User talk:Jprucher

Welcome!

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

• Help pages
• What the ISFDB Wiki is for
• FAQ

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Ahasuerus 17:45, 3 Jan 2007 (CST)

Login problems

The most common cause of login problems is the Safari browser, which I was about to make a note of in the FAQ. Would you happen to be using Safari, by any chance? Also, Internet Explorer for the Macintosh is suspect, but the Firefox/Macintosh combo seems to work fine. Does any of this ring any bells? Ahasuerus 22:04, 3 Jan 2007 (CST)

I'm using WinXP, and I've tried both Firefox (2.0.0.1) and IE (7). Jefe 02:28, 4 Jan 2007 (CST)

Have you checked your broswer options? Do you have cookies enabled? (I assume you do since you can post here on the Wiki). Have you tried enabling third party cookies if they are currently disabled? Are you behind a firewall, a Superclick server or anything like that that may be affecting (some) cookies? If none of this helps, then you may want to post on the Community Portal, where the developer, Al von Ruff, will see it and perhaps have other suggestions. Sorry about the mess, this Internet thing can be a pain sometimes :( Ahasuerus 10:27, 4 Jan 2007 (CST)

Howdy

Hi, Jeff, good to see you here. I hope you get the login problems sorted out soon -- it does seem to be browser specific, as Ahasuerus pointed out. Anything I can do to help, just ask. Mike Christie (talk) 00:00, 4 Jan 2007 (CST)

Exodus from the Long Sun

Jeff, I saw that you changed the price for Exodus from the Long Sun from $23.95 to L16.99. Publication price changes make me nervous as there is a possibilty that a copy of ISBN 0340638354 exists that states $23.95. Do you have a copy that is marked with just £16.99? I approved the change to £16.99 as that ISBN is in the range assigned to the UK but also added a publication note about that the there may be a US $23.95 price on the book too. Marc Kupper 18:59, 8 Jan 2007 (CST)

I do have a copy with only that price. Hodder and Stoughten is a UK publisher; considering that $23.95 is the price of the US first edition, I would assume that the publication was cloned from the US and whoever did it forgot to change the price. I may have acted rashly, however -- I see now that there are TWO editions from H&S with the same ISBN, the one I changed the price on, and one that had the UK price already. I have no idea what to make of the US price, though -- I'll eat my hat if there was an American H&S edition published simultaneously with the Tor edition that's not mentioned in Locus or WorldCat. Is there any way to find out how the publication was created? Jefe 12:28, 9 Jan 2007 (CST)

Jeff, your question about "Is there any way to find out how the publication was created?" is a good one and something that's already in the list of things to add to ISFDB. At the moment there is no practical way to view a publication's edit history. As there were already two publication records 1 2 I went ahead and fixed them up so they were the same other than the price and also added a note about the prices and the Tor edition. I agree that it looks pretty strange that Hodder & Stoughton would be publishing a U.S.A. edition simultaneously with Tor. At this point when we run into odd things like this is to just add notes explaining the issue best as we can and down the road as more publications get physically verified we will be able to sort out what books actually exist versus vaporware created from publisher announcements, errors, etc. I've also copy/pasted this thread to the bibliographic notes for the involved publications. Marc Kupper 14:03, 9 Jan 2007 (CST)

Variant title for Introduction (Episodes of the Argo)?

Jeff, I saw your request to make a variant title, Introduction for "Episodes of the Argo", for an existing introduction. That seems like a pretty unusual thing to do and so could you explain what you are trying to do? Thanks. Marc Kupper 18:13, 9 Jan 2007 (CST)

This introduction was published twice: first as "Introduction" in the book "Episodes of the Argo" and reprinted as "Introduction for "Episodes of the Argo"" in the book "Castle of Days". If you look at Wolfe's essays list [1], you can see that both are listed independently, instead of being multiple pubs (with different titles) of the same work. Jefe 14:21, 10 Jan 2007 (CST)

Do you know what the actual title of the introduction was in the books? When we use Introduction (Episodes of the Argo) the implication is the introduction's title was just "Introduction" in the book and when we use Introduction for "Episodes of the Argo" it's a little less clear if the book states "Introduction for "Episodes of the Argo"" or if it's "Introduction" and someone was trying to indicate which book the introduction was for when they added the record to ISFDB or some other database. If the introduction is stated as "Introduction for "Episodes of the Argo"" then yes, the variant title is a good idea and I'd also put a comment in the notes field explaining the introduction is titled as "Introduction for "Episodes of the Argo"." Marc Kupper 19:08, 10 Jan 2007 (CST)

According to the Locus index, the title in "Episodes of the Argo" was just "Introduction" (which corresponds to the data in ISFDB). In "Castle of Days" (which reprints the intro), the essay is titled "Introduction for 'Episodes of the Argo'". So I'd say that "Introduction for 'Episodes of the Argo'" makes sense as a variant for "Introduction (Episodes of the Argo)". A note explaining the weird nomenclature is an excellent idea.Jefe 20:31, 10 Jan 2007 (CST)

Perfect! I approved the variant title and then more/or/less copy/pasted your comment into the notes for Introduction for 'Episodes of the Argo'. Marc Kupper 00:28, 11 Jan 2007 (CST)

Hero as Werwolf

Jeff (or is it Jefe?) I'm going to copy/paste the entire thread here. You can reply on your own user-talk thread and while I may not notice the reply immediately I should see it within a day rather than bouncing the thread back and forth beteen two user talk pages.

Mark, I see that you rejected my edit to Gene Wolfe's "Hero as Werwolf", and that furthermore it's now been typed as a novel. I originally entered it as a chapterbook, with contents of "The Hero as Werwolf" (i.e., the short story of that name), which is the only content. When I viewed it yesterday, I noticed that the chapbook listed contents of "Hero as Werwolf -- chapterbook" AND "Hero as Werwolf -- novelette". I assumed I made some error in creating it, and tried to delete the (apparently) redundant chapterbook from the contents. I now understand that there are circumstances where listing the work itself as contents makes sense (as you said, a novel with an introduction). But I don't think it does make sense in this case, or for most chapterbooks, which only contain a single story or essay. Under the current model (as I understand it), the only options are to either not include the story as contents (which means that the chapterbook publication won't appear as a pub for the story, which is what happened with the Le Guin chapterbook [2] and the story it contains [3]) or to display fairly confusing contents in the book, which is what we have with the Wolfe book (e.g., it's extremely hard to parse just what is meant by "The Hero as Werwolf" being listed twice in the contents). So I think the bug is not that the parent shouldn't be deletable so much as the parent shouldn't necessarily be displayed.Jefe 16:04, 10 Jan 2007 (CST)

Jeff (or is it Jefe?) – You are absolutely correct. Your submission exposed several ISFDB bugs and other issues.

1. It turns out that while we can create new publications of type CHAPTERBOOK that ISFDB is not including CHAPTERBOOK in the available title types for edit-title and edit-publication meaning by default ISFDB was silently changing the type to ANTHOLOGY when someone did an edit to either the title or publication record. I’ve put in a bug report about this and in the mean time changed both the title and publican to type NOVEL. Once the bug is fixed we can change them back to CHAPTERBOOK.
2. The double listing of the title is certainly confusing and I’ve put in a feature request that may help deal with this and also started a ISFDB:Community_Portal#Novel_vs._shortfiction discussion thread. For ordinary novels ISFDB does a little magic in that when it displays the publication page it does not include the contents section as it would be redundant. If someone adds a new title to the contents to deal with a Foreword, Preface, etc. then ISFDB will display the parent title record in the contents along with the new titles that were added. If you assign page numbers then it looks perfect as you will see a preface on page v, the story on page 1, and an afterword on page 158 for example. Where this gets troublesome is those cases where a shortfiction novella is published as a standalone novel in that the story will show up twice in the contents list.
3. The third ISFDB bug is that ISFDB should not have given you the option of deleting the parent title record at all as this is the thing that links the publication to the author’s bibliography. In other words it Author -> title -> publication and you had tried to delete the title in the middle which would have made the publication a stray or orphan record. Marc Kupper 17:59, 10 Jan 2007 (CST)

Gene Wolfe's In Green's Jungles

Hello again! Your recent submission attempted to change the Publication data for Gene Wolfe's In Green's Jungles from a trade paperback to a hardcover. Amazon.com lists both editions, so I rejected your submission and added the data that you submitted for the hardcover version as another edition (Publication) of this title. Thanks! Ahasuerus 01:30, 13 Jan 2007 (CST)

Short fiction series

Just FYI, I saw a note from Ahasuerus today mentioning that there are still shortcomings in series display for series that consist solely of shortfiction; you might run into these with the Swanwick series you're working on. There's a note on the community portal with a little more detail. Mike Christie (talk) 15:48, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

Sub to update "Out of the Silent Planet"

I saw your update of "Out of the Silent Planet"; I hesitate to approve this because it's marked as verified by Marc Kupper, so I thought I'd point the two of you at each other and let you work it out. I'll post a similar note to Marc's talk page. Mike Christie (talk) 21:11, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology - price change

You submitted a publication update to change the price for Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology from $3.50 to $3.95 along with the note "4th printing (per numberline)." Please do this as a clone-publication. It's a common publisher practice to keep the same ISBN as they reprint at a higher price. The record for $3.50 is quite likely to be a valid publication and would be the 3rd or earlier printing.

Generally my practice is that I use edit-pub to fill in the blanks but never to change an existing record. Other than dealing with what seem like outright errors such as a book listed as tp when from the price it's clearly a pb is that many ISFDB records only have the year but not the month. I believe it's safe to fill in the month (and in that sense we are just filling in a blank). If I need to change the price or other material data I use clone-publication and make the changes to the new copy. Marc Kupper 16:09, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

Either there's a bug in the clone mechanism or my mousing skills have gone all to heck. This at least the third time I've cloned something and gotten a note from a moderator saying that it was an edit. The first time, I assumed I just clicked the wrong link, but I really don't think I'm doing it repeatedly. At any rate, I certainly didn't intend to edit the existing record (or the Le Guin or Wolfe pubs in the above comments).Jefe 17:53, 22 Jan 2007 (CST)

I just tried cloning the Grafton edition of Green Eyes and updating it with the Millennium edition's info. I'm curious to see whether this comes through as a clone or a new pub.Jefe 18:00, 22 Jan 2007 (CST)

I am happy to report that it came through as a clone and was correctly auto-merged with the main title -- see http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1842 . However, it is certainly conceivable that there is still a bug lurking somewhere in the murky waters of Python code and you only manage to trigger it occasionally, so we will be on the lookout for it! :) Ahasuerus 18:35, 22 Jan 2007 (CST)

Year field when adding reviews

I've noticed for a couple of magazines such as Quantum, Spring/Summer 1993 you will enter the first handful of reviews using just YYYY for the year and then switched to YYYY-00-00 for the remaining reviews. ISFDB decodes YYYY as 0000-00-00 meaning these reviews are undated. In your latest submission the reviews from pages 70 to 75 are (0000) and the reviews on page 79 are from 1993. If it'll help - here's the Book Reviews section of the data you submitted: Marc Kupper 23:34, 24 Jan 2007 (CST)

Title	Book Authors	Reviewers	Date	Page
Black Cocktail	Jonathan Carroll	Doug Fratz	1991	70
Heads	Greg Bear	Doug Fratz	1991	70
Griffin's Egg	Michael Swanwick	Doug Fratz	1992	70
Kalimantan	Lucius Shepard	Doug Fratz	1992	70
Outnumbering the Dead	Frederik Pohl	Doug Fratz	1992	70
City of Truth	James Morrow	Doug Fratz	1992	70
Storeys From the Old Hotel	Gene Wolfe	Pascal J. Thomas	1992	70
The Trikon Deception	Ben Bova+Bill Pogue	W. Ritchie Benedict	1992	70
Nightside the Long Sun	Gene Wolfe	Michael Andre-Driussi	1993	71
High Aztech	Ernest Hogan	Pascal J. Thomas	1992	72
Alternate Presidents	Mike Resnick	Pascal J. Thomas	1992	72
A Fire Upon the Deep	Vernor Vinge	Pascal J. Thomas	1992	72
Timemaster	Robert L. Forward	Nancy Hayes	1992	73
Hard Drive	James Wallace+Jim Erickson	Nancy Hayes	1992	73
Jaran	Kate Elliott	John Radzilowski	1992	73
The Memory of Earth	Orson Scott Card	Pascal J. Thomas	1992	74
Halo	Tom Maddox	Pascal J. Thomas	1991	74
The Missing Matter	Thomas R. McDonough	Nancy Hayes	1992	75
Lunar Descent	Allen Steele	Pascal J. Thomas	1991	75
Probe	Margaret Wander Bonano	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
Star Trek: Faces of Fire	Michael Jan Friedman	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
Damia	Anne McCaffrey	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
Pegasus in Flight	Anne McCaffrey	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
To Ride Pegasus	Anne McCaffrey	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
Fractal Mode	Piers Anthony	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
I Shudder at Your Touch: Volume One	Michele Slung	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
Hunter's Moon and Other American Gothic Tales	Kevin J. Anderson	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
Those Dreams That Sleep Disturbs	David P. Silva	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
The Crystal Harp	Virginia Kron	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
Gerald's Game	Stephen King	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
Ray Bradbury Himself Reads 19 Complete Stories	Ray Bradbury	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
Mars	Ben Bova	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79
Children of the Night	Dan Simmons	Doug Fratz	1993-00-00	79

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. The inconsistency is partly due to the ISFDB's code -- it will auto-fill a blank date in the contents with the date of the periodical/book; I didn't realize that it couldn't convert YYYY to YYYY-00-00; though of course mostly the inconsistency is in my data-entry. This actually seems backwards to me -- it would make more sense to assume that YYYY should convert to YYYY-00-00 than that a blank should convert to anything other than 0000-00-00. At least for reviews, that is, where the date is not the date the review was published but the date of the edition being reviewed; if a book is reviewed in the January issue of a magazine, but the review doesn't state the date of the edition being reviewed, the book will be given a date that is almost certainly the wrong year. At any rate, I'll update the reviews with the correct dates.Jefe 11:38, 25 Jan 2007 (CST)

I just saw the update. Did you intend to change the title of "The Trikon Deception" to "The Trikon Deception0"? I'm in the middle of something else and will try to reply to your thoughts later today. I agree though that the code should accept YYYY and there's already a feature request in the queue for that. Marc Kupper 11:46, 25 Jan 2007 (CST)

Good catch; there should not be any zeros in The Trikon Deception.Jefe 13:34, 25 Jan 2007 (CST)

Al is proposing and I believe working on adding screens very much like the ones moderators currently use to help editors preview their work before submitting it. The screens show a color coded side-by-side diff of what is changing meaning it'll be easier to catch typos and will also include validation when practical (for things like ISBNs). Marc Kupper 14:03, 25 Jan 2007 (CST)

The Pirates of Florida and Other Implausibilities

I put this on hold yesterday but forgot to post the question to you. What is going on with the title The Pirates of Florida and Other Implausibilities? The existing title's date is January 2019 and you want to create a variant title dated 1993? I'm assuming the original essay, though appearing in a 1992 collection, is bylined "January 2019" to indicate it's coming from ~27 years in the future. Google seems to indicate that it was a talk given in 1991 and as ISFDN uses the "date of first book publication" for title records I assume the title record in ISFDB should be dated 1992 and we'd add a note about January 2019. I don't think a variant title is needed but maybe I misunderstood what you wanted to do. Marc Kupper 14:03, 25 Jan 2007 (CST)

2019 appears to be an old error, according to this thread (search for Gene Wolfe). I wanted to make the essays variants because one has a comma in the title and one doesn't (my understanding was that that was enough to warrant their being variants; if not they should just be merged), and planned to fix the dates thereafter. Castle of Days has a publication date of 1992, and lists 1991 as the copyright for "The Pirates of Florida...." Quantum has a publication date of Spring/Summer 1993 and gives a copyright of 1993 for the article. (I compared them and they are the same article, with extremely minor differences). Both mention that it was originally a speech. The record should either have a date of 1991 or 1992, depending on ISFDB's dating policy.Jefe 16:05, 25 Jan 2007 (CST)

As long as we're discussing weird submissions of mine, I just noticed that I put the wrong date for one of the Postscripts issues I submitted. Instead of Spring 2003, it should be Spring 2005; all the contents will probably need to have their dates updated. I can edit it after it's been approved if need be, but I thought I'd mention it in case it's easier to change in the approval process.Jefe 16:10, 25 Jan 2007 (CST)

Thank you for the heads up - I sent the make-variant for Gene Wolfe through. Yes, apparently a single comma is enough to make a variant title. The record's date should be 1992 as that's the first book publication. I sometimes add a title note explaining the history and in this case it's a talk given in 1991, etc. --Marc Kupper 18:06, 25 Jan 2007 (CST)

3SF

This a quick note to myself to complete the contents of 3SF, Dec. 2002.

Langfort/Langford

Just an FYI -- the fix you made to the "Langfort" record was accurate, but in fact the best way to handle this kind of problem is an Author Merge, which isn't a very common kind of update. The problem with updating the record is that you then have two author records with identical canonical names. This means that ISFDB will only find one of them when searching; the other record becomes inaccessible, unless you get to it via the title that is listed under the second record.

When you make two author records identical, they don't automatically merge -- merging two authors is such a big change and so difficult to reverse that we want to prevent it happening accidentally. So you have to go to Advanced Search, search for "Langford" in the Author section, and then select the two authors and choose merge.

I'd forgotten the ramifications of this myself, so I went ahead and accepted the edit, but then remembered and went ahead with the merge. Just wanted to let you know about it. Mike Christie (talk) 13:45, 26 Jan 2007 (CST)

Innocents Aboard

I approved the first sub; was the second a mistake? It looks like you hit the submit button twice, perhaps; at any rate, the contents are added, and if I approve the second one it seems you'd get two copies of each content item. I'll leave it on hold till you reply, but I would assume I should reject this. Mike Christie (talk) 22:18, 31 Jan 2007 (CST)

I must have double-clicked it; I definitely didn't mean to add multiple copies.Jefe 23:31, 31 Jan 2007 (CST)

David R. George III

Mark, I saw that you rejected my merge of David R. George III and David R. George, III. The EditTitle help page says this about suffixes:

Suffixes such as "Jr" should follow a comma and space, and be followed by a period if they are abbreviations. This should be regularized if they are not presented this way in the publication. E.g. "Sam Merwin Jr" should be entered as "Sam Merwin, Jr." Other prefixes and suffixes should follow analogous rules.

So I think the two should be merged, rather than made into variants of each other.Jefe 17:20, 31 Jan 2007 (CST)

Jefe - you brought up a good point and as it seems to conflict with my understanding of how author names get filed in ISFDB I've copied the discussion to ISFDB:Community_Portal#David_R._George_III for feedback. --Marc Kupper 00:49, 1 Feb 2007 (CST)

Nomination for moderatorship

I'd like to nominate you to be a moderator. Are you interested? If so, let me know (here or on my talk page) and I'll post a note at the Community Portal for discussion of the nomination. We have no process yet for reviewing nominations, so we'll probably work that out as we go along. Two pages you might want to look at are Moderator Qualifications and Help:Screen:Moderator. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk) 13:11, 3 Feb 2007 (CST)

Thanks for the thought, Mike. Once upon a time, I would have jumped at the chance, but I don't think I have the time right now. I'm already neglecting my other online, SF, volunteer project moderating commitments as it is!Jefe 13:18, 4 Feb 2007 (CST)

Yeah -- I don't have time either; I'm just addicted. Let me know if you change your mind in the future; I'd be glad to nominate you. Mike Christie (talk) 13:23, 4 Feb 2007 (CST)

Gifts

I was wondering if the art on the back cover of Le Guin's Gifts, which you recently submitted, was done by Le Guin or by somebody else? Could you please double check when you get a chance? Thanks! Ahasuerus 18:30, 5 Feb 2007 (CST)

The back cover art is a slightly modified version of the front cover art, by Larry Rostant. Why do you ask?Jefe 21:33, 5 Feb 2007 (CST)

Oh, I am sorry, I misread an abbreviation in the publication record. "bp" stands for "unpaginated pages that precede pagination" while I took it for "bc", i.e. "back cover". I was just wondering if "The Western Shore" was really an INTERIORART piece by Le Guin or whether it was perhaps an ESSAY by Le Guin or INTERIOART by somebody else? Thanks! Ahasuerus 21:58, 5 Feb 2007 (CST)

It's a map drawn by Le Guin.Jefe 22:20, 5 Feb 2007 (CST)

Thanks, I'll update the title record :) Ahasuerus 22:37, 5 Feb 2007 (CST)

Clone/edit Bug

Thanks, I will create a Bug report shortly :) Ahasuerus 14:11, 13 Feb 2007 (CST)

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction

Re: Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, you have changed the date from 2006 to 2007. Amazon.com shows the title as still "not available". I assume it's yet another case of delayed publication, but I was wondering if you may have received a copy already, which would explain the submission. 23:42, 28 Feb 2007 (CST)

I got my advance readers copies, and put in what data I thought was unlikely to change based on that info. I just heard that the shelf date is today(!) which is a month earlier than I was expecting, so I'm pretty excited.Jefe 15:02, 2 Mar 2007 (CST)

Congratulations! :) Ahasuerus 18:10, 4 Mar 2007 (CST)

Strange Seas and Shores

Ahasuerus - Did you ever have a chance to check your copy of this to see who wrote the intro?Jefe 15:23, 2 Mar 2007 (CST)

Sorry, I forgot to check the book when I had access to my collection in late February :( I have added this task to my "To Do" list and will hopefully remember next time I have access, which will likely happen circa March 30. Ahasuerus 17:48, 4 Mar 2007 (CST)

Dancing at the Edge of the World

You were correct; my copy is indeed 1989. I fixed it; good catch. Mike Christie (talk) 14:17, 24 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Jack C. Haldeman II / Jack C. Haldeman, II

re: Your merge of those two names - As a FYI - we use the "Jack C. Haldeman, II" format as a standard in ISFDB. See Help:Screen:AuthorData and the part about the canonical name. I went ahead with fixing this for the existing ISFDB record and merging the other Haldeman record. Marc Kupper (talk) 02:58, 27 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Changes to publication contents

When you are viewing or editing an ISFDB publication record the upper part of the page is the publication record and and the Contents section is composed of ISFDB title records. ISFDB has one big "gotcha" in that if you make changes to the anything in the Contents section other than the page numbers that you will be updating the original title record. Thus with your proposed update to Gravity's Angels you wanted to change The Feast of St. Janis to The Feast of Saint Janis. This would be affect other publications that include that title.

Please see Help:Screen:EditPub#General_contents for how to make updates to the Contents section of a publication.

In this case I approved the submission as there were many other changes that were fine, changed the title back to The Feast of St. Janis and went ahead with the procedure outlined at Help:Screen:EditPub#General_contents since I was already on the edit page to change the title back. Marc Kupper (talk) 03:05, 27 Mar 2007 (CDT)

The update to 34344 Tales of Old Earth has the same problem in that you wanted to change

• A User's Guide to Michael Swanwick
• The User's Guide to Michael Swanwick

though in this case Tales of Old Earth was the only publication that referenced the title and so after approval I did not need to do anything else. Marc Kupper (talk) 03:12, 27 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Avram Davidson's Strange Seas and Shores

I have finally verified this collection and the introduction was written by Ray Bradbury. I'll e-mail Bill Contento so that he could correct his record. Thanks for the reminder! Ahasuerus 12:44, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Cover graphics from Fantastic Fiction

I'm holding your submission of Jonathan Lethem's How We Got Insipid until I hear whether or not we can pull graphics from the Fantastic Fiction website. If I don't hear anything soon, I'll accept the submission, but remove the cover link. Does any other moderator know if we can? Mhhutchins 18:19, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Same situation with your next submission (You Don't Love Me Yet). Mhhutchins

Sorry about that -- I totally misremembered the rules for including images. Here are Amazon links for "How We Got Insipid ([[4]]) and "You Don't Love Me Yet" ([[5]])Jefe 20:16, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the new links. I've approved the submissions and changed the links. Mhhutchins 21:20, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Lethem's story in Full Spectrum 5

Can you verify that the complete title of the story is "The Insipid Profession of Jonathan Hornebom (Hommage à Heinlein)"? I don't have a copy of the book, but no source I've found has the subtitle. Thanks. Mhhutchins 22:11, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)

The subtitle ("Hommage à Heinlein") only appears on the first page of the story, albeit in a different font (well, probably the same font, but smaller and italic) than the main title. I should probably have put a colon after the main title to make it clearer.Jefe 22:31, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)

If that's the way it is on the title page, then that's the canonical title of the story, regardless of how it's titled in the table of contents. If it's reprinted with the subtitle then we can create a variant. I'll go ahead and make the changes. Check it out and let me know if that's the way it looks. (I'll use the colon instead of the parentheses.) Mhhutchins 23:04, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Does the reprint in How We Got Insipid use parentheses and omit the "à"? Mhhutchins 23:08, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)

The title in Full Spectrum 5 should be "The Insipid Profession of Jonathan Hornebom: (Hommage à Heinlein)" (with parens). The title in How We Got Insipid should be changed to "The Insipid Profession of Jonathan Hornebom: (Hommage Heinlein)" (with colon, without the "à", so it should be made a variant). Thanks, Jefe 00:17, 6 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Done as you described. Thanks. Mhhutchins 00:43, 6 Jun 2007 (CDT)

The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction

Welcome back and congratulations on the Hugo nomination! :) Ahasuerus 22:16, 21 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Thanks! Jefe 13:19, 8 Apr 2008 (CDT)

Iron Sunrise

I have added the following data to the Notes field of your verified publication: "Price in Canada C$10.99. Cover design by Rita Frangie. Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario." Hope it matches your copy! Ahasuerus 02:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

My copy is in a box (I just moved), but I'll try to remember to double-check whenever I get around to unpacking it.Jefe 21:18, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

No hurry, take your time! :) Ahasuerus 02:12, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I checked, and that does indeed match my copy.Jefe 21:37, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! :) Ahasuerus 22:01, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

ISBNs

If both an ISBN-10 and an ISBN-13 are listed for a book, either may be entered, as the ISFDB software will automatically display both if either is entered (currently the 13-digit form can always be computed from the 10-digit, and vice versa). If our records have only the ISBN-10 form, but the book shows only an ISBN-13 you may choose to convert, as we do stoore which ever is entered, but the difference will be visible only while editing (or on direct SQL queries on an off-line backup); the dispaly will be unchanged. -DES ^Talk 20:25, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks -- that makes sense.

Majestrum

Jeff, could you please review this discussion when you get a chance? There may be two different versions of the book that you updated earlier today. Thanks! Ahasuerus 01:33, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Answered on my Talk page. Ahasuerus 22:27, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Selling Out

I have approved the changes to Selling Out, but I am curious: if, as you say, "Cover design by Grace M. Conti-Price is not listed on book", then how do we know that Conti-Price was the designer? Secondary sources? Private communication? Ahasuerus 23:14, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

From previous discussion ISFDB:Help desk‎#Price for "Selling Out" I am fairly sure that this should have read "Cover design by Grace M. Conti. Price is not listed on book." How words can trip us. When i first saw the section heading Price for "Selling Out" i thought of a completely different topic. -DES ^Talk 23:39, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

DES is almost right: the designer's name is actually hyphenated, but the second part got eaten by my price note. I've fixed the note to better reflect reality. (I thought that that heading might get people's attention.)Jefe 00:02, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see! No worries, corrections approved :) Ahasuerus 00:36, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

The Country You Have Never Seen

I am afraid "2007" wouldn't be a valid year format. Since we already have 2007-00-00 on file, did you perhaps mean to add the month of publication? Ahasuerus 02:06, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

No, I should have typed 2007-00-00, but I forgot about the unforgiving date-parser. I'm not sure why 2007-00-00 was already on file, though -- it was showing a different date before I edited it. Weird. I edited one of the title's pubs around the same time, but that shouldn't have affected the title's date.Jefe 22:18, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

How peculiar! Did you perchance modify the date of the Title in the Contents section? Ahasuerus 01:31, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes, the application seems to complain about a date in "YYYY" format, but save it as "YYYY-00-00". I haven't done enough experimenting to develop repeatable test cases, and I'm not sure I want to -- we surely don't want editors to rely on what is at best undocumented behavior. -DES ^Talk 01:54, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I think I did change the title's date in the pub data. That explains that, anyway. I remember noticing the inconsistent YYYY behavior when I first started editing, and in fact made a lot of edits in YYYY form because they were converted to the correct format, until I was politely asked to stop. (That's what a background in software testing will get you -- find a bug, and then exploit the workaround.)Jefe 16:58, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Merging Swanwick essays

Instead of merging this record with this record, we have to determine if the titles in each publication is the same or if the 1994 publication does actually have the ellipses at the end. If so, we should make the 2000 publication a variant of 1994 title. Thanks. MHHutchins 07:30, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Locus suggests it has the ellipsis, and quotes around it too. And maybe a "Viewpoint" prefix, but I think that's probably an essay series here. BLongley 14:02, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

The 2000 publication should have an ellipsis. I figured it would be easier to merge the two outright, rather than edit that title and then merge.Jefe 22:35, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

It's probably not wise to verify the 2000 publication until that's sorted out then. Particularly as I've added this to the mix. Still, I own none, so call for verification as needed. I'm feeling the "too many cooks" syndrome tonight, I'll leave you to it. BLongley 23:12, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

It just gets confusinger and confusinger, doesn't it? I'll edit the Moon Dogs version to at least have the right title for that publication, so it doesn't get lost in the wreckage. I still think it can be merged with the Postmodern Archipelago version for now (and make the Asimov's as a variant), since we don't have any reason to think it's spelled one way or the other, and we can always change that one if we need to. Since there's no disagreement that these are, in fact, the same essay, I think recording that fact is more important than trying to figure out whether whoever entered The Postmodern Archipelago used the right title or not.Jefe 19:08, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Since the ellipsis-free title only existed in the book which Jeff has verified -- and turned out to be in error -- I approved the change to the ellipsis-enabled version and merged it with its identical twin brother. It still leaves the "quotes" issue unanswered and I can't check since I don't have any recent Asimov's, so I've set it up as a variant title for now. Let me post a verification request... Ahasuerus 03:29, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

...which was promptly answered by Ron :) Ahasuerus 04:00, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Caldé of the Long Sun

FYI, User:Gilgamesh has added cover art to your verified edition of Caldé of the Long Sun. Ahasuerus 16:49, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. It looks just like my copy, so I'm happy to let the verification stand.Jefe 23:59, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Some of Your Blood

Added a cover image to BKTG17815 and $C price.--Bluesman 23:11, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks; that matches my copy.