R&S Example page/Request to delete Graham Greene

I personally have never considered Graham Greene an author of speculative fiction. I checked each entry for the verifier tag and found no one has done so. Pardon if I missed one. I admit I am not a Graham Greene expert, but his entry(ies) have given me a pseudonym problem. "Philip Stratford" wrote three pieces on Graham Greene of which I still could not find a 'speculative fiction' portion. Unfortunately this real name person had his name used as one of the infamous 'Kenneth Bulmer' pseudonym clutch. I have a definite connection in "Don't Cross A Telekine", [1], which was published in Winds of Liberty under Kenneth Bulmer. [2]. The pseudonym is listed in "The Writings of Kenneth Bulmer" 10th item on page 32 with the cross connection. Full pseudonym list on page 7. Your opinions desired. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 11:45, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I think all of the short fiction on his page qualifies. This for example. But probably not much of anything else.--swfritter 12:20, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I will then try just moving the two short stories under Philip Stratford then. Thanks for the tip. Thanks Harry. --Dragoondelight 14:10, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I think you might be justified in removing Philip Stratford from the Graham Greene collections since he is the editor and not the author. He appears also to have co-authored an autobiography. That title could justifiably be deleted. I think all, or nearly all, of the novels could be removed as long as a little research is done. I don't remember any of the ones I've read as being fantastic in nature. His fantastic literature is definitely a minimal amount of his output.--swfritter 15:53, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Surely none of his well-known novels are SF, although the world of espionage that he writes of in some of them is "fantastic" it is not speculative as we use the term. I have read three or 4 of his novels, and just reviewed his Wikipedia page and the plots of his novels listed there. None are SF as we define that term. But short fiction published in genre magazines is obviously IN. -DES ^Talk 16:37, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree. I am not even sure that we need to move his novels to the "Lost Bibliographies" site since he is well known and there is no lack of bibliographic information about his work. Ahasuerus 16:49, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

One of my favorite authors. I will start whittling away tomorrow. I can get the Stratford items today.--swfritter 17:23, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Same here, I think Greene was an extraordinary author (and should have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and would have if it weren't for how politicized the Prize became, rant over), but I can not recall reading or knowing about any book-length work that might be considered spec-fic. (Unless you consider the divine interventions, especially in The End of the Affair.) If his bibliography here was in better shape than it might be a candidate for removal to the "Lost Bibliographies" site. Sad thing is, it's a mess, and, IMHO, not worth the trouble of trying to salvage what's there. If I were to work on it, I'd start from scratch, and at least enter the first editions. But that would take time away from other projects. Good luck, Swfritter. MHHutchins 22:00, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I think all the long works can go, except maybe A Sense of Reality and Nineteen Stories which have been reviewed in publications that we still want here. But those reviews can be converted to essays to avoid broken links, if the verifiers don't mind, and we can start with a clean slate. BLongley 22:09, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Or we could convert the reviewed Titles to Non-genre :) Ahasuerus 22:43, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Non-Genre Collections with Genre contents don't strike me as correct. Although we don't actually have contents for the latter anyway, and I couldn't verify any contents for the former. Nuke them from orbit as far as I care. Can someone do Robert Louis Stevenson too? BLongley 23:11, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I probably have the reviews and some of the stories in the collections are probably at least borderline s-f. Only the s-f stories should be included in the collections. A Sense of Reality is actually cited as an honorable mention in the 9th edition of Merril's Best of. Maybe I'll even have to read some of the stuff.--swfritter 23:22, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Could we change our name to the ISF & Pirates DB? I would like to keep Treasure Island (Chuckle) Kevin 23:34, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I think Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is SF, and IIRC some of Stevenson's short fiction falls into the "Ghost-story" bin. But I don't think we need keep his non-genre or non-fiction unless it has been reviewed in listed pubs. -DES ^Talk 23:40, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

If we were to keep Stevenson, his biblio would need a lot of cleanup. We have things like volumes of poems, volumes of essays, and letters listed as "Novels" -DES ^Talk 23:43, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Stevenson is our poster boy for "what happens when you enter a few SF works by a prolific non-genre author and ask a helpful but not very bright bot to go grab more of his stuff" :-( Eventually, we'll blow away 90%+ of the currently entered Titles and Pubs, but it will be a time consuming project. Ahasuerus 23:47, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

We can always use G. K. Chesterton for a bit when we clean up Stevenson. Which will take ages, there's many Jekyll and Hyde titles that would probably be the perfect example to use for "expanded", "revised", "excerpt" and "Chapterbook" tests. BLongley 21:59, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

As for Greene. I will first convert the appropriate titles to non-genre and eventually delete them after giving others a chance to review them. An interesting very borderline case, and probably out, is "Our Man in Havana" which could be termed a scientific hoax story. Anything that stays will have a note explaining why it is in the database - perhaps a good general policy for stories by predominately non-genre authors. Progress will be slow as I intend to spend only a few minutes a day on the project.--swfritter 16:44, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I have read "Our Man in Havana"; it is a hoax story, but even had the hoax been true, the tech involved would probably be no more advanced than that in many technothrillers we consider OUT. Since the hoax had no basis in reality (within the story), i don't consider this very fine novel to be IN any more than a story in which a character pretends to be a ghost, but is exposed.

I agree with your idea about a note, or at least a tag, for any titlewhose reason for inclusion is non-obvious. -DES ^Talk 17:09, 27 July 2009 (UTC)