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My Recently Changed Primary Verifications tweaked

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

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

Knight Rider

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

Shocking Tales

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

Application for self-approval status -- MLB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outcome

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

Possible canonical name change Mary A. Turzillo

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

Titles using the following names:

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

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

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

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

replying. John Scifibones 15:37, 3 February 2022

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

Psychotic

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

SFE Issue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clarke and Dunsany

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

Astounding/Analog links to luminist scans

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

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

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

Rename Andre Norton series

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

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

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

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

Proposed Date help text revision

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

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

Morlan's Amulet

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

Bill Longley

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

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

Claude Y.

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

Comic Book Adaptations

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

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

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

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

New yellow warning for language mismatches

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

Fake Trek

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?52303; Actually first published in August 1996 according to copyright page, but this, [2], shows the subtitle to be different. There's a copy of the 1998 edition here, https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780060952761. Publisher of 1996 edition is very obscure; could it be related to this, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?17301? --Username 20:37, 7 February 2022 (EST)

Eddy Deco Cover

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

Schwob's King

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

Application for self-approval status -- henna

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outcome

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

Invalid HREFs in Notes/Synopses

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

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

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

Page count for books with cross book numbering

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

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

Podwil's Perfect Day

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

Fulton

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

15-Foot Spider

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

Changing canonical name "Edgar Malboeuf" to "RavensDagger"

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

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

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

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

2 Ralph Smiths

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

Dickens and Ghosts

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

Gray or Grey

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

Cleanup reports temporarily unavailable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert (S.) Phillips

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

Messing With the Demon

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

Aytoun or Maginn

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

Light and Twilight

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

Edit was approved and I removed the wrong cover. --Username 18:42, 19 February 2022 (EST)

3 cleanup reports for Audible publications

The following 3 cleanup reports have been deployed:

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

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

Greenhouse

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

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

The question is why the subtitle is included in the book's record but not the regular titles record; it should be either both or neither. Since the PV informed me months ago that he's no longer approving edits by me because I had the nerve to disagree with him about some of my edits, and since he hardly does any edits these days, anyway, you can try to find him and ask him about it, or confab with the other mods about whether it should really be part of the title or not. --Username 18:32, 16 February 2022 (EST)

Gadino

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

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

https://www.artrenewal.org/14thARCSalon/Home/Artist/15890; I think they're the same person. --Username 18:27, 16 February 2022 (EST)

Well, unless we're sure, we shouldn't be linking them. All the work I've seen by Victor Gadino is nothing at all like the work by Gadino as far as style goes. Maybe they are the same person, but I haven't seen anything other than having the same surname which would lead me to believe they are the same person. That's not enough, at least for me. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:17, 21 February 2022 (EST)

1943 or 1951

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?45012; I imported 2 stories into Suspense; shouldn't this retitling be dated 1951-00-00? --Username 21:14, 16 February 2022 (EST)

Cleanup menu improvements

The main cleanup menu had two "Translations" sections; they have been merged. In addition, the names of the sections with outstanding cleanup reports are now displayed at the top of the Web page along with the count of active reports within the section; you can click them to jump to the section of your choice. Ahasuerus 21:56, 16 February 2022 (EST)

My Pending Submissions -- self-approver enhancement

"My Pending Submissions" has been modified. When viewing a pending submission, self-approvers can now go to the "Approve/Reject" page for the submission. Ahasuerus 09:29, 17 February 2022 (EST)

Matilda

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?71266; I knew that publisher was fishy; this page, https://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD-JEUNESSE/Folio-Junior/Folio-Junior/Matilda2, suggests it's Gallimard, but it could also be Folio Junior and there's no mention of "Contemporary French Fiction", so I leave it to French readers who may know more about exact details re: who the publisher is and what the publication series is. --Username 11:31, 17 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks for finding this. The trustworthy BNF (French National Bibliography) has the publisher as Gallimard Jeunesse, which I'll insert. Stonecreek 10:18, 18 February 2022 (EST)

The interior art was MATLIDA, so I removed it and then imported the right art, but afterwards got 2 yellow warnings for unstable cover image and language mismatch on the art. So you may want to replace/fix those. --Username 10:40, 18 February 2022 (EST)

MZB's 'Falcons of Narabedla'

Hi! I have done a word count estimate for this publication and found that for the fiction it lies somewhere between 32,000 and 35,000, which does make it a novella. I'll wait for the weekend to pass and change this and the title accordingly if there's no objection. Christian Stonecreek 10:14, 18 February 2022 (EST)

There is a convention that we treat works published in Ace Doubles as novels regardless of length. See the last sentence under "NOVEL" here. However, it also uses "typically". --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 12:06, 18 February 2022 (EST)

I can not agree with this change. I did a rough wordcount for both Ace double editions, and both come to just above or below 40.000 words. --Willem 16:04, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Inscrutable

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?56019; I fixed a minor error for David Shobin's The Center (someone spelled "cover" as "covere") and saw there was a Japanese edition; looking at the list linked above, I'm just curious how these are entered. Stephen King's Misery title is spelled here only in Japanese even though the English title is on the cover, but King's IT is spelled in English and Japanese here, with the Japanese symbol being different between the 2 editions; also, King's name isn't on the cover for Misery but it is for IT, and yet his name is spelled in Japanese for both books here. The Center's title is in Japanese but Shobin's name is in English, even though both title and name are spelled in English on the cover. World War Z's title is in English and its author in Japanese even though both are in English on the cover. Asking on the very slim chance I ever try to enter a Japanese-language book. --Username 11:33, 18 February 2022 (EST)

Bad Red

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?882813; Did someone create a new thing recently where if ISBN is bad it says so on record in red? Looks pretty cool. EDIT: Oh, it's gone now and mod fixed ISBN problem and added notes about it; red message must be for mods' eyes only. I just peeked behind the curtain. --Username 11:35, 19 February 2022 (EST)

The red warning has been present for quite awhile and is visible to everyone. There is also a cleanup report that shows these and people will fix them based on that also. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:47, 19 February 2022 (EST)

Application for self-approval status, Holmesd

As my peers do not seem have upset the apple-cart, the system is still functioning, and the backlog of edits is still large (unknown if it includes self-editors or not), I will assume that self-approval is still something that moderators might be willing to grant. That said, I hereby apply for such status knowing that there is no documentation for what that entails, or whether it can be reversed. ../Doug H 15:00, 19 February 2022 (EST)

Support (as I had already indicated when I nudged you to apply for it) :) Annie 15:12, 19 February 2022 (EST)

Support --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 19:52, 19 February 2022 (EST)

SupportKraang 20:34, 19 February 2022 (EST)

Support. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:04, 19 February 2022 (EST)

Support, of course. Christian Stonecreek 00:23, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Support. --MartyD 06:57, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Support. --Willem 16:00, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Support. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:18, 21 February 2022 (EST)

Outcome

Success. The self-approver flag has been set on the account. Ahasuerus 11:48, 24 February 2022 (EST)

Word Count

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1588237; Here's something I found that might be of interest. A Christian SF magazine, GateWay S-F, published 5 issues (for some reason #4 was never entered here even though info is on the usual sites) about 20 years ago. They actually had a website which is missing the archive of #1's contents but has #2 (there's also a 3rd issue but its contents don't match the print version of #3 at all); there are a few wrinkles like 2 of the stories being in a different order and 1 story online actually being from #1 (whether it's really from #1 or was actually in #2 is a good question). However, the interesting thing is while most of the (mostly lame) stories are very short, the story by Joe Zeff is very long. I did an edit changing it from a short story to a novelette, but then thought mod might ask how I know how long it really is and whether it qualifies. I found a page called wordcount.com and entered the URL, https://web.archive.org/web/20010303180722/http://www.gateway-sf-magazine.com:80/native.html, and got this result: 7,638 Words 46,966 Characters 38,368 Characters without space 11,620 Syllables 552 Sentences 712 Paragraphs. So does it qualify, and is this site known here or did I discover something? EDIT: Wow, I just found the ISFDB page re: story lengths, http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Template:TitleFields:Length, and it says 7,500 words is the low # for a novelette, so I was right, barely; also, I did a Google search for ISFDB and wordcount.com and got no hits, so I may have found something here. --Username 21:15, 19 February 2022 (EST)

I've been told that some people use MS Word to figure out story lengths; the site I mentioned above, wordcount.com, does the same thing almost instantly and is about as basic a page as you can get, unlike other word counting sites that have ads/blogs/giant pictures on the screen, and doesn't force you to enter the Gates of the evil Microsoft Empire. --Username 19:17, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Application for self-approval status: ErsatzCulture

It was suggested to me a few weeks ago that I might consider applying for self-approval privileges. My initial response was to be somewhat reluctant, but given that a large proportion of my edits are mundane AddPubs of stuff Fixer missed (or can no longer get from Amazon UK's API), or adding links to author records, perhaps it's not a good use of the moderators' time to plough through that stuff? I promise not abuse this privilege should it be grant, or conversely to be offended should the judgement go against me ;-) ErsatzCulture 16:21, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Support. Annie 16:53, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Support -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:21, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Support Kraang 22:42, 20 February 2022 (EST)

Support Christian Stonecreek 01:51, 21 February 2022 (EST)

Support. --MartyD 09:02, 21 February 2022 (EST)

Support --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 09:22, 21 February 2022 (EST)

Support. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:18, 21 February 2022 (EST)

Support. --Willem 13:53, 21 February 2022 (EST)

Support.--Chris J 15:29, 21 February 2022 (EST)

Outcome

Success. The self-approver flag has been set on the account. Ahasuerus 15:57, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Kindle Vella ASINs

So it looks like each "episode" of a story on Kindle Vella has a different ASIN. The format of the URLs is https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B09P51SY31, with the ASIN at the end changing for each separate episode. Can we add a "Kindle Vella ASIN" to the External IDs list so we can enter these? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:26, 21 February 2022 (EST)

Are those only in the US Kindle store or are they also on the internationals and if they are there for the internationals, is it the same ASIN across stores (as happens often for ebooks - with the UK/US exception for some publishers) or different (as with audiobooks - which have separate ID in each store) - aka do we need an ID that works like the ASIN (with 16 links) or like Audible ASIN (pointing only to Amazon.com in this case)? Annie 17:46, 25 February 2022 (EST)

If I click on the above amazon.com link from the UK, I (eventually) get a fairly empty page with "Kindle Vella stories are available for US customers on Amazon.com." If I edit the URL to be .co.uk rather than .com, I get a 404-ish "we couldn't find that page" error.

I can try doing a search on Amazon UK if someone tells me what text string to try... ErsatzCulture 18:19, 25 February 2022 (EST)

I suspected so. Search to see if "My Wife Is a Minotaur, but I Don't Have Time for That Now. I'm Late to Work!!" pops up somewhere as a title? Also the main page is here - and that does not work in either of the other Amazons (thus the original question). And then there is this (on the author side of Vella): "With Kindle Vella, U.S. based authors can publish serialized stories, one short episode at a time" and " Kindle Vella publishing is currently available to publishers who reside in the U.S. to publish stories in English." and a few other sites report that both readers and writers need to be in the US. Which means that we need a simple ID (for now) and not the ASIN formatted one. Annie 18:47, 25 February 2022 (EST)

I utterly failed to get anything back in search on Amazon UK, trying several variants of that string, different departments in the dropdown etc.

I was able to see the main Vella page (on amazon.com), with various products listed. If I click on one of them, I get a /story/ page (e.g. [3], which has some details, but also the "Kindle Vella stories are available for US customers on Amazon.com." warning at the top of the page. Clicking on the "Read episode 1" link gets the same empty page as I first mentioned above. ErsatzCulture 19:33, 25 February 2022 (EST)

(unindent) Sorry, folks, I missed this discussion back in February :-(

I guess the first question that we need to answer is whether Vella-hosted Web serials are eligible for inclusion based on ISFDB:Policy. Here is a list of currently included electronic publication types:

e-books with a unique identifier such as an ISBN, ASIN, EAN, or catalog number
downloadable e-zines
Internet-based publications which are downloadable as electronic files in any number of ebook formats (ePub, Mobi, PDF, etc).
Speculative fiction webzines, which are defined as online periodicals with distinct issues (note: online periodicals without distinct issues are not considered webzines)
Special speculative fiction issues of non-genre webzines
One time speculative fiction anthologies published on the Web
Online publications available exclusively as a Web page, but only if:
1. published by a market which makes the author eligible for SFWA membership (listed here), OR
2. shortlisted for a major award

Here is how Vella serials fare:

They have unique identifiers, but are they really e-books?
N/A
Are Vella serial installments downloadable or are they only available in your browser or via the Kindle app?
N/A
N/A
N/A
Apparently N/A:
1. Amazon is not listed as an eligible market by SFWA
2. AFAIK, none of them are shortlisted for major awards so far

Ahasuerus 13:20, 8 March 2022 (EST)

Hm. That's a good question. It is "the web at www.amazon.com/kindle-vella and in the Kindle app" only (for now) from what I can see. So I suspect that will mean that they are closer to web serials than actual ebooks - even though being available on the kindle app kinda makes them a bit of a hybrid. Still probably not eligible under the current definition... We probably need to open that definition a bit more again at some point if we want to follow the publishing world... but that is another conversation. Annie 13:27, 8 March 2022 (EST)

I don't know. Each installment has a unique ASIN, and (like any other Kindle release), there are ways to get the file so you can view it using any viewer, not just the Kindle app. It seems to me that if they meet one of the criteria, they should be in. They are ebooks as you have to download them to your device. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:02, 8 March 2022 (EST)

The fact that they have ASINs -- even though specialized ASINs -- is an argument in favor of their inclusion. However, they appear to be only available via the Kindle app. Regular e-books can be downloaded as mobi/azw3/epub/pdf/etc files. Are they still e-books if they can't be downloaded as files? Ahasuerus 15:55, 9 March 2022 (EST)

Not all ebooks can be downloaded in different formats but they can be downloaded in at least 1 format -- which is enough. Annie 16:03, 9 March 2022 (EST)

How can you get the file from Amazon (not with a third party tools and so on - or any online story anywhere is eligible - I have a browser plugin that can sent to my kindle creating an ebook that way). I cannot find any way to actually download the mobi/azw/azx file from Amazon? If we can download the file, I'd call them ebooks indeed. Annie 16:03, 9 March 2022 (EST)

With regular e-books that you purchase on Amazon, you go to "Manage Your Content and Devices", then "Digital Content", then "Books". When the desired book is displayed in the list, click "More Actions" on the right. In the pop-up list select "Download & transfer via USB" and click "Download". This will download the book as an azw3 file.

When you follow the same steps for a Vella serial, you get to the last step, but the "Download" button is grayed out. Instead you get a "You do not have any compatible devices registered for this content. Buy a Kindle or get the free Kindle reading app." I haven't been able to find a way around it. Ahasuerus 16:49, 9 March 2022 (EST)

That's probably due to Vella still being in beta. I haven't been able to figure out how to do it, either. I'll keep trying different ways. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:05, 9 March 2022 (EST)

Gaèl Baudino versus Gael Baudino

Is the correct first name of author G Baudino really spelled "Gaèl" as shown on her bio page and all of her pubs? I have four early paperback novels written by her that all have her first name spelled "Gael" on the title pages. No one has created an alias. I can't find anywhere that spells it "Gaèl". Should it be mass changed to "Gael"? I'm puzzled where the "è" came from. Phil 08:58, 22 February 2022 (EST)

The software currently doesn't allow an alias from "Gael" to "Gaèl" as it treats the names as identical. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:05, 22 February 2022 (EST)

The way the software works is that if the very first publication was created with the name as Gaèl, any subsequent one will default to it because Gaèl and Gael is the same name for the DB (it is a known limitation). I do not see a name update but there is a merge way back which seems to have caused this with a bad selection on what to remain as the valid name (there was a bug that could have allowed Gaèl and Gael to coexist under some circumstances but one of them was kinda hidden and causing issues elsewhere). We have two choices: change it to Gael (and add notes to the books which use Gaèl) or leave it as is and noes with the books which use Gael. Annie 16:23, 22 February 2022 (EST)

PS: It most likely was created by one of the two French stories - then post-merge, with Gaèl as the default, every Gael got turned into it... Annie 16:25, 22 February 2022 (EST)

I'd vote to change everything to Gael and add notes to anything that might actually have "Gaèl" if they can be identified but that's based on only the 4 pubs I can PV and searches on the WorldCat and Wikidata. Phil 18:00, 22 February 2022 (EST)

This has languished for a few weeks. What has to be done to implement this? Do I just submit a change to the author record and include a note about the change? Phil 10:28, 3 March 2022 (EST)

We tend to give people time to object when such changes are done. :) As noone objected to the change, it is now changed and a note for the second spelling added. Annie 14:08, 3 March 2022 (EST)

German Burroughs

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?720866; Editor TerokNor hasn't been around for years; I added cover to this, it says Gottin on cover, not Gotter, so anyone who may own a copy could check title page and fix if needed. Edgarriceburroughs.nl says: "The Gods of Mars (cover title Goddess of Mars). --Username 11:04, 23 February 2022 (EST)

There are two valid sources which state the currently recorded title "Die Götter des Mars": German National Library and the Bibliography of German-language SF. Both sources usually have a physical copy of the publication and are therefore very likely correct. What's stated on the title page defines the title of the publication, not the title on the cover, and given these two reliable sources I assume that the title page states "Die Götter des Mars". The record at German National Library also mentions "Göttin des Mars", but only in a note as a "secondary" title, which they probably mentioned because of the title deviation on cover and title page. BTW: TerokNor as been active a few days ago (see the contributors page). Jens Hitspacebar

That's why I asked if anyone could check "title page", because what's on "title page" is canon. Mr. T hasn't responded on his discussion page since 8/2018, so I don't know what he's done lately but it's certainly not answering any questions. Also, don't forget to sign your messages with the next-to-last symbol above. --Username 18:56, 23 February 2022 (EST)

The title page says "Die Götter des Mars", the cover "Göttin des Mars". Just checked on a physical copy. Werner Welo 08:57, 5 March 2022 (EST)

Best Indie Book Award

This would be a good one to add. We'd need the following setup:

Short Name: BIBA
Full Name: Best Indie Book Award
Awarded For: The Best Indie Book Award is an annual, international literary award contest recognizing independent authors all over the world since 2013. Entries are limited to independently (indie) published books, including those from small presses, e-book publishers, and self-published authors.
Awarded By: Not sure. I can't find the name of an organization that runs it (other than "Best Indie Book Award").
Poll: No
Non-Genre: Yes
Web Page 1: https://bestindiebookaward.com/
Note: There is an entry fee.

They have the following categories. I haven't looked through them to see if any of the non-genre categories might have genre works winning or being nominated. I've italicized the ones least likely to contain any genre nominations or winners:

Romance
Science Fiction/Dystopian
Fantasy/Paranormal/Supernatural
Action/Adventure
Mystery/Cozy Mystery
Suspense/Thriller
Young Adult
Mainstream/Non-Genre/Literary Fiction
Short Story Collection/Poetry Collection
Children
Children’s Middle Grade
Historical Fiction
Humor/Satire
Occult/Horror
LGBTQ2
Other Fiction (For any Genre Fiction not listed.)
Christian (Fiction/Non-Fiction)
Non-Fiction
Non-Fiction> Memoir
Non-Fiction> Biography
Non-Fiction> Self Help/Health
Non-Fiction> Inspirational/Motivational
Non-Fiction> New Age/Metaphysical/Visionary
Non-Fiction> Religion/Spiritual
Non-Fiction> Business/Investing/Marketing
Non-Fiction> Cooking/Crafting/How-To
Non-Fiction> Travel

Please let me know if you need anything else. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:14, 23 February 2022 (EST)

Sorry, I forgot about this request :-(

Now that I am looking at the award description, I see that these awards are based on authors' submissions and the organizers require an "entry fee" for each submitted book. From their FAQ:

14. You may enter more than one book in the contest, but each entry must be accompanied by the entry fee. Entry fees are non-refundable.
15. You may enter the book in multiple categories. There will be an extra fee for each additional category entered.

In additions, the FAQ says that the winners get (FAQ 24):

Ongoing Promotion of the winning book through social media, print advertising, online advertising, email lists, and more. (100,000+ followers)
Five-Star rating on Goodreads.
Added to the BIBA® Winners list on Goodreads.
Custom Promotional Images of your book for you to use.
Promotion across multiple websites.

These descriptions make it sound more like a promotional service than an award. Ahasuerus 13:35, 8 March 2022 (EST)

I can see that. You do have to win to get those things, though, so it's not as simple as a "pay this fee and you get these services" thing. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:04, 8 March 2022 (EST)

Yes, but they also say (Q 17) that "In the event of a category having a large number of entries in a given year, we may also split categories to give entrants a better chance." That's pretty much a mechanism to keep their paying customers happy.

Apparently there are quite a few similar "awards" which are really contests for self-published authors. This article lists more than 20 of them. Ahasuerus 21:14, 8 March 2022 (EST)

That makes sense. This doesn't look like a good one to add, then. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:11, 9 March 2022 (EST)

Gollancz Fantasy Date

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?359054; Cover was missing so I added it from Amazon, Amazon says 1968 not 1978, ISBN fits in with '68 Gollancz books, who thinks date should be changed to 1968? --Username 11:25, 24 February 2022 (EST)

British Library and OCLC say 1978. Amazon.com is unreliable for such old books - they are second-hand vendors additions and these can be hit or miss. Plus a price of £4.50 is not consistent with 1968 - as a value (too high) and partially as a currency (a bit too early for pounds - they switched officially in February 1971 - although earlier dates are possible). I've added the BL and OCLC numbers while I was around anyway. It may have been a reserved ISBN or a later printing but with this combination of details, this is not a 1968 book. Annie 13:47, 8 March 2022 (EST)

Series Number of Dresden Files short fiction

Looking at Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series and those short fiction entries that have been allocated a series number, it seems that the intended numbering scheme is internal chronological order (although there are a few inconsistencies). This hit my radar when I was looking at my copy and the pub record for Side Jobs and the series number for the short story Vignette. In the book it says it "Takes place between Death Masks and Blood Rites" so the series number should be 5.5, not 0.5 and the note in the title record for Vignette needs a corresponding correction. In any case, 0.5 would also be wrong if the numbering scheme were publication order.
In Side Jobs, every story starts with a statement of where it falls in the internal chronology relating to other novels / short fiction in the series, yet only one of the contents records after Vignette has a series number.
I've just taken a brief look at my copy of the Brief Cases collection and it seems as though the internal chronological position of stories is also stated in that collection.
So, assuming you're all still with me after this long diatribe, two questions:
1) Is the series number a feature that's considered valuable in the ISFDb? I'm quite happy to take on a project to figure out the series number for all the Dresden Files short fiction and make all the edits but I don't want to waste my time or moderators' time with something that's considered inconsequential. It will involve about 10 submissions for the stories in Side Jobs alone and about another 15 for the stories in other collections.
2) Who else, if anyone, should I inform? The title records for the contents entries themselves are not PVd and tracking down all the PVs of all the publications in which all of these pieces of short fiction appear and then notifying them will be onerous. And I'll be less happy to undertake the project! :-) Teallach 18:56, 24 February 2022 (EST)

The more data, the better. We like order when we can establish it. However... when a story is strictly set between Novels 5 and 6, I would call it 5.5 even if it was published 11 years after novel 6 came out. Just saying. :) The numbering may have been done by mistake OR someone may have made a typo or who knows. Just add a note on the series level explaining the numbering of the short fiction and all is well. Adding the note with the statement of where the story falls and where it is explained while adding the numbers is also useful.

As for PVs, as it is a relatively big series, anyone who had PVed a book that contains a story and is active has some stake into the numbering so I would bring that to their attention. You can (and should really) just point them to this thread instead of copying everywhere - thus keeping all conversations in one place. If they want to voice an objection, they can. If they don't or ignore the note, you just update the numbers :)

Don't worry about the number of edits. They may sit on the board for a day or three if you hit a slow moment moderator-wise but as long as you clear the objections and add notes (and moderator notes if needed) and we know what you are doing, these are easy approvals. Annie 19:43, 24 February 2022 (EST)

That's fine. I'll take this on. I will definitely add notes explaining the sources of the series numbers. Before I make any edits, I'll work out the series numbers for every short fiction and report back here first to advise any issues or lack of them. It'll probably take me a week or two to figure everything out. So don't crack the whip on me too hard. :-) Teallach 17:55, 25 February 2022 (EST)

Ok, I now have all the series numbers sitting in a spreadsheet. Early in my research I came across a page on Jim Butcher's website that has a full timeline of Dresden Files events. So that was most of my work done. This timeline is more comprehensive than the story notes in the books because the latter only locate the shorts in relation to the novels, whereas the website timeline locates the shorts in relation to other shorts as well as the novels. This becomes very relevant when you discover that 6 shorts take place between the novels Small Favor and Turn Coat.

Some issues:

A) When I'm adding title notes to explain the source of series numbering, is it ok to link to the author's webpage timeline in terms of stability and is it ok to link or refer to it in terms of permission?

B) 3 of the shorts are in the Bigfoot series which is a sub-series of the Dresden Files. Should I leave the numbers as their Bigfoot series numbers (1, 2, 3) or assign their parent series numbers, which will be 2.5, 7.1, 11.2 respectively ?

C) I wasn't intending to touch the Dresden Files Graphic Novels because I don't have any of them but, actually, I could if I'm using the website timeline. However, they form another sub-series so same question as B) above.

D) According to the website timeline, the shorts "Day One" and "Zoo Day" take place concurrently. Should I assign the same series number to both, which will be 15.7 ? Is that acceptable within the ISFDb? Alternatively, I could just assign series numbers of 15.7 and 15.8 arbitrarily. Please advise. Teallach 18:30, 3 March 2022 (EST)

A) Linking to the author's page is ok.

B) If you pull them in their own series, use the numbers 1,2,3. If you keep them in the main series, you use the 2.5 and so on. In both cases use the template {{MultiS}} in the notes and add a note which is the second series (existing or not in ISFDB). The Notes field help page has links to all available templates and their explanation.

C) See B :)

D) You cannot have two entries with the same series number. Select numbers based on... something (publication date?) and add notes explaining that if needed.

Did I miss something? :) Annie 18:36, 3 March 2022 (EST)

All looks good. I will inform some PVs now, wait a few days for feedback and then start the edits some time next week. Teallach 09:30, 4 March 2022 (EST)

No objections. Phil 12:00, 4 March 2022 (EST)

I imagine that this will continue to evolve as more stories are released. Adding all this detail will make updates much easier down the road. This is great! Tom 18:06, 4 March 2022 (EST)

Ok, it's all done. Took about 30 edits but we got there eventually. Thanks for your help with this Annie. Teallach 13:28, 12 March 2022 (EST)

The End of the World

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?958717; Actually a 1982 PB of a 1981 HC titled Invitation to a Holocaust and reprinted many times by Pinnacle; author seemingly wrote dozens of nonsense books about psychic powers and such. Only here because of the review so probably could be deleted and review kept. --Username 20:51, 24 February 2022 (EST)

Review converted to essay and publication deleted as ineligible work. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:11, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Burrage Barrage

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?6518; Mr. Burrage just keeps on giving; whenever I find more stuff to do related to him even more turns up. Today I noticed a signature on the bottom of his '27 Some Ghost Stories; the artist, Cecil Cornforth, doesn't seem to be credited anywhere on the web for this cover (actually, he's barely credited for any artwork). Then I found that Burrage's essay "Un-Paying Guests" had been reprinted much earlier than credited on ISFDB, in a Ghost Story Society booklet released free to their members (along with 2 rare stories), so that booklet was entered in an edit. Then, most amusingly, the preface "A Skene" which is in his 1967 collection Between the Minute and the Hour confused me since he died 10 years before the book was published. Turns out it was written by Anthony Skene. Ha! Mr. Skene only has 1 other credit on ISFDB, a 1924 essay reprinted in a Michael Moorcock collection, and apparently was well-known for writing Sexton Blake novels. What I'd like to know now is who did that beautiful cover for the '31 Someone in the Room. If anyone knows, let me know. A nicer photo of Mr. Burrage would be good, too; there don't seem to be very many online. --Username 21:56, 27 February 2022 (EST)

Richard Hughes and Robots

http://www.philsp.com/homeville/SFI/k00271.htm#A14; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2949275; I saw a cool photo of famous Brit author Hughes on FantLab and was sad to see it already on ISFDB (probably added by me long ago and forgotten about); however, it unearthed an interesting situation. There's a recent entry by Richard Hughes in some kind of robot anthology which is obviously not by the same Hughes, but while looking at ISFDB's "same name" page and trying to figure which was the best way to differentiate the two I discovered that the PV, VWCrist, hasn't responded since 2018, and according to that philsp.com link above, the work was actually from a 1955 comic, and Hughes and Suchorsky show up in several comic sites for 1950's works. So what's the best way to do this? --Username 12:03, 28 February 2022 (EST)

Here is some help. Looks like the Richard Hughes from "The Robot!" is Richard E. Hughes, while the Richard Hughes of the 1931 poem is Richard Arthur Warren Hughes, as indicated in our record. So the record for "The Robot!" could be separated out using a disambiguated name; we could leave the other one alone or add disambiguation to that as well. Since we know something definite about middle names for both, "Richard Hughes (Arthur Warren)" and "Richard Hughes (E.)" would work, although a little clunky. --MartyD 15:13, 2 March 2022 (EST)

Nightly processing getting split

As the database grows and we add more and more cleanup reports, the process of regenerating database statistics and cleanup reports takes longer and longer. While the nightly process runs, the system is so sluggish that it might as well be unresponsive.

To minimize the impact of nightly processing on system availability, I am starting to move certain processes to a separate job which will be run on Sunday morning. So far I have moved the process of regenerating database statistics, which should save around 4 minutes every night between Monday and Saturday. If everything looks good tomorrow morning, I will start moving relatively low priority cleanup reports to the Sunday job. Ahasuerus 17:18, 3 March 2022 (EST)

A robotic chess game

I've been looking for a number of years for an author/title for a first-contact work.

This search goes back perhaps 5-10 years and is for a work (most likely a short story) published earlier than 2005.

The rough idea is that a first-contact mission to a planet sends out a robotic "explorer" of some type. While searching the surrounding area, the robotic explorer encounters another entity - a precise copy of itself - and finds that any physical movement it makes, the copy executes a mirror maneuver to block the original's further excursions. If the original moves left, the copy moves to the right blocking it's advance.

At the time, I was reading Lem's works and thought it might be by him but I haven't been able to find anything like this.

As I recall, the story was published as part of a collection of short stories - possibly by the same author (not sure about the author part though - it could have been a collection of stories by various authors).

Thanks for any help anyone can provide. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Magillaonfire (talk • contribs) 8:35, 4 March 2022 (EST)

2022-03-05 performance issues

There are a lot of (apparently) automated connections to the ISFDB server at the moment. It's making the system almost unusable at times. I am looking into it. Ahasuerus 10:22, 5 March 2022 (EST)

I have examined our log files and it looks like we are being hammered by robots which are constantly accessing random pages. For example, they access "Delete Title" pages for title records linked to multiple publication records, which no human editor would do. They are also using a variety of IP addresses from different regions, which makes it impossible to block them without specialized software. I'll ask Al if he has any ideas. Ahasuerus 13:10, 5 March 2022 (EST)

I blocked the top IP address (with more than 100,000 accesses today) using iptables. Don't know if that will help in this case. Alvonruff 13:47, 5 March 2022 (EST)

Thanks! Ahasuerus 14:37, 5 March 2022 (EST)

Who 50

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?429068; https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Doctors-Anniversary-Collection/dp/0141348941; ISFDB record for this book had no page # for stories so I entered them from Archive copy, https://archive.org/details/bbcdoctorwho11do0000unse, but cover doesn't match one on ISFDB which has a "50 Years" blurb on it. I replaced cover with Open Library one, but it's as dark as if someone dropped it down a well and then took a picture of it; the Amazon link above shows same cover as Archive but also another cover which says "50th Anniversary Anthology" on it , which neither Archive's or ISFDB's does (although Archive says "50th Anniversary Collection" on back cover). So if anyone owns any editions it would be good to enter them because they seem to have released this with multiple covers. --Username 21:07, 5 March 2022 (EST)

Starlog Covers

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?33627; May '77 and May '78 are the only 2 issues that have cover images judging from my quick scan of all issues; why, and should those 2 covers be deleted? --Username 15:24, 6 March 2022 (EST)

Alex or Alexa?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?94243; Here's a tricky one; Archive.org includes an archivist named Public Resource who apparently scanned over a million items from public libraries in India. I've added many old books in edits today, but they also include more recent books; Edmund Crispin's 1960's-era Best Tales of Terror 1 and 2 being examples. The item in question here is John Keir Cross' story "Happy Birthday, Dear Alexa", which has a note on ISFDB about Tuck wrongly titling it "Alex". Turns out that's the original title; the next reprint, in 1972's London Tales of Terror, also says "Alex" on contents page, and since the only hit on Google for that book and "Alexa" is our own site, I think it's safe to say it's "Alex" inside the book, too. Then there's the 1981 Hoke anthology, https://archive.org/details/mysteriousmenaci00hoke, which says "Alex" on copyright page but "Alexa" everywhere else in the book. So some varianting may be needed. I tried to delete the wrong note about Tuck but because all notes in that record were added with those dots I keep getting a yellow warning about mismatched HTML tags, so if a mod wants to delete it that's fine. EDIT: Well hell, the copy of Best Tales of Terror 1 shows title page and other books by Faber in the same "Best..." series and then proceeds to more than 400 pages of a book about Queen Elizabeth I. So Mr. "Public Resource" or someone else screwed up. At least #2 is really there, although searching is tough because misspellings of titles and faded/corrupted pages abound so searching by author and then by title if that doesn't work is sometimes necessary. --Username 16:59, 6 March 2022 (EST)

The Thrill Book

Unless anyone else had this project on their radar I am going to tackle it using scans of the issues, Bleiler's Annotated Index to The Thrill Book, and a two-volume collection of most of the stories published by LuluBooks. There will be a number of changes to editorship records and the removal and deletion of nongenre titles.--swfritter 17:49, 6 March 2022 (EST)

Have fun :) Annie 13:52, 8 March 2022 (EST)

Transliteration reports moved to the weekly job

All "transliterated values" reports have been moved to the weekly job. A new line has been added to the top of all cleanup reports to indicate how frequently the are run: nightly, weekly or monthly.

In addition, the nightly process has been changed to rebuild cleanup reports one report at a time, so they will no longer disappear when the job kicks in at 1am server time. Ahasuerus 18:42, 8 March 2022 (EST)

Psychotronic

I have a copy of Michael Weldon's 1983 book The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, bought back in the late 80's. I came across this book on ISFDB today and decided to check to make sure all info was correct. Turns out the copy I have is a third printing with a $17.95 price, unlike the $16.95 of the first edition. The page count was also slightly off, being 815 instead of 813 (814 is also mentioned online in some places). There's also a foreword by well-known author Christopher Cerf which wasn't entered so I took care of that, too, and added another WorldCat ID, the old one being in German or something. However, the most important thing is I decided to replace the cover on ISFDB with the 1 on FantLab, being darker and clearer, and noticed the text on the cover was different. At the bottom of the original is "The most amazing film book ever!" while later editions replaced that with a blurb from American Film. The FantLab cover has 1st edition's price and ID on the cover, while the cover on ISFDB had a TWENTY-DOLLAR price and a different ID. How many times was this book reprinted?!? Anyway, if anyone has the elusive second edition or knows what edition costs $20, reply or enter. --Username 21:25, 10 March 2022 (EST)

ISFDB time settings corrected

In the past, some ISFDB pages, including the front page, used Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) while other pages used ISFDB server time (currently Eastern Standard Time.) The software has been standardized to use local server time across all pages. If you come across any issues, please let me know. Ahasuerus 22:15, 10 March 2022 (EST)

Pan Prices

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?264637; I replaced the cover with Bookscans cover, then noticed the price was missing in the corner. Dalby's site has this, https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/collections/newest-shopify-test/products/herbert-van-thal-the-second-pan-book-of-horror-stories-1960-first-edition-paperbacks, and this, https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/products/herbert-van-thal-the-second-pan-book-of-horror-stories-1960-paperbacks, which show the price but as a sticker, which is obvious because in 1 photo it's peeling off. So I think I'm going to leave my edit alone since I figure that's the original edition and price was added to later editions' covers, of which apparently there were many; http://www.45worlds.com/book/title/the-second-pan-book-of-horror-stories. If anyone is an expert on these old Brit PB's and disagrees let me know. --Username 10:53, 11 March 2022 (EST)

Unknown Page Numbers

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?359095; Someone entered the second volume in this series and imported contents with page #'s without realizing the HC and PB #'s are totally different. There's an Archive copy of the HC so I fixed those #'s, but now I notice someone made the same error for the first volume, and I can't find anywhere that shows the contents page. So if anyone owns this they may want to fix those HC #'s. --Username 14:06, 12 March 2022 (EST)

Container reports moved to the weekly job

All "Container" cleanup reports have been moved to the weekly job. Ahasuerus 21:08, 12 March 2022 (EST)

Ditto "Translation" reports. Ahasuerus 22:57, 12 March 2022 (EST)

Lin Carter series name change

Based on the following comment in the the Author's Note published in Down to a Sunless Sea, I would like to change the series name from "The Man Who Loved Mars" [4] to "The Mysteries of Mars".

"This is the fourth, and, probably, the last novel I shall write in a loose sequence of books I think of under the heading of "The Mysteries of Mars.""

The existing series name is the same as the title of the first book in the series. Would anyone object to making this change? Phil 08:18, 13 March 2022 (EDT)

Never owned any of these, but support the change as long as none of the subsequent books reference the name "The Man Who Loved Mars" as anything other than the name of the first book. ../Doug H 11:13, 13 March 2022 (EDT)

And Wikipedia also lists your proposal as 'official' name of the series. Christian Stonecreek 13:29, 13 March 2022 (EDT)

I Am the Walrus

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?407806, https://canerdr.blogspot.com/2013/10/walrus-tales-table-of-contents.html?m=0; This bizarro anthology which includes many well-known authors doesn't seem to have any Kindle edition to check inside, and info online is scarce, unusual for such a recent book. I started to enter partial contents from Datlow's Honorable Mentions list at the back of one of her Best Horror of the Year anthologies which included several stories from this book, then I found the full contents on that nearly 10-year-old Brazilian (!) site, but the Ranalli title is spelled differently on ISFDB and the site doesn't mention that Ranalli's and Hughes' story are reprints. So I imported those 2 and added a link to that site, but if anyone owns a copy they can check if there's a publication history to verify which stories are reprints and if original stories are spelled the same as on that site so that they can be entered. ISFDB gets a shout-out on the site, too! --Username 16:01, 13 March 2022 (EDT)

Contents were just entered by a PV. --Username 15:17, 7 April 2022 (EDT)

The Very Eye of Death

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?381543; Minor point here, but there's 2 Creation Oneiros collections I added from Archive.org recently, and while W. H. Hodgson's Horrors from Haunted Seas had a very different page count (288 on ISFDB vs. the correct 259; corrected by me recently), the Poe collection says 192 on ISFDB, while a couple of Amazon pages agree and 1 says 191, which seems to be correct, but there may be something on the last page that's not included in the contents. Anyone with Archive account can check their copy and make sure. --Username 13:43, 15 March 2022 (EDT)

Andrew Osmond - split into two author entries?

Andrew Osmond is apparently both:

the co-author (with a fairly well known in the UK Conservative politician) of three novels from the late 1960s/early 1970s, who died in 1999 (as documented on Wikipedia and a UK national newspaper)
the writer of a few essays and reviews, mostly anime related, and most of which post-date the aforementioned death date

It seems highly likely to me that these should be split to two different author records. The latter person seems to have a reasonable online presence (Twitter, publisher bio, what seems to be a self-authored bio, none of which mentions co-writing novels with politicians.

Any objections to splitting these up? ErsatzCulture 13:25, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

They should definitely be split up. I've known the second Andrew for years (though I haven't seen him for years, either). Nice guy. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:35, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

Thanks.

I just hacked up a rough SQL query to report on anomalous death dates vs title dates. Lots of false positives - so not something that could easily be turned into a cleanup report - but this author record also looks like a candidate for splitting:

* Richard Young - US author who died in 2015 vs (probably) British currently active artist for UK SF TV tie-ins. ErsatzCulture 15:35, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

That second one should be called Richard Young (artist) when you split them ;) Annie 15:38, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

Richard Young is done. Does anyone have any preferences on which of the Andrew Osmonds to rename and/or how? The newer one describes himself as a journalist on one of the links I supplied above, but as the earlier one was involved in the satirical news magazine Private Eye, I don't think that's a particularly helpful way of disambiguating them. Maybe "(1938-1999)" for the older one?

Unless the new one is a new Isaac Asimov (aka very prolific or very well known or the new one has A LOT of books), the old one keeps his name and the new one gets the (I) :) Annie 17:47, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

The Curse of the Lion

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1094960; The contents of this have never been entered because they (except for "The Ape People") don't appear in secondary sources, but it turns out they do, sort of; this link, http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/l/ll00124.htm#A10, lists all stories in the "Bruce Logan" series, and 1 of them has the same title as the collection. It's mentioned in an old ad for the book and in a 50's fanzine that the narrator is Bruce Logan. I know better than to ask if anyone has a copy of the original, but someone here must own the recent Coachwhip reprint to verify the contents, right? --Username 20:25, 16 March 2022 (EDT)

Sorry, but I think this assumption ain't right: most editors have some special areas of interest, and if a publication is not in one of those it's rather unlikely that someone owns a specific copy of a publication. So, if it's not PVed, one can assume that not one of our editors has it in her or his stock. Christian Stonecreek 13:21, 17 March 2022 (EDT)

Last Day

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?11336; cover is used for every edition except 1 foreign cover, but only credited cover is Dutch. Is that really the original? Should other cover art credits be variants of that or should it be a variant of whichever English-language edition was the original? --Username 09:14, 17 March 2022 (EDT)

Surely not the original, made a parent title, ready to import (or merge). Thanks, Christian Stonecreek 13:32, 17 March 2022 (EDT)

Doll Maker / Dollmaker

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?2159; I did some edits for Sarban's work and this is puzzling me; the title of his collection is The Doll Maker but the story inside is "The Dollmaker"; shouldn't they be the same? Also, it's novel-length, not novella, which is why it was reprinted as a standalone novel a few times. The story "The Trespassers" should be a novella, I think; it's 50, 56 or 62 pages long depending on which book it's in. --Username 22:12, 17 March 2022 (EDT)

Old Paper

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?554648; This is the only book on ISFDB from this publisher that seems to have the full book on Archive.org; others are missing pages with month and so forth. However, judging by the catalog at the back of one of them they sold cloth for $1.00 and paper for 50¢; seeing as how this is the cheaper version, how does the format change? Did they have trade paperbacks back then in 1892, or should it just be made a PB? --Username 22:39, 17 March 2022 (EDT)

Not looking closely at your example and based on Jules Verne research, copies were sold with and without covers, assuming that people would bind them themselves. I'll be interested in the answer. ../Doug H 22:53, 17 March 2022 (EDT)

Blatty Question

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2184055; William Peter Blatty's Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane has many editions on ISFDB; there's a note about it being heavily revised as The Ninth Configuration, a film version with that title being released in 1980. I'd like to enter an edition of Ninth from the only copy on Archive.org, but as can be seen in that link above, the only mention of that title here says it's "non-genre". Knowing the movie had definite genre elements I assume the book does, too, so why is it non-genre but Kane is genre? --Username 11:51, 18 March 2022 (EDT)

French Exorcist

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5264948; French speakers, I found a French Exorcist edition, https://archive.org/details/lexorciste0000blat_h2y4, which isn't on ISFDB; it's by the well-known publisher J'ai Lu, but unlike their much earlier edition on ISFDB which just uses the standard Exorcist cover, this edition uses a crazy-eyed girl as the cover. I made a sad attempt at entering it but I don't have a clue what some of the info on the back cover means, so when this is approved if anyone would like to further improve it, please do. --Username 12:21, 18 March 2022 (EDT)

R. Louis?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2820529; The OL ID links to a preview-only copy, but there's 2 copies I just added links to from Public Library of India which are 1946 reprints. All editions credit R. L. Stevenson, so that R. Louis variant should probably be gone and R. L. variant substituted. Uh-oh, I just checked and that preview copy is also a 1946 reprint, so none of these Archive copies are the original 1945 edition; something may have to be done about that. --Username 14:17, 18 March 2022 (EDT)

Fireman Flower

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?601237; The Public Library of India comes through again; William Sansom's first collection was entered here years ago; I remembered doing something for it a long time ago, realized it was only finding that lovely cover, and being glad of that because another editor, Vasha77, long-gone now, entered the page #'s and got them completely wrong. You'd think someone would have noticed since they end on a much higher number than the page count. I fixed them all, but in my usual OCD way searched for Sansom instead of William Sansom and another Fireman Flower edition came up, https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.475678, which says 1944 but is actually from 1952, in Chatto & Windus' New Phoenix Library. ISFDB has only 2 books in Phoenix Library (no New) for Chatto, 2 editions separated by 20 years of an Ambrose Bierce collection, and an online search seems to suggest there were a lot of books in that series, so other genre books may be waiting to be entered. Sansom's collection is barely genre, with many mainstream stories, but if anyone feels like entering that '52 edition it's there; the page count is much higher than the original Hogarth edition, so I don't know if they printed on really small pages or what. --Username 23:52, 18 March 2022 (EDT)

Publisher Pricing Stickers

How do we handle publisher pricing stickers? Where the publication is exactly the same as an existing record, but the publisher has add a sticker to the book with a higher price? If it were a re-seller or other secondary party, it would be pretty straightforward that it is not a new edition. But when the publisher adds the sticker, how do we want to handle that? -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:15, 19 March 2022 (EDT)

Do what I did. Clone the publication and make a note that the publisher has added a sticker over the old prices with the new higher prices. It can't be a reprint as otherwise the copyright page would state that fact. Presumably at some point they must have printed a large number at the lower price then for "reasons" something happened to affect the prioe of books and the publisher had to print stickers with the new prices to put over the old prices on their remaining stock. --Mavmaramis 17:22, 19 March 2022 (EDT)

"It can't be a reprint". Exactly, it's the same publication, not a new one. I'm not seeing how this is a different case then how we handle ebooks. When we know it is the same ebook sold at different prices, we add that information to the notes. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:57, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

Well yes but if you have a copy that has one of these publisher's stickers on the back, especially if it's a wraparound cover, then uploading that image will replace one that's already there with the original prices (if the full wraparound has been uploaded that is). So although the note would be sufficent for cases where the cover isn't wraparound it's not adequate when the cover is wraparound (as in the case of my copy of Herbert's Destination Void). So i think that cloning the original entry with the original prices and amending the entry with the new price(s) as per the publisher's sticker would be best as then an image can be uploaded to show the sticker on the back of the wraparound artwork. --Mavmaramis 08:13, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

But that will essentially create 2 separate records for the same version of the book... if the stickers get removed (by mistake or on purpose), does it mean you now own a different version of the book? :) Under that logic, we should also be be creating multiple versions of publications for books which get a ton of awards and the publisher keeps adding stickers about them on the cover of the same already printed books. Stickers and price clipping are essentially the same thing for us - modification of the books post-printing. We use notes for these -- and if you want to add the second cover, upload it as a normal file on the wiki and link it. So I would not make a clone personally. Just my 2 cents :) Annie 16:58, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

Help:Screen:NewPub currently says:

...if the price change is via a stickered label, the price change should be ignored. For example, copies of the British distribution of some American magazines were stickered with a British price. These are not British reprint editions of those magazines, but simply imported copies of the American edition, so a separate publication record with a separate price value should not be created for them.

I would use the same approach when dealing with stickers used by the original publisher, but I would also use Notes to document the fact that at least some copies had a sticker with a higher price. Ahasuerus 17:18, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

Annie wrote "if you want to add the second cover, upload it as a normal file on the wiki and link it" - fine if you actually know how to do that. I do not. The wraparound cover with publisher's sticker has been posted elsewhere so I could link to that image instead. --Mavmaramis 12:44, 21 March 2022 (EDT)

Direct Upload. It is one of the links we post in the Welcome message for new editors but either you never got one or it got lost in the shuffle of archiving. External link also works :) Annie 14:24, 21 March 2022 (EDT)

Probably easier for me to link to the image already uploaded elsewhere to be honest. --Mavmaramis 16:15, 21 March 2022 (EDT)

The Man They Couldn't Kill

"I am so thrilled! Arriving in the mail from New Zealand today, I just acquired the only copy for sale in the world (that I could find) of Roy Meyers' first novel: The Man They Couldn't Kill." "The book itself is quite strange in appearance. No copyright year features anywhere in the book, so I have no idea how ISFDB determined it was 1944. It has the appearance of a pulp magazine of the time and is made on pulp paper in pulp magazine size with a pulp magazine shiny paper cover. The title page says the publisher is "Fiction House LTD. 162a Strand, London, W.C.2 Copyright Reserved." Does that mean it was published in the second water closet? The back page indicates it was printed by the "Blackfriars Press, Ltd., Smith-Dorrien Road, Leicester." The above was written by a "deleted user" on Goodreads recently; it seems to contradict some of the info on ISFDB. Any pulp experts here may want to look at this to see if any changes are needed. --Username 08:00, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

It certainly means that it was published in the second wuthering cave that London's underworld is filled with ;-). Sorry, that I can't help with the other unsolved problems (but if each of the other editors is as helpful as me, we'll have them solved in no time). Christian Stonecreek 12:55, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

Your edition is documented in Worldcat. Unfortunately, there are no copies available in a library near me. The only additional data Worldcat seems to have is that the author's middle name was Lethbridge. There is another copy available at biblio.com [5]--swfritter 18:40, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

It's someone on Goodreads who bought that copy, not me, hence the quotes; the last 2 sentences are mine. There's a Fiction House on ISFDB but it published American pulp zines and so is probably not the same. The other thing about Roy Meyers is that he supposedly co-wrote 1 of those crap Laser novels, in 1977, several years after he died. I find it hard to believe an obscure British pulp writer hooked up with an American SF writer (J.F. Bone) and wrote a novel and then it laid around for years until finally being published. There's a note about the name on the cover being Roy Myers, so I suspect that may be who actually co-wrote it, and Roy Meyers had nothing to do with it. But I'm probably wrong. All I'm sure about is most of those Laser novels were awful. --Username 19:34, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

My copy of Dolphin Boy describes it as the author's first novel so perhaps he disowned The Man They Couldn't Kill. SFE claims all the novels are by the same person but who knows? Perhaps we are dealing with three different authors.--swfritter 19:13, 21 March 2022 (EDT)

The Old Tobacco Shop

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.264545; Even though all of William Bowen's works on ISFDB are in the public domain range there don't seem to be any Archive copies except the book linked above; it's a 1922 reprint, not 1921, and is damaged, but last page clearly says 241 with THE END at the bottom. ISFDB and LCCN say 236, but there is a list of 5 illustrations near the front, so it's possible those pages weren't counted. So if anyone wants to look at it. --Username 18:56, 21 March 2022 (EDT)

After two years I need remind myself of this and that. During late March 2022 ;-) i will include this work and also The First Book of Unknown Tales of Horror (#Unknown Page Numbers) in the corpus. --Pwendt|talk 15:05, 24 March 2022 (EDT)

Chico

"Chico Buarque, who wrote the wonderful novel Fazenda modelo/Typical Manor (1974), a variation on Orwell's Animal Farm, which is a satire on capitalism"; the above comes from a blog on FantLab; there's a section on Brazilian writers, but his ISFDB record, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?331575, is empty. So if anyone knows what's up with that; maybe a story that was deleted or something. --Username 16:31, 23 March 2022 (EDT)

Updated. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:34, 24 March 2022 (EDT)

Also, it was empty because there was a review of the book, but the book wasn't entered. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:35, 24 March 2022 (EDT)

Encyclopedia Cthulhiana

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/titlecovers.cgi?1452020; https://archive.org/details/the-encyclopedia-cthulhiana; I found a Japanese (?) edition of this non-fiction book which has a cover unlike any of the others on ISFDB. Maybe a Japanese-fluent editor would like to enter it. --Username 16:04, 24 March 2022 (EDT)

Done. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:08, 24 March 2022 (EDT)

Another edition showed up under the alternate title Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, https://archive.org/details/cthulhu-mythos-encyclopedia-a-guide-to-the-horros-created-and-inspired-by-h.-p.-lovecraft, and I did my best to enter it, but I'm a little suspicious because the Amazon page calls it paperback while also saying Kindle and the date is several months later than Archive.org's copy, so an expert in such Lovecraft stuff can take a look at it after my edit's approved. --Username 15:07, 18 May 2022 (EDT)

Approved. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:37, 19 May 2022 (EDT)

Mummy Extract

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1654520; I have a thing about old authors who have story or book dates much later than the rest of their work; in this case typing the title linked above on Google brought up that it's actually Chapter III of his novel The Mummy and Miss Nitocris. I added "The Ghost Ships" to W.H. Hodgson's record recently and gave it a 1909 date because it was a chapter from his novel The Ghost Pirates, since it's not really an extract but a whole chapter that has the same title as the story included in the much later collection of Hodgson's stories, but I didn't change this one because I'm not entirely sure what's correct. Should this have the date changed to that of Griffith's novel or should it be left alone with just a note saying it's a chapter? --Username 21:24, 24 March 2022 (EDT)

More HTTP/HTTPS changes - cover scan URLs

A few thousand cover scan URLs hosted by third party sites have been upgraded to use HTTPS. The only supported third party sites still using HTTP are:

sf-encyclopedia.uk (note that sf-encyclopedia.com supports HTTPS)
www.philsp.com and philsp.com -- reportedly no plans to upgrade to HTTPS
www.mondourania.com
people.uncw.edu
www.sf-leihbuch.de and sf-leihbuch.de
books.ofearna.us and art.ofearna.us -- note that ofearna.us supports HTTPS

Covers hosted by the following three sites can be found using Advanced Publication Search and will require manual review:

covers.openlibrary.org -- current HTTP URLs redirect to multiple different Web sites
www.grantvillegazette.com -- the Web site structure and the URLs have changed; need to review and update all URLs; see the Web site's main archive page for details
img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk and www.fantasticfiction.co.uk -- URLs seem to be moving to img1.fantasticfiction.com; need to be reviewed

Amazon-hosted images are a separate issue and require more research. Ahasuerus 14:32, 25 March 2022 (EDT)

Most eligible HTTP links to third party Web pages have been upgraded to HTTPS. The rest will have to be done manually. Here is what I discovered while reviewing HTTP links:

Changed URL structure:

zinewiki.com - need to add '/wiki/' between the domain name and the article name
www.tercerafundacion.net - changed to https://tercerafundacion.net [note dropped the 'www']
www.alisoneldred.com - new URL structure, details currently unknown
www.borisjulie.com - some URLs no longer work
www.grantvillegazette.com - all URLs changed (HTTPS)
www.ilona-andrews.com - many URLs have changed (HTTPS)
www.donatoart.com - most URLs have changed (HTTPS)

URLs which may have changed structure:

talestoterrify.com (HHTPS)
farfetchedfables.com (HTTP)
www.strangehorizons.com (HTTP)
bnreview.barnesandnoble.com
www.michaelwhelan.com (HTTPS)

Dead sites:

kirjasto.sci.fi (HTTP)
www.kirjasto.sci.fi (HTTP)
www.mirrorshards.org -- purchased domain, HTTPS supported
chrisachilleos.co.uk - empty domain (HTTP)
www.bpib.com - purchased domain
comicbookdb.com -- sold to comicbook.com

Ahasuerus 17:44, 26 March 2022 (EDT)

Dates for Aldiss / Vanguard from Alpha (Equator)

The title records for Aldiss's novella Vanguard from Alpha and its variants Equator (by Brian W. Aldiss) and Equator (by Brian Aldiss) all have dates of 1959-10-00. However, none of these is contained in any publication having that date. Are these dates correct? If so, could someone please explain why? Teallach 11:27, 27 March 2022 (EDT)

The dates of these variant titles as currently stated are incorrect. The reason is that we originally used the parent title's date for its variant titles. A few years later we changed the data entry standard to use the date of the earliest appearance of a variant title as its date, but a few old records still use the old convention. We update them as we find them. Ahasuerus 17:45, 27 March 2022 (EDT)

The parent was also incorrect as it was dated 1959-10-00, but the first non-serialized appearance is 1959-00-00. There are no publications with a 1959-10-00 date & the pub history of the Ace Double doesn't show it ever had a month that was removed. I have fixed all the records. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:17, 27 March 2022 (EDT)

Thank you! You have saved me the trouble of submitting these edits myself. Teallach 13:17, 29 March 2022 (EDT)

HTTPS upgrade - phase 1 completed

The core ISFDB software has been upgraded to work with HTTPS. This means that if you install the ISFDB software/database on an HTTPS-enabled server, it should work out of the box. Now we need to enable HTTPS on www.isfdb.org, which is a whole different can of worms -- see Development/HTTPS if you are interested in the technical details. Ahasuerus 17:15, 27 March 2022 (EDT)

Falkner Story Title

Does anyone own a copy of the 2000 Tartarus edition of J. Meade Falkner's The Lost Stradivarius? It includes a couple of short stories, and 1 was titled A Midsummer Night's Marriage, yet I found eBay UK copy which says A Midsummer's Night Marriage on copyright page, contents page, front flap and spine. Google Books has a copy of the 1896 magazine where it first appeared and it has the former title. So a look at the story's page head is needed to know if that's the title inside the book. --Username 12:06, 28 March 2022 (EDT)

Magazine or Anthology?

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1320181; I don't know if warning needs to be fixed by someone. --Username 15:22, 28 March 2022 (EDT)

At one point we allowed ANTHOLOGY titles to be included in MAGAZINE publications, but the software behind "Bibliographic Warnings" was not updated to reflect the policy change. Let me see what I can do... Ahasuerus 15:49, 28 March 2022 (EDT)

Fixed. Thanks for reporting the issue. Ahasuerus 16:05, 28 March 2022 (EDT)

Poul Anderson's The Year of the Ransom

The entry states "A rough word count makes it 25,000 words." and guesses that it's really not a novel. I guess that makes the text a novella, and the publication a CHAPBOOK. I'd like to adapt this accordingly. Christian Stonecreek 13:59, 29 March 2022 (EDT)

Check with the PVs for a possible second count (or with whomever did this one if they are around to make sure it was done properly) and if the numbers align, let the PVs know and convert it and add notes explaining the length. Annie 02:49, 30 March 2022 (EDT)

And don't forget to check with the pv's of the omnibus editions, that will have to be turned to collections. --Willem 04:44, 30 March 2022 (EDT)

Adding archived links

I think it would be a good idea to add a second "archive link" field for any external link fields in the database. This would allow us to include an archived version of any external links, thus preventing degradation of links in the database. The archived link could be displayed as "originallink.com (archive)". Thoughts? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:09, 30 March 2022 (EDT)

You can always just add the archived link as a regular one now... which had been done in some places (either as a second link or as the only one). The problem of course is that even if we do that, we cannot guarantee that the link will be valid - archive.org can remove contents (if the owner of the copyright requires it) and they may even go down (hopefully never but...) so not sure how useful that will be really (except to look more structured). And if it is a page that changes/adds things and not just a story for example, do we keep changing the archived link to the newest available? Annie 15:19, 30 March 2022 (EDT)

There are other archive services than archive.org, too. I often use archive.vn. It's better at capturing layouts, too. Yes, archive sites might go down, but having two possible locations increases the odds of one of them not being down. And the odds of archive.org removing a purely informational link are pretty low.

Another possibility is adding a "Reference" section where links can be placed, and give it the ability (maybe via a drop-down menu or something similar) to indicate which items the reference supports. Then add the above archive option to those links. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:12, 30 March 2022 (EDT)

Just because the page has some information we do use does not preclude it from having something that the owner and/or a rights owner wants out from an archived copy :) Not very likely for the kind of pages we usually link but still... :)

Either I am too tired or the explanation for the reference section does not make any sense... Annie 20:06, 30 March 2022 (EDT)

Side-Effect Cover

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?244593; I added OL ID; Archive.org's copy doesn't have any art credit on back cover unlike what note says here. I believe, judging from history, Dsorgen entered that info; he seemed a troublesome fellow and hasn't responded in years to anything, so if anyone else knows if Grace really did the cover they can chime in; Google search only brings up ISFDB with that info. --Username 10:16, 31 March 2022 (EDT)

James Dawson / Juno Dawson

Any objections to reversing the canonical name here? There are more works under the alternative name now and it is the one in use at the moment so new works will be under it. Annie 17:13, 1 April 2022 (EDT)

In the absence of any other opinion: I'm not particularly familiar with this author's work, but they have a fairly high general media profile in the UK as Juno Dawson, and in the past few days it was announced they'd written some new, again fairly high profile, Dr Who audio drama, so it seems reasonable to making that the canonical name. (I wasn't even aware they'd published anything using the other name, FWIW.) ErsatzCulture 18:15, 13 April 2022 (EDT)

Not for a few years :) With no objections in almost 2 weeks, the names are now reversed. Annie 20:11, 13 April 2022 (EDT)

New Terrors

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?560405; This is interesting; I stumbled across a site, booksc.xyz, and saw they had a PDF of Ramsey Campbell's Omnibus of New Terrors (Pan, 1985), which collected New Terrors 1 and 2 from 5 years earlier. Now I highly doubt that's a legit site that got permission from anyone to make that PDF, although where they got the original book from is a mystery because there doesn't seem to be any trace of it online; as far as I know there's never been an e-book version. Opening the book in "Open in Browser" mode shows a perfectly clear and complete PDF. Needless to say I printed all the stories from New Terrors 2 which were never reprinted anywhere or only in the New Terrors II American edition from Pocket, which may be even harder to find nowadays than the British edition. I was lucky enough years ago to buy the Pan New Terrors 1 (for 48 CENTS!) from The Strand in Manhattan, so I didn't need to print any stories from that. This had the happy side effect of me discovering that Christopher Priest's story "The Miraculous Cairn" was reprinted in Granta 7 (1983), so I entered an edit for that. Now the weird thing is that the back cover clearly says the book is 2.95 pounds, not 7.99 like ISFDB says; typing the title and 7.99 in Google only brings up ISFDB and locusmag.com, which I assume is where the price came from. Locus has a 1985 [Aug '96] date; there is a "date unknown" edition also on ISFDB (PV by the long-gone "Prof beard"), so maybe that 1996 printing cost 7.99; were they really still reprinting this book more than 10 years later? So I've changed the 1985 edition to 2.95, but if anyone owns any other editions there may be several in between '85 and '96; who knows, there may be ones after '96, too. It's a shame that there's countless books which have never been reprinted because of rights issues/indifference that have to be found on possibly shady sites like the one above. EDIT: I had the good sense to print the 2-page intro when I printed the stories, and it turns out that while it's dated 1985 it seems to be the intros for 1 and 2 with some minor changes. Campbell's mention of "Tolkein" in #1, per my copy, was corrected to Tolkien, and the last paragraph was deleted because it mentions "from Aickman to Wagner", which doesn't work for the omnibus. Not owning #2 I can't be sure what exactly was changed/deleted, but the mention in the last paragraph of "thirty-eight writers" surely wasn't in #2's intro. Surprisingly, there are very few photos online and none I can find of the intro for #2, so if anyone owns a copy and can provide a photo here then I can add more info to my note for the omnibus which I just made an edit for, which only talks about the changes from #1. EDIT: By random chance I saw a copy of #2 on Richard Dalby's site and title page says New Terrors Two, so title was wrong on ISFDB. I fixed it, pending approval.--Username 19:51, 1 April 2022 (EDT)

OK, so Mhhutchins replied to my question on his board about the 1985 Fantasy Review review being attached to the original British Pan editions and not the American Pocket editions; this raises an issue, because the first 1982 Pocket edition of New Terrors 1 was reprinted in late 1984 to coincide with the release of Pocket's edition of New Terrors 2, so these editions were what was being reviewed. How best to move the reviews to those records? Also, should the Pocket editions have a series # next to them since the Pan editions have a 1 and a 2 (apologies to Lawrence Welk). --Username 09:37, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

Propose Canonical change from L. A. Forman to Lee Andrew Forman

Not sure why L. A. Forman was ever the canonical name. Any objections to this change? John Scifibones 22:25, 1 April 2022 (EDT)

Seems like a good idea. "Lee Andrew Forman" is definitely the most common. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:41, 2 April 2022 (EDT)

Done. John Scifibones 09:03, 3 April 2022 (EDT)

Joel Lane Dates

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?11151; I found an old bibliography for the late Lane (up to 2004) on the archived midnightstreet.co.uk site; turns out many of his stories on ISFDB had wrong dates because they were first published in literary zines, so I fixed them. Most were in his first collection, 1994's The Earth Wire, and while they mainly came from well-known titles like Ambit, Panurge, and Critical Quarterly, there's 1, "The Circus Floor", which says it's from Nutshell 11 (1990). The only other evidence of this zine I can find is a partial D.F. Lewis bibliography (partial because he wrote a couple of thousand stories and probably can't remember where some of them came from) that mentions 3 stories from Nutshell, but the problem is that #10 is dated 1991. So someone's date is wrong. If any Lane experts/obscure British (?) zine collectors know what the date of #11 really is, respond here. --Username 15:01, 2 April 2022 (EDT)

Alternate Name summary bibliography

These three ISFDB authors represent real names of writers whose pseudonym is canonical.

Note. None notes the nature of the alternate name relation, such as "Real name of Saki". Is the empty Note field recommended?
Webpages. Which of the three uses is recommended? [1] H. H. Munro duplicates two links from the page under canonical name Saki. (I doubt that is commendable.) [2] Samuel L. Clemens links the entry for Clemens at SFE3, which is a cross-reference to Mark Twain at SFE3. The target is uninformative at best, and may be misleading. It's accurate, however. [3] Samuel Clemens shows no Webpages. That too is accurate, in the same respect, for SFE3 author names include only the version with middle initial L. --Pwendt|talk 16:38, 2 April 2022 (EDT)

Webpages and all other details go on the canonical author page UNLESS there is a reason for it to stay with the variant (aka a source for the pseudonym provenance which is described in the notes of the pseudonym for example). Annie 17:23, 2 April 2022 (EDT)

SFE Author Articles without a matching SFE URL in ISFDB Author Records

SFE Author Articles without a matching SFE URL in ISFDB Author Records is one of ISFDB "Cleanup Reports" ~~(linkname under Other Pages in margin at left)~~. Its status may differ from the others (eg, inactive project), as it's listed at the bottom of the Cleanup Reports page, beyond the scope of the header directory; and its preface does not explain when it is updated.

Revised (boldface). For anyone who doesn't know, as I didn't for much too long, that is "Cleanup Reports" in the left margin navigation menu of any ISFDB database view (not here).

I did fix two listings by work on ISFDB author pages, and those two are not listed now. Probably this report is a weekly or occasional "Sunday morning, US eastern time" update. --Pwendt

I infer that H. H. Munro appears in the report and Samuel L. Clemens does not because the first of those two ISFDB Alternate Name pages does not, and the second one does, display a link to the SFE3 cross-reference among its Webpages --and nothing has changed, along those lines, since this cleanup report was generated. (Exploring the cleanup report led me to H. H. Munro and thus to the matter immediately above, #Alternate Name summary bibliography.)

The report preface notes that it "lets moderators ignore SFE author URLs", with a couple of reasons why. What is recommended use of the report by non-moderators, especially regarding those SFE3 entries which are cross-references from what is, or should be, an author Alternate Name at ISFDB? --Pwendt|talk 17:04, 2 April 2022 (EDT)

Fix the ones that need fixing. If you find one (or more) which needs to be ignored, post in the Moderator Board a list of the ones that need ignoring, they will be rechecked again and ignored if that is indeed the needed action. That's valid for all reports which have the ignore capability. Annie 17:20, 2 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. I'll proceed thus. Eye-and-brain skim rate is not what it should be, in my opinion, but that happens to everyone. --Pwendt|talk 14:58, 3 April 2022 (EDT)

R/evolution

Submitted for your consideration. R/evolution is classified as a novel. I believe it should be a collection.

Blueprints for Better Worlds, similarly constructed, is classified as a collection.
Two chapters were reprinted as short stories in Broken Fevers

Seeking opinions before making the change and adding content. John Scifibones 23:01, 2 April 2022 (EDT)

No answer - just my 2 cent: "Novel in stories" and "collection of linked stories" are always tricky and somewhat different IMO - although sometimes it is hard to find the line even if you read the things (and sometimes it is a pure marketing decision). If the individual parts are often (for some value of often anyway - literary novels with a structure like that end up split when anthologized a lot for example but that does not make them less of novels) reprinted separately, adding them as collections with a note explaining the reason is usually a good idea. One of the big question usually is "what was published first?". Think of the classical case of "Foundation".

This is also one case where I tend to look at the author site/publisher for guideline (and even online reviews) - some are true episodic novels; some are collections in everything but name. I am fine with it either way - as long as it is documented. Annie 23:39, 2 April 2022 (EDT)

All Work and No Play

I'm holding this submission which would add a book by Jack Torrance (the protagonist from Steven King's The Shining) and which is just repeating lines of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". Despite supposedly being written by a character of a speculative fiction story, the story itself is not speculative in nature so to me this would not qualify. Thuff2000 commented that "I've written a rather extensive foreword in the book that I think should qualify which is the main reason I submitted the title here." I'd like a broader opinion on how to handle. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:19, 3 April 2022 (EDT)

An interesting case. I suppose it could be argued that this is a non-fiction book consisting of an essay ("foreword") about Stephen King's work. Ahasuerus 09:58, 3 April 2022 (EDT)

Hi there, and thanks to JLaTondre for posting this.

I am the 'author' and just wanted to clarify what I was doing with this book. The universe inwhich this book exists is one where Stephen King's The Shining is a docudrama. The first part of the "novel" was transcribed from screenshots exactly as the character typed it in the film, and the rest is fabricated in a similar fashion.

The foreword dives deep into the character (of Jack Torrance), his inspirations, motivations, and general mental state; it examines many hypotheses of Torrance's thinking as he composed it: what he intended it to be, what it is about, and where may have come from.

The foreword is NOT nonfiction about Stephen King, Jack Nicholson, the book, or the movie. The foreword treats Jack Torrance like Rob Reiner treats Spinal Tap. It's fictional nonfiction--a mockumentary in book form.

--Tom 19:33, 3 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for clarifying. It sounds like the foreword is close to Stanisław Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexistent books, which we list as short stories -- see this collection. Also note that Template:TitleFields:TitleType mentions:

... fictional essays, purporting to be written by a character in the book, as introductions or afterwords. There is no "FICTIONAL ESSAY" title type, so you have to choose whether the title is better described as SHORTFICTION or ESSAY.

Ahasuerus 08:09, 4 April 2022 (EDT)

I accepted the submission and made the foreword shortfiction (and added a note about it being a fictional essay). Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:57, 9 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks JLaTondre. --Tom 20:31, 9 April 2022 (EDT)

Problem with merges

This author for instance. Attempts to merge result in a diagnostic message stating at the end"<type 'exceptions.NameError'>: global name 'Compare2Dates' is not defined". The same problem with two other authors and on two different computers.--swfritter 18:23, 4 April 2022 (EDT)

You're not alone, I've experienced the same problem. John Scifibones 19:23, 4 April 2022 (EDT)

Fixed. Sorry about the hassle. Ahasuerus 20:03, 4 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks!!--swfritter 18:12, 5 April 2022 (EDT)

Villy Variants

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?80149; I did some edits for Sorensen's work, and while checking after they were approved I noticed "Theodora og Theodorus" says it was only in French in 2005, but there's also "Two Legends: Theodora and Theodorus" which is in 1 of his collections I did an edit for. So the original Danish was translated to English and then French. Variants aren't my thing, so if anyone wants to tackle that. EDIT: "Silvanus af Nazareth" also in French in 2005, also in his collection as "Two Legends: Sylvanus of Nazareth"; I almost missed this because first word is spelled differently. --Username 11:21, 5 April 2022 (EDT)

Recently fixed by Stonecreek. Thank you, Mr. S. --Username 15:20, 7 April 2022 (EDT)

God Likes Them Plain

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?424027; Does anyone have a copy of this 1935 Eric Linklater collection? WorldCat says 1 story is titled "Coutry-Born", which is an obvious misprint of "Country-Born", the original 1934 title when it was published in The Evening Standard and reprinted in 1 of their anthologies in 1937, but my edit fixing this was rejected. It's "Country-Born" in The Supernatural Index, in a Linklater "Stories of..." on WorldCat, etc. Much info is mistitled on WorldCat, but without the source book there'll be 2 separate records for the same story on ISFDB, and I'm not varianting them because I'm sure there is no variant title, just a mistake on WorldCat's part (or whomever they got their info from). --Username 13:07, 5 April 2022 (EDT)

Pre and Post decimal UK prices

I rejected this edit earlier today. The book in question has both pre-decimal and post-decimal prices as can be seen in this photo from a sale listing. I also added the pre-decimal price per this template. The editor complained that because the UK completed decimalization on February 15, 1971 (per our template) that this publication as dated (April 1971} was published after the conversion. I will point out that the pre-decimal price is not in brackets as is described in our template for post conversion books that have both prices. I did a little more digging, and looking at the edit history, I see that the publication date was altered at the same time the Worldcat and British Library identifiers were added. Neither of those sources have the publication month, nor is there any explanation in either the notes or the moderator notes (I don't know if we had those in 2017). This leaves us with the question of which of the two prices should we reflect in our records, or more precisely in the price field? Since we don't have a source for the post-conversion date, I don't think we can be certain when in 1971 this was published. Also, if the description of the pre-decimal price in brackets when published after conversion was an absolute convention, the lack of brackets would tend to support a pre-conversion publication. Thoughts? --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:11, 5 April 2022 (EDT)

Here's this, https://picclick.com/The-Ship-Who-Sang-Anne-McCaffrey-1st-UK-255387011241.html; back cover shows 3 other books by McCaffrey, all with earlier ISBN # and all with the price in pounds. So that's what they were using at this time. I was right to complain. --Username 20:42, 5 April 2022 (EDT)

Considering that all the prices on the back cover of this book (visible in the image) are in pounds only, it looks like it was produced for after conversion only market - so as long as it does not belong to a later printing, we probably should use the pounds price and add the pre-conversion price in the notes. The brackets in our rule are possibly valid for most publishers but maybe not for all? Annie 13:19, 6 April 2022 (EDT)

OK. Since we've had no other input, I've restored the post-decimal price and put the pre-decimal in the notes. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:09, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

Fran Dorricott <-> Francesca May author relations

Both of these are currently defined as pseudonyms for the other. I know I did one of these on 2022-03-31, I can't see any author edit histories, but the IDs on the pseudonym table records are fairly close (35355 vs 35366) so it's not inconceivable that they were done roughly in parallel. (Or I could just have not been paying enough attention when doing an unnecessary alternate.)

I assume one of the alternate mappings should be removed, but it's not completely clear to me which one should "win". The facts as far as I could gather are:

Fran Dorricott is the author's real name (based on copyright assignation in the Francesca May book)
Fran Dorricott has more books to their name (3 per personal site), although it looks like that name is used more for thrillers - only one of the Dorricott books is currently logged in the database, and that with a caveat that it may not be speculative
The author doesn't seem to favour one of these names over the other when identifying online

Thoughts? ErsatzCulture 11:26, 6 April 2022 (EDT)

This one was approved by mistake I suspect looking at the dates. Considering the numbers and that the Fran Dorricott book may not even be eligible (see my note there), I'd use Francesca May as the canonical. But either way works - as long as it is only in one direction :) Annie 12:43, 6 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. Francesca May has now been made the canonical. Had a momentary panic when the bibliography page showed up with a bunch of "Stray Publications" warnings, but I think all the titles, pubs and author records have now been switched round so that everything should be right. ErsatzCulture 14:56, 8 April 2022 (EDT)

Another dupe author: Rose (Cecil) O'Neill

These are on the authors who died on this day section of the homepage [6] [7]. It's not clear to me which of the two should be the parent record, and which the alternate: both only have a single item on their bibliography pages - although the Cecil-less one is an illustration, whereas the with-Cecil one is short fiction, so maybe the latter might be favoured for the parent record?

Wikipedia doesn't use the "Cecil" variant, whereas Library of Congress implies that "Cecil" version was perhaps more widely used in print?

In the absence of any other opinion being expressed here, I'll make the Cecil-less version the alternate, but will happily defer to anyone else's view. ErsatzCulture 12:10, 6 April 2022 (EDT)

I'd actually use Rose Cecil O'Neill as canonical, considering the numbers and which one is used for the story. Plus that way if another author named Rose O'Neill ever shows up (more likely than a Rose Cecil O'Neill one), she can have the name and not an (I) -- which can go on the pseudonym instead. Annie 12:38, 6 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks - now linked. I'll do the Dorricott/May one in the prior item in a day, once anyone else has had adequate chance to express an alternative opinion.

Should departments in a magazine be series?

In Future Life magazine, Carolyn Henson wrote a regular column about different space-related topics. The column was called "Alternate Space." Should this be a series? I have the same question for other regular columns in the mag. JLochhas, who added the 1980 issues, made several departments series. Should I continue?--Rosab618 18:48, 6 April 2022 (EDT)

Yep - columns and departments become series. That is the only way to organize them and show that they belong together and we had been doing it like that in most magazines - see Asimov's or Locus for example (random issues of both just as illustration). Annie 22:07, 6 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks!--Rosab618 23:32, 6 April 2022 (EDT)

Discus

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?16171; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?28478; FantLab has 3 Asimov editions by Discus, an imprint of Avon. I replaced 2 covers, but the 3rd book was not under Discus / Avon, so I typed the title and it's under Discus Books. Almost all of the 11 Books editions are PV'd, most by Don Erikson or Bluesman, although I saw a Hifrommike65 and Kpulliam, too, so they may not have known it's an imprint. So mods may want to decide whether those should be changed to Discus / Avon. --Username 14:13, 7 April 2022 (EDT)

Essay or Interview?

Is this an essay or interview? I say essay, but the German translation here is called an interview. This goes for other pieces in this form, too. Is it an interview if it isn't in Q&A form?--Rosab618 20:05, 7 April 2022 (EDT)

That one is out there :) Considering that more than half of the article are Toffler's exact words and it is an article based on an interview, I'd probably opt for an Interview and add a note explaining the format - that way the record will show up on Toffler's author page. But an essay also works - so no strong preference either way... Annie 21:52, 7 April 2022 (EDT)

Yes. If this is an essay, the German version should be also.--Rosab618 00:24, 8 April 2022 (EDT)

Yes - whatever the decision is, all translations will need to follow it. Annie 00:52, 8 April 2022 (EDT)

Well, I can't change the German version here or the parent version that Stonecreek created here to essays. Can you help me?--Rosab618 01:09, 8 April 2022 (EDT)

Give it a few days for other editors to have a chance to see the question. When the conversion happens, the new title will need to be added to the publication and the older one ejected -- essays cannot be converted to interviews and vice versa directly (same with reviews) :) Annie 01:20, 8 April 2022 (EDT)

Well, Rudolf and me already have answered quite lengthy on that topic here. It's an interview for sure, since even the table of contents of the issue the piece initially appeared in calls it an interview. Christian Stonecreek 06:53, 8 April 2022 (EDT)

I'd like to hear from some others.--Rosab618 13:49, 9 April 2022 (EDT)

Propose Canonical change from Anne Holmberg to Anne Avery

Or even delete Anne Holmberg. Only one edition of The Wild Swans is credited here to Holmberg, but Amazon look inside shows it's actually credited as by Avery on the titlepage. Only the copyright is assigned to Holmberg. --Willem 16:18, 8 April 2022 (EDT)

This book needs fixing - someone did not know how to add a book to a new pseudonym possibly. If the cover and the title page show Avery, it should never use Holmberg on our record. Before that, make sure the data is moved from the author name because the author will be deleted when this book disappears... Annie 16:36, 8 April 2022 (EDT)

On digging a little deeper, it looks like Anne Holmberg is confused with Anne Forster Avery. Anne Holmberg is the legal name of our Anne Avery. I'll correct this and change the canonical name to Avery. --Willem 13:19, 10 April 2022 (EDT)

And corrected. --Willem 14:10, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

I Maestri dell'Orrore

https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/collane/NILF70090/i-maestri-dell-orrore/; Following up on my recent New Terrors post I discovered that the site mentioned there limits you to 5 downloads a day; I had just found Christopher Fowler's never-published-in-the-USA collection Sharper Knives (1992), which was reprinted as an e-book a few years ago. While biding my time I looked for reviews and came across that Fantascienza link above, which reveals that the book was reprinted in Italian in 1995, and was actually part of a 10-book series; the publisher is on ISFDB and has many series listed but not that one. So any Italian-fluent readers may want to enter those; it's an eclectic mix, but several are reprints of some 90's Dell Abyss titles, which are hard enough to find in English these days. --Username 18:57, 8 April 2022 (EDT)

Monkey in the Gallery

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?299637; I've been adding prices and page #'s to stories appearing in the "adult" magazine Gallery, and this one was published as a separate booklet inside the issue itself. This, http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/k/k04411.htm#A15, says story starts on p. 51, but can that be correct since it's not part of the overall magazine? Also, some editor wrote a note here saying 34-page booklet when it says 32-page on the cover, so that's another issue about which is correct. I wouldn't trust a porn mag to be too accurate. EDIT: A confusing case here, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?45183; ISFDB lists an alternate title as "The Last Super Bowl Game" for Gallery and Run to Starlight, but this, http://agentpalmer.com/10635/media/the-written-word/the-last-superbowl-by-george-r-r-martin-is-a-science-fiction-epitaph-to-sports-as-we-know-it/, shows the title in Gallery was "The Last Super Bowl". Martin's collection Dreamsongs 02, which is on Google Books, says the "shorter version" was in Gallery and the "longer version" was in Run to Starlight and Martin's collection Portraits of His Children. I can't find any photos of Starlight to check the title. So surprisingly there's something by George R.R. Martin that is unclear even in his current superstardom. --Username 14:42, 9 April 2022 (EDT)

Changing canaonical name of Dan J. O'Driscoll to Dan O'Driscoll.

With 4 titles credited to the canonical name vs. 28 titles credited to the variant (not counting interviews which always use the canonical), this one seems fairly straightforward. Any objections to changing it? --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 12:41, 10 April 2022 (EDT)

Looks logical indeed. No objection from me. --Willem 13:20, 10 April 2022 (EDT)

Hearing no objections, I've flipped the relationship. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:34, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

Foreword Dates

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?23385; http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:MartinStever; I made a few changes for Nameless Places, adding a couple of ID's, replacing the cover with a better one, and changing the 1 differing date, the foreword, to that of the book itself and just writing a note about the foreword's date. Just wanted to verify if fixing that date is the correct thing to do. 1 of the PV's is the ubiquitous RTrace but the other I don't think I ever came across before, MartinStever. Reading his bio revealed that he's a man of diverse talents who also had many battles with several mods here about how best to enter things until finally giving up and calling it quits nearly 3 years ago. God bless you, sir, wherever you may be. --Username 21:59, 10 April 2022 (EDT)

Locus Dates

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?284523; I added some info for P. Tremayne's My Lady of Hy Brasil and Other Stories, including changing some dates. The book is copyrighted 1987 (it's on Archive.org) but Locus didn't see a copy until June 1988. Some of my info was accepted, but dates I changed were all set back to the 1988 date. This, https://www.sisterfidelma.com/collection.html, mentions a 1987 "uncorrected proof", and Amazon.com has a June 1987 date. Does ISFDB really date books by when Locus saw a copy? There's many listings where they mention they didn't see a copy until well after its publication date, but that doesn't mean that's when the book was published. I still think all dates should be 1987. Anyone else? --Username 19:02, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

When do we ever date a publication by the copyright date? To paraphrase the help section, books are often copyrighted before actual publication. I see nothing wrong with the publication date. I do have some questions regarding some of the content titles.

My Lady of Hy-Brasil - Date should be 1982-11-00. Suggested citation "First published in Kadath Vol. 1 No. 6/7, November 1982 (source title verso My Lady of Hy Brasil and Other Stories)"
The Hungry Grass - Date should be 1981-10-00. Suggested citation "First published in The Vampire Freak Show and the Hungry Grass, J. Youngson and Peter Tremayne, Adams Press October 1981 (source title verso My Lady of Hy Brasil and Other Stories)"
The Imshee - Add July to Wierdbook 18, publication and contents.
The Hudolion - Determine why we date Eldritch Tales, #10 1984 vs 1983.
The Kelpie's Mask - Is the correct date for Fantasy Macabre #4, July 1983 or July 1984?

Just my opinion, John Scifibones 20:53, 11 April 2022 (EDT)

Because 1987 is the date the book was published; the uncorrected proof copy at Tremayne's site's link above is 1987 and Amazon.com has a June 1987 date for the released book; Locus not seeing a copy until a year later doesn't mean it was published a year later, it means they were delayed in getting a copy. There are countless "wasn't seen until" on locusmag.com. If all books were dated on ISFDB by when they were actually published tens of thousands of dates would need to be changed because lots of paperbacks were published a month ahead or behind of the date on the copyright page and many small-press books weren't released until well after their copyright date for various reasons; every single book on here would need their actual publication date tracked down and changed if necessary, and I don't think anyone wants that. But it doesn't seem a big deal to me because there are no original stories, all reprints, so if the book itself is dated 1987 or 1988, whatever. The other info I entered, about the limitation page saying 800 copies but the front flap saying 1000 copies, was accepted, so that's more important, I think. As to the dates of the stories, I just made an edit adding that 1981 Adams Press book using Dalby's site's copy, and discovered that it and most other Adams Press books on ISFDB were Count Dracula Fan Club publications, so that was entered as a publisher series for those that were missing it, which was most of them. All the other stories came from magazines, and those dates of publication are even harder to verify than those of books. Also, as usual, when I find a full wraparound cover image I add or upload if necessary, and found such for this book on FantLab, but old front cover-only image was just reverted back to because it's supposedly a "better image"; oh well, at least when my edit is approved people who happen to click the FantLab ID link will possibly click the appropriate photo and be able to see the full artwork. --Username 10:14, 12 April 2022 (EDT)

I understand your distaste for the publication note referencing Locus1. Looks like it was added long before the primary verification and all the additional secondary verifications. What do they show? P.S. Thanks for all your hard work. John Scifibones 12:04, 12 April 2022 (EDT)

Sexy Weeds

I discovered today that Stephen King's rare 1976 story "Weeds", which was adapted for a segment of Creepshow, was actually published originally (in the "adult" magazine Cavalier) as "Will Be Necessary to Stop the Weeds". There's surprisingly very little info online about this, so I made an edit and now that will be on ISFDB. What's even better, however, is that while researching this I came across 2 scant mentions of "Weeds" being available to read online at cavmag.com. Yes, apparently they had a website, Cavalier Magazine Online! And yes, King's story was available to read in its entirety, so I added an archived link in an edit. The site is very strange, with the usual models section and "free preview" that luckily doesn't work for me because it uses some ancient version of Flash, but while at first they seemed to only offer "Weeds", eventually they also offered King's 1977 Cavalier story "The Cat from Hell", but only in the membership section (there doesn't seem to be any mention online that they also offered this story). So somewhere locked up in the archived site is another Stephen King story; hmm, if someone still had the password, could it still be read? Nah, I doubt it, and that story's much easier to find now than "Weeds", anyway. As time went on they seemed to drop "Weeds" and just mentioned "Cat from Hell", while also offering articles from ancient Cavalier issues about Fidel Castro in 1957, Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, and something about Bob Dylan, in addition to some old Cincinnati Reds baseball manager being fined for smoking cigars in the clubhouse, complete with a picture of him smoking a cigar with a big grin on his face. However, they seemed to go back to offering "Weeds", but decided to now only offer a small piece of it with the rest readable in the membership section, or downloadable to your smartphone at iTunes. Finally, they seemed to give up and just made a Kindle edition which included both stories plus 3 other King stories from Cavalier ("Battleground", "Suffer the Little Children", and "Trucks"), which is still on Goodreads; https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16085392-cavalier-archive-volume-1. Is that e-book eligible to be entered on ISFDB? I pray it is. Now I wonder what I'll find when I check into "Weeds" in its other "adult" appearance in 1979's Nugget. Did they have a website, too? EDIT: OH MY GOD, they did. I don't see any King stories, so no need for a link. Their site didn't seem to make a pretense of being semi-respectable like Cavalier's site, so offering articles and fiction wasn't a priority. EDIT: Well, so much for that. A nearly 10-year-old thread on thedarktower.org, a site devoted to King's works, explains the whole confusion about the title (which WAS actually "Weeds"), which even King expert Bev Vincent was taken in by. I've made some edits to return things back to what they were, but will have to look over everything afterwards to make sure they're OK. However, on the bright side, while researching I typed a phrase from the story on Google, and it turns out that 1 other site offered the story, anintrotohorror.blogspot.com, in 2012 (other reprints seem to be horror comics, so he possibly just transcribed the text from the story's illustrated version in Creepshow). So Shivers VII making a big deal about reprinting the story for the first time since the 70's wasn't exactly true since it was available to read in at least a couple of places much earlier. So anyone wanting to read it can go to that site and avoid the embarrassment of going to Cavalier's archived site and having a young lady in a skimpy dress and high heels staring at you accusingly from the top of the page while you read. --Username 22:55, 12 April 2022 (EDT)

Chaunty

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=%21+chaunty&type=All+Titles; I noticed someone uploaded a new cover image of the '81 Sphere edition of W.H. Hodgson's The Ghost Pirates, which includes a poem. However, the same poem is included in a 1909 edition by Hodgson with a slightly different title, but that publication is very hard to find, being made just for copyright purposes. So if anyone knows how the poem was titled in that edition it could either be merged or varianted; I also found out that the poem was also in the '75 Sphere edition, so I added that. --Username 13:19, 13 April 2022 (EDT)

Propose Canonical change from Raymond K. Rugg to R. K. Rugg

According to his website, SFPA member Raymond K. Rugg writes all his poetry under the name R. K. Rugg. If there are no objections, I will make that the canonical name. John Scifibones 23:21, 14 April 2022 (EDT)

Unless he starts writing a lot more stories, that's not a bad idea... :) Annie 11:20, 15 April 2022 (EDT)

None heard, Done John Scifibones 15:39, 18 April 2022 (EDT)

Introduction as Fiction

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?339162; The intro is mistakenly entered as fiction and has an unnecessary variant, which is also the variant name of an author from 1905. Thought I'd mention this for fixing, as I noticed it while about to enter the missing stories from Greig's other collection The Bite. --Username 11:48, 15 April 2022 (EDT)

Alternate of Alternate name; vs Variant of Variant title

Rather than simply wait, or ask moderator User:Rtrace about the particular submission, I think it is worthwhile to review the design here.

At the moment we have these alternate name relations, where Dearen and Kinney are real names of co-authors.

238967 Τζην Μαρτς < Gene March
116871 Gene March < Patrick Dearen, Al Kinney, Jr.
Τζην Μαρτς < Patrick Dearen, Al Kinney, Jr.

(We have this "because" I have one Tuesday-04-12 submission in the queue, Remove Alternate Name, which breaks [1], but that may have been passed over purposefully when "2b of 4" was approved to create [3].)

The first relation is true doubly in this instance, supported by the publication history and by the evident origin of Τζην Μαρτς as Greek translation of Gene March. Do we, should we, remove or retain such alternates to alternates?

As I recall, the software does not permit a Variant title of a Variant title, nor a Variant of two different titles. And here the Title relation corresponding to [1] was broken automatically by creation of that corresponding to [3] --by a single Make Variant Title. (That seems to me an unfortunate limitation regarding titles.) --Pwendt|talk 12:43, 15 April 2022 (EDT)

No alternative names of alternatives names are allowed although some can survive if they are not cleaned up properly - when they are not cleaned up, they get flagged in a report. And yes - when you have multi-author pseudonyms, that means that the translated values of the names are not directly connected - but they are connected to the ultimate canonical names. So Τζην Μαρτς < Gene March should not be there, Τζην Μαρτς should go to the actual canonical names. Trying to do anything else just creates more work for someone else down the road. Annie 12:48, 15 April 2022 (EDT)

PS: I broke the faulty connection and now all looks as it should. Annie 12:49, 15 April 2022 (EDT)

A Book of Faith

Does A Book of Faith qualify for inclusion in the ISFDB? It has sat untouched for quite a while. If it does belong, I will correct the pub type, it is an anthology. Add the 1976 1st US edition and add the contents, if possible, to both. John Scifibones 13:39, 15 April 2022 (EDT)

See the note in the author page. Amazon says "This is a collection of poetry and prose which comprise the favourite passages on the subject of faith of the novelist, Elizabeth Goudge. The passages include selections from the Bible, George Herbert, Julian of Norwich, Rainer Maria Rilke, Leo Tolstoy and Gerard Manley Hopkins." which makes it very much NOT ours. I vote for deleting it however there is the question of her being possibly above threshold. However - even if she is, as this is an anthology edited by her and NOT a collection of her works, I still think it does not qualify even under the threshold exception. Annie 14:12, 15 April 2022 (EDT)

Removed by a vote of 2-0, John Scifibones 11:12, 19 April 2022 (EDT)

John Varley author photo

The author photo for John Varley is a broken link. It is hosted on (what I assume is) his personal site, varley.net. That site is up, so I assume it's just a case of the site being reorganized and old URLs being broken. He does have some photos on his site which might be usable example.

However, I don't see varley.net on the list of sites that can be linked to for images. Does anyone know if permission was granted in the past, or if this broken URL should be removed (or ideally replaced with another image)? ErsatzCulture 16:57, 15 April 2022 (EDT)

I replaced it with the cool photo of him on Fantlab, which was obviously taken when he was young judging by the 70's porn 'stache; his Wikipedia photo from 1992 creeped me out until I realized that wasn't his bare belly but rather his leg. --Username 18:42, 15 April 2022 (EDT)

According to the Author Edit History page (moderator-only), the image was added in 2007, long before we had yellow warning. Let me check the cleanup reports to see why it's has been flagged. Ahasuerus 20:19, 15 April 2022 (EDT)

Apparently the answer is "because our URL cleanup report is limited to cover scans." Oops! I'll create a report for author images tomorrow. Ahasuerus 20:28, 15 April 2022 (EDT)

Done. The data (76 authors) will become available tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 12:35, 16 April 2022 (EDT)

Is archive.org a publication site?

Until recently, all of the 'books' I've seen and used on archive.org have been scans that I've treated as images of a published work. I've run across several works now, like this which are not scans of actual books, but scans of documents with the same (reformatted) text and images. There is no publication information in the document, and nothing in the archive.org metadata beyond the collection it is part of.

Does this constitute a (possibly illegal) e-publication? I've been ignoring them, but finally had to use one as a source of information (to verify an illustration was used on the cover). ../Doug H 12:07, 16 April 2022 (EDT)

No, the Internet Archive is not a publisher. It is basically a library that allows anyone to add content. On the work you link to, the uploader is listed on the bottom right of the page. I assume they created it, but it's possible they just uploaded it. The Internet Archive does allow you to flag works that are problematic, but how stringent they are in following up on that, I don't know. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:20, 16 April 2022 (EDT)

OK, they're not a publisher. But does the presence of this document on archive.org constitute it as being 'published'? "Internet-based publications which are downloadable as electronic files in any number of ebook formats (ePub, Mobi, PDF, etc)." per ISFDB Policy? (Although you have to question any definition of 'published' which includes the word in all its qualifications). ../Doug H 12:45, 16 April 2022 (EDT)

Hampton

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Theorizing-Fandom-Fans-Subculture-and-Identity-Edited-by-Cheryl-Harris-PB-1998-/114093428738; I fixed publisher to differ it from the old 40's British Hampton and added the intro from eBay, but this may not belong here; if it does, contents are fully listed, if badly photographed. PV long-gone and unlikely to come back judging from some of his messages. --Username 12:28, 16 April 2022 (EDT)

Application for self-approval status, Rosab618

I formally request self-approval privileges, too. --Rosab618 12:16, 17 April 2022 (EDT)

Support. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:05, 17 April 2022 (EDT)

Support.Kraang 23:34, 20 April 2022 (EDT)

Support. --MartyD 09:09, 21 April 2022 (EDT)

Support. Annie 11:01, 21 April 2022 (EDT)

Support. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:26, 21 April 2022 (EDT)

Support. --Willem 15:07, 21 April 2022 (EDT)

Thank you all! --Rosab618 00:21, 22 April 2022 (EDT)

Outcome

The self-approver flag has been set on the account. Congratulations! Ahasuerus 13:09, 22 April 2022 (EDT)

2 million titles reached

For anyone who cares about these things :-)

I'd noticed this milestone was approaching a few weeks ago, and last weekend's database backup file was 700 short of 2m, so this was reached some time in the past 7 days. I don't think any particular record can be (easily) identified as title #2000000, given how titles can be merged and deleted. (The incremental numeric title IDs are currently in the low 3-millions, which I guess gives an indication of how many title records have been removed for those sorts of reasons.) ErsatzCulture 17:20, 17 April 2022 (EDT)

Back when the ISFDB database was hosted by a third party (TAMU, I think), the database administrator did something that resulted in a few hundred thousand record IDs getting skipped. I don't remember whether it affected both publication IDs and title IDs, but I remember someone commenting on it and the administrator saying that he didn't expect anyone to notice or care. Clearly he didn't know how detail-oriented bibliographers can be :-) Ahasuerus 17:18, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

Ylva

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=ylva+sp&type=Name; I guess they're the same except for missing symbol over a and language differences; variant if anyone wants to. --Username 21:00, 17 April 2022 (EDT)

Nigel Kneale birthdate disputed

We (and SFE, and a Guardian obit) have 18th of April, but (as of recent edits) Wikipedia has the 28th. Raising this to see if the consensus is that we should follow suit. Background:

At the least, I guess this should have a note mentioning the dispute over dates.

ErsatzCulture 14:35, 18 April 2022 (EDT)

I've updated his birthdate to match that found in the published biography. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:15, 18 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. I cc-nudged SFE in one of the Twitter convos so they can make a similar edit if they so choose. ErsatzCulture 16:31, 18 April 2022 (EDT)

Looks like they updated it, with a note indicating it is sometimes incorrectly listed as the 18th. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:59, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

Mary Sutherland

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2080567; I've been adding links to stories on the old archived Whispers of Wickedness site, ookami.co.uk (weirdly, there's a small handful online now which they saved at the authors' request), of which there are a couple of hundred, although not many are on ISFDB. However, Kate Farrell, who is something of a name these days, published 2 stories there. Mea Culpa was OK, but My Name is Mary Sutherland wasn't because she later expanded it into a PS Publishing novella, but the version in her collection is the original short story. Someone erred and the story is called a novella even though it's 8 pages long, so some unmerging or whatever is needed, after which I'll add the link to the short story's record. --Username 20:17, 18 April 2022 (EDT)

Annihilators

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?106821; After being entered in the very early days of 2007, I added the cover image last December; today I noticed there's a copy on Archive.org added in Dec. 2020, and it turned out to be a higher-priced Canadian edition so I entered it. However, there's a signature near the bottom next to the man's leg that I can't make out (HARMON?); the few Fawcett Gold Medal / Ballantine books on ISFDB that have cover artists entered don't match what this looks like at all. So does anyone know? --Username 09:23, 20 April 2022 (EDT)

I'd have guessed J. Rush. There is such an artist, but he doesn't seem to sign his covers (possibly this). ../Doug H 16:56, 20 April 2022 (EDT)

ISFDB license update

The ISFDB data (as opposed to the software) is currently made available under the Creative Commons 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license -- see Creative Commons License for details.

If you scroll to the bottom of the linked Creative Commons page, you will see the following note:

A new version of this license is available. You should use it for new works, and you may want to relicense existing works under it. No works are automatically put under the new license, however.

The "new version" is "Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)" and appears to be essentially the same as the old version. The current plan is to upgrade to it in a few days. Can anyone think of a reason not to? Ahasuerus 15:24, 20 April 2022 (EDT)

Works for me, since I was the one who suggested it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:25, 21 April 2022 (EDT)

Done. The new license icon/verbiage should be visible at the bottom of the navigation bar on the left. Ahasuerus 13:25, 22 April 2022 (EDT)

We should also update the links at the bottom of the wiki pages that point to the old one. There's an icon that says "CC Some Rights Reserved" and another one in plain text with the wording "Content is available under Attribution" ("Attribution" is linked). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:22, 22 April 2022 (EDT)

The icon is updated with this (for the version we have). See also this. See this for the rights text. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:55, 22 April 2022 (EDT)

Done. Some things had to be tweaked to accommodate our version of the MediaWiki software, but everything appears to be in order. If anyone comes across any issues, please let me know. Thanks! Ahasuerus 16:56, 22 April 2022 (EDT)

Looks great. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:39, 25 April 2022 (EDT)

Santoro Collection

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?419478; I've done some edits for this book and noticed just now that either the page count is wrong or the stories' numbers are wrong, because unless those "final words" run for dozens of pages something's off. Can't find anywhere with photos of contents, so maybe someone here owns it. --Username 11:10, 23 April 2022 (EDT)

User privileges clarified on User Search and Contributor Statistics pages

User privileges are now spelled out on User Search and Contributor Statistics pages. Instead of "Moderator: Yes/No" columns, they now have "Privileges: Bureaucrat/Moderator/Self-Approver/Editor" columns. Ahasuerus 17:55, 23 April 2022 (EDT)

2022-04-23 - server issue

Al and I are currently investigating an apparent problem with the ISFDB hardware. It's not affecting regular database operations at the moment, but we may need to take the server down for maintenance later tonight. Ahasuerus 18:09, 23 April 2022 (EDT)

The investigation is still ongoing, but there is no ETA for now. The site may have to be brought down for maintenance within the next hour or two. Ahasuerus 09:04, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

I am about to take the site down for maintenance. Unfortunately, there is no ETA at this time. Ahasuerus 09:19, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

The hosting company has resolved the issue and the server is now back up. Sorry about the inconvenience! Ahasuerus 16:05, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

Sunday morning I was checking my approved edits when the site suddenly went down; it usually does a few times a day for a few minutes at a time, assumedly because the site is updating. --Username 22:46, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

The ISFDB site is typically inaccessible between 9:30am and 9:35am (give or take a few minutes) every morning server (EDT) time. That's when the daily backups run. The site is also slow between 1:00am and 1:05am Monday-Saturday and between 1:00am and 1:20am Sunday morning. That's when the nightly and weekly cleanup reports are regenerated. Ahasuerus 12:36, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

When hours had gone by without it working I knew there was something very wrong going on; being suspicious, I thought 1 of several people on here who I've argued with had worked their way up to running the site and found a way to block me; --Username 22:46, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

We have a Blocking Policy for offenses like vandalism, personal attacks and disruptive behavior. The term "blocking" as used in the policy refers to preventing users from posting on the ISFDB Wiki. There is nothing in the ISFDB software that would let a moderator or a bureaucrat prevent a user from accessing the ISFDB database proper. When the database is not accessible, it's invariably a technical issue of some sort -- either with the ISFDB server or with some part of the internet between the user and the ISFDB server. Ahasuerus 12:36, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

however, typing the words "ISFDB-is-down" on Google brought me to this, http://isfdb.blogspot.com/, where I saw it wasn't just me (just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you). Most of the entries have no comments or a few related to the server issues, but there is 1 entry, January 3, 2015, which has way more comments than the others, and the last comment was written years after the others; an author, Priscilla Lowell, asked for help contacting someone and entering her work here, and looking at her record it seems to have been entered, but there is an interesting issue with 1 of her interviews, in that the last 2 were published in the well-known Thrust, but the first was in a very obscure publication, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?421597. The record hasn't been touched in nearly 9 years, so if anyone familiar wants to look at it and possibly add info I thought I'd mention it. --Username 22:46, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

If you meant me, I'm sincerely flattered. --Rosab618 03:34, 26 April 2022 (EDT)

Let's not contaminate the Community Portal with inter-editor disputed. If you have a complaint about an editor's behavior, please post it on the Moderator Noticeboard. Ahasuerus 12:40, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

Any projects?

Hello, all! I just gained the rank of self-moderator, but now I don't know what to do with it. Advice, please? (I won't swear I'll take it.) Thank you! --Rosab618 02:22, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

Well, we have over 300 cleanup reports. Most of them can be accessed by non-moderators, although they can't mark records as "ignored". Ahasuerus 17:09, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

Just ran across BookScans.com, a site collecting vintage book covers. It's organized by publisher and deals with waaay more than speculative fiction. I was thinking about trying to correlate to the ISFDB to see if they had images for books we didn't have images for, or even books we don't have (they sometimes have multiple images when there are multiple printings (i.e. changes in cover such as prices). If you don't have a local copy of the database, searches based on publisher can be used to generate working lists to match to their images. ../Doug H 21:54, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

Another Art ID

I doubt anyone knows, but I'm trying to identify the creator of this illustration for Chuck Palahniuk's "Guts", in Playboy, March 2004. Can anyone help? Here it is. --Rosab618 04:47, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

PageFree CD

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?77572; That cover I carelessly added recently is actually from the '73 Doubleday ed. (art by Frazetta); I've deleted it, pending approval, but in the process found the cool Longmeadow '91 cover which looks like a Satanic bible, so I added that, pending approval. However, since I couldn't find the real PageFree cover, maybe someone else here can? --Username 18:57, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

Application for moderator status, Scifibones

[Edit: Linking Moderator Qualifications. Ahasuerus 09:28, 26 April 2022 (EDT) ]

I formally request moderator privileges. John Scifibones 20:18, 24 April 2022 (EDT)

Yep! I'm all for it: very good work that I've seen. Christian Stonecreek 01:41, 25 April 2022 (EDT)

Seconded! PeteYoung 05:51, 26 April 2022 (EDT)

Support. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 09:27, 26 April 2022 (EDT)

Support. Does good work and plays well with others. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:02, 26 April 2022 (EDT)

Support. --Willem 14:56, 26 April 2022 (EDT)

Outcome

The nomination was successful; the moderator flag has been set on the account. Congratulations! Ahasuerus 10:28, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

Setsu Izume = Summer Fletcher ?

Stumbled across a bit of a headscratcher, and looking for second opinions before making any edits...

Earlier today, SFWA tweeted a link to an article on their site from 2020 attributed to "Setsu Uzumé". The author bio at the bottom links to a Twitter handle scribblesassin, which has the display name "Summer Fletcher", which in turn links to a summerfletcher.com site.

Both Setsu Uzumé and Summer Fletcher currently have separate entries here, although their work has much in common e.g. a bunch of author interviews for Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines.

Searching on Google and Twitter, the only concrete info I can find indicating these are the same people is Wikipedia, which states "... with Setsu Uzumé (later known as Summer Fletcher) hosting." There are further circumstantial links between the two, e.g. Twitter shows the scribblesassin handle was associated with Setsu Uzumé, and some podcast credits use both names (caused by a partial CMS update not changing all name references perhaps?), but not enough that I'm completely confident in making alternate name links.

Anyone familiar with Lightspeed, Nightmare mags or the Podcastle podcast who can perhaps shed some light on this? ErsatzCulture 11:44, 26 April 2022 (EDT)

Looks like they are likely the same person. Setsu Uzumé seems to be the more used of the two at the moment, though they are each pretty close in quantity. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:04, 26 April 2022 (EDT)

I have made Summer Fletcher an alternate name for Setsu Uzume, varianted all the relevant titles, and added an author note about possible miscrediting, as I suspect some title records in the database are based on web info that was updated after the original publication. ErsatzCulture 17:06, 5 May 2022 (EDT)

Black Rift fixup novel

This novel (published April 2016) is a fixup of these previously-published short fiction chapbooks:

In the Walls of Uryx (August 2015)
The Gnawing Gate (September 2015)
Six Pillars (November 2015)
The Scarlet Lord (February 2016)
Ten Skulls (February 2016)
Bridge of Smoke (March 2016)
The Sulphur Citadel (March 2016)

Submissions have been made to turn all the chapbook contents into SERIAL instead of SHORTFICTION, which seems incorrect to me. I've placed all of them on hold for the moment so we can figure this one out. It's been a long while since I encountered one of these, and I think I've only ever worked on one other fixup novel. How should all of these be organized? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:37, 26 April 2022 (EDT)

I would treat them as serial installments. The author's website bibliography does not show them as individual stories. The first installment, Assault on the Mandrake Bastion, was entered as a serial and correctly linked. I would have used slightly different titles for each installment. I use the format '(Serialized Work), (Installment title)'. "The Black Rift of Klaxus, Part 1: Assault on the Mandrake Bastion" for the first installment. (Same title for the corresponding CHAPBOOK and publication titles) John Scifibones 09:55, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

Unless the title is printed like that in the book itself, you should not be using made-up standartized titles like '(Serialized Work), (Installment title)' -- we go by what the title page says as usual. Just saying. If you want to change the rules, go to R&S and propose it. Annie 14:18, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

The wording was from Amazon. The look inside substitutes the cover for a title page. The format is from the following help page example. "If the title of a SERIAL installment is unique, e.g. "Butterflies in the Kremlin, Part Eight: As the Bear Turns" or "Ciężki bój (cz. 1)", then use the full form of the title. What am I mssing? P.S. Glad to hear from you, I was wondering where you were. John Scifibones 14:42, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

IF the title comes from the title page, you are good. If you are standardizing based on the example, read the help page again - it tells you that IF that is the title of the installment, you use that not that you build the title of the installment this way. Annie 15:02, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

Business travel is back in season and juggling ISFDB at airports and whatsnot is sometimes impossible. :) Annie 15:02, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

Were those advertised as stories or as a novel in installments? That is what determines the formats for me - if it was always meant as a novel, these are serials indeed. If they were individual stories which then got made into a novel without changes, the "novel" is a collection in our DB (see Asimov's "Foundation" for the most famous example) :) If there were changes (especially big ones), we just note it into the notes. Annie 14:18, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

I'm not sure how they were advertised. With how closely the novel followed the publication of the final part, I wouldn't be surprised if they were advertised as a novel in installments. I've just never seen a SERIAL published all by itself. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:40, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

We changed the rules for chapbooks a few years ago specifically to allow for this specific case - when a novel is published in installments first (either ebooks or printed for example) but not inside of a magazine. If anything, that is actually a very old way to publish books - just ask Charles Dickens ("David Copperfield" for example). It is becoming somewhat common in ebooks these days but sometimes happens in paper chapbooks as well. :) Annie 19:43, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

And an example: here. Actually look at most of this author - she was one of the examples when we allowed that way.Annie 19:49, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

Thanks! I wanted to make sure of how it needed to be done before approving the changes since I hadn't run into this before. They've all been approved now. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:29, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

Serendipity

https://archive.org/details/sciencefictionfa0000unse_j7a7; I recently fixed/added info to Thomas A. Easton's novel Silicon Karma, starting with the 1997 White Wolf edition, then the original 1995 DISK version. I also added info that Serendipity published a magazine, Electronic Publishing Forum, which offered an extract from the novel in one of their 1995 issues. As far as I can tell, there's no photos of the disk cover online, but by searching Archive.org I found, on p. 299 of that link above, a wee scan of the cover (IBM-PC COMPATIBLE), so it did actually exist. Also mentioned are 2 other novels; Marian Allen has only short stories on ISFDB (assuming it's the same person; common name), and Mr. Dacy only has a 1973 SF essay, although D.A.I.S.Y. is on Amazon in an e-book version. Checking further, Open Library has 4 books by the publisher; 1 is about mercury spills (available on Amazon if anyone's interested), Allegheny Mountain Chronicles doesn't seem to be anywhere online and probably isn't genre anyway, but the other 2 are interesting; Blue-Eyed Muse's description on Amazon seems to suggest this is a huge Canterbury Tales-type thing, with some of the tales being SF, which is borne out by the fact that The Science Fiction Six-Pack includes the author, John Peter, along with Easton, Dacy, and Allen. So there seems to be a publisher from the ancient days of books on disks/CD who published a lot of stuff not on ISFDB or most other sites. So if anyone knows of/owns any of these, they need entering. --Username 15:11, 26 April 2022 (EDT)

Kubrick the Cover Artist?

[8]; I don't really think Stanley Kubrick should be credited for that first book; if anything the cameraman would get the credit. If he should be credited, then he should also be on the second book which uses the same image. As for the third book, there's a note saying covers are stills from the movie, but is that image from the movie? It sure doesn't look familiar to me, and they show that bloody movie every other week here in the States on BBC America (with swearing and nudity cut out and endless commercials). --Username 11:25, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

You're right, the third image is from the 1997 miniseries adaptation. --Rosab618 12:41, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

David Bell = Jack Wainer

I think Jack Wainer is the pen name of this David Bell, according to here. I'll variant Wainer's work to Bell, if you agree. --Rosab618 12:29, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

Have you considered the 'Additional Bibliographic Comments' linked to the above author Bibliographies? John Scifibones 14:02, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

Yes. But Locus, above, says they're the same person. --Rosab618 14:28, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

Twilight Tales

I don't think Twilight Tales should be called a magazine. It's a series of chapbooks, with different titles, not just numbers. There's Dangerous Dames, Winter Tales, Tales of Forbidden Passion, etc. I think they should be changed to anthologies. Can I do that? --Rosab618 19:52, 27 April 2022 (EDT)

I bet the answer is no, don't go ahead.

This little question raises for me a medium size one, which is the Publication series or Magazine (series)? I make it bigger by continuation in a new section below. --Pwendt|talk 12:46, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

Why not? --Rosab618 13:59, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

I don't have a direct answer for you, but Locus considers the set from 1998 a magazine, despite the differing titles. It could be useful to see how other bibliographic resources (that are not sourcing ISFDB) treat them. --MartyD 07:56, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

Similar treatment here (not surprising). --MartyD 08:21, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

A lot of magazines have subtitles or issue titles... unfortunately due to the rules of how we add magazines, we can only add these into the Notes. I agree to matching the other sources for the format - while this one can go either way indeed, if everyone else calls it a magazine and we have no other reason not to besides "so we can have the titles in the title field", we probably should be changing the magazines titles rules, not working around them. Annie 12:19, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

If it's a matter of recording the title, I am pretty sure using something like "Twilight Tales Presents #1: Tales of Forbidden Passion, February 1998" and "Twilight Tales Presents #2: Dangerous Dames, April 1998" would work properly. In fact, I will go try it so we can see what it looks like. Others may have a different view, but I think such a naming structure is ok under the naming standards. --MartyD 13:49, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

Colons don't do much. But using a comma instead does. The series shows the titles, and you have to click through the title to see the pub name. The effect would be more apparent if we collapsed the editor records into yearly buckets. But with a comma, the title would appear in the grid. Dunno if that's something we like or not..... --MartyD 14:02, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

It will work and it looks perfectly well with a comma - but it is still against the current rule :( I tried awhile back to restart the discussion on allowing for other parts (subtitles, whole numbers and what's not) to be included but it did not work out again (with the usual strong opposition by Rtrace who would rather stick to the rule as is if we cannot find a rule that works for every single magazine under the Sun and noone seemed to have the energy to disagree more) and under the current rules, these cannot be in the title. If you are willing to reopen that discussion again on changing/reinterpreting the rules, I will support fully allowing these in the titles but I am in no mood to start it again... Annie 14:12, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

I'm not trying to open a debate, but we have precedents where the issue number is included using a comma (as I described) to get it into the issue grid. Two beginning-of-the-alphabet examples: Algol and Amazing Stories (UK). As far as I know, the standard is simply <Magazine Title> + comma + <date-or-substitute>, with permissive guidance about what is used for the title part. --MartyD 15:16, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

And yet, if someone decides to “fix” them per the rules, that would be approved and some magazines had been “fixed” that way. :) Annie 15:55, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

Publication series; Magazine

We do have some book "Publication series" wherein most issues contain a single novel and some "Magazine" series wherein most issues contain a single novel. (If a Magazine series, then the novel is a single-issue serial with "(Complete Novel)" rather than "(Part 1)" and so on.) At least in the 19th century, some of the series are near full of reissues, not original works. There may be no agreement on any crucial criterion: eg, whether the binding/format makes a Magazine series rather than a book publication series; whether title page wording and layout makes a Magazine; etc.

All that is my understanding from two and more years ago.

Here is one example novel with book and single-issue serial publications. Here the single-issue serial was the first publication of the work as a whole, months after its publication in multi-part serial editions --in non-genre periodical publications not in the database.

[1] Arrowsmith's is (magazine) Series 30958. Presumably the mix of Christmas Annual titles with and without comma is a mistake. The mix of formats is not a mistake but the entire series may be digest. All three Worldcat records reports size 17cm.

889739 The Wizard by H. Rider Haggard
Arrowsmith's Christmas Annual 1896

[2] Munro's Library is (book) Publication series 7302. Presumably the mix of 'tp' and 'pb' format is a mistake.
(Need a "digest" example too, for adequate illustration.) --Pwendt|talk 12:49, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

(above insert long line [1] and tweak line [2])

From MartyD and Annie in the preceding section I infer that ", 1988" appears in Arrowsmith's seriesgrid 30958 by a technical trick that is evoked by that comma in the publication title.

Here is another MAGAZINE Series, one that routinely contains a single-issue serial edition of one novel (as Arrowsmith's may not).

[3] Harper's Franklin Square Library is (magazine) Series 50637. Format: 1 quarto, 4 unknown.

All five Franklin Square numbers now in the database contain single-issue serials that were 1st ed. or near contemporary to the 1st ed. of the work. --Pwendt|talk 16:40, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

Application for self-approval status -- taweiss

I request self-approval privileges. Tom 19:25, 28 April 2022 (EDT)

Support. --Willem 09:01, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

Support. Does a good job. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:56, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

Support.Kraang 13:19, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

Support -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:07, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

Support. --MartyD 14:21, 3 May 2022 (EDT)

Support. Annie 19:25, 3 May 2022 (EDT)

Thanks! Tom 21:33, 3 May 2022 (EDT)

Outcome

Success. The self-approver flag has been set on the account. Ahasuerus 23:01, 3 May 2022 (EDT)

Sick

https://archive.org/details/howsick; A mention of text stories in old comic books possibly being OK to enter here recently reminded me that there are tons of obscure comic magazines on Archive.org that spoofed genre material, all trying and failing to be Mad Magazine; the one linked above seems to be a book compilation of Sick Magazine articles published by Zebra in 1974, and several, especially the first, Stuporman, are genre-related. So if some of this is acceptable that could open up a metric ton of new entries. Whether or not anyone agrees, one thing I know for sure; MY GOD, these magazines were terribly unfunny. Skimming through this I found nothing even remotely amusing, and for the easily offended there's a series of American Indian cartoons that are so racist it's unbelievable. --Username 14:10, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

Add Web Pages to MakeVariant page

Can we add Web Pages to the MakeVariant page? I often find myself needing to edit the parent post approval just to add the Web Page(s) which support the title and/or date and/or details of the notes of the parent I just added - before that adding notes and the series required an edit anyway but now it is just the Web Pages remaining uneditable. Thanks! Annie 17:45, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

It so happens that I started working on FR 743, "Make this a variant title should move synopsis" earlier today. Once I finish it, I will move on to FR 1487, "Add Web Pages to Make Variant pages". Ahasuerus 19:03, 29 April 2022 (EDT)

FR 1487 has been implemented. Ahasuerus 13:32, 1 May 2022 (EDT)

Spotreps anthology and Brad Torgers[eo]n

I raised this a few weeks ago on the submitting editor's talk page, but it seems they are inactive, so throwing open to a wider audience...

There is a "Brad Torgerson" author record that has a single story from a Spotreps anthology. The data for the latter is apparently from Amazon and the publisher site, but I couldn't find anything on either that supports this pub having Torgersen mis-spelled - the latter link does spell it correctly, although that could easily be down to an edit being made on that site after this pub/story was added here. The Amazon (UK) previews (for both ebook and tp) don't include any bits that reference this author, but the product listing does have his name spelled correctly.

Any objections to fixing this story's record to use the correctly spelled author name? ErsatzCulture 11:59, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

The Amazon Look Inside for the Kindle version includes the title page for that story. It is spelled Brad R. Torgersen. Go ahead and change it to match the Look Inside. The pub is not verified and it is unlikely the tp and ebook use different credits. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:15, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

Argh - I'm sure I looked at both the ebook and tp previews each more than once, and was sure they cut out before they got to his story - but I can see that the ebook preview does indeed have it. Anyway, the record has now been corrected - thanks! ErsatzCulture 12:47, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

Make Variant and Synopsis data

"Make Variant" has been updated to move "synopsis" data from the child title to the parent title.

Which reminds me. Are there scenarios where a VT with a synopsis makes sense? We have 1,636 of them, but I suspect that the vast majority are titles whose synopses were not moved to the parent record when they were varianted. I guess I should create a cleanup report for "VTs with synopsis data" and then we'll see if any are legitimate. Ahasuerus 17:41, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

The cleanup report has been coded and deployed. The data will become available tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 19:57, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

Putin?

FantLab.ru's photos were working earlier today but now they're all broken. Same for others? --Username 19:21, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

Some of FantLab's security certificates were set to expire at the end of April. Presumably their servers are in Europe or Asia, where it's already May 1. Hopefully they will fix it tomorrow or on Monday. Ahasuerus 19:44, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

It looks like the problem has been fixed. Ahasuerus 11:22, 1 May 2022 (EDT)

https://data.fantlab.ru is still broken. We have quite a few images that use that URL format so they are still not working. It also looks like they may have changed their format for linking to images. For example:

Frederik Pohl's author image is https://data.fantlab.ru/images/autors/618 But the image at https://fantlab.ru/autor618 is now https://fantlab.ru/images/autors/618
The First Mayflower Book of Black Magic Stories's cover image is https://data.fantlab.ru/images/editions/big/150132 But the image at https://fantlab.ru/edition150132 is now https://fantlab.ru/images/editions/orig/150132

We will have to monitor to see if they also update the cert for data.fantlab.ru or they have dropped that one permanently and we need to update our image URLs. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:58, 1 May 2022 (EDT)

If they decommission data.fantlab.ru, it will require updating 1,442 pub covers, 445 author images and 3 Web pages. Ouch. At least the naming conventions appear to be the same, which should make it possible to update our links programmatically. Ahasuerus 17:39, 1 May 2022 (EDT)

Affonso Arinhos de Melo Franco = Afonso Arinos

These [9] [10] are clearly the same person - same birthdate, deathdate, place of birth and Wikipedia EN link. Both only have a single, different, item in their bibliographies. I'm not familiar with Brazilian/Portuguese naming/publishing practices - does anyone have any opinion/preference on which should be the primary author record, and which the alternate?

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

More Recent Dead

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

William Campbell

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

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

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

Rhonda E.

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

Wagner

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

Basil Copper Questions

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

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

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

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

Tem Title

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

Peter Crowther Story/Collection

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

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

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

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

Oz Books

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

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

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

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

Dead Lee

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

1992 & 1993 Hugo Awards - "Preliminary Nominees" entries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Superhorror

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

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

Alphabetizing secondary verifications

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

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

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

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

French Dark Love

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

Szabo B.

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

Satanists

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

Potter?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uploaded But Unused

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

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

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

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

Advanced Search options limited to registered users for performance reasons

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

Severance Package

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

LibriVox

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

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

Mon Mohan

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

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

Nicobobinus

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

Dark Voices

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

Tales of Terror

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

The Surrogate Covers

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

Thinner

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

Gutenberg and LibriVox publications

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It depends:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* librivox : 1761 titles, 3 publications

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

Index of Project Gutenberg Works ...

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

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

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

Darkfuse

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

Twenty Years (or, It Just Feels Like It)

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

For Want of a Nail

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

Gilbert Wright

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

Confusing Cacek

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

Titled excerpts

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

The help page spells it out clearly: " If the excerpt has a different title that the work from which it is excerpted, use that title. Otherwise, use the title of the excerpted work, but add " (excerpt)" to the end; e.g. "A Feast for Crows (excerpt)"." :)

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

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

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

Rex Miller - Above the threshold?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twin Lynches

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

PV Dagon

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

Curwen Street

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

Kull

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

Bogus image-related yellow warnings fixed

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

Nightwalker Editions

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

Falcons of Narabedla

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few things:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Son of the Flying Tiger

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

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

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

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

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

Where in the WorldCat

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

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

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

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

Cover modification bug fixed

Bug 642, "Cover Art Modification Bug":

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

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

Technical Fiction

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

Satan on the Loose!

While entering page #'s for the '65 Consul of Derleth's anthology Night's Yawning Peal, I looked up the '74 Signet and while everything there seems to be covered, there's a picture online of the back cover with an ad for a book called Satan on the Loose. It seems not to be fiction but rather non-fiction from a Mex ex-gang member who turned his life over to Jesus and was the subject of that well-known book/movie The Cross and the Switchblade. I know this book (and others he wrote which have similar "horror" titles) probably don't belong on this site, but as can be seen here, [11], many have sweet cover art more appropriate to 80's horror paperbacks. Only 2 copies of Satan are on Open Library and they share the same (uncredited) cover art, with 1 chapter about SATAN'S COMPUTER PROGRAMS (or PROGRAMMES in the British edition), and a stunning note on the British back cover that The Cross and the Switchblade was made into a comic book! So some of those covers may have been done by genre artists and, if so, that may be a way to get those editions on here. These old religious books (not the later Left Behind junk) are a huge void here with many having intros or art done by genre people (many probably hoping nobody would ever find out they were the ones responsible). --Username 14:26, 2 June 2022 (EDT)

Display of pseudonymous reviews fixed

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

Fighting Fantasy Question

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

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

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

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

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

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

Backslash searches fixed

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

The Elephant Talks to God

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

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

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

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

German Verne

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

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

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

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

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

Millennium Macabre

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

Change "WatchDate" to "WatchPrePub"?

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

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

Here is the current proposal:

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

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

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

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

Rites of Passage

Vault of Evil has a lot of small-press covers not on ISFDB including this Obelesk anthology, but after uploading it the .jpg, [12], which says "rites1" when downloading, includes that other unrelated cover. So before adding it to the record, how to go about editing it so only Rites cover shows? --Username 11:19, 5 June 2022 (EDT)

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

Brazilian Galactica

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

Edit History Needs Editing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haunters of the Dark

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

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

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

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

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

Foundation's Edge

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

Blumlein

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?31280; I made an edit for something by Michael Blumlein recently, and I also found this, [13], which raises a few questions; the pub. date is later than what's on ISFDB, the page count is the same as the much later Dell edition, but not either Scream/Press edition, the artist is Timothy, not T.M. (although online photos suggest he's credited as T.M. in the book), and there's a Timothy Caldwell on ISFDB with 1 cover art credit a few years later and a Timothy M. Caldwell who wrote some poems around the same time as the artist was active, so they may all be the same person, although T.M. Caldwell's record includes a few much later short stories, so maybe that's a different Caldwell (EDIT: It was). Most odd, however, is the mention of Blumlein's forthcoming second novel, A Native Land; there is literally ZERO mention of him ever working on or publishing a book with that title online. I was never a fan of his even back 30-35 years ago when I read any and every horror book I could find, his work being much too intellectual for me, but I'm sure there are fans of his here who know more and may add or fix some stuff in his record. --Username 10:55, 10 June 2022 (EDT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sirius Confusion

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

"Reviews" section of the Title page rewritten

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

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

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

Edit History bug fixed; submissions-related column headers clarified

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

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

C. Cole ?

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

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

WatchDate changed to WatchPrePub

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

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

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

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

Magazine Search bug fixed

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

Macauley

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

Cover art attributions, and Bob Haberfield

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

Changing Canonical name to Ishmael A. Soledad from Ishmael Soledad

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

Weinkauf

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

Tombs of Gold

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

Queefrotica

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

The Illustrated Dracula

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

Burroughs Length

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

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

Entering Correct Short Stories by Luigi Pirandello

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

Irving Heine - (possibly) questioned pseudonym

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

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

Abortion Stories

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