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Expanded archive listing

Affonso Arinhos de Melo Franco = Afonso Arinos

These [1] [2] are clearly the same person - same birthdate, deathdate, place of birth and Wikipedia EN link. Both only have a single, different, item in their bibliographies. I'm not familiar with Brazilian/Portuguese naming/publishing practices - does anyone have any opinion/preference on which should be the primary author record, and which the alternate?

Also, I note we have 3 different versions of the given name between the 2 records and the canonical/display and legal name fields: Affonso, Afonso and Alfonso. I propose to leave the display names as-is, but use "Afonso" as the legal name, as that is what Wikipedia EN and PT both have. If anyone can advise on whether "Arinos" should be grouped with the given name or the family name - as the two records split things differently at the moment - that would be helpful too. ErsatzCulture 12:46, 1 May 2022 (EDT)

More Recent Dead

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?463527; When my edit is approved, which entered all 3 dozen or so missing stories from the only place I could find with the page numbers, a JAPANESE site, could someone who owns this book check the Simon, Arnzen, Jeffrey, Gay and Ryan publication histories, which I assume are at the back because they're not at the front? Arnzen published a book of poetry in 2005 from NAKED SNAKE Press with the same title as his poem here, the Ryan story was a digital short on Amazon in 2013, and Gay's story was in online zine Guernica in 2010. The Jeffrey and Simon works I made the same date as this anthology because I can't find anywhere that says they were published elsewhere. EDIT: While searching for something completely unrelated today I found a copy of this book, uploaded Dec. 2019, hiding on Archive.org; probably why I couldn't find it earlier is because Open Library lists both the original anthology and this sequel under the same title heading. So I rejected the Japanese edit and made a new one crediting the Archive copy, but what's interesting is while I was right about the Arnzen, Ryan and Gay stories, Jeffrey's story is from Alt-Zombie (2012), which has no contents on ISFDB, while Simon's poem is from Dead Set (2010), which has contents on ISFDB but not that poem, so I assume whoever entered credits forgot or didn't have complete info. So after this is approved I'll have to fix a few dates, and then look at those other 2 anthologies and see what I can do. --Username 12:14, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

William Campbell

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?15478; The last 2 entries are for the guy who played Squire of Gothos on Star Trek; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Campbell_(actor). I don't think he's responsible for all the other stuff, but possibly those interviews aren't really supposed to be on here. Mods? --Username 00:57, 3 May 2022 (EDT)

Fixed. You really could do this on your own. But thanks! Christian Stonecreek 06:08, 3 May 2022 (EDT)

Deciding whether to completely delete non-ISFDB material wrongly entered here by other editors should be left up to moderators, not someone like me. --Username 09:45, 3 May 2022 (EDT)

Rhonda E.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2964977; Eikamp's name is correct on contents page of webzine and in her bio; should it just be corrected or is a variant really necessary? --Username 11:56, 3 May 2022 (EDT)

Wagner

https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.22068; I randomly came across the record for noted anti-Semite and Hitler's favorite composer Richard Wagner, and added an appropriate photo to it; however, I had no idea his works were published as books, but there they are. Funny that there's such a huge gap between the original editions and the modern ones; surely there are many more that are missing. However, the only copy on Archive.org I can find of his complete trilogy is a crusty 1910 copy from the reliable old Public Library of India; I'm sure Arthur Rackham's illustrations were beautiful but in this poorly scanned copy they all look like Rorschach tests. I thought I'd mention it here in case anyone wants to enter it. --Username 20:25, 4 May 2022 (EDT)

Basil Copper Questions

I don't usually enter page # for editions that already have them entered for another edition with the same # of pages, but in this case, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?283565, the contents were out of order so I decided to enter the #. That opened up a bunch of other issues; first, someone wrote a note saying they got the month, November, from amazon.uk, but I only see a Jan. 1 date which means they didn't know when it was published, but certain other Amazon sites have an exact date of 11-16-1978. Where they got that from is unknown because book only says 1978, so if anyone knows of a photo showing publisher's slip with exact publication date then the date can be changed. Also, the 4 original stories were never given the month so I did that, but story lengths for 3 of them them weren't entered, either. 2 of them were obvious and were fixed, but "The Treasure of Our Lady" is right on the edge between novelette and novella, being 48 pages both in hardcover and paperback, so anyone who owns a print copy could do a word count and enter whatever the right length is. "The Great Vore" is a novella (fixed by me, also) but is on ISFDB in an issue of The Urbanite which only mentions his story "The Flabby Men" on the cover; there's no way they could have fit it into such a small mag so either someone here goofed and entered it incorrectly or there's just an extract in the magazine, so if anyone knows it can be fixed. Finally, Dalby's site says 219 pages for the Hale edition, just like the St. Martin's edition, but someone entered 224 here; many people worked on it over the years, so it's hard to tell who did it, but since Hale and St. Martin's editions back then were usually exactly the same except for prices and other minutiae, I suspect it's really supposed to be 219. --Username 14:27, 5 May 2022 (EDT)

2022-05-06: Brief downtime at 11am server time

The server will be unavailable between 11am and 11:05am. A software patch to automate the process of adding ISFDB templates will be installed. Ahasuerus 10:42, 6 May 2022 (EDT)

Everything should be back up. If you come across any issues with Notes templates, please post the URL of the affected record here. Ahasuerus 11:04, 6 May 2022 (EDT)

Tem Title

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?34535; S.R. Tem's recent collection Thanatrauma has no contents entered here, but Best New Horror Vol. 31, not entered on ISFDB yet, has a story by him from that collection. While checking his online PDF bibliography there was a note that said the limited HC (only TP and E are entered here) contains an extra story, "Again, the Hit and Run", from 1981's Chrysalis 9, so I added that info to the title record, but there's no such story title, it's "Again, the Hit and Miss". Only sites that show the latter title are ISFDB and Philsp, so I assume that's where the info came from. The former title is much more common online, so I suspect it's the correct one, but there doesn't seem to be any photos of Chrysalis 9 contents online. A lot of older SF buffs on here, so I'm sure someone owns it and can verify what's the real title; problem then is how many other titles in the 10 volumes of Chrysalis may be wrong here. --Username 13:04, 6 May 2022 (EDT)

Peter Crowther Story/Collection

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2902166; Crowther published a collection with same title in 2021, not entered here; that's what the review is of, not the individual story. --Username 13:44, 6 May 2022 (EDT)

Please bring that to the attention of the PV: he might not see it here and would have to be asked anyway. Christian Stonecreek 07:31, 7 May 2022 (EDT)

Done. They've already made an edit for the collection and imported contents; that was fast. --Username 10:26, 7 May 2022 (EDT)

Haha, you're welcome. ;) PeteYoung 10:29, 7 May 2022 (EDT)

Oz Books

https://archive.org/details/@ximm?query=oz; 1916 Rinkitink edition has Reilly & Lee as publishers but note on ISFDB says they didn't appear until 1918. I'm sure some of these other books will be useful, too. This dude Ximm never had anything except cover photos whenever I came across him on the Archive, but I guess years ago he did add some actual books. --Username 14:38, 6 May 2022 (EDT)

Wikipedia dates Reilly & Britton becoming Reilly & Lee after 1918, which would put the 1916 first edition of Rinkitink as published under the original name of the firm. Happily, there are numerous bibliographies of Baum and Oz available. The Book Collector's Guide to L. Frank Baum and Oz is one such example. Unfortunately, the two scans of Rinkitink (ignoring the Gutenberg link) in the page you cite do not have enough of the book scanned to uniquely identify the printing. They aren't of the first or second printings which all have "Reilly & Britton" on the title page though there are binding variants of the 2nd with "Reilly & Lee" on the spine. Given that the color plates do not have captions, this is likely a printing from about 1919 or 1920. It could be further narrowed down by the titles listed on the verso of the ownership page, which is missing from the scans. If the verso listed titles through The Tin Woodman of Oz it would be ca. 1919. The ca. 1920 printing lists titles through Glinda of Oz. The captions with the plates were added with a variant of the ca. 1920 printing. The color plates were gradually discontinued beginning in 1932 and were completely gone by 1935. You could add an undated printing for this scan if you'd like. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:14, 10 May 2022 (EDT)

Holy Christ, that was a beautiful block of info. Alas, I'm not really into the whole "minor variant" thing, but if I see any books in Ximm's collection that look unique I'll try to enter them. I wrote the above info mainly because I know there are people here who like entering multiple editions of the same book and detailing all the little differences, so this looked like a trove they could use. EDIT: Something I just noticed; The New Wizard of Oz is from Bobbs-Merrill, did a search and that's the only Oz book on ISFDB by that company, but Ximm's copy seems to be the 1903 original which isn't entered here (1903 here is 2nd ed.), and the page count, 208, fits the much later editions, not the earlier ones. Also, the copyright is 1899, because the original book was titled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but date here is 1900, with a long note explaining why. So there's some things to start with. --Username 19:14, 10 May 2022 (EDT)

No, the cover is not that of the first printing of the second edition (First edition with the title change to The New Wizard of Oz), that cover was first used for the fourth edition (ca. 1920), but binding cloth is wrong and the fourth edition has 259 as the last numbered page. The archive.org edition appears to be the 4th printing of the Fifth edition which was published in the mid-1930s. It is bound in light green cloth which started with the 3rd printing and it lacks a printers imprint on the copyright page which distinguishes it from the 3rd and 5th printings. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 21:30, 10 May 2022 (EDT)

Dead Lee

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?152739; Death date given as 1986 but book is 1993; also, http://www.crimefictioniv.com/Part_17A.html, which says Ann, not Anne, with a note saying they corrected her middle name. --Username 20:21, 7 May 2022 (EDT)

1992 & 1993 Hugo Awards - "Preliminary Nominees" entries

I noticed that the 1992 and 1993 Hugo data has several entries categorized as "Preliminary Nominees". I don't know if it's defined anywhere was exactly that term is supposed to mean - Schema:awards doesn't go into any detail - but I'm guessing it's for long lists and/or awards that have multiple rounds of nomination/voting, which AFAIK has never applied to the Hugos. ErsatzCulture 12:36, 9 May 2022 (EDT)

Our "Special" award levels were created to reflect the variety of scenarios that we had come across over the years. There are no exact definitions; editors just use whatever seems the closest to the nomination that they happen to be working with. Ahasuerus 18:49, 9 May 2022 (EDT)

I dug out the stats PDF for the 1993 awards, and that indicates those entries are titles that weren't finalists, but appeared on at least 5% of ballots. That implies to me that these records would be better categorized as either "Honorable Mention" (which is what they are listed as in that PDF, and which was used for the 1962 Hugos, or "Nomination Below Cutoff" (which is what has been used for the "best of the rest" records since 1995).

Thoughts? ErsatzCulture 12:36, 9 May 2022 (EDT)

If the official PDF lists them as Honorable Mentions, that's what they should be listed as here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:11, 9 May 2022 (EDT)

Thanks both. Unless there are any objections raised here, I'll switch the offending records from "Preliminary Nominee" to "Honorable Mention" in a few days' time.

BTW, I see we also have a gap for these not-quite-Hugo-finalists between 2003 and 2009 inclusive. I see that the full stats for 2003 at the very least were published, so I guess I've just created a mini-project for myself to add all those in... ErsatzCulture 16:58, 11 May 2022 (EDT)

Asimov's A Problem of Numbers marked as non-genre

This story is not speculative in any way or form. After adding its original magazine, it had been marked as such. If anyone disagrees, please point me to the part that would make it speculative - I did not spot even a hint of it while reading it. :) Thanks! Annie 18:40, 9 May 2022 (EDT)

Superhorror

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?35586; Donald Grant actually Don Grant (FantLab flap photo), but that's alternate of Donald M. Grant, who didn't do cover art, so I made it Don Grant (artist); real artist Donald Grant only did French covers. Who's this mysterious Don? While doing this I noticed Gordon Grant's art credit actually belonged to Gordon Grant (artist), so I fixed that, too. --Username 19:53, 9 May 2022 (EDT)

Sometimes cover art is licensed, too, and sometimes people who normally only work in one language will do work in another. This is especially true of art, since it generally doesn't require any translation or modification. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:20, 10 May 2022 (EDT)

Alphabetizing secondary verifications

We are up to 14 secondary verification sources. They are not sorted on most Web pages and it can take a few seconds to find the one that you need. I propose that we alphabetize them. Ahasuerus 16:33, 10 May 2022 (EDT)

I like that idea. It will make finding them easier, especially if we add more. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:06, 11 May 2022 (EDT)

Right! For now the list seems sufficient, but upon adding more and more, it'll be better to have them ordered. Christian Stonecreek 13:34, 11 May 2022 (EDT)

The change has been implemented. Thanks for the comments! Ahasuerus 17:57, 13 May 2022 (EDT)

French Dark Love

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?70551; Mes amis, this, https://archive.org/details/noircommelamour0000unse, has 2000 date on p. 511 but has Albin Michel as publisher, not LGF as OL says, and the cover's gray, not green like the original edition. French contents were never entered here, so this is some sort of edition to be entered. --Username 21:15, 10 May 2022 (EDT)

Szabo B.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?212434; cover of 2 zombie books is same, PV of 1st long-gone, Balasz is not used in either 1 on Archive.org, it's Balaz in both. --Username 12:37, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

Satanists

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1317298; I did several edits for this anthology today; it was a mess, with both HC having no page #, but more importantly Haining's introduction being given its actual title and the 2 Sun essays having to be imported to the editions that were missing them (and both being misspelled). But the Derleth intro is the most curious, because it was only in the American Pyramid edition on ISFDB, but the cover of the American Taplinger edition clearly mentions it, so I imported that, but neither British edition mentions it; is it possible it was written especially for the Americans? I changed the date to match that of Taplinger, but if anyone can verify it was in the British HC then date can be adjusted (and imported to British PB if anyone can verify it was in there, too). --Username 14:39, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

Potter?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?2682; That Bloch cover looked familiar; turns out it was from Lisa Cantrell's Manse, so I changed artist to Bob Eggleton and made a variant; however, 2 of the other Potter books are OK but the Leiber cover has no variant (clearly Potter's style, though); so does anyone know where it originally came from? --Username 15:33, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

Which books are you meaning? You linked to a publication series with a bunch of titles. You can post links to the specific publications, that will be helpful. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:10, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

I would have, except there's only 1 Leiber book on the page. When I wrote that the other 2 books are OK that meant I didn't need to ask anything about them. --Username 19:25, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

It still would have reduced the effort required to figure out what you're talking about if you have linked directly to the publication. Like that. The easier you make it for people to help you, the quicker you'll get the response you want. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:07, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

Having another one of your bad days, Joe? Also, if you're going to reject so many of my author images because they're book covers, regardless of how uncommon they are or whether, as in Richard Wagner's case, they illustrate an important point about the man himself, not to mention that I've seen probably thousands of author images on ISFDB that are book or magazine covers, raising the question of why those were accepted by you and other mods, especially since in many/most cases non-book/magazine images are available online, and you're going to unnecessarily import photos to the Wiki, the least you could do is find images that aren't at the top of the authors' Wikipedia pages, as is the case with all 3 (Wagner, Fuller, Brown) you rejected today. Also also, what's the point of deleting Green Manifesto out of all the contents reviewed in that magazine issue, negating the substantial info I added to its record, instead of just marking it "non-genre" like countless other books on ISFDB? --Username 20:19, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

Please stop being a jerk. We aren't your slaves, and you seem to take great glee in being as obtuse and difficult as possible. You've been asked countless times now to include reasons for your submissions, to include links to what you're specifically talking about in your posts here, and to not treat moderators as your personal slaves. Still, you persist. If you took just a couple extra moments to make our job easier, you wouldn't have so many submission waiting for approval or questions left unanswered here because you refuse to use common courtesy. This is a collaborative project, so please try to be a little more collaborative in the future.

Regarding author images, it's always best to use an image that isn't a book cover as using the book cover is somewhat iffy when it comes to fair use. If there's an acceptable image, even if it's used on Wikipedia, then we should use that image (or one of the images, if there are multiple images available). Any authors that are using a full book cover as the author image should be reviewed to see if there's a better image available.

As for the non-genre book and review that were removed, they were removed because the book is non-genre (it's a political book about steps that should be taken to save the planet) and neither author is above the threshold (this non-genre book was their only work recorded here). I placed the review information in the notes of the publication in which the review appeared. I noticed it appeared to be non-genre, so I checked to see if the authors were above the threshold. When I discovered they weren't, I deleted it. Pretty simple, really. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:33, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

Uploaded But Unused

With the recent Bruno Elettori or whatever his real name is discussions I was looking at books with his cover art and did a few cleanups for the James V. Smith books, but as I went to upload the Grafton cover for Beaststalker it told me there was already an image, and it turns out that OSTRICHSACK uploaded it in 2018 but never actually added it to the book's record, so I did. Is there a way to check and see how many other cover images they may have uploaded but never added? --Username 11:48, 15 May 2022 (EDT)

I think Ahaseurus might need to make a special report that shows that. The wiki has an Unused images special page, but it likely doesn't know if they are used by the main database (since that's outside the wiki software). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:21, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

You are correct that Unused images is only for the wiki and does not take the database into account. It gets tricky finding true unused ones as some images (example, alternate covers or back covers) are only used in notes so you cannot just look at the publication image field. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:24, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

It would probably require it to review all the images in that list of unused images, then check the direct URLs for those images against those used in the database, and eliminate any that are used. A report could then be generated based on those images remaining. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:24, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

Advanced Search options limited to registered users for performance reasons

All Advanced Search menu options have been limited to registered users for performance reasons. Hopefully this should help with the robot problems that we have been having recently. We'll see how it goes and tweak other software components as needed. Ahasuerus 17:58, 15 May 2022 (EDT)

Severance Package

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1360869; I don't think that HC with the insane price was ever published; this link, https://picclick.com/Severance-Package-by-Duane-Swierczynski-Paperback-First-Edition-224552226535.html, doesn't mention an earlier edition on copyright page (although there is a 2007 date also; not sure what that's about, so maybe the book was delayed). --Username 20:42, 15 May 2022 (EDT)

LibriVox

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?29415; I added a link to the 2022 Vampire Nemesis, was told it should be made its own record, and that was just approved; I'm wondering why there's such a huge gap, 2015-2022? Did they go out of business and then recently start again, or is there 7 years worth of genre works that were never entered here? --Username 11:19, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

By a (probably not) coincidence that gap corresponds to the time frame in which I was inactive. Sounds like a good project to go through The Fantastic Fiction links that appear on this page. Each category may be listed by release date and sorted by most recent.--swfritter 19:40, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

Mon Mohan

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/note_search_results.cgi?OPERATOR=contains&NOTE_VALUE=mon+mohan; Notes about Brian Aldiss book cover designs by this person, but they also have a cover art credit, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?232231, which is blank. --Username 13:01, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

Empty record deleted. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:25, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

Nicobobinus

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?17241; I added Amazon cover to Puffin edition but it's blurry because it's small; Archive.org copy has no OL cover and it's a later printing anyway with a higher price; the interior illustrations likely come from the original British HC edition which is not entered here, and possibly belong to the American edition, too (and the American cover likely dates from British HC edition), and the Puffin cover seems similar but not quite to the earlier editions, plus there's a German edition on Goodreads which has a completely different cover but other foreign editions have the same cover online. So maybe people here own any one of these many editions and can enter them here to lessen the confusion. EDIT: Also, I wonder if anyone knows why the cover image for the American edition on OL shows a cartoon of Riker from Star Trek: TNG taking a dump on a toilet that not only has the expected brown stains but also what looks like radioactive slime. Also, he's reading a Star Trek magazine; very meta. --Username 14:07, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

Dark Voices

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?12252; Heads up that after someone uploaded Dark Voices 2 to Archive.org a year and a half ago the other volumes, most of which weren't published in America, are being added, but weirdly someone added 4 to Community Texts back in March while someone else just added it to Books to Borrow, which seems pointless since the Community edition is fully readable. However, 5 is also there (in Books to Borrow); what's odd about this volume is that while almost all the contributors are semi-famous/famous genre authors, the last story is by a complete genre unknown American, Myrna Elana, who apparently published no other horror fiction (regardless of her bio which says she's at work on a horror novel) and seems to have spent her time publishing and writing LESBIAN EROTICA. --Username 18:50, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

Tales of Terror

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?783292; This seems like a problem, because the ISBN seems to be from the Magnet PB here, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1786522; the Methuen (not Metheun) HC was already entered years earlier. Delete? --Username 13:06, 17 May 2022 (EDT)

The Surrogate Covers

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?998393; I added OL ID to Signet edition which has been on Archive.org since 2010; someone here added cover artist based on Paperbacks From Hell, but the British edition has most of the same art, except they changed the doll. Should cover art credit be imported? British copy on eBay doesn't have any credit. --Username 08:40, 18 May 2022 (EDT)

Thinner

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?414371; I just entered the real 1985 Bachman edition; this has a price almost double and should really be in the Stephen King record judging by the note. PV's gone so someone should decide what to do with this; maybe they have a copy of this edition. --Username 12:41, 18 May 2022 (EDT)

Gutenberg and LibriVox publications

Note. Some issues re Webpages links from our title and publication records pertain equally to HathiTrust Digital Library, and the Internet Archive, for instance, but we do not treat HDL and Archive.org images as publications.

We treat Gutenberg texts and LibriVox audio-recorded readings as publications. I understand we do not treat different file formats as different publications. Right? Therefore, it seems to me appropriate that our publication records link to Gutenberg and LibriVox catalogue pages (let me call them) which offer visitors a choice of formats. Right?

I find that our publication records of Gutenberg and LibriVox editions generally do not link to Gutenberg and LibriVox at all. Advanced search yields these counts of records whose Webpages field "contains" the string (that is, as part of a URL):

librivox : 1762 titles, 2 publications [publisher LibriVox, 710]
gutenberg : 12 titles, 5 publications [publisher Project Gutenberg, 4494]
archive.org : 3314 titles, 4882 publications
hathitrust : 468 titles, 68 publications
loc.gov : 18 titles, 18 publications

Evidently we are migrating archive.org links from title to publication records. And not migrating librivox.org links.

I conducted these searches today after submitting my first update of a LibriVox publication 5321408, in which I did add what would be our third publication Webpage at librivox.
(FWIW, I don't think we should have any LibriVox publications that neglect to identify the reader when LibriVox does so [always, I guess]; it appears that I updated such a one without adding that datum. So I have some sympathy.)

A majority (3) of our 5 publications with webpages at gutenberg[.something] are non-gutenberg editions for which gutenberg is one of our sources. Two are gutenberg.net.AU pages for PG of Australia ebooks.

Probably I missed a policy: we don't use the Webpages field to link the publisher's product page for the edition/printing. Right? --Pwendt|talk 21:52, 20 May 2022 (EDT)

It depends:

All Project Gutenberg publications automatically link to their respective Project Gutenberg pages. The ISFDB software creates the link automatically which is under "Other Links" in the left menu. There is no need to duplicate it in the web page field.

Thanks. I had forgotten that Gutenberg link in the margin.

We don't generate such a link for publication records of PG Australia ebooks, so our present Webpages links to gutenberg.net.au (2 of those 5 gutenberg links) are appropriate. Probably we should link gutenberg.ca among Webpages of PG Canada ebooks for the same reason. --Pwendt

For Library of Congress, if it is a LoC Catalog Number, then it should go in the External IDs which will automatically create a link. For older pubs (such as Famous Mystery Stories), the link is not the LoC Catalog record (https://lccn.loc.gov/22005893), but to a LoC hosted scan of the publication (https://www.loc.gov/item/22005893). I would still add the LoC Catalog number to to publication record.
The others are generally publication specific items and should be in the publication web link. However, we have not always had a publication web field and so older ones were entered at the title level. There has not been a systematic cleanup to move them to their respective publications.
As for publisher webpages, it depends. If the webpage is for that specific publication and has meaningful information, it can be on the publication level. If it's just an ad, I wouldn't bother.

Hope that helps. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:05, 21 May 2022 (EDT)

(contd from inline above) By "publisher" I did mean narrowly Gutenberg for ebooks and LibriVox for audiobooks --publisher page being the one with metadata and a choice of formats, all of which we consider a single publication.

My move of one link to LibriVox was approved overnight, so I am happy to update:

* librivox : 1761 titles, 3 publications

I agree with the apparent consensus that it has low priority. For me something to do given another reason to revise the records, such as here--to identify the translator. --Pwendt|talk 13:46, 22 May 2022 (EDT)

Index of Project Gutenberg Works ...

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Haggard, ed. David Widger, 2018-10-29, Ebook #58163 : catalogue page ; html format (top)

What should we make of Ebook #58163? Is it NONFICTION we should acquire? Is its catalogue page no more than an Author webpage? Or something in between? --Pwendt|talk 22:03, 20 May 2022 (EDT)

As it is a downloadable ebook, it is within the ISFDB scope. It can be entered as NONFICTION as we do with physical checklist publications. It is more a question as to whether you feel there is enough value in the Project Gutenberg indexes to take your time adding them or if you have other work you would rather do. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:10, 21 May 2022 (EDT)

Darkfuse

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2072743; Wordgrinder entered Penkas story as "Note Seen" in HC; they haven't been here in many years, and ISFDB is the only search on Google for "Note Seen", so it's likely "Not Seen", in case anyone else has the HC and can correct it. --Username 08:53, 23 May 2022 (EDT)

Twenty Years (or, It Just Feels Like It)

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5317059; I was confused about this until I realized I submitted my edit on 5-14 and a person who isn't a regular coincidentally PV it and entered price info a couple of days after me which was approved very quickly (cough), so now instead of my entry of the page #'s from the only copy I could find on the web that actually showed contents page being approved I'm supposed to check with this person first, who didn't enter those #'s even though they must have a copy otherwise they wouldn't have PV it; if anyone else wants to enter those page numbers and then check with PV go ahead, since I'm not re-doing rejected edits anymore. Now that I look at edit history I realize this person deleted my price info which was entered months ago and just replaced it with their own instead of adding their info to my existing info; talk about etiquette. --Username 10:13, 23 May 2022 (EDT)

For Want of a Nail

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5317182; Can anyone substitute a better cover that isn't faded and dirty like the current one but also shows the NAIL on the right side? --Username 10:21, 23 May 2022 (EDT)

Gilbert Wright

While checking info for an unnecessarily rejected edit of mine I came across this, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?15653; I doubt a British artist from 1911 also published a story in a 1945 American magazine (Blue Book), but it's possible, in case anyone knows for sure, and if they're not the same then (artist) could be added to the 1911 guy. --Username 11:19, 24 May 2022 (EDT)

Confusing Cacek

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?3865; Someone's been entering missing collections of P.D. Cacek's short stories lately, and I noticed that "...with bright and shining eyes..." was entered as original, but I knew that wasn't right because I added a gothic.net link a while back, remembered from when I found it years ago, and also entered info for Quietly Now, the anthology where the story either first appeared or was reprinted, hard to tell. However, as I checked further there were like half-a-dozen stories by her that were marked original that really aren't, and it's hard to say how titles appeared because a lot of them appeared in REALLY obscure publications. So I mention all this in case when my variant edits are approved anyone may look into them further and possibly un-variant a few, because some of them seem pretty fishy to me and probably do have exactly the same titles between original publication and her collections and were just entered wrong here. --Username 21:45, 24 May 2022 (EDT)

Titled excerpts

What's the best way to handle excerpts that have their own title? I just came across a 6-page excerpt introduced as "There Are Elves Out There" [over] "An Excerpt from" [over] Born to Run. I think it should be a SHORTFICTION with a title note that it's an excerpt. Opinions? Phil 08:35, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

The help page spells it out clearly: " 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 yes, it should be "There Are Elves Out There", short fiction, with a note explaining that it is an excerpt and from where. Annie 14:59, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Thanks! Some days are just derp... Phil 15:09, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Oh, I know - too many different things to remember (some of which are not very common so they kinda get forgotten). Which is why I pointed out where it is in the help page - it may be my most visited page around here... :) Annie 15:12, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Rex Miller - Above the threshold?

I'm holding a submission to add a non-genre novel by Rex Miller. Do we think he is above the threshold? I see there is one non-genre story in his bibliography, but that is included in an genre anthology. What do folks think? --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 09:43, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

I am not familiar with this author's work, but reviews suggest that his main splatterpunk series, "Chaingang", is borderline SF at best. The only speculative element that I could find is that the serial killer protagonist seems to have a "danger sense" of sorts. Some plots are also wildly implausible to the point of being almost surrealistic, but not really speculative. If this can be confirmed, we may want to make these title "non-genre" or at least add notes explaining that they are borderline SF. Ahasuerus 11:50, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

That's a different issue and if investigation bears out, we could change them. The submission I am holding is to add a new non-genre novel. I'm just trying to determine whether the consensus is that this author is above the threshold so that we should list all of his non-genre works. It was reviewed in Locus, but in 2015, Hauck converted it to a review of a non-genre work. I assume the the original review was of type REVIEW and was presumably linked to a title record. I speculate that Hauck deleted any existing title or publication records for this novel at the same time. The ultimate question is whether we want to undo the 2015 work and re-add this novel. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 13:38, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

I don't think so - his horror is marginally ours because of essentially a sixth sense kinda thing; that should not make all his other work eligible though... Annie 15:03, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Hearing no arguments for including this title, I've rejected the submission. Thanks all. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 15:31, 29 May 2022 (EDT)

Shame about that; it would have been cool to have a novel about Vietnam approved on Memorial Day weekend. So I guess nothing changes with the Locus review, right? Anyway, to all my fellow Americans reading this, Happy Memorial Day and God Bless America. Before I go, I think now is an appropriate time to mention the case of the missing Trump, by which I mean that to-do months ago where some mod with a grudge didn't accept my photo of Trump because it had a political message on it, which resulted in someone else uploading a non-political photo to our Wiki, which then mysteriously disappeared recently, which I believe only a mod has the permission to do. I recently found another photo that I liked and that's in his record now, but I'm still curious about who was responsible for that; I'm sure the trail can be traced. --Username 18:23, 29 May 2022 (EDT)

Twin Lynches

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?23755; David K. Lynch just showed up on the recent activity list, and I see that interview belongs to the other David Lynch of Twin Peaks fame, but it's in a PV issue of TZ magazine, so a decision needs to be made about how to separate him from the other Lynch. --Username 10:19, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

PV Dagon

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?277149; Surprisingly there's still a lot of work to be done on Arkham House books, and while doing some I came across that page which is PV not by the usual Arkham PV but 2 uncommon PV, one of whom hasn't left a message in a year and a half (might need a "no longer active") and the other who clearly won't be responding to anything anymore judging by his messages, so someone may want to look at this, because that "none" under Catalog ID seems unnecessary. EDIT: Also noticed this is a rare Arkham book with an unstable Amazon image; didn't replace it but found this, https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/dagon-macabre-tales-p-lovecraft-1845762682, which is that 4th printing but has a $10.00 sticker over the previous price, so I don't know if that counts as another edition or what. --Username 11:50, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Curwen Street

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?63286; original Arkham has "House ON Curwen Street", not OF, and so does the Carroll & Graf which I just entered page #'s for. "Of" doesn't make sense, so this may be an entry error here of long standing. EDIT: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1358135 (right title with subtitle), http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?978579 (right title with shorter subtitle), http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?563345 (right title). --Username 12:57, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Kull

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234404262828; No Archive copies or searchable Google copies, 2 ISFDB records (1 of which likely should be deleted), eBay link verifies date on copyright page and price on back cover barcode, but # of pages is a mystery; is it 214, 256, 224 as Open Library says, or something else? Anyone here have a copy? http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?10220 --Username 18:01, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Bogus image-related yellow warnings fixed

I believe I have fixed the software bug which caused invalid yellow warning to be displayed on submission review pages for Author Edit and Clone Publication submissions when editing image URLs. If you come across anything unusual or unexpected, please let me know. Ahasuerus 13:46, 29 May 2022 (EDT)

Nightwalker Editions

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/nightwalker-thomas-tessier-centipede-1761310973; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?14418; I did a lot of Thomas Tessier edits recently, and I think most of them are approved now, but since I check my edits afterwards I see that apparently I forgot to backdate the intro by Jack Ketchum to 2008 because it was originally from Leisure, not Centipede. Checking further, the afterword by Tessier actually has a title, Back Then, so I fixed that and imported it into Centipede, too, and that Worthpoint link above shows a piece of it and after typing the phrase "was hot stuff" which I can barely make out I can confirm that it got a hit for the Google Books copy of the Crossroad Press edition, which is not on ISFDB but may be in that Tomes of Terror, which is a Crossroad omnibus; I don't see the Ketchum intro, though, so maybe they dropped it. So all this is a long way of saying that after all my Tessier edits are approved anyone owning any editions may want to do any further tweaking that may be needed, because they just reprinted the hell out of this guy's books, and Centipede's site going on about new material seems to be the usual publisher BS (unless there's also a new intro and afterword in that edition along with the old ones, in which case, go Centipede). --Username 23:34, 29 May 2022 (EDT)

Falcons of Narabedla

A few months back Stonecreek opened this discussion, suggesting Falcons of Narabedla should be a novella in stead of a novel. There were two responses, both against this change. Surprisingly (or not) yesterday he changed it anyway (see http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1946 here], except for four publications that have primary verifications by others (see here, probably because he knew this would leat to protests. Now we have the same text under two different titlerecords. Do we accept this behaviour? --Willem 05:37, 31 May 2022 (EDT)

This isn't correct and the changes should be reverted. We have the exception for works less than novel length being considered novels if they appear in an Ace Double. If someone wants to change that exception, we would need to reach consensus in the Rules and Standards board before doing so. I'd like to hear why Stonecreek made this change and split this title into two different ones. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 09:36, 31 May 2022 (EDT)t

I didn't split that title into two: there already was the novella of the same title (and also a CHAPBOOK): I have just merged the ones that were quite obviously publications of texts of the novella with the existing one.

I can only give advice to you, Willem, to do some research before pleading 'guilty': you then would have found Originally published in May, 1957, in Other Worlds magazine with publications maculated by you.

(An aside: you really want to state that the Ace Doubles have near to 350 words on a page?) Christian Stonecreek 04:45, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

Looking at last week's database dump, Stonecreek is correct that there was already a NOVEL and a SHORTFICTION (novella) record. However, in the processing of merging, Stonecreek turned what was the NOVEL record (1946) into the novella and created a new NOVEL record (3040549) with the old novella record no longer existing. This wasn't the greatest as any external links to the NOVEL record would now be incorrect. He also left a a novel publication under the novella record. While a discussion on how Ace Double should be handled is better suited for the Rules and standards, if these two records are really for the exact same text, having it as a NOVEL and a novella is not the best solution. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:27, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

Yeah, sorry for hitting the wrong title (1964) to merge with, could have bitten into my ass (and would have done so, if I would have been able to reach it).

I really do think we only have texts of novella length in this case, with the 1964 Ace publication maybe slightly expanded (or maybe just revised).

I just set out to adapt the remaining incongruency when this again unnecessary discussion popped up. Christian Stonecreek 08:55, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

Done. Christian Stonecreek 10:50, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

A few things:

I didn't split that title into two: yes you did. The novella in Otherworlds is completely different from the novel. I downloaded the text from Gutenberg, it has exactly 26.727 words and starts with the same phrase as the novel, but ends with "She smiled. "Does it?" But her bright eyes had given me my answer, and I never had to make up my mind again". Now this title is polluted with the expanded edition that ends with "I heard it, drew a deep breath and then put my arm around Cynara, calling to Adric to come and share it with me". A little research would have prevented this mistake. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Willem H. (talk • contribs) .

No, I didn't. I unmerged the falsely connected titles and merged them with an existing one. For your willingly not understanding mind that does mean that the split existed before. (added by Stonecreek)

Yes you did. You split out every non-verified record. Or do you really think the 188 page Portuguese edition, or the 154 page trade paperback contain the short version? And what is your source for the e-book editions? --Willem 05:55, 7 June 2022 (EDT)

No, I didn't: two versions were there before, and the same two versions are there after. And do you have nearer insight of the Portuguese edition (any word count, number of pages with fiction, no illustrations or other additional material), and yes, the tp seems to hold a text of only novella length, like the one that was already there). (added by Stonecreek)

See above for how the two versions end. It's quite easy to determine which it is, or should I ask Mavmaramis since you refuse to answer questions? --Willem 14:12, 11 June 2022 (EDT)

Originally published in May, 1957, in Other Worlds magazine is not mentioned in the Ace double editions. Only "©1964, by Ace Books, Inc." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Willem H. (talk • contribs) .

You may have noted that these publications still have (mistakenly, see above and below) the text as novels. (added by Stonecreek)

Yes. and don't you dare touch these! So far I count two people opposing your change, and you are the only one in favor. --Willem 05:55, 7 June 2022 (EDT)

Well, two people vs. me and your own estimate: It's possible that it's a novel, but the estimates do point towards a higher likelihood that it is a novella. So, I repeat again: why do you do an estimate and then don't use it? Please explain. Christian Stonecreek 06:54, 11 June 2022 (EDT)

I will use it, but I have the habit of discussing things before making changes. --Willem 14:12, 11 June 2022 (EDT)

you really want to state that the Ace Doubles have near to 350 words on a page?: no, it's only 323 words per page. I counted (in the 2nd printing) three (average) pages, and that's the average. Multiplied by 127 pages of text that gives 39.729 words or very close to novel length. How did you count Christian? --Willem 15:32, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

That's close to novel length but still below. How do you come to the conclusion that a count below a threshold qualifies a text to lie above it? I do think your argumentation is getting weirder and weirder and deviates more and more from facts, Willem. Christian Stonecreek 01:44, 2 June 2022 (EDT)

Ever heard of a margin of error Christian? It's less than 1%, so unless you want to count every word in the book, it should remain as it was. By the way, you didn't answer my question. By what method tid you reach the amazingly incorrect wordcount of the publications of the original novella can't have more than 35,000 words. See above for an exact wordcount of the novella. Either your count is 8.000 too high (if you counted the novella), or 5.000 words too low (if you counted the novel). --Willem 05:55, 7 June 2022 (EDT)

What is wrong with 'can't have more than 35,000 words' when the actual word count lies below it? It was a very rough estimate for an upper limit - just to ensure the title type - but absolutely correct to ensure it's of novella length. I do give a specific range (for example 30,000 - 32,000), when the estimate is finer.

And why do you do an estimate when you don't intend to use the result?

Your estimate seems to be quite incorrect: there are 12 chapters for which one has easily to substract about 1,000 words (likely more) for empty space around their respective beginnings / endings. And this would put the corrected estimate for the expanded / revised 1964 version at about 38,000 - 39,000 words, I think. Christian Stonecreek 08:54, 7 June 2022 (EDT)

So you finally do acknowledge that there are two different versions of the story. Now which version did you do a "very rough" word count of, the original novella or the expanded edition? Your remarks above seem to imply the first. You verified two publications, the German translation and the 1984 http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?640300 Arrow edition]. I can't imagine you used the German translation (could be abridged), so that leaves the Arrow wdition, but according to Worldcat and the British Library that one states ©1964, the date of the Ace version and thus the expanded edition. Please explain. --Willem 16:03, 10 June 2022 (EDT)

So your counting ability has also suffered a loss, you may have to count again. Christian Stonecreek 06:54, 11 June 2022 (EDT)

I copied the Other Worlds text of Falcons from the title to the last word using the "Full Text" option on Archive.org and pasted it on the site I mentioned somewhere above a while back, wordcount.com, and got these results: 27,462 Words 154,640 Characters 120,876 Characters without space 36,576 Syllables 1,890 Sentences 4,654 Paragraphs. In case that makes a difference as to what length it should be entered as here. --Username 07:25, 11 June 2022 (EDT)

Many thanks for your assistance; it seems that we do have the original text (novella - the one with an estimate of 27,462 words, first published 1957) and a somewhat expanded version (most likely a novella - by all word count estimates so far - Willem just conceded that his original estimate of 39.729 words was too high, this text was first published in 1964 by Ace). Christian Stonecreek 07:33, 11 June 2022 (EDT):

OK. Also, I just added Archive link to the 1974 Spanish-language edition, awaiting approval, which was uploaded early last year. There's also this, https://archive.org/details/Dimensions1419540506, which includes Falcons' first chapter and mentions in the uploader's note that the second chapter was published in the next issue of Dimensions, but that doesn't seem to be on Archive, and magazine went out of business so serialization was never completed, anyway. Also, https://archive.org/details/falconsofnarabedla_1709_librivox, because as I mentioned somewhere recently there's a huge gap in LibriVox entries on ISFDB and this is probably one of many that should be on here. I at first thought the title was NARABEDIA, and that actually gets a few hits, https://archive.org/search.php?query=%22falcons%20of%20narabedia%22&sin=TXT, so other people thought that was the title, too. There's also this, https://openlibrary.org/books/OL27044742M/I_falconi_di_Narabedla, which says previewable when searching for the title but seems that got taken down, but anyway it's an edition not on ISFDB. I also added Archive link, awaiting approval, to the 1979 Ace edition, uploaded way back in 2010, but oddly it doesn't show up when searching for the title on Archive.org, only on OL. There's also 2 records on OL for a March 1988 Time Warner UK edition, but WorldCat link leads to 1984 Arrow. Also added Luminist PDF, awaiting approval, to the 1964 dos version. So it's not surprising there's questions about the word count because they reprinted this thing so many times and in so many ways it's hard to know what the definitive text is. --Username 08:03, 11 June 2022 (EDT)

Nobody denied that the Other Worlds version is a novella. Above I gave a wordcount of 26.727 as athe result of pasting the text in MS Word. Also I did not say anything about my estimate of 39.729 words for the expanded version. Christian, do not try to twist my words, but answer my question. Which version of the text did you do a "very rough" word count of. --Willem 08:11, 11 June 2022 (EDT)

So, you deny that you phrased something like 'the book, it should remain as it was' (meaning that you're convinced that it's not a novella)?

Don't try to circumnavigate the point, Willem! That is, we try to determine the length of the second version, which seems to have to stay as a novel because of a faulty overestimation of yours (and of which you decided that it should not count towards determining the title type). Please come up with a corrected estimate that takes the empty spaces into the account. It really seems that there's no novel of the title Falcons of Narabedla by MZB anywhere in sight. Christian Stonecreek 10:49, 11 June 2022 (EDT)

1. "it should remain as it was" because novel length falls within the margin of error. Is that so hard to understand?

2. If you want to prove anything, come up with a far better wordcount than you did.

3. You are not helping to determine which publication has which version of the story. So for the third time, which version of the text did you do a "very rough" word count of. --Willem 14:12, 11 June 2022 (EDT)

ad 1.: You wrote of a margin of error of 1%. That may have had some validity for your faulty word count of 39.729, which is too high, as you condescended. So, once again, please supply a more correct word count, Willem. What is wrong with your attitude that you can't supply that, it's really only a rough count of the empty spaces: how much pages does it add up to?

ad 2.: See below (ad. 3.).

ad 3.: As explained in the discussion above: I didn't do a 'rough word count', I supplied an upper limit for the initially 1957 published text. There the corresponding note appears: what did you not understand about the note? You are constantly failing to supply a more correct word count for the 1964 version. So, I assume it would be right to add a note to it that it's most likely a novella? (And, please no more circumnavigating of yours). Christian Stonecreek 06:32, 12 June 2022 (EDT)

ad 1.:I explained my method of counting above and I'm satisfied with the result. If you have doubts, provide a better word count yourself, don't try command me. You're getting abusive again.

ad 3.:Then let's go back to the original discussion, or have you forgotten about that. Do you still think this publication contains the original novella? Do some research before accusing me af anything! --Willem 04:50, 13 June 2022 (EDT)

ad 1.: So I ask you again: How much of the blank space (if any) has gone into your estimate? And what was the abusive phrase I supplied: instead of stating things like those, please give a concrete citation. I just asked to give a more correct estimate.

ad 3.: You are correct: all the texts of this title that I have seen are of novella length. Christian Stonecreek 08:44, 13 June 2022 (EDT)

(unindent) I am trying to wrap my head around this discussion, but a number of comments are unsigned and I am having trouble figuring out who said what. Could the contributors please sign their comments above? Ahasuerus 11:07, 13 June 2022 (EDT)

Done so far for mine comments with '(added by Stonecreek)', I'd think. Christian Stonecreek 11:34, 13 June 2022 (EDT)

Added the'unsigned' template to mine. --Willem 12:46, 13 June 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for clarification. I will review the discussion and hopefully comment tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 18:58, 13 June 2022 (EDT)

(unindent) It looks like there are a few separate issues here. The first one is substantive, i.e. the issue of separating the two different texts now that we have confirmed that the original story was expanded for book publication (which SFE agrees with.) I have checked my copy of Marion Zimmer Bradley Super Pack and confirmed that it contains the shorter, 1957, version of the text. We should ask primary verifiers of the affected pubs (including translations) to check what the last sentence says and update their verified records to avoid questions in the future.

We should also add a note explaining that some editions claim that this work is part of the Darkover series, but, as SFE says, the link is "marginal". This is also the case with The Door Through Space, another early Bradley novel, which also needs to be updated with this information. Ahasuerus 13:56, 14 June 2022 (EDT)

Word counts have been added and Notes have been expanded. I have also updated all versions of Falcons of Narabedla and The Door Through Space with information about their links to the Darkover series. I have also created a series for the 3 versions of The Door Through Space and added notes about its unusual history. SFE will be updated shortly. Ahasuerus 11:35, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

The second issue is deciding whether we want to make the expanded 1964 text a novella as opposed to a novel. As was pointed out during the first iteration of this discussion, Template:TitleFields:TitleType says:

NOVEL. ... For Ace Doubles, each content title will typically be a NOVEL, rather than SHORTFICTION, unless one of the constituent works is itself an anthology or a collection.

Given that our current best estimate is 39,729 words, the rules as currently formulated clearly favor making it a NOVEL. We should explicitly document this application of the rules in the Note field of the novel title. We should also state the known word count of the 1957 version in its Note field.

The third issue is whether the current Help exception for Ace Doubles is a good idea. My current take on it is "maybe not", but that's something to discuss on the Rules and Standards page, assuming that there is interest.

The fourth issue is the steps taken by Stonecreek to move these two texts between publications. The right way to do it would have been to re-open the February discussion and post new evidence suggesting that certain publication records had been linked to the wrong title record. Then other editors would have been able to check the word counts and first/last lines of whatever editions they had access to -- see Username's comments and my Marion Zimmer Bradley Super Pack example above -- instead of relying on what he thought was "quite obvious".

The way it was done, i.e. without re-opening the discussion and against the outcome of an older one, caused confusion, stress, distrust and a variety of data problems, which were outlined in JLaTondre's response above. This was a self-inflicted wound which should not have happened and then it just spun out of control, causing defensive responses, flaming and even more stress for everyone involved.

This is not something that a self-approver should be doing. As I wrote on Stonecreek's Talk page in January 2022:

Since you are a self-approver, the responsibility to enforce ISFDB conventions and keep records self-consistent falls on you. Please make sure this doesn't happen again or else it will jeopardize your self-approver status.

Given my repeated warnings on Stonecreek's Talk page, e.g.:

This is not what the self-approver status was created for; additional instances of this behavior or any other abuse of the privileges will result in their termination.

I don't think Stonecreek's self-approver privileges can be retained. I will let him respond here before I make the final determination.

P.S. I have notified SFE about various minor issues with their Bradley entry. Ahasuerus 13:56, 14 June 2022 (EDT)

I do apologize if I turned wrong in any of my actions. Alone: I didn't touch the Ace Books, I only merged the novella length publications with the already existing novella title (and I checked the available sources, i.e. Amazon's Look Inside - the archive.org links are no help, so I think I did use the available information). The reason it got reprinted so much after 2010 is the expiry of the 1957 copyright. And I'm sincerely sorry for causing any stress & problems in the data (but I think this is independent from this specific problem, it may have occurred in an unrelated act) but where there really any? (I don't remember deleting any title, only transforming them, so any relation should have remained!).

Finally, if there are really only two versions of "Falcons of Narabedla" they both seem to be novellas: the Arrow publication is considerably shorter than 39.729 words, and the German translation of 2001 is longer with about 38,000 words (but it should be with German needing a bit more words to express the same). Christian Stonecreek 16:27, 14 June 2022 (EDT)

I am going to revoke Stonecreek's self-approver privileges for the time being. After a 2 week cooldown period -- let's make it until July 1 to be it exact -- Stonecreek will be able to re-apply for the self-approver status using the regular nomination/self-nomination process. Ahasuerus 20:48, 14 June 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. Not being aware that my privileges were seemingly not used in a proper way, I'll nevertheless seek concordance in possibly upcoming cases like these. Christian Stonecreek 01:50, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

:::: I'll let this discussion rest, and try to establish which publication should be under which title. It seems plausible that the post 2010 e-books and super-packs contain the 1957 version (a few notes would have helped a lot). I'll ask Stonecreek about the German translations and Mavmaramis about the Arrow edition. I assume the Portuguese translation is of the 1964 text (188 pages). If no proof otherwise is given, I'll return that one to the expanded title. The 2013 Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust edition is definitely the 1964 text. Amazon shows the first pages of the kindle version of that book, which I compared to the Ace Double and Gutenberg text. --Willem 14:49, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

For the Arrow edition I have come to an average of about 254 words per page, with an absolute high of 266 words on one page in my sample, and with an overall majority seeming to lie just beneath or around 250 words a page: the reason for the difference to Mavmaramis' estimate seems to lie in not discounting the empty space and the shorter lines (for example of dialogue and paragraph endings). I think the right way to do an estimate is to actually count the words on representative sample pages (and discount unused space of chapter endings & beginnings). Thus, this word count estimate does lie beneath the threshold of 40,000 words: at 37,772 (just taking the high point page), at 36,608 for the average, and even below that for the 'impressionist' average. Christian Stonecreek 01:03, 16 June 2022 (EDT)

Son of the Flying Tiger

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?824087; Anyone have a copy of the original 1973 edition? Someone (possibly) bootlegged it in 2020 and uploaded to Archive.org (in Community Texts so the net police wouldn't find it), and its covers and title/copyright pages are original with just a 1-line publisher/date added by the (possible) bootlegger. However, the novel ends on p. 181 and ISFDB's sources say 189. My page change was rejected, so I'd like to know if it's really 181 so it can be un-rejected. Anyway, I'm not adding the new edition, but the (possibly) bootleg copy is fully readable. --Username 21:59, 31 May 2022 (EDT)

Even if someone were to confirm a different page count, the submission could not be unrejected as it also attempts to add a scan of the 2020 Orphanwerk Press edition to the 1973 Venus Freeway Press edition. Scans are great, but they should only be added to the publication record which appears in the scan. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 17:25, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

Important thing is getting the right page count confirmed and entered if someone says it's 181 (well, important for the purposes of this database; nobody really gives a damn what the page count is); that (possibly) bootleg edition should have been put in note to mod by me just to show the last page is 181, not put in web page section, so my edit can stay rejected and I will enter the new page count in another edit. --Username 17:36, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

Two different Worldcat records have the page count as 189, Reginald1 has it as 188 (discrepancy could be due to an unnumbered final page). A scan of a different edition is not a more authoritative source than those cited. If you come up with a better source that the page count is incorrect, then it can be changed. If you can't, please don't attempt to change the page count. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:14, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

To be clear, the page count will stay the way it is now unless someone who owns/can get their hands on the 1973 edition responds here with verification (a photo of the last page would be nice) of 181. I won't change it otherwise. Let's be honest, odds are nobody will ever respond and I'll forget about this quickly and go do edits for a thousand other things. --Username 18:24, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

Where in the WorldCat

WorldCat's dead. --Username 09:24, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

Ah, that was the reason I didn't found an entry for a recently added publication. Though I expect the line "WorldCat will return", like in a certain 2022 movie, will hold true. Christian Stonecreek 10:48, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

I just visited the Worldcat site. It seems to be having a database problem (it's only giving errors when you do a search). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:37, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

It has returned! Christian Stonecreek 15:03, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

Cover modification bug fixed

Bug 642, "Cover Art Modification Bug":

If only the date [or another field value in a COVERART record] is changed, it still shows the title and artist as having been changed.

has been fixed. If you come across anything unexpected, please let me know. Ahasuerus 17:52, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

Technical Fiction

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?9372; I think those 3 chapbooks should be non-fiction, and that Trek Technical non-fiction should be a chapbook. --Username 12:40, 2 June 2022 (EDT)

Satan on the Loose!

While entering page #'s for the '65 Consul of Derleth's anthology Night's Yawning Peal, I looked up the '74 Signet and while everything there seems to be covered, there's a picture online of the back cover with an ad for a book called Satan on the Loose. It seems not to be fiction but rather non-fiction from a Mex ex-gang member who turned his life over to Jesus and was the subject of that well-known book/movie The Cross and the Switchblade. I know this book (and others he wrote which have similar "horror" titles) probably don't belong on this site, but as can be seen here, [3], many have sweet cover art more appropriate to 80's horror paperbacks. Only 2 copies of Satan are on Open Library and they share the same (uncredited) cover art, with 1 chapter about SATAN'S COMPUTER PROGRAMS (or PROGRAMMES in the British edition), and a stunning note on the British back cover that The Cross and the Switchblade was made into a comic book! So some of those covers may have been done by genre artists and, if so, that may be a way to get those editions on here. These old religious books (not the later Left Behind junk) are a huge void here with many having intros or art done by genre people (many probably hoping nobody would ever find out they were the ones responsible). --Username 14:26, 2 June 2022 (EDT)

Display of pseudonymous reviews fixed

Bug 165, "Pseudonymous reviews do not display reviewer's canonical name", has been fixed. Ahasuerus 17:04, 2 June 2022 (EDT)

Fighting Fantasy Question

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?459101; I added a lot of info to this, accepted today, so now that it's in my note about the 2 sample adventures being included, is this really still a novel, non-fiction, collection, or what? --Username 19:59, 2 June 2022 (EDT)

It's a novel - provided it's over the 40,000 words threshold (but should be with this page count): since it seems to be entirely fictional it can't be nonfiction. Christian Stonecreek 06:47, 3 June 2022 (EDT)

I had a copy of this as a kid; from ~30 year old memory it is a role playing game rulebook that has no narrative content. The 2 adventures I believe are standard gamemaster + players RPG scenarios, as opposed to the choose-your-own-adventure style single player branching narrative found in the main Fighting Fantasy series. As such, I suspect it is ineligible for inclusion here per ISFDB:Policy#Exclusions?

In a similar vein - but a book I've never actually seen a copy of, so will defer to others' opinion - I saw this a few days ago, which I believe is also a set of RPG rules in paperback form, and so probably shouldn't be listed here. ErsatzCulture 12:31, 3 June 2022 (EDT)

I added Archive link in my recent edit, in case anyone wants to see it and decide. --Username 12:51, 3 June 2022 (EDT)

Both these books are in Reginald3, so I'd hate to lose them. Additionally one is in Locus1 and the other in Clute/Grant. With the two chose your own adventure items, I definitely think the Jackson book should stay with those items as SHORTFICTION. I do think Reginald got the it wrong (see the note) and it probably is better described as NONFICTION as noted in Clute/Grant. For the other book, I'd still want to keep it by virtue of it's mention in two of our standard genre sources. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 17:47, 3 June 2022 (EDT)

Backslash searches fixed

Bug 278, "Search on backslash characters fails", has been fixed. Please note that the database that we are using, MySQL, is configured to treat the backslash character (\), "Ä", "Æ", "ä" and "æ" as identical by default. We won't be able to correct it until we upgrade the whole database to Unicode. Ahasuerus 20:03, 2 June 2022 (EDT)

The Elephant Talks to God

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?862319; My edit for the '89 ed. was just accepted, then I just added/fixed stuff for the '06 TP (not approved yet), but that says on back cover that it includes most of the original stories plus new ones, except the '89 copy on Archive.org has no contents and is just one 60-page story, while the '06 copy on Archive.org has titles for individual stories. So not sure what's to be done; also, '06 TP says page count is 123 but it ends at 122 and only thing on next page is a photo of Dumbo derrière, so it maybe should be changed to 122. --Username 12:15, 3 June 2022 (EDT)

The 1989 edition is not one long story, it too is made up of individual tales. There is no TOC and there are no titles, but the text is the same. For example:

The text beginning on page 7 (1989) is 'The Ant's Point of View' on page 106 (2006)
The text beginning on page 9 (1989) is 'A Woman from China' on page 11 (2006)
The text beginning on page 13 (1989) is 'Not Profound' on page 9 (2006)

Perhaps making the named stories variants of disambiguated untitled stories? Plus, extensive notes. I'm interested to hear from others who have dealt with similar situations. John Scifibones 13:33, 3 June 2022 (EDT)

German Verne

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?428612; Typing title and publisher on Amazon led to this, https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Jules-Verne/dp/B0000BTYIL, which isn't the right book but is a title on ISFDB, so the 1 Verne title by the publisher on ISFDB is probably missing other Verne books. --Username 15:42, 3 June 2022 (EDT)

Sure: there are lots of other titles by Verne in various translations and hundreds of German publications missing! If you'd like to add some, please do so (best for those olden days publications to rely on DNB, not Amazon). If there are questions, please don't hesitate to ping me. Christian Stonecreek 12:46, 5 June 2022 (EDT)

I'm barely fluent in English, much less other languages. After ~30,000 edits I can probably count on my fingers and toes how many foreign editions I've entered, so whenever I see an interesting topic concerning foreign editions I mention it in case anyone fluent in those languages wants to look at it, which has resulted in positive responses and new entries before; enge Bekanntschaften, do your best. --Username 13:07, 5 June 2022 (EDT)

I know there's a lot to do, but I'm barely achieving my self-afflicted to-dos; so, just keep on doing, and when a question pops up with those publications, you know where to tutn to :-). Christian Stonecreek 13:41, 5 June 2022 (EDT)

Jules Verne has been on my plate for a few years now. I started with all the first editions and then as many translations as I could. A 'quick' break doing some non-fiction Asimov has taken about a year now, but I do hope to get back to populating a few of the missing editions in English and other languages. There is a German site I have my eye on. Christian, I may hold you to your offer, if you're still around when I get back to these. ../Doug H 22:07, 5 June 2022 (EDT)

Millennium Macabre

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=um+macab&type=All+Titles; I thought I'd found in that first entry a mostly empty record to enter stuff for until I realized the same item was entered in 2020 by someone else who apparently didn't notice it was already on ISFDB and filled in the details, but the review is with the empty one and also the American price. So empty one can probably be deleted if those things are moved over to the full record. --Username 10:04, 4 June 2022 (EDT)

Change "WatchDate" to "WatchPrePub"?

We have a "WatchDate" template and a linked cleanup report which help keep track of pub records with publication dates from questionable pre-publication sources. The template is currently found in 20 publication records.

Based on our experience with pre-publication data, it would be useful to have broadly similar functionality for questionable pre-publication covers. We could accomplish this goal by creating another template/cleanup report pair, but it's been suggested that creating a generic template/cleanup report pair for questionable pre-publication data would be a better long-term solution.

Here is the current proposal:

Create a new template, "WatchPrePub", as a replacement for "WatchDate".
The new template will be used for all types of "questionable pre-publication data".
The new template will take a parameter indicating which field's (or multiple fields') data is questionable.
The new template will expand to something like The following data is based on questionable pre-publication information and may be incorrect: [parameter, e.g. "publication date" or "cover and publication date"].
The linked cleanup report, which currently displays the publication title and the publication date, will have a "Questionable Field(s)" column added. It will also let editors re-sort the table by publication name, by publication date or by field name similar to the way the Publication Series page works.

What do you think? Ahasuerus 11:23, 4 June 2022 (EDT)

Hearing no objection, I have created FR 1506, "Generalize WatchDate to be WatchPrePub". Ahasuerus 13:22, 9 June 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. ErsatzCulture 17:34, 9 June 2022 (EDT)

Rites of Passage

Vault of Evil has a lot of small-press covers not on ISFDB including this Obelesk anthology, but after uploading it the .jpg, [4], which says "rites1" when downloading, includes that other unrelated cover. So before adding it to the record, how to go about editing it so only Rites cover shows? --Username 11:19, 5 June 2022 (EDT)

You can load it into an image editor (e.g., on Windows, you can use MS Paint) and crop it to contain just the half you want, save that, and upload it. In the notes expand the "uploaded by" notes to document the original source and to state that it has been cropped to remove a second, irrelevant cover. --MartyD 07:30, 6 June 2022 (EDT)

Brazilian Galactica

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=guerra+dos+d&type=All+Titles; Brazilian title is a reprint of English-language Battlestar Galactica novelization, War of the Gods, but editor didn't link it to original novel or make it part of the B.G. series. Also, the cover credits another author than the one in the English edition; Resnick wrote a different Galactica novel. On a tangential note, that Van Vogt translation with the same title has a cover artist but no cover art; Amazon seems not to have it but Spanish-language sites have a lovely cover, which may be the right one for this edition. --Username 14:11, 5 June 2022 (EDT)

Edit History Needs Editing

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pub_history.cgi?312013; Just before I was going to see if anything needed fixing using Archive.org's copy of this zine, I noticed the first entry in "edit history" is missing a field and another field is in the wrong place. I guess someone knows what's up with that. --Username 17:55, 6 June 2022 (EDT)

Checking the database, I see that this is one of 80 "approved" submissions which do not have the approver's name or the time of approval recorded. Based on the dates when they were created -- between 2010 and 2013 -- these submissions errored out half way through the approval process. At the time, we didn't have a mechanism for catching these types of errors and our submission display software doesn't display them correctly. I will create a new bug report and fix the issue once I am done with the bug that I am currently working on. Thanks for reporting the problem. Ahasuerus 21:55, 6 June 2022 (EDT)

EDIT: Also, I had a cover replacement for the Headline PB edition of Alone With the Horrors rejected earlier (it wasn't as clear as the earlier one, which I should have noticed) and another edit was just approved, but there's 2 of the same cover artists now. I don't know what the trail is but something went wrong, so if someone can trace and delete whichever's necessary; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?36880. --Username 17:55, 6 June 2022 (EDT)

Done.Rudam 01:51, 7 June 2022 (EDT)

Proposal: change "AK Mulford" to "A. K. Mulford"

AK Mulford currently has a couple of self-published novels in the database. The Amazon UK preview of the physical version of one of those novels confirms they use(d...) that form of their name, with no full stops after the initials.

Today it was announced those novels plus a bunch of others had been picked up by a trad publisher, with the self-pub ebook versions already being replaced by versions from the new publisher. Per the Amazon preview, these have "A. K. Mulford" on the cover and title page, although the "AK Mulford" version of the name still appears on the copyright page, FWIW.

The author's site also uses the "A. K." form (mostly - the value in the HTML title tag is AK"), but I suspect that may be a recent change to match the new editions.

My understanding of the rules is that we try to follow the author's preference regarding how their initials are recorded. However, I don't ever recall seeing variant names to cover both "A. B. C." and "ABC" forms, so I assume the rules are just to standardize on one form or the other? If that's correct, does anyone object to switching this author from "AK Mulford" to "A. K. Mulford", updating the titles and pubs accordingly, and adding appropriate notes to document when/where the older form was used? ErsatzCulture 18:16, 8 June 2022 (EDT)

In the absence of any objections over the past ~2 weeks, I just went to update the author's name, but I'd forgotten that this is something that requires moderator privs :-( I've added an author note re. the name variants, but could a moderator do the honours please? Once the name has been updated, I'll go through all the old/existing pubs and add pub notes about the form of the name used on them, and then start on adding all the new ones. Thanks ErsatzCulture 11:55, 21 June 2022 (EDT)

Once there's an entry for "A. K. Mulford", we can variant those under "AK Mulford" to the "A. K. Mulford" name. Right now, there are no entries for any books under "A. K. Mulford", so the name shouldn't be changed right now. The canonical name is always the one with the most entries. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:37, 21 June 2022 (EDT)

There are a couple of different but related issues here:

1. There's nothing in the database for "A. K. Mulford" yet because I was waiting on any feedback here before entering them, to avoid unnecessary extra work. The 2 "AK Mulford" titles currently in the database have already been reissued as tradpub ebooks under the "A. K. Mulford" name, and per the article I linked, there are another 6-8 titles contracted, all of which will presumably be under the latter name. As such, right it's a "tie" which name is in wider use, but it won't be long before "A. K. Mulford" will be much more widely used.

2. I ended up hacking up a quick-and-dirty report [*], and (bugs permitting) there are no author entries in the database where we have both "J Doe"/"J. Doe" or "ABC Doe"/"A. B. C. Doe" canonical and pseudonym entries for different forms of starting initials. (There are a handful for the surname as just an initial, and one for a middle initial FWIW.) Whether this lack of variant entries for starting initials is just a coincidence, or some rule/standard that I hadn't seen formally defined, was again something I was hoping to get feedback on here. If it is indeed OK to have both "AK Mulford" and "A. K. Mulford" entries, then that makes this point moot, but given the lack of precedent, I'd prefer to have the nod that it is OK.

[* - which as is the way of things, has identified a few other unrelated author records in the database that needed cleaning up...] ErsatzCulture 19:06, 21 June 2022 (EDT)

Haunters of the Dark

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?67364; I made a minor edit for this, replacing Amazon "P" image with updated image, but that led to me noticing that while ISFDB says 11/2004, OL says 9/25/2007, goodreads.com says 12/1/2007, and Amazon says 12/1/2007 or 5/25/2008 depending on which country it's from. There doesn't seem to be any OCLC or LCCN for this, although there is a non-working OCLC link on the OL page, and I can't find any copies on eBay. I have a feeling it's vaporware, but can't be sure. So does anyone know more? EDIT: I just found this, https://www.philipjosefarmer.com/PJFnew-200710.htm, which complains about the multiple date changes. I'm almost positive this was never published now. --Username 10:44, 9 June 2022 (EDT)

Cover change was approved today, so just bumping this up so someone can chime in and this likely non-existent book can be deleted (which begs the question of why I was so dumb as to replace a cover for a book that probably will be gone soon, but whatever). EDIT: I just realized it won't be deleted, the date will just be changed to unpublished, so the image will remain. Go me. --Username 14:33, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

I've changed it to unpublished status. Thanks for digging into this one. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:29, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

OK. I think the notes you wrote didn't turn out the way you wanted, though. --Username 17:55, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

True, they did not. That's what I get for trying to use wiki markup instead of html. Fixed. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:42, 16 June 2022 (EDT)

Foundation's Edge

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5337513; There's already an OCLC link here, but I added another one which shows Whispers Press info at bottom while it's Doubleday up top. I have a feeling this will be rejected, so I'm mentioning it here so someone can look at it and accept or reject quickly. --Username 13:21, 9 June 2022 (EDT)

Blumlein

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?31280; I made an edit for something by Michael Blumlein recently, and I also found this, [5], which raises a few questions; the pub. date is later than what's on ISFDB, the page count is the same as the much later Dell edition, but not either Scream/Press edition, the artist is Timothy, not T.M. (although online photos suggest he's credited as T.M. in the book), and there's a Timothy Caldwell on ISFDB with 1 cover art credit a few years later and a Timothy M. Caldwell who wrote some poems around the same time as the artist was active, so they may all be the same person, although T.M. Caldwell's record includes a few much later short stories, so maybe that's a different Caldwell (EDIT: It was). Most odd, however, is the mention of Blumlein's forthcoming second novel, A Native Land; there is literally ZERO mention of him ever working on or publishing a book with that title online. I was never a fan of his even back 30-35 years ago when I read any and every horror book I could find, his work being much too intellectual for me, but I'm sure there are fans of his here who know more and may add or fix some stuff in his record. --Username 10:55, 10 June 2022 (EDT)

I'd guess the date of publication (Sep. '90) was taken from Amazon, where it's still stated. But that's the trouble of not documenting in the notes where the date is from. I'd think it'd be safe to change the date of publication according to your found source. Anyone disagreeing?

On Caldwell: I also do think the three are one and the same: all publications seem to belong to the 'slipstream' scene. Christian Stonecreek 13:17, 10 June 2022 (EDT)

I hope the date's changed, because it seems more likely a horror collection would be published close to Halloween. Also, I've found exactly one (1) other mention of A Native Land, https://archive.org/details/The_New_York_Review_Of_Science_Fiction_027_1990-11, where the review of The Brains of Rats notes that title as being mentioned in the author's note. So whether he scrapped it or one of his later novels is that work under a different title is a mystery. --Username 13:43, 10 June 2022 (EDT)

Stac(e)y Jaine McIntosh 2020 story "Lunar"

Stacy Jaine McIntosh has a single story "Lunar" from 2020 to their name. This is surely the same person as Stacey Jaine McIntosh, who has a story of the same name and year in their bibliography. However, the first Lunar story has no pubs listed for it, so I'm slightly perplexed how it exists. I have a vague recollection of seeing and reporting something similar before, and being told it was due to being reviewed, but I can't see that that is the case here? As such, I'm not sure if this is a case for merging/deleting or varianting the relevant records. ErsatzCulture 08:38, 12 June 2022 (EDT)

This usually does happen when you have or create a parent title and then relate the variant title to a different parent: the former parent has no publications anymore when there weren't any under it. So, it does seem the derelict title can be safely deleted. Christian Stonecreek 13:10, 12 June 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. In the absence of any other responses, I've now deleted the title record that had no pubs, and it looks like the offending author record has also been removed, as hoped/expected. ErsatzCulture 11:47, 21 June 2022 (EDT)

Sirius Confusion

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?28514; Do those recent zines really have any connection to the much earlier Sirius publisher? --Username 12:41, 12 June 2022 (EDT)

"Reviews" section of the Title page rewritten

The software that displays the "Reviews" section on the Title page has been rewritten and upgraded to handle the 4 permutations that reviews can create:

reviews of the displayed title
reviews of the displayed title's VTs
VTs of reviews of the displayed title
VTs of reviews of VTs of the displayed title

The software has also been modified to display the alternate names of the authors of reprints and their languages. If you come across any issues, please post the affected URL(s) here. Ahasuerus 19:06, 12 June 2022 (EDT)

Edit History bug fixed; submissions-related column headers clarified

The Edit History bug reported on June 6 has been fixed.

In addition, some column headers in submissions-related tables have been clarified. "Moderator" has been changed to "Reviewer" to account for self-approvers. "Time Reviewed" is now "Time Approved" or "Time Rejected" depending on the Web page. Ahasuerus 11:01, 13 June 2022 (EDT)

C. Cole ?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=c.+cole&type=Name; The 3 C. Cole (or Coles) Phillips (or Phllips) names probably need merging; same bio data is repeated between records. --Username 11:59, 13 June 2022 (EDT)

Alternate names created. Thanks for finding. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:09, 13 June 2022 (EDT)

WatchDate changed to WatchPrePub

As per FR 1506, "Generalize WatchDate to be WatchPrePub", the ISFDB template "WatchDate" has been retired. All of its occurrences in publication notes have been replaced with "WatchPrePub|Publication date". Help:Using Templates and HTML in Note Fields has been updated.

Please note that the associated cleanup report is currently empty. An updated list will become available on Sunday morning when the weekly reports run. Of course, you can always use Advanced Publication Search to look for "WatchPrePub" in the Notes field. Ahasuerus 15:59, 13 June 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. I've tagged a pub which still has a placeholder cover, so I'll check the report at the weekend to verify it shows up. ErsatzCulture 17:55, 13 June 2022 (EDT)

I've updated that one with the final cover per the distributor. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:25, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

Magazine Search bug fixed

Bug 637, "Magazine Search", has been fixed. If you come across unexpected behavior, please post your findings here. Ahasuerus 20:31, 14 June 2022 (EDT)

Macauley

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=macauley&type=Publisher; 12 in one, 26 in the other, none PV, same website linked in both. --Username 20:00, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

Cover art attributions, and Bob Haberfield

Surveying the cover art attributed on ISFDB to Bob Haberfield, I found the following anomalies: Seven attributions (for different art) based on bing.com searches. Three were based on Flickr, and one on a bookseller's opinion at abebooks.com.
Though I think that all of these covers are actually Haberfield's work, I think we should be a bit more critical. Guesses should not be presented as facts.
On the other hand, there are good sources for attributing most of these covers to Haberfield:
1) Michael Moorcock writes at the multiverse.org forum: "Actually I picked Bob Haberfield for the first Mayflower covers and he did my covers for quite a long time until he joined an asram and stopped doing commercial work."
Q: "The currently burning question remains, for me: who did the first few Mayflower photocollage covers; the original Stealer of Souls (red & green eye), Stormbringer (gritted teeth in stormy sky), and the first covers of the Runestaff series?"
Moorcock: "All those covers, Guy, were done by Haberfield. You'll find some of his photomontages in New Worlds, as well."
I'm going to interpret Moorcock's answers as a statement that all Moorcock's Mayflower covers for the period 1968-1976 are by Bob Haberfield. Stylistically, it also makes sense. With one exception, The Black Corridor had a gadget photo cover. And then in 1977, there appeared a Rodney Matthews cover, ending Haberfield's reign.
2) Haberfield showed 32 images of (mostly) cover art on a site which disappeared years ago, but can partly still be found at archive.org. Alas, the next two pages have no images. But I've made a reconstruction using saved images and uploaded the second page here. The third page had only two currently irrelevant images.
I intend to refer to this statement for quite a few cover art credit changes and/or note modifications, so add your comments here please. Horzel 05:36, 17 June 2022 (EDT)

At the moment the multiverse.org forum seems to suffer from an invalid security certificate. But archive.org has a copy. Horzel 15:14, 29 June 2022 (EDT)

Changing Canonical name to Ishmael A. Soledad from Ishmael Soledad

Any objections to making Ishmael A. Soledad the canonical name and Ishmael Soledad the alternate? Even his twitter page uses the middle initial. Thanks, John Scifibones 11:47, 17 June 2022 (EDT)

None noted; Done John Scifibones 11:42, 22 June 2022 (EDT)

Weinkauf

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=weinkauf&type=Name; Same person? --Username 15:56, 17 June 2022 (EDT)

Tombs of Gold

https://archive.org/details/DonSturdyInTheTombsOfGold/appleton-v-don-1925-BK000556/; All of the Tarzan books published by Grosset and Dunlap's division, Madison Square, have no covers here, but I found one on Amazon, then found another on Archive.org, Golden Lion, from an account devoted to JEWELRY. While doing so I saw another book, Don Sturdy in the Tombs of Gold, which looks like it belongs here, but there's only 2 Don Sturdy books here and that isn't one of them. So maybe someone knows why that is; maybe the mummies are fake like in Scooby-Doo? Or maybe it's just that nobody ever decided to enter it. --Username 09:36, 18 June 2022 (EDT)

Queefrotica

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?452132; 3 Germans PV this, and today I came across a highly embarrassing book here which includes words like "Whispering Gash"; the point is that the cover is credited to Elena Helfreicht (I added that info plus the cover image), not Helfrecht as in the book above, which seems to have no Amazon Look Inside but typing artist's name and book's ISBN on Google got exactly 1 hit from one of those highly suspect sites where they dump e-books; however, it does seem to prove that it is actually Helfrecht in Chiang's book, and her website also says Helfrecht. Judging by her name I assume she's German, so maybe PV will know whether she worked on any other books. Also, does Chiang's book have an English-language edition not entered here or was it German-only? --Username 12:02, 18 June 2022 (EDT)

The Illustrated Dracula

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1739936; This review points to a 30-years-later book with the same title, but the book it's supposed to be linked to, from Manor Books with an intro by C. Lee, just had a cover uploaded to the Wiki, so that might need looking at to get everything connected where they should be. --Username 08:38, 19 June 2022 (EDT)

Burroughs Length

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?184537; I'm afraid to ask about this, knowing how angry people can get about determining lengths, but none of the page counts for the 3 novels in this book are long enough for a novel. Abridged, or some other explanation? The original 1924 edition is nearly 200 pages longer. No Archive copy of this edition that I can see, and all 3 PV are long-gone. --Username 12:41, 19 June 2022 (EDT)

The OCLC entry lists 141 copies in the United States (and 1 in Australia). Maybe someone has access to one of these libraries. (P.S. none in Canada or near me) ../Doug H 15:34, 19 June 2022 (EDT)

Entering Correct Short Stories by Luigi Pirandello

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Dirk_P_Broer#Pirandello.27s_Short_Stories; As it says, I stumbled on the fact that the edition entered here was another one entirely. Judging by the response he ain't gonna fix what he broke, so if anyone wants to bother, go ahead. I don't enter translated stories, having enough trouble dealing with English. --Username 19:58, 19 June 2022 (EDT)

Irving Heine - (possibly) questioned pseudonym

SFE have just added a page for "Irving Heine" and state "Unidentified and perhaps pseudonymous author (probably UK), long thought to be one of the many Pseudonyms of Denis Hughes..." The entry here is an alternate name for Denis Hughes. Given that SFE don't seem to be 100% convinced this is a pseudonym, how should this be reflected here - is adding an author note sufficient to cover this? I've had a quick skim of the the help pages for alternate authors, and don't see anything that covers "believed to be" scenarios. ErsatzCulture 16:24, 20 June 2022 (EDT)

I would use an author note and not create an alternate name. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:21, 20 June 2022 (EDT)

The question about "believed to be" pseudonyms may be open.

But Irving Heine is a "believed to be" that SFE4 has retracted. See my AuthorUpdate submission 5349912.

Somehow I achieved four consecutive submissions to the point, 5349912–15. --Pwendt|talk 18:34, 26 June 2022 (EDT)

Abortion Stories

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?307797; Copy uploaded to Archive.org last month; rare book, WorldCat has only 2 University copies and 1 Library of Congress copy, so this is very welcome. I assume the upload was made to capitalize on the recent pro-life ruling. Anyway, that "Order of the Virgin Mothers" is a story but was reprinted in a book of plays, and looking at Google's copy it is a play. So I think they need separating. --Username 18:34, 20 June 2022 (EDT)

Display of cover images on submission review pages tweaked

The software that displays cover images on submission review pages -- New Publication, Edit Publication, Merge COVERART Titles, Variant COVERART Title, etc -- has been fixed to produce valid HTML. For cover images associated with existing publication records, you can still go to the pub record by clicking the image. If you notice anything unusual, please post your findings here. Ahasuerus 15:01, 23 June 2022 (EDT)

"Adult" Fantastic Fiction

https://www.ffadultsonly.com/; Part of fantasticfiction.com, but when I tried to replace cover here, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?875156, I got yellow warning about non-ISFDB site. Did anyone ever ask about whether this sister site could be made ISFDB-friendly like its parent? Also, while cancelling my edit, I noticed that the note about Levinson possibly being the author seems to be wrong, since it was reprinted as part of the Gardner Francis Fox Library, https://www.gardnerfrancisfoxlibrary.com/cherry-delight-27-man-who-was-god-glen-chase-gardner-f-fox. --Username 09:43, 24 June 2022 (EDT)

They Return At Evening

https://www.etsy.com/listing/771875662/first-edition-they-return-at-evening; I couldn't find a clear photo of contents page so I could enter page #'s but that Etsy link shows it's H.R., not H. Russell. His record here is a mess, with many title and name variants, some like these probably a mistake, so someone with access to most or all of his collections in their various editions could probably do a major clean-up. I left a note on the page of the editor who entered these under the wrong name, but I don't hold out much hope for him doing anything about it. EDIT: He did something about it. --Username 21:35, 25 June 2022 (EDT)

Chris Curry / Tamara Thorne

https://www.thehorrorzine.com/Fiction/July2022/TamaraThorne/TamaraThorne.html; The Horror Zine publishes online monthly and includes a story from a genre veteran but doesn't usually mention when they're reprints, which is most of the time. "The Lady Who Lost Her Head" is on ISFDB from Grue Magazine in 1987 as by Chris Curry. There's no mention that they're the same person, and so that story and those other Curry works all need variants now, right? EDIT: Thorne says 1957 but Curry says 1954; another problem. --Username 17:29, 28 June 2022 (EDT)

French Soul Catcher

https://archive.org/details/lepreneurdames0000herb; I did some edits for English-language editions of Frank Herbert's book but noticed this French edition which seems to be earlier than the one on ISFDB, in case any French-fluent editors want to enter it. EDIT: Also, https://archive.org/details/dunetome100pock, whose ISBN only matches much later editions from a different publisher but uses the same cover art and has the later publisher's name on the cover (?). It's also stamped Sausalito Public Library, so apparently there was a thirst for French-language editions of Dune in California at some point. --Username 20:38, 29 June 2022 (EDT)

David St. Clair

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?4619; He wrote a lot of dopey non-fiction books in the 70s and 80s about psychic powers and exorcisms and whatnot, but the etsy.com page I just found for his 1989 book Bloodline says he's turning his hand to fiction. Mine to Kill's Corgi ed., https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/91790613, says "true account" on the cover and the cover of The Devil Rocked Her Cradle on ISFDB also says "account". They're non-fiction (although the Bart ed. of Mine To Kill on ISFDB has different copy on the cover that tries to make it look like a novel) and so probably should be deleted; he's certainly not above-the-threshold. --Username 08:55, 1 July 2022 (EDT)

Reviews by Dave Langford (alternate name)

The summary bibliography for alternate name Dave Langford lists more than 100 Reviews.

And it does not display the note "Alternate Name. See: David Langford (or view all titles published using this alternate name)" that I expect to see.

Meanwhile, for David Langford, I see no way to "toggle" from the default view to one that lists only works we know to be published under that canonical name. Is that a feature we have lost? or (more likely, yes, of course) a phantom memory of some years-ago wishful thought? --Pwendt|talk 13:18, 1 July 2022 (EDT)

Science Fiction Encyclopedia Links

I have been working on this project, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/edit/sfe3_authors.cgi. About half of the original task is done but many of the remaining entries are matches on pseudonyms and I am not sure what is the best way to process them, if at all. Meanwhile, I am taking a little Covid break. Not severe, but I definitely have a little Covid fog.--swfritter 16:15, 1 July 2022 (EDT)

@@ Line 694: / Line 694: @@
 Meanwhile, for David Langford, I see no way to "toggle" from the default view to one that lists only works we know to be published under that canonical name. Is that a feature we have lost? or (more likely, yes, of course) a phantom memory of some years-ago wishful thought? --[[User:Pwendt|Pwendt]]|[[User talk:Pwendt|talk]] 13:18, 1 July 2022 (EDT)
+== Science Fiction Encyclopedia Links ==
+I have been working on this project, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/edit/sfe3_authors.cgi. About half of the original task is done but many of the remaining entries are matches on pseudonyms and  I am not sure what is the best way to process them, if at all. Meanwhile, I am taking a little Covid break. Not severe, but I definitely have a little Covid fog.--[[User:Swfritter|swfritter]] 16:15, 1 July 2022 (EDT)