User talk:Klepsis

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Welcome!

Hello, Klepsis, 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:

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Violent City omnibus

Hello, and a welcome from me, too! Thanks for contributing, but there are some issues with your submission:

1) The authors for the OMNIBUS (John Hawkins) and the authors for the included items don't match (there are three authors).

2) With only 139 pages there doesn't seem to be enough printing space for two novels.

3) As an Ace Double, the format also could be 'dos' (as with other Ace Doubles).

4) And finally: Are you sure that it is speculative fiction that is published in the book? Because only that would be listed.

Thanks, Stonecreek 02:57, 15 May 2019 (EDT)


OK, I am quite new at this, so my entry may have some shortcomings. First, the 139 pages is last page number of this title, there are an additional 149 pages in the other title, which was entered in the details for that title in the contents section (although that appears to have been lost, when viewing the submission data). Should I have totaled the two amounts? Second, the cover states the author as "John and Ward Hawkins" I initially entered John Hawkins and Ward Hawkins as separated author entries for this title, but when I got to the contents section of the entry I combined them. Upon refection, I thought this might have been an error on my part, but I can't seem to find a way to edit the initial submission. Third, the title in question is actually a suspense / mystery title, However, I have noticed that many western, mystery & romance titles are listed with various authors under a sub-section labeled "non-genre", which is where I assumed it would appear if the entry was accepted. If you could point me to what I should click on to correct errors in this entry, as well as some clues on how to correct its faults I would appreciate it greatly.

I'm afraid it seems your submission has to be rejected by our standards:
As a speculative fiction database, the ISFDB includes only written texts like novels and short stories, as well as essays, reviews, interviews about such speculative fiction. However, there are exceptions, which are explained in the ISFDB:Policy. I quote from there:
  • "Included: Works (both fiction and non-fiction) which are not related to speculative fiction, but were produced by authors who have otherwise published works either of or about speculative fiction over a certain threshold"
  • "Excluded: Works that are not related to speculative fiction by authors who have not published works either of or about speculative fiction over a certain threshold."
And it does seem that John Hawkins belongs to the second category (while the non-speculative titles you mentioned should belong to authors of the first category).
Above the threshold are for example Marion Zimmer Bradley (who also published some romances) or Isaac Asimov (who published some crime yarns).
As for the formats: the Ace Doubles are something special and should be referred to as examples for further submissions when you enter dos publications.
And finally, please don't forget to sign your posts on the ISFDB Wiki with four tildes (~). Thanks, Stonecreek 00:24, 17 May 2019 (EDT)


I will concede that I should have done some more research on how to enter data, before attempting to do so. However, I have one question about the policy items you listed. One of the authors of the title in question is Ward Hawkins (John's younger brother). Ward Hawkins is an author of "works of speculative fiction". Shouldn't that qualify this title? Or does he need to be listed first on the title page in order for it to qualify? Klepsis 10:14, 18 May 2019 (EDT)

Both have written speculative fiction, but for the Ward Hawkins the Wikipedia entry has the following:
"His later works seem to have been science fiction, but earlier he wrote serial stories for the Saturday Evening Post in the 1940s and 1950s.[2] He often wrote with his brother John Hawkins, and the University of Oregon has a collection of their manuscripts.[3] In the 1960s, the brothers were writing for television, notably as staff writers for Bonanza."
The question is if a given author is above the threshold, and that doesn't seem to be the case here, since the majority of works for both lies outside our genre. Sorry, but I'll reject your submission. Consider that even an author like George Orwell, who has contributed to our field two works with major impact has his other fiction titles not listed here. Stonecreek 10:38, 18 May 2019 (EDT)


OK. Since I don't yet know exactly what I'm doing yet I don't have a problem with my first attempt being rejected. However, your comments have created a couple of questions. First, will the help pages mentioned in the first welcome message (which I know I should have already read - my fault there) give me some guidelines to determine if an author is "above the threshold" or not? Second, if Ward Hawkins is below the threshold, in the same way that George Orwell is below the threshold, why is there a listing for Down and Out in Paris and London & From the Road to Wigan Pier on Orwell's page? I'm not sure I understand what makes the difference here, or why a non-genre volume shouldn't be listed on Ward's page. I do gather that for something like the volumes for Alfred Hitchcock, the anthologies that are not listed on his page are omitted because they don't contain any stories that would be considered in "our field", and the listed volumes that have only partial contents tied to them have omitted all the non-genre titles. That would be consistent with your comments, although Hitchcock has more non-genre volumes overall that in-genre volumes which I would think would cause him to be under the threshold. Also, the page for Gerald Kersh contains not only a large number of non-genre entries but the contents listings for his collections contain a complete table of contents regardless of whether the stories are within our field or not and at least one of those volumes is almost completely non-genre. That seems inconsistent. I am a little confused. Klepsis 18:03, 19 May 2019 (EDT)

Ad 1): I'm afraid that there is no general guideline for author being over or under the threshold.
Ad 2): The titles of Orwell's nongenre works do show up because one OMNIBUS is titled this way (and we catalogue the title as given on the title page of a publication); please note that these novels don't show up in the publication.
Ad 3): Hitchcock's titles are in because every one of them contains (or should contain) at least one genre item.
Ad 4): Kersh may be a special case who needs to be reviewed. This review should be in concordance with (active) primary verifiers.
I hope my comments do help a little. Stonecreek 00:19, 20 May 2019 (EDT)

Well, it seems that some trial and error attempts will be needed as far as the threshold is concerned. I can live with that. (The vast majority of my library is clearly within genre, so if Iv'e got something that you don't it should be fairly straight forward, apart from the threshold issue.) Please leave the Kersh items in the data base. Even though he did a lot of non-genre things, there should be enough within the genre to make him count. Would completing the contents on some of the Hitchcock items be OK even if the stories are suspense or horror, or should I not waste my time there? Oh, one last question, if a title classifies as horror, but doesn't contain some-sort of supernatural element (ghosts, vampires, aliens a la The Blob, etc.) then I'm assuming that it is out of scope, correct? Klepsis 09:34, 20 May 2019 (EDT)

As per our guidelines: excluded are "works unrelated to speculative fiction that are found in primarily non-genre publication", so that the non-speculative works in non-genre anthologies would not be catalogued here. If the stories are only of horror or suspense character they shouldn't be included. Stonecreek 10:00, 20 May 2019 (EDT)

OK, got it. Looks like I'm going to have to read a few of the Hitchcock volumes that I've collected but not gotten around to yet. Not that that is a problem. :) Thanks for all the coaching. Klepsis 10:41, 20 May 2019 (EDT)

A Walk in Wolf Wood

Hello and welcome back! :) Can you add a note about the printing rank (based in the number line) for this one and where in the book (or in a secondary source) is the exact month mentioned? Or if it is a first printing of a new edition (then the source of the date is clear), we need to say that as well. Thanks! Annie 14:09, 15 November 2019 (EST)

Annie, 

   I have added a note to the moderator which contains the following comment:

There is no number line in this copy. Date is based on comments at bottom of copyright page that read: First Fawcett Crest Edition: August 1981 First Ballantine Books Edition: July 1982

Based on those remarks and the fact that the cover contains only the Fawcett logo and not the Ballentine logo I would infer that this probably should be considered the 2nd printing of the Fawcett edition, but I don't have enough background to say that definitively. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Klepsis (talk • contribs) .

Perfect. I cleaned the notes a bit and added them to the proper note. That's exactly what we need in the notes - so if later someone has a copy WITH a number line, we know it is a different one and we can deal with it. Thanks! Annie 13:15, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Series

To add a work to a series, you need to edit the title record and not the pub. So for The Vampire Contessa publication, you would have clicked on the novel listing in the contents section which would have brought you to this title record. You would then edit that and put the series name in the series field. I made the change, but hope that helps for future changes. Thanks for finding this. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:57, 19 July 2020 (EDT)


Thanks. I'm relatively new to this, so I'm a little unsure of how to proceed in many cases. :) This will help with future updates.

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