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Expanded archive listing

Front page performance and future changes

The way the ISFDB software generates the front page has been modified. In the past, the list of 20 publications to display was regenerated every time the page was displayed. Post-change the list is built once a day as part of the nightly process which regenerates cleanup reports. (If the nightly process doesn't run for some reason, the software will generate the list the old way.)

The immediate impact is that the page will load slightly faster, although the improvement will be marginal. Going forward, it means that we can make the process of selecting publications more sophisticated without affecting front page performance. For example, we should be able to display only one publication per author. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:40, 1 October 2022 (EDT)

What happens if a title on the page gets re-dated during a day it is on the list? Books get delayed or better information (different jurisdiction or source which was incorrect) can cause a book publication date to change - especially on the pre-release records? Generating a few extra titles and ordering by date at display time (or something like that) may solve that issue nicely. Annie (talk) 16:49, 1 October 2022 (EDT)

That's exactly what the new nightly process does. It selects 30 publications and stores them in a separate locations. The front page software uses that list of 30 pubs to build a list of 20 pubs which still meet the requirements. If the new list has less than 20 pubs, the software decides that something must have gone wrong with the nightly process and rebuilds the list from the database. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:38, 1 October 2022 (EDT)

And didn’t we actually have 22 books on that list before? Annie (talk) 16:49, 1 October 2022 (EDT)

The old code had the value of the "MaxBooks" variable set to 21. I thought it was rounded down to 20 due to the displaying 2 books per HTML table row, but it looks like you are right and the algorithm rounded it up to 22. The new code uses "20" without rounding. We can easily change "20" to "22" if desired. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:38, 1 October 2022 (EDT)

Proposed Changes Going Forward

Now that the process of building the list of pubs displayed on the front page has been moved to the nightly job, we can fine-tune it without adversely affecting front page performance.

The first idea, which was briefly discussed a few weeks ago, is to allow only one publication per author. That way if a publisher reprints multiple books by a popular author and they all come out on the same day, only one will appear on the front page.

I think this would be an improvement, but there is a caveat. Suppose Book 2 in a series comes out in hardcover and the publisher makes Book 1 available in paperback on the same day. If we implement the proposed enhancement, our software will display only one of the books, semi-randomly picking Book 1 or Book 2 even though we would prefer Book 2 to be displayed because it's a new book and not a reprint.

There are two ways we could address this issue. The first one would be to institute a "no reprints on the front page" rule. The second one would be to check the date of each pub's reference title and display the pub with the latest date for each author.

Which one would be a better choice? Ahasuerus (talk) 14:44, 4 October 2022 (EDT)

I prefer the second option. We want some reprints I think. Plus we have the pesky problem of translations - if the new book is in German but has a new title and the old translation, for us it is a new title but in reality it is a reprint. Same applies for any renamed book (even if the book just gets & swapped for "and" or something as trivial). And sometimes what looks like a reprint (because there is an earlier book in the publications list) is actually the first publication - due to early (or misdated) translation or early audio version (although technically this is a publication after all) or a book that never made it out but was never cleaned from the list and so on. Unless you make a manual process, reprints will always trickle in. So we may as well just suppress them a bit when they compete with another title. Annie (talk) 14:55, 4 October 2022 (EDT)

Sounds good. FR 1542, "Limit the front page to one pub per author", has been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:25, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

Done. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:13, 8 October 2022 (EDT)

Fantastic Fiction URLs updated

All Fantastic Fiction URLs which used HTTP have been updated to use HTTPS. If you come across any issues, please post them here. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:49, 3 October 2022 (EDT)

Series deletion -- submission review page updated

The submission review page for Series Deletion submissions has been updated. The only change is the addition of a link to the about-to-be-deleted series record and slightly fancier formatting. If you come across any issues, please let me know. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:54, 4 October 2022 (EDT)

Publication deletion -- submission review page updated

The submission review page for Publication Deletion submissions has been updated. A few links have been added. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:54, 4 October 2022 (EDT)

Pratchett's The Unadulterated Cat: The Amazing Maurice Edition

Are there any followers of Terry Pratchett who can help me work out what this upcoming UK pub is, in terms of content? Publisher's listing; Amazon UK; Waterstones. As far as I can work out, it's a new edition of a non-genre novel, but with artwork/imagery from the film adaptation of an otherwise unrelated Discworld novel? Searching on Twitter and Google didn't throw up anything that provided any further enlightenment... ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:35, 6 October 2022 (EDT)

TVTropes says:

• Dolled-Up Installment: Republished in 2022 with the animated version of the Amazing Maurice on the cover, and the word "Cat" clawed out of the title and replaced with "Maurice" in a much bigger font.

Also, I am not sure I would call this book a novel. I skimmed it a couple of decades ago and, IIRC, it's a humorous "treatise" on the nature of cats. TVTropes calls it "nonfiction(ish) book". Ahasuerus (talk) 19:53, 6 October 2022 (EDT)

Thanks, I'll add it over the weekend. ErsatzCulture (talk) 18:17, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

Title deletion -- submission review page updated

The submission review page for Title Deletion submissions has been updated. A couple of links have been added. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:46, 6 October 2022 (EDT)

"Cannonical"

Hi, mods. I just wanted to bring to your attention that after adding an alternate name and it says, "View Cannonical Name" and "View Alternate Name," "canonical" is misspelled. —Rosab618 (talk) 01:55, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

Fixed. Thanks for identifying the problem! Ahasuerus (talk) 13:37, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

DMCA for The Alchemy of Reality

There have been a number of attempts in the past to remove The Alchemy of Reality (https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?554754). The author has resorted to a DMCA takedown with our hosting provider. Since failure to address a DMCA can be a cause for loss of hosting, I am going to delete as much of Andy Echevarria's bibliography as makes sense. (He has works in other magazines and anthologies, which can remain) --Alvonruff (talk) 14:13, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

The story "Doppelganger", https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2303407, actually appeared years earlier in Aphelion, http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/shorts/2008/04/Doppelganger.html, but the author had it removed. Is this person known for doing this kind of thing? --Username (talk) 14:44, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

That's interesting background, which requires a strategy for what to do if the author files another DMCA takedown to remove their stories from in-print publications. One method would be to change their canonical name to LEGALLY REDACTED AUTHOR #1, which would allow the title to remain present in the table of contents, but would separate the author's name from the story title (although nothing would stop us from listing those redacted authors on a Wiki page). We also don't currently have a mechanism in place to prevent the addition of new content for ... problematic authors. For now I have put a note on the author's page instructing that no additional solo content should be added to the bibliography.--Alvonruff (talk) 14:58, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

I am looking at the US government's explanation of what DMCA does (PDF file) and, as far as I can tell, DMCA prevents unauthorized distribution, copying or access to copyrighted works. I don't see anything about suppressing bibliographic records of published books. ISFDB:Policy#Data_Deletion_Policy is identical to that of Goodreads:

• Deleting published books from our system is against policy. Goodreads is striving to be a complete database of all published works, including works that are out-of-print. ... Just as a library would not remove a record from its catalog, so do we not remove books from our database.

Since Goodreads has been owned by Amazon since 2013, I assume that this 2019 policy has been reviewed and approved by Amazon lawyers, so it presumably complies with DMCA

If our server were hosted in a European Union country, the author might be able to leverage the Right to be forgotten, but it doesn't apply in the US. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:28, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

P.S. I used database backups to create a local copy of the deleted publication and title records. Between them and Edit History we should be able to restore the data if and when the DMCA issues are sorted out. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:48, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

Yeah, he could get in trouble for filing false DMCA notices. Since all we have would be a fair use cover image, and the bibliographic information is not copyrighted data, the DMCA notice has no legal basis. This may be helpful in addressing this issue (especially this part). See also this, this, this, this, and this. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:42, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for the pointers. My take on it is that the two cover images (m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61in-QAQKHL.jpg and m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41pp04kXO3L.jpg) are -- from a purely bibliographic perspective -- relatively minor "nice to have" morsels, so removing them wouldn't be a big deal, but the core bibliographic data is important to retain. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:16, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

It does look like it would be a good idea to file a counter-notification, regardless of any other steps taken. Since he won't be able to demonstrate infringement, we'd then be able to restore the content. --MartyD (talk) 08:04, 8 October 2022 (EDT)

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:AndyEchevarria; This person was actually helpful for a couple of months, at least. What went wrong? --Username (talk) 09:22, 8 October 2022 (EDT)

Front page pubs limited to one pub per author

As per discussion above, the list of "selected forthcoming publications" displayed on the front page has been limited to 1 pub per author. For each author, the pub associated with the latest reference title is selected. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:15, 8 October 2022 (EDT)

IT PB/TP

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?5646; I'm trying to get the right formats; I added the Wallace book recently, with a mod making it a TP, but others are PB or digest, with a big gap of years. Were they all TP, PB, digest or some of each with the format changing as time went on? --Username (talk) 17:36, 10 October 2022 (EDT)

Here is the governing help page: formats. The sentence that applies here is

• Any other book that is at least 7.25" (or 19 cm) tall, or at least 4.5" (11.5 cm) wide/deep, and is not a hardback, should be entered as "tp".

We have a somewhat informal agreement for skirting around the top limit for French and German books (although the editors of either langueg really need to get the discussion going to put that into the rules because their books are technically entered against the rules) but the basic rule is that if a book is 19 cm or taller and a paperback and not a pamphlet, it is a tp. Annie (talk) 17:44, 10 October 2022 (EDT)

It's an Italian publication series, so I would apply the Help rule cited by Annie. We have enough trouble with borderline French and German publications; I don't think we want it to spread to other languages. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:09, 10 October 2022 (EDT)

G. C. Edmondson legal name

I was messaged on Twitter that SFE (and also Wikipedia) have a different legal name for G. C. Edmondson. Is there any sort of history why ISFDB might want have a different value - I note that Bio:G. C. Edmondson notes a hoax over his birthplace, so I wonder if there/were similar concerns over legal name?

I'd never heard of this guy before, so have no dog in this fight.

Also, is Wikipedia in the list of sites that can be linked to without having to do the bot challenge? If not, can it be whitelisted? ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:14, 11 October 2022 (EDT)

I think it's simply an oversight (or a simplification, or both). I've updated the name to be the full name. You can see the whitelist here. I agree that wikipedia\.org should be added to the list. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:22, 11 October 2022 (EDT)

The two relevant updates are from 2011 and 2012. Who knows what the sources were saying back then. :) Annie (talk) 16:27, 11 October 2022 (EDT)

Thanks both. Re. whitelist, on reflection, I do remember seeing it before; I was getting mixed up with the fact that only Bureaucrats (IIRC) can edit the list. ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:29, 11 October 2022 (EDT)

wikipedia.org has been added to the white list. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:35, 11 October 2022 (EDT)

It's possible I misunderstood the comment "I've updated the name to be the full name.", but I'm still seeing "Edmondson, Garry Cotton" rather than "José Mario Garry Ordoñez Edmondson y Cotton" as the legal name? NB: I've no idea where the split between given and family names is in the latter, so I've just copied the SFE text rather than the "familyname, given name" form that would be needed for the legal name field ErsatzCulture (talk) 21:29, 11 October 2022 (EDT)

Updated. Annie (talk) 13:44, 13 October 2022 (EDT)

Weird. My update seems to have entirely disappeared. Ah, here it is. Apparently I didn't hit the Approve button. (^_^; ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:33, 13 October 2022 (EDT)

Ah, did not think to check the queue. Sorry :) I tend to start or end my day with a quick glance at my pending edits to see if I forgot to approve something. Happens more often than I wish to admit... :) Annie (talk) 15:26, 13 October 2022 (EDT)

Home page -- possible tweaks

Now that the software that builds the home page has been upgraded to improve performance and to limit the number of pubs per author, we can discuss other tweaks.

Currently the home page says:

• Note: Forthcoming books may be delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic

This note was added in the spring of 2019 when ISBNs were being canceled left and right. Do we still need it 2.5 years into the pandemic?

Also, the list of displayed pubs is currently called "Selected Forthcoming Books". However, it also includes books published today. Should we change its name to "Selected New and Forthcoming Books" or should we change the software not to display books published today?

Finally, the home page currently displays 20 pubs. We could increase the number, but keep in mind that Al has been experimenting with the way pubs are displayed to better utilize our "screen real estate". It may be prudent to see what he comes up with before we alter the number of displayed pubs. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:02, 11 October 2022 (EDT)

Spring 2020 actually, even if it felt that a lot more time must have passed. Some thoughts

• We probably should replace it with something like "Note: Forthcoming books are added based on pre-publication data and the details may have changed" or something along these lines. As much as we all try to keep on top of changes, there are a lot of books being added and some change out of nowhere (case in point - the DAW Books new corporate ownership had caused a bit of a mess with their publication dates this fall and books keep getting moved around, with different sources updating at different times). Or we can rely on people understanding that pre-release data changes and just drop the message.
• I vote to eject the books published "today" - because of timezones and what's not, they are often yesterday's books for people who look at the list, especially for books published in Europe and Asia and editors there.
• I really liked the 22 books we used to have on this list - it was irregular and charming. But that can wait. Annie (talk) 19:30, 11 October 2022 (EDT)

I'm not able to write up a full/coherent comment/justification/explanation right now, for various reasons, but I'd vote for:

• Keeping today's books and tweaking the text to be "New and ..." per Ahasuerus suggestion
• Having a generic caveat message per Annie's suggestion - my impression that the delays we get now are all due to mundane reasons and not Covid. (FWIW, I've seen plenty of cases of other forthcoming book lists e.g. tor.com that have stuff that has had known delays for a long while before those pieces were published)

If this discussion is still ongoing by the weekend, I'll edit in my reasons for the above. ErsatzCulture (talk) 21:25, 11 October 2022 (EDT)

The changes I had in mind for the front page were relatively small, but I did want to address the massive amounts of wasted whitespace that makes for a really long page that requires unnecessary scrolling. So at a minimum:

• Reduce the supporting text associated with the publication (for instance the ISBN isn't really necessary on the front page - some sites simply show the coverart with no associated text at all), and align any remaining text under the cover art, rather than beside it. That will double the available real estate per line for more books.
• Increase the image size, so that the cover art dominates the canvas.
• Swap forthcoming books with the author section (switching top to bottom).
• Change 'authors born on this day' to 'living authors born on this day'. I have toyed with having author pictures (if available) in this section.
• Consider changing 'authors who died on this day' to 'recent deaths'.
• Use multi-column layout for the author information, to again reduce whitespace, and change the placement of the living/dead sections from side-to-side to top/bottom.

When I first mocked those changes up, it resulted in page that required no scrolling. When I start on this again, I'll put the front page up at isfdb2.org for feedback.Alvonruff (talk) 22:13, 11 October 2022 (EDT)

One thing to keep in mind is that we have a separate SF Calendar page. It's linked in the navigation bar on the left and it's effectively a list of all 366 days in the year arranged in the form of a calendar. Each "day cell" is a link to its respective "On This Day in SF" page. For example, On This Day in SF - October 12 lists the authors who were born and who died on October 12. We can tweak these Web pages to have more content and/or we can link to them from the home page. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:21, 12 October 2022 (EDT)

I think linking to the SF Calendar page from the main page (either at the top or bottom of the list of birthdays/death days) would be good. Perhaps something like "See the full calendar here". ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:58, 12 October 2022 (EDT)

Dark Horizons Issues

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5452182; It'll probably be a while before this is approved, so just inquiring whether anyone owns a copy, because as can be seen there is a whole bunch of missing/alternate stuff, but as usual with old zines the only way to know for sure how things are inside is an actual print copy or a scan of one, which as far as I can tell doesn't exist online. Also see the photos on Dalby's site because there are also reviews/other art credits/etc. that may need entering. This is yet another example that just entering info from Galactic Central or Locus isn't reliable. There are probably other early issues that could use a real copy, too, if anyone owns any of them, since I suspect other info entered here may be wrong. --Username (talk) 16:26, 12 October 2022 (EDT)--Username (talk) 16:26, 12 October 2022 (EDT)

Mind Brothers

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?286043; https://archive.org/details/mindbrothers00heat; Archive copy upped in 2010, nobody ever linked it so I did, 5 PV but only 2 active, so if GlennMcG or Spacecow read this why is there a note that says there's something written on the back cover about never-before-published that's not on the back cover, or maybe Archive copy is cut off at the bottom? --Username (talk) 19:30, 12 October 2022 (EDT)

Maxime Durand canonical name

Any objections to switching the canonical name of Maxime Durand to Maxime J. Durand? Annie (talk) 19:14, 13 October 2022 (EDT)

Nope. He started out as "Void Herald" on RoyalRoad, then republished his serials in book form as by "Maxim Durand" and finally seems to have settled on "Maxime J. Durand". Ahasuerus (talk)

Dash It All

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?260265; I added a bunch of Archive.org links to Spinetinglers series, replaced unstable images, and fixed some page counts, but the last book I did said I modified the Regular title when I didn't; there's some weird thing with the dash in the title being OK in 1 variant but spelled out as a word in the other, which may be responsible for the screw-up. --Username (talk) 20:57, 13 October 2022 (EDT)

Meddling With Ghosts

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?244541; Someone recently uploaded Shadows in the Attic (British Library) to Archive.org so I did some editing on it, then remembered there was a Ramsey Campbell anthology from them around the same time so I fixed dates and added some ID's (title date being 2000 while book date was 4/2001), but there seems to be a cover problem, with those on FantLab, https://fantlab.ru/edition170209, and Richard Dalby's site looking different than the one on ISFDB. So was there another edition or is the ISFDB cover a prelim and the others the actual hardcover's cover? --Username (talk) 21:55, 13 October 2022 (EDT)

Server issues -- 2022-10-14

All regular (i.e. bibliographic) pages are currently broken. Edit pages and moderator pages are fine, but that doesn't help much. Investigating. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:40, 14 October 2022 (EDT)

The problem has been resolved. If you come across any issues, please post the URL of the problematic page here. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:51, 14 October 2022 (EDT)

Thank you, Ahasuerus!—Rosab618 (talk) 14:06, 14 October 2022 (EDT)

Citizen of the Galaxy

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL20657077M/Citizen_of_the_Galaxy; I was adding a ton of Robert Hale book edits when I came across this, which is not by Hale regardless of what it says; it's actually an old Scribner's edition, with a code on the copyright page that doesn't match the codes added to the notes of the other early editions on ISFDB. Experts in these old SF books may know what year that code means and may want to enter this as a new edition. --Username (talk) 12:05, 16 October 2022 (EDT)

Devil in Velvet

https://archive.org/details/devilinvelvetmod00john; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?13311; There seems to be only 1 edition of this J.D. Carr novel on Archive.org, but the 2 1968 Bantam editions on ISFDB have an August date while the notes say February, which is what it says in the book. 1 was PV by Don Erikson, 1 by Bluesman, they're both non-active, so does anyone think it's a mistake and the month should be fixed? I'm going to add the link to the US edition, anyway. EDIT: While adding the Archive link I noticed it said the ID in the title and it turns out whoever entered it here got that wrong, too, so I just went ahead and fixed the month and ID in both the American and Canadian editions. --Username (talk) 13:30, 16 October 2022 (EDT)

("it said the ID in the title" --I don't know what that means.)

If I understand correctly (iiuc) the histories and verifications, *August* numerical publication date 1968-08 of both US and Canada printing/pricing[*] dates from User:Mhhutchins 2010-01-22 use of Tuck as a source, or earlier. Probably the origin is Tuck or Mhh clerical error.

--given the title leaf quotation-- I would simply revise to 1968-02, not revise the Note.

More info: The record shows Don Erikson 2013-01-06 primary verified (PV) the US printing without revising the record (added image URL and text Note four days later). And iiuc, it shows Bluesman 2014-08-10 executed a hasty clone-and-modify as the Canada printing. Both PV overlooked 1968-08. For what it's worth, 1968-08 where month 8 matches "8" from the year, is the one of twelve numerical months that I deem easiest to overlook.

Limitation: I know that history of Variant relations is missing before 2021-01-11 and history of AddPub, ClonePub is missing before 2016-10-24. I suppose that all record of changes is missing, some time before 2010-01-22, but when? --Pwendt|talk 21:36, 17 October 2022 (EDT)

I meant that the uploader to Archive.org graciously included the catalog ID in their title, which caught my eye and led me to discover that was (also) entered wrong here. Honestly, the way things are going right now I doubt anyone cares very much about this, since I currently have over 1,000 edits in my queue. By the time someone gets around to this edit I'll have forgotten about it, anyway. If you wish you can follow up if it's approved and make sure everything's proper. I'll just add that when doing some Carr edits recently it's obvious there's a ton of other editions and other books by him that are genre-related and should be on ISFDB, in case anyone's interested. --Username (talk) 22:11, 17 October 2022 (EDT)

Another Signature ID

Can anyone identify this signature? It's from an illustration in the February '68 Playboy. Playboy, it seems, is not as good about crediting their illustrators as they are their photographers. (Even in 2004, this illustration of Chuck Palahniuk's "Guts" was uncredited [and unsigned]). Thank you in advance! —Rosab618 (talk) 03:09, 17 October 2022 (EDT)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?166111; Possibility, since Archive.org January 1968 Playboy shows he wrote his name out on the upper left of the first page of the artwork and was credited by name on the next page while in February he used initials and wasn't credited. I did a search on Archive.org, https://archive.org/search.php?query=%22playboy+magazine%22+%22by+tom+daly%22&sin=TXT, and the only issue with those phrases are the January issue mentioned above. --Username (talk) 08:20, 17 October 2022 (EDT)

Wow. I would never have seen that that could be the initials "TD", or anything but "yo yo." Good eye!

But now that I look at it as letters, the first one looks more like a P. It could be a fancy T, but the style of art also isn't very like "The Yellow Room" at all. It's still the best lead, though.—Rosab618 (talk) 16:24, 17 October 2022 (EDT)

German Birkin

While doing some more Charles Birkin edits to add to those I did a while ago I noticed there are 2 German editions on FantLab that were never entered on ISFDB, https://fantlab.ru/search-editions?q=birkin&page=1, in case anyone fluent wants to enter those. --Username (talk) 19:48, 17 October 2022 (EDT)

No Longer on the Map

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?255284; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?382812; I added cover to the Ramsey one and fixed his name, but it's already there as Ramsay and I see I'm the only one in the edit history for that one back a while ago, so I cancelled today's edit, so now the Amra info and whatever else is necessary should be moved to Ramsay and Ramsey should be deleted, I think. EDIT: Turns out there's a copy on FantLab which allowed me to enter the missing month, fix the price note (I'd previously had a note entering it from some obscure website with a ridiculous long URL), add a note about the jacket designer, and replace the slightly dark cover with a brighter one, plus there's photos of the book from many different angles. --Username (talk) 07:47, 18 October 2022 (EDT)

Conan the Valorous Cover

https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?507; https://picclick.com/Conan-The-Valorous-by-John-Maddox-Roberts-144304185257.html; Someone uploaded 2 John Maddox Roberts Conan novels recently (+ 1 edition uploaded many years ago is also there) which I've been adding, and the 4th printing of Valorous has a Les Edwards cover, but the cover attributed to Boris Vallejo on ISFDB is the same cover, so since PV is gone others may want to fix that and re-date Edwards' cover art, unless Edwards is an error by the publisher; I'm no Conan cover expert. Didn't Vallejo specialize in these fantasy covers with almost-naked women? I don't think that was Edwards' style. --Username (talk) 08:34, 18 October 2022 (EDT)

My Votes enhancements

FR 1318, "Allow sorting 'My Votes' by title and by title date", has been implemented. You can now sort your votes by "Vote", by "Title", by "Date" or by "Most Recent Vote". A few minor display enhancements were also implemented as part of the same patch. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:42, 18 October 2022 (EDT)

Campbell's Claw

Someone uploaded this last month, https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1840346W/The_claw?edition=ia%3Aclaw0000rams, with the wrong fake name on the fake cover and the real author's name on the OL page; anyway, I remember a LONG time ago having a discussion about what the title originally was, so now that we have this available I think that finally the sorting of parents/variants can be fixed after my edit adding the Archive link is approved, not that I know what the correct order is, but anyway, Claw was the original, The Claw was only used on the 90's Brit editions. --Username (talk) 19:47, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

Undated 2nd printing per numberline, at Archive.org

Title leaf of The Story of Doctor Dolittle in its Dell Yearling Centenary Edition P295530 (viewed at archive.org) concludes with these three lines:

May 1988

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

CW

The first two identify an undated 2nd printing of the May 1988 (1st printing date). Right? To be continued. --Pwendt|talk 09:48, 20 October 2022 (EDT)

You can't tell just by looking at that presentation whether the "May 1988" is the original printing's date or this printing's date. But if you look in the back, there is an ad, and the ad appears to have a date near the bottom ("DDD-7/88"), which suggests this printing is July 1988 or later. Another indicator can be other publications from the same era by this same publisher. If we have records for multiple printings and something more definitive about the dating (or lack thereof) of subsequent printings, you might be able to ascertain whether the publisher carried the original date through all printings, and then you could probably assume the same practice would have been applied here. --MartyD (talk) 17:00, 21 October 2022 (EDT)

Thanks, Marty. I need to update the example publication record P295530 after another editor provided the scan at Archive.org, fixed some data, and notified me. [1] Because the Archive.org copy is 2nd printing, and its scan is the only source for price, that price belongs in the notes, not in the Price field. [2] What about use of the Webpages field for that archive.org link: Is that appropriate here (with notice of the mismatch in my revised Note), or only in a record of the 2nd printing (with my cross-reference in this Note)? --Pwendt|talk 22:05, 28 October 2022 (EDT)

It's been a while since I was involved with edits for this book, but I think the fact that it says "One Previous Edition" on the copyright page, and not printing, is telling, since Dell had a habit of doing that with their endless editions of Alfred Hitchcock PB anthologies, where they'd release a new one with a totally different cover and then mention the previous Dell edition, with date, on the copyright page. ISFDB has a 1974 Dell Yearling edition so that might be what they're referring to, but I doubt even if that's not the case that the price would have changed in an edition published a few months later, anyway. But I'm no expert on these kids' books because they reprinted them endlessly in convoluted ways with different publishers and bindings and covers and oh my God it's a nightmare to sort out, which is why I rarely touch them. For example, https://picclick.com/Doctor-Dolittle-The-Story-of-Doctor-Dolittle-by-283933958421.html, another edition with much higher price but same ISBN. Finally, https://archive.org/search.php?query=kleinbaum+dolittle&sin=; Ms. Kleinbaum apparently "adapted" several Dolittle books and also did the novelization of the crap Eddie Murphy movie version (?!?) She apparently did a few more Lofting books that aren't on Archive.org, but that's for others to look into; I call dibs on the Murphy book, which I'm going to enter now. --Username (talk) 22:58, 28 October 2022 (EDT)

I don't know that we have a "standard", but I think it's fine to put the archive.org URL into the webpages list. --MartyD (talk) 08:17, 29 October 2022 (EDT)

Cornish Tales of Terror

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?35335; There's much confusion with this, because that 1970 edition has the same bat photo cover as second impression (which I just added Archive link to along with the prices, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5460362, and there was a third impression with the same cover which I just entered as a new book, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5460384. Justin Todd cover seen in 1970 record here is actually from sometime after June 1974 (the date of the third impression) so if anyone can find photos with the exact date on the copyright page it can be entered as a new book with that cover; the Todd cover should be replaced in the Wiki with the original 1970 cover, but it's tough to know what's the right cover because most photos online are actually from later impressions. --Username (talk) 10:11, 20 October 2022 (EDT)

U, many of your postings mention a recent submission that is in the queue. A link to the submission will help satisfy the curious, even if the mention is an aside to your main point; might help foster a reply. Such as green inserted above, where I suggest "submission ###" and "in the queue" as two candidate linknames to include between square brackets with the URL. --Pwendt|talk 10:54, 20 October 2022 (EDT)

Bookscans Update

Just a heads-up that Bookscans.com finally has a new update with over 3,500 new and/or improved scans including a generous helping of sleaze, although judging by how many Greenleaf covers were broken here recently they were obviously making changes before the official update. However, do not look in the section marked Pet Books; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. --Username (talk) 19:22, 20 October 2022 (EDT)

German Masques

https://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/150161-masques-ii; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL12688059M/Popsy_und_25_weitere_Geschichten_nach_Mitternacht. While doing some Masques edits today I happened across these; any German-fluent editor who may want to enter these will have to do a little searching for info. --Username (talk) 14:15, 21 October 2022 (EDT)

Graham Masterton and Jim Carrey in Vietnam

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5462528; Yes, there was a Vietnamese edition of Masterton's 1988 novel Mirror, and for some reason Jim Carrey is on the covers. I made my usual pathetic attempt at entering an occasional foreign edition of a book, so after it's approved if there are any Vietnamese-fluent people here they can add/fix a lot, I'm sure. There's also this, https://www.vinabook.com/tam-guong-ma-quy-truyen-kinh-di-p30390.html, if that helps with anything. --Username (talk) 23:22, 22 October 2022 (EDT)

Finally approved, so bumping this up for any editors fluent in the language to flesh out the record. --Username (talk) 17:26, 10 November 2022 (EST)

Fantasy Tales Potter Cover

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1036824; While replacing the single (broken) philsp.com cover image on ISFDB for Fantasy Tales magazine with an Amazon cover that's actually slightly better-framed I noticed there may be something wrong with the other 1990 issue, since the American edition, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?161641, has cover art entered as a separate record, not linked with the others. So the usual variant or merge or whatever is needed. I looked in Edit History and saw my name at the top, but I just added (or replaced) the cover and added the OL link to the Archive.org copy, but now that I look at that closer I realize that the American record is much less complete than the British, so if anyone wants to enter the essay and interior art that's needed, too. --Username (talk) 11:25, 23 October 2022 (EDT)

The same art appearing under different titles is varianted. I have made the change but feel free to submit these yourself. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:11, 24 October 2022 (EDT)

BLongley PV Question

I gather Mr. Longley was one of the founding fathers of this site, but I don't come across that many of his PV, since I think he did mostly old SF stuff which I don't do edits for very often. However, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5463077, which seems odd in that I would think he would know the rules for page count include every numbered page, not only the main work's, so if I did wrong by upping it by 1 let me know. Also, this jogged my memory about another edit I did recently that's still awaiting approval, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5451980, so if someone can respond and tell me if that edit's a waste of time and should just be rejected, I'd like to know. --Username (talk) 20:25, 23 October 2022 (EDT)

1. Approved. That was verified in 2009. It could be standards changed over time or simply a mistype (happens to everyone).

2. Rejected. We typically treat a non-fiction work as a single work. We would not enter the individual chapters as contents anymore than we would enter the chapters of a novel. The exceptions are when the nonfiction work is similar to a collection (ex. previously published essays) or anthology (ex. essays by different authors).

-- JLaTondre (talk) 07:23, 24 October 2022 (EDT)

Jonny Quest Trapped?

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1240472; I'm the only one in the Edit History, apparently fixing the title long ago among other things, but as I came across it today I saw it's the only one in the series that has "only appeared as" because the wrong Trapped title, which only shows up in a Google search for this site, is still there, so I'm sure someone knows how to fix that. Also, I assume all the books that start with Jonny Quest shouldn't, so if affirmative I will fix those and get rid of Jonny (I always hated him, anyway). --Username (talk) 21:41, 25 October 2022 (EDT)

Fixed and also added #10 in the series (which was missing). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:54, 26 October 2022 (EDT)

I just had some Jonny Quest edit approved, and I noticed the volume you entered, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?920331, has HarperCollins, which has the UK branch as the publisher for the first several volumes but HarperPrism is for the rest. So either it should be UK with Collins UK price or US with Prism US price. --Username (talk) 10:28, 13 November 2022 (EST)

T(h)om(as) Fleming

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?23003; I did some edits for the Lee book, and afterwards realized that I think the art credits for "Teeth" and the Spectrum book are really by this guy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Fleming_(artist). Yes? --Username (talk) 13:33, 26 October 2022 (EDT)

Briney

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=briney&type=Name; I added an obscure essay by someone named Andrew Briney to a book today, and while looking at names of Briney found those linked above, and there's a Jack Vance review in both, so I believe Bob and Robert are the same guy. --Username (talk) 14:13, 26 October 2022 (EDT)

Established the variants and the pseudonymous correlation. Thanks for this! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:21, 27 October 2022 (EDT)

Oktobertrek

https://archive.org/details/@greeneuva?sort=-addeddate; Came across these randomly, don't know if they qualify, if they do somebody may want to enter them. --Username (talk) 20:26, 26 October 2022 (EDT)

We usually only include convention program books if they have speculative fiction in them, or if they are genre conventions that focus on printed speculative fiction. These seem to be more what they call a "media convention", focused on the TV show and films. I didn't see any content we'd tend to inclue when looking through the program books. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:18, 28 October 2022 (EDT)

Horrorology

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?533416; I've done numerous edits for both editions of this book, but my latest one which, I think, added the full wraparound cover from FantLab caused me, after checking to make sure everything was OK, to notice that the page count is way off, but I'm not sure what the real page count should be, since there's an unnumbered 1-page epilogue, an acknowledgements page with artwork, a bio page with picture, and an illustration. So if anyone wants to correct the page count. --Username (talk) 09:09, 27 October 2022 (EDT)

Wizard of Woodworld

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?50291; I've been doing a lot of Garry Kilworth edits recently, and I uploaded the full wraparound cover of this book from SF-Encyclopedia (edit pending), but they wrote the prices on the back cover over some leaves on the ground and the Australia and New Zealand (and other?) prices are unreadable, so if anyone owns a copy they can always add that info to the notes, assuming they can make the prices out. --Username (talk) 16:08, 27 October 2022 (EDT)

Henry Kuttner / Bertram W. Williams / "The Monkey Wrench"

On Twitter, James Davis Nicoll has asked the question: "Question: is the ISFDB correct to list as Kuttner's first story 1931's "The Monkey Wrench", published under the pen name Bertram W. Williams? The sources I've seen claim his first story was 1936's The Graveyard Rats. As I type this, there are 3 responses, none of which support the idea that The Monkey Wrench is a Kuttner story. I suspect the crux of the matter is whether Bertram W. Williams really is a Kuttner pseudonym - Author:Henry Kuttner gives a possible clue - perhaps one of the PVers of Index to the Science-Fiction Magazines (1926-1950) (Revised Edition) can confirm this pseudonym? ErsatzCulture (talk) 19:04, 29 October 2022 (EDT)

The FictionMags Index does not list Williams being a pseudonym. Biomassbob created the alternate name per the edit history. I will point him to this conversation. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:39, 30 October 2022 (EDT)

http://jerryshouseofeverything.blogspot.com/2019/06/forgotten-book-kuttner-times-three.html; See comment by Haffner. EDIT: Kuttner Times Three was hiding in the "Pulp Magazine Inbox" on Archive.org so I've added an edit with a link. --Username (talk) 08:52, 30 October 2022 (EDT)

This is clearly a mistake, given that Kornbluth was born in 1923. Don't know where the idea came from, but I corrected it.Bob (talk) 12:47, 30 October 2022 (EDT)

Morton(-)Sale

https://archive.org/details/martinpippininda0000farj; I was surprised to see this with a full cover, these older books usually being coverless on Archive.org, so I entered the Archive.org link (and fixed the page count which was off by 10), and after submitting it realized I forgot to add the cover and went to OL, which also surprisingly had it (certainly not always the case). While entering that edit I realized the frontispiece was the same as the cover art but cover artist wasn't entered, the problem being John Morton-Sale is called J. Morton Sale on the front flap and his wife (?), Isobel, isn't mentioned like she is on the title page. Also, there's a guy on ISFDB named Morton Sale, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?346778, who I think might be the same person, and coincidentally I see that I'm the one who entered both of his credits. So if anyone wants to tackle this kids' book some variants might be needed. There's also the matter of the back flap, which says the other Pippin book on ISFDB, Apple Orchard, has a cover by Hugh Lofting, the Dr. Dolittle creator whose cover art credits on ISFDB are only for his books; neither Apple Orchard edition here has any cover credit. So after the recent Dolittle discussion somewhere here recently more has come to light. --Username (talk) 19:08, 29 October 2022 (EDT)

Yes, the artists are husband John and wife Isobel Morton-Sale --submitted and approved ✓

Concerning John's alt name Morton Sale --four submitted as #5478560, 65, 70, 74. (Note the steady rate of submissions by other editors during those five minutes of my own work.) --Pwendt|talk 13:37, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

Strange Wine and the Dillons

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5469373; Archive.org copy can't be borrowed, and there are intros before each story, so I had to search for titles and I think I got all the page numbers correct, but who knows, someone will look at it eventually. The odd thing is the cover is credited to Leo and Diane Dillon, with a 1966 copyright date. There is this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?3527+3, with all covers being a photo of Mr. Ellison, but there's also this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisheryear.cgi?4067+2009, where the Ellison covers without the photo are all the same cover as the Strange Wine book I just did an edit for, but the Dillons are only credited on 1 of them. Ellison also has a 2008 book, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?537728, which has the photo cover but is missing the pub. series (entered by someone in 2015, so maybe the series didn't exist yet on here), so I made another edit adding the series, and most oddly a 1999 book, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?375604, which has the same artwork but with a different color scheme. So why art's dated 1966 and whether the 1999 e-book was the first time it appeared on a cover, who knows, but I'm sure all this will open some discussions here. Tangentially, there's clearly something off about the first half-dozen e-reads.com books being dated before e-books existed, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?4067, and also about this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?45027, which seems the same publisher judging by the notes in both about being acquired by Open Road, and this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?424501, which is the only E-Reads Ellison book listed and has the same cover as all the e-reads.com books, and finally the question of whether these, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?35686, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?16649, and https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?33558, are the same as the others. --Username (talk) 12:21, 30 October 2022 (EDT)

Large backlog in the Pending Submission Queue

Is there a problem with getting submissions in the Pending Edits queue processed? The current count is 5987 and I have pending edits that have been queued since October 18. Thanks! Phil (talk) 12:59, 31 October 2022 (EDT)

They're all approved. I'll also approve the follow-ups as soon as you submit them. Sorry about the delay. John Scifibones 13:50, 31 October 2022 (EDT)

Too many submissions, often requiring time to research and process, and not enough moderators with enough time to go through them properly. It can happen when things align weirdly. Annie (talk) 13:55, 31 October 2022 (EDT)

Football, Maradona, and the Commodore 64

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?36690; There have been 4 copies uploaded in the last few years, https://archive.org/search.php?query=%22book%20of%20two%20halves%22%20royle, and I entered an edit for the original edition which is on ISFDB. A few problems, though; even though the cover is the same on all 4 the credited cover artist is different in the original Gollancz than in the Indigo or Phoenix editions, and the Phoenix changes the subtitle from "New Football Short Stories" to just "Football Short Stories", even though you wouldn't know that unless you look at the cover because the uploader wrote the wrong subtitle in the description. Here's the important thing, though, in case anyone wants to do anything with these; there are nearly 20 more stories that aren't entered here, many of them by genre authors, but I tried reading 1 of them and couldn't make sense of the football (or soccer, here in the USA) slang, so I think this is something for the Brits/Euros to tackle. I'm sure at least a few titles will be eligible for inclusion here. Also, the very first story, by M. John Harrison, is credited to M, no period, so I'm sure those who like creating variants such as that will have a field day, with other names being slightly different, too, no doubt. What I'm really wondering, though, is something that's been bugging me for years, starting in the late 1980s, when a B. Dalton's (RIP) on 5th Avenue in New York had a sweet little alcove downstairs full of computer games and magazines, and I ended up buying nearly a year's worth of issues of Commodore User, a British C64 magazine that somehow made its way to the States, although I'm not sure how shady this might have been because there was an empty box on the cover where the price should have been, with a salesgirl even asking me once what the price was when I went to buy it, as if I would know. Exactly why I bought them I don't know, as I only had an Atari 800XL at the time and didn't get a C64 until late in 1991 on my 21st birthday, when it was almost obsolete (got 15 months of playtime out of it before it died, buying every cheap game at that Dalton's I could, even Mastertronic games-yes, I was that desperate). However, I remember clearly that in 1 issue's letters section there was a (black-and-white, pixelated, tiny) photo of a football player named Diego Maradona, and it showed him jumping in the air and catching the ball with his hand, which even I know is not allowed in that sport, with a caption simply reading "Shameful", or something similar. Many years later, this guy ended up being close friends with Hugo Chavez, the late unlamented Communist leader of Venezuela, and spewing the usual anti-American propaganda. So I've always wondered, was he hated by the European fans for being a cheating bastard, or was he just not a very nice person? EDIT: https://archive.org/details/Commodore_User_Magazine_Issue_040/page/n13/mode/1up; it seems the photo wasn't as tiny as I remembered. --Username (talk) 23:23, 1 November 2022 (EDT)

Well, despite this action (handplay), Maradona is recognized as one of the Great Three of football (European / South American style), the other being the late Pelé and (just recently invicted) Lionel Messi. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:18, 2 February 2023 (EST)

Non-genre nonfiction

How should we use the non-genre tag for nonfiction? I suspect that all three instances by Patrick Moore are tagged by mistake. Also that two of three by Willy Ley are mistakes, and his list of works suggests to me that his version of The Borders of Mathematics may also belong here, without the non-genre tag.

H. G. Wells is a writer above a certain threshold. Perhaps the non-genre tag should be used only for writers who are on that mythical list? (Willy Ley may be one of them.) --Pwendt|talk 20:12, 2 November 2022 (EDT)

It should be used the same way as on any other title: if it's not about speculative fiction, it's non-genre. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:14, 3 November 2022 (EDT)

It seems that many of the nonfiction titles we have in the database are not categorized properly as non-genre (for example titles about movies, tv shows, or astronomy), but it seems they should be! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:18, 3 November 2022 (EDT)

If they cover any print/eprint content, then they are considered genre. We technically shouldn't have anything that covers only a film or TV series or science topics without any print/eprint coverage unless the author/editor is above the threshold. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:21, 3 November 2022 (EDT)

Just adding a note: "The Borders of Mathematics" will always be non-genre and does not belong in the DB unless the author is above threshold. The only non-fiction eligible is one that can be plausibly connected to another book which is already eligible on its own and not as an above threshold item (so connected fiction, poetry or eligible non-fiction which deals with one of the previous two). If there is no fiction tie-in, even with a degree of separation, it only can be in as an above threshold item and always tagged as non-genre. So Asimov's biography is in; a book about historical non-fiction what-ifs or about space or about UFO and so on are out.

And yes, a lot of the DB's non-fiction need cleaning (deleting very often, adding the flag sometimes) - we even have the report for the ones we suspect need deletion (added back when we were apparently adding books for being reviewed in our magazines). Annie (talk) 18:26, 3 November 2022 (EDT)

Scottish Ghost Stories

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1104230; FantLab goofed and included a photo of the front flap of Severn House's edition of Hugh Lamb's 1980 anthology New Tales of Terror on their page for O'Donnell's book, so I added a link in the Lamb book's record to that photo with a note explaining all that, but afterwards I noticed that Jarrold/Jarrolds seem to have reprinted the O'Donnell book umpteen times, because a title page photo says 1975, a copyright page photo says 1981, and FantLab's page says 1990. ISFDB only has the original (?) 1911 edition and a couple of recent ones, so if anyone ever decides to enter more editions there seem to be a whole lot of them. --Username (talk) 14:04, 4 November 2022 (EDT)

Winterwood

https://picclick.com/Keith-Roberts-%93-WINTERWOOD-AND-OTHER-HAUNTINGS-1989-115565926879.html; Doing some Keith Roberts edits and this book has a limited edition with an extra story; oddly, that link above doesn't show any sign of that, but it does show a photo of "The Scarlet Lady"'s title page which is on p. 25, not p. 24 like the contents page/ISFDB says. So does anyone have copies of either edition who can clear all this up? Some stuff may need to be changed. https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?40022. --Username (talk) 08:37, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

Barcode Prices

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Mavmaramis#Warcraft_Atlas; Am I correct in that the price is $29.99 like the barcode says, and the Warcraft page, too, and should that price be entered here? --Username (talk) 10:45, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

According to this article, the price is indeed $12.99 US. A grain of salt though, the article claims that ISBN-13 is part of the EAN strategy, which I was unaware of. ../Doug H (talk) 11:18, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

I assume you meant $29.99, not $12.99. I'm not sure what EAN is, so I'll wait for someone else to chime in and then add the Archive link and price if everyone agrees. --Username (talk) 11:33, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

Yes, that is a price. The leading 5 means US currency and the number the price. However, don't just drop the price in the price field. The notes should state that the price itself was not printed on the cover and was entered based on the barcode. This way there is no confusion down the road. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:46, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

OK, I'll do that, but I hope PV doesn't get mad because they don't seem fond of people contacting them anymore about changes. I'll let them know, anyway. --Username (talk) 11:57, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

Dragons of Komako

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?9257; 1 book in this series is on Archive.org so I added a link, and then did some minor date fixes for other books, but this one has no cover artist, with Dave Dorman being the guy as is mentioned online in several places but I can't find any copyright page photos anywhere and he's credited as David in his other cover art for books in this series, so does anyone have a copy who can check his first name? --Username (talk) 10:50, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

Carn Cover

[1]; I added this book today, there's a "John M" signature on the bottom of the cover, if anyone can make it out it can be added here. I was expecting to see IONICUS as with so many Kimber covers, but no. --Username (talk) 19:22, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

Escape From the Bazaar

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1375642; There is an Archive.org edition but it's a Books For Libraries 1970 reprint, which doesn't specify which edition it's reprinted from, and has the author's full name on the title page unlike all 4 ISFDB records, and the story titled "An Escape" is really "Escape", unlike what the notes say and what was finally entered here. So there's some stuff to research, like which edition was reprinted, whether author's full name was used in every edition, and whether that story was ever published as "An Escape" in any edition. Armstrong has no books on FantLab, 1 book on Dalby's site that's not on ISFDB and is likely non-genre, SFE has no covers, eBay has 3 useless copies with no photos except their covers, etc., so I'm guessing this dude's books are hella rare. Uh-oh, I was about to save this edit when I thought of Google Books, and they have a full view copy of the Knopf edition, which does NOT have the author's full name on the title page but does say "Escape", and a snippet view copy of what Google says is the 1924 Cape edition, which is the same as Knopf, so variants ahoy. Could that weird Smith edition, where it seems nobody's even sure what exactly the publisher's full name is, have used Armstrong's full name? Why would the reprint edition choose that as their source? --Username (talk) 20:58, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

Lost my previous account

Good day. Since the last round of server issues I was no longer able to log in despite using the correct password (I've had the same password since the beginning). After some time, I reluctantly created a new user ID here, & I read that I should link the two, but do not know how to do this. Advice would be appreciated. My former username is Zybahn. CasualDebris (talk) 09:43, 6 November 2022 (EST)

I have sent an email to the address associated with the original account (Zybahn). Ahasuerus (talk) 12:44, 6 November 2022 (EST)

Fixed. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:54, 7 November 2022 (EST)

Yngve SF Collection

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?106931; SWEDISH editors, this 2006 collection was entered in 2008, somebody removed the cover image for some reason a few years later, and it's been sitting dormant for more than 12 years until I stumbled on it today. I believe everything needed to fill in missing info is here, https://web.archive.org/web/20060522062859/http://www.welaforlag.se/ebok.htm, and here, https://web.archive.org/web/20061113202042/http://yngve.bravehost.com/aboutfaceinthedoor.html. The reason I noticed it is because I was entering stories on ISFDB that were published on the old Byzarium website, and Yngve had 1, https://web.archive.org/web/20060323111952/http://www.byzarium.com/storyArchive/December2005.asp?storyName=Nightmare, and his bio mentions a SF novel and its sequel not on ISFDB, and it seems there were more, https://web.archive.org/web/20080228213113/http://yngve.bravehost.com:80/titles.html, although what was actually published is the question. The Swedish review linked at the publisher's site mentions all the stories, including some original Swedish appearances, but as can be seen at the author's site many were also published in English, so tracking down the links hiding in archived sites may interest someone. EDIT: http://aryngve.com/cv.html; It seems the author has published a lot, which were never entered here, so that's interesting. I added a link to his current website in an edit, since the only thing there now is a Goodreads link. EDIT: I also added the 1 Amazon photo of him I could find since there's no photo of him here, and in it he's holding a copy of Precinct 20: Dead Strange, one of his books. If any mods read this, can you approve the 2 Yngve edits at the top of my list, because if any Swedes decide to work on any of this the first thing they'll probably do is enter his image and website, which will make my edits redundant. --Username (talk) 12:54, 6 November 2022 (EST)

Playboy Questions

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?24780; I replaced a 1969 Playboy cover and it was just approved, and then it hit me while looking at it (for the articles) that it's not supposed to have a cover, being a non-genre mag. 1 1954 issue and that 1969 issue are the only ones with covers, so should both probably be deleted, and I also wonder why 2 years, 1957 and 1974, are marked non-genre but not the rest. --Username (talk) 18:07, 6 November 2022 (EST)

Dissembler

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Dissembler; I added some links recently to Leisure horror novels that are on Archive.org, and some of them have notes about info being from Dissembler. The page counts in most cases were very wrong, fixed by me, and today I randomly came across that page linked above. Was this some old joke from the early days of this site, or was it an early version of what's called Fixer now, where some robot AI trawls the internet adding records? Because man, it sucked. --Username (talk) 18:35, 6 November 2022 (EST)

Ijasan

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=ijasan&type=Name; Probably same person, Arabic names written last before first, I guess. --Username (talk) 20:16, 6 November 2022 (EST)

Goodbye to Gunpowder by Donald Barr Chidsey

Any objections to deleting this one? It is non genre, non-fiction from an author who has no known genre works. Annie (talk) 12:57, 7 November 2022 (EST)

Chidsey

Someone just asked if Donald Barr Chidsey's book can be deleted, since it's only there because of the SF magazine review, and it looked familiar because I'm in the edit history as adding the cover a while back. It's an unusual last name so I checked and there's only 2 other Chidseys on ISFDB, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=chids&type=Name, but I suspect they're the same person, writing a letter to the same magazine within a year of each other, so maybe someone here knows for sure and can make one a variant of the other. --Username (talk) 13:44, 7 November 2022 (EST)

Duel Title

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?24108; I added HC Archive.org link. Title isn't right, but what should it be? Duel or Duel: Terror Stories? EDIT: Also, ISFDB has the e-book as 2003, but this, https://jerrywbrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Collected-Stories-includes-Born-of-Man-and-Woman-Matheson-Richard.pdf, says 2011 on the copyright page with the same 13-digit ISBN as ISFDB. What's up with that? --Username (talk) 19:49, 8 November 2022 (EST)

Shrinking Man (Sphere)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?42019; A recent copy appeared on Richard Dalby's site, https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/collections/newest-shopify-test/products/richard-matheson-the-incredible-shrinking-man-sphere-books-1988-paperbacks, and I uploaded the cover because unlike the cover currently on ISFDB you can see a signature on the lower right, KE...something. However, that site's photos usually aren't the greatest, so it's a bit smaller than the old one. So if anyone can find a better Sphere cover that also shows the signature, please upload it and replace mine, and of course if anyone can identify the artist that would be great. --Username (talk) 09:43, 9 November 2022 (EST)

One More Signature ID

This signature is on the cover of Changing Places, by Susan Smith (Scholastic/Point, 1986). Can anyone identify it? —Rosab618 (talk) 00:44, 11 November 2022 (EST)

German Killerbowl

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Killerbowl-Gary-K-Wolf/dp/1975719689; The copyright page says EIS did the cover; it's the same as the 1981 German edition, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?885753, but it's Eis there. Also, should this be by Gary K. Wolf as publisher? --Username (talk) 14:13, 11 November 2022 (EST)

Amazon-hosted cover scans at images/P/

Recall the latest discussion of Amazon cover images at "/P/" and at "/G/":

• Archive 52: Amazon-hosted cover scans, Jan/Feb 2022

(FYI, the preceding seems to be Archive 51: Joan Aiken?, Oct 2021.) The latest concludes with announcement by Ahasuerus of our augmented "My Verifications" reports.

Recently I visited the Amazon product pages for all 17 of my own "/P/" --listed here as "My Primary Verifications with Unstable ISBN-based Amazon URLs". Easy to do: every one is "two clicks away" from that report, because every publication record does report the crucial ISBN. FINDING: All 17 currently link cover images at "/I/", all of which are visually identical to the ones that we link at "/P/". At a glance I suppose that all 17 match the books I verified. ACTION TAKEN: none, because I expect to find most of the latter at a local public library.

This is a change from springtime, when a spot check showed /P/ images at Amazon. It may be useful for others to pursue. --Pwendt|talk 14:24, 11 November 2022 (EST)

Wiki pages for deletion

There is a template we are --or were, a few years ago-- requested to add to ISFDB wiki pages that may be recommended for deletion. For instance, I would add that to Bio:Anthony R. Lewis, where the database Author page is one that I revised this week, in a way that makes the Bio page redundant. In practice it might be only the "Bio:" space where I would use it. --Pwendt|talk 15:53, 11 November 2022 (EST)

You can use Template:Deletion candidate or Template:Page transferred based on the particular circumstances. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:16, 11 November 2022 (EST)

Stickman

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?33232; https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchArg=stickman+pfefferle&searchCode=GKEY%5E*&searchType=0&recCount=25; There are 2 Open Library records, 1 with WorldCat ID (there are actually 2 different records with different ID # on WorldCat, which I've entered in an edit), and 1 with LCCN ID, but clicking it leads to nothing, yet typing the title on LoC does find the book. So are there any numbers on the LoC page that can be entered here as ID? --Username (talk) 18:26, 11 November 2022 (EST)

It does not seem to have an LCCN. The permalink on that page is to some different sort of catalog entry. Looks like maybe it's in a box of stuff? --MartyD (talk) 08:54, 12 November 2022 (EST)

Les Edwards / Daniels

Les Daniels, author of many vampire novels and a lot of genre non-fiction, has 2 cover art credits here; 1 was for a British edition of 1 of his novels, which turns out to be by Les Edwards, so I've made an edit to fix that. However, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?6960, which I can't find anywhere; it's also a British edition, but an ISFDB search for Severn House covers by Les Edwards finds nothing, so if anyone owns this or can find a photo identifying the artist, great; I'm pretty sure it's really Edwards. --Username (talk) 13:08, 13 November 2022 (EST)

Tinkleman vs. Tinkelman

There are two artists [Murray Tinkelman] with a bio and long list of credits and [Murray Tinkleman] with only a couple of credits and no bio. I suspect they are the same, but don't really have an eye for art. A small project for someone. ../Doug H (talk) 16:51, 13 November 2022 (EST)

Well, this is odd; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?271901. It turns out that, as can be seen on the copyright page here, https://postmarkedfromthestars.com/products/the-lurker-at-the-threshold-h-p-lovecraft-1976-3rd-printing-ballantine-books-paperback-murray-tinkleman-cover, Vincent Di Fate is credited for cover art, but magnifying the cover shows "M. Tinkelman" on the lower left. PV is long-gone, so if a mod reads this, please change the name to Tinkelman with a note about the wrong cover artist in the book, since if I make an edit it will be a very long time before it's approved. EDIT: Never mind the Di Fate thing, my OCD made me look at it again and I realized the geniuses inserted a copyright page from some other Ballantine book as can be seen by the different date and ISBN. So the cover art is still signed Tinkelman but now a REAL copyright page from this book needs to be seen to find out how artist's last name is spelled in the book, if it's there at all. I can't find it anywhere online. --Username (talk) 18:28, 13 November 2022 (EST)

Satyrday

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?14733; I added the missing British Souvenir Press edition today, which has the same cover as the American HC, and added Ron Miller's credit from the Berkley PB to the foreign edition because the notes there say cover and illustrations came from Berkley Books; problem is, the foreign edition has an earlier date here than the PB, and there's a mysterious 1982 Berkley TP with no cover and none I can find online. So does anyone know if that's where the art was first used? Also, 1 of Miller's interior art credits was misspelled Satryday here, which I've corrected, but there's a separate interior art credit that's spelled correctly. Miller has 2 cover credits, the covers being totally different, so maybe the art used inside was different, too, or maybe not. Anyone know? --Username (talk) 20:08, 13 November 2022 (EST)

Book cover identity

A user on Reddit asked about a book cover - he states "it showed a long curving floating road, with a long line of mostly alien creatures chained to each other slowly marching along it. In the foreground was a guy in a suit." Poster does not know the title or author. It isn't Norman Spinrad's The Men in the Jungle. If anyone can help with this this given the vague description the question can be found here on Reddit. --Mavmaramis (talk) 14:55, 15 November 2022 (EST)

Theodore Sturgeon SFBC Edition

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?25802; There's only 1 copy on Archive.org, https://archive.org/details/sturgeonisalivew00stur, but it doesn't fit with any of these; the SFBC edition has a note about gutter codes and this copy does have an M on p. 205, so might be the '82 reprint. If anyone knows how to further identify exactly what year it is then it can be entered. The 2 PV of the SFBC edition already on here are long-gone. --Username (talk) 11:58, 17 November 2022 (EST)

Nazis Possessed By Satan

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5480025; My edit was rejected because it's supposedly not spec-fic, just "all that christian stuff", but some of the blurbs at the front and the description on the back clearly peg it as genre, with the premise being that the Nazis and today's skinheads do what they do because of being possessed. If it's not considered spec-fic then most of Elwood's other Christian novels would have to go, too, along with many other Christian-themed books here. Any speed readers here who can read the entire book and weigh in? --Username (talk) 09:24, 19 November 2022 (EST)

Quiver of Horror

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5490693; Unstable image was replaced by me, afterwards I noticed Arrow logo on cover is different, was going to cancel when I saw on Dalby's site, https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/products/dennis-wheatley-quiver-of-horror-arrow-books-1965-paperbacks, that the cover that was there previously is a year-later reprint, so I may have accidentally found the real original cover, any experts on these old British paperbacks and their umpteen reprints maybe can tell us if it is; if so, the old cover should be added to a new record for the reprint. --Username (talk) 20:43, 19 November 2022 (EST)

The Zork Chronicles

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?50891; 5 PV, RTrace, Ahasuerus, Willem still active, I added Archive link and noticed title is Zork: The Novel on copyright page so I added a note about that, does it say that on your copies, too (if not, I'll cancel and just add the link)? Also made Infocom books novelizations except Wishbringer which already was marked so, but Robin Wayne Bailey has alternate name for their 2 books, so which name should be checked off as a novelization; maybe both? EDIT: Typing Effinger and zork-the-novel on Google only finds this, https://www.thezorklibrary.com/history/resources/novel/The%20Zork%20Chronicles.pdf, so apparently this isn't info that's common knowledge. --Username (talk) 22:49, 19 November 2022 (EST)

IT!

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?300084; On the great tapatalk.com site I found this, https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterkidclassichorrorforum/paperback-film-tie-ins-t6678-s1200.html, which mentions that Italian publication linked above, and says the English title is fake, but it's not; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It!_The_Terror_from_Beyond_Space. So really this should be a novelization, but ErnestoVeg, who entered a ton of Italian stuff many years ago, is deceased, so maybe some other Italian experts will know what to do with this. --Username (talk) 09:35, 20 November 2022 (EST)

Japanese Madman

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterkidclassichorrorforum/paperback-film-tie-ins-t6678-s1240.html; I, Madman was a lame horror movie from 1989 that, I think, was novelized in Japan? It was retitled Hardcover overseas (the plot is something about books), and at the link above are 2 photos of what looks like a book; Nihonjoe would know, I'm sure. Also, I just made a change to the Wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Madman, adding Japan in the first sentence; I can probably count how many Wikipedia changes I've ever made on my fingers, but it seems odd to me that any doofus can edit without approval, unlike this site. Does anyone know why this is or if they eventually check what people do? --Username (talk) 11:02, 20 November 2022 (EST)

As far as I can tell, there is no novelization of this film published in Japan. I think that's a scan of the front and back of the movie program (they release a short booklet, usually A4 size, with many films in Japan. It has cast and crew information, as well as other things related to the film). As for why Wikipedia allows anyone to make changes to articles, that's part of their thing. Some pages are less watched than others, so any vandalism sometimes goes unnoticed for a while on less-watched pages. Still, it works pretty well. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:37, 22 November 2022 (EST)

Cover image links broken

First noticed this a couple of months ago, but still an issue. Links for covers to Galactic Central seem to have been broken after the big database move. See, for example, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?61948 --Gengelcox (talk) 19:04, 20 November 2022 (EST)

Yes, can anything be done? When was the move? —Rosab618 (talk) 04:13, 30 January 2023 (EST)

Vonda M. Big Engine Book

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?52198; Very little evidence online of this edition; like other books by the publisher it may have gone down when they went away. After further research this may need the unpublished date. --Username (talk) 09:55, 21 November 2022 (EST)

Gay Zorro

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=zorro&type=All+Titles; Is Zorro, being a mythological figure, ISFDB-relevant? Because I just found a copy on Archive.org of the Zorro, the Gay Blade novelization, an unbelievably offensive 1981 spoof starring George Hamilton soon after he played Dracula in Love At First Bite, and would love to enter it here. --Username (talk) 15:56, 22 November 2022 (EST)

As far as I can tell, there are no speculative elements at all in that adaptation. I wouldn't call Zorro mythological, either, since the character was created around 1920 as a pulp fiction character. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:26, 22 November 2022 (EST)

2 Robert Harrises

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?3055; I doubt the Swedish SS is by the famous Harris because he would have been 9 at the time. --Username (talk) 18:44, 22 November 2022 (EST)

Right you are. I made the difference for this piece into 'Robert Harris (I)' as author. Does anyone know about another Robert Harris active as writer at that time, the 1960s? (I found no one at Wikipedia). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:57, 23 November 2022 (EST)

Christopher Fowler Story Title

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=monsoon+pal&type=All+Titles; It seems that the story starts with "The" in Red Gloves, too, going by the e-book edition readable on Google Books and elsewhere, but ISFDB edition is TP from years ago, and who knows how it is in Dark World, Tartarus books being very rare and so actual story title page can't be seen. So if anyone finds out; I suspect Dark World has the shorter title and Fowler's collection and subsequent reprints have the longer title. --Username (talk) 18:51, 23 November 2022 (EST)

Luana

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?89579; Several active PV, so does "Printed in Canada" appear on copyright page in everyone's copies? If so, it should have a Canadian price, no? Or is it a separate Canadian edition? Because price and SBN are the same as ISFDB's, which would seem to suggest it's not. https://bookshopapocalypse.com/products/luana-by-alan-dean-foster-1974-movie-tie-in-paperback. --Username (talk) 20:41, 23 November 2022 (EST)

Bookfinger Cyclops

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5493838; The 1974 Bookfinger edition of 1940's Dr. Cyclops is very rare because 200 of the 1000 copies were damaged, and the only photos I could find were in a very long novelizations thread on tapatalk.com, but the photo I uploaded just now includes the dustjacket of the original edition and the Bookfinger which has no jacket , while another photo later on in the thread shows only the spines of both. So that's the best one because at least it shows the front cover and the spine, but if anyone knows how to crop out the original and just show the Bookfinger it would be appreciated. --Username (talk) 20:58, 23 November 2022 (EST)

Extremely easy to do. Use MS Paint, for example, select desired area of picture, press 'crop', save as jpg, upload. Done. MagicUnk (talk) 07:41, 24 November 2022 (EST)

Recording ebook editions

I know we generally don't create separate publication records for ebooks. I suspect this is in part because there's no good way to date them. However, I recently purchased the Kindle ebook editions of N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth series and noticed that all three of the ebooks have a code on the copyright page containing what looks like both an edition number and a full date. (example: E3-20210202-JV-PC-COR). The Kindle page counts are also significantly different from the ones in the existing records. I didn't find any guidance in the Help pages nor, for that matter, did I see the don't record ebook editions guidance. Should these be separate pub records or should there just be notes added to the existing ebook pub records? Phil (talk) 09:02, 25 November 2022 (EST)

Yes, I do think that these differences do allow their indexing as separate editions: as long as there are differences, we do recognize them. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:38, 25 November 2022 (EST)

Every Update (and some books get a new update almost weekly - sometimes a single typo will be fixed and a new file uploaded) gets one of these strings so if we start recording them separately, we will have hundreds of records per book (especially for the self-published). Unless the book has a different cover, excerpt, publisher or actual statement for a different edition (or a change in the isbn, author or title of course), I’d treat them as a single record. The page numbers is not an issue - they are usually estimates based on a paperback which may or may not have the same excerpts. Annie (talk) 17:04, 25 November 2022 (EST)

Thanks. Besides the code, each of these has a different cover from the existing ebook record so in this case I'll create separate edition records. Is there some way to get this guidance added to the Help? Phil (talk) 18:17, 25 November 2022 (EST)

As we record the artists and cover art and other details about it (the latter in the notes) and show the cover, a new cover will always mean a new record IMO. More often than not, they also pair with a paperback with the same cover (but not always). Then you can use the dates inside to date (with attribution - GoodReads can sometimes also help dating the covers/editions - Amazon can be a pain for that as they reuse records. Or use 0000-00-00 if that feels right). :) We probably should get that a bit better listed in the help pages. I will work on it as soon as I am fully back online, probably next week - just resurfacing after a bit of a health issue this week. Annie (talk) 18:25, 25 November 2022 (EST)

Canadian Alph

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?251871; https://archive.org/details/alph0000main_b5k4; Many active PV, Archive.org copy printed in Canada on copyright page, same price as USA, is this the copy that was PV? --Username (talk) 10:09, 27 November 2022 (EST)

Year's Best Weird Fiction

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?36975; I've copy-and-pasted a discussion with a mod on my board in case anyone can fill in anything with these books: 1) The title date of #1 is earlier than the edition you PV but there's no record for an earlier edition here; 2) The foreign edition is the only book in the "Modern Weird" Series with no series #, format or cover artist, and the other 3 books are listed as 2 PB and a TP, so obviously one of those formats is wrong; 3) Volume 3 HC has no page count, cover artist or contents, and while cover images for both editions are the same and the TP does have a cover artist later volumes in the series have a different cover (#4 also has 2 separate cover artists) for each edition so it's possible that whoever entered 3's HC cover just copy-and-pasted the TP cover without checking to see if that was the right cover, as has happened so many times before with other books ; 4) Volume 4 HC has no ISBN or page count, doesn't have the day entered like the TP does, and neither edition has page numbers entered for the contents; 5) Volume 5 HC has no cover artist, the page counts of each edition are different, and neither edition has page numbers entered for the contents, plus the viewable e-book on Amazon (never entered on ISFDB) says Five, not 5, in the title, so both editions probably have the wrong title. I may have missed something, but these are the problems I see, in case anyone chances across this message and can fix anything I've mentioned. EDIT: While there don't seem to be any eBay copies of this series with anything other than cover photos, I did find this: https://alligatortreegraphics.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/ybwf5.pdf, so Volume 5 clearly should be Five since this is either the TP or HC judging by the fact that the contents page has page numbers on it. --Username (talk) 11:04, 27 November 2022 (EST)

John Stanley

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?8752; John Stanley (2) has one art credit that probably belongs with first guy; either that or all of first guy's art credits belong with second guy. --Username (talk) 22:38, 27 November 2022 (EST)

Amazon "S" Images

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5496611; This happens occasionally; any way to fix it so yellow warning doesn't happen? --Username (talk) 23:09, 27 November 2022 (EST)

Lift

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterkidclassichorrorforum/paperback-film-tie-ins-t6678-s400.html#p1352911; Been working my way through the great Tapatalk site's forums and this novelization is something I can't find much info about and covers don't really give anything like a price or ISBN, so I'm sure some of our Dutch friends can find something on the appropriate Dutch-language sites or maybe they own a copy; can't let a book about a KILLER ELEVATOR go un-entered. --Username (talk) 23:35, 27 November 2022 (EST)

Last Page

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?174481; Obscure edition of this book, page count entered with last page in brackets plus a note that it's unnumbered, Bluesman is the one who entered it that way and they're not around anymore, note search suggests that's the only note written in that style, so should it just be changed to 160? --Username (talk) 10:00, 28 November 2022 (EST)

The Ends of the Earth

https://archive.org/search.php?query=lucius%20shepard%20ends%20earth; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?37111; Been adding a lot of Lucius Shepard Archive.org links, I entered the PB of the link above with no problem, TP has different ISBN on back cover which is probably the one that should be here because it comes after the HC, cover image is wrong as noted by someone, confusion with dates, etc. in case anyone knows more. I didn't add an edit to TP. --Username (talk) 21:03, 30 November 2022 (EST)

Fourbodings

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5501223; Rare book recently uploaded, but there are a number of annoying details which need answering. It's Edward Miller on copyright page but real name, Les Edwards, is on back flap, so which should take precedence; last story is much longer than the others and probably should be changed to a (short) novel; Lebbon's story is noted to have an incorrect title elsewhere but it's also incorrect here, having a comma that's not in the book, but it also appears in a collection of his so it may have a comma there; intro has a long subtitle which maybe should be part of the title here but it's written in a different font so may have been intended as a heading, and since starting page in the book only says introduction maybe page # should be 9 since that's where the actual intro title appears. --Username (talk) 00:25, 3 December 2022 (EST)

For author names, we generally go with the name as it appears on the title page. Which one appears there? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:17, 30 January 2023 (EST)

I don't see anything in my note about an author name, just an artist name. --Username (talk) 16:48, 30 January 2023 (EST)

Star Wars Newspaper Serialization

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterkidclassichorrorforum/paperback-film-tie-ins-t6678-s560.html#p1370004; Was this a real thing? If so, can newspaper serializations be entered here? I smell microfilm in the future. --Username (talk) 13:58, 3 December 2022 (EST)

Can't speak to whether it's real or not, but, yes, newspaper serializations are valid publications. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:31, 4 December 2022 (EST)

The Art of Richard Powers

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?298166; https://fantlab.ru/edition268163; I have a pending edit adding FantLab ID and noticed that while 1 photo has UK price on the front flap another has the USA/Canada prices stickered on the back cover, and the Canadian price is different than what's here. So if any PV is still active they may want to double-check their copies. --Username (talk) 18:02, 4 December 2022 (EST)

Staehle/Staehla

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?544010; Note by someone about the signature; it's legible in the first photo here, https://fantlab.ru/edition208143, if you magnify it. Could it be this guy, https://www.noosfere.org/livres/auteur.asp?NumAuteur=2147191370, or this guy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Staehle, or someone else? --Username (talk) 20:09, 4 December 2022 (EST)

Landis' Willy and Evans' Forsaken

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?417; I was doing a lot of edits for Ace anthologies edited by Dann and Dozois and everything was going pretty smoothly until this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=willy+in+t&type=All+Titles, where as so often happens a false variant was created, the name being Geoffrey A. Landis in Nanotech, not Geoffrey Landis, but the title also appears much later in an obscure poetry anthology. 2 PV of Nanotech PB are gone, PV of Nanotech HC is barely around, so merge/variant is needed if anyone wants to. EDIT: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?94208; I almost missed their first anthology Unicorns! because the genius who uploaded it spelled editor's name DUZOIS; there's a problem with this one, too, in that the name is Bev Evans on contents page and story page but it's Beverly on ISFDB. Many editions, many PV, some here, some not, so if anyone wants to they can look into that and fix if needed. EDIT: I see that 2 PV of 1984 sixth printing did enter it as Bev and made it a variant of Beverly, but I'm guessing it's another false variant and should be Bev in all editions. --Username (talk) 12:02, 5 December 2022 (EST)

Performance issues -- 2022-12-06

We are currently experiencing performance problems due to what appear to be robots rapid-firing requests at the server. I am looking into it. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:13, 6 December 2022 (EST)

Duvic

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=duvic&type=Name; Patric is either an alternate name or it was entered wrong here, in case anyone knows, and Patrice has 2 Terminus entries so the "only appeared as" Hungarian edition is wrong, probably, because the title appeared in another edition. --Username (talk) 20:39, 6 December 2022 (EST)

Audiobook publications of shortfiction

When recording the audiobook editions of shortfiction, should the audiobook be a new publication under the shortfiction title or a new edition of the chapbook? Phil (talk) 09:04, 8 December 2022 (EST)

An audiobook is merely another publication format. You handle the same way as if you were adding any other publication format.

1. A CHAPBOOK title exists for this SHORTFICTION title. Simply clone an existing publication making the necessary changes.
2. If there isn't an existing CHAPBOOK title, create one via Add New Chapbook.

John Scifibones 09:53, 8 December 2022 (EST)

Thanks! Phil (talk) 09:57, 8 December 2022 (EST)

RSH

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=rokeya&type=Name; Last 2 are likely the same person. --Username (talk) 13:04, 9 December 2022 (EST)

Alternate name created. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:10, 9 December 2022 (EST)

Missing Flash Gordon

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?13912; No evidence of that, but this, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42357382-flash-gordon, is found at several places on the web. So whether 1982 edition qualifies to be here (might be a comic) or if Hirschfeld wrote his own version and, if not, whether it should be deleted is the question. Anyone know? --Username (talk) 20:27, 11 December 2022 (EST)

I've never heard of that Burt Hirschfeld Flash Gordon, and I've been keeping a comics novelization/tie-in list for myself for decades. There's an Amazon entry (without a cover, as with all others like Open Library) dated 1973 instead of 1985, underlining its iffy nature.

That 1982 book riding the coattails of the movie is indeed a comics reprint, written by Bill Pearson and drawn by Ric Estrada, from King Comics' Flash Gordon #3 (January 1967)--a Goodreads reader review gives the story titles. MOHearn (talk) 10:42, 13 December 2022 (EST)

Archive Dead Links

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?398877; The copy's been removed from Archive.org; should link be deleted? --Username (talk) 18:54, 12 December 2022 (EST)

I believe the link should be removed from web page field and the notes, at a minimum. updated to state the item has been removed from IA. The link could be moved into the pub notes for historical purposes if desired. But let's see what other editors think. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:14, 12 December 2022 (EST)

I like moving the link to the notes (without making it an anchor, and adding that it has been removed) as an expansion of the first bullet about the IA scan source. Retains the source identification while also helping avoid having someone else try in vain to hunt it down.... --MartyD (talk) 09:51, 13 December 2022 (EST)

OK, done. There's also a few WorldCat pages with different years so that may mean it was reissued or they were confused. --Username (talk) 10:22, 13 December 2022 (EST)

The Lost World Date

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?364; I added/fixed info for omnibus Jurassic World, date on copyright page for Jurassic Park same as Wiki so I've added an edit changing the title date but Lost World says September 8 on Wiki but September 28 on copyright, so real day is needed. --Username (talk) 13:44, 13 December 2022 (EST)

Dark Terrors

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?8556; Someone just uploaded #4 HC (only PB was there before) and the highly elusive #1, which is very hard to find because listings on WorldCat and elsewhere confuse later volumes with the same title (which is why the OL page for #1 has dozens of Amazon and Better World Books links). So now all are available except #5. I think that TP is suspicious, having no contents and a different page count, so likely it was cancelled and the PB is the real edition; also, if anyone has a copy of any edition of #5 and can upload it that would make the series complete. I'm sure there's lots of ex-library copies over in GB but here in USA I don't think I've ever seen a real copy of any of them. --Username (talk) 16:32, 13 December 2022 (EST)

Problem With Web Pages

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5510604; I noticed something like this once before not too long ago; by adding the Blogspot article it seems to cancel 1 of the other web pages. Am I seeing this wrong or is this a problem that needs fixing? --Username (talk) 22:26, 13 December 2022 (EST)

No, see that it is there both with a plus and with a minus sign in front of it. That’s just different formatting - end of line, a space somewhere or something like that. It is either something added before some of the current fields cleanup operations which happen during saving were implemented or it is an artifact of how we compare values. In either case, as long as it is there as both a plus and a minus line, it is not getting lost - just formatted properly for how the DB wants it now. Annie (talk) 23:18, 13 December 2022 (EST)

Annie is correct: it's a display problem which occurs under certain circumstances. I have identified the root cause and I am about to start working on a fix. Thanks for reporting the problem. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:49, 14 December 2022 (EST)

OK, I think I got it -- note how the problematic submission is displayed now. Please let me know if you come across any issues. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:42, 14 December 2022 (EST)

Picture Mommy Dead: In or Out?

I'm holding this submission and questioned whether the novelization is speculative per our definitions based on the Wikipedia description of the movie that is novelized. The submitter disagrees. I'm cross posting here to solicit additional opinions on whether this book is within our scope. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:08, 14 December 2022 (EST)

I am not familiar with the movie, but AllMovie.com describes the plot thusly:

• A young girl is deeply traumatized after she sees her mother burned to death in a house fire and spends the rest of her youth locked in a mental hospital. By the time she is released, her father has married a nasty woman who only wants his money. Knowing that the recently returned daughter is mentally unstable, the stepmom does all she can to drive the fragile girl over the edge.

It sounds like the horror is psychological -- as opposed to supernatural -- in nature. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:48, 14 December 2022 (EST)

It doesn't really matter. The same mod rejected another novelization I tried to add recently because they said they've seen the movie and it had no "supernatural elements", so cancel this one, too. No big deal. A few rejections out of hundreds of edits is par for the course. --Username (talk) 21:07, 15 December 2022 (EST)

Lee Mandelo

I received a note from the editor of Interzone today concerning the canonical name for Brit/Lee Mandelo. Excerpt:

I'm writing today because the ISFDB entry for Lee Mandelo incorrectly cites their name as 'Brit Mandelo'. Lee Mandelo is listed as an 'alternate', but this does not reflect the reality of Lee Mandelo's life: they identify as Lee, now, not Brit

I'll let you guys sort out what should be done (based on previous precedent and procedures). Alvonruff (talk) 23:09, 14 December 2022 (EST)

Lee Mandelo posted about this issue on the Moderator Noticeboard earlier today. The discussion is ongoing. Ahasuerus (talk) 23:14, 14 December 2022 (EST)

The New People

I'm just curious about something. I know since the big server move a lot of bots have been created and then deleted, but many others seem to be real people, I think. Was there some kind of online bulletin board or something encouraging new editors to join after the move? Is the new server more accessible than the old one was? I've probably seen more new names being created in the "recent changes" section over the last few months than I saw in the nearly 2 years I was here previously. --Username (talk) 21:04, 15 December 2022 (EST)

House Carfax

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?31406; Just a heads up that someone's started uploading issues of this rare zine to Archive.org, much of the contents in the first 2 issues being dated movie reviews and articles with some TERRIBLE fiction included, but in the second issue is a short poem by Baudelaire, "Carcass", which doesn't exactly match any title here, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1388597; I'm hoping they'll get to issue #3 because there's a story by Jack Pavey in that one that was nominated for a BFA, so once they stopped letting the editors include their own stories things obviously improved. There's also a Clive Barker interview that for some reason is in both #1 and #6 according to philsp.com (which calls one an article and the other an interview), and Barker's site shows both issue covers, so I made an edit changing the date to the original. I also think this zine eventually morphed into The Scream Factory judging by the several names who were involved with both. EDIT: #5 is on Dalby's site, https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/products/house-carfax-magazine-number-5-winter-1990, in case uploader never gets around to that issue; I don't see a signature on either cover but 1 of the artists on contents page has a story in the same issue but without his middle initial and the other has 1 interior art credit on ISFDB but with a ", II" after his name. EDIT: Issue #3 has been uploaded on 12/17; I hope when I get around to reading Pavey's award-nominated story it's better than the grade-school level illustration at the end of it. EDIT: Issue #4 is being processed as I write this and should be available soon; no interviews with famous writers, old poems or award-nominated stories in this one judging by the contents on philsp.com, just editors and their friends publishing stories nobody else would. EDIT: #5 is being processed (sorry, Mr. Dalby); another issue with nothing special and someone entered it (and #6) here long ago so I'm just going to add a link in an edit. EDIT: #6 is uploaded; adding a link. I think that's all the issues there were. --Username (talk) 21:29, 15 December 2022 (EST)

Astronaut's Wife

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?718009; Added Archive.org link in a pending edit, Rand Ravich was the writer/director but is credited for cover art here, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?384335, cover of both novelization and this Italian publication are just the movie poster with the stars of the film, editors who entered the Italian publication in 2012 aren't around anymore, so what's to be done? I say Ravich should be removed. --Username (talk) 11:52, 16 December 2022 (EST)

Romanian Robocop

https://archive.org/details/naha-ed.-robocop-scan; I'm guessing this one is pretty rare, the publisher not having any books listed on ISFDB, so if anyone fluent in Romanian would like to enter it. There's also this French edition, https://archive.org/details/robocop-1987-ed-naha-livre-scanne-francais, but the publisher has hundreds of books on ISFDB so it's probably common, but someone may want to enter it, anyway. It seems there are no English-language editions of Robocop on Archive.org. EDIT: https://archive.org/details/robocop20000naha; French edition of Robocop 2. At least with #2 there is a copy of the Jove edition on Archive.org, although it's a very ratty copy with stickers all over the covers; I will enter it. Thank you for your cooperation. --Username (talk) 10:59, 18 December 2022 (EST)

I've entered the Romanian and French editions for the first book. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:09, 19 December 2022 (EST)

Memory of Fire

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?23263; I added Archive.org links to both editions, price for HC was wrong (fixed) and artist is credited as Dinayer, PB has Dinyer which is his real name, search on the archive finds Dinayer only for that book and nothing else, only online site with Dinayer is this, http://www.otherchangeofhobbit.com/0001.html, so should note be made about wrong spelling or wrong name entered for HC and a variant made? EDIT: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?21706; I added TP Archive.org link; 1 of those PB records should probably be deleted as redundant. --Username (talk) 09:58, 19 December 2022 (EST)

Karine

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=karine+d&type=Name; Same person, probably. --Username (talk) 11:19, 19 December 2022 (EST)

Site performance and title searches -- possible software solution

Site performance has been spiky recently -- one moment it's flawless and the next moment it takes 5-10+ seconds to load a simple Web page.

One of the main issues contributing to these performance problems is the fact that we have over 2 million title records. When you enter a word like "pulp" in the main Search box and select "All Titles" or "Fiction Titles", the database software has to scan 1-2+ million records to see which one contain the word "pulp" in the title field. The process can take a number of seconds depending on what else is happening at the same time.

To make matters worse, if a moderator happens to be approving a submission which affects a title record (even an unrelated title record) while the search is running, it will block not only the approval process, but also all other users who are trying to run title searches or display titles-related Web pages (which is to say most of them.) In the meantime, other requests -- searches, page display requests, approvals -- pile up in our database's internal queue. Once the original search finishes and the approval is processed, the next search is executed, which can also take a few seconds and that can result in a collision with the next approval process and so on. Things can really pile up.

The obvious solution would be to add a "Match Type" drop-down box to the "Search" section and change its default behavior from "find records which contain the entered string" to "find records which are exactly like the entered string". It would still ignore upper/lower case, so a search on 'jane doe' would find 'Jane Doe'. It would also check exact transliterated values. Users who need to do a "contains" search could then change the drop-down value from "exact" to "contains". We could also add another drop-down value, "starts with", which is much faster than "contains".

The main issue with this solution is that some users may need the "contains" functionality most of the time, which would require them to change the selected "Match Type" value repeatedly and slow them down. One possible approach would be to make "exact" vs. "contains" a user-defined option. That way users who use "contains" all the time could set it to be their default. Also, since it's primarily title searches that cause performance problem, we could change the default value just for them, but I can't think of a way to do it without causing confusion.

Thoughts? Ideas? Ahasuerus (talk) 17:10, 19 December 2022 (EST)

Switching to a default "exact" will make our search almost useless IMO - people don't always remember if the title starts with "the" or want to type a long title (or even remember it) when it contains a word which will find the title quickly enough. And as Advanced Search requires an account, that will aggravate things even more (while accounts are free, a search requiring an account makes some people a bit wary sometimes). Adding a dropdown may help with pure bot searches (until the bot learns to use the proper mode anyway).

Full text search is always going to be an expensive operation. Maybe some indices can help a bit...

On the other hand, we do need to do something - the servers seem to get hit more and more with these long requests - which makes it almost impossible to use the DB at times... Annie (talk) 12:13, 20 December 2022 (EST)

I keep forgetting that the recent server upgrade also updated the database engine from 5.0 to 8.0. Version 8.0 has much more robust support for "full-text" searches. I'll need to do more research to determine what the new options are. Thanks for jogging my memory. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:53, 21 December 2022 (EST)

Wheatley Omnibus

I've moved info over to the single novel, using Dalby's copy instead of FantLab because it has more photos and inscriptions, but I don't really want to delete this one because I think editor who entered it got confused and meant to make this the Octopus omnibus of Wheatley's novels, https://www.worldcat.org/title/60070877, so if anyone would like to convert it or something. A few people worked on it previously and there's a verification, so I'm not sure why nobody ever noticed something was wrong with it. --Username (talk) 10:18, 21 December 2022 (EST)

Marian Wood

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?281433; I added Marian Wood to publisher for a Henry Holt book and searched notes, finding some people added it, too, while others noted it only; none of the Holt books had it in the publisher while some G.P. Putnam's had it, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?33246, and others didn't. I've tried to standardize them all, but this one, which I replaced the cover image for in a pending edit, is the only one not on Archive.org (correct cover on OL leads to different edition) and neither PV is really active, so whenever my Marian Wood edits are finally approved if anybody remembers they can decide to change this one, too, so all books are under the same publisher. --Username (talk) 13:56, 21 December 2022 (EST)

Mapping the Beast

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?706465; I believe this is another of the MANY Prime books which were announced and then cancelled over the years; an 8888-00-00 may be needed unless someone can find evidence it was released somewhere. --Username (talk) 20:07, 21 December 2022 (EST)

Turner?

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?157242; http://www.bewilderingstories.com/bios/turner_jm_bio.html; that story is not by the dead artist. --Username (talk) 11:25, 22 December 2022 (EST)

Philsp Problem

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/note_search_results.cgi?OPERATOR=contains&NOTE_VALUE=info+from%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fwww.philsp.com%2Fhomeville; I had an issue with a mod about the link I provided in the notes for a story from Philsp not pointing to the same place as it did when I added the link a short time ago; it seems that site constantly updates and stuff gets moved around to other pages. Luckily, I write my notes in a specific style and so that search linked above has found what is likely most of them, although it's possible in my earlier days I wrote them a bit differently so there might be a few others, who knows. Anyway, I have neither the patience or the will to fix any of them, my effort in finding them in the first place being a waste of time now, so I give my permission to anyone who cares to remove the dead links and enter something else, or nothing. --Username (talk) 11:10, 23 December 2022 (EST)

Lands Beyond

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Biomassbob#Lands_Beyond; Re: this discussion, if anybody can determine which edition the Archive.org copy is then they can respond here and I will add the link myself to that edition. --Username (talk) 11:23, 23 December 2022 (EST)

Slesar Stories

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?690; 2021 Archive.org copies of 1978 Doubleday and 1st Avon of 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories, I added links to both, also added month to Asimov intro but there are 4 stories that have 1978 dates that are likely original because they're not in the copyright section, many PV so someone can look into that and decide whether to change their months to that of the original edition, more important is Henry Slesar's stories, he wrote one of those annoying "omnibus" stories in Playboy in 1960 which was under 1 title, After: Four Fables of the Post-Bomb World, but each fable had a different title, After is in many books but it's unclear whether they all reprinted all 4 fables, it also has a variant title of "Doctor" but that's wrong because that's the title of one of the vignettes and is in the same 100 Great... anthology, mentioned above, that "After" is supposedly also in but that's also wrong because there's nothing titled After, it just included 3 of the 4 fables separately, there's also a 1981 German "Doctor" on ISFDB which was never made a variant of the original, 1 fable, "Merchant", has a 1978 date on ISFDB as if it's original, and another, "Lawyer", says it only appeared in Russian. So, if anyone wants to, they can sort out that mess. --Username (talk) 12:48, 23 December 2022 (EST)

Ordering of Moorcock's Elric Books

I'd like to change the numbering of Michael Moorcock's The Elric Saga. We do not number it in publication order, nor do I think we should. As far as I can tell, we seem to have the series numbered by internal chronology of the six books that were published by the 1970s. Any books published after that are added after the first six in publication order. Finally, there is a graphic story that it tacked on the end of the series. To be fair, that title was not marked as graphic until this morning when I did so based on its entry in The Tanelorn Archives and the Amazon listing of its 1997 edition. With the publication of a new Elric book this December, I believe that we should number the series by internal chronology and while I think we can leave the comic book in the series, I wouldn't assign it a number. This is how we treat short stories that have either been collected or not. I would suggest that we number the series as:

1. Elric of Melniboné
2. The Fortress of the Pearl
3. The Sailor on the Seas of Fate
4. The Weird of the White Wolf
5. The Citadel of Forgotten Myths
6. The Sleeping Sorceress
7. The Revenge of the Rose
8. The Bane of the Black Sword
9. Stormbringer

Thoughts?

Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 09:11, 26 December 2022 (EST)

I am thinking that we should probably organize the original (1961-1964) stories, which are currently listed within the main series, as a separate sub-series.

I am afraid I don't have an opinion re: the best way to order the main series since I gave up on it decades ago. All I recall is that the series order was messy because Moorcock kept tweaking things. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:16, 26 December 2022 (EST)

Not hearing any objections, I'm going to go ahead and proceed with the numbering change for the collections/novels. I should have mentioned that for all of them except the recent book, they are collected in various omnibus editions which make the numbering clear. Audible inserts the new book between the two recently published omnibus editions. I'm reading the new novel now and this fits as it contains the character Moonglum who is first introduced in The Weird of the White Wolf. I'll also adjust the content on the omnibus titles. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 17:53, 30 December 2022 (EST)

Printing field for publications

Not sure if this is already a feature request, but it would be extremely helpful to have a "Printing" field that showed up when viewing all of the publications of a particular title. For some (like The Fellowship of the Ring) that have a ton of printings, it would make finding the specific printing entry a lot easier when trying to verify a publication. Currently, you have to pull up multiple publication entries until you find the one you're looking for (since the printing information is in the Notes). Thoughts? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:06, 27 December 2022 (EST)

We have discussed this issue a few times. The latest iteration of the discussion resulted in FR 794, "Add 'Printing number' and "Printing # Details" fields to pub records". The Description field says:

• Add 'Printing number' and "Printing # Details" fields to publication records. The first field should be strictly numeric, allowing values like "1", "3" or "27". It will be displayed as a new column in the standard Publication table. It will be used for sorting publications that have the same publication date and publisher within it.
• The second field will allow arbitrary values like "stated fourth Ace printing but actually at least the 6th printing because Ace reset its printing numbers at some point". The value, if present, will be displayed in a mouse-over bubble next to the numeric Printing Number value. (See http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Community_Portal/Archive/Archive48#.22Printing_Number.22_field_--_an_alternative_approach for further discussion.)

The Discussion section of the FR talks about various related issues, e.g.:

• The main problem that I have run into is that the definition of "printing" can be vague. A popular book which has been published by multiple publishers using multiple formats can easily have half a dozen "first" printings: "first printing of the Dutton edition", "first printing of the Ace paperback edition", "first printing of the Italian edition", etc. If a title is associated with 6 "first printing" publications published over the course of 20 years, sorting them by their "printing" number would create a mess. In addition, some publishers (like Ace in the 1980s) occasionally reset printing numbers, which creates a difference between "stated printing" and "actual printing".

Ahasuerus (talk) 16:23, 27 December 2022 (EST)

(after resolving edit conflict) We have this discussion once a year or so since I had been around :) I absolutely agree - we need that to be visible in the publications list under a title. The usual pebble that derails the conversation is an attempt to formalize what we allow in that field and how to represent things. A text field will do (with guidelines and maybe a check that it starts with a number or contains only a number). One interesting usecase to think of is when the same publisher has 2 editions with undated printings - then you have 2 4th printings which are otherwise the same and you need the notes to separate the two but even then, I am fine with just “4” in the field/list and that would still be better than the current situation. If we can use that field as a secondary sort as well (despite being weird as it will get the undated editions sorted based on that field only, it will still be better than what we have now and make it easier to find if we have that book), it will be even better. Plus it will solve the issue with 2 printing in the same year (with only year). But I’d take it without the sorting as well - just making it visible will be a huge step ahead for usability for books with a lot of printings. It will also show a newish editor and user very clearly that we have separate listings for each printing. :)Annie (talk) 16:33, 27 December 2022 (EST)

Well, if we are going to add a check to make sure that the entered value "contains only a number", then we might as well make the database field numeric, which will simplify sorting.

I guess we could start by implementing a single numeric "Printing number" field, use it for a few weeks/months and then decide whether we need a complementary "Printing # description" field. Ahasuerus (talk) 23:16, 28 December 2022 (EST)

Server downtime at 5pm (2022-12-27)

I will be taking the server down for maintenance at 5pm server (Eastern) time. I expect it to be down for less than 30 minutes as I tweak server settings and build a new index to improve performance. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:26, 27 December 2022 (EST)

The server is back up. This was just Step 1 of a two-step process and any performance improvements that you may see should be marginal. The second step is what should speed up title searches -- and, indirectly, all ISFDB Web pages which retrieve title records -- dramatically. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:12, 27 December 2022 (EST)

Around 7:30 PM I got a message saying that partial title searches won't work anymore and have to be done from advanced title search from now on. Is this the improvement you mentioned? --Username (talk) 19:33, 27 December 2022 (EST)

Yes, it's the downside of the performance enhancements that I mentioned in the announcement which I posted a few minutes ago. We must have cross-posted. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:46, 27 December 2022 (EST)

Title Search performance improvements are now live

The "All Titles"/"Fiction Titles" search performance improvements which we discussed last week are now live. "All Titles" and "Fiction Titles" searches should be significantly faster and should no longer cause the rest of the site to freeze for a number of seconds.

The only downside is that regular title searches are now limited to "complete words". As the All Titles/Fiction Titles Search results page says:

• Note that All Titles and Fiction Titles searches are now limited to complete words for performance reasons. If you want to search for a substring, e.g. 'kenstein' in 'Frankenstein', you will need to use Advanced Title Search.

Note that you can still search for "of Frankenstein", "Frankenstein and the" and other combinations of words.

Please let me know if you come across any issues. Database performance is a tricky thing and it's always possible that fixing one problem only uncovers another, but things look promising at the moment. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:44, 27 December 2022 (EST)

I have created and processed a few hundred Fixer submissions to see how well the system performs post-fix. Everything runs much faster with hardly any delays. System level tools also show that average system load has dropped by a factor of 5+. The only time the approval process struggles is when a submission creates or deletes a bunch of author records, e.g. an anthology with half a dozen previously unknown-to-ISFDB authors. I'll need to look into it at some point, but other than that things look good. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:43, 29 December 2022 (EST)

Wesson

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?165661; Should probably be an alternate name for the author, Paul Wesson, since it's his name written backwards. --Username (talk) 09:45, 28 December 2022 (EST)

Pierard SF Anthology

https://archive.org/details/astoundinggalaxyoffutureifs; I came across this randomly while looking up David Bunch; John Pierard has ISFDB art credits, his brother Matt is mentioned in notes, but this thing isn't on ISFDB. Maybe somebody can do something with it if it qualifies to be here (it's got some art, too); last page mentions a completely unrelated book. --Username (talk) 11:39, 28 December 2022 (EST)

Done! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:42, 28 December 2022 (EST)

Six Ghost Stories

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?962266; I did stuff in a pending edit for the Ash-Tree edition and noticed his full name is on the title page, like the original edition, so T.G. Jackson shouldn't really be the name for anything here, I think. --Username (talk) 15:18, 28 December 2022 (EST)

The ebook version of Six Ghost Stories uses T. G. Jackson on the title page per Amazon Look Inside. I will make the necessary changes for the hc edition. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:45, 28 December 2022 (EST)

The original edition has the same abbreviations after his name on the title page as the Ash-Tree HC, as seen in the Archive link. --Username (talk) 18:32, 28 December 2022 (EST)

Updated. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:48, 28 December 2022 (EST)

Steve Moore Books

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1323144; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5524330; After adding an Archive.org 2nd printing of Moore's novelization of V For Vendetta I also added Somnium, but as can be seen in my pending edit stuff needed fixing. The e-book from nthposition (only book by them on ISFDB) doesn't seem to exist anymore and says Alan Moore wrote the intro while the edition I edited says afterword (which is correct) and there's not much info online about the revised edition, although WorldCat's page count is way different, totally wrong page counts being a common problem when editors here enter info from Amazon. So after mine is approved if anyone can track down the other editions and fix/merge. --Username (talk) 11:34, 29 December 2022 (EST)

Ziel

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5525956; There doesn't seem to be any mention of this anywhere on the web, not even here, http://lynn-munroe-books.com/list62/Ziel_checklist9/Ziel_checklist9.htm, so I may have found something unique here. I was actually editing different editions of Lawrence Sanders' novel Dark Summer and noticed this similarly-titled Koontz book, one of the old gothics he never allowed to be reprinted, and saw ZIEL in the grass. This seems to be a very rare book and on some online covers you can barely see it but on the ISFDB cover, if you magnify it, I see it. ISFDB credits Ziel with, among others, 2 Lancer covers with a similar art style. Am I crazy? Does anyone own this book? no matter how clear an online photo is, nothing beats physical material you can shove up to your eyeballs if you need to make something out. EDIT: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5525973; Another one, although this has been known since 2013 at least according to an update on the Ziel site (not known on this site, though) and was not found by me (damn it). Many PV, at least a couple still active, so I'm sure if they have some possible objection to this they'll chime in here. --Username (talk) 15:13, 30 December 2022 (EST)

AULD LANG SYNE

. --Username (talk) 22:32, 31 December 2022 (EST)

Happy New Year to all readers and bibliographers of speculative fiction (including Fixer)! Ahasuerus (talk) 22:38, 31 December 2022 (EST)

All the best for you all from this side of the lake, too! I hope 2023 is going to get better than 2022 (moving towards peace on the contintents). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 07:06, 1 January 2023 (EST)

Looking for one book.

Hello. I am Looking for one book. I only remember the beginning of the piece. Some guy found a derelict computer, sat down at it and started doing something, and then he saw a man with a gun walk up to the desk, they looked at each other in silence for a while, then the guy mechanically pressed the Enter button and the man shot him back. The work was read in the 1990s or very early 2000s. The piece appeared no later than the 1990s (probably earlier). I also remember that the guy was doing something enthusiastically on the computer: at first he typed without looking at the screen, but the message on the computer monitor made him do his work more slowly and carefully. The phrases went something like this. The message on the computer screen made him work more carefully. Behind the desk stood a man with a gun in his hand. The guy had never seen a real gun, except in the movies, but he knew immediately what it was. The guy's hand dropped mechanically to the Enter button, and the same second the black muzzle of the gun burst into flames, ending his life. Thank you in advance. --Strannik27 (talk) 01:23, 6 January 2023 (EST)

Nothing comes to mind, I am afraid. There are a couple of Reddit forums that may be worth a shot: Tip of My Tongue, which handles all types of media, and PrintSF, which specializes in printed speculative fiction. The Usenet group rec.arts.sf.written may be another place to check. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:49, 6 January 2023 (EST)

Sadly. Thank you. Wrote in the first and third place, in the second they require 2 days from the date of registration. --Strannik27 (talk) 15:05, 6 January 2023 (EST)

Another possible place to check is Book Sleuth on the AbeBooks site. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:09, 6 January 2023 (EST)

I've updated the ISFDB FAQ with a section containing the above links. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:14, 6 January 2023 (EST)

Thank you, I wrote. --Strannik27 (talk) 05:02, 7 January 2023 (EST)

I wrote: 1. Book Sleuth, tipofmytongue, printSF and rec.arts.sf.written. Where else to write? --Strannik27 (talk) 06:58, 8 January 2023 (EST)

Title Merge -- post-submission pages enhanced

Post-submission pages for Title Merge submissions have been enhanced. They now correctly display embedded HTML and properly link to third party Web sites. Displayed field names are now more meaningful. If you come across any issues, please let me know. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:52, 6 January 2023 (EST)

Award Editor -- post-submission pages enhanced

Post-submission pages for Edit Award submissions have been enhanced. They now link to the main Award Type page for the award's type, correctly display embedded HTML and link to IMDB where applicable. If you come across any issues, please let me know. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:52, 6 January 2023 (EST)

Request Currey check (print, 1979)

The Body Snatchers (1955) publication record 211333, primarily by User:Bluesman who is no longer with us, implies that Currey is the source for cover artist "Stuart Treslian". That reference should be to print Reference:Currey rather than the L. W. Currey website, which does not name Stuart T nor any cover artist in current descriptions of two copies (one at US$4500).

Spelling "Stuart Tresilian" may be expected. Stuart T at Wikipedia. --Pwendt|talk 14:04, 12 January 2023 (EST)

The entry for this book in Currey is not the source for the cover artist, and doesn't ordinarily provide the cover artist in the entries. I'm certain that the reference is what Bill was referring to in the note. However, I believe he was only indicating that Currey stated that there was no statement of printing. You may also find this chart helpful. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 14:15, 12 January 2023 (EST)

Thanks. Layout supports your interpretation.

That chart of ISFDB Verification Sources will be useful. --Pwendt|talk 09:03, 13 January 2023 (EST)

Fiction series(?): Body Snatchers, The; Invasion of, The

We have 1955 T437 and rewritten 1978 T186595 versions of this Jack Finney novel, as distinct parent titles with multiple variants (some under shared titles), presumably because the rewrite has been judged "great enough" (DO NOT MERGE, Mhhutchins, 2008-12-13).

Those need some linkage. (I will need to re-revise the former parent Title note, item 2.) I suggest a Series containing numbered versions 1 and 2. Is there any reason not to link them by a fiction series, rather than multiple cross-reference links? --Pwendt|talk 09:16, 13 January 2023 (EST)

New Publication -- post-submission page in the process of being updated

Post-submission pages for "New Publication" submissions are currently in the process of being updated. The first patch was installed a few minutes ago. It tweaked the way the "Title" section is displayed.

Upgrading the software behind this Web page is a delicate process because some of it is shared with other post-submission pages like "Clone Publication". It will take a few patches to get everything updated. In the meantime, if you come across any issues, please let me know. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:15, 13 January 2023 (EST)

It does look a little jarring without a label at the top of the first table but I will wait to see where that ends before complaining about it properly. Annie (talk) 17:30, 13 January 2023 (EST)

Oh, one thing - html in the Moderator notes is not resolving. See example Annie (talk) 17:31, 13 January 2023 (EST)

Investigating... Ahasuerus (talk) 18:05, 13 January 2023 (EST)

OK, the missing header ("Title Data") has been resurrected and "Note to Moderator" has been changed to display HTML correctly. All previously upgraded post-submission pages had the same HTML display issue, but it didn't become obvious until NewPub was upgraded since Fixer uses HTML in moderator notes. Thanks for reporting the problems! Ahasuerus (talk) 18:32, 13 January 2023 (EST)

Looks good now. Thanks! Annie (talk) 19:16, 13 January 2023 (EST)

(unindent) The "Title" section has been further enhanced for AddPub submissions. It now displays all field values for the title record that the new pub is about to be attached to. It doesn't include reviews, tags, a link to the parent title (if there is one), variants or other fancy things that the regular Title page displays, but it's a lot more data than what was displayed before the change. The new format also has a new section header, "Automerge title data", which hopefully makes it easier to tell that the submission is an AddPub and not a NewPub. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:52, 14 January 2023 (EST)

The "Publication Metadata" section has been updated to display embedded HTML tags correctly and to allow multiple warnings per field. A few yellow warnings have been tweaked and I plan another pass to upgrade the rest of them once I update ClonePub, Import/Export and EditPub to use the same software. If you come across any issues, please let me know. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:32, 17 January 2023 (EST)

I suppose that "Post-submission pages" include "Approved ..." among others. Approved New Publication; Approved ClonePub; Approved Publication Update --all retain(?) link label "New record:" in the footer. Approval timestamp 2023-01-17 21:28:23 for the mildly offending PubUpdate. --Pwendt|talk 12:09, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Checking this recently created pub's Edit History, I see that the NewPub submission which created it links to the new record at the bottom of the page, which is as it should be. The subsequent PubUpdate submission also says "New record" and links to it even though it's no longer a new record.

It looks like it's an old bug introduced back when Edit History was implemented a couple of years ago. Bug 824 has been created -- thanks for identifying it! Ahasuerus (talk) 16:14, 19 January 2023 (EST)

It should be fixed now. Thanks again. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:36, 20 January 2023 (EST)

Looking for a sci-fi title

Hello everyone, I am looking for the title and author of a SF short story (or novel) in which a NASA-type company sends chronically unlucky people to unknown planets. Since these people are dogged by ill luck, the company figures they will encounter all the problems there are : monsters, eruptions, and so on. And that will be a good way to prepare for the planets’ exploration. Does anybody happen to know, by any chance, the title or/and author of this story ? Yves Lavandier —The preceding unsigned comment added by Yves Lavandier (talk • contribs) 07:15, January 18, 2023‎

I have no recollection of a plot like this. Can you perhaps give a line of time it might have been published in? (It sounds more like a classic plot: 1940s to 1950s, I'd say). Stonecreek (talk) 12:15, 18 January 2023 (EST)

You can try one of the resources listed here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:33, 18 January 2023 (EST)

Sounds like the plot of Robert Sheckley's The Minimum Man. --Willem (talk) 14:07, 18 January 2023 (EST)

Annals of Klepsis

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?2779; https://archive.org/details/annalsofklepsis0000laff; Active verifiers, look at this, it's got stuff crossed/whited out on front and back covers, a pasted string of numbers on copyright page, etc. Alternate edition or something, maybe, if anyone wants to enter it. It was added in Feb. 2021, just after the last PV. EDIT: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5547100; This was uploaded in April 2021; I made an attempt at entering it ("borrowing" the phrasing of the price info from other records on ISFDB) but I'm sure editors who enter French books regularly can add some stuff after my edit is approved. I notice someone named AlainLeBris did a lot of them; is he still editing? --Username (talk) 11:44, 18 January 2023 (EST)

AlainLeBris's last activity date is 2022-01-22, almost a year ago. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:03, 18 January 2023 (EST)

Robert Silverberg's "We, the Marauders" and "Invaders from Earth"

Silverberg's 1958 novella, We, the Marauders, came out a few months earlier than his 1958 novel Invaders from Earth, although they are basically the same story. As such, it has often been viewed (including in our records) that the novella came first, and was then expanded into the novel. In a post yesterday on the FictionMagsIndex mailing list, Silverberg corrects that impression, writing:
"After 65 years I don't have a clear recollection of how the changes in INVADERS FROM EARTH came about. I do recall that I wrote the book for Don Wollheim at Ace and then offered it to Bob Lowndes, whose pulp magazine SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY could handle long stories. The title "We, the Marauders" on the magazine version was Lowndes', though I liked it. I don't recall whether he or I did the cutting, or how the changes in plot came about. The Ace version was the original one, though."
I have updated the title notes to both the novella and the novel to reflect this information. Chavey (talk) 13:08, 18 January 2023 (EST)

(I reviewed those Title notes but don't know the story.) I submitted update, and noted "hold for User: Chavey", of the NOVEL note as "the same story" ==> "nearly the same story" ... "and the cuts create a different resolution to the main character's personal story." The latter information, from the novella Title note, seems too important to omit from either one. Also I showed strong approval of the paragraph break by replicating it here for the novel, which unfortunately creates a mass of text in the "Differences".

I would have named the "writer's blog" that is also the "FictionMagsIndex mailing list", if I understand correctly. I won't make the call that it belongs in the Notes but hope you will identify it here with a link. --Pwendt|talk 11:53, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Ohioana Book Award

Here's another award I found. It's not a specifically genre award, but there are genre winners regularly appearing in its list of winners. Main list, additional list, general info. They appear to be all juried awards, given out since the early 1940s.

List of categories:

• Fiction
• Nonfiction
• Middle Grade & Young Adult Literature
• Juvenile Literature
• Poetry
• About Ohio (not sure if there are any genre winners in this one as I haven't had time to look)
• Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant (not sure if there are any genre winners in this one as I haven't had time to look)
• Readers’ Choice Award (the only non-juried award)
• Alice Louise Wood Award
• Anniversary Award
• Award of Merit
• Career Award
• Citation Award
• Editorial Excellence
• Head Award
• Krout Poetry
• Ohio Favorite Author (not sure if there are any genre winners in this one as I haven't had time to look)
• Ohio Favorite Book (not sure if there are any genre winners in this one as I haven't had time to look)
• Pegasus Award
• Sesquicentennial Award
• Ohioana Fellowship
• Ohio Favorite Book
• Ohio Favorite Author

I can enter them once they're created. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:13, 18 January 2023 (EST)

I am not sure how many of their categories have SF awards, but I have found at least a few genre authors: Andre Norton, Lois McMaster Bujold, Virginia Hamilton. If there are no objections, I can create a new award type, which will let moderators create categories as needed. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:01, 18 January 2023 (EST)

Yup, that's pretty much along the lines of what I found. Edward Eager is in there, too. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:00, 18 January 2023 (EST)

Done. It's our 100th Award Type! Ahasuerus (talk) 15:32, 21 January 2023 (EST)

An auspicious beginning, to be sure. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:12, 23 January 2023 (EST)

Took a while, but I think all of them are entered now. See here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:35, 3 March 2023 (EST)

S.E.P. SF

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?29174; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?363483; Likely these 2 records are for the same book, but each contains info the other doesn't. --Username (talk) 08:39, 19 January 2023 (EST)

I agree. I've merged everything to this one. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:13, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Amazon cover images in publication records

[1] Given some stable image file.jpg under "images/I" at Amazon, do we have any reason to prefer one of the addresses https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/ and https://m.media-amazon.com/ ? Is it valuable to change our URL from one to the other, upon noticing an address change at the Amazon product page?

[2] Do we have any reason to prefer linking a cover image at Amazon or linking one at Open Library? If not in general, then a match with stated printing number, available via "Look inside" at Amazon or "Preview" at Open Library but not both, is one attractive criterion. Image quality is another. Most recently I chose to link m-media-amazon.com rather than Open Library OL28305950M because the latter image looks "too dark" to me. (Only now I see that "Preview" reveals a 9th printing, and Amazon UK/US provide no "Look inside".)
--Pwendt|talk 12:56, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Amazon: Either works and points to the same place for EVERY image. If we discover that one of the spaces is discontinued, we can swap them programmatically but for the time being, either can be used (ebooks usually use the media one these days; paper books can use the images-na). As long as the ID at the end is the same, the two domains are identical for all intents and purposes and will always show the same image.

As for the OL/Amazon - both are stable (As long as it is an /I/ image in Amazon so use whichever looks better and is of better quality overall. Annie (talk) 17:37, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Clone/Export/Import -- post-submission page updated

The "Publication Data" section of the post-submission review page for Clone/Export/Import submissions has been updated. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:02, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Clive Barker Author Photo

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?71; I did some Clive Barker book edits recently and, as far as I can recall, his photo was broken because it was from one of those sites that don't display HTTP images correctly after our server move (or possibly it was just a bad photo and I decided to replace it), so I substituted a color photo from FantLab of Barker in his library that's very recent judging by his appearance, which is not very pleasant these days due to all his medical problems. Today I randomly came across his page again and saw that someone replaced that with a different photo that's not only in black-and-white but very old judging by his youthful appearance, plus it has one of those long WEBP URL's Amazon was using for a while recently. Is there any way to see a history of who edits author records? I'd like to know who changed it. I'm going to re-replace it with the FantLab photo and hopefully it will stay that way this time. --Username (talk) 11:36, 22 January 2023 (EST)

Author records do have Edit History information on file, but only moderators can access it. The reason is that our data deletion policy lets living authors request removal of biographical (as opposed to bibliographic) data from their author records. Making authors' Edit History publicly available would defeat the purpose of the policy.

In this case the change was made by User:Stonecreek in submission 5527111 on 2023-01-01. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:13, 22 January 2023 (EST)

Stonecreek, you say? What a shock. Anyway, my edit is pending to change it back. --Username (talk) 13:40, 22 January 2023 (EST)

In order to prevent a continuing edit war, I've put the further edit on hold. Could Username and Christian as well as any other editors with an opinion on which image should be used please come to an agreement here before we further churn the author image? Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 10:21, 23 January 2023 (EST)

My opinion is a recent image, like the one I added from FantLab seems to be (they have 2 others which are old and B&W), is better because he doesn't look anything like he did in his heyday when he was rather handsome. However, if someone feels like they really need to see an overly bright B&W photo from decades ago on his ISFDB page, so be it. Maybe after he's dead (which may be soon judging by his appearance these days) perhaps a recent photo will be more appropriate then. I doubt I'll be around to add it, but maybe someone else will. --Username (talk) 10:34, 23 January 2023 (EST)

There were two reasons for me to change the image: the first is the more handsome look (I do think that we should aim to have no images that would possibly intimidate an author or his/her readers), the second that Amazon seems to be more stable & is somewhat more official. I could live with the other image but do fear that it would lead towards users escaping Barker's summary page as fast as one could. Stonecreek (talk) 11:48, 23 January 2023 (EST)

Pending edit's been sitting in my list for a long time so I just cancelled it. I did, however, make another edit today (pending) replacing the ancient Ramsey Campbell B&W photo on ISFDB with a recent color one on Amazon of him in all his chubby glory, so one Brit horror writer falls, another rises. It's hard to say who looks more unhealthy these days, Barker or Campbell. --Username (talk) 14:39, 26 January 2023 (EST)

Australasian Horror

https://australasianhorror.com/competition/ahwa-competition-past-winners/; I was doing some edits for the first issue of Hub Magazine and 1 of the stories by Liam Rands was an honorable mention for this award (he won for another story the next year); there was discussion here recently about awards so this may be something someone would want to enter. Awards are still going as of 2022. --Username (talk) 13:39, 22 January 2023 (EST)

Interesting. It looks like the Australasian Horror Writers Association has two separate/parallel projects:

• The Australian Shadows Award with the usual menagerie of categories like "short story", "novel", "novellete/novella", "collection", etc.
• The AHWA Robert N Stephenson Flash Fiction & Short Story Competition, which has two categories for unpublished horror stories:
  • Flash Fiction: Stories up to 1000 words in length
  • Short Story: Stories from 1001 to 7500 words.

We already have the Australian Shadows Award listed, but we don't cover "The AHWA Robert N Stephenson Flash Fiction & Short Story Competition" at this time. One thing to note is that the latter is a true "competition" in the tradition of pulp magazines. To quote their rules page:

• The winner in each category will receive an engraved plaque and the winning stories will appear in Midnight Echo, and receive the pay rate commensurate with that edition.

Runner-ups presumably benefit by being able to claim that their stories were "runner-ups" when they try to sell them to other markets.

This is a bit unusual, but we do have precedent for including awards given to unpublished texts -- see Prix Jean Ray, which is given to "Best unpublished fantasy text by a Belgian writer".

Thoughts? Ahasuerus (talk) 16:59, 22 January 2023 (EST)

I'd support adding it. Some of the more prestigious Japanese SF awards are contests where the winner(s) get publishing contracts (as do some of the runners up, often). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:11, 23 January 2023 (EST)

If there is no objection, I will create a new Award Type tomorrow. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:59, 27 January 2023 (EST)

A new award type and two award categories have been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:58, 28 January 2023 (EST)

Jusges?--Username (talk) 18:36, 28 January 2023 (EST)

Fixed, thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:51, 28 January 2023 (EST)

Nick Fox/Bantock Cover

https://books.google.com/books?id=GDPwBhpEtAIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=shadrach&f=false; Nick Bantock's art book The Artful Dodger includes a Silverberg cover, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1139072, which is credited to a studio (and back cover seen online does credit it to that studio) but he says he did it under his Nick Fox name. So what to do? Also, Google Books copy seems to be a 2nd printing of the Chronicle Books edition on ISFDB and there's a Canadian edition from Raincoast on Archive.org which isn't on ISFDB. --Username (talk) 09:49, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Inter-author collections of speculative drama

Good afternoon, everyone. Are there inter-author collections (Anthology, Almanac) of speculative drama? Thank you in advance. --Strannik27 (talk) 02:48, 27 January 2023 (EST)

• "Six Science Fiction Plays" anthology, edited by Roger Elwood, Washington Square Press, 1976, ISBN 0-671-48766-3.
• "New Canadian Drama Vol. 8: Speculative Drama: Roswell, Eden's Moon, Alien Bait" edited by Scott Kesi Duchesne, Borealis Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-88887-265-4.

--Zlogorek (talk) 11:01, 27 January 2023 (EST)

• Thank you so much, are there more examples? --Strannik27 (talk) 13:40, 3 February 2023 (EST)

Edit Pub -- post-submission page updated

The Metadata (i.e. top) section of the post-submission review page for Edit Publication submissions has been updated. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:02, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Robert Bloch Book Duplicate

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1941501; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?551231; I started to enter the HC edition, mentioned in the note by the PV, using FantLab's copy but decided to check further and it's already on ISFDB; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?30351. Both HC and TP were entered many years earlier so I guess nobody checked first before approving PV submission. I've made a (pending) edit adding ID, full cover and cover design note to the HC, but there's a problem. PV did a lot of work entering the contents, which nobody did for the 2 records entered earlier, but he got the format wrong and entered it as a collection instead of non-fiction (it has both fiction and non-fiction, so who knows). So some more astute people here should decide what to do, which to keep, possible merges, etc. I'll leave a brief note on PV page about this; they're still active. --Username (talk) 19:48, 27 January 2023 (EST)

I still have the TP handy if you want to point me in the right direction. Still mostly a novice at this. I appreciate this resource and like to contribute how I can. Fenrix1958 (talk) 21:10, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Thanks for responding so quickly. I randomly came across the Bloch book you entered and thought I'd enter the HC edition you mentioned in your note since FantLab has many photos of it, but I found it hard to believe that nobody ever entered it, and after checking further I found both HC and TP editions which, judging by edit history, were entered in the very early days of public editing here. Yours was in 2015, so I'm not sure why a moderator approved it when it already existed and had the same ISBN, but the problem is that you actually did the hard work of entering the numerous contents, unlike the others, but didn't enter the month, made it a PB instead of a TP, made it a collection with Bloch as author instead of non-fiction with Matheson and Mainhardt as editors (I'm not even sure what's correct because it includes Bloch stories but also essays from many other people about Bloch, so anthology, maybe?). So I was wanting people who, unlike me, have been doing this for a very long time to chime in and suggest what should be done because your hard work shouldn't go to waste, but several different people made edits for the edition you didn't enter so it wouldn't be right to just delete that. I've been editing for just over 2 years but am rapidly losing interest due to a variety of reasons, so I won't be of much help to you, I'm afraid; I just do simple stuff these days. Someone else will respond shortly, I'm sure, and this will be resolved soon. --Username (talk) 23:03, 27 January 2023 (EST)

This is the most relevant section of the help:

NONFICTION. This type should be used for books that are predominantly or completely non-fiction. This includes book-length works of non-fiction or books containing essays by one or more authors. A publication that contains both non-fiction and fiction should be typed by that which is predominant. A single work of fiction in an Isaac Asimov essay collection does not make it a COLLECTION. A book of fiction (NOVEL, COLLECTION, or ANTHOLOGY) containing a generous, but not predominate, amount of non-fiction, such as introductions, essays, and other non-fiction works, should not be typed as NONFICTION. Mixtures of fiction and non-fiction are more usually found in magazines than they are in books, so the question does not often arise.

I'd wait a bit to see if there are any opposing viewpoints, but it looks to me like the book is predominantly the Bloch stories and poem, and most of the essays are introductions to those works. However, it also has more -- and a wider range of -- essays than we would normally see as supplemental material in a typical collection. So it strikes me as a book assembling Bloch works and a lot of other material, as opposed to a book about Bloch that happens to contain some of his works. If you have the book, you can make a more informed judgement that I can. If it's primarily a book of Bloch works, I would use ANTHOLOGY as the least bad fit, with Matheson and Mainhardt as the editors. If the book is primarily about Bloch, then NONFICTION would be more appropriate. --MartyD (talk) 07:45, 28 January 2023 (EST)

My edit for the HC was just approved after a long wait (I made a minor error in the note so that new edit still has to be approved), but I think I'm done and so someone should decide what to do with the 2 separate but equal paperback editions now. --Username (talk) 13:03, 14 February 2023 (EST)

L. R. Giles/Lamar Giles - Canonical Name

Our canonical name for this author is currently L. R. Giles, presumably because that's how his first three SF stories credited the author back in 2004-2007. However, over the last 6 years he has published 4 SF novels and 2 stories as "Lamar Giles". A 2018 reprint of a 2006 story also used "Lamar Giles".

Are there any objections to changing the canonical name to "Lamar Giles"? Ahasuerus (talk) 13:41, 28 January 2023 (EST)

Done. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:58, 1 February 2023 (EST)

Page & Spine: Fiction Showcase - call for editors to assist

Hello everybody! As all webzines, including those with mainly non-genre content, are now being indexed following a policy change in October 2022 regarding the Rules of Acquisition (as per this discussion), I recently started indexing speculative contributions appearing in the last two-and-a-half years of Page & Spine: Fiction Showcase. This webzine began publication in 2012 and ceased on 6 May 2022. It will be taken offline permanently on or about 6 May 2023, i.e., in about three months or so. My focus on those issues published between January 2020 and May 2022 is mainly because of the addition of a speculative fiction and poetry section called 'Outta This World' from May of 2020. However, some speculative contributions continued to be published in different sections, such as 'Crumbs' (for drabbles, jokes and short-form poetry) and 'Kid Stuff' (stories and art by under-eighteens) and, prior to the establishment of the 'Outta This World' section, speculative stories and poems could be found in other sections across the site (e.g., in 'The Reading Lamp' and 'Stories').

It will be a challenge for me to complete the period from 2020 to 2022 in the three months available but there's no way I can cover the earlier years alone (if at all). Would anyone else be interested in covering the earlier (nine) years? It's possible that after May 2023, most - if not all - of the webzine could continue to be indexed using the Internet Archive but I suspect that lacunae would occasionally be found in the latter's coverage.

It may be the case that earlier issues contained only a small amount of speculative material so this might facilitate more rapid indexing, though of course the stories, poems and essays will still need to be read to determine their eligibility.

Note that 'issues' are distributed across different sections and have been archived in different ways (e.g. under a specific section or under a particular author). The final issue appears on the current home page with items shown listed under each section. Each item appearing in the same issue will bear the issue date in brackets after the title. They can be found grouped according to month under most sections, e.g. 'The Reading Lamp' section is indexed for the period December 2013 to May 2020 here while that for 'Crumbs' is indexed for the period December 2012 to April 2022 here.--Explorer1000 (talk) 12:34, 29 January 2023 (EST)

Oh, and the series page on ISFDB is here.--Explorer1000 (talk) 12:51, 29 January 2023 (EST)

Rozic/Rosick

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=letter+to+roger&type=Fiction+Titles; I was adding a few links to stories from bloodrosemag.com that are on ISFDB and this dude's name is a mess. He had a story in Pulphouse which was reprinted many years later in a horror anthology under a different name; his story on Blood Rose, https://www.bloodrosemag.com/archives/sep%202001/craziedaze.html, spells his name differently at top and bottom. I did an edit (pending) making Rozic an alternate name of Rosick, but I'm not touching anything else. --Username (talk) 14:24, 29 January 2023 (EST)

Ongoing cleanup of post-submission pages

I am in the process of removing obsolete code which was previously used to display post-submission pages and was deactivated last week. I am also making minor improvements to yellow warnings as I go along, e.g. I am currently working on making the "Price" field support multiple yellow warnings. If you come across any issues, please let me know. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:07, 29 January 2023 (EST)

Catalog ID- and ISBN-specific yellow warnings have been upgraded to support multiple warnings per entered value. Pre-1970 pubs with an ISBN now generate yellow warnings. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:42, 29 January 2023 (EST)

Price-specific yellow warnings for prices now support multiple warnings per entered value. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:04, 29 January 2023 (EST)

Yellow warnings for image URLs now support multiple warnings per entered value. Certain odd Amazon URLs may generate more than one warning because they break more than one of our rules. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:35, 30 January 2023 (EST)

Yellow warnings about alternate and/or disambiguated names are no longer displayed for submissions which do not change them. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:17, 1 February 2023 (EST)

Broken Galactic Central image links

Can anything be done about this? —Rosab618 (talk) 13:45, 30 January 2023 (EST)

See this post for an explanation. John Scifibones 14:04, 30 January 2023 (EST)

Rats! Thanks for the info. Is there a way I can make Google Chrome show the images, by allowing insecure images? I tried allowing both isfdb.org and philsp.com to show insecure content, but it didn't seem to do anything. —Rosab618 (talk) 16:33, 30 January 2023 (EST)

I would tell you to switch to a less arrogant browser, but I did a little research and found you can actually convince Chrome to do what you want in this case:

1. Click on the lock icon to the left of isfdb.org in the address bar.
2. Click on Site settings in the drop-down menu that appears.
3. If Privacy and security is not already selected in the list at the left, select it.
4. You should see a list at the right with "www.isfdb.org" at the top.
5. Scroll way down through the "Permissions" and look for Insecure content with a danger triangle to the left and "Block (default)" to the right.
6. Click on the little down-arrow next to "Blocked (default)" and switch to "Allow".

That's it. Now if you refresh (or go back to) the ISFDB page with the blocked image, you will see the image.

I hope that helps. --MartyD (talk) 19:25, 30 January 2023 (EST)

HOORAY! It works! Thank you so much! —Rosab618 (talk) 20:33, 30 January 2023 (EST)

Biffignandi

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?107101; https://archive.org/details/aless-andro-biffignandi-illustration-art; https://archive.org/details/sex-and-horror-the-art-of-alessandro-biffignandi; Biff apparently did a ton of art but ISFDB, oddly, only has 2 German krimi covers and an American cover for an Anne McCaffrey book (?!?) Anyway, I have a feeling the books linked above may be of use to those who enter all those obscure foreign covers. Be warned, however; there is much, MUCH nudity, including some pretty racy stuff. I do like the cover near the end of the 2nd book, however, where a weird-looking shark is chasing a woman swimming with a BABY in her arms. Is that an Italian thing? --Username (talk) 23:33, 30 January 2023 (EST)

Drew S.

Drew Struzan is a well-known artist, today I added a link to an Archive.org copy of a novel he did the cover for, credit was to Drew Struzman, searching for that name only hit on that book, I asked PV who entered it as Struzan to check but SFJuggler doesn't always respond, so if anyone else has a copy of the 1991 Bantam Falcon edition of Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils you may want to check the copyright page. Struzan has no alternate names on ISFDB, so this may be the first. --Username (talk) 23:43, 30 January 2023 (EST)

Creative Guy From Canada

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?23801; I did some editing for Lucy A. Snyder book, publisher is Canadian, my price fix adding the "C" is the only one, should all be "C"? There's also 1 price missing and 1 where editor entered British price for some reason. --Username (talk) 11:15, 31 January 2023 (EST)

Riley Art

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1468203; Is this, https://fantlab.ru/images/editions/plus/big/220727_19, actually by David A. Riley, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?19937? He has 2 cover art credits, both discovered by me some time ago, and I think this may be another piece of art by him. --Username (talk) 12:29, 31 January 2023 (EST)

French Bardin and Dick

https://archive.org/search?query=%22terrain-vague-pour-la-traduction%22+&sin=TXT&sort=-addeddate; I added Archive.org link to Tor TP of P.K. Dick's The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike and added another link to the Paladin edition I did an edit for a long time ago, but there's another edition, a French one, and while searching for other books by the publisher I found they did an edition of Bardin's Deadly Percheron, although the French title is Big Clogs or something similar. So if anyone who regularly enters French editions wants to enter those. Oddly, there are publishers with the same name on ISFDB, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=terrain+vague&type=Publisher, but one published LONG before these 2 books came out and the other I'm not sure about, having published only an art book and a French novel, with no translations of American books. --Username (talk) 21:36, 31 January 2023 (EST)

The Big O

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?936; I added a D. Wheatley edition from this publisher and noticed the series, Plus, spells the publisher with a capital O. So should the publisher be spelled with a capital O, too? Also for the other series with A.C. Doyle books? Because on the Wheatley book it does look like they made the O big, since it stands for Oswald and so it makes sense that a person's initial would be capitalized. --Username (talk) 10:00, 1 February 2023 (EST)

That seems appropriate. I found this scan where the cover and title page have a stylized "NéO" logo (where it's hard to tell whether the "O" is capitalized), but title page says "Nouvelles éditions Oswald" and the copyright page says "© Nouvelles éditions Oswald (NéO) 1981". So it seems they used the big "O". Two more scans corroborating that: [2] and [3]. --MartyD (talk) 10:38, 1 February 2023 (EST)

Based on that title page, the publisher should be "Nouvelles éditions Oswald" rather than "Néo" or "NéO". ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:56, 1 February 2023 (EST)

All three of those scans have: "NéO" [in stylized form] (over) "Nouvelles éditions Oswald" on the title page. The copyrights use "Nouvelles éditions Oswald (NéO)". Dates are 1981, 1982, and 1986. In the 1986 book on the page facing the title page is "Voir liste des libraries NéO en fin de volume." and "Maquette: Studios Knack/NéO" (referring to the cover illustration). The 1982 book's copyright page's list of other books by the same author has a citation that uses "Nouvelles éditions Oswald/NéO". Whether it should be "NéO" or spelled out doesn't seem clear-cut to me. But if the short form is what should be used, then I think it's clear the capitalization should be "NéO", not "Néo". --MartyD (talk) 14:53, 1 February 2023 (EST)

Yes, the stylized "NéO" is the logo, and the name of the publisher is "Nouvelles éditions Oswald". If the publisher information is on the title page, we always go with that over anything on the copyright page or elsewhere. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:43, 2 February 2023 (EST)

Frankenstein Glut

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5569772; PV is very gone, as can be seen there's a bunch of messy details I've tried to note/fix, LCCN ID on OL leads to a record which mentions a collector ed. and a paperback but there's only one edition on ISFDB, copyright page also mentions the 1977 Mews edition was shorter and substantially different and so wouldn't it be considered a separate book? Anyway, I noticed somebody made an edit for a Glut book today so they or someone may want to look at this after it's approved and see if they can do anything more with it. Donald N. will need to be made a variant of his real name, anyway. --Username (talk) 12:53, 1 February 2023 (EST)

Making of ROTJ

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?957601; $4.25 edition has been here for years, I added $3.50 edition recently, I moved 2 ID over, $4.25 either is Canadian with higher price, later printing, whatever, but both PV are gone, so if anyone here knows what's up a C should be added to price or date should be changed to 0000, etc. --Username (talk) 12:33, 2 February 2023 (EST)

Alien Sex

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?192541; Several PV, some active, nobody added Roman numerals to page count, one of the PV should do that. --Username (talk) 12:32, 3 February 2023 (EST)

Self-nomination for self-approver - Pwendt

Happy New Year (or Groundhog Day)! I nominate myself for self-approver. --Pwendt|talk 16:20, 3 February 2023 (EST)

Support. Kraang (talk) 21:32, 7 February 2023 (EST)

Support. Does a good job. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:46, 8 February 2023 (EST)

Support (and changing the title of the thread so it is clear what this is for :) ) Annie (talk) 15:55, 8 February 2023 (EST)

Support -- Apologies for missing this earlier and not responding sooner. --MartyD (talk) 12:45, 9 February 2023 (EST)

Comment. I haven't worked on Pwendt's submissions lately, so I'll abstain. One issue that I encountered in the past was lack of clarity in Notes. My recommendation would be using shorter complete sentences with a subject, a predicate and an optional object. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:54, 9 February 2023 (EST)

Outcome

Self-approver flag set on the account as per the consensus above. Congratulations! Ahasuerus (talk) 11:40, 11 February 2023 (EST)

Disch Ruins

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?285521; I added links to 2 club editions recently, today a link to Arrow edition, Hutchinson edition has no price or cover artist, SFE says Chris Yates, this STAINED eBay copy has a flap photo which is blurry but a 2 seems to be the start of the price, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/380896522207, so if anyone can find somewhere that shows better photos or owns a copy then price can be entered and cover artist (on back flap, I assume, although it may just be design) can be entered if warranted. --Username (talk) 18:43, 3 February 2023 (EST)

The Turner Diaries

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1601834; I came across a copy, uploaded to Archive.org a little over a year ago, and while making an edit remembered I had done an edit previously, which turned out to be not long before the copy was uploaded (I hate when that happens). Anyway, after my new edit is approved, there's 2 questions: name's spelled Macdonald, not MacDonald, but when changing that it still looks like MacDonald even though it's in a new column so it sees it as a change even though it doesn't look that way. Is that a quirk of ISFDB? More importantly, there's an essay by someone with the same name who I highly doubt is the same guy who wrote this notoriously violent and racist novel, and none of his 5 wives mentioned on his Wikipedia page were named Gina (I suppose it could be a relative), so I'm sure the essay writer, assuming they're still alive (it's been 40 years), would like their name moved to a separate record if they're not that other guy. --Username (talk) 22:11, 4 February 2023 (EST)

When you enter or edit an author name, a publisher name, a series name or a publication series name, the ISFDB software first checks the database to see if we already have it on file. The check is not case-sensitive, so "ace books" will find "Ace Books", "george orwell" will find "George Orwell", etc. Once a matching name has been found, the software uses it instead of the form of the name that was actually entered. The process ensures that we don't end up with multiple separate records for the same author/series/publisher/etc due to capitalization mistakes during the data entry process. If we determine that the capitalization of the canonical name/series name/etc is incorrect, as is apparently the case with Andrew MacDonald, we can edit the main record directly.

That said, the fact that this submission shows "Andrew MacDonald" in the "Proposed Changes" column may be a bug. I'll take a closer look tomorrow. Thanks for reporting the issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 23:17, 4 February 2023 (EST)

I have confirmed that this problem affects both Edit Title and Edit Publication. Bug 826, "Edit Title and Edit Pub do not check for author case properly", has been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:23, 5 February 2023 (EST)

Coincidentally, famous artist LeRoy Neiman has all 4 of his credits on ISFDB as Leroy. Fixing the first one, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5575086, I subbed R but pending edit says r. So I assume it takes a while for your bug fix to start working? --Username (talk) 19:54, 5 February 2023 (EST)

Bug 826 is just a document describing the reported bug and how to recreate it. I am currently working on a software patch which should fix the problem. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:39, 5 February 2023 (EST)

Red Skelton Book

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5575145; I asked about this last July 4 on this board, MartyD agreed with adding the "e", neither of us ever fixed it, I came across this randomly today and am finally fixing it. I trust nobody has any objection? PV is gone. --Username (talk) 21:34, 5 February 2023 (EST)

Price Of Three Women

This is a bit complicated. A stray mention of Anne McCaffrey on this site spurred me to see if I could enter anything interesting by her, skipping over her endless Pern books, and I decided to start with her non-genre works. That was a mistake. She published 3 gothic novels in the 70's which were collected by Tor as Three Women and published in either Dec. 1991 or Jan. 1992. So searching ISBN on OL found a record with no book but it did find a copy on Archive.org; searching for their URL, threewomen00mcca, on OL found a record with a link to the copy, so why ISBN doesn't is unknown because it's there on the page. Anyway, the copy is ancient, having been uploaded in 2010, but is missing the copyright page. Noticing the price was higher I created a new record with an "unknown" date and a note about it, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5575697. The problem is that I can't find a single photo online of a cover with the $4.99 price on it; I suspect there is none and the real original price was $5.99. Locus has much incorrect info, and searching ISBN in contents found these, https://archive.org/search?query=0-812-50587-5&sin=TXT; ignoring the 4 unrelated books, that Brown/Contento book is Locus with the same info found on their site, but that YA guide says $5.99. I find it very strange that multiple copies with extensive photos can't be found since most of her books were big sellers with large print runs and many were reprinted. I was going to cancel my edit and just add the copy link and the page numbers to the existing record, but decided not to because there's still a slim possibility it was originally $4.99. So check your shelves or the dark corners of the web, readers, and let me know if you can find a copy with that price. EDIT: My edit was rejected for some reason over my head so if anyone else wants to enter it, go ahead. --Username (talk) 18:22, 6 February 2023 (EST)

If you were confused as to why it was rejected, you could have asked. I rejected it because it was creating an new OMNIBUS record without any content. Nor was there a moderator note stating that you intended to add the content in a subsequent edit. There are three ways you could have added this publication record. You could use the add publication tool, and manually add the contained novels in one edit. Then you would need to merge each novel separately. You could also use the add publication and in a subsequent edit import the three novel titles. If this was your intent, it's a good idea to note this in the Moderator notes, so that we'll know that you intend to finish the edit. However, the most efficient way to add this publication is with the Clone this Pub tool. That way, all the contained novels will automatically be copied and it will all be accomplished in a single edit rather than 2 or 4 edits. Hope that helps. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:22, 16 February 2023 (EST)

Stockholders in Death

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?3560; Archive.org copy of #7 since 2010 that nobody ever entered here so I just did in a (pending) edit, but publisher is Warner PL; several entries omit the Warner on ISFDB, so should all of them, including this one, be made Warner PL, too? Did PL, no Warner, publish any of them? --Username (talk) 10:47, 7 February 2023 (EST)

Author name validation enhancements

The way the ISFDB software handles author names in Edit Title, New Pub, Add Pub, Clone Pub, and Edit Pub has been enhanced. The following scenarios are now processed correctly:

• The same author name is entered using different capitalization, e.g. "David Weber" is changed to "david weber"
• The order of co-author, co-artist, co-interviewee, co-interviewer, co-reviewer or co-reviewee names is changed
• The same author name is entered two or more times (for the same title) using different capitalization, e.g. "David Weber" and then again "david weber"

In all of these cases the software now ignores the submitted "change".

Hopefully every permutation has been addressed/fixed. If you come across anything unexpected, please let me know. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:53, 7 February 2023 (EST)

Great SF About Doctors

https://archive.org/search?query=%22Great+science+fiction+about+doctors%22; I added a link to original edition, fourth printing is on ISFDB with correct date but wrong printing and date in note, I added a link and fixed the note, cover artist is Don Ivan just like the fifth printing, so there's a lot of confusion, especially since the 2nd printing has no PV and nobody's entered the 3rd. So maybe someone can look into that and unmerge/un-variant; I have a feeling all the editions with that cover have Don Ivan on the back. --Username (talk) 13:22, 8 February 2023 (EST)

C. Alexander London canonical name

Are there any objections to swapping the canonical name here to Alex London. The longer name had not been used for a long time and all new books use the shorter name. SFE also has the record under Alex London. Annie (talk) 12:46, 9 February 2023 (EST)

It's a slightly unusual case in that his first series appeared as by "Alex London", the second one came out as by "C. Alexander London" and the last two went back to "Alex London". Be that as it may, "Alex London" is currently leading 8:3, so I think it should be the canonical name. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:01, 9 February 2023 (EST)

Series with non-fiction and short-fiction only

When a series has only non-fiction and short-fiction in it, it shows up in an author list as a "Nonfiction Series" (As the only container title is non-fiction, it kinda makes sense). However, it is factually wrong and we are a fiction DB after all. As novellas/novelettes are popular (both as "juvenile novels under 40K" and as self-published or e-only non-juveniles), this is happening more and more often. As soon as a collection of more than one of the stories show up, the collection title bumps the series into the Fiction category. But in the meantime, it lags under Non-fiction.

Any chance to have these shown up in the Fiction series list? Example: this series. See where it shows on the author page. Thanks!

PS: Another related case is a series with only short-fiction. Now these show all the way at the bottom, with the short fiction until they get a collection and then they sail up under Fiction series. Maybe we can solve both usecases together and just treat short fiction entries as the fiction containers and just list all fiction series under the normal series heading. Annie (talk) 13:45, 9 February 2023 (EST)

I am looking at the code that drives the Summary Bibliography page and here is what I am seeing.

First, the software organizes all titles by series. Then it builds "series hierarchies" so that embedded series appear under the top series -- note how "Star Wars: The Clone Wars (animated)" appears under "Star Wars: Clone Wars", which appears under "Star Wars Universe" on Tracey West's page. Then it checks the title type of each parent title in each "series hierarchy" to determine which section of the Summary page the hierarchy belongs under. The current logic is as follows:

• If a "series hierarchy" contains at least one NOVEL, COLLECTION, or SERIAL title, it is displayed in the "Fiction Series" section.
• OTHERWISE:
  • If it contains at least one ANTHOLOGY title, it is displayed in the "Anthology Series" section.
  • OTHERWISE:
    • If it contains at least one NONFICTION title, it is displayed in the "Nonfiction Series" section.
    • OTHERWISE:
      • If it contains at least one OMNIBUS title, it is displayed in the "Fiction Series" section. (This check is performed after the ANTHOLOGY and NONFICTION checks so that OMNIBUSES with only ANTHOLOGY/NONFICTION titles would appear in their respective Anthology/Nonfiction series sections.)
      • OTHERWISE:
        • If it contains at least one SHORTFICTION title, it is displayed in the "Short Fiction Series" section.
        • OTHERWISE:
          • If it contains at least one POEM title, it is displayed in the "Poem Series" section.
          • OTHERWISE:
            • If it contains at least one ESSAY title, it is displayed in the "Essay Series" section.
            • OTHERWISE:
              • If it contains at least one COVERART title, it is displayed in the "Cover Art Series" section.
              • OTHERWISE:
                • If it contains at least one INTERIORART title, it is displayed in the "Interior Art Series" section.
                • OTHERWISE:
                  • If it contains at least one REVIEW title, it is displayed in the "Review Series" section.
                  • OTHERWISE:
                    • If it contains at least one INTERVIEW title, it is displayed in the "Interview Series" section.
                    • OTHERWISE:
                      • If it contains at least one title of some other type, it is displayed in the "Other Series" section. (This should never happen because CHAPBOOKs cannot be added to series.)

Once all eligible titles have been placed into series, the displayed order of sections is as follows:

• Fiction Series
• Standalone novels
• Standalone collections
• Standalone omnibuses
• Standalone serials (should never happen because SERIAL titles are supposed to be turned into variants)
• EDITOR series
• Anthology Series
• Standalone anthologies
• Standalone chapbooks
• Nonfiction series
• Standalone nonfiction
• Short Fiction series
• Standalone short fiction
• Poem series
• Standalone poems
• Cover art series
• Standalone cover art
• Interior art series
• Standalone interior art
• Review series
• Standalone reviews
• Interview series
• Standalone interviews

If we decide that we want to fold the "Short Fiction Series" section into the "Fiction Series" section, it would be easy to add "SHORTFICTION" to the list of title types which trigger placement in the "Fiction Series" series, then delete the "Short Fiction Series" section. It would also take care of the NONFICTION issue since series with a mix of NONFICTION and SHORTFICTION titles would appear in the "Fiction Series" section.

As to whether combining "Fiction Series" and "Shortfiction" would be a desirable change, I'll have to think about it. Annie's example is a good argument in favor of making the change, but then non-series short fiction, which appears below magazines, anthologies, chapbooks and non-fiction, would be treated differently than the other title types which drive inclusion in the "Fiction Series" section. I guess we could move the "[standalone] Short Fiction" section up the page, but then it would be above book-length works like magazines and anthologies. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:43, 9 February 2023 (EST)

What a blast from the past! I remember working on that code.... The organizational thought behind that evaluation chain was that "books" should be the primary driver of the series type. But perhaps that's a mistake when it comes to NONFICTION. It seems reasonable to suppose there might be a NONFICTION work about any series of works, and if we want to put that NONFICTION work into the series, it shouldn't affect the series type, whatever that may be. So maybe it would be best to move NONFICTION to the bottom of the chain. just before the "Other Series" catch-all. Then Nonfiction Series would only contain NONFICTION. --MartyD (talk) 19:04, 9 February 2023 (EST)

Currently, a series with a mix of NONFICTION, ESSAY, COVERART, INTERIORART, REVIEW and INTERVIEW titles is displayed in the "Nonfiction Series" section. Would you say that it should be displayed in the "Essay Series" section instead? Ahasuerus (talk) 17:24, 13 February 2023 (EST)

The one gotcha I see with that is a nonfiction series that happens to contain an OMNIBUS as well (do we allow that?); we wouldn't want that to end up in Fiction Series. So that evaluation might need a tweak of some sort. --MartyD (talk) 19:04, 9 February 2023 (EST)

The official rule is: "A publication may be classified as an omnibus if it contains multiple works that have previously been published independently, and at least one of them is a NOVEL, ANTHOLOGY, COLLECTION, or NONFICTION." So technically - yes, an omnibus can contain 3 NONFICTION items. In practice it is rare but it happens. Annie (talk) 19:10, 10 February 2023 (EST)

H. P. Lovecraft's Collected Essays: Complete, which collects HPL's essays originally published as 5 NONFICTION volumes, would be one example. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:45, 13 February 2023 (EST)

Maybe the easiest way will be in the omnibus line to have a secondary check if there is at least one SHORTFICTION or POEM title - everything else on the fiction side is before the Omnibus so we will only reach that case when there are no novels and collections/anthologies.

I won't insist on moving short fiction series higher but... I still think that having fiction series in two different places on the screen is confusing, especially for authors who write on the border between novella and novel and that end up with their series split in weird ways. :) Annie (talk) 19:10, 10 February 2023 (EST)

Outcome

I have changed the software to display series with a mix of NONFICTION and SHORTFICTION/POEM titles in the "Fiction Series" section. We may want to start another discussion about merging the two "Fiction Series" sections. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:35, 13 February 2023 (EST)

Embedded HTML is now displayed correctly

After close to a hundred patches over the course of many months, embedded HTML is now displayed correctly on all ISFDB pages. If you come across any irregularities or bugs, please let me know. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:51, 9 February 2023 (EST)

What does embedded HTML mean? --Username (talk) 19:01, 9 February 2023 (EST)

Consider this record whose title is "<sarcasm>Adventures in Gaming</sarcasm>". It could just as easily be "<b>Adventures in Gaming</b>". Angle brackets like "<" and ">" are the building blocks of HTML tags, so browsers interpret them as HTML commands to use bold, italics, underlining, etc. Or, in the case of "<sarcasm>" just stand around looking very confused :-) That's what "embedded HTML" is.

In order to prevent browser confusion, the ISFDB software needs to do something special to tell the browser that these particular angle brackets should be simply displayed "as is" instead of being interpreted as HTML commands. It took me a while to get everything updated, but I think I am finally done. I think I'll go have a tankard of non-alcoholic Klingon ale to celebrate :-) Ahasuerus (talk) 19:45, 9 February 2023 (EST)

<clanks tankard/> For the Empire! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:29, 10 February 2023 (EST)

MV of SK

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5579477; It says 19.95 on back, librarian typed 21.95 on first page like ISFDB says, Locusmag says 19.95 but also says 1989 is the date yet they didn't see it until Aug. '90 for some reason, after this is approved someone more hip to these tangled Starmont/Borgo things may know more about if this is a 2nd printing, if they suddenly decided to raise the price before the 1st printing, etc. --Username (talk) 18:44, 10 February 2023 (EST)

HELP! A Bear Is Eating Me!

https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL9881165A/Mykle_Hansen; English edition just uploaded to Archive.org, I added a link, but French version uploaded back in 2021 in case anyone wants to enter that. --Username (talk) 11:13, 12 February 2023 (EST)

SFE Clute

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5581010; Why is this happening now? Did they change again? --Username (talk) 13:09, 12 February 2023 (EST)

This is the first "clute_uk" URL that I have seen. I am going to ask the SFE administrator whether it's a typo or a new part of their URL structure. Thanks for reporting the issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:31, 12 February 2023 (EST)

It turns out that "clute_uk" is a new publicly "linkable" subdirectory. I have updated the software to recognize it as legitimate. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:48, 12 February 2023 (EST)

Bradbury's Twice Twenty-Two

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?38262; Search on Archive.org only brings up 1 copy but as can be seen at the OL link, https://openlibrary.org/books/OL5981610M/Twice_twenty-two, there's 1 of those weird "preview" copies; it doesn't really have the cover art like the thumbnail shows, just red cloth binding like the other copy, but it's a different copy. So if anybody knows which edition they belong in, if it's one of those later ones mentioned in the ISFDB notes, etc., then link(s) can be added; note also that OL mentions a 1994 Buccaneer edition. Also, Mugnaini's cover art was missing the month and his frontispiece was only included and dated based on the book club edition, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=twice+twenty&type=All+Titles, so I've fixed all that in (pending) edits; note also the last entry with a month that matches neither edition and is from a Virgil Finlay book. What's that about? --Username (talk) 10:47, 14 February 2023 (EST)

Tainaron

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1440471; https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/holdingsInfo?searchId=13630&recCount=25&recPointer=3&bibId=3359893; The original Finnish edition is not on ISFDB but it is on the Library of Congress site in case anyone fluent wants to enter it. I just added an Archive.org link to the Prime Books edition. --Username (talk) 12:17, 14 February 2023 (EST)

Grindhouse

https://archive.org/details/grindhousethesle0000unse; Would the inclusion of the entire screenplay for Planet Terror qualify this for entry here? I've been wanting to find something with Tarantino's name on it so I can add his bio and find the most unflattering photo of him possible. --Username (talk) 11:57, 15 February 2023 (EST)

Richard Morris

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?147497; Interview is with this guy, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0606889/, not the guy from the 1800's, but does that interview about a movie really belong here? If it does, some addition to interviewee's name is needed to differ him from the dead guy. --Username (talk) 15:50, 15 February 2023 (EST)

I'll differentiate the name: thanks for finding this. The interview does belong here because it was published in a genre magazine. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:36, 16 February 2023 (EST)

Whimper of Whipped Dogs

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=whipped+dogs&type=All+Titles; Today is the anniversary of 911 calls here in America, starting in 1968 and prompted by the murder of Kitty Genovese a few years earlier which was the inspiration for this story by Harlan Ellison. I was looking for an online PDF and found this, https://xpressenglish.com/whipped-dogs/. I'm going to add the link but I'm curious where that drawing came from. Anyone recognize it? also, at the link above, the 2 essays seem like the same thing but there's no variant. Are they the same? --Username (talk) 13:24, 16 February 2023 (EST)

Lester Dent Bibliography

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=lester+dent+bibliography&type=All+Titles; https://archive.org/details/lester_dent_bibliography; 1996 date doesn't match either version on ISFDB and it seems to have been published as an e-book or something. Lots of Doc Savage work done recently here so maybe somebody wants to enter this or at least knows where it originally came from. --Username (talk) 13:52, 16 February 2023 (EST)

Squires Knight

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?834417; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?173963; I added an Archive.org link to the Leisure edition by Knight and checked his real name and found that he originally published What Rough Beast under that name. What's the variant rules here? Who's the parent? --Username (talk) 00:45, 17 February 2023 (EST)

Where it's only one title under each name, it doesn't matter much. But I found an archived copy of his website http://www.harrysquires.com/ in the Wayback Machine, and in a 2012 version there is: "Now writing horror as H.R. Knight, Harry...". So it seems he deliberately changed his horror-writing identity from Squires to Knight. So I'd make Knight the canonical (which also works well because the publications under that name are more recent and more plentiful). --MartyD (talk) 10:01, 17 February 2023 (EST)

Post-submission display of Contents sections improved

The way Contents sections are displayed on post-submission pages is in the process of being changed. At this point NewPub and AddPub submissions have been upgraded. Their Contents sections now properly display multiple yellow warnings when warranted. They also indicate which submitted author name is new, which one is an alternate name or which one is a disambiguated name. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:55, 17 February 2023 (EST)

Filaria

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1258490; A copy was uploaded a few months ago on Archive.org; it revealed that the page count and the price here were wrong, I fixed those and added the link, but the review at Strange Horizons calls this the first book from Chizine and says 2008, as do all copyrights in the book itself. Why it has a late 2009 date here I don't know, and I also don't know why there's such a big gap between the first Chizine book here, January 2009, and the rest of their 2009 books. So real date is needed for this book and probably others from this publisher. Also, while researching this I saw an expired eBay sale for a 100-copy HC, which I believe Chizine did for many of their books, often including extra material, but very few seem to have been entered here, so there's that, too. --Username (talk) 09:42, 20 February 2023 (EST)

Earthman, Come Home

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?229485; I noticed a M. Ayme Mayflower edition said Dell on cover and Google Books had it with Mayflower-Dell on copyright page so I fixed that but this isn't on Google. It says Dell on cover, both PV haven't been around for years, but knowing these old paperbacks I hesitate to fix it without someone seeing a copyright page. So if anyone owns this edition can you check and see what it says inside the book. --Username (talk) 16:17, 20 February 2023 (EST)

Come Softly, Come Sweetly...

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?362038; I added info to the only issue of D. Sutton's British Shadow fanzine, from 1971, that's on ISFDB and Eddy C. Bertin has a story, "Come Softly, Come Sweetly", in it which isn't on ISFDB but his 1971 Dutch collection, linked above, has a title which translates to the English title, just with added words, so any Dutch people who are familiar with his extensive bibliography will probably know which came first and can variant as needed. --Username (talk) 16:36, 20 February 2023 (EST)

Mark

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?325553; Does that seem right? It should be other people named Mark Williams, shouldn't it? --Username (talk) 20:04, 20 February 2023 (EST)

Two things: (1) That "Mark (Wills) Williams" is matched up with forms of "Mark" is a bug. I would bet the issue is the "(". The ambiguity matching logic probably isn't paying attention to whether the parenthesized expression is at the end or is embedded in the middle. (2) That "Mark (Wills) Williams" is not matched up with forms of "Mark Williams" is a limitation/feature of the current matching, which doesn't consider names containing middle names (or initials, etc.) to be ambiguous vis-a-vis the same combination of first and last name without any middle name. I don't think we'd want "Mark XYZ Williams" to be shown as ambiguous with "Mark Williams", but I guess I could see showing "Mark Williams" as ambiguous with "Mark ABC Williams" and "Mark XYZ Williams". You'd have to lobby Ahasuerus on that one. --MartyD (talk) 09:41, 22 February 2023 (EST)

Good catch. Bug 827, "'Same name' logic fails for records with embedded parentheses", has been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:50, 22 February 2023 (EST)

It should be fixed now. Thanks for reporting the problem.

Re: showing "Mark Williams" as ambiguous with "Mark ABC Williams" and "Mark XYZ Williams", that's a whole different can of worms. If you do a name search on "John%Smith", you'll get a list of a dozen names, including:

• John Claude Smith
• John D. Smith
• John Hirschhorn-Smith
• John Smith

First we'd have to decide which ones are considered ambiguous. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:04, 2 March 2023 (EST)

Created By Matheson

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?8191; The advance reading copy, https://archive.org/details/createdby00math, says 352 pages on the first page, it's actually 344, ISFDB says 324. Anyone own a copy who can verify what the actual page count is? There are also Roman numerals at the front; no editions here have them. --Username (talk) 08:30, 21 February 2023 (EST)

Brutarian

https://archive.org/search?query=brutarian&sort=-addeddate&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22texts%22; Heads up that someone, after uploading 3 random issues years ago, started uploading more issues recently. This was not strictly a genre magazine but included some genre fiction/non-fiction, especially in later issues, some of it by big names. ISFDB only has a few late issues entered; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=brutarian&type=Magazine. I distinctly remember seeing issues on the newsstand at some store in New York City back in the 1990's or maybe a bit later, so it got some distribution, I guess. I got an R. Crumb vibe from it, though, probably due to the type of cover art they used, and didn't really peruse it. Crumb's art always made me nervous for some reason. --Username (talk) 19:27, 21 February 2023 (EST)

Bonus fiction in novels

Why is a 'bonus' short fiction title allowed in a novel, but a serial installment is specifically excluded? There are a number of publications, example 1, example 2, example 3, where we're forced to misclassify what is clearly a serial installment. I don't see a downside to lifting the exclusion. John Scifibones 19:05, 22 February 2023 (EST)

Because allowing SERIALs in books at all is a relatively new development. It used to be magazines and fanzines only. Then we allowed chapbooks. I think we should allow it in anthologies, novels and collections as well - especially because Magazines reprints are added as anthologies/collections AND because in our digital world, serials are used as bonus almost anywhere. Post over on R&S and we can hash it out and change the rules for serials. One thing to make sure we clearly separate - excerpts vs serials (it is intent that separates them essentially) :) Annie (talk) 19:13, 22 February 2023 (EST)

Moonchasers TP

I've done a lot of Ed Gorman edits recently and this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?284334, is a problem because the HC is & on the title page but no photos of the TP title page can be found. Does anyone own the TP? I've got a half-dozen edits on hold because mod won't change unless I show that it's & in the TP title, too. --Username (talk) 19:09, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Sword & Fantasy

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?33789; Some weeks-old edit of mine was finally approved, fixing an artist's name in one of these issues, but now that I look at the series page something's not right. Why do only the last 2 issues have a comma after the issue #? Also, is the # really supposed to be in any of them instead of in the notes? Isn't that magazine policy there? --Username (talk) 19:13, 23 February 2023 (EST)

The title records reflected the individual publication titles since they hadn't been 'rolled up' by year. I took care of that.

Regarding the comma:

• The placement of the comma, in a periodical title, controls what is displayed in the issue grid. Basically, everything after the first comma appears in the grid except the year as long as it matches the date field. If the year differs, it will also be displayed. Notice how the issue number doesn't appear in the two titles you question.
• Yes, current policy is to show the issue number in the publication notes. 21:57, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Flashing Swords! Help

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?8495; I've just added Archive.org links in (pending) edits to #1 (2 Doubleday), #2 (Mayflower), #3 (2 Dell), #4 (2 1977 Doubleday), and #5 (Doubleday). Now there are some issues. Some people unnecessarily entered the series title in the book title, others didn't; some people entered Roman numerals in the page count, others didn't; some people entered the book title as it appears on the title page, others didn't. Also, #3 doesn't have the Doubleday book club edition entered; #'s 1, 2, and 4 have the book club dates as earlier than the Dell PB dates but #5 has both as the same date, so it's possible that the story dates for #3 are wrong because the book club edition was probably published earlier. There are many PV for all volumes so if any of them would like to add/fix anything it would help. EDIT: The only thing I fixed was importing Carter's essay in #1, "A Last Word", to the Doubleday edition; it was only entered here in the Dell edition. --Username (talk) 11:30, 25 February 2023 (EST)

Backward(s)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?93690; I just stumbled across a copy of Mitchell's Crystal Man which was uploaded in June of 2022 so I added a link and the missing page numbers to the many stories included in that book, but I noticed 1 story, "The Clock That Went Backwards", is actually "Backward". According to ISFDB the only instances of the singular title are the original, uncredited appearance in a newspaper and reprints in various books starting in 2013. So when my edit is approved that story needs merging with the singular or removing/adding the singular or whatever needs doing; the question now is if it really was the plural in the many books it appeared in between the above collection in 1973 and 2013. --Username (talk) 13:16, 25 February 2023 (EST)

Thanks, Pwendt. --Username (talk) 22:23, 10 March 2023 (EST)

Secret Asia's Blackest Heart

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?855765; Something in the recent edits accidentally led me to this and some of those titles are already on ISFDB, specifically the Webb which was published in 2014 as "U-PAO. The Black Sutra", the Blackmore which is in 3 separate books on ISFDB starting in 2007, not 2009, and the Carter/Cornford story which is under the same title in 3 merged publications but its appearance in this book wasn't merged even though the editor did at least date it correctly as 1997. Person who entered it hasn't responded to anything for a long time so if anyone owns a copy a lot of re-dating/re-titling/merging is probably in order. --Username (talk) 19:21, 25 February 2023 (EST)

Borgo Question

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5592414; One of those annoying situations where they include both editions but don't specify which it is. Was it Borgo's style to print the correct barcode in red as it appears on the back cover in the Archive.org copy or is that totally unrelated and somebody just felt like coloring it? --Username (talk) 20:40, 25 February 2023 (EST)

O.J.'s Nightmare

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1706087; Willem and Bob PV separate editions, pretty sure it should be David, also could be related to other artists named Bowers, first name starts with D, here. --Username (talk) 18:18, 26 February 2023 (EST)

Maelstrom

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5593175; A challenge to anyone who can find a bigger cover image and replace mine. This anthology has been on ISFDB for years and there are a few online mentions of it including Locus where the contents came from but, as can be seen in the notes, it seems to have either been barely published or not at all. While on an archived author's site I was trying to get info from there was an image in her bibliography of this book so I uploaded the .jpg, but it was very tiny and after blowing it up as big as allowable here the author names are illegible. The title and cover art still come through nicely, though. Maybe someone here actually owns a copy (HA!)? --Username (talk) 20:56, 26 February 2023 (EST)

Further Adventures of Batman Printing Dates

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?34733; https://archive.org/details/furtheradventure00gree; There's a bit of confusion here. The original printing was July, PV Vasha77 did the 2nd printing but made an error by entering the month based on an ad on the last page which says 10/87 when the book was obviously published in '89, Archive copy above is a 3rd printing not on ISFDB with that same ad but 2 pages before it is an ad for G.R.R. Martin's Wild Cards with 7/89 on it. So since PV is gone and it was transient anyway I suggest we change month of 2nd to July also and then enter the 3rd with that month, too. --Username (talk) 23:38, 27 February 2023 (EST)

Goldstrom

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?25621; My edit making R. Goldstrom an alternate of Robert was just approved but I see there's 2 separate credits for Skeleton-in-Waiting. I think they need merging or something. --Username (talk) 11:23, 28 February 2023 (EST)

Merged, as you correctly pointed out. John Scifibones 11:05, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Davis Grubb Stories

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?5783; I've done a few edits for his rare 1978 collection Siege of 318 and recently stumbled on the fact that the title story was a retitled reprint of "Cry Havoc", which is why both have a 1976 date here. I've made a variant but I am suspicious that "The Idiots" from the 1976 horror anthology Frights and "The Idiot" are the same, too. Does anyone own a copy who can compare the 2 stories? Frights has an Archive.org link so story is readable. --Username (talk) 17:12, 28 February 2023 (EST)

Content sections of Clone/Import/Export upgraded

The Content sections of Clone/Import/Export Publication post-submission pages have been upgraded. Rows can now display multiple yellow warnings per row. Yellow warnings are now more specific, telling you which authors they refer to. Auto-merge rows no longer warn you about disambiguated/alternate author/artist names. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:44, 28 February 2023 (EST)

The Changing

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?36975; I added LCCN ID and noticed 244 pages which is a lot different than 320. No online copies I can see so if anyone owns this can you check page count and fix if needed. --Username (talk) 08:52, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Derek Neville

https://kylerader.net/2014/12/30/ghost-box-a-discussion-with-author-derek-neville/; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?161858; I suspected the short story was not by the old Neville; there's a guy with the same name who self-published Ghost Box, which isn't on ISFDB but should be, but the only mentions of that name and the short story's title are our site and this, https://kristipetersenschoonover.com/2015/01/12/shitty-almonds-now-available-in-bugs-teaser-toc-here/. So story author should probably get a (I) after their name or something to differ them but unsure whether the same Neville wrote Ghost Box, although it seems likely. --Username (talk) 10:56, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Done. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:57, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Needs space after 1st period of artist to make it the same as artist already on ISFDB. --Username (talk) 18:35, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Looks like that was handled as I can't see what you mean. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:41, 2 March 2023 (EST)

Scifibones fixed it today. --Username (talk) 11:46, 2 March 2023 (EST)

1995 SPGA Showcase

http://www.locusmag.com/index/t742.htm#A37177; The Goldman story has the right original date on ISFDB but no mention of where it came from so I entered the info that it originally came from this anthology; the Everson story has the wrong date (2007), a different title ("Warming the Women"), and no mention of where it came from, so I added where it came from but didn't change date or title because it may have the same title in the anthology and should be merged or it really is different in which case it would be a variant; the Jacob story already has a note here about where it first came from. The Danley work being a story is suspicious because all his works (as Robert C. Danley) on ISFDB are poems; it's also weird that Locus listed all the poems after the stories instead of listing everything in order. So on the very slim chance that anyone owns the anthology some fixes would probably be needed after entering it. --Username (talk) 13:27, 1 March 2023 (EST)

I've added that anthology here. If it turns out the Danley work is actually a poem, we can easily change it. In the meantime, it's listed now. I also varianted the Everson story. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:37, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Phantom Fango Edit

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5595657; I'm confused about something. I haven't looked at any Fangoria issues for a long time, while doing Drake Douglas edits I noticed he had 1 review for a book by himself, I knew he probably wouldn't review his own book and found it was just an entry mistake and it was actually Stanley Wiater, who did the other reviews in that issue; I asked PV about it and they responded but didn't indicate they were going to fix it themselves, but now I see that it was changed to the correct reviewer but I don't see where that was done by anyone in the review record or issue record. Am I missing something? I assume I can just cancel my edit now, right? --Username (talk) 19:43, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Look at the last edit to the publication containing the review. Yes, go ahead and cancel your submission. John Scifibones 20:11, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Anthony Izzo Titles

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5597760; I'm not sure what's going on here. I thought this novel was not on ISFDB because the title was not in the author's record but after entering a new record the ISBN is a duplicate of this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?99881. Izzo mentions the title change here, https://www.anthonyizzo.com/post/author-anthony-izzo-s-latest-thriller-novel. So the existing record seems to have been entered from pre-release info on Amazon, maybe, before the title was changed. So what's to be done? Delete Unforgiven? It has a "P" cover image, wrong format, old ISBN-10 instead of ISBN-13 for a 2007 book, etc. (also see my note in Evil Harvest about confusion with ISBN-13, too). Or leave it and make the 2 titles alternates? --Username (talk) 09:06, 3 March 2023 (EST)

Evil Harvest edit was just approved; still awaiting reply on what should be done here. Anyone? --Username (talk) 11:29, 6 March 2023 (EST)

Beehive Book Award

The Beehive Book Award given out by the Children's Literature Association of Utah in the following categories:

• Children's Fiction (chapter books)
• Picture Books
• Informational Books
• Poetry
• Graphic Novels
• Young Adult Fiction

The books nominated and awarded are not limited to those by Utahns, though. It's voted on by children in the state of Utah from a list of nominees submitted by volunteers. It covers more than just speculative fiction works, but there are quite a few speculative fiction authors whose works have been nominated and/or won over the years. See the lists here. I'll be happy to populate the award if it's added. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:54, 3 March 2023 (EST)

I see all the usual suspects: Le Guin, Lloyd Alexander, Jane Yolen, Ursula Vernon, Brandon Mull, etc. Looks legitimate to me. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:31, 3 March 2023 (EST)

Roofworld Arrow Edition

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1282; In tribute to Christopher Fowler, who just died, I started to add as much info as I could to his books and almost immediately ran into trouble. I added an Archive.org link to the original Ballantine edition but there's also an Arrow edition; however, there's 2 records here with one being entered in the very early days of this site and PV by a long-gone person while the other is much more fleshed out but not PV. Which should be kept and given the link? --Username (talk) 17:21, 3 March 2023 (EST)

They look like they are probably duplicates of each other. Anyone else have any different thoughts? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:51, 3 March 2023 (EST)

The "September 1989" pub was verified against the Locus Index, which says:

• Roofworld (Legend 0-09-962340-4, Sep ’89 [Aug ’89], £3.99, 396pp, pb) Reprint (Ballantine/Legend 1988) sf novel.

It would appear that "September 1989" comes from Locus. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:45, 3 March 2023 (EST)

What The F

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=fer+ward&type=Name; Unusual situation here where one would assume the second name is wrong but that's actually her name; the first name only has 1 credit and searching Amazon Look Inside it does say Jennifer on contents page but typing Jenniffer gets 1 hit, so possibly it's spelled correctly at the head of the story in case anyone who has an Amazon account can verify and fix/variant. --Username (talk) 13:04, 4 March 2023 (EST)

In Dreamless, it's "Jenniffer Wardell" on the cover, on the copyright page and on the title page. The "Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data" section says that she was born in 1981. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:30, 4 March 2023 (EST)

A full view on Amazon inside the book in which her name was entered here as Jennifer is needed because her real name per online info is Jenniffer and while contents page of that book says Jennifer a search inside gets a hit for Jenniffer, so I don't want a false variant name created (there's already way too many of those here) if it really should just have an "f" added to it. --Username (talk) 18:53, 4 March 2023 (EST)

Searching the Amazon Look Inside for 100 Worlds shows that the "Object Lesson" title page uses "Jennifer Wardell". The "About the Author" does list her as "Jenniffer", but we enter per the title page. I have created an alternate name and varianted the story. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:10, 5 March 2023 (EST)

Baen vs. Baen Books

We have separate publisher listings for Baen and Baen Books. The top of both these records has "Do NOT merge this with [other version], there are two completely different timeframes and three different logos". However,

• Baen has books from 1984 - 2023
• Baen Books has books from 1985 - 1992, 1995 - 1996, 2004 - 2006, 2022 - 2023

So we are not separating them out as per the note. I don't see the need to have separate versions as we already normalize minor changes in publisher names and that information can easily be handled in a note. However, if we are going to have separate versions, then the time ranges should be added to the notes and the relevant books updated appropriately. The editor who added the note is no longer active so cannot ask them about it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:22, 5 March 2023 (EST)

I would draw a parallel to Ace Books, with multiple addresses and ownership detailed in a separate ISFDB wiki page. I also see no reason beyond whether they care credited differently in the books (Baen vs. Baen Books) ../Doug H (talk) 13:00, 5 March 2023 (EST)

A couple of thoughts. First, spot-checking some recently published Baen books, I see that they apparently use "Baen Books" and "Baen" interchangeable. For example, the copyright page of Dead Man Walking, which was published on 2023-02-07, says:

• A Baen Book
• Baen Publishing Enterprises
• First Baen Printing
• Electronic version by Baen Books

The copyright page of What Price Victory?, which was published on the same day, says:

• A Baen Books Original
• Baen Publishing Enterprises
• Electronic version by Baen Books

Note the use of "A Baen Book" in the first case and "A Baen Books Original" in the second case. The lack of the word "Original" in Dead Man Walking is due to the fact that it's a US reprint of a UK book, but otherwise "Baen" and "Baen Books" are used interchangeably.

Second, in an ideal world, we would capture two separate values: "publisher name as stated in the publication" and "canonical name of the publisher"; it would be similar to the way we treat variant titles and canonical names. Since we don't have this functionality implemented, I think it would be best to merge the two publisher records. Updating Notes would be nice, but, given the mixed use of the two names (as seen above), it may be more hassle that it's worth. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:43, 5 March 2023 (EST)

What does it state on the title page, though? We generally go with that over what it states on the copyright page. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:31, 6 March 2023 (EST)

Unfortunately, Amazon.com's Look Inside tends to use e-books' data for paper editions and e-books don't always have clearly defined title pages. I have many older Baen books in my paper collection, but nothing recent, so I can't check. For what it's worth, Look Inside shows that the two pubs linked above do not mentions the publisher in the "title page" sections. The sections immediately below them say "BAEN BOOKS by [author name]: [list of titles]", but that doesn't clarify things. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:13, 6 March 2023 (EST)

Post-submission pages for AddPub and ClonePub submissions tweaked

Post-submission pages for AddPub and ClonePub submissions have been adjusted to display more information about the title record that the new publication will be merged with. The "auto-merge" line now displays the same title information, including variant/translation data, that is displayed in the Contents sections of Publication pages. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:19, 5 March 2023 (EST)

Dash or 00

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Rtrace#Dark_Carnival_Date; Re: this discussion, do any experts here know of a way to automatically change all LCCN entered on this site, pre-whatever the date was when they changed from using a dash to zeros, from zeros to dash? I just enter them as they are on their site but, even though it makes no real difference because links lead to the records whether they have dashes or zeros, it would be better, I suppose, to have them as they appear in the books. Now all this is assuming that all pre-change LCCN had dashes and all post-change LCCN have zeroes, which I'm sure isn't true, but anyway I thought I'd ask. --Username (talk) 19:33, 5 March 2023 (EST)

Vuk

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=kostic&type=Name; Vuk Kostic and Vukkostic are the same, I assume, 1 says Serbian and the other English, in case anyone wants to decide which should be the parent and which the variant. --Username (talk) 08:51, 6 March 2023 (EST)

Day Khrus(h)chev Panicked

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1618562; Did some edits a long time ago, came across it again today and added cover images and LCCN ID to both HC, Brits spelled name in title without a middle H, Yanks with a middle H. I fixed that for Cassell (title page seen on Cracabond Books, a site I don't think I've ever heard of before), Random House title page on Google confirms the middle H, Macfadden in Google Images confirms the middle H, if Digit title page can be seen then we'll know all and main title can be changed and American editions' title can be a variant (there's also a UK Ensign edition on AbeBooks without the middle H on the cover, so I think it's safe to say American H, British no H). --Username (talk) 18:03, 6 March 2023 (EST)

Stained-Glass World

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?232309; I added a bunch of Kenneth Bulmer edits yesterday, and this, the last one, was just adding an Archive.org link, but then I noticed the month doesn't match the one in the note. I asked RTrace since I saw his name at the top of the edit history but he was no help, and of the PV the first guy's dead, the next 3 are gone (probably), and the last guy is still around but doesn't seem interested much in this site these days, so maybe Glenn is the only one who may respond helpfully; why is the month, which does say July in the book, April on this site? Fix needed IMO. --Username (talk) 09:42, 7 March 2023 (EST)

AddPub/NewPub/ClonePub post-submission pages enhanced

Post-submission pages for AddPub/NewPub/ClonePub submissions have been enhanced.

AddPub/ClonePubs pages now display a yellow warning if the title type of the associated title record has been changed since the submission was created. The "Title Data" section of NewPub/AddPub pages has been standardized to use the same fields, field names and field order as EditTitles' post-submission pages. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:08, 7 March 2023 (EST)

"Disambiguated author" yellow warnings upgraded

Post-submission yellow warnings for disambiguated authors have been upgraded. They now use the same algorithm as "There are other authors with the same name" displayed at the top of Summary pages.

This means that "A" will no longer be erroneously reported as a disambiguated name based on the existence of "A (W) Hendry". It also means that "Stephen King (I)" or "G. S. (artist)" will generate yellow warnings informing the reviewing moderator that they are disambiguated names. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:00, 7 March 2023 (EST)

Self-Moderation Request

Hello,

with around 10.000 changes to ISFDB since 2013 and also lots of source-code contributions I did really a lot for ISFDB and very seldom my edits have been rejected. As nowadays it takes extremely long to moderate submissions I'd like to have Self-Approver state. Hopefully that also leads to me adding a lot of my own books which I skipped until now.

As is probably known I'm not 100% happy with the way ISFDB works but adhere to the given rules. Thus I'll not use any additional rights I get to do more than now, but restrict my Self-Approver privilege to situations which I think consensus exists (misjudgment in individual cases included :-). For changes which could be troublesome I'd leave these submissions for other moderators to review (I assume that's still possible?).

--Stoecker (talk) 07:33, 8 March 2023 (EST)

Hi, Dirk! Alas, I do have some reservation about that privilege: while you did quite a lot of valuable source-code contributions, I have the feeling that many (if not all) of your publication additions to the database lack the quality we usually try to achieve, especially in sourcing the data (that is: giving the sources for the date of publication and the art credit; I personally think that also statements for the edition - first [language, tp, pb, hc, ...] would be welcome).

Here is a quite recent example (this one also has a seemingly wrong format, since the vast majority of publications by this publisher with the same format are defined as pb). Many of your added / verified publications have stub notes or none at all, like this one. (Also, many verified pub.s have missing or erroneous publication series, like this or this, the first example being again a stub record).

On the whole, most seem somewhat hastily added, and I'd like to see some more quality in added and especially PV'd publications. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:42, 11 March 2023 (EST)

Yes. I usually only add the minimum amount, because it's simply to much hassle to get it correct with a turnaround of multiple days for a change. It takes weeks to enter a single book correctly, especially as there is no preview feature yet and I have to redo everything when I make an error. Thus I only add the information which is required and important, nothing else. I certainly don't add all the information which it seems you find is necessary in the notes, but I add all the relevant information and I don't add wrong information. In the examples you showed there is no error: The example books you choose are tp and not pb. The publication series for Bastei is still a somewhat strange thing and not really visible in the books. The older books I added thus wont have them right simply because this "right" changed over the years. For new entries I try to follow whatever seems currently used in ISFDB. P.S. As already said multiple times - ISFDB has a large amount of errors in non-verified and verified publications (also errors which have been introduced to my verified books which have been correct when I entered the information). When the threshold to participate is too high that also wont change. I tried to help fix the software for this but the attempt didn't work out. I see that a small part of my ideas have be implemented in the last years, but nothing game-changing. Maybe to give you a note what I actually talk about: I own ~2300 SF and F books, 825 of these I verified in ISDFB, 787 more exist in ISFDB often with missing information or missing the exact copy I have. 685 are missing totally. I simply did not add them yet and instead do my own database. BTW Some errors also come from different moderators of the time: One moderator forced me to do one thing, the next exactly the opposite. And I always complied even if it did not make sense. --Stoecker (talk) 10:28, 11 March 2023 (EST)

Comment: I haven't done much work on the submission queue lately, so I'll abstain. To answer the question raised in the last sentence, if a self-approver leaves a submission in the queue, it can be reviewed and approved/rejected by a moderator. However, submissions by self-approvers are color-coded and moderators tend to leave them alone because the presumption is that the self-approver is taking a break and will be back later. Of course, a self-approver can create a submission, leave it in the queue and then ask about it on the Moderator Noticeboard. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:52, 11 March 2023 (EST)

Maybe there should be a flag "please review" to turn off the color code? I actually appreciate in other environments when you have the chance to let somebody else review your stuff even when you yourself could approve it. For the easy cases you approve directly wheres for others you seek per-review. It's a concept which I e.g. are very happy with in software update submissions for openSUSE Linux distribution. --Stoecker (talk) 10:33, 11 March 2023 (EST)

Fixed Story Titles

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Rtrace#Great_Disciple; Maybe I'm not being clear or something, but I'm not getting the answer I'm looking for so maybe someone else can help me. I did a bunch of edits for Bruce Publishing books and this one required more work, using the copy on Google Books, because story titles, I assume taken from Locus, were wrong in 6 cases (and 1 was missing entirely), from missing articles to completely wrong. I fixed them but now that it's been approved the 6 parent stories still have the wrong titles. That can't be right, most of the author's obscure religious stories didn't appear in any genre works and the 2 that did had the right titles (although 1 of them, "The Hound of Cullen", isn't in this collection so now I'm suspicious because it has a 1951 date on ISFDB but appeared in F&SF in 1953, so I wonder if the missing story I entered, "The End of Coo-Cullen", is that story retitled) so there's no variant, so how can I get both author names to show the correct titles? --Username (talk) 12:29, 8 March 2023 (EST)

You would have received the answer you were looking for had you told the reviewer; "The titles were only published under an alternate name so there is no reason the canonical name titles should differ." To correct, simply edit the canonical name titles and make the same corrections. However, I question whether William Bernard Ready should even be the canonical name. I don't see a single title published using that name. I would make W. B. Ready the canonical name with William Ready an alternate. This would obviate the need for the above edits. John Scifibones 13:39, 8 March 2023 (EST)

Which Henry Holt?

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5601242; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5601243; This is the 2nd time recently that this moderator has rejected edit(s) of mine while telling me to ask PV first when I clearly did that in both cases. This one, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5597731, was asked about here, https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Swfritter#A_Month_of_Mystery, but I just decided to cancel it because trying to fix the countless verified editions of books that are clearly book club editions but not identified as such by the PV is too much for me to handle so I've decided to not do those kinds of edits anymore, but as for the 2 edits at the top of this message there's no reason for them to be rejected because as I explained here, https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Rosab618#Henry_Holt, this publisher on ISFDB, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?60311, only has a few entries including those 1990's books entered recently by the same PV, while this publisher, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?86, has almost all their books including pretty much everything published between 1986 and 2023, as is clearly explained in the note at the top of the page where it says they reverted back to that name in 1986. The 2 PV books say Henry Holt and Company on the title page so if we're going by what they actually say it wouldn't match any publisher currently on ISFDB. Standardization, right? Isn't that what mods are always saying, don't enter multiple publisher names? I think those 2 should be un-rejected. If not, I'd hate to see how many of the hundreds of "Henry Holt" books currently on ISFDB would need to be changed to "Henry Holt and Company". --Username (talk) 20:48, 8 March 2023 (EST)

You're mischaracterizing this a bit. In both cases, you submitted the edit before receiving a response from the primary verifier. Changing the name of the publisher is a major change to a publication record and should not be done without the prior assent of all active verifiers. Worse, this submission would have replaced the record for the trade edition with one for a book club edition, effectively deleting the record for the trade edition from the database. I explained this in the rejection note, and again when you objected on my talk page and I am explaining it for a third time here. I also explained in all these places that you need to get a response from the verifiers before submitting the original edit. Now, whether a title page stating "Henry Holt and Company" should be reflected as Henry Holt, Henry Holt & Co. or a new publisher is an open question. However, it is still necessary to have a dialog with the verifiers before changing those records. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 21:58, 8 March 2023 (EST)

FOCUS

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?37441; I believe we have 4 separate publishers here: A German one, a British one (reprint of HC de la Mare book), an imprint based in Massachusetts who did Shakespeare, and a kid's book which maybe should have a different publisher, Tyndale, because it says "Focus on the Family" on the cover so Focus is more likely to be a series. In case anyone cares to differ them in some way. --Username (talk) 10:50, 10 March 2023 (EST)

Amazon UK

In this case, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?312797, is it OK to replace the price and enter a link to this, https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22560761M/The_monsterologist, since there's no UK price and editor just entered the price from Amazon? This happens a lot. --Username (talk) 12:20, 10 March 2023 (EST)

For those interested in Lovecraft and Winnie the Pooh

I ran across this Kickstarter which combines the two. The anthology won't be out for about a year, but it's something to look forward to (I backed it). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:24, 10 March 2023 (EST)

R. Dickerson

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=dickers&type=Name; Russell has many interviews, Russ has 1 which has an alternate because of a language note or something. So 1 of those should be a variant of Russell. --Username (talk) 09:47, 11 March 2023 (EST)

Karloff the Editor

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?35824; A copy of Avon was just uploaded on Archive.org so I added a link, also added C to the price for the other (Canadian) Avon, added the month to the regular title since Avon was first edition, added other countries' prices to Corgi from back cover seen on FantLab, but most significantly added introduction to Souvenir based on photo on FantLab. It's not in Avon so it seems they added it for British editions; however, the only evidence here is in that Portugal edition where it says Introdução. So when my edits are approved that probably should be made a variant of Introduction and if anyone owns the British paperbacks the introduction is probably in those, too, and should be imported. --Username (talk) 09:16, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

De Grote Horror Omnibus

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?175406; Just uploaded is this, https://archive.org/search?query=grote-horror, which seems to be a German edition of the Signet omnibus, in case any German/German-fluent person wants to enter it. --Username (talk) 09:28, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

C. Anderson

[4]; I added OL ID to Science Fiction Films of the Seventies some time ago and today came across it again and added Archive.org link; I noticed cover artist might be the same as the author and there's another similar name, all linked above, in case anyone knows if they're all the same. --Username (talk) 12:26, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

Maureen F. McHugh's The Cost to Be Wise - novelette or novella?

This is categorized as a novelette, but it was nominated for 3 different awards in the novella category. If I look at the page counts in The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels, it shows as 45 pages, which is the same as the following story - Greg Egan's Oceanic - which is categorized as a novella. (The rest of those "short novels" are all categorized as novellas, but they have longer page counts.) Google search results for 'mchugh "the cost to be wise"' followed by "novella" or "novelette" also indicate it is considered to be the former.

There are over a dozen verified pubs containing this story (which distill down to the 1996 Starlight anthology it appeared in, the 1997 Dozois Year's Best, a 2005 author collection, a Lightspeed mag special issue, and the aforementioned Dozois "short novel" anthology), so I'm wary of changing the type without some sort of discussion or second opinion. ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:42, 12 March 2023 (EDT)

I happen to have one of the anthologies as an ebook. After converting it to TXT and removing the other stories, the table of contents, etc, I see that the text contains 19,500 words if you count the title. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:45, 13 March 2023 (EDT)

Derleth's Sleeping

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5606597; Almost missed this rare one uploaded on Archive.org because they're doing something weird where the upload date is different than the added date which is causing a lot of confusion; anyway, PV is a bit...testy judging by my last contact with them, so I'm dry-running this here before letting them know of my changes. Does anyone see anything wrong with my edit? Title as it is on title page, spurious subtitle moved to notes, FantLab ID because it shows cover that coverless copy doesn't, etc. Also, I checked the Four Square abridgement on Dalby's site and it says "AND", not "&", on title page, so variants needed? EDIT: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?33526; I see I added copy link and FantLab ID recently but now I've added LCCN ID, while noticing intro is dated with signed date instead of book date, something I've seen many times before, probably done by a specific editor who thought that's how it was supposed to be, so if it's not right one of the PV should fix the date. EDIT: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5606943; More title fixing; PB edition was recently uploaded so I made an edit adding link for that and title is "AND", not "&", on title page, so more variants needed? --Username (talk) 12:29, 13 March 2023 (EDT)

EditPub yellow warnings upgraded

All yellow warnings displayed in New Cover Art, New Regular Titles, New Reviews and New Interviews tables within the "Content" section of EditPub post-submission pages have been upgraded. They now use the same enhanced functionality already available on other post-submission pages.

At this point the only tables still using the old functionality and table layout are the 4 "Modified Cover/Regular Titles/Reviews/Interviews" tables in EditPub. As always, if you come across anything unexpected or erroneous, please post your findings here. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:37, 13 March 2023 (EDT)

There was a flaw in the last patch. The 4 "New" tables no longer display a yellow warning if the publication date hasn't been changed and the new title date is after the publication date. I am working on a fix. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:39, 13 March 2023 (EDT)

It should be fixed now. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:06, 13 March 2023 (EDT)

When you get a moment, please take a look at this submission. Thanks, John Scifibones 08:07, 14 March 2023 (EDT)

Thanks for reporting the problem. It happens when magazine pubs are cloned. Working on it... Ahasuerus (talk) 11:53, 14 March 2023 (EDT)

It should be fixed now. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:44, 14 March 2023 (EDT)