User talk:StevenSaylor

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Welcome!

Hello, StevenSaylor, 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:

Note: Image uploading isn't entirely automated. You're uploading the files to the wiki which will then have to be linked to the database by editing the publication record.

Please be careful in editing publications that have been primary verified by other editors. See Help:How to verify data#Making changes to verified pubs. But if you have a copy of an unverified publication, verifying it can be quite helpful. See Help:How to verify data for detailed information.

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Mhhutchins 21:36, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Margaret St. Clair's "The Espadrilles"

This story was first published in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, April 1953. The date given on the table of contents page (as seen in this PDF) is a misprint. Look at the bottom of the page and you'll see that it is copyrighted for 1953.

To bring errors to the attention of other ISFDB moderators, please leave a message on the ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard, or make a submission that corrects the error. If the record has been Primary Verified, first leave a message on that editor's talk page. Do not make submissions to update records (or author data) without making changes to the record. The "Note to Moderator" field is used to give information about the changes made in the record.

Thanks for contributing. Mhhutchins 21:46, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that speedy clarification!StevenSaylor 22:46, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

On Eric St. Clair

Thank you very much for your find! I have added the remarks you gave to the author's biography page, with a slightly altered formulation (mainly changing the order of the sentences). I hope this is alright for you; please change it to your liking. Thank you again, Stonecreek 16:50, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

"Mistress of Virdis/Viridis"

I have to reject your submission to change the title of a story contained in this publication. You may not have seen that the record has been primary verified, which means that an editor with a copy of the publication has confirmed that the data is accurate. That doesn't mean the record or the editor is infallible. If you have a copy of the same magazine, please do a second primary verification of the record, and then leave a message on the talk page of the other primary verifying editor, before making another submission to correct the title.

Keep in mind that titles are taken from the page on which the story appears, not from the cover or the contents page. If the work appears in another publication under a different title, we can variant one record to the other so that both appear publications appear on its title page. Thanks. Mhhutchins 22:46, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I will leave a message on the PV editor's talk page and ask him to confirm the spelling of the title. If the record is incorrect, he'll edit the title. Thanks again. Mhhutchins 22:49, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Wilton Hazzard

I have to reject your submission to remove this as a pseudonym for Margaret St. Clair. Several sources state that she wrote "The Dancers" and it was published under this house name. (Including the The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Wikipedia.) I have removed the other three stories under credit and attributed them to Nelson S. Bond as it seems whoever varianted them to St. Clair mistakenly believed it was a personal pseudonym and not a house pseudonym. According to this reference she also published an article under that credit (it's outside this db's range for inclusion.) Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:17, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts. Unfortunately, those entries listing "The Dancers" as by St. Clair look increasingly unreliable to me. I got in touch with Eric Leif Davin, the author of Partners in Wonder, who can no longer remember how or why he attributed "Geronimo" by Hazzard to St. Clair. Pulp fiction expert Mike Ashley is also looking into this; he reports: "The research that I did with a few others seemed to boil down that the first reference to Hazzard as a St Clair alias was in the first edition of the Clute/Nicholls SF Encyclopedia, but I know from John Clute (who wrote that entry) that he got the data from somewhere else but his extremely thorough DosBank he uses for all these things was a little less thorough way back then and the source isn't there." I have just gotten in touch with the lawyer who knew St. Clair, handled her estate, and acquired her archives and copyright, so perhaps he can settle this. Onward!StevenSaylor 18:33, 31 May 2014 (UTC)
Feel free to add a Note in the title record of "The Dancers", concerning the sources for the attribution and the lack of hard evidence for it. Mhhutchins 20:06, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Neighbor to a Nightmare (Esquire), Twenty-Seven Capured Suns (articles)

Hello, I've approved your submission for this story but tweaked it a bit to conform to ISFDB standards, the result being here. Can your confirm that the author is given as "Margaret S. Clair" (no St.)? In this case, a pseudonym must be created and a variant establihed. Hauck 08:53, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Oops! It should be "Margaret St. Clair", not "Margaret S. Clair." I re-submitted in hopes of correcting. Sorry for the typo. StevenSaylor 17:46, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Corrected. Note that I've rejected your submission for an St. Clair essay as "Only fiction in non-genre magazines are allowed into the database" says our local Bible. Hauck 17:57, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

RE non-inclusion of essays, how come there is a whole section headed "Essays" (with several entries) at the bottom of Margaret St. Clair's page?: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?237 (I presumed this was where her two pieces on writing science fiction for Writer's Digest would go.) StevenSaylor 16:27, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

You'll probably notice that all those essays were published in "genre" magazines or books, that's not the case of the Writer's Digest essays, that's why they're not allowed under the present rules. If you think they should change, I'll invite you to raise the matter here. Hauck 16:48, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
There is a "backdoor" way to creating title records without creating publication records for non-genre publications. If you can confirm that these essays are about science fiction, I will create title records for them. We just don't want the database filled with publication records for publications which are not speculative fiction. Exceptions have been made for fiction, but not nonfiction. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:51, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Note that they will appear on the Cleanup Report, which seems to indicate that it's not the correct way to proceed.Hauck 17:09, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Your concern seems to be misplaced. ESSAY, POEM, and SHORTFICTION records are excluded from the cleanup report. Otherwise I would not have proposed it. There are literally thousands of publess titles in the database of these three types. This is the only method to add such titles without creating thousands of non-eligible publications into the db. Mhhutchins 18:08, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Somebody once wrote on my talk page "Only fiction in non-genre magazines are allowed into the database." the wording seemed to me at the time quite clear but as we say here "Seuls les imbéciles ne changent pas d'avis". Likely another of those famous non-writen rules. Hauck 18:30, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
A written rule, #3 of the Rules of Acquisition: "In - Works about speculative fiction.". Hauck, you were correct to reject the submission adding publication records for a nongenre magazine without a work of speculative fiction. I was only pointing out to StevenSaylor that there is a way to add "works about speculative fiction" to the database without violating the "only fiction in nongenre magazines" rule. If you wish to discuss this further, do as you suggested to this user and start a discussion on ISFDB:Rules and standards discussions page. We shouldn't be doing it on his talk page. Mhhutchins 19:03, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, these two piece for Writer's Digest are about writing for the science fiction market, and very interesting to read. St. Clair also includes info about "where fan clubs are located," and sample plots. Thus of considerable historical interest re the genre circa 1947, especially coming from one of the somewhat rare female writers of the day. StevenSaylor 19:00, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

I will create title records for them and link them here so that you can update them to add notes about the subject of the essays. Thanks for contributing. Mhhutchins 19:03, 24 May 2015 (UTC)
Twenty-Seven Captured Suns and the supplement. Mhhutchins 19:09, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Moon of Israel / Moon of Israel: A Tale of the Exodus

Hello, It's not necessary to create a variant for a question of subtitles see this classic example. I've rejected your submission and merged the lot under the shorter title. Hauck 16:46, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

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