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Expanded archive listing

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

[1]; "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, [2], 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)

Sphere Frights

https://www.amazon.com/FRIGHTS-2-Kirby-McCauley/dp/0722157800; Kirby McCauley's 1976 anthology Frights was reprinted by Sphere in 1979 in 2 PB's; Frights 1's cover artist was found because someone noticed the same cover was used on a 1983 French book from Fleuve Noir; I noticed SFE lists Terry Oakes as cover artist for both Frights PB's, so that info seems to be known now, but what may not be known is whether that cool art at the Amazon link above, which I added just now in an edit along with Oakes' credit, was also re-used for a Fleuve Noir book. I thought I could check, but they published hundreds of those things, so if anyone more familiar with French PB's recognizes that cover they can always make it a variant. --Username 18:18, 2 January 2022 (EST)

Mystic Voices

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?500808; I couldn't find anywhere that shows the contents page of the original 1923 edition of Roger Pater's collection, but a scan is on Google Books and by searching for titles I think I've pieced all the page #'s together. However, it's possible it's not 100% correct, so if anyone has a copy or can find somewhere that shows contents let us know here. --Username 12:28, 3 January 2022 (EST)

I just added the 1923 intro by Pater so I think I'm done with this book now, but the problem is David G. Rowlands wrote a new intro for the 2001 Ash-Tree Press edition, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?279936, while there's something called "Preface to Mystic Voices" by Pater, which runs the same # of pages as the original intro. So I don't know if having 2 "Introduction (Mystic Voices)" will conflict, and whether that Preface should be merged with the 1923 intro since they're almost certainly the same. --Username 10:45, 4 January 2022 (EST)

Allen & Unwin vs Allen & Unwin (Australia)

There's a UK book due out this week that looks eligible for inclusion here. That review says it's from Atlantic Books, but Amazon and Kobo both say it's from "Allen & Unwin".

The publisher record for Allen & Unwin states "Australia-based independent publisher since 1990.", plus addition info about its history prior to then. However, there is also Allen & Unwin (Australia), which seems to cover the same post-1990 entity?

Both of these have pubs for recent years - the former seems to be a mix of USD and GBP priced pubs, and just a few AUD (which I suspect is more down to where the data was sourced from, rather than an indication of the country of publication); the latter is a mix of unpriced and AUD pubs. This seems a bit confusing to me. Naively I might assume "Allen & Unwin" should refer only to the pre-1990 UK publisher?

Going back to the title I want to add, doing a bit of investigation shows that the current "Allen & Unwin" entity is listed on the Atlantic Books site as "The UK home of Australia’s leading independent publisher". This makes me think that the title/pub I want to add might be best attributed to a new "Allen & Unwin / Atlantic Books" publisher record, to disambiguate from the parent Australian org, or the UK publisher prior to 1990. (And potentially the same for other books that have been published by the UK imprint of the UK arm of the Australian parent org - but that's something for another time...)

(FWIW There also seems to be a separate Oct 2021 pub from Allen & Unwin (Australia), which I may or may not get around to submitting, but will at the very least ensure is reflected in the title date.)

Any thoughts/objections/suggestions? ErsatzCulture 18:31, 3 January 2022 (EST)

EDIT: FWIW Kobo has a preview of the ebook already available, which does indeed have "Allen & Unwin" on the title page. The logo is similar but not identical to the one on the title page of the Australian ebook as visible via Amazon.com.au. ErsatzCulture 18:40, 3 January 2022 (EST)

Sacred or Scared?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5188173; I remember some time ago when I changed a lowercase letter in a name to its proper uppercase but it didn't show up that way after I submitted the edit; I didn't mention it anywhere but now this edit linked above has the same issue, where it agrees the name was changed but still shows the same lowercase letter instead of McRoberts and has the same record #. More importantly, that title just can't be correct; SCARED Realm?!? I got on a kick of adding covers and a few other things to some of these PublishAmerica books, which seem to mostly be by people who have no other credits on ISFDB, and I get the feeling they weren't of the highest standard and probably had bad proofreading (not that major publishers don't often have bad proofreading, too). No title page photos online that I can find, so if anyone knows where to find one or actually owns it, can you check title page and verify it's SACRED Realm; please don't tell me it's really supposed to be SCARED? --Username 00:33, 4 January 2022 (EST)

Falkenstern

https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/carr_terry; Fantasy Annual IV and V, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?8918, and the SFE link above reveals Lisa Falkenstern did those covers, like she is credited for doing on III on ISFDB. IV has "LAF" signature on PB covers so that's obvious but I don't see any kind of signature on V so that's questionable. --Username 10:22, 4 January 2022 (EST)

Crime Club

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crime_Club; Harry Harrison's novel Queen Victoria's Revenge had no cover so I added it, but there was a note by some other editor that it was part of The Crime Club; link above says they were an imprint of Doubleday, so I changed publisher from Doubleday to Crime Club / Doubleday. However, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?57191, shows that only 5 ISFDB records use it that way while there's more than 25 that use it as part of a series. There's also 13 that call it Doubleday / Crime Club, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?25307. Also, Collins has many of their Crime Club books listed here as a publisher, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?9961, but also a few listed here as a series, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?2690. So some standardization may be in order to get all Crime Club books by both publishers under the same name. --Username 11:25, 5 January 2022 (EST)

Rat Cover

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?289366; I added OL ID to this and now that it's approved I realize the Archive.org copy has a totally different cover; prices on back are higher, so likely a later printing, in case anyone knows how many editions this went through. ISBN is the same as the earlier "train" cover, though. --Username 11:18, 6 January 2022 (EST)

Mouseover help for prices

As per FR 1467, the software has been updated to display mouseover bubbles for price values. All currency symbols listed in Help:List of currency symbols are currently supported. If you find bibliographic pages which display prices without a mouseover bubble, please post the offending URL here. Ahasuerus 11:44, 6 January 2022 (EST)

Rogue Wave / Theodore Taylor

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/edit/find_dups.cgi?30022; This book was entered as a novel and a collection, I changed novel edition to collection, but it's just a bunch of old sea stories from Argosy, not sure why it's here. Merge or delete, as you wish. --Username 16:03, 6 January 2022 (EST)

Anybody know anything about the author Theodore Taylor? Except for The Boy Who Could Fly Without a Motor, his work seems to be non-genre (primarily children's historical fiction). It's possible Weirdo might be genre, but sounds more non-speculative horror. None of his works are verified so no one to ask who has read them. It seems like his works need a good pruning. I'll give it a few days to see if anyone has any input, though. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:43, 6 January 2022 (EST)

Yeah, I just looked through all of the long fiction and I agree (I couldn't find enough info to comment on the short fiction). The only one that looks genre is The Boy Who Could Fly Without a Motor. Not even Weirdo looks genre to me. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:55, 6 January 2022 (EST)

I went through the long works and tagged those that aren't genre. I left the autobiography since he does have at least one genre work. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:01, 6 January 2022 (EST)

https://archive.org/details/roguewaveotherre00tayl; Copyright page dates many of the stories as much earlier than their ISFDB date. --Username 18:39, 6 January 2022 (EST)

I've removed all of the non-genre stories since he is definitely not above the threshold. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:38, 10 January 2022 (EST)

Restructuring Blaze Ward's Alexandria Station Series

I want to restructure the Alexandria Station series and sub-series per Blaze Ward's own structure as shown on his website here. Proposed new structure:

Alexandria Station Universe

• 1 Alexandria Station Stories (rename of series "The Last Waltz")
  • existing titles plus The Story Road
• 2 The Science Officer
  • Move #1-8 into new sub-series "The Science Officer: Season One"
  • Move #9-on into new sub-series "The Science Officer Season Two"
• 3 The Jessica Keller Chronicles
  • Titles 1-9, Subseries "CS-405", "Uniforms of the Fleet: Volume One"
• 4 First Centurion Kosnett (moved from within "The Jessica Keller Chronicles" and stated on the website to be "Sequel Series to the Jessica Keller Chronicles")
  • Two titles so far (to be six total)
• 5 Handsome Rob
  • existing titles

This will put them in an in-universe order as well as matching the author's preferred grouping. Comments please. Phil 18:46, 7 January 2022 (EST)

At the moment, the sub-series that comprise this series are not explicitly numbered, so the display order is the alphabetical order of the sub-series names. Simply assigning then numbers based on publication order would be an improvement.

That said, since the author's Web site states that "First Centurion Kosnett" is a direct sequel to "The Jessica Keller Chronicles", I wonder if it may be better to creates a "Jessica Keller Sequence" sub-series and then turn both "The Jessica Keller Chronicles" and "First Centurion Kosnett" into its sub-series. We would end up with multiple levels of nesting, but it may be a more accurate representation of the universe.

I am going to leave a note on User:Chris_J's Talk page since Edit History indicates that he has done much of the work on this author's bibliography. Ahasuerus 17:36, 9 January 2022 (EST)

I think that would handle it nicely! That would also give room to create another sub-series if Blaze ever creates the follow-on series to "First Centurion Kosnett" that he has mentioned in his newsletter. BTW, I just discovered I missed mentioning that I also need to break up The Science Officer into to two sub-series: "The Science Officer: Season One" for #1-8 and "The Science Officer: Season Two" for #9-? (Fixing original note above for consolidated view of changes.) Phil 08:02, 10 January 2022 (EST)

Chris hasn't responded, so I went ahead and restructured the series based on your proposal. The only thing that I did differently was moving the non-fiction book "Uniforms of the Fleet: Volume One" to the newly created "Jessica Keller Sequence" series. Could you please take a look to see if everything looks OK? Ahasuerus 11:01, 15 January 2022 (EST)

Looks good! Thanks for doing it - I wasn't looking forward to all the delays doing it as a non-Mod! One thought about the new series name Jessica Keller Sequence. I asked Blaze Ward what he considers a good name for grouping those series together and he suggested that it be called "Republic of Aquitaine Era" since he has very loosely plotted out a future series set in the "Imperial Aquitaine Era". Plus, Jessica Keller isn't really more than a mention in any of the series after the "Jessica Keller Chronicles". Phil 11:35, 15 January 2022 (EST)

Works for me! Ahasuerus 11:46, 15 January 2022 (EST)

I've submitted the series rename. Thanks! Phil 12:12, 15 January 2022 (EST)

Approved. Ahasuerus 12:15, 15 January 2022 (EST)

Artist ID

Can anyone make out this signature? --Rosab618 17:30, 8 January 2022 (EST)

Perhaps Jack Woolhiser? A Google search on "Jack Woolhiser signature" finds better quality signatures which look similar. Ahasuerus 17:14, 9 January 2022 (EST)

Right you are! Thanks!--Rosab618 01:09, 10 January 2022 (EST)

Excellent :-) Ahasuerus 11:07, 10 January 2022 (EST)

Correct Help text for "Correcting a Variant Title that was done backwards"

This help text is partially incorrect. For Step 2: Instead of reading "You do not need to wait for moderator approval of the delete-variant-title but instead can just continue on to the next step." it should be changed to something like: "You need to wait for moderator approval of the delete-variant-title before continuing on to the next step. If you do not wait, you will get the error message "Error: Proposed parent title is currently a variant of another title. Variants of variants are not allowed." Phil 12:21, 9 January 2022 (EST)

Excellent point; I have made the change. Thanks! Ahasuerus 17:18, 9 January 2022 (EST)

Thanks! Phil 22:10, 9 January 2022 (EST)

Cthulhu and Henry James

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1692; 2 letters in 1989 issues of Crypt of Cthulhu, published nearly 75 years after he died. Probably a different Henry James. Same 2 PV for both issues, 1 gone, the other Biomassbob, so he might still have those issues. --Username 18:24, 9 January 2022 (EST)

Award to add? German Science Fiction Award - Deutscher Science Fiction Preis

Hi there, happy to new year!

How about adding the German "Deutscher Science Fiction Preis" , in English: "German Science Fiction Award", which is around since 1985.

Information about the award on English: https://www.dsfp.de/der-preis/the-german-science-fiction-award-information-in-english from the website itself or at the English Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Science_Fiction_Preis

Many thanks and Best regards, Jannis (still very new to the isfdb!)

Looks like a perfectly legitimate award to me. If we have volunteers willing to enter the data, I can create a new award type for it. Ahasuerus 12:31, 10 January 2022 (EST)

Since I am the one asking for it, I would enter the previous winners and nominated entrees year for year (if there isn't some evil deadline to be finished in xxx days?). --Jannis 02:37, 11 January 2022 (EST)

Nope, no evil deadline! :-) Ahasuerus 08:26, 11 January 2022 (EST)

The only "evil" thing that may happen is that someone else may notice the award and decide to assist and add some of them before you :) Annie 17:32, 11 January 2022 (EST)

OK, if there are no objections, I can add the new award type tomorrow. Ahasuerus 19:42, 11 January 2022 (EST)

Cool, thanks a lot! The needed information for this award: Short Award Name: "DSFP", Full Award Name: "Deutscher Science Fiction Preis", Awarded For: "Best German-language science fiction novel and story", Awarded By: "Jury", Poll: "No", Non-Genre: "No" --Jannis 04:06, 12 January 2022 (EST)

Could you please clarify this award's "poll" status? Checking the list of 2021 nominations, I see that they are ranked 1-5 for short fiction and 1-9 for novels. It would appear that it makes it a "poll" in ISFDB terms based on Help:Screen:AwardType:

• Poll: "No" if this award is limited to wins and nominations. "Yes" if this award assigns numeric places, e.g. 1, 2, 10, etc.

? Ahasuerus 16:00, 12 January 2022 (EST)

Sorry, yes you are absolutely right: Poll: yes, since there are the winners and other nominees as well! --Jannis 01:57, 13 January 2022 (EST)

Outcome: a new award type, DSFP/Deutscher Science Fiction Preis, has been created. It has two award categories, one for novels and the other one for short fiction. Ahasuerus 09:27, 13 January 2022 (EST)

Broughton Stories

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoda_Broughton; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?786021; 3 new stories, obviously not really new because she died many years earlier, all stories have notes saying they appeared in Temple Bar, Wikipedia link says they all appeared in non-Temple Bar publications, so any experts who know where and when they appeared can fix if they want. --Username 13:49, 10 January 2022 (EST)

I've fixed them up. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:20, 10 January 2022 (EST)

Times Wrong Numbers

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?307807; The page # start off OK but start to differ and by the end are off by 5 pages, as seen here, https://data.fantlab.ru/images/editions/plus/big/173665_4. Many people worked on this book over the years but there's no notes so maybe somebody had the book and they're all correct as they are, or maybe not. EDIT: Oh, I see now, someone got the # from The Supernatural Index. A real copy is needed to decide what the #'s really are. --Username 18:47, 10 January 2022 (EST)

Gor

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1036747; I was editing on Sidgwick & Jackson books and saw 1972's Gor Omnibus didn't have a cover, but couldn't find a cover image anywhere except on APPLE'S APP STORE. It's a perfectly clean cover and mentions the publisher's name so I uploaded it, but was told there was already an image by that name. I replaced it, and it turns out another editor, Ofearna, uploaded the cover for the 2007 Dark Horse edition nearly 10 years ago. That edition is also on ISFDB, with the correct cover, and she's not on the editors' list, so why it's in the Sidgwick wiki is unknown. So if any mods want to delete the Dark Horse upload, or if anyone actually owns a copy/knows where to find an image of the actual 1972 cover, they can replace the one from APPLE'S APP STORE. Ironic that Dark Horse's edition barely sold due to complaints but Apple has no problem selling what are basically BDSM porn novels. --Username 14:27, 14 January 2022 (EST)

I am assuming you are referring to Image:GRMNBSBZJM1972.jpg (associated with 297784) and one of the apps by "Corbin Miller" (either 650224447 or 628282752). There are a few applicable screenshots containing the cover but this one is particularly relevant. I cannot speak to why Susan uploaded that image with respect to that edition as clearly it does not belong there (but rather on the Dark Horse edition as you pointed out). You might find this archived discussion from the end of 2012 relevant. I appreciate your finding the correct cover but the image certainly needs to be cropped on the top and bottom. Thank you, —Uzume 12:11, 15 January 2022 (EST)

Wow, that's some Indiana Jones-level digging there, remembering a short discussion you had from 2012. Ofearna asked how to fix it, and obviously it never was. Any mod can still delete it if they care to. I can't believe there's no image of the original 1972 cover on the web somewhere, but I'm sure someone will find it eventually. Or maybe someone will admit to owning it and scan their own cover. --Username 12:35, 15 January 2022 (EST)

I did not really need to remember that as I just looked at Special:Whatlinkshere/Image:GRMNBSBZJM1972.jpg and found the older discussion. FYI: I also cropped the image and reuploaded it. Thanks again, —Uzume 12:42, 15 January 2022 (EST)

Different statuses for the two collections of authors

In the light of the fact that the two allowed melting pots assemble many authors of diverse languages: shouldn't 'uncredited' (here an example) and 'unknown' have the same status, i. e. have no language attached? Stonecreek 06:34, 15 January 2022 (EST)

I don't think it is possible to edit an author to remove the language. Author records start out with no language when first added from a publication, but any edit to the author record adds one. "null" is not an option in the language pull down list. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 07:26, 15 January 2022 (EST)

That is correct. The ISO 639-2 standard, which we use as the source of our supported languages, includes "zxx - No linguistic content; Not applicable", but it's not a part of the subset that we currently support. Ahasuerus 13:41, 15 January 2022 (EST)

Yeah, but I seem to remember that 'uncredited' once was the same way (or was it established when we had no language assignment around, but 'unknown' should have been around then also).

Also, 'uncredited' is virtually uneditable, 'unknown' maybe should have the same status. Stonecreek 08:23, 15 January 2022 (EST)

The difference between uncredited and unknown is not language. It is that uncredited has so many records the software prohibits viewing the author record. In the database, uncredited has a language of English, you just can't see that in the display. The software could probably be relatively easily changed to not display the language field on the unknown author record. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:38, 15 January 2022 (EST)

Our software uses authors' "Working language" values to determine which titles have their language displayed on Summary pages and which ones don't. For example, our Vladimir Nabokov record currently uses "English" as his working language, so his Russian works have "[Russian]" displayed next to their titles while his English works do not have "[English]" displayed. If we were to change his working language to "Russian", it would be the other way around.

Similarly, the fact that "unknown" currently has "English" set up as its working language means that English titles do not have their language displayed next to them while all other titles do. If we decide that it's desirable, it wouldn't be hard to change the software to always display the title's language on "unknown"'s Summary page. Ahasuerus 13:53, 15 January 2022 (EST)

Does it make sense to have an "unknown (language)", even if it's just to separate them out? Make it an alternate name? ../Doug H 15:04, 15 January 2022 (EST) (says unilingual bystander who doesn't really know what he's talking about).

That sort of makes sense. It is unlikely a Japanese publication would ever be credited with an author of "uncredited" or "unknown" as they would use something similar in Japanese. If we do make such authors, it might even make sense to make them into pseudonyms of the "unknown" or "uncredited" (although that might have other implications but in theory such could be handled like other shared pseudonyms in the title variants). —Uzume 12:50, 16 January 2022 (EST)

But those two denominations are no actual credits they are sorts of placeholders, and it makes IMO more sense to keep it as simple as possible, that is: have one denomination in our overall language of handling for each of the meanings. Stonecreek 13:12, 16 January 2022 (EST)

This approach partitions the unknowns, allowing one to view only, say, Russian unknowns together. An advanced query will do the same thing for those who might want to know and having the canonical unknown with listings for "[as unknown (Russian) [Russian]]" would seem odd. ../Doug H 15:02, 16 January 2022 (EST)

Perry Rhodan in French

Hi everyone! This seems to be a somewhat bigger cake, and there are some more complex problems involved.

There are two major phases of publishing the original Perry Rhodan series in French (see below), but both face the seemingly in most cases erroneous crediting to Clark Darlton and 'K.-H. Scheer': those two authors were central to the development of the series, but retreated over the course of time more and more from writing the novellas. So, in most cases the credit for one or both of them is wrongly stated (see this example, where the originals were written by Kurt Mahr and William Voltz, respectively). Usually we'd denominate the French credits as something like 'Clark Darlton (in error)' and 'K.-H. Scheer (in error)' (or possibly in the latter case just as 'K.-H. Scheer' since this alternate name of K. H. Scheer seems to have been used only in French).

Phase 1 (bundling of two novellas): This was the way to publish the series in French up to the year 2005. As of now, these publications are entered as novels, though each of them seems to consist of two distinct titled parts (the translated two novellas, see the example referred to above). It'd be better to have them that way, I'd think, that is, to have those volumes entered as anthologies or collections.

The trouble is that from 1966 (the beginning of the Fleuve Noir PR series) until 1970 or a bit later (I still have gaps in my collection), there is no clear evidence that the books are indeed collections of two novellas (apart from the mention “First Part” and "Second Part”, without any other title). See #1 of the series, presented as the translation of Unternehmen Stardust alone. Distinct titles for each part, usually translations of the German titles, seem to appear around 1970. As from 1973 or thereabouts, two original titles are indicated, thus implying the book is indeed a collection or anthology. So the very early years of the French series cause a real problem. Linguist 05:25, 17 January 2022 (EST).

It seems that for the first volumes at least, there's no major problem per se: they are varianted to the novel adaptations of 1962 and after (see here for #1), not the original novellas of 1961 and after. This also is the case for the last one without named parts. In case future problems will pop up, it still would be possible to use the identified beginnings of the respective parts as titles for the novella, like was done here for a statement by Scheer. Stonecreek 09:14, 17 January 2022 (EST)

Phase 2 (translations of fix-ups): With the year 2005 (and #200) the publications were stated translations of the fix-up novels that combined and bridged the single novellas into genuine novels and thus should directly be varianted to their originals.

For the background on this, see also Perrypedia. Any input on this will be welcome! Stonecreek 08:20, 16 January 2022 (EST)

From this response it seems to be okay to variant the titles of the second phase to the original novels.

For those of phase on from the internal logic and the statements 'This book collects French translations of two Perry Rhodan novellas' as in the example referred to above the assumption made above that those are really ANTHOLOGIES / COLLECTIONS also seem to be correct (with the exception of the ones that are variants of the early novel adaptations of the 1960s).

And also the alternate name 'Clark Darlton (in error)' should be inserted when appropriate.

I'll wait for a few days more for any other input (say until next Weekend) and then begin with the work. In this case, could you Dominique or Alain supply the titles for the respective two parts of the ANTHOLOGIES / COLLECTIONS, or should just 'Chapitre I' / 'Chapitre II' [or 'Première partie (...)' / 'Deuxième partie (...)'] be inserted.

In any case, there seem to be some updates for the notes in order. Stonecreek 02:05, 18 January 2022 (EST)

I can add the titles of the two parts when necessary, but remember my collection of Perry Rhodans is very far from complete. Just give me a ping when you want the job done. Linguist 04:18, 18 January 2022 (EST).

Thanks! Likely, this will be due beginning sometimes during next week. Christian Stonecreek 05:02, 18 January 2022 (EST)

I have just verified this publication and two points worth mentioning appeared to me when looking at it:

1) Dominique, how do you plan to enter the novellas: a) with their title proper, or b) with 'Première partie : respective title'. (I ask because some of those you haven't verified nevertheless have the respective titles listed in the notes.)

I think the second solution is the better one, as it gives a more precise idea of the way the French edition is organized (and sorry I didn't see your question earlier). Linguist 04:13, 23 January 2022 (EST).

2) In general: shouldn't the month of the stated dépôt légal be made into the to be entered month of publication (instead of the month of printing)? After all, this is the most likely month, the other one is just the month it was printed in. Christian Stonecreek 10:14, 21 January 2022 (EST)

Gwynplaine

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1562; I added author photo to F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre's record, it was just approved, but my note about his death by suicide was replaced by the note I wrote for the moderator about author's uncertain birth place which was moved into the regular notes section. I don't know why that was done, but who cares; the point is while I was looking at his record I noticed there was a comment written by Ahasuerus nearly 10 years ago that the author used 3 different names and most everything else about him was uncertain. Now that I stumbled onto this, if anyone knows whether anyone ever figured out his real name, where he was really born, etc. it might be time to update his record. --Username 10:38, 18 January 2022 (EST)

Bryan Smith

I think that the few dark suspense novels of Bryan Smith should be listed as the volume of supernatural and horror fiction that he has published, and is still publishing. I have been told no, but I would like a second opinion. How much is the right amount to be above the threshold? Not trying to cause any problems here, but... MLB 13:59, 19 January 2022 (EST)

Given the amount of work he's had published, I think he is above the threshold. So, I'd say add them, but be sure to mark any that have no supernatural content as non-genre. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:22, 19 January 2022 (EST)

Unless there is a cache of non-speculative stories and novels I don't know about (and Goodreads does not about either), he looks well above threshold to me. Annie 15:08, 19 January 2022 (EST)

I'm the one who has reservations.;) Is the volume of an author's work decisive in determining whether he/she/xer is above the threshold, or should we factor in how famous/well known the author is in the speculative fiction field as well? The author is definately not in the league of Asimov or Clarke or... And as I'm reluctant to add non spec-fic regardless, irrespective whether its above or below threshold (which is subjective, right? :), I have my doubts whether to include the work. MagicUnk 16:53, 19 January 2022 (EST)

"Well known" to whom? There are some big authors that never got an award in their life - bad timing, too niche or whatever else happened. With the advent of self-publishing, we will have even more of them. On the other hand, as big as Orwell will always be in the genre, we won't index all his works because he is not primarily a speculative author. The only somewhat objective criteria we have is "is he primarily a speculative author aka does most of his work belong in the genre?". For Bryan Smith the answer is "yes" IMO. So he is above threshold.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather not index any non-genre work by anyone. But under the current definition and practices, Smith is above the waterline I think. Annie 17:35, 19 January 2022 (EST)

ISFDB:Policy says "The goal [of the "certain threshold" standard] is to avoid cataloging everything ever published by James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Louis Stevenson, Honoré de Balzac and other popular authors. Instead, we want to catalog their speculative fiction works only." So basically it excludes non-SF by "non-genre authors".

That's how I have been using the "certain threshold" standard, but in the past some editors have argued in favor of using a higher standard, something like "genre importance". Ahasuerus 20:24, 19 January 2022 (EST)

I'm not sure if you can use "well known" as a term much now. Smith would have been considered a mid-level author in the old days, but now, he's considered a major talent in the small-press horror field. He's been filmed, and major limited, signed editions have been issued. He's no King or Koontz, but he's major player in the horror field. MLB 02:29, 20 January 2022 (EST)

Being a famous horror author in and of itself doesn't warrant inclusion in the database. I'm with Ahasuerus' interpretation of the rules here: the author should be a genre author. So, since I'm not familiar enough with Bryan Smith's other works, would you say the majority of his work has speculative elements in it, as that would imply he's a genre author and his non-genre works eligible for inclusion? MagicUnk 05:00, 20 January 2022 (EST)

Let me make sure that I understand your question correctly Are you making a distinction between "psychological horror" [not SF as per Policy] and "supernatural horror" [SF as per Policy]? If so, then I believe that a very large percentage of Bryan Smith's works includes supernatural elements. A randomly selected 2016 collection included stories about "serial killers, vampire nuns, demons, werewolves, and regular people forced to make hellish choices." Some of his works are not speculative -- psychological horror and crime fiction -- but overall I would say that he is a genre author. Ahasuerus 11:20, 20 January 2022 (EST)

Yup, that's the distinction I wanted to make. As he's a genre author, I'll aprove MLB's submission, and flag it as non-genre. MagicUnk 16:56, 20 January 2022 (EST)

That's why I mentioned that unless there is a cache of non-speculative stories somewhere, he is above threshold for me (that implies that he is a genre author - you cannot get there unless you write mostly our type of stories). He is definitely one of ours - the speculative manages to sneak even into most of the ones that you would not expect (although a few stories and novels somehow managed not to have it) :) Annie 17:20, 20 January 2022 (EST)

Vagabonds of Gor

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?53042; Related to my find of the apparently rare cover for Gor Omnibus recently, the 1987 Star edition of Vagabonds was missing its cover until I just uploaded a beautiful one from www.sfandfantasy.co.uk. I also added Canadian and NZ prices from a back cover photo on AUSTRALIAN eBay. Online info suggests Ken (W.) Kelly did the cover, as he did for so many other Gor novels, but there was no mention of that on the back, so that's for someone else to enter if they own a copy and it mentions his name somewhere in the book. Uzume, do you have a copy? --Username 22:05, 19 January 2022 (EST)

Depp

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?384335; Rand Ravich wrote the screenplay for The Astronaut's Wife; the cover linked above is the poster with the stars, Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron. It's not artwork. --Username 19:26, 21 January 2022 (EST)

Web API updated

The Web API, i.e. the part of the ISFDB software which communicates with other computers, has been updated to include publication-specific transliterated titles and Web pages. There should be no impact on regular Web pages which are viewed/edited by ISFDB users. Ahasuerus 14:45, 23 January 2022 (EST)

Adding a "Stated Publication Date" field?

Recently, we had a discussion of publication dates on the Moderator Noticeboard. There were three parts to the discussion:

1. Internal inconsistencies in the current version of Template:PublicationFields:Date
2. Differences between Template:PublicationFields:Date and the prevailing data entry practices
3. The fact that we have only one field for "Publication Date", which forces us to choose between entering the date stated within the publication (on the title page, on the copyright date, etc) and the date when the publication was actually made available to the public.

Following up on that discussion, MartyD put together a proposed update to Help, which would address issues 1 and 2 above. Unfortunately, the proposed changes won't help with issue 3 because publication records have only field dates and you can't fit two different dates in one field no matter what you do. If a book published on 2021-09-27 has an "October 2021" statement on the copyright page, as is fairly common, it leaves us in an inherently difficult position. If we enter "2021-09-27" as the Date value, we very visibly contradict what's stated in the book and violate the "principle of least astonishment". If we enter "2021-10-00" and move the exact date to Notes, we lose granularity and accuracy, especially when it comes to searching and data mining.

After reviewing the discussion which was prompted by Marty's proposal, I wrote:

• ...we really need to add a "Stated Publication Date" to publication records and we need to do it sooner rather than later. A single field is just insufficient to handle the reality of what's out there.

Here is what I have been thinking:

• The current "Publication Date" field (and all of its current values) would be kept "as is". It will be used for actual publication dates going forward
• A new field, "Stated Publication Date", will be used when it's different from the actual publication date. If a publication has multiple publication dates, e.g. "2012" on the title page and "October 2012" on the copyright page, the more precise date will be used.
• Title-level dates will remain as they are now and be "actual dates of first publication".
• We will have to decide how to use this field for magazine publications, which have a separate set of data entry rules
• If this works out, we may do something similar with certain other fields at a later point.

This would take a fair amount of programming work, but nothing insurmountable.

What does everyone think? Ideas? Potential issues? Ahasuerus 16:00, 23 January 2022 (EST)

I like the idea. We are a DB - the more data we have, the better. Annie 16:45, 23 January 2022 (EST)

PS: I think it will also solve nicely the issue with magazines dating - especially webzines and ebooks - which have dates but due to the way we have our rules, end up dated with just year or month. Having the two fields will allow us to keep both dates - the cover date and the actual date. Except that for them what we have now is closer to "stated dates" than to actual dates so we may need a cleanup effort to deal with these and move them to the proper places (especially for e-magazines and webzines). Annie 18:10, 23 January 2022 (EST)

A pragmatic solution, I'm good with it. Three topics when (if) we move on - display, documentation and population of the new field. A wish though - a way to persuade editors to provide meaningful citations for non-stated data. And in case I miss the later discussions - document the split / populating in/through the Help and use the history to 'recover' old values for date. ../Doug H 23:10, 23 January 2022 (EST)

Cliff ?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?35340; I added OL link, previous editor entered name wrong ( it's Cliff NIELSON on back cover, https://archive.org/details/generoddenberrys00fred), but actually it's by Cliff Nielsen, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?21018, so if anyone cares to untangle that...also, there's another entry for Cliff Neilson on ISFDB and another one for Cliff Nielson. --Username 18:04, 23 January 2022 (EST)

Thanks for finding these errors! Fixed. Stonecreek 02:10, 24 January 2022 (EST)

Doesn't seem to be fixed (yet)? MagicUnk 06:23, 24 January 2022 (EST)

Hi, could you explain what seems to be still wrong? I can't see anything (but one does tend towards errors like this with his own doings / writings). Thanks, Christian Stonecreek 06:52, 24 January 2022 (EST)

Well, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?35340 has to be by Cliff NIELSON, not NIELSEN, as that's what's written on the back of the cover (see archive.org scan). I didn't find Cliff NEILSON anymore (presumably automatically deleted once you updated the records to NIELSON?) - as I don't know which records were affected, could you confirm it really was a typo, or rather that the books did have NEILSON written on it. IF the latter is the case, that name had to be a pseudonym instead. Regards, MagicUnk 08:35, 24 January 2022 (EST)

Oh, and incidentally, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?866152 really seems to be a typo by the editor. At least I can't find a reference to an edition on which NIELSON is credited - rather, NIELSEN is credited on back cover of the paperback edition here, as well as on the copyright page of the 7th printing hardcover edition (via LookInside). Regards, MagicUnk 08:42, 24 January 2022 (EST)

Thanks, both were dealt with. Christian Stonecreek 09:00, 24 January 2022 (EST)

Star Trek Fanzines

https://archive.org/details/@fanzine_collection_archivist; I entered info for this, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?853551, and saw this Archive user has a treasure trove of old Trek fanzines. ScoTpress, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?38212, is missing almost everything on ISFDB, so anyone who likes entering old fanzines might find a lot to do here. These don't seem to be listed on Open Library, so covers will probably have to be uploaded. Also, the cover artist is A.H. for the publication I entered info for, but there's a 1982 Polish essayist and an 1870's artist on ISFDB with the same name. So when this edit is approved someone may want to chime in with how to fix this; maybe A.H. (fanzine artist)? --Username 11:24, 25 January 2022 (EST)

I changed it to A.H. (fanzine artist) since nobody responded. --Username 10:05, 27 January 2022 (EST)

There's already an A.H. (artist) in the DB - not the same one you think? MagicUnk 12:20, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Probably not, since the A.H. already on ISFDB did the art in the 1870's and the person who did the cover for the Trek zine was 1984. Unless he lived to a ripe old age I doubt it's the same person. --Username 12:30, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Right... that's what you get when not paying attention :( But on the topic: the standard way to disambiguate is to use roman numerals (next to '(artist)', or '(in error)'). Examples here and here. Granted, the current case is a bit ambiguous, but I believe we could update the 'A.H. (fanzine artist)' to 'A.H. (I) (artist)' or 'A.H. (artist I)' as per the examples, which I believe to be more in line with actual practice. What do you think? MagicUnk 07:28, 28 January 2022 (EST)

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=fanzi&type=Name; only 2 names with "fanzine" in them, so you're right; change it to whatever you think best in keeping with standards. --Username 08:30, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Painting the Dark (Side)

https://www.amazon.com/Painting-Dark-Liane-Jones/dp/006101172X; I don't know which book was meant to be here, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?25543, but the book by Jones is Painting the Dark. --Username 19:34, 25 January 2022 (EST)

Looking at the edit history - seems to me a wrong cover was added in December 2017, and title was adjusted based on that wrong cover. I've replaced the cover with a link to the (supposedly) correct one, and changed the title accordingly. Should look better now. MagicUnk 09:54, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Gold Medal Recipe

Doing edits for Fawcett Gold Medal books; The Haunting of Drumroe, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?586630, is 144 pages but says WorldCat has 143. This, https://picclick.com/Paperback-The-Haunting-of-Drumroe-By-Claudette-124789383161.html, has 11 photos, but this, https://www.etsy.com/listing/1026058074/pulp-novel-the-haunting-of-dromroe-by, has the same photos but also includes a video where the seller flips quickly through the book, pausing briefly on the copyright page, which allowed me to see the month and enter that missing info here. 1 of the photos shows what seems to be the last page of the novel, 141 (although it's possible 142-143 may be an epilogue or something similar), and another photo shows the last page, 144, which is a RECIPE. Fawcett published cookbooks, so is it possible that they included a free recipe in their 70's books? If so, does that really count as part of the book? Anyway, that probably explains the WorldCat discrepancy. --Username 09:24, 26 January 2022 (EST)

I would include it, though if it's not SF-related, you could include it in the notes with an explanation of the page count. I would use the full page count (144), even if the content on the last page isn't included anywhere other than the notes. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:04, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Voigt Book

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?730271; I fixed publisher and also added price and month; lots of editors/moderators worked on this, and someone added an OL link in 2019, I think, but for some reason didn't notice all the wrong/missing info; also, the cover uploaded to ISFDB doesn't match the OL cover, missing that big star on lower left and also missing the price after the ISBN on the cover. I don't want to upload the OL cover just for a PB reprint, but if anyone cares they can approve my edit and then do whatever they want afterwards. --Username 17:09, 26 January 2022 (EST)

2001: A Space Odyssey COLLECTION vs. OMNIBUS

Hi, everyone interested. We have this as a COLLECTION but this as an OMNIBUS. Both editions/publications feature the same fiction content (though translated in one case). My preference would be for the latter, but I can see why the first was entered as a COLLECTION. Please vote, people. Christian Stonecreek 05:52, 27 January 2022 (EST)

It looks counterintuitive, but I think the rules point to COLLECTION. From the help screen under novel: "NOVEL. Used when the book is devoted to a single work of fiction. The addition of multiple short stories makes the book a collection, not a novel". --Willem 08:49, 27 January 2022 (EST)

(after editing conflict) Looking at the rules entries for NOVEL and OMNIBUS here, it has to be either a NOVEL or a COLLECTION (not an OMNIBUS). I also remember an earlier discussion (but can't find it right now), where basically it was said that a short fiction piece was added to a novel 'as an afterthought', or as a bonus, then the pub type would retain the type of the primary work - NOVEL in this case (in agreement with the rules for NOVEL pub type). If you consider the two stories not to be bonuses or afterthoughts, then it has to be a COLLECTION (and not an OMNIBUS). Regards, MagicUnk 08:51, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Omnibus needs two separate containers inside of it IMO (2 novels, novel+collection, 2 collections, 2 anthologies and so on). 1 Novel+1 bonus story is a novel; 1 novel+2 or more stories (or 1 novel and 1 novella) is a collection. I'd call this one a collection. Annie 15:55, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Thanks to everyone, I have transformed and varianted the Portuguese title & publications. Christian Stonecreek 01:57, 28 January 2022 (EST)

German Spelling

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1801447; [3]; [4]; note the different spelling, TAUSENDUNDEINE, on the later edition. Cut-off cover image, mistake by the publisher, or did Germany have a spelling overhaul between 1997 and 2004? --Username 14:39, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Judging from the bibliographical links (DNB and OCLC) it's a misspelling just on the cover (and maybe also on the spine), which is not reflected on the title page. Stonecreek 02:16, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Semiprozines vs. Professional Magazines

The distinction between amateur and semiprozine is pretty clear. Are there specific criteria seperating semiprozines from professional magazines? John Scifibones 15:29, 27 January 2022 (EST)

In our DB? No. The distinction matters for some awards but in our DB, something is either a magazine (and that includes all semiprozines I had ever seen) or a fanzine (and even that line can blur in some cases - there is a reason why we use the same type for the title records of these). Annie 15:37, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Lately, I have seen some large differences in author renumeration. I don't want to incorrectly refer to a magazine as a semiprozine if it is something more. Pehaps I shouldn't use the term in anythong other an an awards reference? Thanks, John Scifibones 15:51, 27 January 2022 (EST)

But we don't have a semiprozine type anywhere? Do you mean notes? I don't usually use the term semiprozine in notes UNLESS the publication calls themselves so and/or they have awards/nominations in the category (and even then... I'd just call the thing magazine and not worry about the hierarchy). From our DB perspective, we don't really care what the remuneration is - a magazine is a magazine even if they pay in coconuts or monopoly money. Annie 16:00, 27 January 2022 (EST)

I have used the term in descriptions. I won't use it anymore. John Scifibones 16:40, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Application for self-approval status -- Swfritter

(Moved from Moderator Noticeboard to Community Portal) Which would probably be welcomed by a few moderators. The primary process I will be working on for (probably months) is internet archive links. The side benefit is that I am making a list of the few issues that need work. What would be nice is a way to flag admissions that I would like to be moderated by someone else.--swfritter 17:42, 25 January 2022 (EST)

Unfortunately it is all or nothing - once you get the ability to self-approve, moderators cannot touch your submissions - you can ping the moderators via the Moderator board or post on someone's individual page and they can look or assist you with a comment/advice, but we won't be able to approve/reject for you. Still interested in being able to self-approve under that rule?Annie 17:48, 25 January 2022 (EST)

Sounds good. Rtrace, Krang, and JLaTondre will probably be quite happy as they have been doing most of the approvals. Most of my knowledge from my decade as a moderator seems to be intact. Thanks.--swfritter 18:28, 25 January 2022 (EST)

I have pinged the moderators who have been working on Swfritter's submissions over the last few weeks. Ahasuerus 09:22, 26 January 2022 (EST)

I would welcome allowing swfritter to self-moderate. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 09:35, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Swfritter's area in the past & it appears present was magazines, so self-moderation would be great and hopefully sooner rather than later full moderation so I can go back to mostly ignoring magazines.Kraang 12:41, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Yes it would be a great help. Go for it.--Chris J 15:28, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Yep, I agree as well. The team is always around for questions/assistance if the rules had changed that much in a certain area. Annie 18:30, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Support. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:43, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Support. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:12, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support. --Willem 18:18, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support. Stonecreek 02:17, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Support. --MartyD 12:26, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Support. --Bob 12:53, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Support. PeteYoung 00:10, 29 January 2022 (EST)

Outcome

Swfritter has been added to the list of self-approvers. Ahasuerus 09:55, 31 January 2022 (EST)

Application for self-approval status, Scifibones

(Moved from Moderator Noticeboard to Community Portal)

I formally request self-approval privileges. John Scifibones 13:59, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Support. I would be fine with you have full moderator privileges. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:15, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Support. I'd advice first self-approving for a few weeks, then thinking about full moderation but as I mentioned on your page, I won't vote 'no' on either. Annie 18:28, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Support. Scifibones' almost never require questioning. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 20:26, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Support, self-moderation for a short period & then move to full moderation.Kraang 22:01, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Support, John, has shown he as a very good grasp of the rules by now - all of his edits are of high quality. I agree with above statements that John should/could move to full moderatorship shortly after. MagicUnk 08:53, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support. Does a good job with everything I've seen. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:12, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support.--Chris J 15:44, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support. --Willem 18:19, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support, good work done so far as I've seen. -- Stonecreek 02:18, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Support. --MartyD 12:26, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Support. --Bob 12:52, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Support. PeteYoung 00:10, 29 January 2022 (EST)

Outcome

Scifibones has been added to the list of self-approvers. Ahasuerus 09:55, 31 January 2022 (EST)

Application for self-approval status--MOHearn

(Moved from Moderator Noticeboard to Community Portal)

And to keep the ball rolling on the subject of these last posts, here's my request for self-approval status.--Martin MOHearn 21:49, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Support - working translations and weird languages is never easy in our DB and I’ve rarely seen issues. Annie 22:08, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Support, detailed submissions & has good grasp of the DB.Kraang 22:51, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Support. Never really had any issues with Martin's submissions. Should be no problem to go to full moderator status as well. Regards, MagicUnk 08:54, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support. Does a good job with accuracy and including what needs to be there. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:13, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:33, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support.--Chris J 15:45, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:01, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support. --Willem 18:20, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Support. --MartyD 12:26, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Support. --Bob 12:51, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Support. PeteYoung 00:10, 29 January 2022 (EST)

Outcome

MOHearn has been added to the list of self-approvers. Ahasuerus 09:56, 31 January 2022 (EST)

El Frankenstein

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?869753; I used my mad Spanish skillz to figure out that the editor who entered this anthology didn't know or care to variant stories to their English originals; I did for all of them except the Morrow story because that also involves varianting the name, and I'm not touching that. Also, they stole the contents from one of Peter Haining's crap anthologies, 1995's The Frankenstein Omnibus, so I don't know if that would make the anthology a variant of the 1995 one or not. --Username 19:59, 27 January 2022 (EST)

Thanks for linking these translations. Unfortunately, the length is missing or disagrees with that of the parent title for several of these. The consensus is that if the length changes in translation, we list both records with the original length. There is another step required for these edits to edit the translated record to conform to the length of the original. This will keep them from showing up in this cleanup report. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 09:52, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Shock

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?53695; Jack Davis did all 3 covers for this 1960 magazine, but was only credited on 1 here. I fixed that, but why is 1 issue separate from the others? That can't be right. EDIT: I made an edit fixing the date issue; I'll know if I did it right if it's approved. --Username 20:48, 27 January 2022 (EST)

They were separate because noone got around to merging them when one of them was added. :) Merged now.

PS: You do not need to rename/re-date the EDITOR record in order to merge in these cases - that would have meant two steps (update and then merge). Instead you can use Advanced search to get both titles in a merge screen - and just merge them from there. Thanks for spotting that one. Annie 18:01, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Bauman's Husband

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=versandi&type=Name; Jill Bauman, famous artist, is still missing many credits on ISFDB. I just added 3 cover credits, and then noticed that she has an alternate name of Versandi which she used for a few books in 1986-1987. There's only 1 other person by that name here, Bob Versandi, who wrote 1 story published in a Tor horror anthology in 1987. Jill did cover art for many Tor books, so it seems likely they threw her husband a bone and published a story by him (there's barely any mention of it online). I can't find any definitive proof it's her husband, but if anyone else can then they can be linked with a note mentioning they are/were married. --Username 17:08, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Western Why

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?840906; Non-genre and no genre zine reviews, so why is it here? Maybe it shouldn't be. --Username 19:03, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Loaded with one of the early automations and never cleaned up. Will zap it.

PS: Even if there were reviews, we would be converting the reviews to essays and still deleting that one. Annie 19:08, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Collier Maps

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?195397; I was editing for a John Collier collection and noticed there were 2 interior art credits on his page here, 1 from 1923 and 1 from the 1970's. The 1970's one turned out to be by a different guy with the same name who did maps for some of Michael Moorcock's books. However, after I fixed that and then merged the art with another art credit, I noticed the original date was several years earlier. For some reason, the maps in earlier editions have a different name. About a dozen PV's worked on these books, some no longer around, so if anyone knows the deal with these maps and what title they should have it's all there. --Username 12:10, 29 January 2022 (EST)

Major changes made to Harry Turtledove "Series: How Few Remain Universe" without any consultation

All titles & pub titles where changed by dropping the series name which appears to be built into the title, for example "Title indicated as "Settling Accounts: Return Engagement" on cover, spine, copyright page and title page"[5] & [6]. A look inside of any of the other ten titles will show the same thing, plus even in the "books by" part of the book its the same[7]. I believe this may have been changed in hast, Personal Verifiers & other interested parties should have been consulted.Kraang 12:47, 29 January 2022 (EST)

The relevant part of the data entry standards was changed a few years ago. To quote Help:Screen:NewPub:

• Note that the title page may show the series name, and sometimes the publication's position in the series. The present (2018) usage is to enter only the "simplified" title, for example, you could enter the title for a publication as "Song of the Dragon" and the note would have "The title page states 'Song of the' over 'Dragon' over 'The annals of Drakis: Book One'."

We are currently discussing whether editors should discuss these types of changes with primary verifiers on the Rules and Standards page. Ahasuerus 13:03, 29 January 2022 (EST)

Struggled with subtitles in the past but in this case these appear to be the actual intended titles, just felt such a major change should have been brought to the attentions of currents editors which PV the books.Kraang 13:21, 29 January 2022 (EST)

Missing X-Files

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?102785; I can't find a cover or any proof this was published. Might be it was announced and then cancelled. Anyone know? --Username 15:08, 29 January 2022 (EST)

Software support for more currencies

The software has been updated to recognize and display mouseover help for the following currencies:

• Austrian schillings
• Singapore dollars
• Hong Kong dollars
• New Zealand dollars
• Taiwan dollars
• Chilean pesos
• Colombian pesos
• Uruguayan pesos

The Austrian schilling has been added to Help:List of currency symbols. Ahasuerus 17:22, 29 January 2022 (EST)

Swiss francs

We apparently use "CHF", "sfr", "Sfr", "Sfr.", "SFr" or "sFr" for "Swiss Franc" -- see these Advanced Publication Search results. Wikipedia says that "SFr" is obsolete and that the current usage is "Fr." (German), "fr." (French/Italian/Romansch) or "CHF" (English and other languages.)

I propose that we standardize using "CHF" -- which will require a couple dozen edits -- and update the software to display mouseover help to reflect the standard. Ahasuerus 17:49, 29 January 2022 (EST)

CHF has been added to Help:List of currency symbols. The software has been updated to display appropriate mouseover help. Ahasuerus 12:42, 2 February 2022 (EST)

All database records have been updated. Ahasuerus 12:49, 2 February 2022 (EST)

Amazon-hosted cover scans

We have around 420,000 Amazon-hosted cover scans. 386,000 of them use "images/I" URLs and are fine. However, over 23,000 Amazon-hosted scans use "images/P" URLs, which means that they are based on the publication's ISBN. Amazon has been known to change the cover scans behind "/P/" URLs arbitrarily. It happens regrettably often, so we can't rely on them to remain stable. We already have a yellow warning which says:

• Note that Amazon URLs which do not start with "/images/I/" may not be stable

Based on what Amazon has been doing with "/P/" images, we may want to take it a step further and display the following warning on all affected Publication pages:

• Note: The displayed Amazon image is based on the ISBN of the publication and may no longer reflect the actual cover of this particular edition.

We may also want to create a cleanup report to look for primary verified publications which still use "/P/" images. We have roughly 4,200 of them.

Does this plan sound OK? Ahasuerus 19:16, 29 January 2022 (EST)

I remember another mod bringing that up recently, but the # of covers was much higher. Whatever the real #, it would be good to modernize them. Only problem is that Amazon has MANY pages where the publisher is not the right one for the image; in some cases you can actually see the correct publisher's name on the spine. I can't count how many covers I've replaced over the last year because an editor just right-clicked the Amazon image without making sure it was the right one. Is there a way to look for those? I think I know the answer already. --Username 19:24, 29 January 2022 (EST)

4,200 is the number of "/P/" images associated with primary-verified publications, the low-hanging fruit in this case. The other 19,000 publications with "/P/" images haven't been verified, so it may take longer to update them.

We also have 6,768 pubs with "/G/" images, including 3,904 primary-verified pubs. Our yellow warning says that "/G/" URLs are not stable either, but I don't recall whether they are in more or less danger of being changed by Amazon. Ahasuerus 19:37, 29 January 2022 (EST)

Upon reflection, perhaps the first thing to do is to add a new option, "My Primary Verifications with Unstable Amazon Images", to the "My Verifications" menu. It's easy to do and it will let verifiers check their collections for potentially unstable/superseded cover scans. Ahasuerus 12:11, 30 January 2022 (EST)

A new menu option, My Primary Verifications with Unstable Amazon URLs has been added to the My Verifications menu. Amazon URLs which do not start with "/images/I" (like this pub's) now carry the following warning:

• The displayed Amazon image URL does not start with 'images/I/'. It may not be stable and may no longer reflect the actual cover of this particular edition.

It sounds a bit awkward, but it's the best I could come up with. Originally I was going to have it say something like "The displayed Amazon image is based on the ISBN of the publication", but that only covers Amazon's "P" URLs. Their "G" URLs are also potentially unstable and do not use ISBNs, e.g. see this 1969 pub. I don't know how likely they are to mutate, but the last time we looked into it, we determined that only "I" images are stable, hence the current wording of the related yellow warning. Ahasuerus 17:46, 31 January 2022 (EST)

I have no idea where Amazon uses the /G/ space these days (if at all) or how stable they may be. They may be the previous iteration of the /I/ idea (aka non-ISBN related images - in which case we may be ok) but there is no way to tell. I will do some digging to see if I can find any information. Annie 19:01, 31 January 2022 (EST)

They probably have been the correct images when the book was added and/or verified. That is the problem with the /P/ links - they get changed by Amazon - they point to whatever /I/ image is the cover of the latest printing that had been loaded for that ISBN. So if you add a book in 2018 with the correct image but you use a /P/ URL instead of an /I/ one, when the book gets reissued with the same ISBN and a new cover in 2021, the cover here in our DB changes on all printings which use the /P/ URL. That's why we added that yellow warning for unstable links last year (?) - so people know to check for that. Annie 19:01, 31 January 2022 (EST)

(unindent) It occurs to me that we could split the new report into two: one for ISBN-based ("P") URLs and another one for other non-I (primarily "G") URLs. ISBN-based URLs are in greater danger of being changed, so having them listed separately would make it easier to prioritize the cleanup process. We could do the same to the warning message. Ahasuerus 08:01, 1 February 2022 (EST)

That's a good idea. Annie 16:47, 1 February 2022 (EST)

Done -- see the new menu option in the My Verifications menu. The warning message has been split in 2 as well. Ahasuerus 19:06, 1 February 2022 (EST)

That's really useful. I didn't start fixing up the /P/ images immediately when PVing, and now have a backlog of 464. (And 418 of the others). I thought I was going to have to start my shelves over again when I reached the end. --GlennMcG 15:14, 3 February 2022 (EST)

Glad to hear it's been useful :-) Ahasuerus 17:29, 3 February 2022 (EST)

Is the sort order the PV date? (most recent first?) --GlennMcG 18:46, 3 February 2022 (EST)

That's right. Ahasuerus 23:12, 3 February 2022 (EST)

Perhaps the Amazon icon could be expanded in the 'cover' column of the title record to show this good/maybe/bad status? --GlennMcG 19:08, 3 February 2022 (EST)

Could you please clarify which Web page you are referring to? Is it the standard "Publications" table displayed on Title pages like this one? Ahasuerus 10:05, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Yes, that's what I was referring to. --GlennMcG 15:56, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Another option is the Publication page (e.g. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?369390 this] and maybe a coloured border on the image? ../Doug H 10:13, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Or perhaps a way to mark the included cover images. It could be nice to find another publication with the same cover to fix up ones PVs. It would also be nice to have some way to notify other printing/format PVers that a candidate matching cover has been added to another entry. --GlennMcG 19:08, 3 February 2022 (EST)

Stephen King's Brother

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?256961; That interview is of horror man S. King's bro; the fantasy novel is by another guy with the same name. How best to differentiate these two? The birthplace and Amazon link belong to the fantasy author. --Username 17:15, 30 January 2022 (EST)

According to this biography, Stephen's adopted brother David Victor King was born on 1945-08-17, so I guess we could enter him as "Dave King (1945-)". Ahasuerus 17:28, 30 January 2022 (EST)

Done; edit awaiting approval. --Username 17:54, 30 January 2022 (EST)

Approved, thanks. The new author record has been updated. Ahasuerus 18:38, 30 January 2022 (EST)

Make Variant Title

Ahasuerus, Will you consider adding the series field to the 'Make Variant Title' form. This will save an edit anytime a series is involved. It will be especially useful for non moderators. Thanks, John Scifibones 09:09, 31 January 2022 (EST)

Earlier this month I was thinking the same thing while working on entering Japanese light novels, which require a lot of VTs :-) FR 1479, "Add Series and Series number fields to Make Variant Title" has been created. Ahasuerus 09:52, 31 January 2022 (EST)

And done. Ahasuerus 20:11, 13 February 2022 (EST)

Thank you!! John Scifibones 14:22, 14 February 2022 (EST)

The Sixth Sense (no, not that one)

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1121274; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1013304; I found a better cover for Witch, then noticed there was another Sixth Sense novelization by M.Z. Bradley, which is in the Sixth Sense series here, but Witch isn't; when I tried to fix that the series fields are blacked out. The chapbook is a novelization but the story itself wasn't so I fixed that, too, but someone who knows can say why it can't be made part of the series. --Username 17:57, 31 January 2022 (EST)

It was decided some years ago that CHAPBOOKs are to be excluded from being part of a title series. I think the main reason was that they would clutter the listing of the respective series. Christian Stonecreek 01:38, 1 February 2022 (EST)

While chapbooks look like just another form of publication, they are a unique construct of this database. Think of them as merely a container, the pupose of which is to hold a content (title) record. The content record is the key. To include in a series, use the series field in the content record. Reviews and awards work the same way, attach to the content record. John Scifibones 07:53, 1 February 2022 (EST)

My Recently Changed Primary Verifications tweaked

The Web page My Recently Changed Primary Verifications has been updated to display the word "Webpage" in the "Changed field" column when appropriate. Ahasuerus 14:53, 1 February 2022 (EST)

Any chance you could link from the 'New' icon directly to this report? It seems that it's the only one like this. --GlennMcG 18:41, 5 February 2022 (EST)

Knight Rider

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?56540; Did some edits for these recently, did more today, last book says -also as by- but names are the same, which is probably a mistake; also, last book is missing American cover but I can't find anywhere usable and refuse to upload a Knight Rider cover, so maybe someone can find a usable one on the list of sites ISFDB is friendly with. --Username 18:51, 1 February 2022 (EST)

Shocking Tales

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?284952; I just fixed a few things for this; 2 questions I have are does anyone know whose signature that is on low left corner and why there's an ASIN ID for this 1946 book? --Username 11:55, 2 February 2022 (EST)

Application for self-approval status -- MLB

MLB is being shy about directly asking (after asking here) so here we go. Annie 12:40, 2 February 2022 (EST)

Support. Annie 12:40, 2 February 2022 (EST)

Support. Does a great job. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:59, 2 February 2022 (EST)

Support. Long overdue. --Willem 14:14, 2 February 2022 (EST)

Support --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 14:26, 2 February 2022 (EST)

Support.--Chris J 15:38, 2 February 2022 (EST)

Support. Wholeheartedly! --MartyD 13:51, 5 February 2022 (EST)

Outcome

Success; self-approver flag set on the account. Ahasuerus 13:51, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Possible canonical name change Mary A. Turzillo

Before adding the remaining 43 titles to this publication, I gathered the following information for a possible canonical name change.

Titles using the following names:

• 110 Mary A. Turzillo (approximate)
• 104 Mary Turzillo
• 12 Various other alternate names

Her website and LiveJournal use 'Mary A. Turzillo'. SFE also refers to her this way. Beside the above collection, four additional collections still need their contents added. All are credited to 'Mary Turzillo'. Opinions? John Scifibones 08:00, 3 February 2022 (EST)

When were those collections published - aka are they new (so move towards that name) or old? Considering what her website uses, it seems like her preferred name is the "A." version and as the numbers are close enough (I know the 4 collections will tip it), I'd leave it as is and keep an eye on her for now. But that's just my 2 cents :) Annie 14:26, 3 February 2022 (EST)

The additional four collections are dated 2007,2008,2014, and 2017. There is no distinctive trend, she has used both names throughout. I don't feel strongly either way. My intention is to allow a week for comments. Thanks for

replying. John Scifibones 15:37, 3 February 2022

After further investigation, it appears she uses 'Mary Turzillo' primarially for collections and 'Mary A. Turzillo' for everything else. I'm leaving the canonical name unchanged. John Scifibones 18:55, 12 February 2022 (EST)

Psychotic

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=psychotic%2C&type=Fiction+Titles; Lots of different editors, but I feel none of these are actually short fiction. --Username 10:55, 3 February 2022 (EST)

SFE Issue

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5216264; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5216277; SF-Encyclopedia has many cover images (and artist credits) that don't really show up in online searches; I was adding several covers (some new, some better than old ones on ISFDB) and artists today without a problem until those 2 linked above. Not sure what that warning means, but I'm sure someone here does. Other Mystic Rebel book covers will be replaced, too, but I'll wait until this is cleared up before doing that. --Username 13:43, 4 February 2022 (EST)

The message is very clear: "For SFE-hosted images, only links to /clute/, /langford/ and /robinson/ sub-directories are allowed.". The link you are trying to add is to a fourth subdirectory (/gal/spy_guys/) for both which we do NOT have permissions to link directly to. It is a public image but we cannot deep-link to it - the same way we cannot link to the the Goodreads images directly. Either you need to find these covers elsewhere or you need to bring them in our DB - we cannot link to them in SFE.

In addition, even for the images in the 3 sub-directories which we are allowed to use from SFE, we cannot use the images links as they are, we need to use a special format ("For images hosted by this site, the URL of the associated Web page must be entered after a '|'" - so image_link|page_where_the_image_is_linked_in_SFE and not just image_link.) - we have a few sites like that so if the yellow message reminds of that, the rules will need to be followed or we cannot link to that cover. Annie 13:56, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Well, I remember Mystic Rebel because I replaced 4 covers out of the 6 books in the series with better ones on Amazon months ago, and the editor who worked on these books originally is long gone, so the SFE covers are the best anyone's going to get (they're all beautifully framed and photographed, definitely better than Amazon's). However, I hesitate to upload covers unless they're for rare or small-press books; if I uploaded better covers for every mass-market PB I wouldn't have time for anything else. So I think what I'll do is cancel the 2 edits I made and just add a link on the Mystic Rebel series page here to SFE's page for these books so people can see the covers if they wish. Also, none of the many other SFE covers I added/replaced today had any error messages, and I believe SFE made major changes to their site recently, so all that stuff about adding "|" and sub-directories may be outdated. In the future, I'll add covers with no warnings and delete ones with warnings so I don't receive any more angry messages. --Username 14:15, 4 February 2022 (EST)

There are no angry messages anywhere - deep linking to a source we are not allowed to link to or not following the rules of a source which imposes conditions to allow deep-links can get us in trouble (including SFE not allowing us to use any of their covers in this case). That's the reality of internet etiquette and permissions around deep-linking I am afraid - an image deep link means that we show the image here but use their bandwidth and they pay for the traffic while they don't really get a visitor to their site - which can get very expensive on some hosting plans (and that's why we need explicit permissions and we follow whatever conditions the source has).

I will ping Ahasuerus to check if the message for the format of the SFE links needs an update or if the software needs an update and we need a cleanup report to fix the ones added naked. Annie 14:27, 4 February 2022 (EST)

I think I figured it out; all acceptable images start with "x.sf-encyclopedia.com" while rejected ones start with "sf-encyclopedia.uk". --Username 14:30, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Different sites, different rules on the permissions we have. I pinged Ahasuerus anyway to make sure the software does what it is supposed to anyway - we've had wrongly coded permissions checks when the sites are close enough before. Annie 14:32, 4 February 2022 (EST)

I see original editor for these Mystic Rebel books was long gone but came back recently after a long absence; I had 1 dealing with them since then which didn't go well, so if anyone has any further questions about these books they can always ask that editor. Also, the site I got all images from is https://sf-encyclopedia.com/, but bad .uk images are also on that site, so the 2 sites seem connected. --Username 14:52, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Well, this is odd. I went back to the Mystic Rebel gallery and it's also on .com, and those images are acceptable. So I think what happened is some image I was looking for was linked to the UK site, and then further image edits here were all unacceptable because they were UK. So the key is to always make sure you're adding images from the .com site. --Username 15:05, 4 February 2022 (EST)

(unindent) Re: SFE links, it's a long and convoluted story. The short version is that the online version of SFE was originally sponsored by a UK publisher. Because of that association and -- presumably -- because of the expectation that SFE Web pages would help the publisher sell more books, our links to SFE pages had more restrictions than our links to other third party sites.

The publisher and the editorial team behind SFE parted ways in 2021. The SFE site is now under complete control of the SFE team. A few days after the transition I asked Dave Langford, their technical administrator, if the change of ownership meant that there was going to be a change to how other sites could link to SFE. The answer was that there would be no changes, at least in the short term. That said, Dave has more control over the software now, so perhaps things will change in the foreseeable future, but that's where we are at the moment. Ahasuerus 15:07, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Spot-checking a bunch of SFE URLs, I see that there may have been a change in the URL structure. I don't think I have seen URLs like x.sf-encyclopedia.com/gal/matthews/HancockHI-Gold.jpg before. Let me check with Dave... Ahasuerus 15:20, 4 February 2022 (EST)

We have our answer. For technical reasons, SFE is now using "x.sf-encyclopedia.com" and "sf-encyclopedia.uk" URLs interchangeably. The same rules apply to both sets of URLs. I will be updating the yellow warning later today, once the backups finish. Ahasuerus 12:33, 5 February 2022 (EST)

So does this mean my SFE edits on hold will be accepted, rejected, etc. (a few already were) and should I continue to add more (there are likely hundreds of them if not thousands) or wait? If your note means that any SFE cover image will get a yellow warning after today then I'm not even going to bother with them anymore. --Username 12:42, 5 February 2022 (EST)

It means "only links to /clute/, /langford/ and /robinson/ sub-directories are allowed." Your edits will be processed based on that. You can add any links under those subdirectories. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:02, 5 February 2022 (EST)

So checking my accepted edits I see that JLaTondre reverted every accepted SFE cover I added recently back to their old inferior covers except for 1 that's in Clute, Mr. Klein's Kampf, and even that was modified by him to add a pipe and other stuff to the URL. So even after the site is under new management and their links and everything else are being changed, this deal with only a few directories being usable, and even those needing to modify every URL with all that extra stuff, is still necessary? Is anyone going to ask the guy in charge now if maybe now that the old guard is gone they might want to become 1 of those sites that let ISFDB use their URL's without uploading? Their covers don't usually show up on Google Image searches, so the fact that they have MANY superior covers to the ones already on ISFDB is probably news to a lot of people. SFE might appreciate the traffic. How disappointing; those covers could have kept me occupied for months. --Username 14:08, 5 February 2022 (EST)

Ahasuerus did ask & received the response that there is no change. See the post of his you replied to above... -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:55, 5 February 2022 (EST)

And all links to the SFE images need to have the extended syntax with the pipe as described in our documentation as per our agreement with SFE. Annie 15:02, 5 February 2022 (EST)

(unindent) OK, I have updated the yellow warnings. As stated above, only links to /clute/, /langford/ and /robinson/ sub-directories are allowed for both sf-encyclopedia.com and sf-encyclopedia.uk. All of their URLs require the currently used "|" syntax. Ahasuerus 15:45, 5 February 2022 (EST)

Clarke and Dunsany

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisheryear.cgi?628+1998; added several missing covers for this publisher, but for this year I think 1 of those Correspondence editions is redundant and can probably be deleted. --Username 15:58, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Astounding/Analog links to luminist scans

Beginning in about 1960 there are no Internet Archive links for Astounding/Analog. Links to luminist are used instead. But those links go to a Google Drive account. Example in this issue. In my case, this leads to some rather iffy options for downloading the file rather than viewing online as with Internet Archive. This is not a method I trust.--swfritter 18:14, 4 February 2022 (EST)

I agree that we shouldn't be linking to scans of post-1926, i.e. potentially copyrighted, books/magazines uploaded to Google Drive and similar services. There is no way of telling what their copyright status may be without doing the kind of comprehensive copyright search that Gutenberg and similar sites do before they make scans and OCRs publicly available. Our editors and moderators are not well equipped to do that kind of work. Ahasuerus 15:53, 5 February 2022 (EST)

My problem is not with copyrights but with links to weird places. The most likely reason that there are no post-1960 Astounding/Analog scans on the Internet Archive is that they were properly copyrighted. Most of the magazines were not properly copyrighted and if they were copyrighted in the first place, the copyrights were quite often not properly renewed. It wasn't until about 1988 that copyrights did not have to be registered with the government. In any case, the worse that is likely to happen is a take-down notice.--swfritter 16:51, 5 February 2022 (EST)

Rename Andre Norton series

I would like to rename the Andre Norton series Jern Murdoc to "Zero Stone / Murdoc Jern". The actual character name is Murdoc Jern. The series is named "Zero Stone Series by Andre Norton (Series aka) Murdoc Jern" on the andre-norton.com website. Are there any objections? Thanks! Phil 13:16, 5 February 2022 (EST)

I believe I was the last editor to update this series name, but I don't recall the specifics and have no objections. At one point we had a discussion of Norton's numerous overlapping series and there were some arguments re: how they would be best organized, but I don't think we ever reached consensus. Ahasuerus 17:14, 5 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks. Submitted. Phil 18:06, 5 February 2022 (EST)

Approved. Ahasuerus 18:34, 5 February 2022 (EST)

Proposed Date help text revision

Cross-posted to R & S Discussions as well. I have a draft revision of the help text for publication dates available at User:MartyD/ProposedDateHelp for review. This is meant to codify/clarify existing rules/policies, not to define anything new or different. A special thanks to the early reviewers. Please comment on the discussion page there. Thanks! --MartyD 13:32, 5 February 2022 (EST)

The official Template:PublicationFields:Date has been updated with the proposed text. --MartyD 12:40, 12 February 2022 (EST)

Morlan's Amulet

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?16138; TP cover was missing, I added it, noticed the e-book cover here has the same creases and marks, typed e-book ISBN into Google Images, only 1 cover came up, [8], cover has A.R. Morlan's name below the title unlike other covers, so I don't know what's up but I think that may be the real e-book cover and the one here now is actually the TP cover which I just entered for the TP edition. --Username 13:50, 5 February 2022 (EST)

Bill Longley

As this is the Community Portal, I'm just letting our more recent editors know that our mod Bill Longley passed away this day in 2014. He was a knowledgable and popular guy, he used to run an ISFDB blog over on Live Journal, and he shepherded my early years here. I wonder is it worth updating his reference work Using the ISFDB? Raising a glass in your memory, Bill. PeteYoung 16:31, 5 February 2022 (EST)

Bill was a good person and a valued contributor. Unfortunately, his guide is obsolete, but then it's been almost 9 years, an eternity in ISFDB terms. I am also not sure we could update it because the copyright page says "This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form". If an editor wants to preserve and update the information, it may be better to review Bill's guide and use it as an inspiration to fill in any lacunae that Help may have. Ahasuerus 17:12, 5 February 2022 (EST)

Claude Y.

https://www.ebay.fr/itm/393657246869; French-speaking people, this caught my eye, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?297863, because the author's name is actually Yelnick. That eBay link shows his true name but not on title page, so it's possible it's wrong there; also, there's a French price on the back, but I hesitate to enter that because I don't know how many editions this went through. So if anyone more familiar wants to take this. EDIT: some edition is here under his right name, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?565110. --Username 11:41, 6 February 2022 (EST)

Comic Book Adaptations

I'm holding this edit. The publication being edited appears to be a comic book adaptation of Stevenson's story. I know that we have some exceptions for graphic novels of above the threshold authors (Gaiman comes to mind). I don't believe that this publication falls into that exception. If it did, we would need to track many other Classics Illustrated comics. Does anyone disagree? --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 10:02, 7 February 2022 (EST)

I agree with you - that one does not belong here. Robert Louis Stevenson is not above threshold. We had a conversation a few years ago on allowing adaptations of books which do belong here in their original form but it went nowhere and we never changed the policies on it. Annie 11:58, 7 February 2022 (EST)

I agree, as the rules currently stand, that one doesn't belong here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:43, 7 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks all. I have deleted the publication. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 06:46, 9 February 2022 (EST)

New yellow warning for language mismatches

The software has been modified to display a yellow warning when trying to import a title into a publication whose "referral" title has a different language. This should make it easier to catch errors dealing with titles like "1984" and "Solaris", which are spelled the same way in multiple different languages. Ahasuerus 16:25, 7 February 2022 (EST)

Fake Trek

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?52303; Actually first published in August 1996 according to copyright page, but this, [9], shows the subtitle to be different. There's a copy of the 1998 edition here, https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780060952761. Publisher of 1996 edition is very obscure; could it be related to this, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?17301? --Username 20:37, 7 February 2022 (EST)

Eddy Deco Cover

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/titlecovers.cgi?13902; The artwork is almost the same but the stuff at the top is different; should they merge or did Wilson really alter the cover for the later edition? EDIT: Also, after doing edits for several Wilson titles, I noticed 2 of his collections have "graphic format" next to them while the others don't. Should all have it or none? --Username 07:55, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Schwob's King

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?613064; I ran across this and the name jogged a memory; I remembered seeing this when I used to be an avid reader decades ago, but in English. Turns out it's this, http://50watts.com/filter/july-2008/The-King-in-the-Golden-Mask. One of those editions was at the Central Library in Jamaica, N.Y. I don't remember anything about the stories, but after looking further I found this, https://fantlab.ru/searchmain?searchstr=marcel+schwob+king, which reveals there was a 2012 Tartarus edition and a 2021 Zagava edition, and Open Library mentions a 2017 Wakefield Press edition but there's little info about it, plus no English edition is available on Archive.org. An editor named Hauck made all the edits for the French version on ISFDB, so maybe he'd like to know there are many English editions out there, although some seem to take stories from several of Schwob's French collections. --Username 11:22, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Application for self-approval status -- henna

Hello, Annie asked me if I would like to get self-approved status. I say yes, and promise to handle it carefully. What do you say? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Henna (talk • contribs) .

Support :) Annie 14:35, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Yes, absolutely, sort of overdue, I'd think. Christian Stonecreek 14:42, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Support --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 15:02, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Support. Definitely a good egg. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:32, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Agree MagicUnk 13:34, 10 February 2022 (EST)

Support --Willem 14:01, 10 February 2022 (EST)

Support. --MartyD 15:18, 10 February 2022 (EST)

Outcome

User:Henna is now a self-approver. Ahasuerus 15:38, 13 February 2022 (EST)

Invalid HREFs in Notes/Synopses

The cleanup report Invalid HREFs in Notes has been redesigned. In the past, it was limited to Publication notes. The new version covers all record types (titles, series, authors, awards, etc) and does a better job of finding malformed HREFs. It also superseded the cleanup report "Mismatched Double Quotes", which has been retired.

The new data will become available tomorrow morning; I expect approximately 220 records to be flagged.

Please note that the HTML standard requires that all HREFs to have double quotes around URLs. Most modern browsers try to be forgiving about missing quotes, but some older browsers get confused. The cleanup report will flag notes with missing quotes. Ahasuerus 17:28, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Page count for books with cross book numbering

I'm adding a publication (The Two Towers) that starts on page 399. Should I use the rule for magazines and compute a page count? --GlennMcG 21:07, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Compute the number of pages for the "Pages" in the publication field but use the actual number printed in front of the contents (And add a note explaining what is going on). Annie 21:17, 8 February 2022 (EST)

Podwil's Perfect Day

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1993568; I added cover to $1.50 undated Fawcett ed. of I. Levin's This Perfect Day, same cover as $1.75 1976 edition linked above, so cover art clearly dates from earlier in case anyone knows when it was first used. --Username 21:32, 9 February 2022 (EST)

Fulton

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/greenwichtime/name/elizabeth-fulton-obituary?id=10021405; I ran across this, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?45058, and remembered that cool cover from when the book first came out. While trying to find a better cover I found that the author died last year; also, her other novel is also on ISFDB, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?53251, under a different name. I remember finding a cover for Vengeance months ago but not adding it here because the Tor logo didn't look like a 1987 one; although Amazon says that's the year, this, https://www.ebay.com/itm/143563408404, seems to have the right info, being from 1982. From the description on the back, I don't know what qualifies it for inclusion here; maybe Mhhutchins does because he entered it in 2014. So if anyone wants to they can add bio info to whichever name they think appropriate, and decide whether Vengeance belongs here, and if it does whether the 1987 printing actually exists. --Username 19:41, 10 February 2022 (EST)

15-Foot Spider

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/09/lifetimes/kin-r-it.html; Should there be 2 separate entries for this, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?717766, since they're really the same? EDIT: The '59, '63 and '90 issues have the same, uh, issue; I didn't check the 2000's issues. --Username 19:48, 10 February 2022 (EST)

Changing canonical name "Edgar Malboeuf" to "RavensDagger"

This author has published one novel (2013) as Edgar Malboeuf and 5 novels as "RavensDagger". He also has a large number of online serials being published as by "RavensDagger".

Given the fact that he averages over 90K words of fiction per month (sic), I expect that well over 95% of his publicly available output is as by "RavensDagger". I propose that we change his canonical name accordingly. Ahasuerus 21:23, 10 February 2022 (EST)

Looks like a good idea. Annie 12:19, 11 February 2022 (EST)

Done. Ahasuerus 12:14, 15 February 2022 (EST)

2 Ralph Smiths

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?8649; I was going to add (artist) to the 2nd guy but if that 1st guy's cartoon book isn't supposed to be here then there's no need to. Thoughts? --Username 08:38, 11 February 2022 (EST)

Dickens and Ghosts

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?720157; Original British edition was missing page # and cover, I added those, intro in later editions was also missing so I imported that, but it has a date of 1981-12-00 while book has 1982 date, so if anyone knows for sure 1 date should be changed. EDIT: Probably the 1981 date is correct because they would publish a Dickens collection for the Christmas holiday season; just my feeling. --Username 10:32, 12 February 2022 (EST)

Gray or Grey

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?3264; I found a copy of this on Archive.org mistakenly added to the pulp mag section; I added a link in an edit, but 1 story, Everil Worrell's "Gray Killer", is spelled "Grey Killer". As with my months-ago question about the different spelling of Stephen King's "Gray Matter"/"Grey Matter", is it necessary for this to be a variant or is it just a British quirk and should be left alone? I checked the other (American) publications the story appeared in and it's "Gray" in all of them. EDIT: Also, some of Thomson's Not At Night books are under Selwyn and Blount, some are under Selwyn & Blount; probably a standard name for this publisher should be decided on and all books grouped under the chosen name. --Username 11:41, 12 February 2022 (EST)

Cleanup reports temporarily unavailable

The cleanup reports are temporarily unavailable. The list of authors over 79 is so long now that the nightly process can't handle the volume and errors out. I plan to change the threshold to 85 tomorrow. Ahasuerus 21:50, 12 February 2022 (EST)

Let me clarify that the plan is to fix the software later today; the data will become available on Monday morning. Ahasuerus 09:58, 13 February 2022 (EST)

The software has been fixed. We should see the new data in about 3 hours. Ahasuerus 22:34, 13 February 2022 (EST)

Series and Series number fields added to the Make Variant Title page

Two new fields, Series and Series Number, have been added to the Make Variant Title page. Help will be updated shortly. If you come across any issues, please post your findings here. Ahasuerus 20:09, 13 February 2022 (EST)

Awesome. Any chance to also add Web Pages? Annie 12:01, 15 February 2022 (EST)

Sure, let me create an FR. Ahasuerus 12:26, 15 February 2022 (EST)

FR 1487, "Add Web Pages to Make Variant pages", has been created. Ahasuerus 12:28, 15 February 2022 (EST)

And the 4 checkboxes (novelization, juvenile and so on) - if one is a self-approver, they can ensure they are set in the variant and they will carry up when making the variant; if the editor is not self-approving and the edits are approved our of order, a subsequent edit will be needed just to set these on the parent later. I know this one will be much trickier but the Web Pages one should be easy enough I think? Annie 12:01, 15 February 2022 (EST)

Let me first make sure that we are talking about the same thing. The way the software works at the moment, the current values of the four title flags -- juvenile, novelization, non-genre, graphic format -- associated with a title are automatically copied to the newly created parent title. What you are requesting is the ability to set the new parent title's flag values explicitly at VT creation time, right? My only concern with that is that it could result in the two sets of flags getting out of sync if the submitter doesn't create another submission for the VT. I guess it shouldn't be much of an issue because any discrepancies would be caught by one of our cleanup reports. Ahasuerus 12:26, 15 February 2022 (EST)

They are already getting out of sync if the creation of the variant is approved before the edit that sets them on the child.

For self-approvers, that change is not needed - you set them on the variant, approve, then use Make Variant - otherwise you still need to go and edit the child later anyway. But for non self-approvers, they easily go out of sync when the approving is not done in the correct order.

The big challenge here is that if you make them explicitly settable here, it stops the "copy from variant to parent on creation" logic which takes care of those for self-approvers. Thus me calling it trickier. We need a way to indicate when the ones coming from the child are to be used... maybe build the logic to account for both: "if checked, set it as checked; if unchecked, use what is in the variant" thus enabling both ways to get them set. Annie 12:56, 15 February 2022 (EST)

Interesting points. I guess if one were to step back and consider the issue from a different perspective, one could argue that the 4 flags should only exist at the parent title level. After all, that's what we do with series and synopsis information. If memory serves, the reason why we originally allowed them to be set at the VT level was that we wanted to make them findable via Advanced Title Search. That said, I am not sure it's a big enough advantage to outweigh the added complexity and potential for confusion. Ahasuerus 16:32, 15 February 2022 (EST)

Robert (S.) Phillips

I added bio info here, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?19924, including the fact he died very recently. I think another item on ISFDB is by him but was mistakenly entered as a different author, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1034674, since it's mentioned here, https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/8630/circumstances-beyond-our-control, in Table of Contents and there's a mention of authors who were born in late 1930's-early 1940's like Robert S. He was well-known as a poet, as can be seen by the author image I added which is a book of poetry. EDIT: I had forgotten that I added a nytimes.com link to a 60's notice about his lady because it verified his middle name, but clicking on it now gets me nothing while the Wikipedia link next to it is fine. If anyone else can't open it then maybe there's something amiss with linking to the Times website, in which case I guess it'll have to go. --Username 23:31, 13 February 2022 (EST)

Messing With the Demon

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5223292; I just wrote one of the mods asking why he uploads to the Wiki old inferior covers after I add better covers to books he PV'd, and now I find this submission, which sat partially unaccepted for days because the same mod mentioned above has something against using full covers even if the art is continued on the back like this one, and today another mod finally accepted it, but rewrote my note about price and cover artist in order to add a few "the" words. I feel like I've mentioned this before, but altering my notes annoys me because 1 way I know when I've come across something I've previously worked on, which happens very often since I've done 20,000+ edits, is I write in a specific way so I know which notes were by me. Please stop doing this. Also, I'm no language expert, but is it correct that the transliterated title doesn't have the symbol over the first E in Angelique? --Username 09:38, 14 February 2022 (EST)

Aytoun or Maginn

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?891416; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1140889; Supernatural Index under Aytoun's name says for "The Man in the Bell": "error , should be William Maginn". There's a few other mentions of this online; Peter Haining could be blamed as usual except for the fact that the Aytoun credit also is in a 1935 book. I moved the note about Blackwood's over to Maginn's ISFDB page for this story, but some sort of variant mentioning error may be necessary. --Username 11:26, 14 February 2022 (EST)

Light and Twilight

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?786877; I added/fixed a bunch of stuff for this old book; the cover image I replaced the fake Amazon one with got a yellow "already on file" warning; it's on ISFDB for the Laurel reprint, but since that's a facsimile technically it's the cover of the original. If it's OK, let it stand; if not, accept my edit and then I will remove the cover credit afterwards. Just don't reject it and make me do the edit over again. --Username 00:38, 15 February 2022 (EST)

3 cleanup reports for Audible publications

The following 3 cleanup reports have been deployed:

• Pubs without an ISBN and with an Audible ASIN which is an ISBN-10
• Digital audio download pubs with a regular ASIN and no Audible ASIN
• Pubs with an Audible ASIN and a non-Audible format

The data will become available tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 16:10, 15 February 2022 (EST)

Greenhouse

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?17367; I just added OL ID to this; the cover has the extra verbiage and so does the title page, but is that really supposed to be part of the title or is it just a descriptive blurb since it appears above the title? Regular title on ISFDB doesn't have it but book itself does. --Username 20:22, 15 February 2022 (EST)

If it's on the title page, it's probably part of the title. Does the copyright page show a Library of Congress catalog information section? That will usually have the correct title. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:05, 16 February 2022 (EST)

Gadino

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=gadino&type=Name; Same person here. I added missing cover to Enchantress and then searched for artist's name; online info says he's a very famous poster artist and did covers for many gay and straight romance novels. I have a feeling some of his cover credits are missing on ISFDB; anyway, 1 name should probably be made a variant of the other, although I can't find any personal info on him to add. --Username 08:48, 16 February 2022 (EST)

I don't think they are the same person. Gadino was active 40-50 years ago, and Victor Gadino has only relatively recently started working in the field. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:11, 16 February 2022 (EST)