning to feel like a house remodel project where you pull something down to discover that there is something you had not planned to deal with...
  • Change the type from SHORTFICTION to Novel
  • Added a note “Expanded and revised from the 1958 shortfiction of the same title by Asimov.”
  • Save the title record and approve it. Hitting refresh shows that the standalone novel looks good.
• Let’s deal with the magazine appearance under the title Lastborn.
  • First I click on Asimov’s name to get to his bibliography and search the page for Lastborn.
  • Great, it’s already there and listed as a variant of the shortfiction The Ugly Little Boy. I click on Lastborn and discover no publications.
  • I go back to the bibliography and click on The Ugly Little Boy
  • I click “Unmerge titles” in the left navbar, select the Galaxy Science Fiction, item, click [Submit Unmerge], and approve this.
  • I do an advanced search for The Ugly Little Boy and for the last title listed (#346301) I click the number to drop into edit-pub and change the title to Lastborn, save that, and approve it.
  • I do another advanced search, this time for Lastborn, and merge the two, approving the results. With most authors I would not have needed to first change the title but Asimov has so many stories that Lastborn would never end up on the same page as The Ugly Little Boy and that’s what I needed to do the merge.
• The bibliography now properly lists Lastborn with it’s publication but as my source was the Wikipedia for this variant relationship I decided to document that and so I go to the The Ugly Little Boy shortfiction and via edit-title I add the link to the Wikipedia and also added a note (copy/pasted from wikipedia stating the source was the wikipedia).
• Finally, I hope, we just need to deal with the Child of Time UK reprint.
  • I look at Asimov’s page and crud – it’s not over as the date for Child of Time is 1991 implying that The Ugly Little Boy was the variant/reprint. Ok, I’ll Google locusmag.com for Child of Time and discover that Child of Time was in August-1991 and that The Ugly Little Boy was the U.S.A. printing in October 1992.
  • No problem, now that I better understand the relationships I see that Child of Time is title record 17333 and from 346231 The Ugly Little Boy I click on “Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work” and set the parent title to 17333. After approval the bibliography now correctly shows that the VT relationship.
  • One last detail was to edit-title things to add better notes explaining the relationships between the stories and to link all of them to the wikipedia.
  • I then realized that the shortfiction variant was backwards. It should be "Lastborn (1958) vt The Ugly Little Boy (1959)."
    • I go to the record for Lastborn, select “make this a variant…”, set the parent # to 0, and save/approve. This disconnects the VT relationship. I also note that Lastborn is title # 187061.
    • I then go to The Ugly Little Boy, select “make this a variant…”, set the parent # to 187061, and save/approve.
• A final (this time for real…) edit to The Ugly Little Boy to change the year to 1959 (first book publication) and now I can check and see that the Colts are back in the lead. Marc Kupper (talk) 19:03, 4 Feb 2007 (CST)

The Naked God

Hello again! Last night you entered entered the second printing of Peter F. Hamilton's The Naked God. Unfortunately, the record that you were trying to edit was somewhat messed up because of multiple edits. It used to be treated as an OMNIBUS because the novel was later reprinted in two volumes in the US, but then it was changed back to NOVEL. The change, however, was only partial and resulted in a mismatch between the OMNIBUS Publication record and the NOVEL Title that it contained, so that needed to be corrected first. Trying to correct the mismatch and enter new data in one submission often leads to problems because of the way the software displays (or doesn't) Contents data for mismatched records.

I then corrected the first printing data based on the Locus Index and then entered your second printing data manually. Please check http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?19989 for the end result to make sure that everything looks right. Also, please note that although entering 0000-00-00 as the Publication date is the right thing to do when we are not sure when a particular edition or printing was published, there is no need to change the Title date field to 0000-00-00 since in this case we know that the first edition was published in 1999-10-00. Thanks! Ahasuerus 12:43, 7 Feb 2007 (CST)

Amber by other hands

The reason that the series appears twice is that there is a known (and reported) software bug with handling apostrophes in series names. The only way around it at this time is to change both series names to something without an apostrophe and then, once all items are under the same series, change the series name back to what it should be. It's messy and doesn't solve the problem in the long run since adding another volume to the series later on will break things again, but it's all we can do for now :( Ahasuerus 00:18, 8 Feb 2007 (CST)

Ahem, it turns out that the bug was never properly documented, so I have created a new Bug, 30015, for it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention! Ahasuerus 14:25, 9 Feb 2007 (CST)

Otherness

I'm concerned about your publication update to Otherness.

1. There are many changes to the page numbering. Did you clone this record from another record earlier and are now changing the page numbering? If so, then that part of the update is ok as we should be cloning publications and then updating the clone.
2. You are changing the tile of the content items, such as Story Notes for "Bubbles" to Story Notes or The Commonwealth of Wonder to The New Meme. This will effect the display of the title in the Bantam edition which has been verified as using the titles Story Notes for "Bubbles", The Commonwealth of Wonder, etc. While it's mildly painful you need to change content titles by using the "Remove Titles" publication option to remove the old title and then [Add Title] to add the corrected title back in.
3. Of lesser importance is you are changing many of the storylen values. As these are so subjective I usually don't care that editors change them. Marc Kupper (talk) 16:10, 11 Feb 2007 (CST)

Marc, thought this one would get flagged.

1. Yes, i cloned it than went back and changed the contents.
2. Copied the contents page as it appears. GB edition uses"Story notes" only & last essay is "The New Meme" it may be an alternate title for "Commonwealth" would have to compare the two. GB ed. uses overall titles like Transition/Continuity...,but are not numbered. Should i have inserted them with just a page number?
3. I used the copyright dates from the copyright page.Based the storylenghts on page count ie:20-50pages is a novelette.Kraang 16:49, 11 Feb 2007 (CST)

1. That's fine then.
2. I've updated Help:Screen:EditPub#General_contents to (hopefully) explain the issues the issues with editing publication contents.
3. The dates are messy but in summary we are looking for "first book publication" and not the copyright date. Storylen based on the page count will be inexact as it’s dependant on the page size, type size, margins, that some books run the stories back to back while others have title pages, introductions, etc. Marc Kupper (talk) 01:53, 12 Feb 2007 (CST)

Marc-For the moment it might be best to leave the book info but delete the contents page, the clone version is misleading. The coll. entries are giving me a bit of trouble, will continue with easy updates ie: pages, but leave ones like this for the future when i'am more comfortable with the dynamics of the system. Lots of other books anyways.Kraang 21:29, 12 Feb 2007 (CST)

Hmm, that's discouraging as I thought the system was relatively easy to understand. Let's take a look at The Commonwealth of Wonder which you want to change to The New Meme on page 373.

• From the Otherness publication I click "Edit this pub."
• I go down to the bottom of the Contents section and click on [Add Title].
• I enter Page: 373, title: The New Meme, Date: 1990-00-00, type: ESSAY, author: David Brin
• I click [Submit Data]
• I hit the browser's back button twice to get back to the publication view and click "Remove Titles From This Pub."
• I click/select The Commonwealth of Wonder and then click [Submit Data]
• After moderator approval of the PubUpdate and TitleRemove the publication shows the essay under the correct title.

I could have combined multiple title changes, such as all of the "Story Notes for 'Myth Number 21'" to "Story Notes" changes in this edit but wanted to show as an example how one content item gets changed.

To update a story property such as the date you or storylen just change it. For example, you wanted to change the date of The Dogma of Otherness from 1994-00-00 to 1986-00-00 and also change it from page 86 to 93. No problem.

• From the Otherness publication I click "Edit this pub."
• I find The Dogma of Otherness in the contents list and just change the data.
• I click [Submit Data] and after moderator approval The Dogma of Otherness now displays correctly. Note that as the The Dogma of Otherness is in two publications they both will show "1986" for this title
• I looked at The Dogma of Otherness and concern is that while the date is 1986 ISFDB shows just two publications, both in 1994. Locus says that it was published in
  • Analog Apr 1986
  • Otherness, Orbit 1994; revised
  • Otherness, Bantam Spectra 1994
• As ISFDB uses "first book publication" I decided this date change was in error and from the title I did, Edit this title, and changed the date to 1994-00-00. After approval The Dogma of Otherness is now shown with (1994) in both publication contents and in David Brin's bibliography.

In summary, the rule is, if you need to change a title or author name then use Add Title and add a new record with the correct data. You then do a Remove-title to unlink the publication from the existing title record. To change anything else (page, date, type, storylen) you just edit the data but be aware that your edit will be visible to all publications that referance the title. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:03, 13 Feb 2007 (CST)

To clear this off the queue I went ahead with the remaining updates as add-title/remove-title as needed. I also decided to change the "Story Notes" titles to instead have "Story Notes (for 'title')" so that someone would not see a bunch of David Brin essays called "Story Notes" and assume they should be merged. I believe Otherness is ready for you to verify as matching your copy. Marc Kupper (talk) 02:26, 15 Feb 2007 (CST)

Betancourt's Amber

Hi, Kraang! The other day you created a submission that removed series information from one of Betancourt's Amber books. I wasn't sure what the intent was, but I have now added the other two volumes to the series and made it a subseries under "Amber". Could you please take a look at his biblio and let me know if it looks OK? Thanks! Ahasuerus 20:08, 17 Feb 2007 (CST)

When you wrote The overall title "Amber" is probably not necessary just the "Dawn of Amber" would be fine, were you referring to the superseries ("Amber") information that I added? Keep in mind that it's one of the two ways that we have to indicate that Betancourt's series is a part of Zelazny's Amber universe. We can handle "sequels by other hands" either by putting them in a series of their own and then making that series a subseries in the original universe or we can just add them to the end of the original series. In this case, since the sub-series has its own title (although it appears to have changed from volume to volume), I think the current solution is the most intuitive one.

As far as Chalker goes, he had serious problems with Del Rey at the end of their relationship and complained about his books being handled very poorly to the point of complete neglect. I wonder if it may have resulted in some discrepancies in publication data? 23:51, 17 Feb 2007 (CST)

Chalker

Sorry about the Lilith delays! You were trying to replace the 1986 reprint data with the first edition (1981) data and I wasn't sure whether the 1986 information was legit, so I had to poke around. I have added a new record for the first edition for now. Could you please see if it looks right? Thanks!

As far as Chalker's problems with del Rey go, he had numerous complaints that he posted on the Web at one point. He later took the essay down after he reached a tentative agreement with the publisher. Ahasuerus 18:43, 18 Feb 2007 (CST)

Thanks for checking! I have noticed a number of cases when an editor would try editing an existing publication when they meant to "Add a new Publication". Either the options in the navbar are not labeled clearly or we do too much editing late at night :) Ahasuerus 21:54, 18 Feb 2007 (CST)

Forty Days and Nights in the Wilderness

I see that you are trying to make "In the Wilderness", as the story was known when it first appeared in a magazine in 1978, into a Variant Title of "Forty Days and Nights in the Wilderness", the title that was used in the 1988 Chalker cleanup collection. Wouldn't you want the relationship to be reversed so that the latter version becomes a Variant Title of the earlier version? It's not a big deal either way, just wondering why you think the 1988 version is canonical. Typically, we use the title of the earliest version as the canonical title unless a later title is much better known, but in this case both versions appear to be reasonably obscure. Ahasuerus 23:27, 23 Feb 2007 (CST)

Ah, I see! Now that Unapersson has brought up this bug, I recall its gory details. It is indeed an error in the Moderator approval screen. I duplicated what you did and got the same result. When I approved my submission, everything worked fine. I have rejected the original edit since the Variant Title relationship was already in place after my edits. Sorry about the confusion! Ahasuerus 02:18, 26 Feb 2007 (CST)

Del: US vs. CDN printings

Marc-From 1978-ca.1990 before dual pricing del put out a CDN & US printing. The CDN are always higher to reflect the exchange rate. With multiple entries would it be helpful to put the letter "C" before price(ie. C$2.25) on CDN printings to help identify faster. Other publishers had similar pricing policies, but most only printed in US. You end up with two identical books(ie. printings) but priced $3.95 & $4.95. See Chalker's The Demons at Rainbow Bridge (ACE) for example.Kraang 20:15, 23 Feb 2007 (CST)

See ISFDB:Community_Portal/Archive/Archive03#Codes_for_Foreign_currency - I'm updating Template:PublicationFields:Price to reflect this. BTW - how can you tell it's a USA vs. Canadian price in the Del books? Marc Kupper (talk) 00:25, 24 Feb 2007 (CST)

Marc- One of my collecting interests was Chalker 1st printings.From 1978 to present the exchange rate varied from 10% to 60%. IF you compare my VERIFIED books with similar dated books you will see the "Printed in Canada"(on copyright page) are always higher in price. A perfect example is Chalkers "Exiles at the Well of Souls" both 1st printings $1.95(Manufactured in US) & $2.25(Printed in Canada). Being in the US you would not see the alternate priced books except as used copies(most of these would be in CDN) Most of the books on the ISFDB are sourced from US. Dual pricing made this issue disappear. If its agreeable i will go and add the letter "C" to the "Printed in CDN" on the ones i have personally seen. It may be helpful to put a note somewhere for editors about the DEL books to include the printing info in NOTES. On single priced books the printing info(on copyright page) is significant others may be unaware of this.Kraang 20:21, 25 Feb 2007 (CST)

You have brought up an interesting issue and so I shifted the thread to ISFDB:Community_Portal#US_vs._CDN_printings_and_entering_the_price. Marc Kupper (talk) 19:36, 26 Feb 2007 (CST)

DAW (Canada)

FYI - As you have a bunch of DAW books that probably are the Canadian editions you may be interested in what I did for Marune: Alastor 933 where I have both the USA and Canadian 1st printing. Marc Kupper (talk) 12:39, 27 Feb 2007 (CST)

Pâté de Foie Gras

Kraang, I have approved the proposed merge of the two "Pâté de Foie Gras" Title records, but I changed the Title Type from ESSAY to SHORTFICTION/ss since it's very much a fiction story. If it wasn't, Asimov would have had his Nobel shortly upon publication :) Ahasuerus 21:17, 27 Feb 2007 (CST)

Breeds There a Man?

It loosk like you were trying to record the fact that Breeds There a Man? first appeared in Astounding in June 1951, but I am afraid that auto-merging a MAGAZINE and a short story would't work.

Ordinarily, if the magazine issue in question is not already in the ISFDB, you would want to enter it using the "New Magazine" link in the navbar. If you don't know the rest of the magazine's contents, just mark the issue as incomplete in the Note field. You could then merge the two short story Titles or, if they differed, make one into a Variant Title of the other.

However, in this case, we already have Astounding Science Fiction, June 1951 on file. All we need to do to tell the database that the two stories are really the same story is to make Breeds There a Man? into a Variant Title of Breeds There a Man...? :) Ahasuerus 21:59, 27 Feb 2007 (CST)

P.S. Ditto with The Three Who Died Too Soon, which is misspelled in our magazine Publication record. By the way, in case you are not sure how to search for magazines (which can be a little tricky), the easiest way to do it is by pulling them up in the Magazine pages of the ISFDB Wiki. Ahasuerus 22:12, 27 Feb 2007 (CST)

It's almost certainly a typo in our record since you can see the correct title on the cover of the magazine issue which is linked from that same record :) Ahasuerus 22:18, 27 Feb 2007 (CST)

Oh yes, entering collections/anthologies (and to some extent omnibuses) is currently very time consuming because you need to find any potential duplicates after the fact and either merge them or create Variant Titles. And then there is the Great Pseudonym Hunt when dealing with magazines.

We have talked about various ways of streamlining the process, but, unfortunately, there is nothing in the works yet :( Ahasuerus 23:03, 27 Feb 2007 (CST)

The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Fourteenth Series

You submitted a pub-update for The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: Fourteenth Series but something got my attention.

• You want to change the title of the story The Compleat Consumators to The Compleat Consummators. The problem is that the original title is linked to six publications and you'd be impacting all of them. Google seems to find that both titles are in use. What I decided to do is to approve your update as you had many other changes that were fine but I then edited the title and add a new title called The Compleat Consummators (merge) on page 206 and cleared out the page # for The Compleat Consumators. After approval I did a title-search for The Compleat Consummators and merged the two records to get the new title I had added merged back into the standard record for The Compleat Consummators. Finally I did a remove-titles to get rid of the The Compleat Consumators version. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:34, 3 Mar 2007 (CST)

If it makes you feel better, Kraang, I recently had to correct the same spelling for a publication I own. Once we get to verifying ALL the publications the bad spelling may disappear. Or will get listed as a variant. BLongley 14:25, 4 Mar 2007 (CST)

Minos of Sardanes

Marc- I want to move "Minos of Sardanes" by Charles Stilson into the main works of Charles B. Stilson, is there an easy way?Kraang 18:21, 4 Mar 2007 (CST)

Yes, when you identify a situation where there is a pseudonym or an alternate spelling of an author's name then you should do two things.

1. From the pseudonym or alternate name's author page, Charles_Stilson in this case, you click on each title and from each title you do "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work." On the lower part of the page enter the author's canonical name in the Author1 field.
2. See if it says "Used As Alternate Name By" at the top of the author's display. If not, then click "Make This Author a Pseudonym" and enter the author's canonical name in the parent name field.

With both of these the canonical name is Charles B. Stilson in this case. Marc Kupper (talk) 18:35, 4 Mar 2007 (CST)

Murasaki

Re:your update to 23102 - The existing note says "Interior illustrations by Jonathon Scott" and you added an interior-art for Jonathan Scott. I assume you have the book and can check on which is the correct spelling. Marc Kupper (talk) 21:48, 4 Mar 2007 (CST)

Niven's Scatterbrains Coll.

Ahasuerus- Larry takes short excerpts from novels like "Destiny's Road". Should I label these as short stories, ie: Destiny's Road (Excerpt)?

Yes, please! Unfortunately, at this point there is no way to link novels and excerpts aside from adding a Note. We enter excerpts as short stories (or novellas/novelettes as the case may be) and add "(Excerpt)" in parentheses. There have been some discussions of improving the process, but nothing has come out of it so far. Ahasuerus 10:59, 5 Mar 2007 (CST)

It seem we do use the "(excerpt)" more than I thought. Which means I should probably go and redo some of my edits where the exact title was "From <Novel>". But there's plenty of counterexamples: e.g. this pub. BLongley 17:36, 5 Mar 2007 (CST)

Still, go ahead with "Scatterbrain" - I just received my copy today, and it's easier to check your edits than do it all myself. ;-) BLongley 17:36, 5 Mar 2007 (CST)

Also should I copy contents pages verbatum. Example short story "Smut Talk" is "SMUT TALK A Draco Tavern Story", although he calls it by the shorter version in his story header notes?Kraang 23:22, 2 Mar 2007 (CST)

We typically use whatever is printed at the top of the first page of the story as the story title. Any differences, including any alternative spellings on the cover, in the table of contents, author notes, etc are documented in the Notes section.

I'd check whether a Series/Category name is actually part of the title or not. I can't see any value in making "SMUT TALK A Draco Tavern Story" a variant of "Smut Talk" - I've already added the category. The title (once regularised) is just "Smut Talk", the rest is comment, IMO. Sometimes it's clear from a change of font or a switch to Italics or suchlike. (Although I suspect not in this case.) BLongley 17:36, 5 Mar 2007 (CST)

P.S. Sorry about the delay, my Internet access has been sporadic the last few days :( Ahasuerus 10:59, 5 Mar 2007 (CST)

Hidden World

Just a reminder that Publications that belong under a Variant Title, e.g. "Hidden World" vs. "The Hidden World", should be added to the matching Title, in this case "Hidden World". Also, if the publication date of a reprint edition is unknown, but it states the date of the first printing, then the safest thing to do is to create two Publication records, one for the first printing and one for the Publication that you have. The latter can be stamped with "unknown date" and you can then explain your sources in the Notes field. See the current state of Hidden World for an example. Thanks for editing! Ahasuerus 23:18, 6 Mar 2007 (CST)

Ace Doubles Omnibus or Novel?

Marc- I see Ace Doubles entered as Novels but i thought that i read somewhere that it would be better to enter them as an Omnibus? Which is the preferred method?Kraang 23:20, 14 Mar 2007 (CDT)

I tend to do them as omnibuses as that way someone looking for an individual story will know which publications it appeared in. Help:Screen:EditPub says to set the author to N/A for the omnibus though it seems many doubles are in the database with both authors so that it'll show up on the author's bibliography. The binding is set to dos. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:03, 15 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Wonder Story Annual, 1951

I have approved the addition of page numbers and other data to Wonder Story Annual, 1951, but I was wondering if you had the issue handy and could check the editor's name? We currently list it as "unknown", which I will change to "uncredited" if there is no name given. We can then create a Variant Title once we find out the identity of this masked stranger :) Ahasuerus 21:49, 17 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Thanks, I have changed the Publication record to "uncredited", added an EDITOR record and posted a request for more information on the Community Portal :) Ahasuerus 23:03, 17 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Space Platform and translations

The Note field in Space Platform says:

"Stated 1st printing of 1953 Pocket ed. Copyright page notes "Pocket Book edition pub. March, 1953"

but the Year field says "1953-01-00". Is this a discrepancy or am I missing something obvious? Ahasuerus 00:38, 18 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Geez, you learn new things all the time! :) Ahasuerus 21:18, 20 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Also, when submitting a Publication that was translated into English (like the Futurological Congress submission a few minutes ago), you may want to do an "Add Publication" against the English language Variant Title as opposed to the original Title. Not a big deal, but saves some time on subsequent unmerging and merging :) Ahasuerus 00:38, 18 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Interior Art

I see you have been entering publications with notes such as "Interior art by Jack Gaughan. One picture p.5" - I usually deal with things like this by adding an INTERIORART title record and if it's just one artwork then I'd give the page # and would also give the starting page # for the story itself so that the story and artwork get sorted correctly. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:51, 22 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Marc- Not a problem. I can go back and update the entries. Should frontispieces be also given a seperate entry to? I figured if the cover artists was looked up they would also find note about other art by same artist. If it was a different artist than the cover artist i would have included it in contents, that way there would be a link back to both.Kraang 23:15, 22 Mar 2007 (CDT)

It's more of an FYI rather than needing to go back and update existing publications. I'm still uncertain about exactly why isfdb exists and if there is a "should" in terms of what data gets collected/entered. Some of that uncertainty gets reflected in things such as the recent conversation on the community portal about what needs to get entered to qualify a book as "verified."

What got my attention was that you were identifying an artist and what he did in the notes and it seemed like 90% of the work was done in terms of being able to enter that as an interior-art title record. I do these using title (frontispiece) type INTERIORART. To answer your question, yes, if someone does both the cover and frontispiece or other interior artwork I'll add a separate record for this meaning the artist will have both a coverart and interiorart record for the same publication. That does not mean you "should" though - it's just something I do. When I'm entering books I'll try to enter all of the identified artists (cover, frontispiece. interior art, etc.) though to date have not been adding a record for the photographer who did the author's photo on the back flyleaf. If an artist is not identified then I add a note to that affect so that people will know I looked and could not find the artist credit. Marc Kupper (talk) 18:34, 23 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Novel as as variant of cover art?

I'm confused by your two most recent submissions.

1. The cover-art title 506641 Cover: Lord of the Green Planet / Five Against Arlane painted by Diane Duane exists and you want to create a variant title, a novel titled So You Want to Be a Wizard? by Freas? Is this the same painting on two different books?
2. The interior art 232951 A Little Pile by Diane Duane exists and you want to create a variant title novel that's also titled So You Want to Be a Wizard? by Freas? Marc Kupper (talk) 20:43, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Marc, what i wanted to do was move Freas's work to the parent name Frank Kelly Freas. Apparently what i was doing makes no sense. In the parent box i put in the parent #488 for F K F. I've also submited a merge for The Road to the Rim where there are conflicts that i'm not use to, so i only did one to see what the results are.Kraang 22:43, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Are you trying to move the title record or to set up a variant? Note that in this case Frank_Kelly_Freas is the canonical name and Kelly_Freas plus Freas are known "pseudonyms." If a publication credits Frank_Kelly_Freas then that's what we enter and we are set. If the publication credits either Freas or Kelly_Freas then we enter that name and after approval need to go to the bibliography and make the title a variant of the Frank_Kelly_Freas name. For example, From [1]

• Click Cover: Lord of the Green Planet / Five Against Arlane
• Click "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work" in the left navbar
• In the lower part of the page change Author1 from Freas to Frank Kelly Freas
• Click [Submit Data] and after approval the title Cover: Lord of the Green Planet / Five Against Arlane will vanish from [2]'s page and instead will be displayed on Frank_Kelly_Freas's page with an "[As by]" Freas. Note that a title record for Cover: Lord of the Green Planet / Five Against Arlane by [3] still exists but it now has a pointer to a new title record that has Cover: Lord of the Green Planet / Five Against Arlane by Frank_Kelly_Freas.

If you were trying to move the title record (the publication credits Frank Kelly Freas) then you would just edit the author name field and it'll move to the correct bibliography. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:32, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

ps. after looking at your next question (below) and your submissions I realized what you had tried to do. I approved both submissions but then removed the variant titles you had set up so that the Freas page is back to it's normal state. It'll give you a chance to try the make-variant thing listed here. You were close in the previous try but the "already exists" option expects a title record # and if you enter something like an author's # like 488 it will "work" but point at title # 488. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:03, 2 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Ah, this exchange may help explain another submission that I rejected with the following note the other day:

This must have been some kind of typo which resulted in a submission attempting to make a Joe Haldeman title into a VT of a Nelson Bond title. I have linked the "Nelson Bond" and "Nelson S. Bond" versions of ’’Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman’’ instead, which appears to have been the intent of this submission. Ahasuerus 13:01, 2 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Duane/ Freas

Marc, the title # for Duane's Wizard and the author # for Freas are the same #488?Kraang 23:12, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Yes that can get confusing at times, authors, titles, publications, series, etc. all are organized in their own tables with the records numbered from 1 to N. Record # 448 is valid for "author" Frank Kelly Freas, the title So You Want to Be a Wizard? by Diane Duane (small world - I was on her web site not 10 minutes ago), the publication A Diversity of Creatures by Rudyard Kipling, and the Ler series by M.A. Foster (again a small world, as of last week I have read all of M.A. Foster's published works and really liked the Ler series). Marc Kupper (talk) 23:23, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Cover artist for The Incomplete Enchanter

Hi, I was entering my de Camps today and saw you had verified this publication. You show the cover artist as Emsh, but my copy has "cover painting by Richard Powers" on the back cover, and it's listed at the Powers Compendium web site. Could you double-check your source and update the record as needed? (Scott Latham 19:53, 2 Apr 2007 (CDT))

Spartan Planet

As a quick FYI, Chandler's Spartan Planet was already in the database as a variant title of volume 7 in the Grimes series, so I merged the two titles. Ahasuerus 20:14, 2 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Dec 47 Amazing

Hi, sorry about the delay asking on this one after I held it. I am a bit confused by the note, and wanted to check with you. You say "NOTE: "The Rain of Fish" by Pete Bogg is not on p.175 or in this magazine. This essay is also mentioned on the back cover with a picture of fish falling on a village." but you're also adding the essay as new content. Is it in fact there? If so, what does the note mean? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious here. Mike Christie (talk) 22:09, 3 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Poul Anderson, Going for Infinity

Hi, I just submitted a change for this pub, GNGFRNFN2002, correcting "A Misummer Tempest" to "A Midsummer Tempest". I assume it's an entry error, since Amazon's scanned TOC page includes the "d". But I wanted to let you know, just in case your copy has an actual misprint. --WimLewis 11:19, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Three for Tomorrow

Hi, I see that you verified an edition of this pub. I have the same edition, well, we know how that can be, yet nowhere in mine can I find that Robert Silverberg was actually the editor. Does your edition actually list him as such? CoachPaul 00:35, 8 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I'm pretty sure you'll find it was Arthur C. Clarke. As my version has "EDITED BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE" on the front cover and "THREE FOR TOMORROW ARTHUR C. CLARKE" on the spine. ;-) Title page doesn't actually credit him with more than the foreword though. :-( Still, I'm confident to add mine, have a look and see if you can find anything that doesn't look right. BLongley 15:58, 8 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I have posted more unearthed data on CoachPaul's Talk page. Ahasuerus 00:50, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Cosmonaut Keep

I have changed the price of the mass market paperback edition of Cosmonaut Keep from $9.99 to the more regular $7.99 as per Amazon.com and other online sites. Could you please double check that the current value is correct? Thanks! Ahasuerus 20:39, 10 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Hearts and Soldiers

"Hearts and Engines" is a variant title of "Soldiers Running", which has also been published as "How to Be a Soldier" (see http://contento.best.vwh.net/s4.htm). I have rejected the submission that tried to merge 3 of the records and created various variant title relationships instead -- take a look when you get a chance :) Ahasuerus 12:56, 11 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Ah, I think I see where the misunderstanding lies! The problem with the original submission was that it tried to merge "Hearts and Engines" published as by "Brian W. Aldiss" with "Hearts and Engines" published as by "Brian Aldiss". The latest submission from about an hour ago (which I currently have on hold) tries to do the same thing.

We make a concerted effort to keep track of the exact spelling of the author's name in every publication and create Variant Titles when appropriate. In this case we already have a Variant Title relationship between the "W" and "W"-less versions of "Hearts and Engines", which seems to be a happy relationship :) Ahasuerus 20:59, 11 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Aha, I think we are getting somewhere now! So it looks like the underlying probelm is that we have two identical "Signet #D2411" Starswarm Publications on file, one that (correctly) lists all stories as by "Brian Aldiss" and another that (incorrectly) lists all of them as by "Brian W. Aldiss", right? Are all of the stories in the book listed as by "Brian Aldiss"? If so, then we could just delete the duplicate (and erroneous) publication and then see if there is anything else that needs to do with the affected titles. Does that sound like a plan? Ahasuerus 21:58, 11 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I ended up deleting the offending Publication and then deleting the resulting Publication-less Title. I figure deleting publication-less Title records is safer than merging since the software won't allow you to delete a Title with associated publications :)

Good job sorting it all out! Aldiss is indeed a pain and so are other writers like james Gunn whose publishers apparently think that using middle initials is strictly optional :( Ahasuerus 00:56, 12 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Mirror, Mirror

As far as the proposed change of the publication year for "Mirror, Mirror" from 1960 to 1968 goes, Contento suggests that this novella was first published in Fantastic in June 1960. Would you happen to know otherwise? Thanks! Ahasuerus 20:59, 11 Apr 2007 (CDT)

A little more digging seems to have clarified the situation. The story was originally published in Fantastic in 1960 as "The Mirror". It was reprinted in Psi High, and Others in hardcover in 1967 and in the almost-identically titled paperback in 1968. We had a problem in the database in that we had two versions of the hardcover Publication, one of them with "The Mirror" instead of "Mirror, Mirror". I have zapped the bad pub and will post a verification request to be on the safe side. The story was reprinted again in Bretnor's 1980 anthology The Future At War Vol. 2, once again as "Mirror, Mirror". The anthology's Publication record was messed in the ISFDB as well: it listed the story twice, once as "Mirror, Mirror" and then again as "The Mirror". I have removed "The Mirror" from the Publication and merged the resulting orphan Title record. I think we are OK now -- take a look when you have a chance :) Ahasuerus 22:34, 11 Apr 2007 (CDT)

John (M.) Blair

A couple of things re: the recently modified John (M.) Blair.

First, the software doesn't understand "1961" by itself and converts it to "0000-00-00" instead of "1961-00-00".

Second, when you updated A Landscape of Darkness, you changed the name in the Publication record to "John Blair", but left the name in the associated Title record (in the Contents area) the way it originally was, "John M. Blair". At that point we had two Author records, one for "John M. Blair" and one for "John Blair". The latter had only one Publication and no Titles associated with it, so the Publication record displayed as a "Stray Publication". Then you changed the canonical name in the "John M. Blair" Author record to "John Blair". Since we already had a "John Blair" Author record, we ended up with two records with the same canonical name, which broke the software in various interesting ways. I fixed it by temporarily changing the canonical name of one of the records to "John Blair (test)", which made it possible to access the other "John Blair" record, and then merging the two Author records.

I guess the bottom line is that we need to ask Al to prevent editors from creating duplicate canonical names, since this is far from the first time we run into this problem :) Ahasuerus 23:31, 13 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Lord Demon

I have approved the Lord Demon submission, but I was wondering whether it really included "Lord Demon(Excerpt)" on page 311? Granted, stranger things have been known to happen :) Ahasuerus 01:44, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Clearly, the publisher wanted to make sure that Lord Demon readers were still aware of the existence of the book after they finished reading it! :) Ahasuerus 22:13, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

When I see something that seems stupid or could be interpreted as being in error I add a publication note to make it clear that this is exactly what's in a book and it's not a data entry error. Marc Kupper (talk) 03:36, 15 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Good point! I went ahead and added a note to the publication, thanks! Ahasuerus 12:51, 15 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Berserker Fury by Saberhagen

When changing the date of the publication, it isn't necessary to change the date of the title. In fact, it's better not to edit anything in the contents section of the publication. It may impact other publications that have been linked to the title. For more information go to this page in the help section. Thanks for your contributions. Mhhutchins 21:43, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Well, if you are changing the date of the first edition from, say, 1985-00-00 to 1985-03-00, then it would stand to reason that you would want to change the date of the associated Title to 1985-03-00 at the same time. However, as Michael points out, in many other cases changing the Title date may have unexpected side effects when it affects all the other Publications that the Title appears in. After a few thousand submissions it usually becomes intuitively clear when it's safe to change Title data in the Contents area, though. :) Ahasuerus 22:11, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Well, once a submission has been rejected or approved, it is deleted from the submission queue; only its summary is left in the "Integrated/Rejected Submissions" table. The latter has the following fields: "Date/Time", "Submission [number/type]", "Submitter", "Approver", "Subject", "Reason". Since the details are already lost, I can't go back and review these submissions, much less un-reject and approve them. By the way, that's one of the reasons why I usually put "wrong looking" submissions On Hold instead of rejecting them, especially if they contain Contents level changes that may be non-tivial or at least time consuming to recreate.

However, I think that in this case the really important thing is to make sure that we (editors, moderators, etc) are all on the same page and have the same expectations. It would do us no good if these 3 submissions were approved, but at the end of the day different editors and moderators followed different guidelines. That would be a recipe for frustration and general pandemonium.

There are certain types of Contents changes that can have a far reaching effect on the database -- see my note about "John (m.) Blair" above for a recent example. I suspect that this where Michael is coming from and it is certainly understandable. On the other hand, the ability to change multiple lines of Contents data in one submission is rather powerful and, when used correctly, saves editors a lot of time. If we really didn't want editors to change any Contents data, we could disable this functionality programmatically -- which, to be honest, I sometimes wonder about -- but as long as it is allowed, we have to support it even though it means that moderators have to be extra careful with submissions that alter Contents data.

Let me post on Michael's Talk page and see if he can join us here in the morning :) Ahasuerus 01:13, 15 Apr 2007 (CDT)

This area has always befuddled me and I should have been more cautious, especially about rejecting submissions that had extensive edits and may be difficult to reconstruct. I apologize to you, Kraang, for being overzealous in my rejection of those three submissions. Mhhutchins 10:21, 15 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Andromeda Gun

I approved the update to 2655 but reverted the change to the ISBN from "0-425-02878-X / #N2878" back to "0-425-02878-X". If there's a straight ISBN in this field then ISFDB sets up links to Amazon and other services that index books by the ISBN. I saw that the notes already mention the codes on the spine and cover. My question though is if the ISBN, 0-425-02878-X, is mentioned anywhere in the book? If not, then we'd code this using something like "#425-02878 / N2878". Marc Kupper (talk) 23:07, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Hi Marc. Its mentioned on the copyright page as SBN 425-02878-X, getting tired and forgot to mention it. Also had three edits in a row rejected a new first, still thinking that over. On another note i've not entered the Daw books i sent you into the ISFDB. Except for coll. and anth. Should i bother or will they eventually turn up when you integrate the data?Kraang 23:34, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I suspect you should enter the DAW books for now. One thing I've done with Canadian books I've entered is I named the publisher "Daw Books (Canada)". I'm so swamped in things that I've been paying minimal attention to the DAW list lately.

Three rejects in a row? That's not typical at all. I took a look and all of them seen fine with me and I understand what you were doing. I'll send a note to Mhhutchins. Something that may have helped is if your pub note had said something about that the copyright page states the date of first publication along with the printing date. That way a moderator would know why both dates are being set. Marc Kupper (talk) 04:09, 15 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Ahead of Time

FYI, I have approved the 1961 Four Square Ahead of Time clone, but you probably want to take a look at the discussion on Brin's Talk page since he is working on the 1967 printing of the same edition :) Ahasuerus 00:24, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Further discussion of Ahead of Time issues on Brin1's Talk page :) Ahasuerus 23:52, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Five Galaxy

Sounds like a perfectly good plan to me! :) Ahasuerus 23:58, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Star Surgeon

I approved pub update 32118 but was not sure if that pub-note was to the moderator or to yourself. Marc Kupper (talk) 01:15, 21 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Protostars

You may want to take a look at User_talk:Rudam#Protostars as it's about a publication you verified. Marc Kupper (talk) 12:44, 21 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Downtime

I got an e-mail on behalf of Kraang that said his computer/e-mail are down but that he should be back on line next week. Marc Kupper (talk) 12:53, 23 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Introduction in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fifth Series

Hello, you've verified 1961 Ace edition of The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fifth Series as containing "Inroduction (Best of F&SF 5) (Excerpt from hardcover)". I suppose that it's your, and not the Ace typesetters', typo for "Introduction"; but what does the parenthesis mean? That the introduction in the hardcover was cut for this reprint? How? If so, an explanatory Note would probably be in place (and we'd probably also need to switch the introductions in the 1968 Ace reprint). Thanks, --JVjr 12:28, 24 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Verification of Dan Simmons' LoveDeath collection

Could you check to see if the title of the story in your verified edition of LoveDeath is "Death in Bangkok" or "Dying in Bangkok"? Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:52, 30 Apr 2007 (CDT)

"Intruders on the Moon" and The Red-Eared Ghosts/"M81: Ursa Major"

2 questions about recent submissions:

1. You are trying to establish a Variant Title relationship between Vivien Alcock's novel The Red-Eared Ghosts (1998) and Edmund Cooper's story "M81: Ursa Major" (1956). Is that right or was there some kind of typo involved?
2. I have approved your submission that deleted the Variant Title relationship between Edmund Cooper's "Intruders on the Moon" and "Intruders". I assumed that it was done on purpose so that you could reverse the relationship later. Is that right? Thanks! Ahasuerus 21:19, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the clarification; I have rejected the original, erroneous, submission and approved the new one. One thing that I have found useful is to cut-and-paste the Title ID of the proposed parent title. Seems to cut down on the number of typos considerably.

As far as "M81: Ursa Major" goes, we had another variant title pair for this story, so I repointed all versions of "M81(:/-) Ursa Major" to "The End of the Journey". Take a look when you have a chance and see if it looks OK. Thanks! Ahasuerus 22:13, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

Robots and Empire

You submitted an edit to this edition when I assume you meant to clone it to create a Canadian edition. Is that correct? Thanks. Mhhutchins 14:05, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

Ray Bradbury's "The Jack-In-The-Box"

Does anyone have any of these novels and can they shed any light on the titles in the following discussion? Thanks :)Kraang 19:02, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

Dark Carnival,The Stories of Ray Bradbury & The Small Assassins these collections list it as "The Jack-In-The-Box" but Contento list all of the above as "Jack-In-The-Box". The verified publications also only list it as "Jack-In-The-Box". The only listing i could find was a french web site that lists it "The Jack-In-The-Box" as a stand alone title. The french add Le & La to half there words and if translated back from french the word "The" could easily get left in. What i'am proposing is to delete the title "The Jack-In-The-Box" and list only as "Jack-In-The-Box" with no variant. Also all listings of Dark Carnival on AbeBooks that included a listing of short stories list it as "Jack-In-The-Box". Don't like to delete titles unless there is agreement from higher up. Let me know what you think. Thanks :)Kraang 20:23, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

I have checked WorldCat. The two affected collections that they have ToCs for both list the story as "Jack-In-The-Box" without the definite article, so it looks highly likely that you are right and the "The" is in error.

Just to be on the safe side, do you want to cut-and-paste your question on ISFDB:Verification requests board to see if somebody could verify Dark Carnival? I have The Small Assassin (an abridgement of Dark Carnival), The Stories of Ray Bradbury and The October Country in my collection and I can check my copies around May 25 if nobody else has the books handy. Thanks! Ahasuerus 22:31, 14 May 2007 (CD

Eando Binder's "Conquest of Life"

You have created a Make Variant submission that would make "Conquest of Life" by Eando Binder a variant title of itself. Did you, by chance, mean to make it a pseudonymous work by Otto Binder instead? Or is there something deeper and more sinister going on here? :) Ahasuerus 22:29, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

I submitted the variant before i removed the old title , and i picked up the wrong parent number.Kraang 22:56, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

Okies, I have rejected the submission, back in your court :) Ahasuerus 23:35, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

Dune - image

Just a heads up in that you added 191209 but the image is blank. Marc Kupper (talk) 18:54, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

ISBNs

Please be aware that the Catalog-ID / ISBN field is used to link to Amazon and other sites. It should contain just the ISBN (or a Catalog-ID prefixed with #) but not both. I have approved the following publications and then edited them

• 52007 - I removed " / N2781" from the ISBN and added it to the publication notes. You may want to update this publication's note as I'm not where where you got the ISBN from.
• 191397 - I removed " / #451-AE1290" from the ISBN. Cover artist is blank.
• 191401 - I removed " / #451-AE4170" from the ISBN. Cover artist is blank.
• 191405 - I removed " / #N2813" from the ISBN. You may want to update this publication's note as I'm not where where you got the ISBN from. You went into great detail explaining where all of the other codes were but are silent on the ISBN. Cover artist is blank.
• 191409 - I removed " / #451-AE5111" from the ISBN. Cover artist is blank.
• 15714 - I removed " / #451-AE2625" from the ISBN and added this to the comments. You may want to update this publication's note as I'm not where where you got the ISBN from. Cover artist is blank.

For several of these I noted "cover artist is blank." Is the artist not credited? My personal practice is that if I can't find the artist credit I usually make a note of this with a comment like "The cover artist is not credited nor is a signature visible" so that someone out on the Internet will not be "helpful" and just fill in the artist field based on an unknown/unverified source. Some people to this by setting the cover artist to "Uncredited" which will also work though the help field say to leave this blank. Marc Kupper (talk) 21:05, 18 May 2007 (CDT)

Marc, sorry about the extra work. The late 60's to mid 70's are a mess when it comes to cat#'s. I've noted some editors & mods. list cover# others spine# & some SBN#(ISBN without"0"). I thought by putting in the "/" a search would find one or the other depending on which cat# they searched for. With the SBN# is it ok to add the "0" or just enter as #425-02813-5 for example? Regarding the uncredited artists i've always left it blank if not signed or credited in the book. In the future i will leave a note as you suggested:-)Kraang 21:52, 18 May 2007 (CDT)

No problem and it's perfectly understandable that people would search for either the code or ISBN. I believe I submitted a feature request long ago to allow this field to have multiple values separated by semicolons to deal with exactly this situation. Or, maybe the ISBN parser can be smarter (it needs work anyway for ISBN-13) and to locate the ISBN in the middle of the text. The uncredited artist thing is not that big of a deal. Marc Kupper (talk) 04:29, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

Haldeman's Tool of the Trade

Your submission to update this pub removes the note "Cover is coded N2781." I'm not sure what the original editor meant by the note, except that maybe it's the catalog number. Is this change based on a physical verification of the book? Thanks. Mhhutchins 22:53, 18 May 2007 (CDT)

I was the original editor that added that particular comment and if it's not clear then I need to figure out better wording. I was intending to say that the publisher's catalog No. on the front cover is N2781. Now that I think about it - I should use the same wording as the ISFDB field rather than calling it the publisher's code. It's one of those books that has a mix of old style codes, SBNs, ISBNs, etc. depending on where you look. It's ok that Kraang removes it as I added it today and in looking at the book now I'm wondering if I added it to the wrong record as I was juggling several records (see the previous section immediately above this). Marc Kupper (talk) 04:25, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

Jack-in-the-Box

I've rejected a title update for 58396 as you wanted to change it from The Jack-in-the-Box to Jack-in-the-Box. This title is referenced by six publications and I'd have think that at least one of them uses The Jack-in-the-Box though I can't find the string "The Jack-in-the-Box" Locus/Contendo other than [4] which is for another author. I see that title records 99517 and 577997 exist for Jack-in-the-Box.

I guess what we could do is to search all six publications under 58396 to see if perhaps each one of them uses Jack-in-the-Box. If that's the case, then use, a title merge of all three records should be done. Marc Kupper (talk) 17:04, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

Marc, have you seen this conversation? 17:09, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm sorry - all fixed now. Marc Kupper (talk) 18:26, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

Mind Changer

Kraang, can you double-check the artist for this pub please? I think there may be an extra "L" in his name. (I'm not too keen on "A Sector General Novel" being included as part of the title either, but we need to beef-up the help on WHICH bits of the Title-page are Title and which are Series or other comments before I'd stamp all over a verified pub.) Cheers! BLongley 16:57, 22 May 2007 (CDT)

Double Contact by James White

You're right, it looks suspicious. At first I thought Amazon might have misused the paperback picture for the hardcover - they do for the "look inside" feature - but all the books at Abebooks and Alibris indicate it's the same picture on both anyway. Drop Dana Carson a note and ask for a double-check - I don't actually own either edition. (I'll pick up the paperback myself at some point, but not the hardcover - I don't have room for many of those.) BLongley 13:35, 23 May 2007 (CDT)

Alan Dean Foster's Mission to Moulokin

Your submission to update this edition of the novel removes all US printing info to create an exclusively Canadian edition. Or did you intend to clone it to create a Canadian edition? Otherwise, you'd be over-writing all previous data. Mhhutchins 20:07, 26 May 2007 (CDT)

Also there's something I've been meaning to ask you for awhile. You often change publications with "Ballantine Del Rey" into "del Rey". I believe that the former is the standard name for this imprint. And I've never seen a book from this imprint as "del Rey". I know it gets its name from the author/editor/publisher Lester del Rey, but every book I have from this publisher is "A Del Rey Book / Ballantine Books". What is the reasoning behind changing the name? Just wondering. Mhhutchins 20:22, 26 May 2007 (CDT)

There may have been a US edition with the same ISBN and the price as indicated. Creating a new Canadian edition would leave the original edition just in case. I'll leave your submission on hold until a more experienced moderator can help make a decision on how to handle the situation. Mhhutchins 20:32, 26 May 2007 (CDT)

Well, we already have a verified US edition with the same ISBN and $1.95 price and then we have an unverified January 1981 Ballantine printing priced at $2.50. The latter looks like it may have come from a used book dealer, so perhaps we could ask on the Verification board and see if anybody has that printing? FWIW, I don't have any paperback copies, but I have the SFBC hardcover in my collection, which I have just verified. Ahasuerus 21:34, 26 May 2007 (CDT)

re: The Del Rey thing. Did Del Rey (the publisher imprint) ever exist independent of Ballantine? I have been entering these as "Del Rey / Ballantine" assuming it's possible there are "Del Rey" publications that do not include "Ballantine." Marc Kupper (talk) 18:13, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

No, the Del Rey imprint came about when Judy-Lynn del Rey was hired by Ballantine to run their sciencefiction line, and Lester del Rey shortly after to run their fantasy line, which had been a little sparse since the end of the "Adult Fantasy" series. -DES ^Talk 10:49, 20 Feb 2008 (CST)

Dying Man=Dio

Sorry about the reject. I saw your very next submission was creating the variant. Thanks. Mhhutchins 10:28, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

Keith Laumer

Well, I have almost all of Laumer's SF (aside from a couple of media tie-ins) and I would be happy to help, but the limiting factor, as always, is my access to the collection. I will be on the road again starting Sunday and won't be back until the end of June. If you want to try to clean up his short stories based on Contento and other secondary sources in June, I can do a verification pass when I briefly have access on June 30. Perhaps you could ask other folks for help in the meantime? Ahasuerus 23:18, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

Thanks! :) Ahasuerus 23:42, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

I've got half-a-shelf of Laumer, so feel free to ask for some help from me. I may not be ABLE to (if they're the wrong pubs) but I'm willing to help in special projects. (I get easily bored if I do things in logical order.) BLongley 18:35, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

OK, I rechecked last night, but after only 1 new verification all I've really added is cover-art. :-/ I may order some more though - they're fairly cheap, and as one pub fell apart in my hands I need to replace a few with more durable copies anyway, for the future days when I'll have time to actually read them. BLongley 12:45, 8 Jun 2007 (CDT)