ISFDB:Community Portal/Archive/Archive51

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Expanded archive listing

Elsie Young, Author of 'The Secret of Yesterday Hills', (1990[?])

I am attempting to contact Elsie Young. I can find nothing on Google. I am merely wishing to gain her permission to use some extracts from 'The Secret of Yesterday Hills' as a teaching resource. Noel McDonough noelpam@gmail.com 0403 354 619 (Australia)

I am afraid we are a bibliographic database and, as such, are not the best place to contact authors. If an author has a publicly disclosed email address, we add it to our "author record", but other than that we rarely have a way to contact anyone. Ahasuerus 14:07, 2 July 2021 (EDT)

There are a few references online, like this, https://www.bookdepository.com/Spectrum-Blue-Recommended-for-9-11-Yrs-Secret-Yesterday-Hills-Elsie-Young/9780729509015, to that title being published by Pascal Press (possibly a reprint since it says Harcourt elsewhere), and this, https://books.google.com/books?id=qdM-o833ZWQC, also published by Pascal Press, has extracts including from Yesterday Hills. It also gives Pascal's address, PO Box 250, Glebe NSW 2037, and their phone #, (02) 8585 4044, and their website, www.pascalpress.com.au. Their website is on Archive.org going back to 1998 and they're still alive today, so Pascal would likely be the ones to give permission. There's so many people named Elsie Young online who knows if any of them are this author. --Username 14:48, 2 July 2021 (EDT)

Alphabetical Sorting

I was working with Edgar Rice Burroughs' bibliography sorted alphabetically, and I discovered something surprising. The sort appears to order upper case letters before lower case letters. For example, "Tarzan Triumphant" is sorted before "Tarzan and 'The Foreign Legion'". It's certainly a valid way of sorting (all uppercase before all lowercase), but, to me, was unexpected. How do others expect the ordering? I'll also raise a second issue while we're on the subject of sorting, though I suspect it would be more complicated to change. If initial articles could be ignored, that would be easier to work with. It's not that big a deal in the author bibliographies, but navigating the magazine directory for TH is maybe getting a bit unwieldy. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 07:36, 2 July 2021 (EDT)

Let me check what the software does internally... Ahasuerus 12:29, 2 July 2021 (EDT)

It turns out that it was a bug. Normally, when the ISFDB software retrieves data from the database, the sorting happens within the database, which is configured to sort English characters in a case-insensitive manner. However, the alphabetical page is a bit different. For performance reasons, it queries the database twice -- once to get all matching canonical titles and then again to get all matching variant titles. The software then combines the two sets of titles and re-sorts the results. It was that last operation, re-sorting, that was done in a case-sensitive fashion. The bug has been fixed, so everything should be back to normal. (For values of "normal" which exclude non-English characters, but that's a whole different can of worms.)

Re: ignoring initial titles, you are right that it would be more difficult to change. Ahasuerus 13:35, 2 July 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for fixing the bibliography sort. I'm used to articles being included, so no worries on the other. Thanks again. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:10, 2 July 2021 (EDT)

Bunn

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?119021; Mr. Bunn's 2012 collection Creeping Stones was entered here in 2014, but not the contents. I did that today, but it was a bit tough. Many stories were already here and could be imported, but many were not. Knowing it was unlikely he wrote so many new stories, I checked bibliography on his website, cullenbunn.com, and saw that almost all were reprints from online zines or genre publications too obscure even for ISFDB. Most had dates, but a couple did not, so I had to trawl through his archived site for 1 story and got the date for the other from a scant couple of mentions on Google, 1 from a French (?) site that listed it as a potential nominee for a 2007 Stoker Award, and the other from an old March 2006 horror.org newsletter mentioning the publisher of the chapbook where the story appeared, NAKED SNAKE. I tweeted Mr. Bunn to ask if he could verify the info I entered, but who knows if he'll respond or if he even remembers exact info anymore. Weird thing is that the publisher of Creeping Stones, Evileye Books, had a website, evileyebooks.com, which is archived, but ends with "robots.txt" a year before Creeping Stones was published. On a related note, 1 of the last mentions before they went dark was Bunn's novel, Crooked Hills, which has a preorder page in Feb. 2011 and then apparently was published in Fall 2011. ISFDB, however, lists publisher for that book as Earwig Press. Looking on Google, Bunn's Wikipedia page mentions it was published by Earwig Press/Evileye Books. So maybe Earwig was an imprint? If anyone owns a copy of either of these books and can verify titles for Creeping Stones (and add page numbers for each story and check if there's a "first publication" page to see if dates match with ones entered here) or verify which publisher is listed for Crooked Hills, that would be great. --Username 12:19, 2 July 2021 (EDT)

Hands Across America

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1602608; https://thebedlamfiles.com/fiction/the-coming-self-destruction-of-the-usa/; I added cover to Souvenir months ago, but Grove eludes me, and I stumbled across Bedlam Files page with different and creepy cover by Panther; anyone here who can add Grove cover or find out whether that Panther is an earlier or later edition? ISBN on cover is same for both, but they had a habit of using different covers when they reprinted. --Username 20:17, 2 July 2021 (EDT)

Different Penguins

Did some fixing for O. Sitwell's Triple Fugue, noticed editor used wrong cover from a later reprint, replaced with right one, checked all 1940 Penguin books here and saw the difference; on older book the penguin logo is standing straight and tall, while later logo has him bent over. When exactly they changed it (and why) is unknown. --Username 22:00, 3 July 2021 (EDT)

Elvira Nude

https://www.amazon.com/Scream-Queens-Very-Best-Society/dp/B001VC6D16; there are 3 books on ISFDB by Drake Publishers, all non-fiction, and they published a lot of other textbooks and such. They were bought out by a guy who owned a bunch of "adult" magazines like Playgirl and High Society, and many years later they were busted for the biggest online credit card fraud case in history. That's not relevant here, but that Amazon link is; apparently in 1991 High Society, a hardcore pornographic magazine, published a horror issue?!? I assume the Elvira shots the cover refers to were taken from 1 of the R-rated movies Cassandra Peterson made in the 70's before she became "Elvira". I wonder if anyone here will admit to owning a copy of this and find out if there's any short stories, interviews, etc. that can be entered here? --Username 11:58, 7 July 2021 (EDT)

Náhuatl

Is it possible to add Náhuatl to the list of available languages? John Scifibones 12:16, 7 July 2021 (EDT)

As per this rule, "only ISO 639-2-recognized languages are supposed to be added to the ISFDB". It so happens that "Nahuatl languages" is an ISO 639-2-recognized group of languages, so we can add it. FR 1421 has been created. Please note that non-English characters are currently not supported in language names, so it will be called "Nahuatl languages" within the ISFDB database. Ahasuerus 12:42, 7 July 2021 (EDT)

Thank you John Scifibones 12:48, 7 July 2021 (EDT)

Done -- Tsintatak has been updated. Ahasuerus 15:16, 7 July 2021 (EDT)

AML Award

Can we add "AML Award" to the list of awards? It's a non-genre award that (over the years, since 1975) has given various category awards to around 100 different genre works and authors/editors. It's a juried award, given by a panel of judges. You can read more here. I'll populate it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:29, 8 July 2021 (EDT)

Looks good to me. Ahasuerus 20:43, 8 July 2021 (EDT)

New Award Type has been created. Populate away! Ahasuerus 18:49, 15 July 2021 (EDT)

Will do. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:29, 16 July 2021 (EDT)

All entered up to the most recent awards given in June 2021. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:18, 2 August 2021 (EDT)

Thanks! Ahasuerus 15:47, 2 August 2021 (EDT)

Horror Shorts

When I discovered The Internet Archive a few years ago, 1 of the great things about it was all the horror fiction that can't be found on modern websites. I thought it would be cool to keep a running tally of Archive links I add to ISFDB records, so I'll start today with a great story I read a while back, https://web.archive.org/web/20190323143104/http://kentbrewster.com/flowsnakes/. It's from the sci-fi/horror zine Aberrations in 1995. Weird thing is that his website seemed to end in 2019 and then was taken over by a brewing company, because his last name is Brewster. That archived page seems to be the last working link to this story on the web. --Username 19:46, 8 July 2021 (EDT)

Unfortunately, it happens fairly often -- domain registration expires and then some other company picks it up. It makes our (and SFE3's) links to third party sites more ephemeral than we would like them to be :-( Ahasuerus 20:45, 8 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20060614191255/http://www.joecliffordfaust.com/library/tools.html; I remember reading this story years ago, but trying to find the archived page was tough because Mr. Faust seemed to change the layout of his website over and over again; finally found it, and there's only 2 archived pages, so this is a rare one. --Username 20:53, 8 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20070411162353/www.buried.com/features/ellies_boy.pdf; Buried.com used to be a major horror news site, and also included some horror fiction; there's still a page on Google with some fiction, http://www.buried.com/features/novels.shtml, but the archived page includes others that don't exist online anymore. Rio Youers became a major horror/fantasy writer, but Ellie's Boy was published nearly 10 years before any of his work on ISFDB, and apparently he gave Buried.com permission to reprint it as a PDF, which is good because finding much info for it nowadays is almost impossible, not even a cover image. --Username 23:36, 8 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20040210222345/http://johnrosenman.hypermart.net/excerpts.htm; in addition to some excerpts, link includes 2 complete stories, "Eyes of the Leopard" and "The Blue of Her Hair, The Gold of Her Eyes", both Stoker Award contenders. "Eyes..." is from one of Lone Wolf's CD-only anthologies and wasn't entered here so I entered it. --Username 11:46, 9 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20071211164058/http://www.steveharris.razorgang.com/escapefromdoughnutcity.htm; https://web.archive.org/web/20071211164123/http://www.steveharris.razorgang.com/lonelyhearts.htm; https://web.archive.org/web/20010421142515/http://www.imaginary-worlds.com/authors/harris-lh.html; https://web.archive.org/web/20010422074315/http://www.imaginary-worlds.com/authors/harris-rg.html; Harris wrote a bunch of fat horror novels in the 1990's, 1 of which was published by Tor in America, but he also wrote a few short stories. Imaginary Worlds published a few books, and their old website featured some fiction, including the 2 long stories linked above. "Lonely Hearts" was in 3 British publications but never made it to America (not sure if Harris updated it for his website so I included both links), and "Razor Girl" is possibly original since there's not a mention of it anywhere online; however, there's a link on ISFDB to Harris' old website, razorgang.com, and that phrase is mentioned a few times in the story, so who knows if there's a series of "Razor" stories out there somewhere on the web. Also, there's this on his site, https://web.archive.org/web/20021203053909/http://www.razorgang.com/books/Switch/freeswitch.html, which offers an unpublished novel for free; however, clicking the MS Reader version takes you to another page where you're supposed to right-click and download the book, but there's a scary "HUGE DOMAINS" in place of the cover and it's in .lit format, which probably won't even work on modern computers. If anyone wants to try it, there it is. --Username 14:59, 9 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20010305075903/http://www.larrysantoro.com:80/god.html; https://web.archive.org/web/20011219150255/http://www.larrysantoro.com/hoor.html; Santoro's novel Just North of Nowhere is a fix-up novel which includes 3 old stories as chapters in somewhat different form, as Smashwords' copy says; those links are for 2 of the original stories. Sadly, ""What Do You Know of the Land of Death?" Said Clown One Night to the Haunted Boy" eluded me. --Username 13:59, 10 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/19970401014639/http://www.sff.net/people/Ben_Adams/moving.htp; more a sad mood piece than horror, but it's from Midnight Journeys, a 1995 small-press anthology with only a couple of copies available on Worldcat, so most people probably haven't read it. --Username 13:08, 11 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20020324201715/http://www.users.bigpond.com/pilotage/mainstream.html; Chris Kenworthy published 3 small-press anthologies in the early-mid 1990's, "slipstream" being the buzzword back then, when they were actually pretentious twaddle masquerading as horror fiction. His first anthology, The Sun Rises Red, not only has an unbearable left-wing intro but he filled nearly half the contents with his own stories. 2 of the stories were picked for Best New Horror 4, but that was more of an attempt to balance out the real horror stories with "literary" horror. However, as usual, Nicholas Royle, despite being a fine writer with many mainstream works, never forgot how to write a good horror story, and "The Mainstream" doesn't seem to have been reprinted anywhere, so enjoy reading this creepy tale. The intro and the 2 reprinted stories are also on that site if you really must read them. --Username 19:14, 12 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/19990502075614/http://members.aol.com/Horrorman1/horrorman1.html; Mr. Lucier edited a popular online zine, Alternate Realities, many years ago, and in 2011 had an e-book, Night Walk, which collected 13 stories, most of which are on that link above (there's also a Night Walk 2, but most of the stories in that one eluded me, although I found a couple on Alternate Realities hiding in the giant mess the site exists as on archive.org; 1 story didn't even show until I highlighted the text on the page); not great stories or anything, but some are enjoyable (especially "The Curse of Thoueris", which Lucier reprinted under his preferred title "PENIS OF THE BABOON"), and most come from very obscure magazines or online zines, some of which are not on ISFDB; the only problem is 1 story in Night Walk isn't mentioned anywhere, but since I printed those stories a few years ago the Amazon page for Night Walk dropped its "Look Inside", and the cached Google page has it but it doesn't work. I think the story had "Pigs" in the title, so if anyone has Kindle Unlimited and can read it for free, could you check and see if that story has any mention of where it came from? https://www.amazon.com/Night-Walk-Thirteen-Tales-Unexpected-ebook/dp/B004JF4MYW --Username 00:08, 14 July 2021 (EDT)

Just added 3 story links from here, https://web.archive.org/web/20000129143919/http://www.dragonsoup.com/PeepTom/stuarthughes.html. Hughes was editor of the long-running erotic horror zine Peeping Tom, and his 1997 collection Ocean Eyes is very hard to find. 2 of the stories are from Ocean Eyes while "Are You Sure" wasn't in Ocean Eyes or reprinted as far as I can tell. I didn't add "Clock's Runnin', Mister" or "In His Own Way" since both are on Infinity Plus, which still exists online (and "...Way" is just a 100-word drabble anyway), while "Pay Back Time" is still on stuarthughes.webs.com. "Sweet Laura" is interesting, though, because the few mentions on Google include the fact that a massive anthology titled The Dark Heart of Peeping Tom was published by theExaggeratedPress in 2014 and Google Books has a copy with limited preview. "Sweet Laura" is in there although not part of the preview, and there are many other stories from the pages of Peeping Tom. This book is not on ISFDB, and although I didn't add a link for Hughes' collaboration with D.F. Lewis (because there are hundreds of Lewis stories floating around the web), Hughes and Lewis published a book of their collaborations in 2012, Busy Blood, also from theExaggeratedPress and also not on ISFDB. That publisher only has 4 books on ISFDB, so I'm guessing there's a lot more than these 2 books missing. --Username 09:03, 15 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20111103005338/http://www.paulgtremblay.com/cyoexcerpt.htm; the excerpt is "The Jar" from Brainbox II, a scarce 2001 anthology that was 1 of those electronic/print publications so popular in the late 1990s/early 2000s. However, it was reprinted in Tremblay's 2004 collection Compositions for the Young and Old, which had an odd history, being reprinted a year later by the same publisher with new cover art, a new intro, and some adding/dropping of stories. Both editions are on Google Books (although the new edition isn't on ISFDB). Also weird is that paulgtremblay.com doesn't exist online anymore but Tremblay's TRIPOD site, pgtremblay.tripod.com, still does. Finally, the first story in both editions, "Perfect", which comes from another scarce anthology, 2003's Vivisections, can be read at Google Books in the previews, and is a chilling story about a boy who seeks attention after his mom has another baby and will do ANYTHING to get it. --Username 15:02, 16 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20010716104416/http://www.sff.net/people/jrussell/babyjune.htm; https://web.archive.org/web/19970103002106/http://sff.net/people/jrussell/prolog.htm; 1st link is for one of Russell's Marty Burns stories, while the 2nd is the censored prologue from Russell's 1996 novel Blood. I also found info from Fantastic Fiction that his 2001 novel Brown Harvest was supposed to be published by St. Martin's but was dropped due to content after advice from lawyers; Russell started his career writing nasty splatter stories as "J.S. Russell" so it's not surprising. --Username 19:09, 16 July 2021 (EDT)

Found a mention in ISFDB Notes that a story by the late J.F. Gonzalez, Tattoos, was published on 1000delights.com, so I found and added that link, https://web.archive.org/web/20030605024658/http://www.1000delights.com/stories/tattoos.shtml. There's a story behind this, since 1000 Delights was an "adult" site (not sure if it was just nudes or X-rated stuff) that sent out requests for genre stories in the early 2000s without telling writers what kind of zine they were sending their work to. You can still find a few mentions online today where people complain about that situation. There's several dozen stories archived, although a few that are mentioned in online bibliographies aren't there; I get the feeling when they shut down the site in the mid-2000's they just dumped whatever they had without any quality control, since some of the biographies don't match up with the person who wrote the story. However, among the lame or outright terrible stories are many that were written by well-known or soon-to-be well-known authors. Some of those are just as bad as the unknown writers' stories, but there are some gems among them, some of them erotic horror and some just plain old horror, with a few SF and fantasy tales mixed in. If you visit the archived site, only click links from 2003-2005, because links from 2001-2002 are the old "adult" site and later links from 2010 onwards seem to have been bought up by an antivirus company. --Username 19:56, 16 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20090813150000/http://thomastessier.blog.com/2006/02/; https://web.archive.org/web/20090814184201/http://thomastessier.blog.com/2008/12/01/something-small-and-gray-and-quick/#comments; Mr. Tessier's blog is still online but looks nothing like his old blog, and stories don't seem to be there anymore. Archived site is tough to search because most pages are titled by date so you have to go month by month, but I found those 2 stories above. The first was published on his site before its 2007 anthology appearance and was reprinted in his collection World of Hurt, but contents were never entered on ISFDB so that was a surprise, and the second appeared in a charity horror anthology not on ISFDB, https://patientcreature.livejournal.com/5111.html, and was reprinted in his collection Remorseless, but those contents were never entered either. So finding these stories will lead to 3 other books having their contents entered on ISFDB. UPDATE: turns out as I entered contents of Remorseless from Amazon Look Inside, several stories had their name changed for some reason, and one titled 10-31-2001 says it's from Tessier's blog. Turns out I didn't go all the way to the very end of his old blog and hiding in a post for Halloween 2010 was another story, https://web.archive.org/web/20110511085337/http://www.thomastessier.blog.com/. This one also had its name changed but Remorseless' copyright page didn't bother to mention that; the link for the individual post doesn't work so the story, The Saddest Halloween, is halfway down the page. Not prime Tessier, but there's no trace of it online, so enjoy. --Username 14:18, 17 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20121130060700/http://www.m-s-tem.com/mfic3a.htm; the late Melanie Tem had 2 shorts on her website with her husband, Steve Rasnic Tem; stevetem.com still exists, but the Free Fiction page dropped her story written for the old site, "The Dancing Doll". Earliest archived page is December 1999, so it's old. ISFDB has it reprinted in a 2004 Spanish anthology, Paura, which oddly has Spanish language writers except for Tem and a 1992 story by Michael Arnzen; searching online reveals it was also published in In Delirium II, a horror anthology from Delirium Books which is not on ISFDB (nor is the first volume). So there's another 2 books to be entered. UPDATE: Mr. Tem changes his free story around Christmas, and last year's, "Smoke in a Bottle", is in a few books on ISFDB, none of them easy to find, so here's a link, https://web.archive.org/web/20201220064606/http://stevetem.com/free-fiction/. --Username 13:20, 18 July 2021 (EDT)

I added Jay Woelfel's website to his record; he's known for his horror movies, but published a few stories years ago. This section, https://www.jaywoelfel.com/index.php/writings/, contains 2, the first a children's SF story from a non-genre magazine, but the second, Self-Made Man, is a gross "body horror" tale. What's interesting is it says it's from Greg Gifune's old zine The Edge but the story is not on ISFDB. Turns out of the 20 issues only 14 were entered here, which is usually a sign that philsp.com didn't have the info, but in this case they have info for all issues. I entered rest of contents for #6 and fixed some info for #6 and #7, but some of the higher issues need info fixed and of course those missing issues should be entered. --Username 20:34, 19 July 2021 (EDT)

Here's an odd case: Greg Gifune published a short story collection in 2001, Heretics, from Delirium Books. Their books were usually limited editions and very hard to find, and this one only had 250 copies. The long title story was published as an e-book years later so that's no problem, but the other stories are scattered in ancient websites. I found one on the old Delirium Books website, where they excerpted 1 free story from some of their books, but unlike the other stories, Gifune's "The Uncertainty of Darkness" wasn't coded properly and is a wonderful mess. However, I believe the full story is on the page, https://web.archive.org/web/20020128223130/http://www.deliriumbooks.com:80/stories/uncertainty.htm, but it takes a bit of work to read it. At the bottom of the page is the beginning of the story, from "Dull blue neon..." to "He knew what lay beyond it,". For the rest of the story, you have to go to the top of the page and highlight the text, revealing the rest from "and wondered if the faces there would be the same." to "But deep down, somewhere just beyond the pale of clarity�he could not be certain." No sense adding this broken page to ISFDB, but I thought I'd share it here. Of course, if anyone knows another site with this story, feel free to share. UPDATE: Well what do you know. I remembered reading a discussion on some old site about how Delirium had to move to their own server because their earlier one objected to some of their content. Searched it, found link to Gifune's story, and it appeared in all its properly coded glory here: https://web.archive.org/web/20010510082727/http://members.kconline.com/deliriumbooks/stories/uncertainty.htm. UPDATE: https://web.archive.org/web/20050530232901/http://deliriumbooks.com:80/stories/down_to_sleep.pdf; a story from Gifune's first collection Down to Sleep, "The Raincatchers". The reason why it's on Delirium's website is because they released a very limited edition hardcover in 2004 with 3 extra stories, new intro, and new cover art, but that edition isn't on ISFDB. Also, while doing some edits for Gifune books, I found, on the much-missed DarkFuse site, a PDF (the only 1 on the entire site) for Gifune's "Restoration". There's a story by that name in his collection Heretics, so I assume this is the same; here's a link: https://web.archive.org/web/20121119031515/http://www.darkfuse.com:80/Restoration.pdf. Only the first 44 pages are the story itself, while the rest is mostly a long excerpt from 1 of Gifune's novels, The Bleeding Season. --Username 20:27, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20020212005831/http://www.deliriumbooks.com/stories/dancing.htm; Barbara Malenky wrote a bunch of horror stories in the 1990s and 2000s, but Human Oddities, a chapbook from Delirium, was apparently her only publication. If their hardcovers are rare I can only imagine this is almost impossible to find, so at least now 1 story can be read. The real reason I mentioned her, though, is because I found a cover for her chapbook, the only cover image online as far as I can tell, http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Image:HMNDDTSXVV2000.jpg. It reminds me of The Manster, a 1959 American/Japanese horror movie where a man grows another head ON HIS SHOULDER; https://monsterreviewsmovie.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/manster.jpg?w=720. --Username 00:07, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20111006191711/http://www.keithminnion.com/storage/its_for_you.pdf; Keith Minnion is an artist who also published some SF and horror stories; his 2011 collection It's For You is still on his archived homepage, which doesn't exist online anymore. It was PV here by "Kminnion", so he added his own book in early 2018, was asked by moderator to provide cover image, and then never responded. I see in Edit History that I added the cover months ago, so now it's complete. Oddly, when I exported contents from the 2019 reprint, 1 story was missing, "Room to Let", even though it's there in Amazon Look Inside, so I added it to both. --Username 15:06, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Added several links from here, https://web.archive.org/web/20030410191207/http://www.dusksite.ukgo.com:80/fiction.php. Many I didn't add because they're still online or in collections, but many are nowhere to be found. Also, some are original to the site, with a much earlier publication date than their ISFDB records. Site is a mess, however, because there are some stories that have a 2001 archived page when the site first started while others don't, searching the summary on Archive.org reveals a few exist as PDF's, some links lead to Freeola pages (apparently the site's web host), etc. --Username 12:50, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20010725051115/http://blackfuneral.tripod.com:80/issues/apr01/harder_bevvincent.html; Mr. Vincent's website has a full list of his fiction but his early story "Harder" only has an entry for the British mag Peep Show. Remembering that I printed the story off the web a few years ago, I knew something was missing, so I went to the archives, and for some reason his current bibliography dropped the story's original appearance on a very lo-fi website called Dark Funeral. Also, his well-known story "Harming Obsession" has a 2002 date on ISFDB but originally appeared in 2000 in a long-running but now dead online zine, The Harrow; since Google search for theharrow.com includes words like Cialis and Viagra, I instead added a link to its Storytellers Unplugged reprint, https://web.archive.org/web/20071031010423/http://www.storytellersunplugged.com/2007/10/17/harming-obsession/, where he cleaned it up a bit and improved it. UPDATE: I tweeted Mr. Vincent to inform him I added the link for "Harder" to ISFDB and he responded almost immediately to thank me and tell me he added it back to the fiction credits on his website. Cool, although he said it's not one of his favorite stories because it's nasty, which is certainly true. --Username 23:51, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20021006015728/http://www.johndharvey.com:80/frames/main/m_fiction.htm; Mr. Harvey had a novel published by Arkham House in their waning days, but also wrote a few stories. Hornsby is mistitled as Hornby on ISFDB, the Mindmares cover is not found online, and the poem is by John Harvey on ISFDB, a different person entirely. So title fixed, cover added, and name changed. Finding these archived fictions inadvertently helps to fix a lot of other stuff here. There's 3 archived fiction pages, with each one giving a different date for the forthcoming release of his novel, the last being September, and ISFDB says it was published in October. Also, be quick clicking the links, because after a little while the page goes to a 404 page for a "John D. Harvey, Blacksmith". --Username 11:53, 24 July 2021 (EDT)

Not really horror, but the very rare 1920 book by Laurence Housman, Gods and Their Makers and Other Stories, had the title story published earlier as a separate novel, and there's a link to it on archive.org, while "The Blind God" was reprinted in 2 anthologies, 1 of them recent and easy to find. However, the other stories were not found until I discovered that the great blog, A Shiver in the Archives, reprinted "Let Us Make Gods" earlier this year, while "Little Saint Oogh", which had a 1920 date on ISFDB, is actually from 1908, and was hiding on Google Books in an obscure magazine. So the book is now readable with the exception of "The Miracle-Worker", which shows no trace anywhere online (except ISFDB). So if anyone can find any site with that story, the entire book will be completely readable. --Username 19:49, 4 August 2021 (EDT)

https://www.salon.com/2000/10/31/embraces/; added page # to Vermifuge, a 2001 collection by Lorelei Shannon, then went to her archived site. Added "Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go", an ELVIS HORROR STORY, but also saw a mention that another story, "Virgin Spring", ran into trouble for content after it appeared in Salon magazine. The link to Salon's site takes you to 1 of those awful deals you saw a lot of in the old days of the internet, where they'd break a story up into separate pages to increase the traffic. All 3 pages worked, which is a miracle in itself, but the art at the top was broken. Checking the modern web, I was shocked to see that not only is Salon's site still around, but "Virgin Spring" is alive and well, with all of it on 1 page and the art on full display. So read it and find out why it was so controversial. --Username 23:40, 4 August 2021 (EDT)

Redsine Magazine published many print issues but switched for a while in the early 2000's to online issues; their archived site is a huge mess, but I've been adding links on ISFDB to stories I've found. However, there's a Brian Stableford story, "And Justify The Ways Of God To Men", which was never reprinted according to his online bibliography at philsp.com, which is a shock because the dude published a ton of collections. So here's a link since the story's not on ISFDB; https://web.archive.org/web/20010907031430/http://www.redsine.com/archives/four/fa-4.html. --Username 14:06, 6 August 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20130810140849/http://www.swanriverpress.ie/reader/srpr.pdf; Swan River publishes very limited edition books, so this PDF sampler is very welcome. The Parker story was reprinted in Best New Horror, but the other stories are not easy to find, and some of them are on ISFDB in books not published by Swan River, so there seem to be some missing books here from them. --Username 13:43, 7 August 2021 (EDT)

Tim Pratt's Flytrap 'zine published 10 issues through 2008, then Kickstarted a final issue many years later. No link on ISFDB, but I found it, https://web.archive.org/web/20160404111134/http://www.tropismpress.com/?m=201403. All stories are readable. --Username 15:32, 7 August 2021 (EDT)

https://web.archive.org/web/20040627142451/http://www.sjoanpopek.com/freebook/purity.pdf; Douglas Clegg published a short novel, Purity, in 2000 as a Cemetery Dance Novella. He offered it for free later, but modern web only mentions it on scary spyware sites. Only legit site I can find is Issuu.com, but they don't allow you to download it. That linked PDF lets you download it. --Username 10:37, 9 August 2021 (EDT)

Norman Partridge published a chapbook, Red Right Hand, in 1998 from Subterranean and it was quickly reprinted in the anthology Subterranean Gallery, followed a couple of years later by Partridge's collection The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists. 20 years later, and it doesn't seem to have been reprinted again, but I found it as a free fiction here, https://web.archive.org/web/20100801025842/http://www.normanpartridge.com:80/fiction14.htm. Partridge's intro for the expanded Subterranean edition of his first collection Mr. Fox is also available, https://web.archive.org/web/20111002011035/http://normanpartridge.com/nonfiction2.htm. --Username 11:28, 16 August 2021 (EDT)

Ronald Kelly offered lots of free stories on his site ronaldkelly.com which can only be found on the archived version, so I've been adding them to ISFDB. Most are old reprints (some of them quite good-"Consumption" is really gross!), but as time went on he started offering more recent stories and also new ones. One story, "Delayed Reaction", seems not to have been published, being written as 1 of a series of personalized stories Kelly did for customers of Cemetery Dance. There seems to be almost no info online about it except for this, https://forum.cemeterydance.com/forum/authors-sections/ronald-kelly/page5, but it's too good to let go to waste, especially as it concerns the events of 9/11, which in a creepy coincidence happens to be the 20th anniversary of today, so here it is: https://web.archive.org/web/20111001024010/http://www.ronaldkelly.com:80/sample.html. --Username 15:51, 11 September 2021 (EDT)

Another ELVIS HORROR STORY; https://web.archive.org/web/20010423160741/http://www.twilighttales.com:80/King.html. Thank you, thank you very much. --Username 14:07, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

Sébastien Doubinsky Canonical name

The name Seb Doubinsky had been used almost exclusively since 2013 and the numbers had flipped at some point. Unless someone disagrees or we have a good reason to keep the canonical name as is (which I am missing), I will be switching the canonical name this weekend. Annie 20:26, 12 July 2021 (EDT)

New Amazon service - Kindle Vella

As many of you know, the number of Web sites which let authors serialize their works online has been steadily climbing. Certain sites are limited to fan fiction while others host a mix of fan fiction and original content, but they all tend to be heavily SFnal. Some of the more popular English language sites include:

• Fanfiction.net
• Archive of Our Own
• Space Battles
• Sufficient Velocity
• Royal Road
• Webnovel.com
• Lots of sites dedicated to translating East Asian serials

Some are 100% free, some require login, some require payment to access premium content, etc. Authors who post their stories for free often set up Patreon or comparable accounts.

Amazon is the latest entrant into this growing field. Their service is called "Kindle Vella" and you can find the official Help pages here. It's currently limited to US-base customers, but the emphasis appears to be on "currently".

I don't think this needs to have an immediate impact on our Inclusion Policy, but it's something to keep an eye on going forward. Ahasuerus 12:23, 14 July 2021 (EDT)

How should we enter them? They are SERIALs, but without a clear container (like a MAGAZINE or similar). What should we put as the container for them since SERIALs shouldn't be entered separately. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:57, 15 July 2021 (EDT)

Actually - we have a type for it - Chapbooks - that's exactly why we extended the type to allow Serials a few months (years?) ago. Annie 12:22, 15 July 2021 (EDT)

Yup -- "The SERIAL title type is to be used when a work is serialized across multiple chapbooks (2018-11-29). Ahasuerus 13:14, 15 July 2021 (EDT)

I guess that fell out of my brain. Thanks! (^_^) ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:30, 15 July 2021 (EDT)

New Web page: Publications for Author X Published by Publisher Y

A new Web page, Publications for Author X Published by Publisher Y, has been added. For example, here is Publications for Author Lilith Saintcrow Published by Orbit (US). The page can be accessed from the recently implemented "Authors for Publisher Y" page, e.g. this one.

Please let me know if the way the stats and the pubs are sorted on the new page makes sense. Ahasuerus 22:35, 14 July 2021 (EDT)

That's kinda cool. :) ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:35, 15 July 2021 (EDT)

Hopefully, the new Web pages will help editors and moderators determine what kind of publisher/author they are dealing with -- self-publisher, indie publisher, "group publisher", etc. Ahasuerus 17:23, 16 July 2021 (EDT)

Language addition automated

In the past, adding a new language required developer intervention. We now have a new menu option which lets an ISFDB Bureaucrat create and approve a regular submission to add new language.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the last type of regular database activity that required developer intervention. From now on, even if a developer is not available, ISFDB moderators and bureaucrats should be able to perform needed activities.

I have also created a new Help page, Help:Screen:BureaucratMenu, which lists the menu options currently restricted to ISFDB Bureaucrats. Please let me know if you have any questions. Ahasuerus 17:20, 16 July 2021 (EDT)

Sax Rohmer Mystery

Rohmer's The Dream Detective has a Doubleday edition on ISFDB and Bat Wing has a Doubleday and a McKinlay, Stone & Mackenzie, but archive.org has readable copies of both and they say McKinlay... on title page but are copyrighted to Doubleday. Bat Wing's McKinlay... record on ISFDB says, "Tuck does not note this edition", and that's probably because there is no separate edition, McKinlay being the same as Doubleday. Rohmer's bibliography is almost as complex as Edgar Wallace's, so I don't know if this info is known or not, but I see online that many other Rohmer books have McKinlay as the publisher, but ISFDB only has Bat Wing, so some confusion there is. --Username 10:58, 18 July 2021 (EDT)

Lola

Here's something surprising; http://ashiverinthearchives.blogspot.com/2019/03/early-caitlin-r-kiernan.html. Turns out very well-known horror/fantasy author Caitlin R. Kiernan was born a male. I figured this info would be common knowledge on the web, but searching on Google for Kiernan and "Kenneth Robert Wright" together brought up only that link and https://www.riamco.org/render?eadid=US-RPB-ms.2017.008&view=biography, the latter including a reference to an article, in the Inventory section, titled "Transsexual hopes publicity will win him election". I don't know if this will require any changes to Kiernan's info on ISFDB. --Username 18:09, 18 July 2021 (EDT)

It seems to be reasonably well known; Wikipedia says:

• In their twenties, Kiernan identified as transgender and transitioned to female, further identifying as lesbian. In 2020 Kiernan stated, "I no longer consider myself transgender (or transsexual). I would say that I'm gender fluid, if I had to say anything," explaining that this was not a recognized option in the 1980s.

We don't have any biographical data for this author, so I don't think it affects our records.

At one point we discussed possibly adding a "Sex" or "Gender" field to author records, but we were not able to reach consensus, so nothing ever got implemented. Ahasuerus 16:37, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

Wiki crash - 2021-07-20

The ISFDB Wiki crashed and became inaccessible earlier this afternoon. It should be back to normal now -- please let me know if you come across anything unusual. Ahasuerus 16:31, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

I posted a new Help Desk item titled "Blaze Ward - The Last Ranger" around 12:20 PM EDT that is now missing. Do I need to recreate it? Phil 16:49, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

And my question about the Solaris US publisher is missing as well. --GlennMcG 16:51, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

When the ISFDB Wiki database -- which stores all Wiki pages and is separate from the main ISFDB database -- crashed, it apparently caused database degradation. Some Wiki pages like the Community Portal and the Help Desk got mixed together. I am currently looking into it to see whether the problems can be fixed on the fly or whether we need to restore the backups from 9:30am this morning. Ahasuerus 17:24, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

I will be taking the Wiki and the main database down for maintenance at 5:45pm EDT. Hopefully it will resolve this and related issues caused by the database crash. Ahasuerus 17:37, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

(unindent) I have fixed the immediate database problems caused by the crash and we should be back up. However, it's possible that the crash also caused other, harder to detect, problems, so we are not completely out of the woods yet. Please let me know if you see anything unusual. Ahasuerus 18:27, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

Maybe it's time again to look into updating the wiki. Maybe we can do it on a test server using a recent backup to work out any kinks? I'm happy to help with that. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:39, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

I am afraid the whole ISP-owned server crashed, not just the Wiki software, so a Wiki upgrade wouldn't have helped in this case. Ahasuerus 12:04, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Still, it looks like the upgrade is fairly straightforward given the version we are on. I'd have to look at the directory containing the wiki software to know for sure, but as long as we are above version 1.5 (we are version 1.12rc1), then it's a very simple process. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:08, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

I am certainly all for upgrading the Wiki. Unfortunately, I am not familiar with the technologies involved (PHP), so I was happy to leave it to Al when he volunteered to work on it some months ago. The only change since then has been that another developer, Klaus Elsbernd, was able to install and upgrad the Wiki software on another server -- see SR 184 for his account of the changes that he had to make. Ahasuerus 19:21, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

New server crash/reboot - 2021-07-21

It looks like the server crashed or was rebooted around midnight. After that the nightly reports didn't run at 1am and the backups (9:30am) look corrupt. This is not good.

I will be disabling all connectivity to the server and checking for database discrepancies starting at 12:20pm. Ahasuerus 12:10, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

I have checked database integrity, rerun the nightly reports and the backups. So far things look reasonably good; everything should be back up. I will be running the rest of the database checks on the development server.

If you come across any issues, please let me know. Ahasuerus 13:12, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Hello Ahasuerus. If you didn't already know if you go to a User page and click the Dioscussion tab it takes you to ISFDB Discussion Pages and Noticeboards except it has User talk: "User" as the title. Which means no one can notify PVs of any changes. I did some edits prior to the crash but assume those have now been lost in the void. --Mavmaramis 13:45, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Could you please specify which User pages have this problem? I have tried User:Mavmaramis and User:Ahasuerus and everything appears to be OK, so the problem is likely limited to a subset of User pages. Ahasuerus 14:06, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Dirk P Broer gives me the ISFDB Discussion Page and Noticeboards; Wjmvanruth gives me Cover Image Data for the 1987 Oebit edition of Major Operation. I wrote on both their talk pages prior to the crash. Cover art image for Incident on Ath is broken as well. --Mavmaramis 00:47, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

Wjmvanruth and Dirk - just adding the links and confirming that they indeed point somewhere where they should not. Ahasuerus is probably off for the night. Annie 01:05, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for the update! It looks like the Wiki "cache" table was corrupted during the crash and needs to be rebuilt. Ahasuerus 11:41, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

Rebuilding the table which I suspected was responsible for this problem (TRUNCATE mw_objectcache) didn't help. Investigating... Ahasuerus 12:12, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

I had to restore the two affected Wiki pages from their pre-crash versions. Unfortunately, User:Mavmaramis's 2021-07-20 comments about "Incident on Ath" could not be restored. Sorry about that!

I will keep looking for any other issues that may have been introduced during/after the first or second server crash. Ahasuerus 12:25, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

(unindent) I hope I'm not the first to publicly express my thanks to all those poor souls who probably have a lot less hair now as a result of "The Incident" and for their efforts to restore it all to some vague semblance of working order. That still leaves the broken cover art for Incident on Ath it won't let me re-upload it. --Mavmaramis 12:51, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

Does the problem occur when you click the "Upload new cover scan" link on that publication's page? Could you please describe the exact sequence of events that happen when you do it? Ahasuerus 13:18, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

No it occurs after that. I click "Upload new cover sscan" it goes to the upload page, I select the file, it uploads then I click "Save file" then it merely gives me a data panel for an image uploaded by User:Dirk P Broer. If I click on either of the links on the page displayed it gives me the following error mesaage "This image http: //www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/9/95/NCDNTNTHVT1981.jpg cannot be displayed, because it contains errors" the other images I've uploaded have all done so without issue. --Mavmaramis 14:11, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for the clarification! I am not sure I can fix this issue easily. Let's try the following workaround instead.

When you click "Upload new cover scan", the URL of the "Upload file" page starts with "www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Special:Upload?wpDestFile=NCDNTNTHVT1981.jpg&wpUploadDescription=", right? Could you change "wpDestFile=NCDNTNTHVT1981" to "wpDestFile=NCDNTNTHVT2081" [note 20821] manually, hit Enter and see if you can use the resulting Upload page? If it works, then we should be in good shape. If not, well, it shouldn't take more than a minute or two of your time to try. Ahasuerus 14:29, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

Right well I did as you suggested. I selected the JPG file and clicked "Upload file" then it simply goes to the Cover Image data page for the one uploaded by Dirk (again !). So no luck doing it that way. --Mavmaramis 15:49, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

When you're on the image wiki page, try clicking on the image to view just the image, then refresh your browser to see if it will load the correct image. If it does, then go back to the image wiki page and refresh there to get the correct image to appear. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:18, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

Server Maintenance - 2021-07-22

I will be taking the server down for maintenance at 12 noon. It should only take a few minutes. Ahasuerus 11:41, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

The server is back up, but the problems reported immediately above are still present. Investigating... Ahasuerus 12:10, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

The Collector, by John Fowles

What does "Kept because of touchy PV" mean, for The Collector? I'm just curious. I know that PV stands for primary verifier.--Rosab618 02:46, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

The book is out of scope and should not be in the db but we are keeping the record to keep the peace. Apparently some time after the note was added, we actually deleted the book but no one fixed the note. These two reviews need to be converted to essays and this record deleted. I will do that in the morning - too many operations to do it from the phone now. Thanks for finding it. Annie 03:47, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

I'm sorry I did. I think it should stay.--Rosab618 13:11, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

But it is a non-genre novel from an author who is not above threshold. :( I wish we were adding those as well (it will cut on the confusion with the non-speculative horror) but as the rules stand, it is not eligible. Is there anything speculative at all? If we can reclassify as genre, it stays :) Or is there a case to be made that it must stay because of the author?

And it would have been noticed sooner or later - we have been cleaning these slowly so someone would have seen it sooner or later... Annie 13:54, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

The Collector is a non-speculative thriller, so it doesn't belong in the database as long as the author is below the "threshold". BTW, we are missing Mantissa (1982), a somewhat surrealistic fantasy. I suggest we add it and add a note about its borderline nature. Ahasuerus 14:56, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

Play and Coast

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1228376; note about 3 unidentified plays, but someone added (play) to the end of 2 of them. I added (play) to the end of the 3rd one, but was rejected. Either all should say it or none; also, searching Title for (play) here revealed 74 matches, so if it's not necessary then a lot of other records should have it removed, too. Secondly, I discovered 1 of William Hope Hodgson's poems had a slightly incorrect title, Down the Long Coast missing an s at the end, but that was rejected because some other editor left a note saying they got most of the poem's titles from an online checklist. Fantlab has a 1977 Ferret Fantasy book, Poems of the Sea, which reprinted the original book Calling of the Sea, and it says "Coasts". Searching for the plural title online gets a lot more matches than the singular, so the plural is almost certainly correct, but the only way to know for sure is to look at contents page of the 1920 original. Someone here must have a copy, right? --Username 09:38, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

Vera Searles

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?43251; A few years ago I read a whole bunch of Searles' stories, which are scattered all over the web, sometimes in very obscure places, some non-genre. Recently I came across a 2002 collection by her, Tales of Dark and Light Fiction with Other Colors, not on ISFDB, nor is the publisher, Lakewood Press. Seems to be very rare, since only pages are 1 on Amazon and an eBay auction, which is where I got contents from and entered them here. However, there are some problems. Amazon gives the publisher as Morris while photo of title page on eBay clearly says Lakewood; also, while many of the stories are on ISFDB and could be imported (although 1 had a 2006 date which needed changing), many are not. That would imply they're new, but I recognize several titles from my reading years ago. Only way to know for sure is finding a copy and seeing if there's any publication history, so does anyone here own a copy? It would also help add a few page numbers since photo of contents page on eBay chopped off some at the bottom of the page; https://www.ebay.com/itm/302908715672. --Username 10:43, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

Two "Mark Harrisons"

According to his online autobiography, the artist Mark Harrison "stopped taking on illustration commissions to paint personal work for sale in UK galleries" in 2003. However, we have quite a few post-2003 covers attributed to him. It turns out that the well known comic artist Mark Harrison (1963), who is best known for his Star Wars and 2000AD comics, has been branching out and doing some cover art for related books like the Durham Red series of fiction novels set in the 2000AD universe.

It would appear that all Abaddon Books covers currently attributed to Mark Harrison were actually done by Mark Harrison (1963-) as claimed by the Star Wars Wiki. The fact that both 2000AD and Abaddon Books are owned by the same multimedia company, Rebellion, supports this claim.

Any objections to moving the Abaddon Books to Mark Harrison (1963-)? Ahasuerus 11:56, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

Chetwynd-Hayes and Love

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?2628; Amazon has a page with 1990 info, but cover is clearly much older, with a $2.25 price. There's another Amazon page for this book with a 1979 date, otherwise completely empty. So I added 1979 edition and all info possible; does anyone have a copy of any edition to verify 1979 date or provide a cover for 1990 edition? --Username 12:22, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

I have approved the submission and added the page count from OCLC. Their data comes from the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which has the same page count. Ahasuerus 12:32, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

Mortality

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?264234; when adding links to a few of Nicholas Royle's stories from the old Dusk site mentioned above, I realized his first collection has a lot of "original" stories on ISFDB that are actually reprints, some very old. No copies on archive.org and Google Books only has snippets, so if anyone has a copy of Mortality it would help to fix dates for those stories which need fixing. --Username 19:46, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

Everyman

I did a lot of editing for Stephanie Dowrick's anthology Great Tales of the Supernatural using info from here, https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/products/stephanie-dowrick-great-tales-of-the-supernatural-dent-1978-paperbacks, but afterwards it had a yellow warning because I added Everyman's Library (UK) as a publisher series. This page, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?129, shows that there's all kinds of variations, with the series I added being listed as publisher for a few, which doesn't seem right to me. Dowrick's book says it's a shorter version of her previous anthology, but has a British price even though it says U.S.A. on the copyright page. Dent, Dent/Dutton, Everyman's Library (sometimes UK, sometimes not), other publishers entirely, etc. So wherever anyone thinks the info I added to pub. series field should be moved is fine, but more importantly, Dent and their imprints are all kinds of tangled and confused, so this might be something that needs a lot of work after someone decides what the standard should be for their books. --Username 21:08, 24 July 2021 (EDT)

Heinlein Mystery

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?55749; there was an odd history for this book, explained in the note for the unpublished record here, and I noticed the published record had no page numbers. Instead of the usual places, Open Library had a rare listing of all contents with page numbers. All out of order and lots of stories, so it took a while. When I finally finished , the co-written Heinlein story had no number. Searching inside Google Books' copy didn't show any evidence of that story, either. Edit History shows no one's touched this record since Jan. 2009, and that editor is no longer active, so I don't know what to say about this, except having 1 story with no # is annoying, so maybe someone has a copy and can verify whether story's in there and add the # or if it's not and should be deleted. --Username 18:12, 26 July 2021 (EDT)

Open Library probably took the page numbers from Bill Contento's index of pre-1984 anthologies (which has apparently changed URLs yet again.) This blog has a capture of Contento's data. It confirms the page numbers and the absence of this version of "Beyond Doubt". I have approved your submission and removed the fluke title. Thanks! Ahasuerus 18:54, 26 July 2021 (EDT)

Ship or Skull?

[1]; [2]; I did a little editing for Death in the Mind, a 1945 mystery/sci-fi novel, and there's only a photo of the actual cover here, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?560562; I was going to upload the jacket, but I don't know which of those 2 covers linked above is the right one. Anyone know? --Username 12:56, 27 July 2021 (EDT)

Bones II

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?47642; had my edit rejected that changed format and cover artist; the price is obviously for an e-book, not a TP, and the "Look Inside" seems to say Mike Jansen did the cover art. Amazon e-book page has same ISBN as Amazon TP page, so someone got confused, and link above shows $2.99 is the price for other e-books by the publisher. If anyone thinks anything needs changing... --Username 14:20, 27 July 2021 (EDT)

Look Inside is a little confusing. It states "Cover art and design by Mike Jansen", but also "Art by Niall Parkinson" on the next line. Also, Amazon lists the price as $9.49 for the TP. Since it looks like the PV for the TP is very inactive (no talk page activity since 2014), and they never responded to the inquiry made back in 2014 about this very issue, I'd lean toward making the corrections. Anyone object? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:30, 27 July 2021 (EDT)

How do we know that the format is the error as opposed to the price? I wouldn't change the format which would effectively delete the paperback edition. Better to clone to create the eBook (which is what I suggested in the rejection message). --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 16:21, 27 July 2021 (EDT)

There's nowhere I can find that has the TP for that price. Ebooks generally don't have page counts, either. Everything that's entered is clearly for the TP. I agree about cloning to create the ebook. Makes things easier, anyway. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:37, 27 July 2021 (EDT)

Signet's Paper Dolls

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?20761; I added edition from copy on archive.org, cover is exactly the same as non-active PV's copy here, except for a "-451" after Signet on their cover. Archive copy is 2nd printing, copy entered on ISFDB is 4th. I don't know if it's important, but I thought I'd mention it. --Username 17:18, 27 July 2021 (EDT)

Shane Leslie (Non)Fiction

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?249379; he wrote "true" ghost collections (and some fiction, too), and Ghost Book is non-fiction on ISFDB, but several pieces were reprinted in fiction anthologies and marked as fiction here. 1 was already in contents, I imported another 1 because it was reprinted in 1961 but had a 1956 date like the collection, but there's another, The Diplomatist's Story, which has a note saying it comes from the original 1955 British edition but a copy of the 1956 American edition on eBay, https://www.ebay.com/itm/SHANE-LESLIES-GHOST-BOOK-1956-Sheed-Ward-NY-First-American-Edition-HC-DJ-/401735829151, shows all contents and that story doesn't appear. So does anyone know if titles were dropped/changed between editions, and should the story in ISFDB's contents and the 1 I imported be changed to non-fiction since that's what the book is? --Username 17:23, 27 July 2021 (EDT)

Chariot

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?3347; I think there are 3 different publishers under this banner here; 1960-1961 books are a cheapo PB house, 1978-1979 books are reprints of George MacDonald works, and 1983-1987 books are by a Christian publisher (Amazon page says Christian Adventure Series for the 1987 book). --Username 18:23, 27 July 2021 (EDT)

Hutchinson's New...

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=new+author&type=Publication+Series; all the same series, I think, but entered differently here. Anyone think they should be changed to the same for all books or not? --Username 17:31, 29 July 2021 (EDT)

Dracula Review

I think this review, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1739936, is for this not-on-ISFDB title, https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/collections/newest-shopify-test/products/christopher-lee-the-illustrated-dracula-manor-books-1975-paperbacks, not the book linked. --Username 22:30, 29 July 2021 (EDT)

Link Review changes

Post-submission/submission review pages for Link Review submissions have been changed. They now display the language of the review as well as the language of the reviewed title. Hopefully, this enhancement will make it easier to identify incorrectly linked reviews of translations. Ahasuerus 11:59, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

Nightmare

https://archive.org/details/nightmarenovel00dorn; only the 1988 PB is on ISFDB, with a "possible non-genre" tag. Reading the flaps of the original HC, it seems like a "molester chased down by angry mom" thriller, and probably isn't ISFDB-worthy. --Username 12:13, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

Reading the description, I agree. It's also the only thing by Dorner in the db here, so it doesn't qualify that way. It's been removed. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:41, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

Make Variant changes

The "Make Variant" Web page has been modified. When turning a title into a variant of a new (non-existent) record, you can now create a Title Note. Whatever you enter will appear in the new parent title's Note field. Ahasuerus 15:19, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

Awesome! Annie 15:20, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

Thank you! -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:43, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

Hopefully it will help reduce the need for follow-up submissions :-) Ahasuerus 18:15, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

Les Edwards' Bats

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?36812; fixed format and added month from gamebooks.org, and original 1984 edition's cover art predates the variant art from the German book it's linked to on ISFDB. --Username 11:26, 31 July 2021 (EDT)

Added the 1984 edition, and fixed the varianting. MagicUnk 12:18, 3 August 2021 (EDT)

Herzog

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?308687; can't find the story "The Last Dinner" in Google Books copy. Anyone own a copy who can check if that story is in the book? Worldcat mentions it, but they're not always reliable. --Username 09:50, 2 August 2021 (EDT)

Spanish Series

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?9773; the Miedaner book's English editions aren't on ISFDB, so I entered the original Coward-Mccann 1977 edition, but there are few photos online besides the cover, and the 1 photo on ebay with a photo of the back flap is blurry; the jacket art is by Vincent T-something. If anyone has a copy, the cover artist's name would be appreciated since it doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere online. Also, the De Felitta book's English editions aren't on ISFDB, either, but from the descriptions online I don't think it's ISFDB-worthy. It's about a Holocaust survivor who escapes from a mental hospital and chops up people with a cleaver. Also, another editor just uploaded 2 cover images to this series for the 2 books I mentioned, so synchronicity. --Username 11:18, 2 August 2021 (EDT)

Ordeal of Barata

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?361; added dozens of covers to Wildside's reprints of Fowler Wright's non-genre novels, and the one above didn't have that edition, just the original 1939 one. I decided to enter it, only to be told that the ISBN is already on file; the novel, both original and Wildside editions, are also in the genre section of his record. So I deleted my unnecessary edit and think that the title's record in the non-genre section should be deleted. However, 1 record has a note the other doesn't (although info it provides isn't really needed) and 1 has a verification the other doesn't, so maybe those should be kept. --Username 17:42, 4 August 2021 (EDT)

Who is Samuel Cross?

https://bryanberg.net/files/portfolio-fiction/magic-realism/the-other-lorenzo/; disagrees with this, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?101041. 2 different people. --Username 23:59, 4 August 2021 (EDT)

Royal

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?838242; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?324104; did some fixing of catalog ID for Royal Books, and 1 was already on file; seems to be the same book, but 1 has the series as the publisher, and there's a different set of editors who worked on each record. So it's possible 1 of these is unnecessary. --Username 10:17, 5 August 2021 (EDT)

Missing Edition of a Christmas Carol

Here's something interesting; https://web.archive.org/web/20040728011137/http://www.stealthpress.com:80/store/pdf/Christmas_Carol.pdf. Stealth published between 2000-2002; their archived site includes a few PDF's, mostly excerpts from their books, but there's a PDF of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, too. Online search revealed the only site it's still on is Scribd, but just a preview, so this PDF seems to be the only full version. It includes the original 1843 illustrations by John Leech with some incidental art from 19th Century Christmas cards, but says the text is taken from the 1897 Gadshill edition by Chapman & Hall. There's no mention of Gadshill on ISFDB, and Chapman & Hall's edition isn't here. So it's hard to believe but there's still missing editions of A Christmas Carol. --Username 11:51, 6 August 2021 (EDT)

More software tweaks -- 2021-08-06

I am about to install a number of software tweaks. They address certain obscure problems and inefficiencies within the core of the ISFDB system, but they should have no impact on what our users/editors see. If you notices anything odd, please let me know. Ahasuerus 20:29, 6 August 2021 (EDT)

Science (Non) Fiction

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?149838; fiction record says Second Edition but First edition is listed as non-fiction, along with a (?) Third edition. --Username 21:06, 6 August 2021 (EDT)

Combined the two Thought Probes. Philosophy Through Science Fiction is a differently work. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:10, 7 August 2021 (EDT)

Hogarth and H.G.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1474178; there's 2 Schuster eds. with the same 2 ISFDB editors who worked on both; not sure why the 1975 record is there, but there's some info that isn't in the 1973 record. Also, Hogarth published a few H.G. Wells books in the late 80's, 1 of which didn't have a cover here, so I added it. Fantlab only has 1 Hogarth book by Wells, and it seems to be the same biography linked above, only revised, but the title seems to be backwards compared to the original Nicolson ed. --Username 13:33, 8 August 2021 (EDT)

Pedneau's Pseudonyms

Lee Hawks, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?5695, and Marc Eliot, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?6017, published books that were both by the same guy; I added a cover to Hawks' book (remember it from back in 1990; very creepy). There's differences in info between both records. He also wrote other books under his own name, and I've seen a cover for the Hawks book published as by Pedneau. --Username 19:04, 9 August 2021 (EDT)

Beloved Artist

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?173983; Leisure cover was missing so I added it, but I think the cover art credit is wrong; prior editor seemed to get their info from locusmag.com, which credits Leming, when in fact he did cover for previous edition. Leisure's covers by this time were usually generic stuff, so I doubt he did a whole new cover for them, and it doesn't look like his other covers on ISFDB. There's a copy on eBay which showed both covers and copyright page and he's not credited anywhere. --Username 19:38, 9 August 2021 (EDT)

Straub Stuff

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?37385; I added missing cover to 1992 Grafton PB edition, then found out that cover was actually for an earlier (1991?) Grafton PB. The correct edition was on Open Library so I added cover from there and some missing info. The original Grafton HC has a note on ISFDB saying the editor corrected cover artist, but I sensed something was wrong, and I was right. Whoever entered info used cover from American Dutton edition and credited that edition's cover artist; the real Grafton HC cover doesn't seem to be on any ISFDB-friendly sites so I had to upload it, and changed artist credit, too, back to what it used to (correctly) be. Then I found what I think is the cover for the earlier Grafton PB, [3], with a bloody ghost kid peeping from the side. Maybe someone here knows if it is. --Username 16:30, 10 August 2021 (EDT)

Gauntlet

https://web.archive.org/web/20040430191741/http://www.gauntletpress.com:80/MagazinePDF/Issue24.pdf; Gauntlet was an anti-censorship zine that ran for 23 print issues between 1990 and the early 2000's, and they also included some fiction, some of it of high quality by well-known authors. However, apparently their last issue went electronic because of money troubles. It says 2002 on the cover, but April 2003 elsewhere. Very little info on this issue online, with gauntletpress.com having a page for all issues but this issue being the only one without a price. There's 1 archived page with a PDF of the full issue; no fiction, but some of the articles are genre-related. I typed a random article's name on Google, and the only site that had it was moviemags.com, although they seem to think this issue is from 2005. There are a few random issues of Gauntlet on ISFDB, so if anyone thinks this has content that belongs here they can use that PDF to enter it. There's actually 1 other PDF on Gauntlet's archived site from nearly 10 years later, but since the URL contains the phrase viagra-if-you-ejaculate I don't think I'll be clicking that one. --Username 21:37, 10 August 2021 (EDT)

Fantasque

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?511007; Volume 2, Number 1 is Spring 2002 according to philsp.com. That issue was completely entered here, while the record in the link has only 1 story entered and little else. Date says 2003 and philsp.com has a Spring 2003 issue, but it has no contents. Where editor got Succubi from is unknown, since there's not a trace of that title by Loren Macleod anywhere I can find, and how they knew what page it was on is also unknown. Editor is no longer active, so I don't know if anyone wants to do anything with this, like change date to 2003, delete story unless proof can be found, etc. --Username 12:24, 11 August 2021 (EDT)

Dead on Main Street

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?648175; price is same as TP edition here, which can't be right, and Amazon links are dead. I changed format from TP to EBOOK for another D. Alexander Ward-edited book, so I don't know if same ISFDB editor entered wrong info for several of his books; might need checking out. --Username 12:50, 11 August 2021 (EDT)

Manly Wade Wellman Award

This award has been given out since 2013. The full title of the award is "The Manly Wade Wellman Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy". If you add it, I will populate it. You can read more about it here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:11, 11 August 2021 (EDT)

Sorry, I missed this post. Apologies! Since there were no objections and the award appears to be perfectly legitimate, I went ahead and added the new award type. Please feel free to tweak the record as needed. Thanks for volunteering to work on it! Ahasuerus 22:06, 19 August 2021 (EDT)

Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:27, 20 August 2021 (EDT)

All entered! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:19, 20 August 2021 (EDT)

Excellent! :) Ahasuerus 19:57, 21 August 2021 (EDT)

Same Title, Different People

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1214952; no cover, but Fantlab had it, so I was going to add it here, then noticed the editors were not the same as entered here. Thought I was going to correct a big mistake, but then found a cover online for ISFDB's edition with correct editors. Why the same book was released with different editors and stories written by different people in each edition but using the same titles is a mystery which someone here might know the answer to, although I notice the Fantlab cover has the subtitle "International Edition", so that might mean something. https://fantlab.ru/edition73864 --Username 13:51, 13 August 2021 (EDT)

Look at the contents - not just at the title of the books. The contents is totally different - this should have told you that you are dealing with two separate books. Add the one from Fantlab if you want to - it is NOT the same book as the one we have and we seem to be missing that one. Amazon has both ebooks: The Fantlab version (note the title : "Scenes from the Second Storey: International" and [ours - note the title page "Scenes from the Second Storey". Now - Amazon being Amazon had put them on the same entry but that does not make them the same book - common issue with similarly named books sometimes. Annie 14:35, 13 August 2021 (EDT)

I'm not sure I understand that reply. There's a book on ISFDB titled Scenes from the Second Storey. The cover on Fantlab's page has the same title but different editors. I found the cover on Amazon with the right editors and added it. It looks totally different to Fantlab's cover. My confusion is why 2 editions of the same book have different covers, editors and authors but the same story titles. I mentioned that Fantlab's copy says International, so I don't know why I'm being told to note the title; I noted it. I don't know if this is a common practice with Morrigan, the publisher, to release different editions overseas, so I thought someone familiar with them might know. I see now that the last time this book was worked on here was nearly 10 years ago, so if no one can reply with a helpful answer, who cares? It'll go unsolved and I'll just move on to a hundred other things, like usual. --Username 16:21, 13 August 2021 (EDT)

Look at author names and not just the titles. The stories are named after songs from an album so they have the same titles but are written by different people. Click on the links I provided - they will get you to the Amazon pages for both books and both have Look Inside. Not sure how to explain it better. Annie 16:59, 13 August 2021 (EDT)

Security patch - 2021-08-13

A new software patch was installed a few minutes ago. It enhanced the security of the system in a way that should be completely transparent to our users. If you notice anything unusual, especially when editing/moderating, please let me know. Ahasuerus 16:07, 13 August 2021 (EDT)

Downward Spiral

While checking the late J. F. Gonzalez' bibliography, I saw that he had a novella in a 2006 anthology, Downward Spiral, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?307611. I went to the publisher's archived site and discovered that, contrary to online info, it's not a 4-author collection with a single story by each, but rather 3 of the 4 have multiple stories, with only Gonzalez having a single novella. Seemingly the only place where this is verified is a 2008 customer review on Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/0975514466, which lists all stories, plus the info that 1 of the stories has a different title than what is listed everywhere else, including on the publisher's site. I imported several stories already on ISFDB (including 1 that had a 2019(!) date, and 1 that had a note verifying that it originally came from Downward Spiral), but many are not. Before I enter new titles using the Amazon review, I wonder if anyone might have a print copy of this seemingly rare book to verify those titles? --Username 09:56, 14 August 2021 (EDT)

Revised works

When dealing with collections, I frequently see instances where a given work is a reprint from an earlier work. These are easy to handle via merge or variant as appropriate. I have occasionally come across the following.

Example excerpt from copyright page - "Some of the works in Collection Title have appeared in earlier collections. All have been substantially revised to fit the requirement of this book"

• Is this enough to consider these new works? If not, what would be enough?
• Assuming yes to the previous question, Is there a preferred method of identification? Here are few I can think of using Original Title
  1. Original Title - Unchanged, But include in notes "This work has been substantially revised since it was first published in "insert appropriate" (copyright page "Collection Title")
  2. Original Title (revised) - With or without the note from #1
  3. Original Title, revised - With or without the note from #1
  4. any better choice.
• Asked in the interest of consistency.

John Scifibones 14:55, 14 August 2021 (EDT)

We have two options when handling revisions:

1. Merge (or variant if different title or author credit) and add a title note mentioning the differences.
2. Leave as two separate records and add title notes to both

The first is usually done when the revisions are minor and the second when they are major. However, we don't have a firm rule on that and minor / major are in the eye of the beholder. We also don't have a firm rule on naming if left separate. Your first two [leave unchanged, add (revised)] are both used. I prefer leaving unchanged and just using notes as that is in keeping with record as per the publication. Others see differently. The key is to use title notes. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:06, 14 August 2021 (EDT)

Jim Morrison Lives!

I added photo to Jim Morrison's record months ago, and today I randomly came back across that record, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?19974. While admiring the photo I noticed the story, "For He Has Seen the Lord in All His Metallic Splendor", had a 1993 date. Being more than 20 years after he (supposedly) died, I was suspicious of that. Typing that title on Google brings up philsp.com, locusmag.com, and ISFDB. A short story by Jim Morrison, lead singer of THE DOORS, would certainly be mentioned on more than just a few genre sites, so I suspect the title is by someone who happens to have the same name. The zine it appears in is pretty obscure, but maybe someone here has a copy of that issue and can verify if there's a bio for Morrison which says it's not the same guy? --Username 10:33, 15 August 2021 (EDT)

Missing Dick

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?6082; Deal had unentered Thomas Canty cover credit (another beautiful Canty cover is always welcome) and Dick had unentered Les Katz cover credit (Katz' last credit on ISFDB was 7 years earlier!). I added both from Archive.org copies, then noticed the date on copyright page for Deal's original edition was same as date for Dick on ISFDB. I made Deal a variant of Dick. I suspect they changed original title because dumb people would think it was a porn novel. --Username 11:06, 15 August 2021 (EDT)

The Foreworld Saga series

There is currently one series for The Foreworld Saga titles here. There are actually three series groups related to these titles: the five main 'canon' titles, about 15 Foreworld SideQuest titles, and about 16 Foreworld Fan Fiction titles. Would there be any objection to my creating two new sub-series 'Foreworld SideQuests' and 'Foreworld Fan Fiction' and my moving the four existing titles that are actually Foreworld SideQuests under that new sub-series? I've just submitted four of the fan-fic novellas so all will be populated. Phil 12:12, 15 August 2021 (EDT)

Sinister

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1241273; the original 1919 edition and the Hippocampus edition use same cover. While checking for price of 1919, I found a cover on dustjackets.com, https://www.dustjackets.com/pages/books/30268/leland-hall/sinister-house, which has price but artwork is different. Checking Google Books, the cover on dustjackets.com is used as an interior illustration but Google's cover is same as that on ISFDB. Not sure what to make of this. --Username 01:25, 16 August 2021 (EDT)

Mancuso

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?844; I found it strange well-known Canadian actor Nick Mancuso published 1 sci-fi story in 1982, so checked archive.org's copy of that issue and bio didn't mention anything about acting. Then I noticed that story's author was TED Mancuso. Who entered this as Nick and why is a good question, since there's an essay in the same issue with his correct name; I changed author to Ted (the novel mentioned in the bio is on ISFDB so he's already here), so now I think Nick's record should be deleted from ISFDB. --Username 01:50, 16 August 2021 (EDT)

Just FYI: When the last title credited to an author is deleted, the author record gets deleted automatically. So Nick is gone now. --MartyD 07:50, 16 August 2021 (EDT)

Mistitled C. Beaumont Story

Found rare photos of Shadow Play, British collection of Charles Beaumont's stories, and entered the page numbers. Turns out 1 of the stories was mistitled! "Last Night in the Rain" is actually "Last Night the Rain". Here's the contents page of original 1958 HC of The Hunger where story first appeared, [4], and the copyright page of the Bantam PB, [5], which shows that's really the title. The Valancourt edition (Amazon Look Inside) agrees, so that leaves Mass for Mixed Voices, which is expensive and hard to find photos of like most of Centipede's books, but Worldcat thankfully lists all contents and story title is "Last Night the Rain". So I think it's safe to say the title on ISFDB can be changed. I made an edit, so it just needs approval. --Username 15:39, 16 August 2021 (EDT)

Og Artist

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?32171; copy on Archive.org of the 1984 edition is a tie-in to TV version; I added cover, but erased cover art credit because it was a scene from the TV version, not artwork. However, the copyright page says original book is 1961, but illustrations are 1974 by Patsy Berton. 1961 edition on ISFDB has William Winter as artist, so I think the art credit for 1984 is not originally from 1961 but maybe a later 1974 edition. I don't know anything about this book, but maybe someone else does. --Username 16:21, 16 August 2021 (EDT)

Dark Voices 2 (II)

"Dark Voices 2 cover art Hello. Concerning the cover art of these pubs, my copy clearly indicates on bc "Cover illustration by Marshall Arisman". Do you confirm the name of Dave Carson (whose style is utterly different) on yours ? In this case, there seems to be a slight problem ! Thanks, Linguist 05:26, 11 August 2017 (EDT).

This is entirely my error - the TITLE PAGE is Carson - the cover is not credited on my copy Prof beard 04:49, 31 August 2017 (EDT)"

The above is copied from Mr. Beard's page; there's a copy of Dark Voices 2, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?35580, on Archive.org, and I was going to check story info to make sure all is correct on ISFDB, but I didn't get further than the cover before finding a mistake. Apparently the guys above forgot to change the reprint's cover credit. --Username 11:51, 17 August 2021 (EDT)

Gethsem?ne

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?83214; Stephen Gallagher offered a free PDF of his novelette "In Gethsemene" several years ago and it's still on the web, so I added it; problem is it's titled "In Gethsemane". I found photos of Heaven Sent (Daw) online and it's spelled Gethsemene on contents page, while a copy of Out of His Mind on Google Books spells it Gethsemane. Gethsemane is a real place where Jesus Christ underwent the agony in the garden the night before his crucifixion, so I suspect Daw's editor didn't know that and just spelled it the way it sounds. Of course, it's also possible it's spelled properly at the head of the story itself, which I believe is what ISFDB goes with. So does anyone have a copy of Heaven Sent, American or British edition, to check how it's spelled and change if needed? --Username 12:55, 17 August 2021 (EDT)

Suggestion: Page field for new Novels

Would it be possible to add the the ability to assign a Page number/sequence for the new Publication on the new Novel entry form? Currently, this can only be done for the Additional Regular Titles. As a result, an additional edit has to be done to get all the titles displayed in the correct sequence. Implementation of this should reduce the number of edits to be approved. It would also reduce the followups an editor needs to track. Phil 08:38, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

That is a common request - novel is this weird case where the reference title is THE title we care about (non-fiction can be the same way; anthologies and collections also but there are usually stories there so we rarely add a page number to the containers). If you are adding scanned covers, it gets combined with this request easily; if you are not, then yeah - it needs an extra one. Annie 11:53, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

I can see how adding a new field for the page number that the NOVEL/NONFICTION title starts on would speed things up. I assume we would want to add it to the "Publication Data" section of the data entry form, probably immediately before the "Pages" field.

If we decide to do it, what should we call the new field? We'll want to make sure that it's not confused with the "Pages" field. Ahasuerus 12:58, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

"Starting page"? "Novel/Non-fiction start page"? Something like that? :) Annie 13:04, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

No need for a new, separate, field. Another approach (which is preferable imo) is to have a section Regular Title on the New Novel (and other) page(s) just above the Additional Regular Titles section, and have exactly the same fields (page, title, date, title type, length (well, length not really needed)), and prepopulate all of them with read-only values fore the novel title, and only allow Page field to be filled in. Alternatively, you could rename the Additional Regular Titles as just Regular Titles, and again prepopulate the novel title as above in the first available slot. Of course, not knowing how the software works, I have no idea how much work that would be... MagicUnk 14:31, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

(owch, forgot one thing and that is that you'd have to have a trigger to populate these read-only fields once the Title: field (and date, ...) have been filled in - is that doable?) MagicUnk 14:33, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

Adding a new field will be easier (development-wise) than reworking the Regular Titles section and pre-populating and making things read-only and so on. Just saying :) Sometimes it is down to what is the quickest way to get what we need. Annie 15:15, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

Also, keep in mind that we would need to keep the two sections -- one editable and the other one read-only -- in sync if and when the editor goes back and changes the editable values. It's all possible, but it would be a pain to implement. Ahasuerus 15:30, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

(unindent) Thinking some more about this issue, calling the new field "Starting page" could confuse the editor if the publication contains a preface or an introduction. Something like "Novel starting page" and "Nonfiction starting page" would be less likely to confused editors.

I suppose another approach that we could conceivably take would be to add a short "Main Title" section between the "Cover Art" section and the "Additional Regular Titles" section. It would include a note stating that the title data for the main NOVEL/NONFICTION title would be copied from the "Title Data" section at the top of the Web page and have a single editable field for the main title's "Page" value. Ahasuerus 15:40, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

I like this last approach since it's in the flow of how things are entered currently. It would be easy to scroll past it if no data needs to entered. It would also be easy to visually check the overall sequence in combination with the ones entered in the "Additional Regular Titles" section since they would all be together. I'm assuming the value entry for this field would be the same as that used for the Page field in the "Additional Regular Titles" section. Phil 16:07, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

Yes, it would be the same type of field as the ones used in the "Additional Regular Titles", "Reviews" and "Interviews" sections. Ahasuerus 16:11, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

Crabbe

After my recent problems with varianting, I think from now on if I come across any I'll just mention it on this board. So today I added cover to Katharyn F. Crabbe's bio, J.R.R. Tolkien, for the 1981 TP edition, and a link to Open Library, where the book can be read on Archive.org. I didn't add a cover for the HC because the 1 photo on Amazon looks like a paper book to me, so it's probably Amazon's usual mixing and matching; if anyone else finds a photo of the real HC edition they can add it. More importantly, I added cover to the revised 1988 edition, and noticed her middle initial was now W! This explains it; http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Katharyn_Crabbe. Also, there's an interview with a Kathy Crabbe, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2352513, so that might be the same person, too. --Username 20:42, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

This one's fairly straightforward, albeit lengthy. I did the following edits:

1) Updated the author of 454649 to katharyn W. Crabbe, AND added a new Contents record with the new author's name (the contents title record is read-only since that is also used in the other pubs, so I'll need to add the new one, and in a second step remove the old one)

2) Removed the title record with the old author's name from the 'Contents' section (see left-hand menu item 'Remove Titles From This Pub')

3) Made Katharyn W. Crabbe an alternate name of Katharyn F. Crabbe (left-hand menu item 'Make/Remove Alternate Name)

4) Varianted the Katharyn W. Crabbe title record to the Katharyn F. Crabbe title record

The first three edits should not interfere with each other, so can be submitted at the same time.

I didn't touch Kathy Crabbe, as I'd like additional evidence before doing the edits. MagicUnk 04:39, 19 August 2021 (EDT)

Missing Picassos

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?214283; I think those 2 entries are by Pablo Picasso but they weren't made a variant of that name here. --Username 08:55, 20 August 2021 (EDT)

Thanks! Varianting done. Stonecreek 12:23, 21 August 2021 (EDT)

Hunter and Stone

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?563788; I added cover, saw note about pseudonym, found out it's Rodney Stone, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?137064, and there's a SFE3 link in his record which explains that. --Username 09:23, 20 August 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for this! I'll do the varianting and pseudonyming, but don't hesitate to to this on your own! In this case it was only necessary to link Hunter to Stone by using the 'Make/Remove Alternate Name' tool and variant Hunter's novel to the canonical name of Stone. Stonecreek 12:22, 21 August 2021 (EDT)

Not Spielberg

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?12164; even though it's tagged as novelization it wasn't actually checked off as such so I did that, then got suspicious that Spielberg wrote it. Turns out he didn't, as it was co-authored by novelization writer extraordinaire Leslie Waller, as mentioned on his Wikipedia and many other sites. Waller has a couple of old books on ISFDB, but none of the novelizations, I suppose because they're not genre, but Close Encounters definitely is. I don't know if that matters here, or if only the name on the book matters. --Username 19:59, 20 August 2021 (EDT)

For a long time it was suspected that Spielberg hasn't been the sole author of this novelization. I didn't know who was responsible for the co-authorship, so thanks for finding him! Do you want to variant the title(s), creating a new parent title? Don't be anxious for a try, this one's quite straightforwars, you just have to keep track of the one English variant and the translations. Stonecreek 12:13, 21 August 2021 (EDT)

I explained above why I'm not doing variants anymore. Honestly, I'm burned out after 8 months and thousands of edits. I get almost no feedback about anything; most of my messages on the boards go unanswered, and often I end up answering my own questions when I stumble across the answer, sometimes months later. I tried offering my help with finding rare info months ago and got a few quick responses, then nothing for months now. I also tried a thread listing hard-to-find horror fiction I discover on Archive.org and have gotten no responses to any of it - no comments, nobody listing their own discoveries, nothing. It's also tough when the site goes down several times a day for several minutes at a time, and the long waits between mods approving my edits have been getting longer, with a gap between edits recently of more than 2 days. Also, the trend these days for editors on ISFDB seems to be on e-books and upcoming books, which don't interest me, since most of my edits are filling in the countless gaps for books that actually exist physically. I've continued to edit because I know how much is missing and/or wrong, and felt I was doing a service to ISFDB users by adding or correcting info, but I'm tired. Obviously if I had a social life I wouldn't be doing so many edits every day, and I've started to become embarrassed at myself for not doing other more healthy things I could be doing. So who knows what the future will hold, but I think my edits here will be much fewer for the foreseeable future. --Username 13:03, 21 August 2021 (EDT)

I perfecttly understand your feelings. I for one appreciate your research and findings: you're right that there is a huge amount of tasks to be done in bettering the quality & connecting author entries, for it's one of the things ISFDB is excellent in enabling it, at least in theory). I'll do the varianting to Waller & Spielberg. Stonecreek 07:24, 22 August 2021 (EDT)

Possible Werewolf Novel

Melisand March wrote a horror novel, The Site, published by St. Martin's in '88 and Leisure in '89. After adding info, I saw online that she wrote another novel, The Mandrake Scream, in 1975, but it's not on ISFDB. The 1977 PB, https://www.amazon.com/Mandrake-Scream-Melisand-March/dp/0380008831, looks like a werewolf novel, but copyright page on eBay says it was first published as a HC by Mason/Charter. They have many books on Archive.org but not this one (they also don't have any books on ISFDB), and I can't find a photo or much info at all about that edition. So if anyone has a copy or can find the cover and/or solid info that can be entered here, that would be great. Amazon says 353 pages, but can't rely on their info, and ISBN they provide only appears on Amazon and Paperbackswap.com. Dondammassa.com mentions "supernatural themes", so I think it belongs here. --Username 13:56, 22 August 2021 (EDT)

Reused Bauman Art

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?22105; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?537601; same art, both 1985, but German book's record has no mention of Bauman cover variant. --Username 16:39, 22 August 2021 (EDT)

Well it's a Dutch book, but I varianted the art anyway :). Thanks for the find! Stonecreek 06:05, 23 August 2021 (EDT)

Yes, Dutch; I should have realized that when it said "Dutch" in the notes (duh). I see the publisher has 4 books on ISFDB; 1 is Omen III, reusing cover from another edition which is just Sam Neill on the movie poster, and 1 reuses art from PB of The Night Church, and is varianted as such; that leaves the Charlotte Paul book, which has cover art that I suspect is from some other book, but searching Google Images found nothing. So 1 more mystery to solve. By the way, there's a hurricane passing through my neck of the woods (Eastern United States), so my planned sabbatical from ISFDB was delayed by a couple of days, which is why I was still making edits. However, after tonight when it blows over I'll be taking my break and trying to limit my edits until Labor Day (Sep. 6). So any comments should be left on my board because I won't be checking elsewhere. --Username 07:50, 23 August 2021 (EDT)

Re: my sabbatical, any plans I had to travel anywhere are now unlikely since the chances of Americans being killed have greatly increased lately. Honestly, I'm ashamed of my whining about how "tough" it is to keep doing these edits every day, when our worthless excuse for a President is stranding countless Americans in a foreign land and allowing terrorists to run things; kind of puts things in perspective. So I've come to appreciate how lucky I am to be doing what I'm doing and how relatively easy I have it, notwithstanding my feelings about the problems I have re: this site. God Bless America, and Impeach Biden. --Username 07:47, 25 August 2021 (EDT)

Trezzo

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=trezzo&type=Name; almost certainly same person, with most credits under the shorter name; Braden credits probably after she married and added husband's last name. --Username 22:51, 22 August 2021 (EDT)

Far Arena

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14992316M/The_far_arena; I added covers and other info to http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?484021, but the Pan edition has a note saying it's 2nd printing. That Pan photo on Open Library is totally different, but has same date and ISBN. Is that the 1st edition or a later one? Maybe someone here has a copy and can add it to ISFDB. --Username 13:11, 23 August 2021 (EDT)

Database tables are now accessible from the "ISFDB Statistics and Top Lists" page

The "ISFDB Statistics and Top Lists" Web page has been updated. It now has a "Database Tables" section, which can take you to the following 2 Web pages:

• ISFDB-Supported Languages
• ISFDB-Supported Secondary Verification Sources

It's the same data that we have always had access to as drop-down lists (for languages) or as verification options, but now it's centralized and available as nice tables. Ahasuerus 17:31, 23 August 2021 (EDT)

Petaja

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?36342; found Fantlab copy of this, added lovely cover, but Petaja's "Sky Hermit" isn't original, being from 1935. Philsp.com has it plus others under Theodore Pine; ISFDB has 2 entries under that name, but also 1 entry for E. T. Pine which is by Petaja but not noted as such. I mention all this in case anyone enters the contents of The Book of Munn so they don't enter Petaja's poem as original, and also for the usual varianting stuff where Petaja and the various Pines have to be linked together. --Username 14:25, 25 August 2021 (EDT)

2 Titles, Same Story

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2904647; I brought this up somewhere here a while ago, but Unsworth's story "Private Ambulance" was reprinted under original name in Best British Horror but as "Night Run" in Best New Horror for some reason. Finally stumbled on copy of the 1st book on Archive.org and entered original name as a variant on ISFDB, it was accepted, and I just imported that title into Noir, edited by Ian Whates, which is where it came from (contents are empty otherwise). But as usual varianting is a problem and both Best... books show Night Run as the title. So whoever wants to can variant or unmerge or whatever. --Username 18:02, 25 August 2021 (EDT)

Moorstones

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5066858; ISBN's already on file; locusmag.com probably where it came from. Real ISBN from American reprint by Salem probably needed. --Username 19:50, 25 August 2021 (EDT)

Currency kroner

In the discussion here currency_symbol it was discovered that in the Template:PublicationFields:Price is no explicit currency abbreviation for the European countries with the currency "kroner". To distinguish "kroner" unambiguously, it is proposed to designate the currencies as follows (Sweden: "skr", Denmark: "dkr" and Norway: "nkr") and to include them in Template:PublicationFields:Price, if there is no objection. Regards Rudolf Rudam 10:50, 26 August 2021 (EDT)

Sounds like a good plan - that is the same situation as with the $ currencies. We probably should also add a few more currencies that come up often to the template... Annie 16:34, 26 August 2021 (EDT)

Yep, good idea! MagicUnk 11:23, 28 August 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll include them. Regards Rudolf Rudam 04:41, 29 August 2021 (EDT)

Body Snatchers

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisheryear.cgi?26934+1979; I vaguely remember talking about this here months ago, and just came across it again. I just now made the Rings and Rogers books novelizations since they are specifically for the terrible Bakshi movie and the really terrible TV version of Buck Rogers, but those 2 Body Snatchers books are confusing. The Richter credit is correct since he wrote the script for the 1978 film, but the Finney record has most of the info, including corrected ISBN, while the Richter record uses the bad ISBN and doesn't include a page count. Also, it should be made a novelization, too, after records are fixed. --Username 14:54, 26 August 2021 (EDT)

Ongoing security-related changes

I am in the process of upgrading the ISFDB software to work with the HTTPS protocol. The process should be completely transparent to all users, but it requires changing literally hundreds of small pieces of ISFDB code. Sometimes bugs slip through even after testing. If you come across an ISFDB page which includes one or more broken links, please let me know where you found it, including copies of any broken URL(s). Ahasuerus 15:40, 26 August 2021 (EDT)

Spook

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?14238; I remember that great cover art from back in the day, and was surprised to see that the artist didn't do anything else, but also noticed the PB cover had almost the same name. Turns out it's the same cover, so I figured they misspelled it in the PB, but turns out it was misspelled by some editor here. Book hasn't been worked on since 2014, but 4 different editors worked on it, so it's hard to say who entered it wrong. While fixing it, I added Open Library links to the records since they're both on Archive.org, but noticed the PB says HC was in 1989. Date here says 10/1990; if it was January I could understand, but that's a big gap. I added a note to PB explaining this, but if anyone knows when it was actually published (HC says 1990 on copyright page but says 1989 for cover art on back flap) they can always correct if necessary. --Username 20:09, 27 August 2021 (EDT)

Novel titles

I ran across some (NOVEL) publications with different titles than the contained TITLE. E.g. here and here. They only differ by a comma, so it's hard to notice. Should this be possible? Acceptable? ../Doug H 21:31, 27 August 2021 (EDT)

Possible - sure - someone merged or edited later for the first then the second was created as a clone from it. Should they be like that - not really. :) They should be split out and varianted. Annie 00:09, 28 August 2021 (EDT)

We should check these more closely. For the audiobook, the Gutenberg page has the comma. I don't know what should serve as the title page for an audiobook. How much of a pause in the reading denotes a comma? For the trade paperback, are we certain that the title page doesn't have a comma? The look inside on Amazon shows a separate ebook publication by the same publisher, which also has a cover missing the comma. It reprints the 1920 Grosset & Dunlap title page which does not have a comma, but does print "Thuvia" over "Maid of Mars" in a smaller font. Do we imply a comma there? Zeuschner's Burroughs bibliography does show the G&D printing with a comma. He does note printings without the comma, which are all the editions published by Quiet Vision. He does not list the Kessinger edition. A variant is certainly warranted. I don't know if we should start it with the 1920 G&D, or the 2000 Quiet Vision. If the Kessinger is included in the variant, we should note that we're working from the cover title only. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 08:13, 28 August 2021 (EDT)

There are more than these two I was working through, but this mixed approach stood out. If I understand, the publication title should match a content title. Mayhap there should be a report on violations of this (my SQL is rusty - it seems do-able but tricky). I checked the Kessinger at Amazon again and got the actual edition for look inside. The title page has no comma, but this is from the 1921 McClurg & Grosset & Dunlap edition [Zeus. 804]. According to Zeuschner this was McClurg edition with just the title page replaced. The entries on ISFDB are the Zeus. 802, 803 and 805. Which suggests I should add this edition without the comma and fix the Kessinger content title and if necessary merge them. And on to the others. ../Doug H 11:51, 28 August 2021 (EDT)

Dash

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?95377; been correcting Pan Horror using Luminist PDF's; Trevor's Chicken Switch says here there's a dash in the Canning anthology appearance but it's also there in the Pan book, so needs unmerging or varianting. --Username 11:40, 28 August 2021 (EDT)

White Worm

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5069346; added Fantlab's copy of 1911 Rider edition, illustrator misspelled for some reason on ISFDB, fixed that, needs unvarianting or whatever; Fantlab shows photos of all illustrations in case that helps flesh out this record. --Username 14:09, 28 August 2021 (EDT)

Exchange of Men

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=exchange+of+men&type=All+Titles; same story, but Cross not mentioned as a variant of Nemerov; found this info on Nemerov's Wikipedia. --Username 14:41, 28 August 2021 (EDT)

The source for the note at Wikipedia has broken down, and I think it doesn't seem convincing enough that a poet who 'wrote almost exclusively in fixed forms and meter' should have published a thriller story; also, Wikipedia doesn't mention the co-author at all. Stonecreek 15:12, 28 August 2021 (EDT)

Crucified City

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5070324; according to Worldcat, New Authors Limited was a series from Hutchinson, so I fixed that, but all Worldcat pages give different page counts; prior editor used the 221 count on ISFDB, but another page says 220, while another says it's less than 200; Fantlab says 222. So if anyone has a physical copy and can verify which is correct, respond here. --Username 10:30, 29 August 2021 (EDT)

Missing Poems

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?8409; I've been adding/fixing info for this series and today I did stuff for XVI and XVII; those 2 have Dutch editions, and as I finished I realized there's 1 entry missing from both, "Martyr Without Canon" from XVI and "The Daily Chernobyl" from XVII. Both are poems, so maybe the publisher dropped them because they didn't want any poetry, or it's possible they are there but online sites where contents were taken from didn't bother to mention them. So anyone who has copies might want to check and add those 2 poems if they're in there or add notes explaining they were dropped. --Username 12:51, 29 August 2021 (EDT)

William Marshall(s)

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?5281; didn't seem right that the mystery author who has 2 genre novels on ISFDB wrote an intro for a book about Dracula, and turns out it's not that William Marshall but the actor who was BLACULA. Then I thought that Trek interview odd and turns out it's by the actor also, who was on an episode of Trek in the 60's. Someone approve my (actor) addition to those 2 records so I can add info to his record including the best image I can find of him as BLACULA. --Username 14:15, 29 August 2021 (EDT)

Lansdale Book

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?36883; HC has no page numbers on ISFDB for stories, but paper edition has them, and checking photos online shows they're exactly the same for both, yet paper edition is 10 pages less than HC on ISFDB. Paper was PV'd by someone no longer active named TEDDYBEAR, while HC isn't verified but editor is still active. So maybe someone who has a copy of either can check; possible wrong page count somewhere. --Username 15:59, 29 August 2021 (EDT)

Proto Date

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?891884; got price for Coward edition from NY Times review, but it was in April, while ISFDB says August. Note says month was entered arbitrarily to place it after the June UK first edition, but that places it before it. Several other sites online also say April for Coward, so month for UK here is probably wrong, since editor left a note saying they got month from Amazon UK, which is not reliable. --Username 10:42, 30 August 2021 (EDT)

Okay, I adapted the entry and added a note. Thanks, Stonecreek 09:21, 31 August 2021 (EDT)

Yeah, your note was there, but another mod finally got around to approving relevant edits and your note is now gone. That's the problem with the huge backlog of edits and many different mods approving those edits; many of them don't actually look closely at what they're approving and just do it so they can get them off the list; I got a message on my board about an edit I made recently where I added another note to the note in my previous edit, but because the first edit hadn't been approved yet the 2nd note just wiped out the first note, and I had to waste time telling mod to include both notes; now I just noticed another edit I made replacing a cover art credit with the correct name had both the original incorrect name and the correct one in the same record, so I had to waste more time deleting the wrong one and now have to wait for that to be approved. Who knows how many other notes and corrections I've made that have ended up wrong and I didn't catch them. I barely care at this point. If you want to re-enter your note, go ahead. --Username 16:27, 1 September 2021 (EDT)

Multiple Maniacs

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?137888; I added original edition of Maniacs and tried to variant it to French and American reprint editions and make it the parent but it obviously didn't work, so if anyone cares to they can merge them or unmerge or variant or unvariant or whatever. --Username 09:01, 31 August 2021 (EDT)

Well it worked! The only thing left to do for me was the merging of the doubled original title. Thanks for your work, Stonecreek 09:15, 31 August 2021 (EDT)

Small World?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?850611; cover on Goodreads leads me to believe this is an edition of King's Small World; anyone own a copy? I found 1 site that agrees, https://www.frightlikeagirl.com.br/2019/06/pequenas-realidades-de-tabitha-king.html. --Username 10:02, 31 August 2021 (EDT)

2 Guys

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?392465; shouldn't this be an anthology? --Username 22:46, 1 September 2021 (EDT)

Yup MagicUnk 07:57, 2 September 2021 (EDT)

SF-Encyclopedia

Do we have permission to use cover scans from SF-Encyclopedia? It would be useful for older pubs. Bob 20:12, 2 September 2021 (EDT)

It looks like we do, but there are restrictions. See this page. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 21:14, 2 September 2021 (EDT)

Ellery or Avram?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2024873; added info to "And on the Eighth Day" and PDF where I got price from says it's actually by Avram Davidson; he has it as a pseudonym here but none of the Queen books listed show his name. Any old Queen experts here? --Username 19:33, 3 September 2021 (EDT)

According to elleryqueen.us as well as Wikipedia and sf-encyclopaedia.com, this EQ novel was ghostwritten by Avram Davidson. Manfred Lee may have been involved. Dannay apparently wasn't. Horzel 09:43, 12 September 2021 (EDT)

Anthology Discovery

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?769422; I was fixing/adding info for Gahan Wilson, and this book, which was wrongly entered as a collection here, is actually an anthology; I fixed what I could, but searching for the word copyright shows 2 pages worth of poems, some by big names, so so, meone with an account who can read the whole book can enter individual poems and page #'s if they wish. --Username 08:21, 5 September 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for finding this! I corrected the entry. Stonecreek 05:45, 7 September 2021 (EDT)

I'm just going to go ahead and delete what's in the contents now, because none of them are poems; they're actually chapter headings and the actual poems are by other authors, with Moore just being 1 of the editors, although checking now I see the first poem under the Queer and Eerie chapter is signed L.M. so maybe she contributed a poem to each chapter, too. Whoever entered this here originally seemed very confused about what it is, and edit history shows no names, so maybe it was entered by 1 of the robots years ago, with the wrong info coming from some other site, but now that I found there's a copy on the Archive individual poems can be entered if anyone wants to do that. It will require someone with an account because it only shows a limited preview, which makes entering dozens of poems and their page numbers tough, especially since most or all of them are reprints, so some importing of poems already on ISFDB will be necessary, too. UPDATE: I found out there's an index of authors on the last page, 64, which shows there's more than 40 poems by nearly 30 authors. Turns out Ms. Moore only has that 1 poem, so I got the ball rolling by entering it here. --Username 07:01, 7 September 2021 (EDT)--Username 06:42, 7 September 2021 (EDT)

Fixer and the other automatically adding tasks don't enter the contents, so that must have been done by an editor; I already added the other editor, who was forgotten upon entering. Thanks for your work! By the way, I have deleted the initial publication (after cloning it), it wasn't primary verified: the links also were faulty. Stonecreek 12:23, 7 September 2021 (EDT)

Prophecy Editions

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?998067; There's only 1 edition on ISFDB of this novelization of the 1979 GIANT MUTANT GRIZZLY film, but note says it's a 4th printing. Checking Open Library, they have the original which has a date 4 months earlier than the one here, with a totally different cover, so I fixed the date. Also, there's a British edition from Mayflower that says "date unknown" with a cover which seems to be trying to recreate the poster, while the other Mayflower edition says 1979 but looking at the preview it's actually from 1982 and mentions it was reprinted twice, plus it has a cheap cover which looks like a stock photo but actually has a cover credit on the back for someone who has no other credits here. So there are lots of editions that can be added, and I wouldn't doubt that some have different covers, plus who knows how many foreign covers there are. Maybe some of them have a drawing or photo of the GIANT MUTANT GRIZZLY. --Username 15:02, 6 September 2021 (EDT)

Author Award Bibliography tweaks

The way the Author Award Bibliography page selects and sorts title-based awards has been changed. The most noticeable change is that awards and nominations are now sorted by:

• award year
• award title
• award level (1-N with nominations treated as "9"s)

We also have a new cleanup report in the "Awards" section. It looks for title-based award records whose linked titles have different authors compared to the authors that existed at the time the award was entered. In most cases it's harmless because the current version of the award display/sorting software always uses the title and the authors of the title record. However, in the past some parts of the ISFDB software used the author names as they were originally entered, which created an opportunity for title-based award records and their linked title records to diverge. This cleanup report will help identify these problems once the data is populated tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 20:19, 7 September 2021 (EDT)

Open Library linking template for use in Notes missing?

If there is no Open Library linking template, can we get one? MagicUnk 07:49, 10 September 2021 (EDT)

It looks like the following supported External Identifier types do not have matching templates:

• Goodreads
• Open Library
• COPAC

Unless there is a reason for these exceptions, we should presumably synchronize them. Ahasuerus 09:21, 10 September 2021 (EDT)

Can't think of any reason to exclude them. They may not be used often, but why not have them so we can use them if we do? Regards, MagicUnk 10:27, 10 September 2021 (EDT)

Probably noone remembered to ask for them and it slipped the developer's mind to add them. No cookies for the developer tonight! ;) Annie 18:20, 10 September 2021 (EDT)

(unindent) "Goodreads" and "OpenLibrary" templates have been added -- see Help:Using Templates and HTML in Note Fields.

COPAC, alas, is no more. It looks like its partial successor, Library Hub Discover, doesn't have stable IDs which we could use as External IDs. We could still link to them using ISBNs, although it's not as precise. Ahasuerus 20:31, 12 September 2021 (EDT)

Balzac

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?24944; Whenever I see a non-genre anthology with a note saying only titles already in the database were entered I double-check because some are often missed; in this case, "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning wasn't entered so I added it. More importantly, there's a 50-page story by Honore de Balzac titled "The Succubus" which turns out to also be on ISFDB; it has an 1837 date as "Le succube" but only book it appears in on ISFDB is a 1978 German horror anthology as "Der Succubus". I don't like to mess with the foreign titles because I can barely handle English, but if anyone wants to add it and variant or merge it's on Archive.org; https://archive.org/details/onceagainstlaw00tenn. --Username 19:10, 10 September 2021 (EDT)

Likely in this case the missig titles were only introduced after the anthology was added (in 2009!), the German Balzac certainly was. But thanks for the hint! Stonecreek 12:03, 11 September 2021 (EDT)

how to add preexisting title to collection?

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I can't find it in the first few archive pages.

I'm trying to add preexisting short stories to a collection. So far I've been using the "Add Title" button, adding in a new short story, then later merging the new title with the preexisting one. What's a more streamlined way without having to merge titles?

Also, is there a way to search the archives without going to individual pages?

Thanks!

First to your second question: What exactly do you mean with 'archives'? If you search for a specific title you may use the 'Search the database' or the advanced search.

Second, to your first problem: It's quite easy to add a pre-existing title to a publication (for example one of a collection). Just use 'Import Content' from the 'Editing Tools' on the left. If you'd find that Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron is missing in one of his collections, you'd just have to enter the title id # 41335 in the lower section of the form that was opened after clicking on 'Import Content'. (If you'd like to import many stories from one existing source, you may use the upper section). Hope that helps, Stonecreek 16:06, 11 September 2021 (EDT)

If by searching the archives you mean searching the archives of "ISFDB:Community Portal" then I don't think that's possible with the current wiki settings (requires a different search extension). /Lokal_Profil 16:52, 13 September 2021 (EDT)

Brite Question

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?92472; I've been adding/fixing a lot of stuff for Dell's Abyss line of the 90's, and there's something weird I found; Poppy Z. Brite published a collection called Wormwood which has a January 1996 date, as can be seen in the Archive.org copy. However, there's a story titled "Wormwood" in Brite's record which has a 1995 date, a nomination for an IHG award, and nothing else. Here's what I think: the story "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood" came out in 1990 and was collected in a small-press collection in 1993, Swamp Foetus, which was retitled after the 1990 story for a mini-collection from Penguin in 1994, and then was reprinted in Wormwood; that collection should be nominated for the 1996 IHG (it probably appeared in late December which would explain being nominated for a 1996 award). Anyone know more? --Username 18:41, 12 September 2021 (EDT)

Hale Western?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?278545; cover looks like a Western, https://www.amazon.com/Highland-Vengeance-Archie-Venters/dp/0709169604. Probably should be deleted. --Username 00:21, 13 September 2021 (EDT)

I don't think it's a Western. It doesn't look like one to me (and I have a lot of them). Fantastic Fiction has it listed as science fiction. I can't find any reviews of it, and Amazon doesn't give any description. In fact, I can find practically nothing about the author except this obituary and this very brief bio. Based on that, it appears he wrote mysteries and/or crime fiction. That doesn't mean this one isn't both science fiction and a mystery (the cover says "mystery" to me). His books seem to be very hard to find, too, so getting a copy of this one would be difficult. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:26, 13 September 2021 (EDT)

Note by another editor in Highland Vengeance's record mentioned the Western thing, and since it doesn't have the usual Hale SF logo on the cover whatever it is it's probably not SF. Maybe someone here will have a copy and clear this up. UPDATE: https://archive.org/details/deathbelowzero0000vent; picture of author on back cover. No sense adding info to his record because his 1 book on ISFDB will probably be gone soon. --Username 12:05, 13 September 2021 (EDT)

It might not be straight science fiction, but any science fictional element in it would qualify the novel to be indexed into our database, I'd think. We really should wait for somebody having read it, or a competent review. Stonecreek 12:47, 13 September 2021 (EDT)

Standard naming of synopsis

Hi all. Have been adding some of the publications in my bookshelf and came across some which included a synopsis of an earlier books in a series. I added it to the contents but have in retrospect gotten a bit unsure about how these should be named (when the name is just that of the earlier book). I went for TITLE (synopsis) but I've also seen TITLE Synopsis, Synopsis of "TITLE" or Synopsis (TITLE). By contrast for excerpts there is a clear rule stated in Template:TitleFields:Title. Mainly thought I'd ask for the preference her since it affects which name I keep after merging two synopses. /Lokal_Profil 17:13, 13 September 2021 (EDT)

Author Award Bibliography page tweaked

The Author Award Bibliography page has been tweaked to display translation languages -- see Stanisław Lem's Awards page for an example. Ahasuerus 17:58, 13 September 2021 (EDT)

2 new External IDs and templates added for the National Library of Sweden

Two new External IDs have been added for the Libris catalog of National Library of Sweden. We need 2 of them because the old catalog (Libris) and the new catalog (Libris XL) use different IDs.

See Help:Using Templates and HTML in Note Fields for the two matching Notes templates, "Libris" and "Libris-XL". Ahasuerus 21:02, 13 September 2021 (EDT)

West's Malicia

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?14229; first 4 stories were all in his 1961 mainstream collection Call Out the Malicia, I think, but there's many questions. "Chanceyville" comes from Shock magazine, so is a reprint, and "The Fiesta..." has a note here saying it came from the 1961 collection and has a different date than that of the F&SF where it was reprinted, so that makes sense; however, "George" has the same 1961 date as the F&SF where it was reprinted and "Gladys's Gregory" has the 1963 date of the F&SF where it was reprinted, which are both wrong. Also, the page count seems to be very different for the original Heinemann vs. Dutton edition, cover has same artwork but different colors (red for British, green for American), and titles seem to be different for a few stories, with the contents of Dutton on Worldcat listing "TOWN OF Chanceyville" and "Gladys's Gregory (A REPORT)". I can't find a photo of any edition's contents page, and Open Library not only includes the above 2 editions but 1 they claim is in French (!) and that's the 1 that has a Worldcat link. It's also possible some of the other stories might be genre, too. So both editions would require checking a physical copy to verify lots of info and the differences between editions. Maybe some readers will have them and respond here so at least 1 edition can be added to ISFDB. --Username 17:27, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

Simon?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?322963; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?96369; added page numbers to couple of huge old anthologies and this name is spelled with quotes and without, which makes 2 separate records; also, I don't believe those Lovecraft books in the Simon record are by the same person. --Username 19:16, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

Once again thanks for finding this erroneous ordering! I have dealt with them by assigning the 1936 titles to 'Simon': it may very well be that they weren't eligible for ISFDB in the first place, being part of publications that seem - at least in part - non-genre ones (and so these stories may also turn out to be that. Stonecreek 10:28, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

New cleanup report for the National Library of Sweden

A new cleanup report, Publications with Swedish Titles with no Libris XL ID, has been deployed. The data will become available tomorrow morning. This is cleanup report #300 :-) Ahasuerus 19:21, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

COPAC retirement and partial replacement

As previously discussed, the UK/Irish union catalog COPAC was retired some months ago. Its replacement, Library Hub Discover, doesn't recognize COPAC IDs and, as far as I can tell, doesn't have permanent IDs of its own, at least at this time.

I have changed the name of the ISBN-based link in the navigation bar from "COPAC" and "Library Hub Discover" and added the word "(defunct)" to the name of COPAC's External ID Type. AT first I considered removing COPAC External IDs, but the mere fact of their existence is informative -- it indicates that the publication's existence was confirmed at some point in he past. Besides, it's possible that Library Hub Discover, which clearly tries to be backwards compatible with COPAC, may start supporting these IDs again. Ahasuerus 12:00, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Barry Pain

I've been adding/fixing a lot of stuff for Pain's books, and got stumped by this one, https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/collections/all/products/barry-pain-more-stories-t-werner-laurie-1930. This, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?586806, says 2 old novels and 2 apparently new stories are included, but that Canadian Canoe is puzzling, since it seems to be a reprint of Pain's 1891 collection, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?552605, not a short story, but doesn't separate Canadian Canoe and Nine Muses into separate stories (at least on contents page) but does include the last 3 stories separately. Maybe Nine Muses was published in a separate edition not on ISFDB, and then it and Canadian Canoe could be added to More Stories as collections. Because it's a 1930 collection it's not in public domain and there's no copy on Archive.org. I'm no Pain expert, so anyone who knows more can reply here. --Username 12:21, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

I found a copy of More Stories on Archive.org from The Public Library of India, but it ends on p. 238 so is likely part of a multi-volume set. Got a couple of page numbers from it (had to search for story titles because the contents page is blindingly bright and the numbers are unreadable). --Username 10:33, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

Online Publication Dates

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5085457; I've been adding more horror fiction only found on old archived sites, and I have a question: this story by Moore has a 2016 date on ISFDB as if it's original to the collection it appears in, online info mentions it was in Moore's super-rare Slices collection from the mid-2000s, but it actually came from the horror site Stillwaters Journal, which was an online arm of Marietta Publishing (the editors also edited Warfear from Marietta). Which date should be used? That's a significant gap of more than 15 years! --Username 17:09, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

The Amazon.com Look inside for This Is Halloween shows a copyright date of 1994 for Harvest Moon. Hope you don't mind a non moderator answering. John Scifibones 17:19, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Wow, man, that's some info you found, because turns out this story predates anything above and actually was published in 1994 by Pumpkin Patch, a Marietta publisher, possibly related to the publisher named Marietta. So I'll change date to 1994, but really that rare publication should also be entered, too. I'm not even going to ask if anyone has a copy because I know the answer, so I'll try to dig up enough info to make it worthwhile to enter it. --Username 21:21, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

How much of Jules Verne is genre?

Jules Verne has been called the Father of Science Fiction, and did indeed write a number of classic SF stories like De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon), La journée d'un journaliste américain en 2890 (The Day of an American Journalist in 2889) and Voyage au centre de la terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth). However, many of his lesser known works (e.g. [6], [7], [8]) and even one well-known one [9] seem to lack any speculative elements. The ISFDB Policy gives latitude to pre-1800 works, but Jules Verne went from the 1860's to 1900's. Without arguing particulars (there are too many), what is the thinking regarding the following: ../Doug H 22:54, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

1 Giving a blanket genre to his works vs. assessing each title individually

one argument for the blanket approach is they are (mostly) part of the famous Extraordinary Voyage series, and hence linked. ../Doug H 22:54, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

2 To what standard would we hold any title?

3 What would be the threshold for keeping the non-genre works?

Foreign Trek

Hello German readers. I found a book called Cap'n Beckmessers Führer durch Star Trek - Die Classic Serie, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1832273, which is a reprint of a 1994 American edition. Only copy I can find on Amazon shows cover pretty clearly except for the GIANT SPOTLIGHT in the middle so I added it here. There's a nice cover on Goodreads, but searching further there's also a cover on booklocker.de and memory-alpha.fandom.com. Thing is that none of them show back cover, while the Amazon page shows back cover in a separate photo but there's a GIANT STICKER covering up barcode and probably other info, too. So rather than trying to choose which of the non-Amazon covers is the best and uploading it here, maybe someone who owns a copy can upload a cover scan which shows the entire cover, front and back, and possibly make ISFDB the only site on the web which shows the entire cover. --Username 16:26, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

I have access to a copy of the pub and just uploaded a scan. Welo 07:57, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

Live long and prosper. --Username 08:06, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

George Evans?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?26438; I added photo and info to his record, but I doubt that story in a British anthology was by him. Anyone have a copy who can check and see if there's a bio which would verify it's a different guy? --Username 19:10, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

Boulle Collection

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?37905; Secker had no page #'s so I used Google Books to enter them, but 3 stories didn't get any hits when searching for their titles. Paperback edition includes those 3 as verified by seeing contents page on eBay and copyright page says it's a reprint of the Vanguard edition. Secker's page count is much lower than Vanguard, and notes here say Tuck only lists 9 stories, so I have a feeling they dropped those stories but editor here just imported all stories without verifying that all editions had the same stories. There's nowhere I can find that has a photo of Secker's or Vanguard's contents page, so I ask if anyone here has a copy to check and delete those 3 if needed. Also, Vanguard edition on Google has page #'s that don't match up at all with what's on ISFDB, so that will also need checking. --Username 08:04, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

Possible rise in Wikipedia vandalism

Please note that there appear to be more cases of Wikipedia vandalism as of late. For example, Andrea White's article was recently vandalized and now includes an incorrect place of birth as well as other biographical details. Ahasuerus 10:11, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

I'm not sure about a rise in vandalism; Wikipedia has always had a lot of it. I have reverted that page & watch listed it. If you ever see any others, please fell free to ping me directly. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:10, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

Thanks, will do! Ahasuerus 15:22, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

Hell Is Murky

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?279823; added page #'s from Dalby's site, and also changed "Gie Me..." because contents page shows it's not a variant but exactly the same title as original in 1996. Also, "Game of Nine" says "The Game of Nine" on contents page and Mr Raven should have a period after Mr, so anyone who has a copy and can verify "Before I Dee" at story head, The before Game of Nine, and Mr with a period, respond here. UPDATE: Checking online reveals story in Castle Fantastic spells it Gie Me Somethin' Ta Eat on copyright page but To Eat on contents page, so story header for this anthology is needed, too, to find out how this story is titled there and whether these Afore and Before words are actually used. Locusmag.com says Ta Eat Afore for Castle Fantastic, so I'm merging them for the time being unless someone says differently. --Username 13:08, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

Edit was approved but didn't seem to work, as correct title (as far as I know) is in both books now but there's still a variant that doesn't belong. No sense changing it because not 100% sure which title is used at story head in both books, so will just leave it as is and if and when someone verifies correct titles it can be fixed. --Username 17:37, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Varma Drama

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?359469; Someone messed up this record badly, with some wrong names and titles and dates, wrong page count, no price, wrong page # for the stories, etc. What's odd is there's an ID for Open Library which leads to a page with a preview copy of the book, so all of this info could have easily been verified. I fixed a lot, but there may be little things I missed; I think per ISFDB rules the Varney extract should have date of this book, not original date, but others who know for sure can take a look. What's more important is the publisher, Key Porter, is Canadian, so I added a C to the price, but checking further revealed the other 17 books by them on ISFDB mostly have prices entered, all American $ except for 1 £. So they may need a C added, too. --Username 21:15, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

New award - Ignyte

"Ignyte" is a new award for speculative fiction:

• The Awards seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.

According to Mike Glyer of File770, who posted a list of winners on 2021-09-19:

• The winners were chosen by an open public vote on a shortlist selected by the Ignyte Awards Committee, 15 BIPOC+ voters made up of FIYAHCON staff and previous award winners, of varying genders, sexualities, cultures, disabilities, and locations throughout the world.

According to this blog post:

• Fiyah is a quarterly speculative fiction magazine that features stories by and about Black people of the African Diaspora based in the USA founded in 2016. The magazine announced that they would host FIYAHCON for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) with the Ignyte Awards as its centrepiece in 2020.

The full list of 2021 nominees is here.

There doesn't appear to be a dedicated Web site, so the information is kind of scattered across multiple Web sites. Still, it's probably enough to create a new Award Type if we have a volunteer to enter the data. Ahasuerus 10:04, 19 September 2021 (EDT)

If you go ahead and create the award, I'll be glad to take care of it. John Scifibones 17:59, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Done. Thanks for volunteering! Ahasuerus 11:44, 23 September 2021 (EDT)

All Done, John Scifibones 14:25, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

Looks good, thanks! Ahasuerus 15:24, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

Phantom Feast

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?28553; no cover I can find online, 2 copies on Open Library have no external ID's, no nothing. I have a feeling this was never published, but I can't find anywhere that says so. Anyone know? A Sheckley collection from a major mainstream publisher like Holt would certainly have some info online. --Username 16:34, 19 September 2021 (EDT)

Your feeling seems to be correct! I didn't find nothing also, and set this to unpublished. Thanks for this find!! Stonecreek 05:49, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Rhys/Stall

http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/rhys_jack; while working on Robert Hale books, I found out Jack Rhys published stories as by Michael Stall. The novel The Five Doors was an expansion of a Stall short story. I thought it was unknown info, but turns out it's right there in the SF3 link for Rhys. The next 2 stories by Stall were also in New Writings in SF, but the last 2 weren't, so don't know if they're all the same Michael Stall. I varianted "Five Doors", so if anyone knows more they can do more. --Username 07:57, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Australian Story Title

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?10268; Boy reprinted as Torment; dropped 1 story and added 1 new one. I fixed all this from copy of Torment on Archive.org, but 1 story, 15 Globe St., Tarelle, is 15 Globe Street, Tarella in Torment. Online info on Australian sites give both titles, and Tarella is a real place in Australia, so I changed title to Torment's spelling. If anyone has a copy of Boy... and can say different, they can always variant. --Username 11:45, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Cover Artist's Various Names

Beverly Le Barrow, Le Barrow, Beverley Le Barrow, Beverley Lebarrow, Beverley Le Barrow, Beverly Lebarrow. Added Le Barrow to http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2919033, searched for cover artists named Barrow, only people listed above came up, all of which are probably the same person but spelled many different ways. Every book is PV'd except the 1 I added to, so if anyone wants to investigate whether all these names belong together several people will probably need contacting. --Username 00:36, 21 September 2021 (EDT)

Laymon and Woods

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?12996; found very informative article, https://beta.peakd.com/hive-180164/@modernzorker/untangling-richard-laymons-the-woods-are-dark-1981-1991-and-2008, which details the tangled history of this novel. What stood out to me is that it says Leisure's 2008 edition of the full uncut novel runs much shorter and says it's 215 pages, while ISFDB claims it's FOUR HUNDRED PAGES (no note about where that info came from). The 2009 e-book has same cover and a note on ISFDB saying the Kindle runs 215 pages. So a print copy of the Leisure is needed, which can't be found by me online. Someone here should have a copy since Leisure was a mass-market publisher, so they can correct page count if needed. Other info in that article may prove usable, too. --Username 15:28, 21 September 2021 (EDT)

New Mervyn Peake Artwork

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?444364; verified it was done by (and plagiarized from) Peake. Mentioning it here in case someone needs to variant it to that 1944 publication, if necessary. --Username 11:35, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Help - Undelete

Please, I delete by mistake!

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5092758--Paulotecario 13:50, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Unrejected and approved :) Annie 14:05, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

New post-submission yellow warning for "Source"

"New Publication" and "Clone Publication" data entry forms include a "Source of the data" list of radio buttons. The last one says "Other website, later printing/edition or another source (please explain in Publication Note)".

I have added a yellow warning which warns reviewing moderators if an "Other" submission doesn't have anything entered in the Note field. Ahasuerus 16:14, 25 September 2021 (EDT)

New Web API - lookup by publication ID

A new way to query the ISFDB system has been added. Developers can now request XML representations of publication records by publication ID -- see this section of the Web API documentation for details. Ahasuerus 17:15, 25 September 2021 (EDT)

Black/Negro

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?850944; Spanish speakers, I think this may be a Spanish-language edition of Altman's Black Christmas. --Username 00:13, 26 September 2021 (EDT)

It's a Portuguese translation. VT set up, thanks! Ahasuerus 00:29, 26 September 2021 (EDT)

Co-Authored Charles Beaumont Story

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=moon+in+gemini&type=All+Titles; date unknown for inclusion in Centipede reprint of Beaumont and Tomerlin's novel, but it's actually from Beaumont's 2000 collection of unpublished stories A Touch of the Creature; photos of contents page online don't show Tomerlin, so maybe it's at head of story or they didn't know back then (or forgot to mention it). PV rarely responds so maybe someone else has the book handy. --Username 11:46, 26 September 2021 (EDT)

"Publications with Invalid Prices" further enhanced

The cleanup report "Publications with Invalid Prices" has been further enhanced to look for incorrectly positioned currency abbreviations, missing decimal separators, etc. I expect that the next run of the report will find around 1,680 problem prices. Ahasuerus 21:54, 26 September 2021 (EDT)

So can we get a yellow warning when trying to add a price that will ping on the report? :) Annie 12:57, 27 September 2021 (EDT)

Yup! FR 1444, "Enhance yellow warnings for prices", was created 3 hours ago :-) Ahasuerus 13:10, 27 September 2021 (EDT)

Great. The big offenders on the missing thousands separator are the few languages which have 4-digits prices often but do not natively use thousands separator - Japanese, Hungarian... Some of the other weird prices in the report are... weird. Annie 13:42, 27 September 2021 (EDT)

Done. The logic was a bit tricky due to certain obscure technical issues, but it should work in the vast majority of cases that we are likely to deal with. Ahasuerus 14:48, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Related to this, could we have the system automate the adding of commas where appropriate? A similar thing is already done with dashes in ISBNs, and that could probably be adapted to insert commas where appropriate in prices. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:58, 27 September 2021 (EDT)

The way the ISFDB software auto-hyphenates ISBNs is not a very good example because the code that does the work is over 60,000 characters long :-)

I'll have to think about the feasibility of adding commas automatically. It seems doable, but there may be gotchas. Ahasuerus 18:44, 27 September 2021 (EDT)

NNNN will always need to be N,NNN and NNNNN will always need to be NN,NNN (and NNNNNN -> NNN,NNN). Not much of a place for gotchas. Unless someone writes something like 0200 as a price copying from somewhere which padded 0s but these can be easily caught on moderation even if we cannot first remove the padding on submission. Still better than chasing people for the missing comma. Plus that will also allow you to catch things like 12,23 - comma will always mean 3 symbols behind it. ;) Annie 19:08, 27 September 2021 (EDT)

(The) Claw

Futura edition of Ramsey Campbell's (as Jay Ramsay) The Claw, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?178149, was actually titled Claw, which I discovered from title page on Richard Dalby's site (which doesn't show up on Google Images because in the Dalby site's usual shoddy way misspelled name as Jay Ramsey). I changed title for both Ramsay and Campbell parent, but there are 2 1992 editions which say The Claw, so I don't know if those actually have that title, whether their title pages just say Claw, and whether their variant status has to be changed now that I've fixed the original edition's title. --Username 17:51, 27 September 2021 (EDT)

You cannot change the title of the parent because it is inside of the two books that we highly suspect have "The" on their title pages (as they do on their covers - title and pub records should match). So we have two options here:

• Create a new parent for this record with the title "Claw" and redate the existing "The Claw" to match the first record under that form so 1992-07-00 (now it takes its date from the earlier publication because of the "most commonly known title" rule.
• Leave it as is if "The Claw" is considered the best known title.

Let me know if you have any questions. Cases like that can get a bit complicated because of early publication under different titles under pseudonyms. Annie 18:11, 27 September 2021 (EDT)

Asimov's non-fiction

A new editor found a new updated list of Asimov's non-fiction, a lot of which we are missing, most of it is non-genre related (but is eligible as it was published as separate books and he is above threshold). The data is here if we have a volunteer. Annie 17:57, 27 September 2021 (EDT)

One volunteer. Willing to share. ../Doug H 19:29, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

Gahan Trio

"Phyllis" by Gahan Wilson had a 1962 date on ISFDB but no note about where it came from; it came from Playboy, and was part of a 3-story group, Horror Trio. Another story, "The Book", has a note about where it came from but wasn't in that issue on ISFDB so I imported it and "Phyllis", but the 3rd story, "Appetizer", apparently was never published solo in any Wilson collection so I added it to that issue. However, Horror Trio is listed as a short story on ISFDB in Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?333886, so that might be a problem; either they just used the drawings accompanying the stories or actually reprinted the stories, in which case some varianting might be needed. --Username 09:25, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

Well, there's a primary verifier for that publication, who is active. So, what about asking him? (That'd be a lot more effective). Stonecreek 09:27, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

Because the 1 time months ago I let him know I added/fixed info for a book he PV'd, he responded with extreme rudeness bordering on hostility, so much so that I left him a message calling him out on it, to which he never bothered to respond. So if you want to ask him about this book, go ahead. If not, who cares, it'll go unfixed for years or maybe never; book was PV'd in 2014, so obviously nobody else here was ever curious about why a new story was written by Wilson in a book full of decades-old stories. UPDATE: PV also entered Dracula Country as original when it's actually from 1978, so I fixed that and added a link to PLAYBOY's site which includes the full story and the original cartoons by Wilson. Also, 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons is on Google with a preview of the book, and searching inside shows Appetizer, Book, and Phyllis are mentioned, so why PV didn't enter them under their individual titles is unknown. --Username 10:15, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

You refer to this. Re-read the first line and tell me again how you wrote "in a professional manner". And about not responding to messages, on your talk page I counted over 40 messages to which you never bothered to respond. How civilized is that?

On the subject of Gahan Wilson, 'Horror Trio' is presented as one story with three chapters titled Appetizer, Book and Phyllis. There is nothing in the book about how and when it was published before. The only thing I knew (from the title of the book) was that it was published in Playboy at some undefined time. Nice that you found this. I entered the three separate stories and a note about how they are presented. --Willem 15:13, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

The first line mentions info I added and changes I made and reason why I contacted you about them first, because of frequent complaints from mods about checking with PV first before making changes. There's nothing unprofessional about any of that. Most of the messages I get on my page don't receive an answer because they're not the type that require an answer; if a fix is needed I just fix it, so there's no need to respond. I also noticed today for the first time that when you deleted some of my notes for Wellspring you referred to them as "nonsense notes", which is clearly not professional. None of this matters much because I've refrained since then from contacting you about any book PV'd by you and if I come across one I just fix what needs fixing, which is often needed. As to Gahan Wilson, a check of ISFDB's record for him would have shown that his 1998 collection The Cleft contains 2 of the tales, The Book and Phyllis, and obviously there was a third tale, Appetizer, since they were all under the heading Horror Trio. I found out all of this in a few seconds. Also, I suppose there was no date for Dracula Country, either, since you entered it as an original story, but the real 1978 date was also found in a few seconds. A PV should know that books are totally unreliable as to when and where stories are first published and more research is needed to verify the info. --Username 15:41, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

Let me clarify one thing here. Primary verifications exist to confirm that our records accurately reflect what's stated in the actual publications. If a primary verifier decides to do more research, that's great, but it's not a requirement. As per Help:How_to_verify_data, the only requirement is to "make sure that your publication matches what is in the database". Ahasuerus 17:47, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

I've added page scans from a site that shows all 3 stories, so that should be all for this matter. FYI, I found a 2007 edition of Wellspring and added it a while back, in case you own that one, too, and have anything to add to its record. --Username 15:41, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

Deriving an ISBN and adding notes are not significant changes, if you had read the message above my talkpage, you could have seen there was no need at all to bother me with that. "you can look at it before others do and complain that I didn't talk to PV before making changes" is cynical and completely unnecessary for a first contact. If you don't have the decency to acknowledge you read a message and explain what you did, why do you keep complaining that I didn't respond to your last accusation? On your talkpage see this, this and this for some of your most blatant breaches of protocol. --Willem 16:13, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

The "Plagiarism" issue turned out to be correct, as the person guilty of it was mentioned on several websites, and not only was my webpage about him added to his ISFDB record but moderator searched the web and added a page about his plagiarism they found, too; the "Language" issue was because when adding edits I would occasionally refer to "damn Amazon" or something similar when their shoddy info was annoying me; none of the (very mild) language was ever directed at editors, moderators, etc. --Username 17:24, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

"Damn Amazon" would be fairly mild in a casual conversation. However, keep in mind that not only Notes, but also Moderator Notes can be accessed by anyone on the internet. Not only would such language present our project as unprofessional, but it could also jeopardize our ability to get book data from Amazon. The reason that our robot, Fixer, has been able to build and enter so many records -- see this Top Contributors page for NewPubs -- is that the ISFDB and Amazon have an agreement that lets us access Amazon's internal databases. Amazon can terminate the agreement at any time and for any reason (or for no reason at all.) Keeping our notes professional is the least we can do to avoid jeopardizing our access. Ahasuerus 19:24, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

As for the third message, the editor hacked my user page and was given a warning by moderators not to do it again or there would be consequences, so I had a very good reason not to respond to any of their messages. Also, if you had responded with "no need" then I would have added similar info to your PV'd books in the future without asking you first; other moderators have told me "no need" without a problem. Instead, you wrote, "You use an awful lot of words to say nothing. I don't need to visit your source" and referred to my notes as "cluttering the notefield" and "nonsense notes". Maybe your house fire which occurred shortly before our conversation left you in a bad mood, so I'll just chalk your angry response up to that. --Username 17:24, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

So keep living in your dreamworld where everybody has to be decent except you. --Willem 03:56, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Merovingen Nights

Back when we entered the title series Merovingen Nights in the database, the software only supported integer series numbers. There was no easy way to reflect the fact that C. J. Cherryh's Angel with the Sword was originally a standalone novel which later spawned a series of 7 anthologies edited by Cherryh. We ended up entering Angel with the Sword as entry #1 in the series and then entered the anthologies as entries 2-8. This wasn't a great solution because the seven anthologies are explicitly numbered 1-7 as explained in this note.

Now that we have more options, I think we should use the same numbering scheme (1-7) that the anthologies use. We could then call Angel with the Sword book #0 in the series. Would that work? Ahasuerus 09:54, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

Yep. This numbering had been bugging me for awhile. Annie 12:00, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

Without objection, so ordered. Ahasuerus 14:09, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

And I removed the Series note I added back in 2018 which was explaining our weird numbering because it was incorrect now. :) Annie 19:10, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Ivan Stang

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?710845; ISFDB entry for J.R. Dobbs misspells first name of real guy so I fixed it and added Wikipedia for Ivan Stang, then searched for Ivan Stang and there's that 1 story above; don't know if that's by the "real" Ivan Stang or what. --Username 12:45, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

Link to the PV page on the PV'd publication

If you look at a PV'd publication, (example), and you click on the name of the verifier, it leads you to their user page and not to their discussion page. That can be a bit confusing if someone does not have experience with Wiki and it kinda hides messages left on top of an editor's Discussion/Talk page explaining how to communicate with them or showing that they are inactive and so on. Is there a reason why we link to the user page and not to the Talk page? Annie 17:10, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

It looks like most submission-related pages link to User pages as well as to Talk pages. On the other hand, user-facing bibliographic pages like the Publication page linked above or the Advanced User Search page link only to User page.

It would be easy enough to make all pages link to Talk pages in addition to User pages. Ahasuerus 17:22, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

Or just leave links to the Talk page so we do not confuse people. Which just happened again despite a step by step provided. Annie 13:39, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

So can we do something about this, please? Annie 03:08, 20 October 2021 (EDT)

I can create an FR, but first we need to decide how we want to standardize User/Talk links across Web pages. Do we need links to User pages? Or will links to Talk pages be enough? Removing links to User pages would also make things less crowded. Ahasuerus 10:36, 20 October 2021 (EDT)

I’d vote for replacing the current User link with a Talk link. Annie 11:40, 20 October 2021 (EDT)

I can see how a single "Talk" link would be a cleaner option than what we currently have. I have hardly used "User" links in the 15+ years that we have had them. Ahasuerus 13:33, 20 October 2021 (EDT)

Hearing no objection, I have created FR 1459, "Standardize links to User and Talk pages ". Ahasuerus 16:51, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Duplicate Brazilian Foundation prequels and sequels currently showing on the homepage

There are 4/8 of these, plus a box set e.g. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?854955 and http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?854974 . A glance at the edit history of a couple of them looks like they were submitted by different editors at roughly the same time.

I could possibly merge these records, but maybe it'd be better for someone more knowledgeable on Brazilian pubs to take a look? In particular, one set are marked as pb, the other as tp. Looking at earlier Foundation series pubs from this publisher, I suspect they are tps, but I couldn't be sure on that. OTOH, the tp records were done as NewPubs, and so aren't varianted to the original English titles. (The omnibus looks like it uses these tp records, so I imagine that will need to have the contents cleared out and re-done?) ErsatzCulture 08:17, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

I will clear these up - they all were just approved without clearing up. Thanks for the note! Annie 13:41, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

I think I got them all. Thanks for posting :) Annie 14:26, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Hidden MacAvoy Book

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL26775558M/New_Cthulhu_The_Recent_Weird; just a heads up that R.A. MacAvoy's book Death and Resurrection is on Archive.org but trying to find it on Open Library is screwy because Prime Books, one of my most nefarious foes since I started editing on ISFDB, whose track record for shoddiness is legendary, printed the wrong ISBN on New Cthulhu's copyright page but the right one on the back cover, so MacAvoy's Open Library page has no Archive link to his book but the page I linked above has wrong title and cover image but right author, and clicking Preview brings you to MacAvoy's book, in case anyone was looking for it. --Username 11:10, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Hale or Gresham?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?4784; been doing lots of edits for Robert Hale SF books, and an oddity is that there seems to be a subseries called John Gresham SF; just added Nuetzel to the page linked above (couldn't find the cover anywhere, but Amazon's fake cover says it's a Gresham book). Some of those books say John Gresham is the publisher, some just say Gresham, and some say Robert Hale. Most of these books were only published in Great Britain, so if anyone owns copies they can verify who the publisher is and fix accordingly. --Username 14:56, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Sheep

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?7783; the American edition was almost totally empty, so I added info pieced together from different online sites; cover image can't be found by me anywhere. I remember this book clearly from my bookstore-browsing days in the 1990's when White Wolf books were everywhere. Since they went out of business many of their books seem to have vanished, and finding copies or exact info about them is really tough. Recently I found a copy of their edition of the anthology Borderlands 2 at a decrepit thrift shop and it looked like a mint copy, which is bizarre because it came out more than 20 years earlier. So what I'd like to know is if anyone has a copy of Sheep and can verify info I added is all correct. Making the format "pb" I'm pretty sure about, but the rest is iffy. Found this, https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/White_Wolf_Night_Edition_Number_2, so ISBN and price seem to be correct. --Username 22:34, 2 October 2021 (EDT)

Swallowed By the Cracks

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5106233; should "by" be capitalized in title; ISBN taken from publisher site, but got yellow warning; copyright page on Google Books says "Dave 2 Beta 2" first appeared on Smith's blog in 2009, so should date be changed or doesn't that count? --Username 10:07, 3 October 2021 (EDT)

Questions answered in edit following mine. --Username 15:49, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

Capitalization - we always follow our own rules unless there is an indication that the uncommon capitalization comes from the author and is intentional. No such indication here so we standardize.

For the ISBNs - if it comes from a secondary source, unless they claim it is taken directly from the book, we follow our rules for the ISBN13/ISBN10. If you follow the secondary source because they claim it is so in the book, a note about that needs to be added. So a 2011 book will have an ISBN13 - unless we verify that only ISBN10 is printed in all possible places on the book. Some sites always use ISBN10, some always use ISBN13 - regardless of the age of the book.

For the dates - add that to the notes.

If you have a question here that is tied to a submission, you need to let us know in the moderator notes of the submission. Keeping track of questions here and submissions and lining them up together is not trivial.

Let me know if I missed something above. :) Annie 16:14, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

You answered them OK both in your edit's "notes to moderator" and here. I asked about them here because when I wonder about certain things in my edits' notes most of the time I get no response, unless it's an angry one asking why I'm writing them a note there and not asking about it on the message boards, which used to happen often with a certain moderator here until I wised up and stopped writing notes in my edits; he rarely approves edits anymore, anyway. --Username 17:13, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

Just saying "see "this community post" with a link is enough so someone knows to look - as long as it does not mean doing it for every single submission - that will slow down things considerably. Otherwise things get disconnected and especially with the big number of notes you are adding, noone can track them unless they monitor all boards while trying to work the queue and that is a bit... hard. I caught this one here by chance - recognized the title when it popped up as latest update. Plus notes here are not connected to the book so someone piecing things together later will not find them. The basic rule is: if you have a question, post on the boards somewhere but link in the submission (or wait for an answer before submitting); if it is background, add it to the moderator note. The problem with questions inside of a moderator note is that we have no other way to answer - besides posting to the wiki - so someone needs to go, create the question, add the answer and so on - as opposed to finding the question and just responding. Multiply that by a few hundred submissions per day from various editors with various level of understanding of how the DB works and... it gets complicated. Thus the "please no questions in the submissions; but do let us know when there are questions posted about it elsewhere". Or just ask, get an answer, then make the submission - most editors do that. :) Annie 17:26, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

African Counselman

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?511906; https://fantlab.ru/edition177015; Very interesting case here, as Counselman published collections from genre publishers but also this rare book, which somehow is on Fantlab with photos of copyright page and contents page. I imported the 2 stories on ISFDB which have exactly the same title, but there's several 1950's titles from Jungle Stories which don't have the same title in this book, although 1 does have right title on copyright page vs. contents page, and "Blood-Brother of the Crocodile" says it's by either unknown or "John Starr" on ISFDB, but this, [10], seems to suggest that she wrote it under a pseudonym because she already had a story in that issue under her real name; the fact that story is by her doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere online. There's also a copyright credit for a 1933 Weird Tales story which isn't in the contents, a couple of mentions of non-genre magazines without saying which stories came from them, and an intriguing credit for Witch-Burning which is the title of a 1936 Weird Tales poem by her but is listed in the magazine credits. There's also a signature on the lower right of the cover which I can't decipher. So lots of work needed on this one, and hopefully someone will chime in with further useful info or possibly have a print copy so all titles can be verified from inside the book itself; possibly back cover might yield some info, too. Very little info online, so this would be a good one to add to ISFDB. There's also this, https://data.fantlab.ru/images/editions/plus/big/177029_1, which says the 1977 edition is actually enlarged from a 1975 edition, plus there's some other titles on that page that may belong on ISFDB. --Username 19:57, 3 October 2021 (EDT)

Joan Aiken?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?13759; added cover to 1 of Pineiro's books, so checked author's other books, too, and almost passed this 1 by because it already had a cover until I felt something was off because it's a fantasy cover and Pineiro doesn't write fantasy; turns out neither of the editors who worked on this record noticed the cover was for a Joan Aiken book with a totally different title. Not sure how that happened, but I fixed it; now I'm wondering if there's any way to scan ISFDB's records and determine in a batch which cover images don't match their titles? --Username 11:19, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

Actually this is the dreaded Amazon ISBN-based images issue (or as I call it the /P/ covers mess). The old value was http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0618196250.jpg

This is ISBN-based image. When it was added, it was pointing to whatever Amazon had under the ISBN 0618196250 and probably matched the title just fine. That changed some time in the past - to a totally different book - usually it will be to a different edition but if/when ISBNs are reused or Amazon fixes/introduces a problem with an ISBN, all bets are off. As this links by ISBN, Amazon changes, our image changes. That's why we insist on /I/ images now - these are stable. Behind the scenes, the /P/ address just links to an /I/ address and they move to a different /I/ when the cover for the ISBN changes - thus messing up our editions sometimes.

If you have the will and inclination to do something about these they are easily found-able with Advanced Search by looking for images containing amazon.com/images/P/ or like this - and yes, we have a LOT of them - 26K last time I looked). Each of them can change overnight. If you work on that and you hit a verified book, make sure the PVs confirm what cover they have. Or just work on the non-verified first - there are enough for everyone. Fixing them is not trivial - as these need real eyes on them - we cannot just hit Amazon for the latest /I/ based on the ISBN because especially for older books, chances are that it is not the real one. So there will be some cross-validation around. Annie 17:35, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

Milton's Paradise Lost - genre or not?

Is "Paradise Lost" genre or does it fall under the religions exception that makes the Bible not a fantasy book? I think the Milton's poem is ours despite its connection to the religious texts... Any thoughts by anyone? Annie 18:57, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

I would say it's fantasy. To quote from Clute/Grant's entry on Milton: "His renown, in both English literature and genre fantasy, is based primarily on Paradise Lost..." It goes on to say that the poem "dramatizes conversations between divine beings". We include Dante's Divine Comedy which seems to me, the same sort of work. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 19:39, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

Acervo Terror

Randomly came across a Spanish-language edition of R. Bloch's Strange Eons on Fantlab, entered it here, and now I see this, https://tercerafundacion.net/biblioteca/ver/coleccion/234, with 2 editions of R. Campbell's The Parasite, 2 of G.R.R. Martin's Fevre Dream, and a novel by a Spanish-language author who only has 2 short stories on ISFDB. I remember when looking for the Bloch cover on Google Images seeing a different cover with the same title, so there might be another edition of that, too. Possibly some people here have actual copies of these books they can enter. --Username 19:52, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

Antiquary Impressions

Noticed Fantlab, in their usual careless way, threw up a bunch of random photos to go with their Ghost Stories of an Antiquary page, https://fantlab.ru/edition139848, and 2 photos show title pages of Third Impression (1906) and Fourth Impression (1910); only original and Second Impression are on ISFDB. In case anyone ever enters more editions, there's proof there's at least 2 more. --Username 00:22, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

It is not "careless" - they just do not record the different impressions/printings of English books separately (or of the Russian ones either - additional printings are noted inside of the same record with all known details unless it is considered a new edition - which is well defined in Russian publishing). So we get lucky occasionally with data from weird printings popping up. You cannot blame them for actually following their policies. :) Annie 00:36, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

I suppose it's also their policy to show the photo of the fourth impression before the third one. Their written info is unreliable with many misspellings, wrong names, dates, etc. which cause me to have to double-check any info I get from their site. Many of their photos have watermarks not their own or look exactly like photos on other, more reputable sites, down to the same rips in the cover, so it's questionable where they got many of their photos from, too. One of my few joys while editing here is complaining about the shocking shoddiness of sites I get info from or book publishers who can't even get info right in their own books. If I want to vent, I'll vent. --Username 01:17, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

Title Dates Before First Publication Date

This report is only restricted to Serials and Coverart variants now - which we are mostly done with. Can we add another type so we can start working on more of the mismatched titles. Novel for example (which will be a lot more fun because sometimes it will mean adding books, sometimes it will mean resetting the date)... :) Annie 18:38, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

Certainly. Here is what we have on the development server, which is currently one day behind the live server:

+--------------+--------------------+
| ANTHOLOGY    |                 83 |
| COLLECTION   |                224 |
| COVERART     |                  5 |
| INTERIORART  |               9467 |
| EDITOR       |                  1 |
| ESSAY        |               1796 |
| INTERVIEW    |                 86 |
| NOVEL        |               2106 |
| NONFICTION   |                 69 |
| OMNIBUS      |                 77 |
| POEM         |                955 |
| REVIEW       |                129 |
| SERIAL       |                 16 |
| SHORTFICTION |              10498 |
| CHAPBOOK     |                 60 |
+--------------+--------------------+

Which title type(s) would be the best candidate? Ahasuerus 21:04, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

Let’s get the anthologies, chapbooks, omnibuses and collections out of the way - they will have both cases where we need to add a book and cases where we need to fix a date and they are low enough number not to overwhelm. 21:12, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

Done! The data will become available tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 22:07, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

"New" Hugh Walpole Stories

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2627515; fixed "The Faithful Servant" and gave it its original 1939 date; however, Leonaur either gave "Major Wilbraham" the wrong title on their website or it's actually spelled that way in their book. No PV, no photos of contents page online I can find, so if anyone has the book they may want to check and fix/merge, or make it a variant. --Username 20:49, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

Lois Lowry Mostly non-genre

HI! A new submitter has tagged a group of Lois Lowry[11] books as non-genre and a quick look at her page and aside from the series Giver the rest appears to be just that non-genre. One that fits is about talking animals I think and a few short stories(specfic). Thoughts/opinions? Thanks.Kraang 22:08, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

Looking at them, the Krupnik family does not seem to be anywhere near genre and I don’t see Lowry as above genre - so that whole series should be deleted IMO. And that’s probably true for some others in there as well. Annie 22:46, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

SFE3 confirms that the Giver series is YA science fiction. It also states that Gossamer is a fantasy, which Wikipedia agrees with. The Birthday Ball is a juvenile tale about a princess in what appears to be pre-modern society, but I can't tell if it includes any speculative elements. According to one review, The Willoughbys "often breaks out of its confines of impossible situations through fantasy", but it reviews the movie and not the source material, so it may not be dispositive.

Overall, I would say that this author's non-SF works significantly outnumber her SF works -- see this Wikipedia bibliography, which is more complete than ours. We may want to delete the non-SF titles. Ahasuerus 22:56, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

Well I'll get at it tomorrow and approve the submitters edits, then leave a note on their page that the non-genre had to be deleted. If this sound OK I'll proceed. Thanks!Kraang 23:12, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

Sounds like a plan. It will also save us from having to convert a lot of these ‘novels’ to chapbooks :) Annie 23:27, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

Arthur Stone canonical name

This guy uses Arthur Stone for his English translations and Артём Каменистый for his Russian originals (it is the same name, just translated (not transliterated but translated) into the language the books are published in - who knows what he will be called in French). I plan to change the canonical name to the Russian name while adding all the originals. Anyone opposing? Annie 15:46, 6 October 2021 (EDT)

Hearing no objections, I am going to change the canonical name here Annie 18:53, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

Matheson's Created By

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?88662; R.C. Matheson's 2016 collection Zoopraxis is on Google Books, and I found that Harry O. Morris was the cover artist, so entered that info and a bunch of essays, including one by Morris. Reading it, it mentioned other covers he'd done for Matheson's books, including the Gauntlet edition of Created By. That didn't have Morris' cover credit either, so I also entered that and a bunch of essays using this, https://picclick.com/CREATED-BY-Richard-Christian-Matheson-Signed-Limited-133740062907.html; however, some were not entered, because I don't know what TAG is (essay or short story, I'd assume), there's an Interview With Richard Matheson from 1991 already on ISFDB, so I don't know if it's that one or a new one, and The Script Portion sounds like a screenplay excerpt, but who knows. This edition seems rare, so if anyone has a print copy and can verify what those items are, respond here. --Username 18:22, 6 October 2021 (EDT)

Mercury Mystery

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?318208; wrote a note to PV, who doesn't respond often, about making his Donovan's Brain part of the Mercury Mystery series and making 87 the series #. There's another Mercury Mystery on ISFDB, The Sound of Murder, which has publisher as Mercury, so that probably needs renaming to The American Mercury. --Username 19:54, 6 October 2021 (EDT)

He responded and agreed with me. --Username 22:02, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Bibliographic Projects

There is a wiki page for Bibliographic Projects in Progress which hasn't really been used since 2017. I gather the page was used by a small group to co-ordinate their activities and served as a base to other project pages. I would like to see it refurbished and promoted for editors to 'suggest' projects or activities that they feel are worthwhile but do not have the time, interest or ability to work on. The additional wiki 'project' pages should be optional. Categories and rules for opening, working on or closing projects would help. Just looking for feedback before or put it on my project list. ../Doug H 12:36, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Why not. We can use a space where people can leave homework they cannot (or do not want to) work on for others to follow up if they chose to. Annie 21:57, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

A few thoughts. First, many of these projects have been superseded by our nightly cleanup reports. For example:

• ISFDB:Stray Shortfiction and ISFDB:Stray Essays were superseded by the cleanup report Titles without Pubs.
• ISFDB:Serial Cleanup was superseded by SERIALs without a Parent Title, Serials without Standard Parenthetical Disambiguators and Serials with Potentially Unnecessary Disambiguation.

These Wiki-based project pages need to be reviewed to make sure that the corresponding cleanup reports cover everything, then deleted (and optionally archived.)

Second, some of the "select authors cleanup" projects intersect with Fixer-maintained automatically generated lists of Clean Authors, Waiting Authors, Clean Publishers and Waiting Publishers. These Wiki-based projects need to reviewed to see if we can incorporate their data into Fixer-maintained lists. If we can do it, we can add their data to Fixer's lists, then delete the project pages.

Third, some of these project pages, e.g. Annual Page Views - 2005, point to author-specific Wiki pages. Since we are in the process of migrating author-specific Wiki pages to the database, these pages are effectively obsolete and can be deleted.

Fourth, this reminds me that I haven't looked at my To Do List in many years. Some of the items on the list are clearly obsolete, but others, e.g. "Reconcile R. R. Haywood's The Undead series" or "Reconcile Jon F. Merz's Lawson Vampire series with the author's list", are still outstanding. They need to be reviewed and either deleted or moved to Fixer's "Waiting Authors" list.

Ahasuerus 13:25, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

None of your latest example are for the Waiting List of Fixer - reconciling with an author list and reconciling with what Fixer knows are different things. So let's not mix these up. Fixer can get us what is in his DB but after that someone will need to manually check if all from the author list came through :) Annie 14:08, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

True, my list includes a lot of tasks that can't be simply turned over to Fixer. Many tasks should be deleted because the software has changed so much over the last 10-15 years. "Change A. R. Long's canonical name to Amelia Reynolds Long once we can delete pseudonyms [sic!]" reminds me that there was a time -- not so long ago -- when we couldn't remove alternate names even if they were entered in error! Ahasuerus 18:20, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

Well, you can complain about that last one to the developer... The DB had changed a lot just in the years I had been around, let alone the time before that. Which reminds me that I need to check my todo list as well and see if anything needs to be cleaned. ;) Annie 18:23, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

Feghoots

We currently have Reginald Bretnor's Feghoot vignettes spread across three different series all under a single parent. It appears that when Asimov's began publishing these in 1977, they applied their own numbering scheme, as did Amazing starting in 1983. This has created a bit of a problem. When some of the Asimov's stories were reprinted in this 1980 collection, they continued the numbering from the original series. The final collection which adds 22 stories beyond those from the 1980 collection. I would assume that the 5 stories from Asimov's not in the 1980 collection, and 9 from Amazing are among those 22 and the numbering follows that of the original stories. In any case we currently have the first 8 stories from the Asimov's series duplicated in the original series (e.g. Asimov's 1 is actually 2 vignettes, "On Poaching" and "On Praying" which are 93 & 92 in the original series, Asimov's 2 is original 89). Clearly, this isn't optimal. So the questions are:

1. Do we want this as three separate series or one?
2. If we keep it as three, where do we place stories that appear in more than one series? First publication, or does the overall numbering trump?

My personal feeling is that there should really be a single series. The Asimov's and Amazing numbers are what we would consider a publication series for book length works (i.e. they are a series only within those publications, but not when published elsewhere). Does anyone else have thoughts on how these should be handled? --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 21:26, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

It's actually even more complicated. "Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: LXIX is the same story as "Feghoot LXX" which suggests that numbering is off between the original magazine publications and the Mirage editions and at least some of our variants are off. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 21:57, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Use a single series but for each of these, use the multiS template and a note of its Asimov/Amazing number (and which it was in) so that if one day we make multiple series per title possible, we can add these numbered series back. Then we can merge/variant the texts that are the same and have and still have all the info. Annie 22:00, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud

I'm interested in opinions on whether Arthur Rimbaud's poetry collection Illuminations qualifies for inclusion. There are valid points for both inclusion and exclusion. What does everyone think? John Scifibones 20:04, 11 October 2021 (EDT)

Peter James's Possession

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?17348; There's a copy of the Sphere ed. on Archive.org with the same cover as on ISFDB, but opening Preview shows another cover. The copyright page looks the same as later ed., but the prices on the back are cheaper. The price on ISFDB is on the back of this Archive ed.; a copy on etsy.com has the later cover with the higher price. I fixed existing ed. and added earlier one, but I have a feeling the 1989 date may not be right for the later ed. Little info online for the earlier ed.; locusmag.com mentions it and there's a cover image on Biblio.com. If anyone knows more and can tweak or add anything let us know. Also, the cover for St. Martin's edition of Sweet Heart by Peter James was the wrong one; I felt something was wrong because I remember reading it back in the day and the cover here didn't look like the usual St. Martin's cover. I found the right one on Amazon (not many images of this edition online) and replaced it; checking further, I found an eBay copy of the edition with the previous (wrong) cover and there's an upside-down photo of the back cover with the words "Doubleday Canada" on the bottom. ISFDB has a few 1970's books by them, then there's a huge gap until 1997. I wonder how many other books by them are missing here. --Username 10:44, 12 October 2021 (EDT)

Dick Sand - Jules Verne

First time coming across this community as I am struggling down a rabbit hole.

I picked up a copy of Jules Verne's Dick Sand at a library sale - however, there is no publishing date on the inside cover, and the only identifying marking is the A.L. Burt Company on the side of the binding, and at the end of the book, A. L Burt's Books For Young People, which is a catalogue of book recommendations. I've been unable to find any copy with the same cover as the one I have on google images.

In going down the rabbit hole of trying to identify this version, I found on A.L. Burt's publishing page, that user Holmesd had previously verified a copy of another Verne work - I am unsure how to page this person and ask for help otherwise. Pictures attached of cover and side binding. [12] [13]

- Helsinki, 10:07 PM, 10/12/2021

Well, you seem to have figured out how to contact Holmesd :) He will see the note on his page and will respond with whatever they know. Welcome to the DB! Not having some of the old editions online is not unusual... :) Annie 22:35, 12 October 2021 (EDT)

Can your book be any of these: this or this. No covers but there is some description of the illustrations, number of pages, number of plates and signatures and so on so it may help to narrow down what you have. None of them has an year but... more details make it easier to find matches. Annie 22:48, 12 October 2021 (EDT)

It seems that this [14] version is the correct one, howvever, it seems that there are multiple versions which fit the bill, all of them undated. [15] and [16]are also 413 pages, albeit with less distinctive information. It may be that it was put into the system multiple times by accident, given that one of them seems to be an online copy.. The good news is, the description matches the title page. However, it is mildly infuriating that the specific publishing date is unidentified, and this [17] one cites it at being at some point in the late 1800s, which is viable given the timeframe the A.L. Burt company operated, but it does not source it. I'm not entirely sure I have a first edition translation next to me, but I would like to rule it out. Helsinki 23:28, 12 October 2021 (EDT)

One step at a time :) Old books can take months and years to be sorted out sometimes. At least we are getting to some information. So 413 pages, 12 illustrations and vii pages before the text (and numbering starts). Older books will always have multiple OCLC pages - OCLC/Worldcat is an aggregator so if different libraries had added the records differently, especially older records, they will have separate OCLC numbers even if they are the same book. I picked the two with the most details that seems to show different versions (although who knows - there may be a type - are the illustrations in your book signed?) so we can get started from somewhere. The LCCN record is almost useless - no date from there either. From what I can see online and based on other books, that one may have been reprinted to death...

Is there anything on the title page or the back of the title page that may be helpful? Annie 00:17, 13 October 2021 (EDT)

Much to my chagrin, there is absolutely no other identifiers other than the illustration itself. On the bottom right corner of the illlustration, it seems to be signed by a Barrant(?), and on the left, is possibly another signature which I cannot make out, a certain M. ????.

I reached out to another person of interest who did some writing on the A.L. Burt company, with sources being his own copies of books and sleeves. Unfortunately, on that particular page, there aren't any covers which match my own in style. I'm hopeful that I'll get a response, and I'm going to see if I can ask my university library for some aid as well today. Helsinki 08:19, 13 October 2021 (EDT)Helsinki

Just added to the publisher Notes giving addresses / date correlations: 1889-1896 66 Reade Street, 1896-1900 97 Reade Street, 1900-1912 52-58 Duane Street, 1912-1937 114-120 East 23rd St. ../Doug H 08:22, 13 October 2021 (EDT)

That's a big update! I've realized that last night, as I was writing this, that I had forgotten to put the address which was handily listed in the back, along with the book recommendations. It cites as 52-58 Duane Street, New York, which I now have half a mind to visit. The main takeaway is that it narrows it down quite a bit, giving the 1900-1912 timeframe. Helsinki 08:33, 13 October 2021 (EDT) PS. Another friend of mine has sent me two interesting photos, of a copy of Mysterious Island, also by Verne. Notable is that there is the same illustration on the cover, albeit formatted differently, sans title of the book. The book itself is red, and this is the second time I've seen the cover illustration outside of my own copy. The first was on another book, untitled, but colored blue, which I can only assume is another Verne book which is not Mysterious Island.

I have gone through the painstaking process of going through all 62 books listed in the book recommendations in the back in order to help place this. My thinking was that this particular edition of Jules Verne could not have been published before any of the books mentioned had been released, as my understanding is that the ARC system was not in place yet. The key book I found was Ben Bruce. Scenes in the Life of a Bowery Newsboy. by Horatio Alger Jr, which had been published in 1901, from what I can find. Therefore, this copy cannot be older than 1901, which narrows the range further. The current range this could exist in is 1901-1910, which narrows things down only by a year, but progress is progress. This also aligns with the other book illustration, which was at least from 1901 or earlier. Thank you for bearing with me. Helsinki 10:24, 13 October 2021 (EDT)

The Greenlanders - that's not really genre

We have Jane Smiley's The Greenlanders in the db and looking at the tag, it matches one of the Amazon categories (historical fantasy). However, Amazon uses that category for both speculative and non-speculative (not our type of fantasy) and this specific book has no speculative elements at all (not even a wise woman that can do seemingly magical tricks with plants - it is purely a historical epic). Any objections to deleting it from the DB? Annie 20:04, 13 October 2021 (EDT)

Nope. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:31, 13 October 2021 (EDT)

Locus Poll Award - "(old)" categories

Prompted by this tweet - are there any particular reasons for having roughly two dozen of the Locus Poll Award categories tagged with "(old)"? It doesn't appear to be directly correlated with defunct categories they no longer present, as there are counterexamples that aren't tagged so e.g. #1, e.g. #2.

Some cursory Googling didn't appear to show any use of "old" in conjunction with these awards outside ISFDB, and I wasn't able to find anything relevant in the search functionality for this wiki. Is this maybe something that could/should be further explained in the award type note? ErsatzCulture 12:25, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

While none of the categories so marked have been awarded since the 70s, I don't think it adds anything to disambiguate categories no longer awarded with current ones. There is only one other category for a different award that has been marked this way. My opinion is that the parenthetical disambiguators should be removed from both the Locus and World Fantasy categories. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 17:47, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

I support the removal of (old) where it is unneeded. And if it remains somewhere, the Note on the Award level and the notes on each category level should be explaining the usage. Annie 18:07, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

And if we need to keep any of them with a weird name, can we use (year-year) format and not (old) to show which years they were given in? It will keep it a lot cleaner and clearer and a lot less weird when you open the list... Annie 18:10, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

Comparing our categories with what's listed by Wikipedia, it looks like our "(old)" categories match Wikipedia's "inactive" categories.

I agree that we should remove all occurrences of "(old)" and update each discontinued category's Note field wit an explanation of what happened to it: some were merged, others were split, etc. Ahasuerus 20:34, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

SFE changes

The Online edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has undergone a number of changes since October 1. They have parted ways with their sponsor, changed servers, upgraded from HTTP to HTTPS, changed the URLs of some Web pages, etc. The project is now known as "the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition" as opposed to the 2011-2021 "Third Edition".

These changes affect us in a variety of ways. I have updated the ISFDB software to accommodate most of them, but Al and I are still working on certain outstanding technical issues behind the scenes.

The good news is that pretty much all existing ISFDB links to SFE's author pages still work. Links to the Encyclopedia of Fantasy also work, but they redirect from "sf-encyclopedia.uk" to "sf-encyclopedia.com". It's not clear how long the redirects will remain active. I will ask the SFE crew about their long term plans.

The "SFE3" template has been changed to "SFE" and its name has been changed to "Online Edition of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction" to reflect the fact that it covers all SFE editions after the second one (which has a separate template.) I have converted all occurrences of the "SFE3" template manually since it has been used only 16 times. Changing plain text references from "SFE3" to the SFE template will take longer due to the number of affected records. As per the Advanced Notes Search:

• Authors (119)
• Award Types (1)
• Publications (279)
• Publishers (3)
• Series (30)
• Synopses (77)
• Titles (170)

Ahasuerus 14:44, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

Award (Mexico): Premio Nacional de Cuento Fantástico y de Ciencia Ficción

I suggest the addition of this award: Premio Nacional de Cuento Fantástico y de Ciencia Ficción, an annual award for a scifi/fantasy short story written by in Spanish by a Mexican resident. An example winner listed on ISFDB is the short story La pequeña guerra by Mauricio-José Schwarz, the 1984 winner. Morebooks 18:16, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

Looks like a legitimate award. Do we have a volunteer who would be willing and able to enter any missing titles and the award records? Ahasuerus 20:23, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

Interzone PV

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?147582; saw this, fixed 1990 error because it's on philsp.com, but book reviews aren't listed separately so I can't fix the 1986 one; searched for Interzone #18 on Archive.org and couldn't find anything. PV is long gone, and I wonder how many other errors they made when entering magazines' contents; their name shows up very often while I'm editing. --Username 18:36, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

Well, User:Hauck is responsible for 173,962 submission, so even if his error rate were only 0.3%, it would still be over 500 errors. A more realistic rate of 1.2% would mean a couple of thousand errors.

It's kind of a Catch-22 -- the more submissions you create, the more errors will slip in. The only way to lower the rate is to have multiple eyes examining the same pubs. Ideally, we would convince one or more giant clams to join the project since they have hundreds of eyes :-) Ahasuerus 20:12, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

Missing Werewolf

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?7305; This might be unpublished; no holdings on Worldcat, no cover images, nothing. --Username 20:38, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

Gateway To Hell

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?353266; Added missing info from Fantlab, but it's just a novel, not an omnibus. Would deleting the extra novels and changing Omnibus to Novel suffice? --Username 10:11, 16 October 2021 (EDT)

Fear of the Unknown

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?73872; I added page #'s to the stories using ecampus.com, which is the only place I can find that has them, and the last story starts on p. 221. Problem is ISFDB and every other site I can find says the book is 210 pages. Mysterious; does anyone have a print copy? --Username 14:00, 16 October 2021 (EDT)

Subterranean Shorts

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?308665; I added cover to View from Hell by John Shirley, saw #4 on cover, realized it was part of Subterranean's Short Novel Series, but David J. Schow's novel Rock Breaks Scissors Cut is already #4 in that series on ISFDB. However, it's date is not aligned with the others in the series, so I don't know what's going on with this, and whether Schow's novel is really part of that series; Shirley's novel definitely is, so I'm keeping that edit. Anyone know more? --Username 19:56, 16 October 2021 (EDT)

Killing Bottle

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?42425; Worldcat link is odd because the subject and contents are clearly not for this book; this, https://www.worldcat.org/title/killing-bottle/oclc/560867805/editions, lists other editions. Would it be better to enter all of them, pick the most complete one, exclude the one currently here because of the wrong info, etc.? Looking further, the other 3 Worldcat links are mostly empty, and I can't find a cover image, so was this really published? --Username 17:32, 17 October 2021 (EDT)

Old New Stories

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?89189; Entered in 2008, then more than 12 years went by until more work was done on it, but nobody noticed the contents are all old but most have new dates. --Username 18:26, 17 October 2021 (EDT)

Crediting translations to author bibliographys

Is there a reason translations are not credited to an author's bibliography page? A separate heading would be my first choice. A separate page, like awards, would be less useful. The information could come from the translator template. I'm sure there are many tiles where a translator was noted, but, the template was not used. These could be fixed over time. What do you think? John Scifibones 12:21, 18 October 2021 (EDT)

Translations are always varianted do the originals and show up under them. The only exceptions are the random collections, anthologies and omnibuses which are not direct translations. Annie 12:28, 18 October 2021 (EDT)

If you mean when translators are also authors - that’s part of the reason we have the Translator template. One day that’s the plan technically. But not there yet. And not as many as you think - we have been doing major cleanup to get them all templates so we can use them when we have the roles set properly. The topic has quite a lot of history. :) Annie 12:30, 18 October 2021 (EDT)

Even if they are not an author, I would like to see a bibliography generated for their translations. Treat translator the same as author, artist, etc. John Scifibones 13:12, 18 October 2021 (EDT)

So do we all. :) It is in the plans for one day (hopefully that day will come)- as part of a much bigger discussion/project on allowing additional roles - Narrators for audiobooks, Editors for novels, Cover Designers and so on. Some have templates now (Translator, Narrator). Some may get one if someone decides to work on them.

Until a few years ago, we did not even record translators properly (and the template did not exist - in the first months we spent a lot of time splitting previously merged translations from different people - we still have some but... we are getting there). A few years earlier, we did not support non Latin characters in titles and author names (using Latin transliterations or Japanese and Russian titles was... interesting). :) Annie 13:31, 18 October 2021 (EDT)

(after edit conflict) We certainly want to be able to generate lists of works translated by individual translators. However, deciding on a viable design has proven difficult, e.g. see this 2017 discussion, in which I wrote "The issue of translator support has been open for close to 5 years now".

The big challenge with capturing translator names is that they are associated with title records. Currently New/Add/Edit/Clone Publication pages have 4 separate sections for 4 different kinds of titles: artist, regular, review, interview. We can't just add a 5th section for translations because translations are associated with individual titles. What we need to do is update "Edit Title" and capture the translator(s)' name(s) in a new infinitely repeating field. Then we have to deal with the fact that many translators use alternate names, so we need a mechanism for linking them to their canonical names, which would require a great deal of work behind the scenes.

A full-blown implementation would be time consuming, which means that there are always higher priority issues to work on. Our attempts to come up with a temporary palliative solution have been unsuccessful so far. Ahasuerus 13:34, 18 October 2021 (EDT)

Tom Clancy's Net Force

We have the complete original series (and the young adult spin-off). Why is that genre and does not get caught under the "Techno-thriller, political thriller and satire works set in a future indistinguishable from the present (?)" exclusion? Yes, the reality is different as time progresses but that is valid for every single long thriller series out there - even if it starts current, they diverge enough sooner or later to make an argument for being alternate history (which kinda defeats the exception we have). What am I missing with this series?

There was a revival a few years ago - and a new book is about to come out - so that made me wonder why we have these in the DB... Annie 22:10, 18 October 2021 (EDT)

I'd consider them near future science fiction. I don't see a problem with keeping them. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:11, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

My only problem is that they open the door for at least 50% of the thrillers out there... but sure. Annie 16:16, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

I'd rather err on the side of inclusion. If they are slightly science fiction, I think they should be included, even if only borderline. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:20, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

I think we are drawing the line for this exclusion in different places but that’s fine. :) I don’t remember anything that eleven remotely pinged as genre for me when I read them - especially because they kinda came out from the Op Center sequence and as such are not different from later volumes in other thriller series . Maybe time for a reread :) Annie 21:49, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Yeah, if they don't have any at all, then they shouldn't be here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:50, 20 October 2021 (EDT)

Kevin J. Anderson collection

How is this different from this? Should one be deleted?--Rosab618 01:14, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

One of them says "This is a limited edition of 250" and the other does not. And they have different covers...

The question is - was the whole run 250 or did the publisher produce a 250-copies special run and a trade run in parallel? And which cover belongs where - one has colors, the other does not - so unless one of them was a mockup, we may have two different versions... Annie 01:35, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

They are definitely two versions of the same thing (one limited and one not). I have both copies and have verified the information on them now. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:31, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Both with the same price? Just making sure we are not overlooking something in both records while we have a live PV. . Annie 21:50, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Yes. The price is on the spine. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:51, 20 October 2021 (EDT)

Devil Tales

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?11167; added page #'s from Archive copy; the 2 varianted stories on ISFDB are not really variants; they're spelled exactly the same way in this book, too. --Username 10:46, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

The publication record for the 1972 edition says "Contents' page numbers from Archive.org copy", but the Archive.org copy is not linked. Could you please link it? Once I confirm that we are looking at the same publication, I will merge the title records. Ahasuerus 15:45, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

As I've explained several times here recently, I only link directly to Archive links when they're public domain, fully-readable books or in rare cases where I feel there's a good reason to. Many things in the Archive are not supposed to be there, and get taken down because of copyright complaints frequently. I read a scary essay recently outlining the shady practices of the Archive and how they get a lot of their books; if I could remember where I read it I would link it here. While the original edition of Devil Tales is public domain, the 1972 reprint isn't. That's why I provide Open Library ID's, so people can see the book is available on the Archive and choose for themselves whether they want to click on their links. If you want to click the OL link, fine. If not, let me know, and I'll try to just merge those 2 stories myself, although that usually goes badly for me. --Username 16:34, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for clarifying. I have found Archive.org's scan of the 1972 edition and merged the titles. Ahasuerus 18:00, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Locked Record

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?639961; Found eBay photo with contents but can't enter #'s because entire record is locked here. --Username 11:59, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Could you please clarify what you mean when you say that the record is locked? Most Content fields are not editable because they are shared across multiple publications, but the "Page" field should be editable. Ahasuerus 15:36, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

I mean that after finding a photo of the contents pages on eBay the page #'s can't be added because clicking boxes to enter them isn't allowed, and clicking in a blank space on the page and pressing spacebar to scroll down doesn't work, either, so something behind the scenes is probably awry which needs fixing by a mod, like you. This is a very recent anthology so the idea that all stories would be in other pubs. is very unlikely; either that or I am doing something wrong, but that's not very likely, either. --Username 16:24, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

We have two copies of the anthology - the ebook and the hc versions - that's why all stories are grey - they are in the two separate publication records - so yes, they are in two different books (as you can see if you click on a story. So you cannot edit their dates, titles or authors from inside of the publication. However - the page numbers should be editable - I can go to them both with a mouse and with a keyboard tapping down from the top.

What browser are you using and what addons do you have enabled? Disable/uninstall them one by one and see if you can edit the fields - something is interfering and it is not the site. That has nothing to do with Mod vs non-Mod (yep, just tried with my test account - no issues with it either) - this is most likely an addon/plugin doing something it should not because of how the page is written and how it interprets it (or a browser being obstinate). Annie 16:40, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Also, please note that it's important to make sure that your browser displays ISFDB pages the same way that it does it for all other editors. If you are seeing different results -- whether it's due to an add-on, an out of date browser, a virus or something else -- it will not only impeded editing, but it will also make it hard for other editors and moderators to communicate with you since you will be seeing different results. Ahasuerus 17:05, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Well, now it's working. At 12:00 all fields were grayed out, but a few hours later I'm suddenly able to enter page #'s. Don't know what happened, don't care. Edit awaiting approval. --Username 17:26, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

In the future, please add the link to ebay photo in the moderator notes. While we really do not want random ebay links in the notes and the permanent record for anyone finding the page online, all information need to be SOURCED. Which means that the approving moderator needs to check the data you are entering (the two sets of eyes system) when possible. When you do not provide a source that can be checked (when it is an online source - when it is a paper source, it needs to be indicated properly so someone with the same source can look it up so we tend to take one's word for it and just verify that the source exists as a book and is properly identified), you leave the moderators two options - reject or lose the time to try to find the photo you were looking at. So please link it here this time and in the future, please add the links to the moderator notes. I will keep the record on hold in the meantime. Annie 17:35, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

https://picclick.com/Dark-Places-Evil-Faces-Mark-Lumby-PS-Publishing-304032021973.html. --Username 17:53, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Are you resubmitting or should I unreject the edit you rejected for some reason? Annie 18:15, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Unreject. --Username 18:39, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Done. Thanks. Annie 18:40, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Incorrect Bibliographic Warnings

Since I started adding the Baen CD-ROM Library titles, I have noticed that the component titles are now showing "Missing ISBN/Catalog ID" and "Missing page count" bibliographic errors related to the those Baen CD-ROM Library titles. Since those titles will never have any of the missing data indicated by the warnings, could the warning criteria be tweaked to exclude displaying warnings where the format type is "other"? That would eliminate the useless warnings. Phil 12:58, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Well, the format value "other" covers a variety of scenarios. The pubs listed by Advanced Publication Search when run for "Format is exactly other, Sort by Title" mostly have page count values and many have ISBNs and/or Catalogue IDs. Baen-produced CD-ROMs do not, but they are just a subset of the 600+ "other" pubs which we currently have on file. Ahasuerus 14:24, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

I should have guessed it wouldn't be that simple. Is there another way to keep those warnings from showing up? While they can just be ignored, there are likely to be well over 1000 of these invalid warnings once I'm done entering the Baen CD-ROM library titles. I just hate seeing noise mess up displays and useful reports if there's a reasonable way to eliminate them. Phil 14:47, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Nothing in the software as it currently exists, I am afraid. We have a "Do not display bibliographic warnings on Title pages" preference under User Preferences, but that only applies to the current user.

One thing that we could do is change the software not to display bibliographic warnings for primary-verified pubs. It seems fairly likely that if a primary-verified pub is missing one or more common field values, there is a reason for it. The reason I say "fairly likely" is that primary verifications can be done by anyone, including new and inexperienced editors who may not realize that they missed something. Still, it may be better than what we have now. We could even suppress bibliographic warnings for pubs with secondary verifications, but that would be even chancier. Ahasuerus 15:23, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Rare (?) Book of SF Essays

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?1645; Strange that a semi-recent book from a major publisher like Doubleday with essays by some big SF authors would be so hard to find info for, but that's the case here. Cover image is scarce, price also, and only place I could find with page numbers was Google Books, but extracting them was harder than usual. So when my edit is approved shortly if someone here has an actual print copy and can verify #'s are correct, and if there's any useable info on the flaps, can you respond here? --Username 21:12, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

I actually just ordered this book off Abe. They had a picture of the cover, so I uploaded it. I'll verify the rest of it once I receive it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:10, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

I found the price on Fanac and the cover is on Amazon so I added both to my edit, but if your cover is better it would be good to have it in the Wiki; if possible when you get the book you could scan the whole cover and then ISFDB may be the only site on the web that has it. Page #'s are probably correct, but there may be a cover artist/designer on the back flap or maybe a date including the month. --Username 09:02, 20 October 2021 (EDT)

I've received my copy and updated the entry with the info I could find in it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:49, 26 October 2021 (EDT)

Peter Haining

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1001310; I assumed most of Haining's books were well taken care of here, but a random scan of 1 book opened a Pandora's box, because it turns out there's all kinds of missing/wrong info for him, starting with the fact he had no photo, which I added. Many books have wrong covers, and the one linked above is interesting because the Gollancz wrongly had the same cover as Peacock, but when I added correct cover it turned out the cover artist was the same for both, even though the art is totally different! So if anyone is working on anything re: Haining, don't assume info is correct. I'll try to add/fix as much as I can. --Username 13:05, 20 October 2021 (EDT)

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2063610; entered page #'s for both editions, and neither includes Lovecraft's story. Should probably be deleted, but slim possibility it's in the book but not the contents. Anyone own a copy? --Username 14:50, 20 October 2021 (EDT)

Sexy Vampires

https://www.ebay.com/itm/174633504809; Cecilia Tan edited lots of "erotic" anthologies back in the 90's, and one called Erotica Vampirica came out in 1996 and was reprinted in 2005; however, I found that eBay link above, which seems to have collected that anthology plus 3 others edited by Tan but used the same title. No copy on Archive.org, so if anyone owns this it needs entering. --Username 14:35, 21 October 2021 (EDT)

Poe collection

While perusing the November 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, I came across an advert for a 10-volume complete works set of Edgar Allan Poe on page 755. It seems similar to the 1905 set after looking through the contents listed in the ad and comparing them to the 1905 set, but there are a few differences. Does anyone have more information on this set? The seller, Popular Book Corporation, isn't listed as a publisher on ISFDB, and I'm not sure if there is some other publisher based on the information in the ad. If this is a different set, we really ought to have it in the database. Thoughts? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:59, 21 October 2021 (EDT)

It looks like a reprint of that 1905 edition indeed which if I am not wrong is a reprint of the 1902 Richmond edition by Pearson (which the ad mentions as the base for their plates as well). OCLC for the 10 volume one, one more and an online listing (which we also do not have). Annie 20:16, 21 October 2021 (EDT)

I think it's mostly that, but the ad mentions three essays in the first volume, of which only one seems to appear in that 1905 edition. So, this one advertised in 1928 is at least slightly different, even if drawn from the same source. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:28, 21 October 2021 (EDT)

Possibly but it also says that it uses the plates from the Richmond edition - which would mean the same text everywhere - plates are kinda locking you in... They could not just drop half a page here and there. So not entirely sure if the 3 essays are not the memoir, the eulogy and the notice actually. :) Annie 20:36, 21 October 2021 (EDT)

PS: While I was digging, we do not have The Harrison edition by Thomas Y. Crowell either. If someone feels like adding them, we do want all of these editions :) Annie 20:16, 21 October 2021 (EDT)

And another 10 books set by Fred de Fau & Company from 1902 (and more images for that one. And it mentions Putnam so there may be at least one more set..

And another 17 volumes one from 1902 by George D. Sproul Company (seems to match the Harrison one above in contents but not in publisher. Annie 20:23, 21 October 2021 (EDT)

Children's Classics

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?174; I added cover to the Oz book; the other books are by different companies, so I'm wondering if there's a rule for separating pub. series that happen to have the same name as there is for authors or publishers with same names. Also, Open Library says the publisher of the Oz book is Frog, so that's interesting. --Username 10:53, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

I would create "Children's Classics (Ideal)", "Children's Classics (Bloomsbury)", and "Children's Classics (Max Bollinger)" to separate them. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:48, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

Yep - it is a somewhat common practice to add the publisher name to the pub series name so they are separated properly (unless it is a multi-publisher pub series of course - the Russian publishers had been passing pub series from one to the other, continuing numbers and so on for example). See this group of pub series for an extreme example of "same name, different publisher" :) Annie 13:17, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

New cleanup report needed: Reviews and titles language mismatch

We need a new report around languages: Reviews and reviewed titles language mismatch. While that can happen occasionally so we should not explicitly forbid it (although a note explaining the situation should be encouraged), most reviews will review the book published in their language so the review should be connected to the translation, not the original. For example this review connects properly to the French translation but this one is connected to the English original when it should be connected to the German translation. I've left a note to the PV on the last case but I suspect that's far from the only one connected sideways... Annie 14:39, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

Checking the database, I see that we currently have 1,791 mismatches. It would be easy to create a cleanup report to find them. Do we need a yellow warning as well? Ahasuerus 15:26, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

Yes, please - spelling out that if this is intentional, a note needs to be added.

Also - can you check that if someone adds a review called "Annie" by Someone" (in English) and the only title in the DB is "Annie" by Someone (in French), the review does not auto-connect on creation? I know the report will catch these if they happen but no point doing them to start with if at all possible. :) Annie 15:31, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

The new cleanup report has been implemented and deployed. The data will become available tomorrow morning. I have also created 2 additional FRs, one for the requested yellow warning and one to make the auto-linking logic aware of languages. I plan to work on them next week. Ahasuerus 17:11, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

The new cleanup report has been made available to non-moderators. Ahasuerus 11:26, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Two Heads

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?537519; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?278204. Both 1985 books with the same cover; don't know which came first. Maybe someone else here does. --Username 19:35, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

Add J.D. as recognizable author suffix

As per the instructions in the cleanup report: a new suffix is identified with Jessica 'Zhanna' Malekos Smith, J.D.. I can ignore the author from the report but can we add the prefix as recognizable as well? Thanks! Annie 01:42, 23 October 2021 (EDT)

Sure, let me take a look. Ahasuerus 11:27, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Done. As per Bug 786, "Cleanup reports do not check name suffix validity correctly", I have also corrected the algorithm behind this cleanup report. The new data will become available tomorrow morning. I expect a dozen new author names to appear on the report. Ahasuerus 17:27, 26 October 2021 (EDT)

Title and Publication templates in notes

We already have Publisher, S for Series, PubS and A for author - all working based on the name (and Advanced searching for it). Can we add Publication and Title to cover everything and make it easier for people to write notes - using the ID (then it can be used as "Title (ID: ID)" in notes or something like that. I know that we cannot replicate what we can do on the wiki side with the multi-parameter templates (like the one for Titles) but we should be able to at least do proper links to all parts of our DB without the need to know HTML :) Annie 02:33, 23 October 2021 (EDT)

At this time, templates are limited to simple substitutions which replace the provided value with a template-specific URL which includes the value. In this case, "Publisher", "PubS", "S" and "A" templates replace the publisher's/series'/author's name with the URL of an "exact" ISFDB Search URL for the given name.

We can do the same thing for publication and title records, but it be will displaying their numeric IDs as opposed to titles. Here are a couple of examples:

• {{Title|437811}} will be replaced with "437811"
• {{Pub|161701}} will be replaced with "161701"

I think it would be better to display the record's title as opposed to its ID, but it would require software changes. I'll have to take a closer look to determine the scope of the changes. Ahasuerus 19:38, 31 October 2021 (EDT)

Maybe as a quick solution, do the numerical - someone can always just copy the title and construct around the number. Once we have a better solution, we can clean it up (plus sometimes you want the ID and not the title anyway - especially for these two types of records. So call these TitleId/PubId and then when we have a better option, we can always create Title and Pub as well. Annie 19:46, 31 October 2021 (EDT)

I plan to examine the code to see what would be involved. If the effort is modest, it will be better to get it done in one iteration. Here is to hope. Ahasuerus 20:59, 31 October 2021 (EDT)

I have created FR 1461, "Create templates for Title and Publication records", to support the research/implementation effort. Ahasuerus 11:09, 1 November 2021 (EDT)

Chris(topher) Fahy

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2848370; I fixed an old story's date in this book, but that Chris Fahy story was also bothering me, and I realized it's by Christopher Fahy, a well-known writer with a collection, Matinee At the Flame, whose many original stories haven't been entered here, but checking preview on Scribd revealed "The Guardian" was 1 of the originals, so the date should be changed to that of Matinee. Question now is whether he's really credited as Chris or Christopher in Damned Yankees. Info about these latter-day Waugh-edited books is scarce, but Nihonjoe did all the editing here so maybe he knows more. --Username 08:27, 23 October 2021 (EDT)

FAQ updated: "How do I use the ISFDB to find the most popular/acclaimed SF works?"

Earlier today I added a "How do I use the ISFDB to find the most popular/acclaimed SF works?" section to ISFDB:FAQ. The new section should make it easier to respond to queries both here and elsewhere. If you can think of any potential additions to this (or any other) section of the FAQ, please post your ideas here.

BTW, what prompted me to write this section was the fact that Reddit, an increasingly popular platform supporting thousands of forums, including many SF-specific forums, auto-routes comments with links to isfdb.org to its spam queue. Multiple attempts to have Reddit admins remove ISFDB from Reddit's blacklist have been unsuccessful. It's been increasingly frustrating because we support a number of ways to create lists of popular and/or critically acclaimed works and authors, something that Reddit users ask all the time. Now we can simply respond with "Google 'ISFDB FAQ' and go to this section". Ahasuerus 17:58, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Story Starting Page

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5129699; contacted somebody about fixing page #'s using Archive.org copy; each story has a page with nothing but the title followed by a blank page and then the story itself with the title at the head. My edit was rejected, so maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't the rule to use page #'s of the actual story and not that preceding stuff? --Username 19:50, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Puffin vs Puffin / Penguin Books (UK)

Does anyone see a valid reason for these two publishers:

• Puffin
• Puffin / Penguin Books (UK)

to stay separate? Both are the Puffin division of Penguin UK and the books since 2104 had been all added to the shorter name; the older ones are split with no rhyme or reason: See 2005 Puffin / Penguin Books (UK) vs 2005 Puffin. If we keep both, we need a definition of what goes where. Note: Puffin may contain some non-UK editions which need to be sent to their proper publishers eventually but it is supposed to be the UK one only based on the note and the website link. Annie 20:10, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Strick

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?62891; Philip Strick has several items in his ISFDB record, but Phillip Strick only has this book, which only has a "Cover Coming Soon" on Amazon, and Open Library's 2 non-previewable copies call the author "Phillip Stuck". I have a feeling this book doesn't exist, so if anyone knows more... --Username 12:27, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

OCLC has a record but no holding libraries - which is not surprising because this is a UK book. BL had not heard of it and there are no copies in any of the usual places so possibly announced but never came out. Which explains pulling the cover out of it in 2009 on our record I guess. Most likely vaporware but who knows - OCLC marking the publisher as "Cassell Academic" may mean a very small run so it may be out there. I'll add a note - and fix the author name - that double L is a typo from somewhere. Annie 13:17, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

Amazon.co.uk has an entry for it here, and Abebooks has one here, but no copies are available. SFRevu had it listed as one of the books coming out in September 2002. That's all I can find. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:11, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

Yeah but something is off with a lot of these entries. The ISBN is Cassell’s for sure. Redistribution from another publisher on the US side? Who knows. Annie 16:15, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

I've sent a message to SFE3 about it, since they mention the book in his bio in a way that makes me think one of them may have a copy. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:18, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

Good thought. I’ve pinged a movies fan across the pond who collects similar books to see if he has it as well. Of course, once we locate it, it may turn out to be out of scope for the DB :) Annie 16:15, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

SFE thinks it's likely a ghost title, so I've updated the entry to reflect that it was never published. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:57, 27 October 2021 (EDT)

Faber Fanfares

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?1370+3; I added covers to both books recently; today someone added a book by Bantam Fanfare and while searching for publishers with Fanfare in their name I came across this, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?10241. All 5 PV'd but none of the PV's active, I believe, so does anyone know whether Fanfare was a separate publisher than Faber or just an imprint, and whether those 2 books should be merged with the other 5 or vice versa? --Username 09:42, 26 October 2021 (EDT)

The Original/Other Occupant

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?134040; Nevill's company Ritual published his first collection, Some Will Not Sleep, and I entered the contents today; however, 1 story, "The Other Occupant", is titled "The Original Occupant" in online mentions. It originally appeared in a Gray Friar anthology, Bernie Herrmann's Manic Sextet, and this review, https://trumpetville.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/filler-content-with-orchestration/, titles it "The Original Occupant". Gray Friar's archived site titles it "The Other Occupant", so I think what happened is someone just copied that info here without checking the book itself, which is understandable because Gray Friar's books were hard to find when they were active, and since they went out of business about 5 years ago many of their books have disappeared. So I'm going to leave the title as it is until someone with a copy of Sextet can verify it's "The Original Occupant" in the book itself and can change the title. --Username 11:20, 26 October 2021 (EDT)

October's Ghost?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?498618; October's Ghost has full records for Morrow and Avon editions, but this edition seems to be mistakenly for another book by the author, Capitol Punishment, https://openlibrary.org/search?q=%22october%27s+ghost%22&mode=everything. Should probably be deleted, but there's a possibility it's also a genre book, although I doubt it. Anyone know for sure? --Username 12:21, 26 October 2021 (EDT)

They Walk Again

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1316088; Interesting that this major anthology, with an intro by WALTER DE LA MARE, has no covers on ISFDB and is missing several editions. The 1931 edition, which can be seen on Fantlab and Goodreads, has a huge sticker in the middle with an Australian bookseller's label on it. The 1932 edition is called "Cheap Edition" on the copyright page of the 1937 edition found on Richard Dalby's site, which has 2 different URL's, https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/products/the-ghost-book-a-collection-of-the-best-ghost-stories-faber-faber-1937-walter-de-la-mare?variant=8800682737763, and https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/products/the-ghost-book-a-collection-of-the-best-ghost-stories. The copyright page also mentions a reprint in 1934. Then there's the 1942 American edition from E.P. Dutton, which is also missing here; there's a supposedly previewable copy on Open Library but there's no preview (!), although the full cover is on dustjackets.com. There's also the fact that different editions can't seem to decide what the title is, with some seeming to call it The Ghost Book; both titles are on the title page as can be seen on Fantlab. So I'll start by trying to find a clean cover for the original 1931 edition, but if anyone wants to contribute there's a lot that needs entering. --Username 19:56, 26 October 2021 (EDT)

New cleanup report - Author Names with an Unrecognized Suffix

The cleanup report "Author Names with Invalid Data or an Unrecognized Suffix" has been split into two:

• Author Names with Invalid or Suspect Data
• Author Names with an Unrecognized Suffix

The second report has been improved to find more unrecognized suffixes. The data will become available in a couple of hours and will include roughly 370 author names. It looks like "Esq." is common enough to make it a "recognized" suffix. Ahasuerus 00:14, 27 October 2021 (EDT)

Can we add "V" to the recognized suffixes. We caught one of those. Maybe also add VI, and VII while at it (or even all the way to X? :) Annie 14:48, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Good idea. V-X have been added to the list of "recognized" suffixes. Ahasuerus 16:47, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

A.J. Alan

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1337677; I added a cover image to the audiobook recently and today while looking through Richards Press books I saw that they published the print edition so I found the contents on Fantlab and started to enter them. They seem to have messed up because "Diptych" has a higher page # than the next story; however, someone on ISFDB messed up, too, because several stories entered here aren't actually in the book and several stories in the book aren't entered here; same incorrect contents are also in the audiobook's record. So an actual copy is needed; there's 2 non-previewable copies on Open Library, 1 of which says it's from John Baker in 1967, so maybe that's where the contents entered here actually belong. --Username 19:08, 29 October 2021 (EDT)

It's possible that these are two completely different collections, despite them having the same title. I've seen that happen in the past. As you wrote, we definitely need someone who can look at the physical copies (and listen tot he audiobook) to see if they are the same or different. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:27, 29 October 2021 (EDT)

I am pretty sure that these are different collections. Audible can be a bit weird sometimes but when they list 10 stories (and The AU version), they rarely have 15 and our list matches what Audible has for this audiobook.

Amazon putting together different books that share the same name together is nothing new when a title/author matches and they are not flagged by someone and it happens even more when one or more of the books is old. There are at least two scans of the 1954 book contents page (here and Fantlab showing the misprint of the page number of Diptych in the Contents page (possibly an inversion of 69) and these are not the same scans from the looks of it.

I think we are looking at that from the wrong angle - is there actually any proof anywhere that these are two formats of the same book besides the matching title and Amazon being Amazon? Because from anything I can see, they need to be split and noted (and we need to be careful which of the 15 stories in the paper one are actually eligible for the DB). Annie 22:52, 31 October 2021 (EDT)

New External IDs request

Can we add 3 more external IDs/templates combos:

• The COBISS ones that we are using already in the DB (note the #full at the end):

• COBISS.BG - The Bulgarian library system. Example URL: https://plus.bg.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/1042352100#full . We have 30 of these in the Web Pages now and I am adding more as I am working through the Bulgarian titles again.
• COBISS.SR - The Serbian library system. Example URL: https://plus.sr.cobiss.net/opac7/bib/21623559#full . We have 26 of these in the Notes and they can be lifted up cleanly. We had been adding more Serbian books.

• Biblioman - A Bulgarian project to collect information for every book ever published in Bulgarian. Example URL: https://biblioman.chitanka.info/books/6076. We have 23 in Web Pages but as with COBISS.BG, I keep adding more of these as I find them and as I add books.

All 3 operate with a simple Numerical ID. We probably also need two cleanup reports (or more if we want to split the template from the IDs):

• Notes contain the string COBISS (case insensitive) and pub does not have COBISS.BG or COBISS.SR ID or their corresponding template (to allow for linking for a different edition as source for example). That way if one of the other 5 COBISS systems start appearing, we will see them coming in via the report and we can add them as well. I think the COBISS reports should be really together - as we really want to catch any mention of COBISS even when the country is omited.
• Biblioman mentioned in Notes but no ID or template used.

As the names of these are pretty non-standard, we can police these via searches temporarily so the cleanup reports are not required initially of that will delay the implementation. Thanks! Annie 17:14, 31 October 2021 (EDT)

It all looks eminently doable. I am currently recovering after an illness but hope to be able to do more coding later in the week. Ahasuerus 18:05, 31 October 2021 (EDT)

FR 1460, "Add support for COBISS and Biblioman External IDs/templates", has been created. Ahasuerus 11:04, 1 November 2021 (EDT)

3 requested External ID Types and 3 matching templates have been added -- see Template:PublicationFields:ExternalIDs and Help:Using Templates and HTML in Note Fields for details. I'll work on the new cleanup reports next. Ahasuerus 19:53, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Thanks! It's a race then - can I move all of the existing ones before the reports are deployed and run for the first time. I will drop a note to our Serbian editor about the new ID ;) Annie 19:58, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

The requested cleanup reports have been added. The data will become available tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 22:19, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Thanks. Should be at zero but we will see. We may want to also add all 3 in Publications with Invalid Non-numeric External IDs - they are all always numerical (for now). Not urgent at all - but at some point. Annie 22:24, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Good point. I have added these three ID Types as well as other recently implemented numeric ID Types to the report. I have changed the rules for "Bleiler Supernatural", which, as it turns out, allows a trailing alpha character. Ahasuerus 12:34, 4 November 2021 (EDT)

A translator's request for anonymity

I have just entered pub details for The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, a novel by an Iranian author which carries the statement on the first page "The translator's name has not been included here for reasons of safety and at the translator's request." Amazon has the translator as "Anonymous", although Goodreads identifies the translator. It's not our place to dox or expose anyone, and the ISFDB has had requests for the witholding of information in the past and more often than not they've been complied with, so I'm suggesting we remove the translator from the title record. Opening this up to other thoughts on the matter. PeteYoung 06:28, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

Yes, I do think we should remove the name. Christian Stonecreek 09:53, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

Our Policy makes a distinction between bibliographic and biographical data. On the biographical side, Data Deletion Policy says:

• If a living author (or their authorized representative) requests that the ISFDB remove the author's detailed biographical information, the ISFDB will comply after confirming the requester's identity. The ISFDB will remove as much biographical data as needed in order to accommodate legitimate privacy concerns while preserving, to the extent possible, the work of the editors who have compiled the data. A note will be added to the author's record explaining what type of information has been removed and why.

On the bibliographic side, we record what's stated in publications "as is". We then use publicly available sources to create variant titles and alternative names.

In this case, we are dealing with a book originally written in Farsi/Persian and published in an English translation by Wild Dingo Press, an Australian publisher, in 2017. The online catalogue of the State Library of Western Australia lists Adrien Kijek as the translator of the second (2020) edition. So does OCLC 1222876364, presumably based on the Australian data. When the book was shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize, the award site called it "a unique and profoundly moving novel, translated from Farsi by Adrien Kijek." This 2019 Australian magazine review and other contemporary Australian reviews also listed Adrien Kijek as the translator.

The questions, as I see them, then are:

• Was Adrien Kijek explicitly credited as the translator in the 2017 and 2020 editions by Wild Ding Press? Or was it something disclosed by the Stella Prize organization?
• Did the Europa Editions edition use the same translation or did it commission a different one from a different, anonymous, translator?

Ahasuerus 10:58, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

It is the same translation - see this blog and its explanation (at least it heavily implies it). And it also says that the name is actually in the bibliographic details of at least one of the editions - most likely the Australian one: "It has been translated into English by a translator whose pseudonym appears only in the bibliographic details at the front of the book.". Which means that we can split the translations if we want to, calling them different and clear the name from the Europa ones but it SHOULD stay on the Australian one because it is in the book.

We can remove it and write a lengthy note explaining why we did and why it should not be added back I guess. Not sure that someone won't just delete the note and re-add it from Goodreads, OCLC or another online store but we can. Although I am not sure how to reconcile that with the name being printed inside a book. Annie 13:08, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

The linked blog post says: "It has been translated into English by a translator whose pseudonym appears only in the bibliographic details at the front of the book." It seems to suggest that "Adrien Kijek" is a pseudonym, but we'd need to check the Wild Ding Press edition to see what it says. Ahasuerus 13:21, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

I am not sure I understand the problem. We never know if a translator uses a real name or a pseudonym. Why does it make a difference here? The point is that the name was printed inside of the book according to this review. Annie 13:45, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

The concern above was "It's not our place to dox or expose anyone". If "Adrien Kijek" was a pseudonym, then it would presumably address the concern. We can simply write that the Wild Ding Press edition credited the translator using this pseudonym and the Europa Editions edition stated that the translator chose to remain anonymous. Ahasuerus 14:08, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

I have been given a scan of the copyright page of the Wild Dingo Press edition. Here is what the bibliographically relevant parts say:

• Published by Wild Dingo Press
• Melbourne, Australia
• books@wilddingopress.com.au
• www.wilddingopress.com.au
• First published by Wild Dingo Press 2017
• Text copyright © Shokoofeh Azar
• The moral right of the author has been asserted.
• Cover design: Debra Billson
• Paintings by Shokoofeh Azar used for cover design: 1. The Poetry Night; 2. Two Birds; 3. Red Bird and Moon
• Translator: Adrien Kijek
• Editor: Catherine Lewis
• Typesetting: Midland Typesetters, Australia
• National Library of Australia
• Cataloguing-in-Publications Data
• Azar, Shokoofeh, author.The enlightenment of the greengage tree / Shokoofeh Azar.
• ISBN: 9780987381309 (paperback)
• ISBN: 9780987381316 (ebook)
• Magic realism (Literature) Families—Iran—Fiction. Islam and civil society—Fiction. Iran—History—Revolution, 1979—Fiction. Iran—History—1979–1997—Fiction.

Ahasuerus 23:26, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

As the name does appear in the first edition, I accept that bibliographically speaking it's a detail that should stay. I've added qualifying details to the title record, and thanks for your input everyone. PeteYoung 06:51, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Add warning when importing multi-language titles

Can we get a yellow warning when importing a title in a language different from the reference title's language. See this for example - the title and author match, the cover image is ok but the languages of the book and of the cover are different so it should not have been imported that way. Unless the moderators and/or editors specifically watch out for that (or recognize the publisher name as non-native for the artist so they check specifically), these get missed and we need to fix later. Adding a yellow warning so both the editor and the moderator know to check on submission will help. Thanks! Annie 21:01, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

Sounds reasonable. FR 1462 has been created. Ahasuerus 22:28, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

New cleanup report to find 'uncredited' COVERART artists

A new cleanup report that finds 'uncredited' COVERART artists has been deployed. The data will become available tomorrow morning and is expected to be limited to 17 matching records.

FR 1454 also covers "unknown" COVERART artists. They weren't added to this iteration of the cleanup report because we have only two matching records and they are both associated with primary-verified publications. They are kind of special cases and I can see the logic behind the decision to use "unknown". I'll leave a note on the verifier's Talk page to see what his thoughts are. Ahasuerus 22:23, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

I'm the one who added those unknown cover artists. In the case of the Lumley collection, the unknown artist is for the splipcase, which is pictured. My thinking is that I didn't want the slipcase cover to be confused with the dust jacket. There is a note on the publication record explaining the two COVERART records. For The Whisperer, the cover is a composite of 4 covers from the pulp magazine. I was able to identify two of the artist for those covers, but not for the other one or two covers. Since it's a combined credit, I didn't want the COVERART record to be used to assert that the artist of those individual covers had been identified. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 07:06, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

"The Whisperer" needs a note explaining that. While semi-obvious once you know the explanation, if two are identified, they really need to be linked in the notes somewhere so it is clear which ones we are still trying to identify and where the author credit comes from and why we have the cover credit that way. And we really should have the explanation on the COVERART record notes as well for both I think. Annie 14:13, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

If we agree that "unknown" can be a valid artist credit in certain rare cases, I can update the FR and close it. I could also create another, similar, cleanup report which would look for COVERART titles with "unknown" artists and let moderators ignore them. Ahasuerus 17:05, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

There are also a few similar cases on the uncredited list which will fall under the same exception (and a few other oddities). The clear ones had been taken care of - the ones still in the report need some thinking over. I am thinking if they should stay uncredited or shifted to unknown and what exactly we want to do for awhile. So maybe let the dust settle a bit first? I don't think we need a separate report but we may need to standardize how we add "we know half the artist credit only" :) Annie 17:13, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Sure, there is no hurry. Ahasuerus 17:39, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Notes added to the two COVERART records. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 17:40, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Changes to review auto-linking

The way New/Edit/Clone Publication submissions automatically link reviews to reviewed titles has been changed.

In the past, the match was based on the title and the name of the author. If a matching book-length title was found, the review was automatically linked to it even even if the language was different or if there were other matching titles. If no matching book-length title was found, the auto-link logic would look for a matching SHORTFICTION title using the same matching criteria.

Post-change, the auto-linking logic is triggered only if the two languages are identical. In addition, if there is more than one matching title, the logic will not be triggered. This can be important if we have multiple translations with the same title on file.

Let's use Philip K. Dick's Ubik as an example. In the past, a review of "Ubik by Philip K. Dick" would be automatically linked to the English canonical title -- because it has the lowest record ID in the database -- regardless of the language of the review. Post-change, the software will check the language of the review and find a matching title. English reviews will be linked to the English title, German reviews will be linked to the German translation, French reviews will be linked to the French translations, etc. Note that Portuguese reviews will not be auto-linked because we have 2 different Portuguese translations with the same title on file. They will need to be linked manually. Ahasuerus 17:08, 5 November 2021 (EDT)

A related patch has been deployed. "Link review" submissions which would create a language mismatch between the review and the reviewed title now get a yellow warning. Ahasuerus 15:15, 6 November 2021 (EDT)

Additional Link Review yellow warnings

The following yellow warnings have been added to the post-submission page for Link Review submissions:

• The review title doesn't match the title of the reviewed work
• The review date is before the date of the reviewed title
• The type of the reviewed title is uncommon, i.e. not 'ANTHOLOGY', 'COLLECTION', 'NOVEL', 'NONFICTION', 'OMNIBUS' or 'SHORTFICTION'
• Review authors do not match title authors
• (previously implemented) Review language does not match the language of the reviewed title

Ahasuerus 10:25, 7 November 2021 (EST)

Zoms

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?190049; Second Edition e-book under original edition, TP Second Edition separate. Probably not right. --Username 13:05, 7 November 2021 (EST)

Books about movies only are not eligible for inclusion and the author doesn't fit the threshold exception. Unless someone sees a reason for keeping that I'm missing, I will delete them all. I'll get it a day or two first. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:48, 7 November 2021 (EST)

Driftglider

I saw on Jeffrey Osier's page, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?11153, that he had one story published way after all the others, and as usual I checked about that and found that "The Algae Angels" was actually published 25 YEARS EARLIER (as "Algae Angels") in Osier's very rare 1993 collection Driftglider and Other Stories, published by Montilla, who were a Lovecraftian publisher judging by their other publications. There's no copies on OpenLibrary or Worldcat, but there is an Amazon page and 1 eBay auction. I entered the info from the Amazon page, but the eBay seller says 112 pages instead of 109 and gives the month as December. So if anyone here actually owns a copy and can verify # of pages, full contents and their page #'s, month, whether Osier did the cover, if "Algae Angels" has "The" or not, etc. you can reply here. --Username 11:04, 8 November 2021 (EST)

Gothic Series

So I came across Shadow of Evil, which was a retitling of Greye La Spina's Invaders from the Dark, and I noticed on eBay there's a number on the spine and the words "A Paperback Library Gothic" on the cover and realized there seemed to be a series. Checking further here, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?3809, I saw most of these were Dark Shadows books, and I'm not touching them because they published hundreds of those things, but the non-Dark Shadows books all seem to have a number, at least the ones I could find spine photos of. Also, 1 of the dates was wrong, being from 1966 instead of 1965, and some copyright page photos revealed months, many of which weren't entered previously. Problem is when I worked backwards to the first book, Lost Lake, it said on the copyright page, which can be seen on Richard Dalby's site, that it was originally from 1964 but the copy was a second printing from 1966. The photo I found somewhere that showed the spine said 5, but that can't be right because books published later had lower numbers. I think what happened is they republished some older Paperback Library books in this series and then numbered them, but the older editions didn't have any numbers, so the photo I saw of Lost Lake must be of the 1966 edition. It's all very confusing (I'm not even sure the #2 I entered for Curse of Doone is right because the 1 spine photo I could find, on Amazon, is so blurry it looks 3D). So when those edits are reached I think some shuffling/fixing might be needed. This might take a bit of extra work, so if anyone has copies of these books in any of their editions it would be helpful; I don't think I ever found a copyright page for Shadow of Evil to enter the exact date, and that Karlova book completely eluded me; knowing the months for every book would help in making sure the series numbering is in order. --Username 00:03, 9 November 2021 (EST)

Linking excerpts to sources

There was talk, long ago, about making excerpts their own type, so they could be linked, like reviews, to the original. An alternative suggestion was to make it a length of short fiction, which would not help in associating the excerpt to an original. I would like to see some kind of linkage available, to deal with things like Under the Moons of Mars (excerpt). What this would link to though, I am unsure about, given it is from a serialization in 6 parts. The approach should also deal with excerpts of upcoming books which do not yet exist. Too vague for a feature request, but maybe enough to get started figuring out what such a feature should look like. ../Doug H 10:35, 10 November 2021 (EST)

The serializations should all be varianted to a combined title. If it's never been published combined, then use the date of the last serialized part as the date. Then the excerpt can be connected to it if this is done. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:58, 10 November 2021 (EST)

Couple of notes.

• As per How to connect serials to titles: "Use the year of the final serialization installment as the date of the newly created parent title.". So don't use the date of the last installment please, just its year :)
• Unless I am misreading Doug, this is an excerpt from the serialization, not the serialization itself. Which means it won't be connected - we will connect the serialization if it is there but not just an excerpt from it (as we won't connect an excerpt from a novel). The only way to connect things now is via the Notes. And yes - I wish we had a better way. We already have Variant standing for "serialization" (if the child is a serial), "translation" if the language is different and variant if it is a new name (or a split novel - which still bugs me). The cleanest way may be actually to work inside of this framework - rename it to Relationship (With the old meanings as 3 of the options) and add a few new ones (excerpt, abridgement, adaptation). That still won't solve the variant of variant we also need (the ability to connect the same translation under two different titles for example or if we make Relationship broader - to show which title exactly it was excerpted from) but it may be a good first step. Of course, it will also require code changes... and cleanup but this is unavoidable. :) Annie 14:27, 10 November 2021 (EST)

I do know that we document links in the Notes. And I'd rather wait for a solution than overload Variant even more. I am aware of the hopes attached to the Relationship upgrade. My purpose in raising the topic, and using the example of "Under the Moons of Mars" with a different parent title from the excerpt - "A Princess of Mars", was to develop excerpt requirements for any solution. Even if there are no solutions (yet), what are the excerpt related questions? What an excerpt would link to is unclear - this extract came from the serialized version, but there are other reprints that were not serialized. All of these variant to the canonical title. Would the link be to the canonical title, or the oldest matching variant name (for example author name variant involved) or the exact variant name? And there's the question of how you link to a non-existent title? ../Doug H 16:42, 10 November 2021 (EST)

That was just me thinking aloud above :) And no - I am not proposing to overload Variant as it is built now -- just an expansion of it in the future. What we link to will probably depend on how it is implemented - in the best possible solution, we want to link to the text it was actually extracted from (and if it is missing, it can be added). Excerpts from never published works are the only challenge for that but... are these excerpts really or should we treat them as their own works? :) Annie 17:17, 10 November 2021 (EST)

a) The excerpts are their own works currently, we're just thinking about how to identify the work their based on. And it is still an excerpt from something even if it hasn't been published (yet), so making/calling it an excerpt seems reasonable. b) I can't think of any reason the link wouldn't be TITLE-based. c) Can we rely on the title given to the excerpt as a match to the original? ../Doug H 19:29, 10 November 2021 (EST)

The rules for excerpts naming are: "If the excerpt has a different title that the work from which it is excerpted, use that title. Otherwise, use the title of the excerpted work, but add " (excerpt)" to the end; e.g. "A Feast for Crows (excerpt)". ". So technically you should have a match for the ones with the (excerpt) on them but these are NOT all excerpts in the DB. Annie 00:53, 13 November 2021 (EST)

Joe Hill Story Title

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?310352; Fantlab had the chapbook, I added cover, title was wrong, fixed that, short story's title was wrong, deleted and imported right title; I don't know if it's spelled "Commital" anywhere but I think probably not, Archive.org copy of 20th Century Ghosts has "Committal", so I think someone goofed here. --Username 11:41, 10 November 2021 (EST)

The title page has "Committal", so I suspect you're correct. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:56, 10 November 2021 (EST)

Live Girls

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1623; The Macdonald edition had the wrong cover so I added the right one from Fantlab; thing is that the old cover has Ron Lesser's signature on it like the original Pocket edition but the publisher logo on bottom of spine is one I don't recognize. The British editions use the same cover art but don't have Lesser's signature, so I assume this is an American edition, but I'm not sure. Does anyone know? It might be an edition that needs entering here. --Username 12:02, 10 November 2021 (EST)

Whitley Strieber Questions

I was doing some work on Strieber's books and saw 1 of them had the same title, The Day After Tomorrow, as the big 2004 disaster movie. Turns out they're related, but I'm not sure how. There's several editions on ISFDB, none of which mention the fact that the movie was largely based on Strieber's 1999 "non-fiction" book about supposed global warming and climate change titled The Coming Global Superstorm, co-written with well-known crackpot Art Bell. The book isn't marked as a novelization, so does anyone know if Strieber wrote a fictional version of his book or the publisher just reprinted the 1999 book (and didn't bother crediting Bell)? I think I'm going to make it a novelization. Also, I asked about Strieber's very rare collection Evenings With Demons somewhere here a while ago, and just now I found that there's a record on Fantlab, https://fantlab.ru/edition327940, with a beautiful photo of the entire contents page; problem is after I entered all 9 stories Strieber wrote up to 1997 when the book was published there are still 16 other stories in the contents. If anyone owns a copy and knows if any of them are genre-related and should be on ISFDB reply here. Also, Fantlab and a (very) few sites online mention Steve Neill as the cover artist while different sites say it's either 304 pages or 306 pages, so those need verifying, too. --Username 22:20, 10 November 2021 (EST)

French Prices

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5146875; Just made this edit which adds the cover image and, as you can see, there's a warning about the price. Lots of discussion about foreign prices spurred by my Hachette post recently, so I'm guessing this is somehow related and may need someone to decide what's the right way to enter the price. --Username 22:32, 10 November 2021 (EST)

Steven Sidor canonical name

Any objections to reversing the canonical name here? In the last years he writes as S. A. Sidor when he writes speculative fiction and as Steven Sidor when writing the books we do no care about in the DB. Annie 04:31, 12 November 2021 (EST)

With no objections heard, the canonical was switched. Annie 06:01, 16 November 2021 (EST)

(The) Puppet Master

Did some work on Arkana books, but this one, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?17981, stumped me. The PV of 1 edition, who hasn't been on his page for more than 3 years, entered the title wrong, and wrote a long note about ISBN and American vs. British editions, etc. There's a previewable copy, https://archive.org/details/puppetmasternove00greerich, which has a Penguin Books in addition to Arkana on the back cover and different ISBN on copyright page vs. back cover, so I don't know which edition it belongs to, although I'm guessing it should be for the British. Sweet cover art, so I'd like to get it entered here. --Username 10:58, 12 November 2021 (EST)

Webb Date

https://www.worldcat.org/title/new-farmers-almanac/oclc/1260164736; Don Webb's story "Seven-Four Planting", http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1217330, has a 1993 date on ISFDB and in Webb's Weird Wild West; however, it says on the copyright page that it was a surplus with Webb's collection The Bestseller, which has a 1990 date. The Worldcat link above shows what that surplus was and it also has a 1990 date, so I think the story's date should be changed to 1990, correct? It's probably just another case of publishers not getting info right in their own books and then whoever entered the info here not double-checking to make sure it was correct. The other story, "One Hundred", has a 1987 date on ISFDB so that one's OK. --Username 00:38, 13 November 2021 (EST)

My Recommendation System using ISFDB Data

I'm currently working on a recommendation system for speculative fiction titles using ISFDB data (https://www.bookclub.guide). Like the Netflix or Goodreads algorithms, it would recommend books to users based on the ratings they gave to books in the past, after being trained on a larger set of users' ratings. For the initial set of data, I'm mostly using the Bookcrossings data set as well as some ratings from people I know in real life.

I apologize if this post is off-topic or spammy, but I wanted to let the community know about this project for a few reasons:

1. To let contributers know their work is being used in a downstream project and to say thank you.

2. I may need to correct data problems I find during this project and would rather contribute them to this public source than just correct them in my own database. It's particularly import for my purposes to have the non-genre field set correctly (so non-genre books aren't recommended to users) as well as the juvenile/YA field (so users can filter or ignore these recommendations if they don't read this). However, I realize these edits take up reviewer time and they might be less of a priority for ISFDB. If this is the case, I could just make the changes in my own data, but I thought I'd ask about this first.

3. In case anyone here is interested in the project, either in general, or to get reading recommendations as the project matures. Note that since most of the data is from a 2004 data set, it doesn't do a good job recommending anything published after that. Also, Bookcrossings users weren't specifically genre readers, so there's some mismatch between their taste and the users I'm trying to give recommendations to. Frankly, I'd also appreciate anyone who would like to give their own ratings by creating an account and rating books they've read, or by sending them to me in some other format (I can ingest Goodreads exports for example).

I'm publicly hosting the code for my project on GitHub:

The website/recommendation system code: https://github.com/JustinL42/rec_sys_app

The database migration code: https://github.com/JustinL42/isfdb_migration

I'd welcome feedback on the project, either from the perspective of users or developers. I can be reached at justin.lavoie@post.com.

JustinL42 21:51, 13 November 2021 (EST)JustinL42

Thanks for letting us know! It's good to see that our data set continues to be used by various projects.

From the development perspective, one thing to keep in mind is that our tables have evolved over the years. For example, there was a time when we didn't have separate "award type" or "award category" tables, no database support for publication series, etc. We have tentative plans to enhance other aspects of the database, which will probably involve creating new table for series, publication series and prices. Nothing definite at the moment, but it's something to keep in mind.

Good luck with your project! Recommendation algorithms are a notoriously tough nut to crack. Ahasuerus 14:57, 14 November 2021 (EST)

From the moderation perspective, we always welcome any and all improvements - the non-genre and juvenile flags are relatively new (they used to hide into a multi-value field) and as a result they are not consistently used). Add to that the fact that some YA novels are really not YA but adult ones being marketed down for one reason or another and the more mature YA rarely seems to get the flag set - there is too much research involved with them sometimes. Feel free to submit any changes you want but keep a few things in mind:

• If you drop a few hundred updates at the same time, it will take time to process them
• Adding an explanation to the moderator notes on why you think the flag needs to be set is a good idea and will speed up the processing. If there are PVs on the books you are changing the titles for, we generally will need to seek agreement or at least leave a notification. That slows the process but with collaborative sites, this is important.
• If you change the flags on a title , you also need to change them on all related titles as follows:

• All variants of the main title - including translations.
• If you are changing a SHORTFICTION/CHAPBOOK record, the other one also needs to be changed manually (and all variants of both of them)

• Sometimes the handling moderator will disagree with you (for example there are YA novels in English which are marketed as 16+/18+ when translated - see my note above about the YA/adult boundary and its fluidity. Marking these as juvenile really does not make much sense - we are an international site after all).

We communicate through the wiki pages so if you are going to submit updates, we expect you to also respond on your Talk page and discuss your changes with the rest of the editors if required. Welcome to ISFDB! :) Annie 01:41, 15 November 2021 (EST)

Adding revised to title?

I remove "(revised)" from a publication title since it did not appear that way on the title page, and I had assumed that was the standard. A moderator restored the "(revised)" to the title since it had been revised from the original edition. This does not seem to be a consistent rule. I often see collections and anthologies with different selections and the same name. Just adding revised wouldn't necessarily clear thing since it doesn't specify what it was revised from. Right now there isn't a way to determine which pubs had different contents that the first edition or any others. Should be marking these more often? What should we do here? TAWeiss 08:33, 14 November 2021 (EST)

"The title should appear exactly as published" is what is stated in the help text, so I think you're right. The moderator in question was absent for a longer time, and may not have recognized that we do it now different than before. Applying a note also to the title entry is helpful, though (which I'll do). Thanks, Stonecreek 10:22, 14 November 2021 (EST)

Anne Holmberg caninical name switch

Any objections to switching Anne Holmberg canonical name to Anne Avery? Annie 05:56, 16 November 2021 (EST)

Nope. Looks pretty cut-and-dried to me. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:56, 16 November 2021 (EST)

Waiting for approval

Normally I wouldn't complain, but I'm just wondering why the pending edits are piling up.--Rosab618 13:00, 16 November 2021 (EST)

A few people are off for one reason or another, a few editors with very poor quality submissions which require a lot of time to process had been sending a lot of submissions and you have the perfect storm. Happens occasionally. Should hopefully calm down in the next days (may get a bit crazy next week with the holiday again but we shall see). Annie 13:08, 16 November 2021 (EST)

Thanks! I just hope I'm not one of the editors with poor quality submissions.--Rosab618 15:05, 16 November 2021 (EST)

If noone reminds you about the same thing 2 times per week for months or, even worse, had given up on you and just fixes anything you add without as much as a note, you are doing fine. :) Annie 15:13, 16 November 2021 (EST)

Adding currencies so the currency list

Can we add the following to the list:

• Lev (Bulgaria)
• Lei (Romania)
• Din (dinar; Serbia and Yugoslavia and other countries from the Federation before switching to their own)
• RUB (Ruble - USSR and Russia and other ex-Soviet republics before switching to their own)
• kn (kuna - Croatia since 1994)
• Kč (Czech Koruna)
• zł (polish zlota)
• hrn (Ukrainian hryvnia)
• Sk (Slovak Koruna before the Euro)

Thanks! Or should I just add them? Annie 19:25, 16 November 2021 (EST)

A couple of thoughts:

• Most of these look straightforward. A number of other countries use dinars, but the symbol "Din" is only used for the Serbia/Yugoslavian dinar. The symbol for the Macedonian dinar is apparently Den.
• The symbol for the Belarusian ruble is "BR", so "RUB" should be unambiguous.
• Given the rising number of currencies that we support, I am thinking that we may want to add mouseover help for currency values. It would be similar to the way we display mouseover help for publication formats. It wouldn't be as comprehensive as what FR 1158, "Allow multiple prices per publication", envisions, but it would be fairly easy to implement and it would be a step in the right direction.

Ahasuerus 21:56, 16 November 2021 (EST)

A mouseover is a Great idea.

These are also already in use so if we are changing any, now is the time. :) Annie 22:04, 16 November 2021 (EST)

One more for the list:

• TL - Turkish Lira (Turkey and Northern Cyprus). Our records are split between that and the symbol ₺. I prefer TL (easier to recognize) but we are adding more books so time to decide which direction we are going.

And we probably need to add zl -> zł and Kc -> Kč automatic conversions as we do for E, L and Y. Annie 22:41, 16 November 2021 (EST)

And we need to decide what we are doing with the "portuguese escudos". The DB has esc and PTE and Wikipedia says it is another $ currency... Annie 23:43, 16 November 2021 (EST)

I have added an "Abbrev." column to the Help:List of currency symbols table. I have also created FR 1468, "Auto-convert price values starting with zl and Kc", and FR 1467, "Add mouseover Help for prices".

I'll wait another day or two and see if there are any suggestions before I add the currencies listed above to the table. Ahasuerus 17:27, 17 November 2021 (EST)

I have added the currencies listed above except for the Portuguese escudo. I'll prettify the rows to use alternating colors later (unless a volunteer gets to it first.) Ahasuerus 16:34, 21 November 2021 (EST)

Publisher in transition

I recently rejected a submission to change the publisher of this book from Harper & Row to Thomas Y. Crowell. My reasoning was that both Reginald and Worldcat listed the publisher as Harper. Even the Open Library record that the submitter added lists the publisher as Harper although, the archive.org scan linked from OL lists only the Crowell. I had assumed that this was an attempt to add a different edition overwriting an existing one (update vs. clone). The submitter complained that Harper had purchased Crowell in 1979, and the book was published in 1980. Wikipedia states that Harper acquired Crowell in 1978 and merged it with Lippincott as "Lippincott & Crowell" in 1979 and ultimately merging it into Harper & Row in 1980. I also discovered in researching this that the ISBN of the Crowell scan in archive.org matches the ISBN of the Harper record in Worldcat. So I think we are talking about a single publication of the book, which from the scan does not mention Harper at all. However, four secondary sources refer to a Harper edition (Worldcat, Library of Congress, Reginald, Open Library). My worry is that if we create a Crowell record, someone will at some point see any of those secondary sources and re-add a Harper record. A note in the Crowell edition would be insufficient as it isn't normal to check all other editions of a book that is believed missing. I'd like to recommend that even though Harper isn't mentioned in the book, that we list the publisher as as "Thomas Y. Crowell / Harper & Row". This way it would be clear as to the imprint / publisher arrangement. Thoughts? --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:45, 18 November 2021 (EST)

I think that this is a good solution considering the way all sources had filed that book. A note explaining why we credit it this way can explain our reasoning. Annie 20:09, 18 November 2021 (EST)

Another mystery: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?40709. Cover art is the same as the other editions, but Atheneum isn't mentioned anywhere in the Archive.org copy. I changed publisher to Charles Scribner's Sons, since that's what it says on title page; however, it also mentions Macmillan, and Charles Scribner's Sons' publisher page on ISFDB says it was an imprint of Macmillan from mid-80's until late 90's, but there's not a single book on ISFDB with the publisher listed as Charles Scribner's Sons / Macmillan or any combination thereof. So if anyone thinks it should be an imprint then there's the mess of checking every Charles Scribner's Sons book in those years and seeing if Macmillan needs to be added to them, too. --Username 19:07, 19 November 2021 (EST)

Bumper Book

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?359103; I saw a copy of the First Bumper Book on Archive.org and entered page #'s, then noticed the Third didn't have any contents so I imported them; page count is very different than the original anthology so I looked for a copy and could only find 1 Etsy page where the seller forgot to photo the 2nd contents page, so if anyone owns a copy the contents after p. 145 need their #'s entered. --Username 11:07, 19 November 2021 (EST)

McInerny

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?10080; Famous Catholic writer whose 1 genre novel on ISFDB includes his middle initial but copy on Archive.org has no M. on the cover. I couldn't find any photos of the Tor edition and I believe the cover uploaded to ISFDB's Wiki is the HC because there's no Tor info on it and it looks exactly like the HC cover. I changed format from TP to PB and original date from 1986 to 1985 to reflect the original edition but that's all I can do, so anyone here who owns the PB?. Also, the intro for Lord of the World is in a 2001 edition by St. Augustine's while the preface is in a 2011 edition by St. Augustines; very likely they're the same publisher and I think probably the same intro, too, since he died in 2010. --Username 18:56, 21 November 2021 (EST)

I question whether The Noonday Devil is genre (descriptions seem to fit the "Techno-thriller, political thriller and satire works set in a future indistinguishable from the present" exclusion), but having not read it, cannot be certain. I added the h/w edition, removed the h/c image from the pb edition, and tagged it with "possible non-genre". We will need someone who has read it to make the final decision. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:35, 24 November 2021 (EST)

Ian Dallas

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?93321; did an edit for his novel and flap said he converted to Islam and showed him dressed in Arab garb. This, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdalqadir_as-Sufi, shows a name change, so whatever the procedure is for that here, someone might want to look into that. --Username 12:02, 22 November 2021 (EST)

I updated the author entry. Since he only published speculative fiction under Ian Dallas, we would leave that the canonical name. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:05, 23 November 2021 (EST)

Science Fiction Chronicle

Some editors might be interested to know that the Open Library is (at this very moment) scanning and uploading issues of the Science Fiction Chronicle. At first glance, they seem to have a complete run. There are some gaps in entries for that publication on the ISFDB that could be filled by someone with enough time. Link: https://archive.org/details/pub_chronicle?&sort=-date --Watchsmart 08:15, 23 November 2021 (EST)

Seanan Story

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2608600; This collection has what seems to be complete contents entered for the e-book but no contents at all for the HC, which is unusual on ISFDB, with e-books usually getting less complete edits. Also, the editor who entered those contents here, http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User:Mellotronman, is a name I don't think I've ever come across before even after thousands of edits. The HC record says deluxe, so it's possible they included exclusive material not in the e-book; maybe someone who reads this owns a copy?. There's also 1 story in this collection, "Uncle Sam", which was published on a dead site called Edge of Propinquity (although some remnants remain online), that is VERY creepy, not the kind of story you'd expect to read in a book titled Laughter at the Academy. I added a link to the story in an edit (awaiting approval), which is 1 of the stories still online, so no need to use Archive.org for once. --Username 22:50, 24 November 2021 (EST)

Wimp(e)y

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?750861; Robert Westall's "Blackham's Wimpey" appeared in Break of Dark; Shades of Darkness, American and Brit editions, title it "Blackham's Wimpy" (both are on Archive.org). There are several other editions of Break of Dark on Archive.org that aren't on ISFDB and ISFDB lists another couple of recent editions; Valancourt's 2016 collection Spectral Shadows goes back to using "Wimpey". So the alternate title probably belongs here for at least a couple of books. --Username 20:56, 25 November 2021 (EST)

When should an abstract or excerpt be indexed

Hi all. I'm going through a stack of books I own (a publication series) but struggling to decide whether to index some of the contents. PublicationInfo:WhatToInclude isn't clear in this case so thought I'd raise it here. There are two types of content im having issues with. The first are abstracts at the end of each book of the next book in the series. It's clearly intended as advertisement but the format makes it less clear cut. The length of these are half a page to a page. The second is an excerpt from the current book at the start of the book itself. Normally about half a page on yhe front endpaper. Either way I'll make sure to include the info in the Notes, my question here is whether to index these as content. Cheers /Lokal_Profil 04:49, 26 November 2021 (EST)

It is left up to your judgement to determine whether it is content important/significant enough to warrant indexing. In my opinion, indexing excerpts of OTHER books is useful in that it can sometimes help narrow down an otherwise unknown/unstated publication date for that other book. I don't see any benefit to indexing a leading intra-book excerpt, although if that same excerpt appeared in other books, then perhaps having it indexed separately in the current one might be interesting to someone. I personally would not bother and would not even take the time to note its appearance, but that's exercising my discretion as editor, not an ISFDB policy or standard. --MartyD 07:28, 26 November 2021 (EST)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll probably index the abstracts/synopsises at the end but skip the excerpt at the start. Cheers /Lokal_Profil 14:20, 28 November 2021 (EST)

Millar

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?187565; I thought it was odd that Margaret Millar, famous old writer of stodgy mysteries, wrote a disco-themed short story, "Radiant Flower of The Divine Heavens", several years after she died; I've discovered that the real author is MARTIN Millar, who has an extensive ISFDB record including 1 short story, also in a music-themed anthology. There are only a few mentions of Martin Millar as the real author online, and none of those sites are in English, although Worldcat got it right. There's also this weird interview from ANGELFIRE, https://www.angelfire.com/mn/electriclight/arcmartin.html, where Martin Millar is interviewed by someone named Radiant Flower - coincidence? I wonder how Margaret got mixed up in all this. --Username 11:54, 26 November 2021 (EST)

Kristen Stewart Poem?!?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2834848; Dark Offspring, which is a rare anthology of horror tales by the kids of famous people, had no contents until I entered them from a copy on Archive.org months ago; today I accidentally came across a story title from the book and the author's name seemed familiar. I checked online and saw she has the same name as the female star of TWILIGHT! The actress was born in early 1990 and this late 2002 book says she's 14, which isn't exactly right but it's close enough. I can't find anywhere online verifying this and she apparently doesn't use social media so I can't ask her. I leave this here in case anyone can find any verification that they're one and the same person. Certainly the poem, which is on p. 30 here, https://archive.org/details/darkoffspring00newy, is mopey enough to be by the star of Twilight. --Username 18:08, 26 November 2021 (EST)

Sax Case

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?841329; Editor wrote note about "Chord of G" only being in Doubleday which is wrong because it's also in Pyramid; thing is the original 1913 story was retitled as "Case of the Chord in G" for the book, but editor entered full title for Doubleday while editor for Pyramid entered original title with a note saying all stories have "Case of" before them. No editions are PV'd, so the question is whether Doubleday should use original title with note or if Pyramid should use full title and delete note. --Username 16:11, 27 November 2021 (EST)

I've moved and modified the note. It's now on the two publications that have the story rather than on the title. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:12, 3 December 2021 (EST)

Schachnovelle / Chess

I've felt it necessary to add a note to the entry for Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle ('Chess') in disagreement with John Clute's reading of it at the SFE, where a paragraph in Zweig's entry is taken up discussing this novella under the misconception that the world Chess champion is a "Robot". The actual text makes it explicit he is entirely human, thereby removing any SFnal context. Zweig is clearly "below the threshold" although this title does appear in a magazine and an anthology that we have, so it probably should not warrant removal. I would like to categorise 'Schachnovelle' and its translations as "non-genre", but first want to seek out other editors' opinions. Cheers. PeteYoung 06:58, 28 November 2021 (EST)

As it's been a week and seemingly no objections, I'll go ahead and mark it non-genre. PeteYoung 04:39, 6 December 2021 (EST)

Absolutely right, there doesn't seem anywhere near enough speculative content. I still don't understand why SFE reads a robot chess champion into it, and why a Romanian sf magazine published it. Christian Stonecreek 13:05, 6 December 2021 (EST)

I wonder what word may had been mistyped/misread as robot to cause the confusion. I concur though - that is not genre - there are psychological elements that may make it horror technically if one wants to consider it so but not our type of horror. Annie 13:26, 6 December 2021 (EST)

The SFE team has been notified and will be updating the article shortly. Ahasuerus 12:37, 7 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks, I was just about to fire off a quick email to Dave L. this morning but you've saved me the job! PeteYoung 08:38, 8 December 2021 (EST)

Ramsey Campbell Title

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?13370; Campbell published this in GB as Claw under the pseudonym Jay Ramsay; when it came to America he used his real name and it was retitled Night of the Claw. 90's GB reprints titled it The Claw. I remember some discussion about this months ago, and today I randomly came across it and realized the original GB HC didn't have a cover; only place I could find it was on some site called The Devil's Library, and I couldn't even save the cover image from Chrome because it gave me a security warning, so I had to open INTERNET EXPLORER because their security sucks and you can download anything. Now that all ISFDB editions are covered, someone needs to decide why the overall title is still The Claw when it should really be Claw. A mod left a sarcastic note to PV of GB PB but I just saw that they never responded, so I suggest that anyone who owns copies of 1983 PB or HC check their title pages to make sure they just say Claw so the title can be changed here and this issue can be laid to rest. --Username 14:33, 28 November 2021 (EST)

Longest Titles

I have a friend who would like to know what's the longest title for a published short story in the genre. Seems like something the iSFdb could answer easily, but I don't see how to do that from the front end. Gengelcox 13:27, 30 November 2021 (EST)

A quick database query finds On the Irritating Tendency of the Tau Cetians to Indulge in Ever More Verbose Titles for Their Cross-Dimensional, Cross-Species Romances, Inevitably Entailing the Listing of at Least a Dozen Characters with Unpronounceable Names (One of Whom Will Invariably be an E-Eridanian Whose Association with the Other Characters is as Improbable as it is Brief), Together with the Major and Minor Genders of Those Characters, Not to Mention the Names and Ages of Any of Their Offspring Still Attached in the Bud, as well as the Birth Planets and Dietary Preferences of the Characters (Particular Attention Being Given to the Bizarrely Gory Eating Habits of the Hyper-Carnivorous E-Eridanian - This being the Primary Reason for Including a Member of Such a Belligerent Species in the First Place), and Often Also Containing Unsavory and Detailed Descriptions of the Numerous Pungent Odors Produced in Moments of Single or Multiplexed Passion, a short story published in Tales of the Unanticipated #22 (April 2001). Ahasuerus 22:15, 30 November 2021 (EST)

Most excellent! Gengelcox 23:58, 30 November 2021 (EST)

Lovecraft's Out for Blood

https://picclick.co.uk/H-P-LOVECRAFT-out-for-blood-c-1984-274382960053.html; cover's on Amazon so I added it, then saw this link and decided to add it here; I'm not sure what this is, art book or non-fiction essays or what, but scant info here so someone may find this useful. --Username 21:46, 30 November 2021 (EST)

Automatic convesion of currency symbols

As per an earlier discussion, the software has been modified to auto-convert "zl", "Kc" and "Kcs" to "zł", "Kč" and "Kčs" respectively. Ahasuerus 22:07, 30 November 2021 (EST)

Down to Sleep

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?39344; This is complicated, but the cover (which I think I added some time ago) for the December Girl edition clearly says Goddess of the Bay at the top. Sandy DeLuca published books and other things under both publishers, and there's a 1999 Stoker nomination, so I figure the Goddess edition was published in 1999 (1998 date was fixed by me) and then a new December Girl edition came out in 2002. Whether there's a cover for 2002 which says December Girl on it or whether they just used the same cover I don't know, and apparently in 2004 there was 1 of those Delirium very limited editions which isn't on ISFDB at all. If anyone has a copy of any of these editions it would be good to know; another odd thing is that some of the stories are from 2000 on ISFDB, so I think maybe they were original and then reprinted in magazines, which means their dates should be 1999. Again, a print copy would help a lot to fix all this. This ancient interview from TRIPOD, http://bookchat_and_allthat.tripod.com/home/id12.html, verifies (on the bottom) that 1999 and Goddess of the Bay Publications belong to the original edition. --Username 14:45, 1 December 2021 (EST)

Vivisections

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?258806; I noticed the editor had a Twitter page so I tweeted him asking for contents' page #'s; he replied quickly but said he was sick, then after several days asked me for my e-mail address which I sent, then he liked it but didn't send an e-mail for several more days, then finally sent it yesterday but forgot to send the attachment with the contents page, and finally sent it with the attachment today. I always suspected this was never distributed and it turns out that was true because he said he had to discontinue it because the publisher didn't pay anyone. So now I believe ISFDB is the only site on the web that has the contents numbered and in their correct order. XOXO. --Username 20:42, 1 December 2021 (EST)

So the book was published briefly, but then removed from publication because the publisher didn't pay anyone? Or was it removed before it was actually published? Just making sure. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:03, 2 December 2021 (EST)

It sounds like what happened to the last issue of Satellite Science Fiction:

• Some sources list a June, 1959 issue. It was never printed although a few galley proofs are said to survive.

Depending on the specifics, even ARCs may be printed and distributed before the publisher pulls the plug. Ahasuerus 19:52, 2 December 2021 (EST)

I'm not sure (I assume, like a lot of these books that are ready to be published when a publisher goes out of business, review copies were sent out but the book never made it to retailers; see R. J. Horsely's 2006 comment here, https://www.amazon.com/Vivisections-William-P-Simmons/dp/9185075000; however, there's also a 2003 comment on that page from someone not in the book and nowhere to be found online as a reviewer, so how did he get the book?); that's all the info Simmons gave me, except for letting me know he's published 5 books recently and asking if I could add them, too. It took so long to get the Vivisections photo that I hesitate to contact him again; only reason he mentioned the non-payment stuff was because I mentioned how rare the book seems to be. There was supposed to be a Vivisections II, https://web.archive.org/web/20021219092439/http://www.catalystpress.net:80/vivisections2.htm, but that obviously never came to pass. I remember from visiting Catalyst's archived site some time ago that Catalyst's Monica (J.) O'Rourke, a well-known horror writer, and a woman who ran some other horror press combined into 1 press, but that didn't work out so well because they ended in 2003, and apparently O'Rourke just used Catalyst's site for a while after that as her own personal page until she got her own site. Looking at their horribly broken books page, https://web.archive.org/web/20030411223545/http://catalystpress.net:80/books.htm, I see there's a few books not on ISFDB that probably need entering, so silver lining and all that. --Username 19:59, 2 December 2021 (EST)

Also, re: Satellite, are you aware of this, http://www.philsp.com/mags/satellite_science_fiction.html; June and July 1959 covers! --Username 20:37, 2 December 2021 (EST)

I didn't know about the July issue. The last time I looked into Satellite was during the 1990s. I believe I consulted volume 3 of Tuck's Encyclopedia (1982), which mentioned the June issue and stated that "only four copies now remain, of which two are in the U.S. Library of Congress". I see that Miller and Contento referenced the July issue in 2002:

• Another issue dated July 1959 was in the works but had never been assembled. Part of its contents would have been as follows: "Try to Remember" by Frank Herbert, "Ship of Darkness" by A.E. van Vogt and two articles "Breaking the Ice Barrier" by Frank Belknap Long and "The Lore of H.P. Lovecraft" by Sam Moskowitz. Special thanks to Sam Moskowitz for this information.

It's good to see their preliminary covers available online. Ahasuerus 21:13, 2 December 2021 (EST)

Re: "there's also a 2003 comment on that page from someone not in the book and nowhere to be found online as a reviewer, so how did he get the book?", review copies are (or at least were) occasionally sold by second hand dealers in New York City, where many reviewers live and work. I remember running into them on a semi-regular basis when I frequented The Strand a few decades ago. Ahasuerus 21:20, 2 December 2021 (EST)

Oh yes, the Strand. Back when I also frequented them a few decades ago, I picked up some great stuff (British Pan Books edition of Ramsey Campbell's New Terrors 1 in an outside bin for 48 CENTS, Horrorstory: Volume Four (a HC collecting Year's Best Horror Stories X, XI, and XII), several Playboy Press PB anthologies edited by Charles L. Grant, etc. Also saw original Land of Enchantment edition of Koontz's Twilight Eyes which was later greatly expanded for the PB, although the price was too much for me even back then); what was great was they marked the price way down on a lot of their books so poor folks like me could actually buy some. Then they got lazy and started just marking most books as 1/2 off, which in most cases was still way too much for me. Combine that with the MTA getting rid of those $4 unlimited ride cards where you could take the train as many times as you wanted in a 24-hour period, and that's why I haven't visited the Strand since the 2000's. Probably for the best, since most of Manhattan these days resembles something from a post-apocalyptic movie. --Username 21:58, 2 December 2021 (EST)

Forces Obscures

https://archive.org/details/forcesobscures180000unse; This 1999 French horror anthology isn't on ISFDB; it's a mix of reprints (some rare) and originals. I don't usually enter foreign-language books but I thought I'd mention this here because there's a lot of worthy stuff in here that some French-fluent person may want to enter. --Username 13:42, 2 December 2021 (EST)

I'll enter it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:06, 2 December 2021 (EST)

Okay, all entered: 871002. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:58, 2 December 2021 (EST)

That was fast. I found there's 1 Naturellement-published book on Fantlab, by J.P. Andrevon, and it wasn't on ISFDB so I took a shot at entering it. I think I got most of it right, but some bits may need a look. --Username 20:28, 2 December 2021 (EST)

Do you have a link? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:02, 3 December 2021 (EST)

https://fantlab.ru/edition113680. --Username 12:37, 3 December 2021 (EST)

I've updated the binding type to "hc" per the Fantlab entry having this: Тип обложки: твёрдая. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:40, 3 December 2021 (EST)

But the Goodreads entry has this, "Format 128 pages, Paperback", and the other book on ISFDB in the 2000.com series is also a TP. --Username 17:29, 3 December 2021 (EST)

Story Id Request : Robotic Police

I'm looking for a short story, probably Analog, about a future where robotic police arrest all criminals to the point that there is nobody left who isn't incarcerated. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Porkov (talk • contribs) .

Hi, and welcome! Do you have any idea of the period of time this story might have been published, or any thing else about the author? For me, this rings no bell, but it might for somebody else. Stonecreek 08:32, 3 December 2021 (EST)

Not quite the same, but that sounds a little bit like Bradbury's The Pedestrian. --MartyD 09:51, 3 December 2021 (EST)

Raincoats in August

https://web.archive.org/web/20071023131646/http://www.hd-image.com/fiction/raincoats_in_august.htm; Here's something interesting; there was a zine, Aberrant Dreams, that published 9 issues in the 2000's according to ISFDB; however, an issue that was PV'd by someone here got 1 of the titles wrong. I'm still waiting to fix that, but I went back to the archived Aberrant Dreams site because the last issue included 2 old reprints by Victor Hugo and George Sterling. The Sterling's OK, but the Hugo was entered as a new story because I guess it was never translated into English until this magazine did it (which I find hard to believe, but whatever). I added a note with the original French date, then figured since a lot of the archived stories seem to be available I'd at least add the 2 old ones. However, Sterling's story only had 1 archived page and there was nothing on it; I was going to try for Hugo next, but stumbled on this, https://web.archive.org/web/20080724224200/http://www.hd-image.com/previous_pubs.htm. Whatever this is, it's not on ISFDB, as the first story title got no hits. The 2nd didn't either, but in my usual way I searched for the author's name and got this, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2344921. Even a dope like me knows Agosto means August, so I added the link to the record. Searching for the author and the English story title together online got 0 hits, so I may have found some rarities here, both that English translation and the anthology that may or may not have been published. Anyone know more about any of this? EDIT: found this, "This originally in the January 2007 issue of Aberrant Dreams", here, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2480326. --Username 19:06, 3 December 2021 (EST)

New cleanup report to find awards linked to CHAPBOOKs

A new cleanup report has been deployed. It looks for award records linked to CHAPBOOK titles. Most of them will probably need to be re-linked to the respective SHORTFICTION or POEM titles, but moderators can ignore records. The data will become available around 1:30am server time. Ahasuerus 21:33, 3 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks! Annie 22:41, 3 December 2021 (EST)

ISFDB and Open Library

Did some edits for Carl Jacobi books and saw on this page, https://openlibrary.org/books/OL5305368M/Disclosures_in_Scarlet, this website as an ID on the bottom. Didn't see it listed for any other Jacobi book I looked at, so what's the deal? How do certain books have it and others don't? Is it a volunteer site like this one where people can enter the info they wish to? --Username 00:04, 4 December 2021 (EST)

According to The Open Library Team page:

• Open Library is made possibly [sic] because of a dedicated team of staff and over 100 volunteers from around the globe.

The distinction between "staff" and "volunteers" seems to suggest that some contributors are paid employees and some are unpaid volunteers. Ahasuerus 09:26, 4 December 2021 (EST)

Interesting. I was thinking if all books on Open Library that are also on ISFDB had ISFDB ID links it would greatly increase traffic to this site, but I'm sure there's some reason why it's not so. --Username 11:45, 4 December 2021 (EST)

I am not sure how active Open Library is these days. BTW, I recently discovered that the SF subset of "libgen.li", one of the incarnations of the previously mentioned LibGen family of projects, uses our metadata and links to our Publication/Author pages. Ahasuerus 13:46, 4 December 2021 (EST)

Enemies of the System by Aldiss

I'd like to convert this to novella: it is one according to its length (and according to SFE3). I'll wait for a few days before acting, though. Stonecreek 01:23, 4 December 2021 (EST)

It most likely is a novella but let’s not rely just on number of pages (unless you have a source for the word count?), especially for older titles with a lot of verifiers who can do a rough count. There are PVs on a lot of these books, some of them very active. If you already did that, please post the link to the thread where the count always discussed, preferably in an English edition because translations can be a bit problematic if there were abridgments or a format had to be followed. :) Annie 21:53, 4 December 2021 (EST)

Well, I'm a PV - of the German translation (which tends to have more words than an English parent). Stonecreek 00:37, 5 December 2021 (EST)

Except when it is abridged and we both know that this is not always disclosed. :) Let’s check the original - just in case - especially because we have quite a lot of Active PVs. You will need to notify them anyway so might as well get someone who can get to the book to do a rough count. Dot the I’s, cross the t’s and all that. Annie 00:54, 5 December 2021 (EST)

My calculation of the word count in the 1978 Harper & Row edition follows:

• The text begins on page 9 and concludes on page 119, yielding 89 full pages and 22 partial pages (First and last page of the 11 chapters). There are 36 lines per page.
• the 22 partial pages total 455 lines / 36 lines per page = approx 12.5 pages
• 89 full pages + 12.5 pages = 101.5 equivalent pages.
• I counted 9, randomly selected, full pages. Result - 318 average words per page. 101.5 x 318 = 32,118 total words. Hope this helps, John Scifibones 11:13, 5 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks for counting! Novella it is indeed. I’d usually count multiple pages only if it is really close to 40K - with the 102 pages or so, you need almost 400 words per page so if a sample full page with almost no dialog is way down, it’s clear where we are. :) Annie 11:34, 5 December 2021 (EST)

Yes, good work, John! I'll begin right away with the task (and hope I'll run through it today). Thanks to you all, Christian Stonecreek 12:05, 5 December 2021 (EST)

Leave me a note if you run out of time - I’ll lend you a hand so we don’t end up with this title on 20 reports tonight while in mid conversion. Annie 12:54, 5 December 2021 (EST)

The Ghost Book

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?288782; I added the page # today from eBay, but unlike the Hutchinson eds. the Scribner ed. doesn't separate the 2 Onions stories on the contents page, so anyone with a copy or who knows where a full copy can be checked? --Username 21:42, 4 December 2021 (EST)

Italian Horror Story

https://web.archive.org/web/19990505052300/http://vampyres-only.com/electext/misc/buio_eng.html; This very old vampire-related site has some fiction ( not all of it working), and this one is interesting because like the Aberrant Dreams translation I found recently this seems to be another 1 that doesn't exist according to the modern web. It's a translation of this, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1425717. Obviously the date is much earlier than what ISFDB says, so any Italians who are familiar with the 1995 anthology(?) the archived page says it came from may want to change the date if it's accurate. --Username 21:22, 5 December 2021 (EST)

We have a lot of missing first publications (and because of that incorrect dates). We don't have active Italian editors these days unfortunately but that one is easy: here it is. I'll add it. Annie 22:11, 5 December 2021 (EST)

Done.Annie 22:25, 5 December 2021 (EST)

Ernest Newman

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?131768; the essay doesn't belong with the other stuff, but this, https://fanac.org/fanzines/Vector/Vector999.pdf; calls it a spoof "written under transparently false names". How best to separate this Newman from the older one? No worries about asking Vector's PV's first, because 1 is not active and the other, C1, has a board full of messages that make me look like an agreeable team player. --Username 07:36, 6 December 2021 (EST)

Site downtime -- 2021-12-06 between noon and 12:30pm server time

The whole site will be down for maintenance today, 2021-12-06, between noon and 12:30pm server time. This includes the ISFDB Wiki. Ahasuerus 11:12, 6 December 2021 (EST)

We are back up. If you come across any issues, please post your findings here. Ahasuerus 12:32, 6 December 2021 (EST)

Penny Dreadful

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?347591; I added cover to this, started to look at the other issues, there's so much unknown or wrong I didn't even bother, but after this 1 was approved I noticed format is PB, which I doubt, and there's a cover art credit for an issue with no art on the cover. Buburuz is credited on the cover but that's for interior art. So if anyone owns this issue they can change format and remove cover artist, if necessary. --Username 23:55, 6 December 2021 (EST)

Grand Comics Database

This post is prompted by a discussion in Rules and Standards concerning graphic novels. The Grand Comics Database is the equivalent of the ISFDB for comic books. At the very least it can be used to link authors/artists as I have done here: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1864. There might be other possibilities for title level links.--swfritter 17:30, 7 December 2021 (EST)

Added to Sources of Bibliographic Information, thanks. Ahasuerus 11:53, 8 December 2021 (EST)

Another source for scanned pulp and digest magazines

Many of the pubs are not at the internet archive. The pubs are in compressed archive files. https://pulpandoldmagazines.wordpress.com/ --swfritter 17:46, 7 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks, I have added it to Sources of Bibliographic Information. Ahasuerus 11:45, 8 December 2021 (EST)

John Gregory

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/adv_search_results.cgi?START=0&TYPE=Title&USE_1=author_canonical&O_1=exact&TERM_1=John%20Gregory&ORDERBY=title_title&C=AND; cheap 70's SF novel pseudonym and old horror story pseudonym got mixed together. --Username 19:50, 7 December 2021 (EST)

Robert Morgan

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?110054; English poet mixed up with pseudonym for American C.J. Henderson. --Username 20:35, 7 December 2021 (EST)

It turns out that it's a fairly well-known SF poem by the US poet Robert Morgan (b. 1944). I had never heard of it, but apparently it's taught in some middle schools. Live and learn... Ahasuerus 12:20, 8 December 2021 (EST)

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/adv_search_results.cgi?START=0&TYPE=Title&USE_1=author_canonical&O_1=exact&TERM_1=Robert%20Morgan&ORDERBY=title_title&C=AND; I'm thinking those 2 essays published in a British mag probably belong with Robert Morgan (I) who edited a British anthology, although there's a huge gap between the dates. --Username 12:46, 8 December 2021 (EST)

It's possible, but then again, Henderson was probably better known as "Robert Morgan" in the late 1990s: he had 6 novels published as "Morgan" and only 2 as by "Henderson". Ahasuerus 13:37, 9 December 2021 (EST)

Scribe Award?

The Scribe Award is an annual award given by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers for media tie-ins. It covers all genres, with adult SF works usually getting a category of their own. The "YA/middle-grade" category also includes a lot of SF works.

Their online list of nominees and winners is comprehensive and I am thinking that we should add this award type to our menagerie.

The "Faust Award for lifetime achievement" is presented by the same organization as part of the same process, so I am thinking that we could add it as another award category under the same award type, which is how we handle SFWA's "Grand Master Award". Ahasuerus 12:42, 8 December 2021 (EST)

Sounds good to me. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:53, 8 December 2021 (EST)

I have created a new award type and entered all Faust Award recipients. I have also created award category records for all known speculative categories. Looking for volunteers to enter other nominees and winners. Ahasuerus 14:13, 11 December 2021 (EST)

Stoker Award

The Stoker Award shouldn't have a Grandmaster category as they don't give a Grandmaster Award (they have a Lifetime Achievement award instead). The Stokers are given by the Horror Writers Association. The horror grandmaster award was given by the World Horror Convention, which stopped happening after 2016. So, we need to remove the category from the Stoker, and then create the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award.

Here are the details for that:

• Short Name: WHC Grand Master
• Full Name: World Horror Convention Grand Master Award
• Awarded For: Significant contributions to the field of horror literature
• Awarded By: World Horror Convention committee
• Poll: No
• Covers more than just SF: No
• Webpages: Wikipedia-EN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Horror_Convention_Grand_Master_Award)
• Note: Nominees were submitted and the WHC committee selected the recipient from among those nominated. The award was given out from 1991-2016.

There are no categories for the award, and only one person received it each year, though it was not given out every year. I'll be happy to fill in the recipients once the award is created. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:50, 8 December 2021 (EST)

Done. Ahasuerus 13:46, 9 December 2021 (EST)

And all entered. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:08, 9 December 2021 (EST)

Excellent! :) Ahasuerus 16:39, 9 December 2021 (EST)

Lord Ruthven Award

Here's another one we should add:

• Short Name: Ruthven
• Full Name: Lord Ruthven Award
• Awarded For: Significant contributions to the field of horror literature
• Awarded By: Lord Ruthven Assembly
• Poll: not sure
• Covers more than just SF: No
• Webpages: Wikipedia-EN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Ruthven_Award), SFADB (http://www.sfadb.com/Lord_Ruthven_Awards_Winners_By_Year)
• Note: Given out since 1989

The following categories currently exist:

• Fiction: Best fiction on vampires
• Non-fiction: Best academic work on the study of the vampire figure in culture and literature
• Media/Popular Culture
• Special Award

I'll be happy to add them once it's created. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:11, 8 December 2021 (EST)

If there are no objections, I will create this award type in a couple of days. Ahasuerus 13:47, 9 December 2021 (EST)

Done. I have also created a category for "Special Citation", which may (or may not) be separate from the "Special Award" category. The relevant SFADB Web page, which lists all Ruthven awards by category, has 2 "Special Award" sections and another section for "Special Citation". Wikipedia has only one "Special" category, but it links to this File770 announcement, which calls the 2018 category "Special Recognition".

Also, please note that "Powers of Darkness: The Lost Translation of Dracula" is not exactly a translation. To quote the English publisher of the book, the Icelandic publisher, writer and translator Valdimar "Ásmundsson hadn't merely translated Dracula but had penned an entirely new version of the story, with all new characters and a totally re-worked plot." The 2018 Special Recognition award was apparently given to both the 1901 text and "the scholarship added by Hans de Roos". Ahasuerus 13:17, 11 December 2021 (EST)

All entered! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:52, 14 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks! Ahasuerus 17:34, 14 December 2021 (EST)

Russell Edson

["Erasing Amyloo", "Oh My God, I'll Never Get Home", "Baby Pianos", "The Large Thing", "The Adventures of a Turtle", "The Wounded Breakfast", "Bringing a Dead Man Back into Life", "Ape", "Counting Sheep", "The Reason Why the Closet Man is Never Sad"]; I saw Edson had a short story, Prose Poems, and knew that was fishy so I checked and turns out he had 10 poems in this anthology, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?338085. I deleted Prose Poems and found, in an Amazon reader comment, the titles listed above. Only 1 of them is on ISFDB, but many other titles were published in Edson's poetry collections (only 1 collection is on ISFDB), while a few titles don't seem to be from any of his collections. I imported the 1 poem, but if anyone owns a copy of that anthology it might have a publication history for the rest of the poems; Edson was still alive when it was published, so it's possible he wrote a few originals in addition to the reprints. --Username 10:29, 9 December 2021 (EST)

Herbert ? Bernstein

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?12478; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?336818; Muddling Through was by Herbert Bernstein on ISFDB so I added the J. from the cover; those 2 Analog stories by Herbert Jacob are mentioned here as by Herbert J., https://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~cse103/Fall_01/README.yaya.html, but it doesn't mention Muddling Through. If anyone can verify they're all by the same guy, is the correct procedure to make an alternate name (and which one should be the alternate?) or to make the 2 stories variants? --Username 10:31, 10 December 2021 (EST)

The Room in the Tower

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2316407; The 2nd book is 420 pages; it's probably a reprint of the collection, not a chapbook containing just the 1 story. --Username 11:58, 10 December 2021 (EST)

Sea Mist

[18]; "Dives" and "Lazarus" actually "Dives and Lazarus", I fixed that, but page # clearly wrong; anyone own a copy, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?267428, to verify #'s? --Username 23:15, 10 December 2021 (EST)

Everything Old Is New Again

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?869953; I added cover artist to this recent book, but noticed that while some stories were imported properly, all the fiction is old. The first M.R. James story, the 2 Bosanquet poems, the R.H. Benson, the J.K. Stephens (actually by J.K. Stephen), the Tatham (actually by H.F.W. Tatham), and the Stone are all reprints, I think. Several people have made edits here, so I'm sure someone must have noticed all this, but just in case no one did I'm mentioning it. Swan River books are very limited editions which are tough to verify from online info, so an actual print copy is probably necessary. --Username 00:18, 11 December 2021 (EST)

Or Subtitles

What is our standard for subtitles with "or":

1. Title; or, Subtitle
2. Title, or, Subtitle

We have plenty of both. I thought this was documented somewhere, but not seeing it on Template:TitleFields:Title and searching has not been effective as too generic a term. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:57, 12 December 2021 (EST)

There was a previous discussion which unfortunately didn't result in a consensus. When I enter such a title, I normalize it to the first form you mention (<title>; or, <alternate title>) which is how I most frequently see them reflected when not separated by new lines on a title page. I admit that my perception of what is most common is purely anecdotal. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 12:24, 12 December 2021 (EST)

I think the underlying problem is that different bibliographic and writing style manuals use different standards. In some cases they even endorse multiple standards, e.g. the Chicago Manual of Style (8.1.65) says "a semicolon between title and subtitle may usually be changed to a colon" [emphasis added].

Since many of our records -- especially for older books when long subtitles were more common -- originally came from secondary sources, we effectively inherited a mishmash of styles. Ahasuerus 15:18, 12 December 2021 (EST)

Basil Faulty

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?83283; I found out AC Benson's "Basil Netherby" had an alternate title, "The House At Treheale", and made it a variant. Approvals have been scarce lately, and now that this has been approved and I'm looking at it again I realize I'm not sure if the date is right; from what I can gather it was read to audiences for Christmas, 1903 under the alternate and was changed when published in the collection, but Haining in one of his usual shady moves published it under the alternate in one of his final anthologies in order to make it look like a lost story. So should the date of "...Treheale" be 1903 (probably not), date collection was published, or date of anthology? --Username 20:51, 12 December 2021 (EST)

Haining Excerpt

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?285967; The Garfield is an excerpt, not the full novel. --Username 09:05, 13 December 2021 (EST)

Well, at this length it ain't a novel in the first place. I'll deal with the title. Thanks for finding this! Stonecreek 09:20, 13 December 2021 (EST)

A new issue has come up; http://www.locusmag.com/index/t733.htm#A36657. Peter Haining, in his usual confusing way, used chapter headings or whatever for each story, and for some reason used Garfield's 1972 title The Ghost Downstairs but the actual story in the book seems to be "The Constable's Tale" from 1993; this story isn't on ISFDB, having been published in a newspaper, and there seems to be almost no mention of it online. --Username 10:04, 13 December 2021 (EST)

It seems possible that "The Constable's Tale" is an excerpt from "The Ghost Downstairs", and was just titled that way by the newspaper. I guess a primary verifier is what we'd need. Stonecreek 10:01, 15 December 2021 (EST)

Zilpha

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?616260; Artist didn't write a short story in this book as far as I can tell, and there's no mention they did the cover, just illustrations, so a deletion or two might be needed. I added the OL link to the record. EDIT: I changed short story to interior art but left the cover credit since it may very well be done by the same artist, even if not credited. --Username 19:32, 14 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks! Upon entering there was obviously no change to the actual title type for the interior art; the style of the cover art fits the other works by the artist, though. Stonecreek 02:20, 15 December 2021 (EST)

"Adult" Novel Stuff

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1875171; So after doing a ton of edits for awful "adult" books some time ago, recently someone entered a bunch of them and I've been doing more edits. I thought I was done for now, but randomly noticed that the 2 covers at the link above are really the same, except the later edition gave her a more mod hairstyle and shortened her skirt, and yet 2 different artists are credited. Maybe that's so, maybe not, but more interesting is while checking covers by both artists I came across a book I vaguely remember working on months ago (hard to forget a cover with a DOG WITH A HUMAN HEAD), A Labor of Lust, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?809743, and the blurb about "Doctor Proctor" on the cover rang a bell; I think this is the book mentioned here, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?809737. I've never found any trace of a cover for Doctor Proctor, so I think it's possible either it was never published or maybe it's titled Doctor Proctor inside A Labor of Lust, since these porn books didn't exactly have much quality control and often changed things from 1 part of the book to another; or is it possible it's a sequel?. So maybe someone will chime in here with more info. There's another book by DuBreuil, The Hat, which is also missing, but that title's a little more vague. EDIT: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?521715; Editor wrote a note about different editions, but they entered ID with the wrong cover. Right cover I added from Bookscans, but then saw this, https://openlibrary.org/search?q=%22sin+on+wheels%22&mode=everything. First photo is the same as editor added, but second seems to be by Greenleaf, judging from the Nightstand info on the bottom, and apparently they were still releasing it years later because there's a retitled edition, The Instructor, with the same art but now by Reed Nightstand. So just when you think you've found them all, more crawl out of the woodwork. --Username 20:48, 14 December 2021 (EST)

1971/1972 French/English Verne Book

https://fantlab.ru/edition153290; Lots of discussion lately about Jules Verne on this board, so I'll mention this, which is not on ISFDB, although the author is, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?166791, including a French essay about Verne. Lots of nice illustrations and a Verne photo. --Username 13:09, 15 December 2021 (EST)

Ushers

https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/search?type=product&q=gray+usher; So months ago I found mention on Vault of Evil that Shaun & Gray Usher's 1975 collection The Graveyard Companion was partially reprinted as Festival of Fiends the next year by the same publisher; they dropped a few stories and added several new ones. The 1975 collection was published in America in 1980, but today I randomly came across my note again and noticed the American edition was much longer than the British. Richard Dalby's site has all 3 books, and it turns out info on ISFDB is badly messed up. Many stories entered for the British aren't in the book, and many in the book aren't entered here. Photos of contents pages on Dalby's site are bad and don't show page #'s, and unlike the American they don't say who wrote which story on the contents page, so I can't really enter the missing stories because I don't know who wrote what. Also, the American's info was entered from an Archive.org copy, but 2 of the titles were wrong and so was the price, so I fixed them. Festival of Fiends also has stories in it not in the original Graveyard Companion but also not in the longer American edition, either. So it's a mess. I've deleted the wrong titles from the original; anyone here with copies of either original Graveyard Companion or Festival of Fiends can help greatly with solving all of this. --Username 21:47, 15 December 2021 (EST)

Lucifer

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?107485; I worked on this a long time ago, adding that awesome cover. I cleaned it up a bit today, deleting part of the FantLab URL and adding their link, then read that the cover is an alternate, with there also being a standard cover with a little picture on the front. I don't know who did that one or whether that would count as a separate edition to be entered here, but what's more important is the alternate cover wasn't done for this book but is actually an old painting, which was also used on 1 of the recently deceased Anne Rice's books. So, as usual, I mention a possible variant situation in case anyone decides it's necessary. --Username 08:59, 17 December 2021 (EST)

Brennan Non-Fiction

Herbie Brennan wrote a lot of books; 1 of them, The Young Ghosthunter's Guide, was a novel on ISFDB but copy on Archive.org revealed it's non-fiction; I fixed that and the title because the apostrophe was in the wrong place, but looking at his other books this one, https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25954113M/The_Codebreakers_Handbook, was also a novel on ISFDB but again the Archive.org copy revealed it's non-fiction, which I also fixed; however, the cover added here many years ago, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?242369, doesn't match the one on OL, and the cover on OL doesn't match the cover on the book itself. The price is in pounds on the back cover, unlike the American price entered here, but the ISBN is the same. So if anyone's interested, although it probably isn't a book that belongs here and is just included because of the author's genre status. --Username 12:58, 17 December 2021 (EST)

Warm As Snow

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=warm+as+s&type=Fiction+Titles; probably a variant situation needed. These guys published so much under so many different name combos it's crazy. --Username 00:57, 18 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks for finding this! I have dealt with it. Stonecreek 09:13, 19 December 2021 (EST)

Rabou

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1764301; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1027577; Seems publisher's website was right, and the story "Tobias Guarnerius" was actually by Charles Rabou. EDIT: see here: http://tartaruspress.com/f2.htm. --Username 15:20, 18 December 2021 (EST)

Possible Non-Genre Wilkie Collins

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?852423; Title translates as moonstone, so is a translation of Collins' famous novel, but since no other edition is on ISFDB, is it really genre and does it belong here? --Username 20:37, 18 December 2021 (EST)

Yep, this does look like not belonging here. I tend towards deleting the entry. Stonecreek 08:57, 19 December 2021 (EST)

Agreed. It's a detective novel, with no speculative (by our definition) features. However, it's very possible Collins would be considered "above the threshold" given the works he's done in the genre. If he is considered ABT, then we would include it and mark it as non-genre (and he has several things marked that way already, lending credence to the ABT classification). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:21, 20 December 2021 (EST)

Ah, yes, I have varianted it to the English original title. Thanks for the input! Christian Stonecreek 01:53, 21 December 2021 (EST)

PV approvals

If a publication has multiple PVs and you have notified all of them, is it necessary to wait for positive responses from all of them before making changes or is it acceptable to go ahead after receiving one positive response? Phil 14:32, 20 December 2021 (EST)

Depends. ;-) If they are active verifiers & the change is major, I would wait for all. If the change is minor or the verifiers are only semi-active, I would go ahead. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:22, 22 December 2021 (EST)

Grubb Collection

https://www.abebooks.com/signed-first-edition/Siege-318-Thirteen-Mystical-Stories--SIGNED-/30365297812; Davis Grubb published a collection in 1978, The Siege of 318, which was from a small press non-genre publisher, unlike his other collections which were published by mainstream publishers and are all relatively easy to find. I remember trying to find a photo of the contents page some time ago with no luck, but tonight while looking for something else I found it hiding on an AbeBooks seller's page. However, photo #4 at the link above was photographed badly, being blindingly white and slanted. I think I got them all entered correctly, but if anyone here actually owns a copy they may want to double-check; it's also possible stories don't start on the same page as what it says on the contents page, which is a common thing with these small press publishers. EDIT: Well, something weird happened; I added the cover to this book back in March using FantLab according to the edit history; I just checked FantLab again and they have new photos, including the CONTENTS PAGE, photographed perfectly. Turns out I entered all the #'s correctly from that awful AbeBooks photo, so that's taken care of. Still, anyone who owns a copy can still check if they wish to make sure contents' #'s match actual story #'s. --Username 01:17, 21 December 2021 (EST)

Appal(l)ing

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1511177; It's "The Appalling Gift" in original mag and in Dover's Level collection also edited by Joshi, https://books.google.com/books?id=-G7bCwAAQBAJ, but judging by the notes for the Centipede editions they were shoddily proofread, so it's possible it was really misspelled; if anyone owns those they may want to check and fix if needed. --Username 23:18, 21 December 2021 (EST)

Existing PV notifications - Clarification requested

Since I'm mostly going through my own collection and doing a PV after checking each book, I almost constantly need to inform existing PVs of changes to notes or adding LCCN ids. That's taking a lot of time. Since there is a "My Changed Primary Verifications" display readily available to each user and since I'm going to PV, is it unacceptable to simply make the notes changes/additions and add appropriate info in the "Note to Moderator" field? That way I'm both not cluttering up each user's Talk page and getting through my collection faster. Obviously, this doesn't apply to major changes where pre-approval from active users is expected. BTW, is there a consensus as to when a user is considered inactive? Thanks! Phil 08:32, 23 December 2021 (EST)

Yes, if you are making additions & not changing data, then you can rely on the changed pubs functionality vs. having to post on user's talk pages. If you are changing data (unless it's like a simple typo in the notes), then you should discuss it. The reason is two fold: 1) when there is a difference of opinion on how to represent something, it is best to work it out via discussion; and 2) sometimes it turns out there are actually separate editions / printings. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:11, 23 December 2021 (EST)

External IDs are usually safe to add so unless the data in them differs from what is already in the record, I usually won't notify the PVs when I add them (the moderator note is enough). If there are differences (in dates or publisher), I'll make sure they actually belong to that edition and not somewhere else (and the differences need to be added to the notes). Fixing typos in notes, fixing formatting in formatted fields (outside of Notes/Summary) and other things like that (cleanup activities basically) also are fine with just moderator notes. Anything bigger - I will post on the PVs page.

As for what is inactive - I'd consider anyone that had been here in the last year active enough to require a notification... Annie 11:51, 23 December 2021 (EST)

Millhiser's Mirror

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?567801; The Book Club Edition is on Archive.org, I added OL link, page count completely different than PV's (383 vs. 336), PV wrote long note about how page count differs greatly from original edition, there's another copy on Archive.org with no dustjacket that's also 383 pages, could be another BCE copy, so someone with original edition should check; I believe both editions are the same # and whoever entered # here for original just copied wrong # of 414 pages from some other site. --Username 18:39, 25 December 2021 (EST)

Burks Collection

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?989214; https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/products/arthur-j-burks-look-behind-you-1954-first-edition; Dalby's site has an extensive bunch of photos from Burks' rare collection, but title story has no exclamation point on the contents page, unlike ISFDB. Also, title story is apparently long enough to be divided into 4 chapters, all mentioned on the contents page, but none of the chapter titles are mentioned anywhere online as far as I've found. So on the off chance someone owns this, they may want to verify story titles and those chapter titles, which then could be mentioned in the Notes field for this book. --Username 16:02, 26 December 2021 (EST)

Hagberg

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?19680; There's a signature on the Belmont edition of Croc, couldn't find out who it belongs to, but while searching I found out the author died a couple of years ago so I entered that in an edit. However, ISFDB has a separate page for David Hagberg with lots of entries, so now that he's dead someone may want to connect all the dots and merge. EDIT: I checked the Hagberg page, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?5768, again and saw someone already entered his death date there, so I cancelled my edit. However, the David James page is troublesome, because Hagberg was American but the first short story on David James' page is from a British SF mag, and the first 2 art credits are from the same mag. The last short story is also from a British SF mag, while the last art credit is American and so is the poem. So there might be a British David James in the 70's, the American who wrote Croc and the middle 3 short stories, either the same British guy or another one with the same name who published a single story 20 years after the other one, an American guy who did some interior art for a 2001 Planet of the Apes novelization, and another American guy who wrote a poem for an obscure horror mag. Good luck. --Username 01:02, 27 December 2021 (EST)

I broke out the short story and poem authors based on The Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Weird Fiction Magazine Index. They do not appear to be the same as the novelist. I also broke out the artist as a separate record. It's not clear they are all by the same artist given it is 1975 and 2001 so added note to artist page. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:19, 28 December 2021 (EST)

Cool, although I'm going to add a (III) to the author of "Time & Again" because it was published in the same British SF mag as the first 2 pieces of art by (III). --Username 09:29, 28 December 2021 (EST)

Cover art based on multi-page interior art entry

I have a submission which have been stuck in review for a long time, likely because it's not super clear how to deal with it. In short this cover art is based on one of the pages in this interior art entry. Having thought about it a bit more (and found a digital copy of the publication) my suggestion is that the interior art entry be replaced by entries for each of the 10 individual pages and that the cover then variants the correct one of these. Since the pther submission is stuck I however don't want to start such a project without firat checking here. /Lokal_Profil 07:57, 28 December 2021 (EST)

Yes, your proposed solution is the best. Add the individual artworks to Heavy Metal and then variant to the specific one. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:00, 28 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks. A submission to that effect is now in. /Lokal_Profil 08:09, 28 December 2021 (EST)

Approved. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:21, 28 December 2021 (EST)

Breton language added

The Breton language has been added to the list of supported languages. Ahasuerus 14:02, 28 December 2021 (EST)

Albert Einstein painting

Can anyone make out this signature? https://cloud10.todocoleccion.online/carteles/tc/2016/05/16/18/56876556.webp --Rosab618 21:49, 28 December 2021 (EST)

Looks like "RT Handville" to me. We have Robert T. Handville in the database. That's the only one we have in the database, though. Based on this work, the signatures look the same. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:03, 29 December 2021 (EST)

Thank you!--Rosab618 13:05, 29 December 2021 (EST)

Words Without Borders

Moved to Moderator noticeboard /Lokal_Profil 06:48, 1 January 2022 (EST)

Ram or Rani

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2940963; all other works by her are by Rani, not Ram, but the Utopia link shows while it's Ram at story head her bio is the correct Rani, so that's odd and probably needs looking at. --Username 20:57, 29 December 2021 (EST)

A Winner Is You

VICTORY! One of the very first things I did after joining ISFDB last December was mentioning the fact that a story I had read a few years earlier on Archive.org in a 1948 issue of the Saturday Evening Post, titled "Day of Vengeance" by Noel Langley, was reprinted in Langley's rare 1950 collection Tales of Mystery and Revenge as "The Bone Bead Necklace". In my earliest days here I thought the procedure was to find info and for mods to enter it, but was greeted rudely by a mod who shall remain nameless telling me my recollection of the story wasn't enough. Over the past year I've mentioned a few times how it still bothered me that I couldn't verify it because the Post issues were taken down, the Post website requires signing up to read their issues, and Medley Macabre, which is the only genre anthology where the story was reprinted, is almost impossible to find in America. Well, a Christmas miracle happened today because while searching for something else entirely I found a copy of Medley Macabre on Archive.org that was added earlier this year, https://archive.org/details/medleymacabre0000neth, and reading the beginning of Langley's story revealed instantly that it was the same as the Post story with the different title. As far as I can tell there is no mention of this connection anywhere, so now there will be. I also found this, [19], which shows the headmaster in the story holding the BONE BEAD NECKLACE. Also, the Archive copy isn't from 1966 but 1972, with an ISBN and everything, so there's a new edition to enter, too. --Username 21:58, 29 December 2021 (EST)

Done. Now the question is whether any other stories in the book are retitled. I wish I had the same energy as when I started here to find these things, but maybe someone else will see this one day and surprise us. --Username 00:38, 4 January 2022 (EST)

Chronister

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=chronister&type=Name; There was a Bantam reprint of a 1981 Celestial Arts publication where some editor mistakenly thought the cover art was the same, but using Archive.org's copy it was actually by Bob Chronister. Checking that unusual last name, there's 3 art credits by Bob and 3 by Robert (although when my edit is approved Bob will have 4). Dates are all in the same late 70's-early 80's period, so if anyone knows what the name is he usually went by when doing cover art the 2 names should be varianted. --Username 21:36, 30 December 2021 (EST)

New cleanup reports - Translations

A new section, "Translations", has been added to the Cleanup Reports menu. At the moment, it includes 8 cleanup reports and is displayed after the "Transliterations" section. The data will become available on Saturday morning.

The first 7 reports are language-specific and find "book-length titles with no publications, no same-language VTs and with a translated VT". The following languages are currently covered: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. Most reports are expected to have 150-450 titles depending on the language. Japanese is the only exception with over a thousand titles.

The last report is a "catch-all" report for the remaining languages. It is sorted by language to make it easier to find books that different editors are familiar with. The total number of titles is expected to be just over 500.

These reports ignore 0000-00-00 and 8888-00-00 titles, at least for now. Also, please note that they are limited to the following title types: NOVEL, COLLECTION, ANTHOLOGY, NONFICTION, and OMNIBUS. Another set of reports will be deployed for the remaining title types at a later point.

Happy (and bibliographically profitable) New Year! :-) Ahasuerus 19:18, 31 December 2021 (EST)

A complementary set of cleanup reports has been deployed. It covers the rest of the title types. The data will become available tomorrow morning. This patch should wrap up this FR. Ahasuerus 20:14, 2 January 2022 (EST)

Bair/Gurney

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?6448; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?132626. Same person, but 2 different records. --Username 19:57, 31 December 2021 (EST)

Updates made. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:39, 1 January 2022 (EST)