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Expanded archive listing

This World Is Taboo

This World Is Taboo is currently listed as a novel with a title record note of "first appeared as 'Pariah Planet' in Amazing, July 1961". A word count of the Project Gutenberg edition (which is a transcription of the Ace Book edition) shows it to be 35,932 words (so a novella and not a novel). A comparison of the Amazing Stories, July 1961 Internet Archive scan shows the text of Pariah Planet to match that of "This World Is Taboo". So "This World Is Taboo" should be converted to a novella and varianted to "Pariah Planet". This would also require converting The Med Series from an omnibus to a collection as all contents would then be short fiction.

I will be notifying all the active verifiers of pubs containing "This World Is Taboo" and pointing them to this centralized conversation. If there are no objections, I will convert the novel to a novella in a few days. -- JLaTondre (talk) 06:42, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

No objections to converting. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 08:30, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5780069. --Username (talk) 08:35, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

Works for me as well. The Project Gutenberg version of "Pariah Planet" contains 35,002 words, but the difference may be due to the extensive footers and headers (copyright statements etc) that PG tends to add. Ahasuerus (talk) 08:44, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

Imported the story text of both PG versions (excluding headers, footers, page numbers) into Word and did a compare. Pariah has 34,041 words and Taboo has 35,932 words. There has been some editing between the two versions including a scattering of an additional explanatory sentence here and there. All in all, it's close enough to consider the same work. I will add an explanatory note to both title records when varianting. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:48, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

Ok with me. --Glenn (talk) 15:30, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

Support the change.15:58, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

Works for me, thanks. PeteYoung (talk) 23:25, 2 October 2023 (EDT)

Ok with me too. --Dirk P Broer (talk) 11:16, 4 October 2023 (EDT)

Sounds good to me. Definitely include the above information in the note for the TITLE record. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:45, 4 October 2023 (EDT)

Changes made as discussed. Thanks all. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:37, 7 October 2023 (EDT)

More than one edition?

Hi. I just heard of this at Capclave this weekend. Looked up my one published (so far) novel, 11,000 Years.

Problem: the original publisher, the late Eric Flint's Ring of Fire Press, was shut down after his death. The novel is now *republished* by another publisher. I don't see "other editions", or any obvious reasonable way to add this info (which is important to me, since it *is* now back in print.

Thanks in advance. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Whitroth (talk • contribs) . 08:18, 2 October 2023‎ (EDT)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?3054628. --Username (talk) 11:59, 2 October 2023 (EDT)

Since the new editions will have different ISBNs and publishers, they are just a new publication under the same title. You can certainly add notes to both the title and publication records as well. It looks like the tp edition was added by Fixer back in August but the ebook is yet to be added. Phil (talk) 12:35, 3 October 2023 (EDT)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?13521; If you enter anything I think the publisher should be changed in some way to differ it from the one that did magazines 50 years ago. --Username (talk) 14:27, 3 October 2023 (EDT)

Cute, Amazon. Per the Look-inside views, the publisher is actually Novus Mundi Publishing. If you want me to do the edits and clone for the ebook, I can but you can do it yourself. Phil (talk) 17:09, 3 October 2023 (EDT)

Fosses d'Iverson

https://archive.org/search?query=dan+simmons+fosses; I was doing a bunch of Dan Simmons edits and came across that French edition where they packaged his story "Iverson's Pits" into its own separate book; in case anyone here who's fluent wants to enter it. --Username (talk) 19:15, 2 October 2023 (EDT)

Beyond the Doors of Death

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5781424; Title date is different than date of both editions, intro is entered with one of those dates while Broderick's original story is entered with the other date, what should the real date be for all of these? --Username (talk) 19:55, 2 October 2023 (EDT)

Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5781813; I'm not sure which of those 3 page counts is correct. Last numbered page is 593 but there's an "About the Artist" page following it which probably shouldn't count but the editor of the Sterling edition here entered 594 and also has the Roman numerals one higher than the Fall River edition, so maybe Sterling added an extra page to the book and the last numbered page really is 594. If anyone owns Fall River, B&N first printing or Sterling all that can be checked and fixed as needed. Also, does ISFDB software know not to import titles already there? Because I think it removed intro automatically which someone added to all 3 editions. --Username (talk) 11:02, 3 October 2023 (EDT)

Jane Gaskell Sphere Editions

https://archive.org/search?query=jane+gaskell+sphere&sort=-addeddate&and%5B%5D=year%3A%221967%22; Those books have prices and dates which are the same as what's on ISFDB but the covers are totally different; anybody who knows the history of these UK paperbacks where they change covers and nothing else may know what year these are really from and would like to enter them here. --Username (talk) 10:50, 4 October 2023 (EDT)

Who Is N. Dalby?

https://richarddalbyslibrary.com/products/all-hallows-3-1991-the-journal-of-the-ghost-story-society-barbara-roden-christopher-roden-ash-tree-press-4; I suspect the N. Dalby credited on p. 13 is actually Richard Dalby; does anyone own this issue who can look for a signature on the artwork if there is one? --Username (talk) 19:17, 4 October 2023 (EDT)

Late Victorian Gothic Tales

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?448651; I added an archived 2009 edition (7th printing) just now and was nearly fooled into cut-and-pasting the page count from the 2009 edition already on ISFDB until my usual paranoia caused me to check the copy itself only to discover count is much higher, 282 pages. Does anyone own the first printing who can check and fix count if needed? There's no edit history; I'm sure all printings are 282 and the wrong info is from Amazon or some other unreliable site. --Username (talk) 19:44, 4 October 2023 (EDT)

Balzac

Looking for the year of publication by P. F. Collier & Son New York For The First Complete Translation into English Honore de Balzac in Twenty-Five volumes? There is not ISBN number. The covers are green with gold lettering and HB is embossed on the cover and binder side. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tina.adams (talk • contribs) .

I have this edition in my collection, but it's currently boxed and I can't get to it. Luckily, you can view and/or download individual volumes of this edition from Google Books, e.g. Volume 25. There is "MCM" at the bottom of the title page, which is Roman numerals for "1900". Ahasuerus (talk) 13:12, 5 October 2023 (EDT)

I too have this collection which is why I was enquiring. I inherited it along with a collection of Robert Louis Stevenson published in New York by Charles Scriberner's Sons from 1905. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tina.adams (talk • contribs) .

https://archive.org/search?query=%22+p.+f.+collier%22+balzac+volumes&sort=title. --Username (talk) 18:35, 5 October 2023 (EDT)

Nick Smith

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?41231; The Smith who wrote the 4 novels is from England and born in 1972 (I've been adding stuff to Luath Press books and his bio is on their site) so is not the same Smith who did everything else on the page. --Username (talk) 00:15, 7 October 2023 (EDT)

Novelist has been separated out. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:40, 7 October 2023 (EDT)

Alexander Forbes

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?127476; A copy of Radio Gunner was uploaded earlier this year so I have an edit pending with a link, either the story is by some youngster or they reprinted something by the older guy, also FantLab has someone with a similar name who illustrated an old book that seems to be about fairies judging by some of the scanned photos (Blue Fairy, maybe?), https://fantlab.ru/art9514, but his dates don't match the novelist so probably a different Forbes, if anyone can translate maybe they can decide whether the fairy book belongs here. --Username (talk) 13:56, 7 October 2023 (EDT)

Canonical name change Xan van Rooyen from Suzanne van Rooyen

Any objections to making Xan van Rooyen the canonical name and Suzanne van Rooyen an alternate?

• 15 titles credited to Xan van Rooyen.
• 14 titles credited to Suzanne van Rooyen.

The about section on the author's website (the url does use suzannevanrooyen) is titled Xan van Rooyen and the author explicitly asks to be called Xan. All titles since 2020 are credited to Xan van Rooyen. John Scifibones 16:32, 7 October 2023 (EDT)

Sounds good to me. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:03, 9 October 2023 (EDT)

Hearing no objections, the relationship has been reversed. John Scifibones 15:07, 13 October 2023 (EDT)

ESFS

While searching for something I came across this, https://fantlab.ru/award30; I don't see that award on ISFDB so maybe this can be something useful to enter for someone. There's a few mentions of it in notes, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/note_search_results.cgi?OPERATOR=contains&NOTE_VALUE=esfs. --Username (talk) 13:14, 8 October 2023 (EDT)

Falcons

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5785847; I entered Book of Lyonne here nearly 2 years ago; today I came across 2 eBay listings with 12 photos each. I see the reason I didn't enter the price back then is because FantLab has a price-clipped photo but eBay copies are not clipped. I think all 8 Peake drawings are viewable; I see the lion on the frontispiece, a weird hybrid creature with an umbrella, a little man-beast smoking a cigar, the lion with a Japanese lady, a tiptoeing elephant, a couple of ducks, a monkey diving at a bird, and a group shot of a bunch of animals following the lion around a tree. I also want to clear up the Falcon Press mess which I believe I asked about a long time ago without success. Per the note the UK publisher used both Falcon Press and The Falcon Press; I suppose it's possible that the UK Frazetta book published more than 20 years after the others is by the same publisher but I doubt it. Then there's Wilson's 2 US books and a much later reprint of a Robert W. Chambers book. So we've got 1, possibly 2, UK and 1, possibly 2, US Falcons. If anyone's interested and can provide more info I'm sure we can separate all of them. --Username (talk) 19:30, 8 October 2023 (EDT)

Elizabeth Davis

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?210874; Someone recently entered Old Woman and I followed up with a PENDING edit fixing/adding stuff; the story & poem almost certainly belong to one of the other Davises but they're both contemporary so it's hard to say which. I would guess it's (I) but her webpage isn't found online and typing the titles of the story and poem together on Google gets nothing so no online bibliography, it seems. EDIT: Davis (I) webpage, https://www.elizabethdavis.mercierdavis.com/, is found if you type it directly into the URL bar but her bibliography ends in 2021; both story and poem are 2022. The search goes on. --Username (talk) 20:57, 8 October 2023 (EDT)

Smashwords Author Images

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5786282; Coming across that awful author photo annoyed me so much I tried to replace it but Amazon seems to no longer have that one and now has 2 that are equally worthless; one is an "S" image that ISFDB doesn't like and the other isn't actually a photo but some kind of cartoon drawing. I resorted to looking at the old ISFDB "image linking permissions" page and decided to try Smashwords, found his photo, checked to see how the image is supposed to be entered, and to my great surprise it worked. Then I decided to do an advanced author search for images containing either "cloudfront" or "smashwords" and got nothing. So is it possible that this will be the only Smashwords photo on ISFDB? Anyway, anyone looking for images on Amazon who can't find any or only bad ones, try Smashwords. --Username (talk) 11:13, 9 October 2023 (EDT)

230 publications use smashword images as of 13:43, 9 October 2023. John Scifibones 13:43, 9 October 2023 (EDT)

Authors is what I was referring to. Book covers are usually uploaded on many sites but photos are often unique. I searched this page, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/adv_search_selection.cgi?author, for "Author Image contains smashwords" and got nothing. --Username (talk) 17:08, 9 October 2023 (EDT)

I approved the submission, but then uploaded the image from their Amazon author page as it wasn't blurry like the Smashwords image. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:01, 9 October 2023 (EDT)

Mary M.

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?60641; A mod just entered a 1984 novel with a jacket credit by Mary Mietzelfeld that I added plus other stuff, usual paranoia caused me to search for similar names and I got the link above, I imported cover credit into '85 US and Canada and changed the date, there's also a 16th printing that has the cover credit but no cover, lots of PV for various editions so they may want to look into this and figure out where the credit came from since notes imply there's no credit in the book for some or all of the editions. Only other credit on Google I can find for "Mary Meitzelfeld" is a 1970's Mario Puzo book so I'd think Mietzelfeld is the correct spelling. --Username (talk) 18:06, 9 October 2023 (EDT)

2nd Utopia Awards

I asked a few months ago if the Utopia Awards for Utopian/Climate fiction could be added, and I was told it would be better to wait for for it to have at least a second year. Since the second edition was awarded this week, could it be added to the database now? The award is connected to the Climate Fiction Conference, which was held yesterday, and it appeared on Locus Magazine, so it has some grounding. My apologies if the request is inadequate.

Thanks for the update! When we create a new Award Type, we populate the following fields:

• Short Name, e.g. "World Fantasy"
• Full Name, e. g. "World Fantasy Award"
• Awarded For, e.g. "Fantasy and horror"
• Awarded By, e.g. "Panel of judges chosen by the World Fantasy Awards Administration"
• Poll (Yes/No)
• Covers more than just SF (Yes/No)

I am trying to find information that we would need to populate these fields. So far I have had limited success. This Android Press page seems to suggest that nominees are chosen by Android Press and the winners are determined by online voters, but it's not clear. Is there an online description of the award sponsors, nominee qualifications, award categories and the award selection process? Ahasuerus (talk) 11:16, 10 October 2023 (EDT)

The nomination was also open to the public, though online voters, so both the nominees and the winners were chosen by the public. This link had the rules of the qualifications during the voting process, but it's no longer visible since it was a Google formulary (like the British SF awards), from what I recall when I voted, the focus was on speculative stories (both sci fi and fantasy) about climate fiction or with an utopian/positive bent published in the previous year. You can see the categories here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Alittlebook (talk • contribs) .

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdHgetVmOb28bWcU-W3pUIFc3d6IP5GH5V6Z620bjhyTGAygg/viewform. --Username (talk) 09:37, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

Thanks to User:Alittlebook for the clarifications and to User:Username for the link to the 2023 nomination form.

The form says that the award is given to "works ... that exemplify hopeful, utopian fiction (science fiction, fantasy, climate fiction...)", which we can use to populate the "Awarded For" field.

The one outstanding question is the name of the body that administers the award, which we need for the "Awarded By" field. It would appear that it is Android Press, whose first major project was Solarpunk Magazine (2022-) and which is associated with (sponsors?) annual Climate Fiction Conferences. Is there a statement explaining the relationship between these bodies/organizations and which one(s) administer the Utopia Awards? Ahasuerus (talk) 10:43, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

From what I gathered, Solarpunk Magazine is a project done by Android Press, who created/hosted the Utopia Awards and the Climate Fiction Conference. They held a Kickstarter to fund it last year. From the description of the fundraiser, the inaugural award had their nominees chosen by an invited panel of publishing houses and magazine editors, but they shifted for public voting this year. Also, my apologies for not signing my earlier posts, I had forgotten how to, lol Alittlebook (talk) 14:06, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

Thanks, the Kickstarter link is very useful. So basically the core organization behind the award is Android Press, which has 8 editors. They organize annual "Climate Fiction Conferences" and administer the Utopia Award.

We have come across publisher-administered "awards" which were actually ploys to promote the publisher's books, but in this case I don't think it's a concern. The fact that their Kickstarter was successfully funded to the tune of $5,000 is pretty convincing evidence that it's a genuine "subgenre award".

Any objections to creating a new Award Type for this award? Ahasuerus (talk) 18:57, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

Oh yeah, out of 47 nominees this year, only 2 are connected to one of their branches (a poem and a single short story from the Solarpunk Magazine; the authors of both works campaigned a lot during the voting, so it didn't felt like a sketchy result, and neither of them won). I followed their proccess because I'm interested in climate fiction/solarpunk and it seemed like a genuine push for the subgenre's visibility. Alittlebook (talk) 20:09, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

Outcome of the "Utopia Awards" discussion

Hearing no objection, I have created a new Award Type for "Utopia Award" as well as 9 award categories. Everything should be ready for "Add Award" submissions to be created. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:38, 14 October 2023 (EDT)

Thanks! I'm adding the awards little by little, just a question: the winner of the Anthology category this year was a special issue of Omenana, a magazine. It seems like I can't add awards to magazine issues, what should I do about it? Alittlebook (talk) 16:20, 15 October 2023 (EDT)

According to this list, the award was given to the July, 2022 issue aka "Issue #22" aka "Positive Visions of Democracy". As per Help:Screen:AddAward:

ISFDB supports two different types of awards. Although they are entered and modified using the same Web pages, they are quite different and it's important to understand the difference before you start entering or editing awards. The two award types are as follows:

• Title-based Awards (including Cover Art): Most awards are given to individual ISFDB titles, e.g. novels, non-fiction, short stories, cover art and so on. Note that these titles MUST already exist in ISFDB before you can add awards to them. If you want to add an award to a title that is not in ISFDB, then you have to enter that title first, wait for the submission to be approved and then enter the title's award(s).
• Other awards: ISFDB also supports awards given to individuals beyond their specific works, e.g. Lifetime Achievement awards. In addition, it supports awards given to publishers, editors, title series, and non-ISFDB items such as web sites, movies, graphic novels, and never-published stories (such as runner-ups in various "new story" awards). These awards are referred to as "Untitled Awards" because they are not associated with ISFDB title records.

In this case we are dealing with an award given to a magazine issue, which is a publication as opposed to a title. However, each MAGAZINE (or FANZINE) publication has an EDITOR title associated with it. It's displayed next to the words "Editor Title" right above the "Contents" line. If you follow the link to the EDITOR title, you will see the "Add an Award to This Title" option under "Editing Tool".

Keep in mind that an EDITOR title like "Omenana - 2022" can be shared by multiple magazine issues if they all have the same editor(s) and year of publication. Adding awards/nominations can get tricky if only one of the issues associated with the same EDITOR title is nominated. However, in this case this EDITOR title is associated with a single magazine issue, so it shouldn't be a problem.Ahasuerus (talk) 11:14, 15 October 2023 (EDT)

Got it. Just did like you said, thanks! Alittlebook (talk) 16:20, 15 October 2023 (EDT)

Vorzimer

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=vorzi&type=Name; Who should be parent? They're about even. --Username (talk) 17:42, 10 October 2023 (EDT)

Peter Vorzimer was the way he was credited in the fanzine that he edited (Abstract) while Peter J. Vorzimer was the way he was credited when writing letters to Richard E. Geis's Science Fiction Review (1st Series). Since "EDITOR" generally has more weight than "ESSAY" for the purposes of "best known within the genre", I made Peter Vorzimer the canonical name and Peter J. Vorzimer its alternate. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:56, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

Thanks. I wonder if his disappearance after a few years had anything to do with this, https://latimes.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-woman-struck-by-au/127127953/, assuming it's the same guy; the zine WAS published in California. --Username (talk) 11:21, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

Page 1 of the first issue of Abstract lists the publisher's address: 1311 N. Laurel Ave., W. Hollywood 46, Calif. The linked LA Times article has the same address, so it's the same person. I have added the middle name to the "legal name" field.

That said, the accident happened on March 17, 1954, but he continued to publish the fanzine until 1955, so it's not clear what the fallout of the accident was. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:55, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

Amazon URL

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5787245; It happens now and then where a URL will be different but image looks the same and is the same size. Is there no benefit to replacing or is it better to have a newer URL? Why does this happen? --Username (talk) 13:32, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

The sizes are actually slightly different, so the images are presumably also different, although the differences are imperceptible to the naked eye. As to why Amazon has two almost identical images, it's hard to tell. Their images come from different sources and we don't know what they are, so it may be any number of things. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:57, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

EDIT: Also, my spell check doesn't like the editor's note "mis-numbers" and has a red line under the mis part; it's a legit word so I wonder if anyone else sees that, too? I did a note search and that's the only use of that word on all of ISFDB with or without the dash; editor must have been hooked on phonics that day. --Username (talk) 13:32, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

Spellchecking is handled by your browser as opposed to the ISFDB server. These days most browsers come with built-in spellcheckers and they usually let you add new words like "mis-numbers" to the list of recognized words. You can also install a custom browser add-on to handle spellchecking and grammar validation if you want a more sophisticated tool. There are a number of popular ones like LanguageTool. I am not sure how useful they would be since our Notes tend to use a lot of abbreviated sentences, but there is no harm in giving them a try. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:57, 11 October 2023 (EDT)

Plant Rage

https://fantlab.ru/edition388900; I was adding a link explaining the history of Stephen King's rare The Plant and came across that weird FantLab page where it seems a Russian publisher combined both Plant and King's hard-to-find 1977 Richard Bachman novel Rage which he hasn't allowed to be reprinted as a standalone novel in the USA because it concerns school shootings. So anyone fluent in Russian may want to add that book here since it contains 2 King works that haven't been reprinted endlessly. --Username (talk) 23:00, 12 October 2023 (EDT)

By by

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?692274; OL-only archived copy, unusual for such a recent book, so I added a link and page numbers and corrected page count. I happened to notice that O'Regan's story was missing the word by at the end so I added that but I capitalized it in opposition to what this page says, https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Template:AllFields:Case, because it has a different meaning in this title rather than being "by" someone. I looked at these, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=passed+by&type=Fiction+Titles, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=passes+by&type=Fiction+Titles, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=passing+by&type=Fiction+Titles, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=pass+by&type=Fiction+Titles. Most are like O'Regan's title as I entered it with the majority being capitalized but a few aren't; also, I think Tarzia's poem in the last link is the only one that uses it in the possessive so that is probably a legitimate use of the small b. What does anyone else think? Some will need to be changed to make everything standard. --Username (talk) 13:48, 13 October 2023 (EDT)

Best of the Midwest's SFFH

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?348698; I made some edits for this book a long time ago and today found that the story by Douglas Graham is actually by D. Douglas Graham who has another story in the book by that name; I fixed that in a pending edit but while doing that I noticed that the stories are illustrated with the artists' names listed on the contents page but the search function on Google Books is not great and it's hard to find anything specific with accuracy. I see some pretty big names like Marge Simon, David Transue (who did Volume II's cover), etc. So if anyone knows how to get a look at the full copy a lot of artist credits can be entered; there seems to be no preview of Volume II but I'm guessing that's probably illustrated, too. These are rare books; the second one was recalled due to cover problems. --Username (talk) 10:37, 14 October 2023 (EDT)

Hobgoblin

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?337356; I did a lot of John Coyne edits some time ago, doing more today, a lot of his HC editions on Archive.org are book club editions which aren't on ISFDB, I'm ignoring those but this one, https://archive.org/search?query=+hobgoblin00coyn&sort=-addeddate, is interesting, it says book club on front flap but, unlike other club editions, it's much longer, 307 pages, than what's on ISFDB. Library of Congress says 304 pages. So if anyone knows what non-club edition's count is, let us know. I'd like to add a link to the archived copy somewhere. --Username (talk) 11:59, 14 October 2023 (EDT)

Maiden, Matron, Crone

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?168059; I added archived link to $7.50 edition in a PENDING edit; should the other edition be deleted? --Username (talk) 13:43, 14 October 2023 (EDT)

Duplicate deleted. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:33, 14 October 2023 (EDT)

Christina Sng

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5790172; I've added full contents but there's a problem with the last 2 poems. Her website's bibliography says 9/02 for this (Sng's title is not seen because contents are incomplete), https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?439266, and it turns out it says "September" clearly on the cover so I don't know why it was entered here as October; do all dates need changing? Also, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?310470, where her site says "Turtle Shell" appeared in this issue but it says "The Scarecrow" here; I noticed the next poem by another author is "Scarecrow" so I have a feeling 2 poems got mixed up and Sng's title should be changed. However, that would require someone looking at an actual copy of this rare zine; can anyone help? --Username (talk) 19:39, 15 October 2023 (EDT)

Captain Shark

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?25623; Recent upload of Jaws, added a link and cover credit for famed artist Hector Garrido, none of the copies on eBay for By Pirate's Blood show copyright page, likely same artist judging by style but can't be positive, anyone own a copy? --Username (talk) 20:14, 15 October 2023 (EDT)

Puleo

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?184633; http://www.bewilderingstories.com/bios/puleo_bio.html; I came across this randomly and thought I'd start adding bios from that site for obscure people who don't have bios elsewhere online but I may have picked a very bad one to start with. There are numerous online newspaper sites from Kentucky, where the bio linked above says Puleo lives, detailing the arrest on child pornography charges of a Carl Puleo/Carl A. Puleo/Carl Anthony Puleo. I don't want to link to any of those sites but many of them include his picture (as do sites like therapist.com since that was his job before he was arrested) which show him to be a middle-aged white male, sometimes with a beard and sometimes not. Care must be taken not to associate the Puleo on ISFDB with the other one unless some proof can be found that they're one and the same. It's very unlikely that the issue of Vampire Dan's where his poem appeared can be found but his bio mentions Anotherealm, an online site which which has only been spottily entered here and which, on Archive.org, doesn't have any mention of the name Puleo in a URL search. I did add a note a long time ago to Edward E. Kramer's record here detailing the reason why his genre work ended in 2000 was because of similar charges but in that case his crimes are well-documented on his Wikipedia page and it's clearly the same person. So if anyone can find definitively that author Puleo is the same as criminal Puleo then I will add details to his record (and also his middle name, Anthony). --Username (talk) 13:21, 17 October 2023 (EDT)

Please come participate...

...in this discussion on page numbering questions. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:09, 17 October 2023 (EDT)

Lawrence the Artist

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?27810; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5791436; Photo was probably taken in the mid-20th century but doesn't look much better than the one taken of Jack the Ripper's last victim in 1888; also, he bears a disturbing resemblance to a certain German dictator. More to the point, FantLab says birth year is 1884 as do some other sites online; is 1886 accurate? Also, FantLab just says he died in 1960 with no day or month so the accuracy of those entered here may not be right, either. Clouding this whole issue is this, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/187880368/lawrence-sterne-stevens, which seems to be the same guy judging by the picture but says 1885; headstone says the same (and 1960) but provides no days or months. Wow; messy. --Username (talk) 20:37, 17 October 2023 (EDT)

Micromania

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?482014; https://picclick.com/?q=micromania+langford; I recently uploaded the cover, it was just approved, format says TP but cover looks like HC to me, Sphere PB has totally different ISBN (and cover), so either format should be changed to HC or there is a TP edition (but there's no proof of that online). Not sure what "adapted for the UK" on Langford's site means; did Platt have an American edition first? --Username (talk) 10:18, 18 October 2023 (EDT)

AbeBooks Links

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5786883; About this rejection, it's not correct that sale links aren't accepted because there's a whole bunch of them that were, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/webpages_search_results.cgi?OPERATOR=contains&WEBPAGE_VALUE=abebooks (the first one on that page doesn't count, it's Julie Abe's Facebook site), with at least the last one being entered by me last year and accepted with no problem, so can someone suggest how I can get that link accepted? Is there a mod here who doesn't have a problem with accepting them? Most of the AbeBooks links entered on ISFDB are still working and even when the product is sold many of the listings still remain on PicClick, Google Cache, Archive.org (https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.abebooks.com/signed-first-edition*), etc. --Username (talk) 11:36, 18 October 2023 (EDT)

Bioshock: Rapture

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?397958; I added archived TP link in PENDING edit, nearly got fooled into "fixing" page count to 427, usual paranoia caused me to check archived PB, it's 430, so either ex-library TP is ragged and last few pages fell out/got ripped out or Tor printers messed up. Does anyone own the TP who can verify that it ends on 430 and not 427? --Username (talk) 12:44, 18 October 2023 (EDT)

Ladies of Horror Fiction Award

Hello earthlings, I come forward with another micro award I found.

The Ladies of Horror Fiction Awards (short form: LOHF Award) was horror award given to woman authors in 2020 (for works from 2019), 2021 (for works from 2020) and 2022 (for works from 2021) by a self-proclaimed grasshoots organization aimed at uplifting women authors. From what I saw, they worked mostly as a website posting reviews and the award itself, and later changed to HorrorSpotlight and seem to have dropped the award entirely after the name change. Here's the Locus Magazine post about the winners from 2020, 2021 and 2022. From what I gathered, they were juri-based (chosen by the people who mantained the Ladies of Horror Fiction website/organization), and besides the typical categories of Novel, YA, MG, Debut, Collection, Poetry Collection. Novella and Short Fiction, they also had a special category in their last year called Readers Choice, which was open for the public to vote. From what I understood from the Locus Magazine post about the Readers Choice category, they worked as honorary mentions for the 2022 LOFT Awards, since they listed ten different works with no specific sole winner. Their 2020 award also listed short fiction under honorable mentions, with no specific winners. Alittlebook (talk) 14:11, 18 October 2023 (EDT)

Our main concern with minor awards is separating legitimate awards from promotional "awards" given by publishers to their own authors as well as "awards" given by individuals to their friends. Given the fact that the Facebook page run by "Ladies of Horror Fiction" has 1.7K followers I think it's a reasonably safe bet that this falls on the "legitimate award" side and therefore eligible for inclusion. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:16, 1 November 2023 (EDT)

Good to know! I've been taking notes on awards who aren't in the database already and slowly gathering info about them, if LOHF is added I'll work on adding the winners/nominees for it after finishing Argos. Alittlebook (talk) 00:32, 2 November 2023 (EDT)

Hearing no objection, I have created a new Award Type for Ladies of Horror Fiction Fiction Award. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:39, 10 November 2023 (EST)

Bear's Lost Souls

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?211621; I added archived links in PENDING edits to 3 editions of Greg Bear's Psychlone and noticed the edition re-titled Lost Souls had a small dark cover uploaded by, um, me in 2022. Oops. It's better than the raggedy creased cover uploaded by someone else way back in 2010 but the problem is that almost every cover currently online is the same as the one I uploaded, gregbear.com, FantLab, Open Library, etc.; the creased cover image seems to have totally disappeared (except on the Wiki page here, of course) or maybe it was someone's personal copy. The one eBay copy has a far-away tiny photo with a cracked spine and someone's bookcase in the background. Then I had a vague memory that there was a site devoted to Ace Books (not Bookscans because they end in 1980 and this edition is 1982); I found a page, http://people.uncw.edu/smithms/Ace_5N4.html, but ominously clicking the book's cover link does absolutely nothing. That sparked a memory that while editing some time ago I noticed that images from that site are broken so I assume the server where the images were kept is dead. No problem, I thought, I'll go for the archived image; only problem is I got this, [1]. Here's a list of books with an image URL from that site, [2], most are PV and a few that aren't are non-fiction books that don't really belong here, although there are a few non-PV books that do belong so I'll see if I can replace those. PV of all the others should probably replace theirs, too. As for Lost Souls, chime in if you can find a good cover. --Username (talk) 18:21, 18 October 2023 (EDT)

Here is correct link for the cover image file. Unfortunately, it is spoiled by a watermark in the lower right corner. --Zlogorek (talk) 03:23, 30 October 2023 (EDT)

Censored Breast

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?27207; I left a note to PV Stoecker about the last book in Ladd's record (which I've added an Archive.org link to, not approved yet) letting him know the artist stopped doing cover art in the mid-80s so that 1994 cover is likely re-used from somewhere else. While doing this I noticed the first book in Ladd's record, which has a collage on the cover, uses the girl from 1980's The Northern Girl but this book came out in 1978. Also, the US covers are censored; the 1978 book shows full nipple as do the 3 foreign editions of Northern Girl but the 3 US editions have an added lock of hair covering one of the breasts. I believe MagicUnk and Willem H. PV the 1978 book so they may want to variant or something similar to Northern Girl's cover, PV of US editions may want to add a note about the censorship, etc. --Username (talk) 11:25, 19 October 2023 (EDT)

A. Smothers

[3]; same person, 2 different websites. --Username (talk) 12:13, 19 October 2023 (EDT)

The artist's name is shown the same way (Alexa "Dok" Smothers) in both on-line pubs. It appears PeteYoung normalized the one occurrence and not the other when verifying. I will ping him. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:58, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

Mondolithic

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=mondoli&type=Name; I just fixed Harry Potter cover for the second artist linked above, should that and the other cover under "Inc." have "Inc." removed so they fall under the same artist as all the others? --Username (talk) 09:54, 20 October 2023 (EDT)

Again, Dangerous Visions

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5793462; The 2 Sallis titles under the heading Tissue, "At the Fitting Shop" and "53rd American Dream", are only on ISFDB in the original Doubleday edition and a 2012 Gateway e-book. Are the umbrella titles for B. Wolfe, G. Wolfe and Sallis really separate fiction of their own? This is like the Oliver Onions issue where a couple of his stories were known as "Two Trifles" but each had its own title, Ether-Hogs and Mortal, and nobody ever agreed how they should be entered so some collections have the umbrella title entered and some the individual titles. Problem is that most of Ellison's books are PV so deciding how these 3 problematic authors' stories should be entered might be a problem. Certainly at least the Sallis should be entered because as it is now it looks like they only appeared in 2 widely separated editions when they probably appeared in all of them. Also, the cover by the Dillons was used on a lot (all?) of these E-Reads editions; I remember mentioning this a long time ago but I don't think I got an answer so if anyone knows what the first use of it was then I guess all the others will need to be made a variant of it, right? --Username (talk) 19:20, 20 October 2023 (EDT)

Possibly this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?250744, is where the cover art originated? --Username (talk) 19:41, 18 December 2023 (EST)

Giant Bones

[4]; https://archive.org/search?query=beagle+giant-bones&sort=-addeddate&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22texts%22; I added a link in a PENDING edit for the uploaded-in-2011 copy on Archive.org but the 2023 one has a different back cover with an ISBN that only shows up in the Google search linked above in 2 places, Archive.org and Amazon.de (with no real info except "library binding" but no such edition is mentioned on the copyright page). So if anyone knows what that copy really is, book club or something else, reply here. --Username (talk) 20:09, 21 October 2023 (EDT)

Fantasy Worlds of Peter

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?28517; Note for Del Rey original edition says S. in author name isn't on title page so it (and possibly the later Del Rey edition) shouldn't be a variant but merged. --Username (talk) 20:54, 21 October 2023 (EDT)

The pub author for the verified 1979 Del Rey was already Peter Beagle. It was under the wrong title record. I unmerged it and merged it with the correct one. There is an additional problem that, while these pubs are credited to Peter Beagle, the interior contents are credited to Peter S. Beagle. Unless the contents had separate title records that had the middle initial, the contents should also be without the initial. I will ping the verifiers and point them to this discussion. Once they chime in, I will make any necessary changes. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:59, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

Agreed. We should drop the middle initial for the contents. Tom (talk) 09:40, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

Yes, I see where the initial should be dropped. Thanks. gzuckier (talk) 22:30, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

Publications' contents have been updated to be by Peter Beagle as per standards. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:33, 30 October 2023 (EDT)

Server downtime -- 2023-10-22 at noon EDT

The ISFDB server will be taken down for maintenance at 12pm server time (EDT). It should be back up within 15-20 minutes. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:03, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

The server is back up. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:20, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

Irene Adler series by Carole Nelson Douglas

I was adding ebooks to the titles in the Irene Adler series by Carole Nelson Douglas and am surprised that they are NOT marked as non-genre. They are definitely mysteries but on the face of it, I don't see any elements in them that would make them be included as genre titles, save perhaps the short story "Dracula on the Rocks". Would there be any objection to my changing the other titles to non-genre? Phil (talk) 13:57, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

Checking the record number of the first edition pub, I see that it's very low. It means that the data was entered during the ISFDB 1.0 era, before we had the "non-genre" flag. I think it's safe to change the titles to non-genre.

I am more curious about Fair Wind, Fiery Star, which says "Non-genre", but the synopsis mentions a "mysterious Dutchman, a mystical sea captain". Ahasuerus (talk) 14:20, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

P.S. I have checked the last page of Fair Wind, Fiery Star, which mentions the "mysterious Dutchman". He is described ambiguously before he disappears. It's not clear whether he is real or a figment of the protagonist's imagination. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:28, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

P.P.S. I have updated the Fair Wind, Fiery Star title record, added the first (abridged) edition and changed the non-genre flag to 'No' until we can find more details. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:43, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

I have changed the titles to non-genre. Phil (talk) 15:39, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5794782. --Username (talk) 18:11, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

Approved, thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:22, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

Farnol's Shadow

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5795005; If anyone wants to read Great Quietude in the 1970 reprint and decide whether it counts to be here then the rest of the stories can be deleted; he wrote a lot of pirate-related stuff and is one of those authors, like W. W. Jacobs, who stuck a few of his horror stories in between their "serious" fiction. --Username (talk) 20:34, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?78925; https://archive.org/search?query=%22Benyon%27s+Entanglement%22; After adding a link in a PENDING edit to a Vault of Evil review where it's mentioned that Braddon's story "Colonel Benyon's Entanglement" seems to be missing the ending in its reprint in a recent British anthology I looked on Archive.org to see if anyone had uploaded the original magazine serial and didn't see anything but did find that it is included in those two collections linked above (it's on pp. 291-337 in Meeting Her Fate and is spread across both volumes of The Dreaded Guest) and neither of which is on ISFDB although the story "The Dreaded Guest" is in another collection. So if anyone has the anthology and wants to compare the endings to see if it is really missing or if anyone wants to enter those 2 collections and possibly variant the story titles to one of the dozen names she was published under, please do. --Username (talk) 11:39, 23 October 2023 (EDT)

Midnight Tales Discussion

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Rosab618#Midnight_Tales; I think I got this figured out correctly, right? EDIT: See also https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Boskar#Cockburn. --Username (talk) 17:03, 23 October 2023 (EDT)

Fantastic Fiction Images

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5796104; I get a scary error page when I right-click and open the old image. Anyone else? --Username (talk) 01:41, 24 October 2023 (EDT)

When I try to access , I get the following error:

• 403 ERROR
• The request could not be satisfied.
• Bad request. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner. If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
• Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
• Request ID: [variable request ID]

The key word in this message is "CloudFront" -- see this Wikipedia article for a somewhat technical summary of what it does. At the most basic level, it's an Amazon service that serves as a front end for many Web sites, in this case Fantastic Fiction.

Normally I would expect CloudFront to redirect "http" links to their "https" counterparts automatically. The fact that it doesn't do it suggests that it isn't configured that way, either due to a human error or to technical issues that CloudFront or Fantastic Fiction may be experiencing this week. Since we need to change all FF-hosted "http" images to "https", it shouldn't be a big deal. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:07, 24 October 2023 (EDT)

I believe I have changed all FF-hosted author images from "http" to "https". Ahasuerus (talk) 14:14, 24 October 2023 (EDT)

Argos Award / Prêmio Argos

I have another award suggestion for the Award Directory. I had another suggestion a few posts above (I believe it got lost among the other submissions), but I think this one should be added because it's the oldest/most traditional award given to speculative fiction in Brazil. I collected the necessary information below, including their links (their website is having problems, but it can be seen here). The award is organized and voted by the members of CLFC, a Brazilian association of readers and writers of speculative fiction. It started in 2000 and is still ongoing.

• Short Name: Argos
• Full Name: Prêmio Argos / Argos Award
• Awarded For: Speculative fiction originally published in Portuguese.
• Awarded By: Clube de Leitores de Ficção Científica, a Brazilian association of readers and writers of speculative fiction.
• Poll: Yes
• Covers more than just SF: No
• Website: Website, Twitter
• Categories: Melhor Romance (Best Novel/Novella), Melhor Coletânea/Antologia (Best Anthology/Collected Works), Melhor Conto (Best Short Story/Novelette)

The category Romance (not to be confused with the genre; its how novels and novellas are called as a format in Portuguese), as mentioned above, includes both novels and novellas, while Conto includes both short stories and novelettes. Alittlebook (talk) 16:29, 24 October 2023 (EDT)

It looks like a pretty solid candidate. Twitter warns that their Web site is currently unsafe, but the Wayback Machine version appears to be comprehensive, so we should be able to recreate nominee lists. (They also have a Facebook page, but, apparently, it hasn't been updated since 2019.) I am not sure how many nominated titles the ISFDB database may be missing, but it should be doable. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:42, 24 October 2023 (EDT)

Their website has been wonky for a while, so they mostly publish their results on Twitter and on their closed group, but I'm confident I can find most of the nominated works. Thanks! Alittlebook (talk) 18:56, 24 October 2023 (EDT)

If the award type is created, just a heads up that I mistranslated one of the categories (I originally spelled it "Collected words", but its "Collected works"), but already fixed it. Alittlebook (talk) 22:59, 28 October 2023 (EDT)

If there are no objections by the end of the weekend, I will create a new award type on Monday. Ahasuerus (talk) 23:24, 28 October 2023 (EDT)

Great! I'm already working on adding at least the winners who aren't already on the Database, and slowly the rest. Alittlebook (talk) 11:32, 30 October 2023 (EDT)

All done. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:52, 30 October 2023 (EDT)

Thanks! Just a question: I'm already adding the award to titles ISFDB already have, and doing so I realized Argos is really erratic with the nature of their finalists: some years they release it like the Hugos, with first, second, third place and such, but others they just release the winner and the finalists, with no tiers among the finalists. How should I approach this? In the years they don't release the tiers, should I just put "1" for the winner, and "finalists" for the finalists? Alittlebook (talk) 16:10, 30 October 2023 (EDT)

Yes, that's how we usually handle inconsistent "poll" awards -- see this list of "John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer / Astounding Award for the Best New Science Fiction Writer" nominees for 1973-2023 for an example. FR 1086, "Change the award year field to a drop-down list", if implemented, may help in this area, but for now it's our best bet. Thanks for working on these awards! Ahasuerus (talk) 17:30, 30 October 2023 (EDT)

Perfect, thanks, I'm already on it! Just a heads up, I suggested another award a little above (Ladies of Horror Fiction, a week or so before I mentioned Argos), could you check if that one is worth cataloging here? Alittlebook (talk) 00:45, 31 October 2023 (EDT)

Done. Sorry about the delay: the first and last days of each months are usually very busy on my end as I run monthly backups, enter new light novels, etc. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:17, 1 November 2023 (EDT)

No problem! Thank you for the hard work. :) Alittlebook (talk) 00:28, 2 November 2023 (EDT)

Adventure House

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?3836; Should the 1936 item be under an alternate publisher name? --Username (talk) 18:51, 24 October 2023 (EDT)

It's very likely a carryover from the 2006 facsimile reprint edition, which has been primary verified by one of our editors. I have left a note on his Talk page to see if the reprint includes a page with the name of the original publisher. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:30, 24 October 2023 (EDT)

The record has been updated based on what we currently know. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:41, 24 October 2023 (EDT)

Odyssey Publications

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?26323; I have PENDING edits adding archived links to the first 5 on that list. URL for the item missing ID suggests it should be #4 (PV just forgot?) and ID for #9 was entered without a space between letters and number like the others; which is correct? --Username (talk) 23:51, 24 October 2023 (EDT)

Remember the Alamo!

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5797826; I added an archived link in a PENDING edit, someone's note mentions partial signature, it's more visible here, https://www.ebay.com/itm/364244986997, it could be one of a few Charter artists already on ISFDB or maybe someone else entirely, anyone recognize it? --Username (talk) 20:19, 25 October 2023 (EDT)

Arbor House Treasury of Nobel Prize Winners

Does anyone own the TP of the above anthology? Because the HC on Archive.org has Charles G. Waugh on title page, not Charles Waugh. Price, page numbers for stories entered and decision on whether other stories qualify, entering of preface, better cover, etc. also needed. TP seems unfindable online (wow, unfindable is a word, I thought spell-check would red-line that). --Username (talk) 19:06, 26 October 2023 (EDT)

I could ask Charles if he still has a copy of the trade paperback if no one else has it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:59, 26 October 2023 (EDT)

OK. I have a PENDING edit adding the HC. --Username (talk) 20:46, 26 October 2023 (EDT)

The Diploids

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?37801; Open Library has a record for the Gregg edition of K. Maclean's collection but the link is for a copy of the 1953 novella. I added the link to that novella just for the heck of it but noticed there's some discrepancy with titles among various editions; note in Gregg says it's a reprint of Avon but 1 story in Avon is titled "The Pyramid in the Desert" while in Gregg it's the alternate title, "And Be Merry...". Also, Manor has an alternate alternate title, "And Be Merry". So does anyone own the Gregg who can verify what it says? --Username (talk) 12:15, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

Season of the Witch

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5799039; I entered the 1985 printing of Jack Martin's (really Dennis Etchison) novelization of the 3rd Halloween movie last year and today came across the 1984 one hiding on Archive.org so I entered it. They used the same ISBN for 1982 and 1983 but the last 2 are different from it and each other. If anyone owns a copy, please check because this may have had printings well after 1985. EDIT: I remembered that I entered a later edition of #2 last year, too, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?868156, so that may also have other printings. --Username (talk) 16:58, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

The Executioner

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?950765; This is on eBay, www.ebay.com/itm/324711912241, but there's also an archived copy, https://archive.org/search?query=%22Paradine%27s+Gauntlet%22, which has the same copyright page but price is $2.50 on front cover and in barcode on back cover. How can you tell what printings these books are? Is there a gutter code or something? --Username (talk) 18:09, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

Darkening Island Cover Artist

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?251927; I added archived link to 1972 HC of this book in a PENDING edit and noticed someone entered PB cover artist with one name but wrote another name in the note. I blew up the image but it's so blurry and the signature so crappy it could be either one. I searched for "Manor Books" and book title and got 1 hit...ISFDB. So if anyone can see a copy and verify what the signature really is one of those names will need fixing. There's no Friere here and several Freire but very unlikely that any of them could be this Freire. --Username (talk) 19:10, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

All the Traps of Earth

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?283283; I added archived link in PENDING edit; it does not say "and Other Stories" on title page. Active PV AliHarlow, Willem, Dirk: the title may need changing. --Username (talk) 23:42, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

Condors

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?19977; I added cover image for Rotunda in a PENDING edit; it's the only Condor PB without a price and I didn't see one anywhere in the archived copy so if anyone knows what it is, reply here. Also, the Roquard items are clearly by a different publisher which should be differentiated in some way. EDIT: Never mind, I got it, $2.25; Open Library cover, which is the same as Archive.org cover, is very scratchy but has bold colors; problem is it isn't framed well and the price info is off the left side. Bookscans has a clear cover with slightly less bold colors and some kind of weird lens flare on the left side but I could barely make out the price through the blinding light. --Username (talk) 00:41, 28 October 2023 (EDT)

NL Psychoville

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?536129; Doing some more edits today for the recently deceased Christopher Fowler, couple of wrong covers, some other minor stuff, but the edition of Psychoville linked above only has this awful image, https://boekenbalie.nl/psychoville/463400609, online as far as I can see. If anyone can find a better one please upload it. --Username (talk) 17:46, 29 October 2023 (EDT)

Roofworld Editions

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Community_Portal/Archive/Archive54#Roofworld_Arrow_Edition; I added archived link to non-PV edition in a PENDING edit so I think PV edition could be deleted now. --Username (talk) 21:52, 29 October 2023 (EDT)

I would think that given duplicates where one has a primary verification, we'd want to preserve that verification. Especially when the verifier has been active within the last six months. My recollection is also that Unapersson has taken extended breaks in the past and returned. Hopefully, she will do so again. Chris J who has a secondary verification on the other record and is active, can easily move the Locus1 verification. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 06:54, 30 October 2023 (EDT)

Authorship of Dune's map

While adding a new publication to the Dune title, I noticed that there's only one pub record here that has Matt Griffin as map artist (which is in and of itself doubtful as I couldn't find conclusive evidence that he indeed was the artist), instead of Dorothy deFointaine. Comparing the map in the Ace edition (see video where it says it's 'a redesigned world map of Dune') with the original map of Dorothy deFontaine, there's almost no discernible difference between both. Since the statement 'a redesigned world map' is highly exaggerated, I'm thinking to attribute the unsigned map in the Ace edition to Dorothy deFontaine (and not to Matt Griffin) - what do you think? How should we treat these two map records? Any other way to treat these two art records? Suggestions? MagicUnk (talk) 07:47, 30 October 2023 (EDT)

It's definitely redesigned, but not redrawn. The design of the map is quite different for the new one as it uses a lot of shading not found in the original, different labeling/fonts, and placement of somethings is a little different. That said, the copyright page credits the map like this: "Map by Matt Griffin, inspired by the original by Dorothy de Fontaine". Based on that, I think the new one should be credited to both of them, especially due to the many similarities. A not could be placed on the map title page explaining all that. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:46, 2 November 2023 (EDT)

Thanks! Updated accordingly. MagicUnk (talk) 08:34, 3 November 2023 (EDT)

B. Farthing

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5800896; The warning message "Proposed..." doesn't show up on Google when I search for it. Should I have rejected my edit or is it correct and I should do it again and ignore the warning or should Ben be the variant of Benjamin? I already have an edit making Benjamin an alternate name of Ben. --Username (talk) 12:40, 30 October 2023 (EDT)

Benjamin should be the variant of Ben, and then the title date for the variant should be changed to match its parent (since the variant is the name of the author). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:49, 2 November 2023 (EDT)

Done (I think). --Username (talk) 12:31, 3 November 2023 (EDT)

PVR

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=rosenkr&type=Name; Palie von is actually Palle von per contents page photo online, novel is not genre from what I can gather online, Palle Rosenkrantz story is not genre per online reviews, neither really belong here, didn't notice this until I'd already entered bio info for Rosenkrantz, cancelled my edit, I think both names should be deleted, probably other contents from 1960 omnibus and Martin Edwards anthology are not genre and should be removed, too (there's a note in the anthology's record mentioning this). --Username (talk) 14:30, 2 November 2023 (EDT)

Rageot

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=rageot&type=Publisher; I have a PENDING edit fixing/adding stuff re: someone else's recent edit for a book published by Rageot and I noticed ISFDB has records for that name which was on the title page and the longer name, Rageot-Éditeur, which was on the copyright page. So really all books should probably be merged under one name. --Username (talk) 12:30, 3 November 2023 (EDT)

Science Fictional Solar System

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?32159; The UK HC & book club editions say Martin H. Greenberg on their cover, 2 eBay copies of book club don't show title page, does anyone own either edition who can verify what his name is on title page? --Username (talk) 22:28, 4 November 2023 (EDT)

Brad Steiger Stories

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5805263; I didn't change the dates of Steiger's stories but I think they're both wrong. "Detroit", being a variant title, should have the date of this anthology, I think, and "Huntsman" should have a 1966 date as copyright page says. Am I right? --Username (talk) 10:01, 5 November 2023 (EST)

Yes, titles are dated per first appearance of that form of the title. Updates made. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:51, 5 November 2023 (EST)

Amazon WEBP Images

[5]; After I replaced one a few days ago and another one today I did a search and it seems most (all?) of the images with the weird URL Amazon switched to for a while are now broken. Is there a batch fix or will they have to be changed one by one (there's several hundred)? Most are not PV. --Username (talk) 17:09, 5 November 2023 (EST)

I see what you mean. There are 806 affected publication records, 30 of them primary-verified. I could create a script to change the URLs of the unverified pubs, then we could ask the primary verifiers to check their pubs. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:25, 5 November 2023 (EST)

I'm sure you've already got something that could be repurposed for this, but if not:

https://github.com/JohnSmithDev/ISFDB-Tools/blob/master/tools/submit_edits_via_api.py

You would need to update get_bad_pub_records() to pick up the affected records - plus any additional check to not pick up verified pubs - and the regex to fix them in the first line of generate_pubdate_imagefix()

Then 'uncomment' the PUB_COVER_EDITS code in the __main__ section. ErsatzCulture (talk) 05:01, 6 November 2023 (EST)

There have been quite a few scripts to mass change URL structures over the years, e.g. this one from 2022. I plan to use it as a template later today. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:17, 6 November 2023 (EST)

I was adding an Amazon author image for Maggie Allen and the URL is weird so I did a search, [6], and these are also broken. I don't know if the batch will fix these, too. EDIT: This URL was fine, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5806113, which I got by searching for Amazon and the author's name in Google Images; however, on the author's Amazon page, https://www.amazon.ca/-/fr/Maggie-Allen/e/B00DXZNLOG, the URL is the broken one. I don't know what's up with all this but I'm sure someone else does. --Username (talk) 10:13, 6 November 2023 (EST)

I have now manually fixed the "WEBP" author URLs. All but 2 were broken. Removing the "WEBP" part fixed all of them, although a few were "S" images, so they will be caught by the cleanup reports when they next run. I think it's safe to say that we should be able to removed "WEBP" from the affected cover scans programmatically. I'll work on it later today. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:13, 6 November 2023 (EST)

Thanks. I added an image to Maxwell Alexander Drake's record and of the 4 images on his Amazon page (I think at least some people must be aware by now that only certain regional Amazon pages display all author images at the moment in the scroll bar or whatever it's called, Amazon.com and many others just show the main photo, and they seem to be getting fewer and fewer as time goes by; I find Amazon Canada and Amazon France are still good) 2 are WEBP and 2 are regular; it figures that the one I had to use wasn't as good as the others. --Username (talk) 19:33, 6 November 2023 (EST)

Outcome -- WEBP images converted

All 806 "WEBP" images have been converted. Please let me know if you come across any issues. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:17, 6 November 2023 (EST)

St. Martin's The Light Fantastic

https://colinsmythe.co.uk/terry-pratchett/discworld/discworld-novels/light-fantastic/; I was doing some edits for the few St. Martin's editions of Terry Pratchett's novels and I think this last one, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?43074, doesn't exist. It should probably get the unpublished code for the date. --Username (talk) 11:46, 6 November 2023 (EST)

Untouched by Human Hands

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5806259; Actual price was a bit different than what Tuck supposedly said but since Bluesman is gone if anyone else has the Tuck book and it really says 12/- then a note about difference on flap can be added after my edit is approved. --Username (talk) 12:38, 6 November 2023 (EST)

There is a price shown here: www.ebay.com/itm/115568098201 Tom (talk) 22:07, 13 November 2023 (EST)

Faerie Tale

https://archive.org/search?query=faerie-tale&sort=title&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22texts%22&and%5B%5D=firstTitle%3AF; While doing an edit for Raymond E. Feist (adding a note that he was born Gonzales, not Feist, and fixing his day of birth) I saw that, despite the dozens of editions of his great horror/fantasy novel Faerie Tale the only one archived is a Doubleday Book-of-the-Month Club edition which isn't on ISFDB! Open Library claims there are 2 previewable copies but whichever edition the other one was, it's gone now. So if anyone has one of those club indexes or wherever people get the dates/ID # from, you may want to enter this edition so at least there'll be one copy people can read easily. --Username (talk) 19:26, 6 November 2023 (EST)

I've added the BOMC edition here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:23, 7 November 2023 (EST)

Alan Burns

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?18958; I added cover image to Dreamerika a while ago and today added archived link to US Babel edition; SFE says "Babel" in New Worlds is an excerpt so I've added that word to the title. The issue now is SFE thinks all the other short stories are by a different Alan Burns (and probably the poems and essay, too). Does anyone know for sure? --Username (talk) 11:31, 7 November 2023 (EST)

Connecting books in an unnamed series

I'm currently adding two books where one is the sequel to the other, yet they are not part of a named series. Should I still add series to them (and if so what should I call it), or should I only make a not about it in the title note? /Lokal_Profil 14:34, 7 November 2023 (EST)

What are the books? Can you provide a link to them? Or have you not added them yet? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:52, 7 November 2023 (EST)

One thing that we often do when two or more titles -- or two or more series -- are part of a larger, unnamed, setting is create a new series (or super-series) and use the word "universe" in its name. One example would be the Baba Yaga Universe. It contains 2 sub-series and one collection. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:05, 7 November 2023 (EST)

This is only two books Domens dag and Råttorna. Calling it a universe feels a bit like giving it more credit than it is due =) /Lokal_Profil 18:01, 7 November 2023 (EST)

Hi! If you can't find a naming of the series or a general theme, I'd suggest to use in this case the title of the first novel, like it was done for the two novels in this series. (The second link you provided leads one to a piece of interior art ;-) ) Christian Stonecreek (talk) 06:48, 8 November 2023 (EST)

If the two novels do share the same main character, there'd be the additional possibility to name the series after it, like it was done here. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 07:10, 8 November 2023 (EST)

Thanks for the many suggestions! I'll go with the title of the first novel suggestion as the main characters are not given a last name (if memory serves) and Peter & Anna is way to generic =). Appologies for the erroneous second link (that was the pub-id not the title-id), the intended one is Råttorna. /Lokal_Profil 16:53, 8 November 2023 (EST)

Pied Pipers

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1428017; I left Chavey a message about a city missing in their note about imprint on title page of Routledge edition (which I'd just added an Archive.org link to) but later saw that there was a more pressing problem; the title was wrong, missing a word and misspelling another. I later added another note about Warne edition also likely being wrong based on cover image. Looking further, I think the other 2 editions also have the wrong title; Rand McNally 1937 edition (Chavey's note says 1927, that may be yet another mistake) is on Archive.org and it says The Pied Piper of Hamelin on title page while there's no edit history for Harrap edition but notes are in Chavey's style. Problem is Chavey hasn't responded to any messages since May of last year. Any suggestions? --Username (talk) 19:28, 7 November 2023 (EST)

Their last activity in the database was on 2023-11-04, so only a few days ago. I suggest giving it a little more time for them to respond to the questions. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:33, 8 November 2023 (EST)

Geta

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?17102; I added a link to 1984-00-00 in a PENDING edit; 1985 2nd printing was edited by Hauck, hater of ISFDB, while RTrace cloned the 1984-06-00 but that date can't be right because the price is higher than 1985. There are 2 identical notes about name of publisher in 1984-00-00 and 1985 but neither was edited by the same person/people so some cloning/copying happened there, too. So publisher should either be Granada or Panther / Granada for all 3 and 1984-06-00 should either have a new date or all 0's for unknown; it also says TP, not PB, and likely has the same cover as the others so cover artist should be imported. --Username (talk) 23:48, 9 November 2023 (EST)

Arthur Barker Edition of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5809217; No idea why that obviously incorrect cover artist data was approved by a mod but I removed Kay and the word "Illustrations" from Litherland's credit. I assume the Amazon cover is the correct one because there's a few non-Amazon sites that show the same cover for that ISBN but the problem is Open Library has a 1985 date for the Arthur Barker edition (the only one out of 85 editions) but editor here has 1980 and ISFDB page for that publisher ends in 1980. This edition seems rare so if anyone owns it can you check to make sure date, price, page count (Open Library says 188, not 187), etc. are correct? I left PV a message but they don't seem to answer any questions. --Username (talk) 10:01, 10 November 2023 (EST)

Letter From A Teddy Bear On ?

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:J-Sun#Letter_from_a_Teddy_Bear_on_Veteran.27s_Day; I doubt this editor will respond so if anyone else wants to say what the right way to do this is, chime in. I could have sworn this discussion took place much earlier but I see it was only last December and yet I added some weird image to my message, which I don't do, so not sure why I did that. --Username (talk) 13:46, 10 November 2023 (EST)

Varianted. Most common version used as parent per standard. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:26, 10 November 2023 (EST)

Who Is Lewis Pinder?

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?976273; MLB recently PV Signet PB and I just replaced faded Amazon cover with nice Bookscans cover but I can't find a cover for the HC anywhere. If anyone else can, can you upload it? --Username (talk) 23:29, 10 November 2023 (EST)

Request to add German fantastic literature price:

Hi all,

after adding the German "DSFP" award, I would like to add now the "Phantastikpreis der Stadt Wetzlar", another German fantastic price:

Translation: The “Fantasy Prize of the City of Wetzlar” has been awarded since 1983. The prize is a literary prize endowed with 4,000 euros and is awarded annually for a novel. The prize honors works from all types of fantasy, from magical realism to fantasy science fiction, utopia and horror. Particular emphasis is placed on the fact that the fantastic element - similar to Goethe's “Magician's Apprentice” - also allows real life connections to appear in a new light. The prize is awarded by the city of Wetzlar in cooperation with the Wetzlar Fantastic Library. The jury consists of literary experts from Wetzlar and the surrounding area who have a close connection to fantastic literature.

Source (in German): https://www.phantastik.eu/ausschreibungen-und-preise/phantastikpreis-der-stadt-wetzlar.html

Forgot to sign it: Jannis (talk) 08:39, 12 November 2023 (EST)

I do think it should be perfectly eligible. Stonecreek (talk) 07:06, 12 November 2023 (EST)

I agree that it appears to be eligible. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:41, 13 November 2023 (EST)

Hearing no objection, I have created a new Award Type and an Award Category for this prize. Please let me know if there are any issues with the new records, otherwise have fun entering the awards :-) Ahasuerus (talk) 15:54, 17 November 2023 (EST)

Thats great! Thanks a lot Ahasuerus, I will add the books & authors of last winners of this price, and later link the price to their works. Jannis (talk) 05:16, 18 November 2023 (EST)

Pro Se

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=pro+se&type=Publisher; If anyone knows whether these are all by the same publisher some altering to bring them under the same publisher name would be helpful. They publish pulp-style stuff in all genres; neither of the books on Archive.org, https://archive.org/search?query=pro-se-press&and%5B%5D=year%3A%222016%22, are on ISFDB, Sushi Bar... likely has some genre-related stories, probably other eligible books by them out there. --Username (talk) 21:46, 12 November 2023 (EST)

If memory serves, I used Amazon's Look Inside to look into "Pro Se" publishers/publication series at one point. Their books used a number of different forms of attribution and I couldn't figure out the logic behind it. Someone would need to do more digging to sort it all out. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:55, 13 November 2023 (EST)

Cyrano and Jules Verne

https://archive.org/search?query=airborne+alan-c; I added 2 anthologies recently, imported genre stories into Skyriders in a PENDING edit, imported 3 genre stories (Kipling, T. L. Thomas, O'Flaherty) into Airborne but there's a couple of ancient excerpts (?) that are a problem. The Cyrano title doesn't match the one on ISFDB and there is no such title by Verne here. Searching for Verne title online only got 1 hit, https://www.mwbooks.ie/pages/books/307419/alan-c-jenkins/airborne-compiled-by-alan-c-jenkins, an Irish bookseller's page for Airborne. Typing a line of text from Verne's story got nothing online. I doubt this book found some long-lost Verne story so I assume it's just a novel excerpt. Does anyone know? --Username (talk) 10:41, 13 November 2023 (EST)

Anna's Archive has a downloadable copy. According to the Acknowledgements page, the Cyrano title is a "passage from Other Worlds by Cyrano de Bergerac, translated by Geoffrey Strachan". The Verne title is a "passage from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, translated by Jacqueline Baldick". Ahasuerus (talk) 12:15, 13 November 2023 (EST)

The submission has been approved. The two titles discussed above have been added. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:38, 13 November 2023 (EST)

Bellows

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?97465; I added FantLab photo in a PENDING edit, findagrave.com says Jeffrey, not Jeffery, and has "Kent" in quotes like it's a nickname but the grave says Kent Bellows, and what does the G. stand for? --Username (talk) 09:24, 14 November 2023 (EST)

Bizarrocast

[7]; I was going through the old horror webzine Rosewort, adding links (yes, I found ANOTHER D. F. Lewis story, "Aspen"), and the Ken Goldman story "Going Potty" had a dead link. Then I noticed that the Bizarrocast link in that story's record leads to a log-on page because the original site is gone, but the archived site hardly has any archived pages; I tried one from 2013, "How the Isle of Cats Got Its Name", and after waiting a long time for the page to load all I saw was Arabic (?) writing so even that seems to have been captured after the site was already dead. My link above searched for all title webpages with Bizarrocast in their URL and there's quite a few so if anyone knows whether there's a new site, say here. Otherwise, all those links should probably be deleted. --Username (talk) 13:16, 14 November 2023 (EST)

Book storage and moving boxes

When I packed my book collection for an interstate move last year, I mostly used the 1 cubic-foot book boxes sold by U-Haul. There were a total of about 135 boxes. I have just finished unpacking the last of them and no damage occurred to any of the books. I particularly liked that they stacked nicely and were easy to hold onto while moving them around. They were especially useful for moving and storing paperbacks. Since there always a need to put some books into storage, I recommend using these boxes. Cheers! Phil (talk) 17:16, 14 November 2023 (EST)

Bloodlust and Fangers

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?118655; Today I was adding links to any stories on the old Bloodlust-UK horror site that are on ISFDB and they seem to have redesigned the site some time after 2005 because there were a couple of links that had different URL's for the same stories. I did get quite a few links, including at least one that was published earlier on Bloodlust than what the note on ISFDB says and two by the same author that were supposedly original to one of her collections but were actually published on Bloodlust more than 10 years earlier, and was feeling pretty good about all that until tonight when I decided to see if the authors who got links had any other stories online nowadays, non-archived, and while looking for stories by Denise Sodaro this site came up, https://fangersinc.wordpress.com/tag/short-stories/, where they dumped most/all of the original site's stories without any note that I can see that these stories are nearly 2 decades old. I nearly cried at how much faster I could have added links from Fangers instead of trawling through the old site. Anyway, it seems they were collected in some recent Fangers anthologies; I feel bad for people paying money for these old stories that mostly shouldn't have been published the first time when online editors were hungry for content and would accept almost anything. However, there is one thing that could lead to something interesting; this guy, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?118655, seems to have plagiarized at least one story, "Jumpers", which I added a note to some time ago with an explanation of who actually wrote the story. His other ISFDB story is in an anthology that I read via Interlibrary Loan years before I was an editor here and I can't remember a word of it so no way to tell if that's original. Bloodlust had a story by Michael Steinberg, "Life, or Something Like It", but this Fangers site calls him M. O. Steinberg even though he was already using the M. O. name back when the original site was active so why he went by Michael is anyone's guess. I typed a line of text from "Life..." on Google but got no hits so I'm not sure if it's original or another plagiarism. So if anyone owns the anthology Dreaming of Angels and can read Steinberg's story or reads "Life..." and recognizes it as being by someone else, can you let us know? --Username (talk) 20:11, 16 November 2023 (EST)

Mark Powers - two different people

Currently for this author we have a bunch of UK juvenile titles, and some Jim Butcher/Dresden Files comics. I'm reasonably sure these are two different people: here is the agency page for the former, and here a publisher page for the latter, with neither page acknowledging the other work.

Unless anyone objects, I propose to split these off, probably making the second one "Mark Powers (comics)" unless there are better suggestions. ErsatzCulture (talk) 13:54, 17 November 2023 (EST)

I agree. This is a page showing a pic of the Dresden comics writer. Definitely not the person shown in the two Twitter/X profiles on our author page. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:00, 17 November 2023 (EST)

The Dresden Files comics should now all be switched over to the new author record. Thanks for confirmation! ErsatzCulture (talk) 18:59, 19 November 2023 (EST)

Twitter changed to "X/Twitter"

I am seeing more and more references to "X" instead of "Twitter". I have changed the way third party links appear on bibliographic pages from "Twitter" to "X/Twitter" to reflect this. It's a trivial change, so we can always tweak it again if the name changes. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:46, 17 November 2023 (EST)

Darrell Awards

https://web.archive.org/web/20120908050157/http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~timgatewood/sf/darrell/DarrellWinners_Categories_96to12.pdf; I came across that while looking for something else entirely and since some here like entering new awards and this doesn't seem to be on ISFDB I thought I'd link it in case anyone wants to enter it if it's eligible. --Username (talk) 13:49, 19 November 2023 (EST)

Final Frontier Cover

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?13334; I noticed there was a Greg and Gregory Brodeur here, made Gregory an alternate, made variant of one of his essays and merged 3 into 1 for the other essay (a variant will need to be made of that result after, I think), noticed 1st printing of Final Frontier '88 US PB was on Archive.org so added a link, finally noticed BORIS VALLEJO is credited for a foreign edition but not for any of the others even though they have the same art, Bluesman who was PV of 2 editions is long gone so if active PV of US PB agree with PV, Welo, that added art (they didn't mention where they got it in their notes) then cover credit can be added to all with date of US PB. --Username (talk) 19:00, 19 November 2023 (EST)

The German translation states Boris Vallejo as cover artist on the copyright page. But, i wouldn't take this as given for every other release without another source to verify. At the time the german publishers weren't the reliablest for infos on the copyright pages, they had sometimes wrong infos (copied from previous pubs, but not correct). I've stumbled over a few wrong ones over time. Welo (talk) 12:31, 1 December 2023 (EST)

SFWA Bulletin

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?951170; I was doing Bruce McAllister edits and there's 1 Bruce McAllaster credit here (along with a correct spelling elsewhere in it) but SFWA.org says McAllister so probably a misprint by PV. Also, Gatherng should be Gathering, Nores should be Notes, etc. If anyone can see a real copy all of those can probably be fixed. I assume there are many other mistakes in the other issues of this bulletin since the same PV worked on most/all of them. --Username (talk) 11:11, 20 November 2023 (EST)

Book of Ballads Dates

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Ofearna#Book_of_Ballads; Does anyone agree with me that the 2004 contents should be November instead of October? They say they're original to this book in their notes. --Username (talk) 17:39, 21 November 2023 (EST)

Lecrivain

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=the+last+swan+prince&type=All+Titles; 2017 zine has no period after the C in her name, 2020 webzine does, story's title page will need to be seen to determine if 2017 really doesn't have it, then there should be a merge or a variant. Her other story in that zine doesn't have a period, either, according to ISFDB. --Username (talk) 18:25, 21 November 2023 (EST)

Ormazoids

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5816628; Since PV is deceased if anyone wants to add/fix anything mentioned in my note to mod, feel free. EDIT: Seems logical UK edition would have been first for a Who book so title date should probably be 1986-00-00 unless anyone can determine exact UK date. --Username (talk) 18:56, 21 November 2023 (EST)

Patterns of the Fantastic II

https://archive.org/search?query=%22patterns+of+the+fantastic%22&sort=title; Copyright page says December 1984, title page says 1986 in roman numerals, ISFDB says May 1985. If anyone knows what's the deal here they may want to add the link where appropriate and fix dates if needed. --Username (talk) 00:22, 23 November 2023 (EST)

The title page date is on a sticker that has been applied after printing. That sticker also has "Borgo Press". So it could be Borgo was selling copies for Starmont House or they made a photographic reprint and stuck their sticker on it. May 1985 is the date Locus1 has so that might have been the source for the ISFDB record. Rtrace has secondary verified it with Clute/Nicholls and Reginald3. I will ping him to see if either of those might has some info to shed light on the situation. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:53, 23 November 2023 (EST)

Neither Reginald3 nor Clute/Nicholls mention Borgo. The former has a 1985 date while the latter has 1984. Chalker/Owings has the 1984 date. BP 300 has 1985. This is probably due to the difference between copyright and publication dates. Also from BP 300, Borgo acquired Starmont in March 1993 after having purchased Starmont's Contemporary Writers Series in 1991. If I had to guess, the sticker is likely a cancel of the Starmont publisher and perhaps the 1986 date is due to a typo (VI vs IV). With that scenario, the sticker was likely added sometime after 1993 when Borgo purchased Starmont. Chalker/Owings does note that the purchase included Starmont's back stock. Regardless, if we decided to add a new publication record for the Borgo cancel of Starmont, I don't think we can date it exactly and I'd recommend using the unknown date. Hope this helps. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 09:13, 23 November 2023 (EST)

I made the following changes:

• Updated the Starmont House editions with the stated publication date as per ISFDB standards. I also included a pub note on the secondary source dates and a statement that it was likely not out until after the stated publication date.
• Cloned an undated Borgo Press edition with a statement regarding Borgo Press buying Starmont House backstock & the uncertainty of the Roman numeral date's meaning.
• Added the contents.

-- JLaTondre (talk) 08:21, 25 November 2023 (EST)

Philip K. Dick Reader

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1365790; I cloned an 11th printing and publisher is Citadel+Kensington like 2016 but cover is same as 1997 which says publisher is Citadel Twilight; does anyone own a 1st printing who can say whether it says Twilight or if 1997 should be changed to Kensington? Twilight books had a certain bluish look about their covers and they say Twilight on the cover which this book doesn't. Per note on ISFDB Twilight ended in 2000 so it's possible it was a Twilight book and it was only mentioned inside. --Username (talk) 10:46, 24 November 2023 (EST)

ASIN

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?966441; Clicking US ASIN leads to a different magazine; I don't know if that happens often or not but I thought I'd mention it. --Username (talk) 18:07, 24 November 2023 (EST)

There are two ISFDB records sharing the same ASIN, "B0CDQWPL1Z":

• Dark Hall Press Cosmic Horror Anthology
• Savage Realms Monthly, August 2023

Their respective Edit Histories show that the 2 pubs were manually entered by the same editor on the same day. Most likely it was a copy-and-paste error. I have corrected the erroneous ASIN; thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:17, 24 November 2023 (EST)

Salt Is Not For Slaves

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=salt+is&type=All+Titles; I can't find a copy of 1931 Ghost Stories issue where it says E. W. supposedly, can confirm it's G. W. in Book of the Living Dead (added link in a PENDING edit from OL-only no-search copy). --Username (talk) 12:19, 25 November 2023 (EST)

Rustin Parr

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?36131; Title was entered in 2011, I've made 3 edits (one in each of the last 3 years), and only today noticed the title was wrong; it's Confession, not Confessions. Fixed that in a PENDING edit and while doing so noticed there are 2 foreign editions, https://archive.org/search?query=%22rustin+parr%22+stern&sort=-addeddate&and%5B%5D=year%3A%222000%22, in case anyone fluent wants to enter those. I also have an edit adding UK Boxtree 4th printing of The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier by the same author; there is a HC book club (?) edition of the Onyx edition on Archive.org but I didn't bother with that. --Username (talk) 21:29, 26 November 2023 (EST)

Khaw & Kadrey's The Dead Take the A Train

Re. this title, I propose deleting the pub dated 2022-09-27. That was the original publication date, which was pushed back a full year. I have added this detail to the notes for actual pub when it was released (2023-10-03), so the earlier pub record is now redundant. Any objections from anyone? PeteYoung (talk) 07:43, 27 November 2023 (EST)

Would it not be better to make the pub date 8888-00-00, rather than deleting the record? That way the ISBN is still in the database in case anyone else tries adding it in future? ErsatzCulture (talk) 08:36, 27 November 2023 (EST)

Yeah, that sounds sensible. Done. PeteYoung (talk) 15:49, 27 November 2023 (EST)

ayaz daryl nielsen

Are there any objections to using lowercase for Ayaz Daryl Nielsen. I have never seen him credited any other way. John Scifibones 09:01, 27 November 2023 (EST)

Hearing no objections, the change has been made. John Scifibones 10:31, 3 December 2023 (EST)

Eichner

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=m.+eichner&type=Name; While adding links and other stuff to E. Everett Evans books I noticed Eichner shows up twice as an illustrator and I assume those are the same people which would mean a variant is needed. Also, Eichner's birth date is off by 10 days from Wikipedia and most sites seem to agree it's 9, not 19, so the day may need changing. --Username (talk) 00:38, 30 November 2023 (EST)

Disabling the Synopsis field for Variant Titles

Back in April 2022 "Make This a Variant Title" 2022-04-30 was modified to move VTs' Synopsis data to their parent titles. A new cleanup report, Variant Title with Synopsis Data, was created at the same time.

The original plan was to:

• clean up any titles found by this cleanup report (1,600+ at the time)
• confirm that there were no scenarios where a VT needed to have Synopsis data
• change "Edit Title" to disable the Synopsis field for VTs

The first step was never completed, so the process stalled. I have now processed/corrected around 50 (out of 1546) affected title record. It is as we suspected. Most just needed their synopsis data to be moved to the parent titles. Some needed two synopsis entries reconciled. A few were in error, e.g. there was Notes data in the Synopsis field or vice versa. A few Synopsis values were using a language other than English, which is explicitly not allowed in Help.

Based on the above, I think it's safe to change the software to disallow entering Synopsis data for VTs. If there are no objections, I plan to work on it over the next few days. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:03, 30 November 2023 (EST)

Will this block adding a synopsis to a serial title? In at least this case, each of the serial titles is a separate novella that could justifiably have its own synopsis. Phil (talk) 21:57, 1 December 2023 (EST)

That's right, the proposed change would prevent Synopsis values from being added to SERIAL titles. I don't think it should cause significant issues since semi-standalone SERIALs are rare and could be handled the way we handled George Lowther's Superman:

• Chapters 1-2 describe Superman's planet of origin, Krypton. Chapters 3-5 deal with Clark Kent's childhood with his adoptive parents. In chapter 6, Clark goes to Metropolis and gets a job with the Daily Planet. The remaining eleven chapters deal with a mystery involving ghost ships and Nazi spies.

Ahasuerus (talk) 10:53, 2 December 2023 (EST)

That's what I thought. Hmmm. I don't think that would work in the case of Last Stand since each of the installments (Episodes) are approx. 20,000 word novellas which have differing focus characters within the pseudo-TV series framework and the summaries should be more than a couple of words each. I'm not convinced it is truly a serial anyway. Anniemod set this up initially and I've been following suit since. I could just as well see this as a series called Last Stand with the individual novellas as normal Chapbooks/Shortfiction titles. Phil (talk) 12:52, 2 December 2023 (EST)

If they have different focus characters and different plots requiring different synopses, then I agree that they sound more like linked stories than a serialization. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:09, 2 December 2023 (EST)

I'm the only PV for these. On deeper examination, I believe they are linked stories, not serials. I'm going toss a note to Annie and then convert these from serials to shortfiction, unvarianting the titles, and grouping them under the series Last Stand. Phil (talk) 07:37, 3 December 2023 (EST)

Outcome: Software has been changed

Hearing no further objections, I have changed "Edit Title" to disallow entering Synopsis data for variant titles. Template:TitleFields:Synopsis‎ has been updated as follows:

• A synopsis can only be entered for canonical titles. The software won't let you add a Synopsis to a variant title.

If you come across any issues, please let me know. All that's left is cleaning up the remaining 1400+ VTs which still have Synopsis values. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:15, 5 December 2023 (EST)

There was a minor bug in the associated cleanup report. It was causing three valid title records to appear on the report. The bug has been fixed. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:54, 6 December 2023 (EST)

Nightly cleanup reports fixed

It turns out that the recent addition of a Notes template with an apostrophe in its name -- "Achevé D’Imprimer" -- broke the automated nightly process which regenerates cleanup reports. The software was fixed a few minutes ago and everything should be back to normal tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:12, 30 November 2023 (EST)

New superseries for Glynn Stewart's Castle Federation

Would anyone object if I create a new superseries named Castle Federation Universe which would have the existing series Castle Federation as subseries #1 and Dakotan Confederacy as subseries #2? Phil (talk) 18:14, 1 December 2023 (EST)

No objection -- book covers and Goodreads reviews confirm it. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:09, 1 December 2023 (EST)

Done. Phil (talk) 21:52, 1 December 2023 (EST)

Julie Novakova/Nováková

The page for this author has "Novakova" in her name, and states uses accentless spelling of her surname for foreign publications.. However I just checked her collection and an anthology she contributed a story to, and an anthology she co-edited, and all use "Nováková". I assume these should at least be a variant, but I don't have the privileges to see who might have added that author note, in case they can shed any further light?

(Also, "foreign publications" seems a bit Anglocentric, especially in conjunction with a Czech author?) ErsatzCulture (talk) 19:38, 2 December 2023 (EST)

Ghosts of the Chit-Chat

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?869953; Contents #1, #4-7, #9, and #12 are not original; they're much older stories with at least one (Tatham) being under a different name (H. F. W.) and title ("Phonograph Bewitched"), plus a couple of authors that are not already on ISFDB (although J. K. Stephens may be James Stephens who is). If anyone owns this or knows where to get a look at the full text some fixing/merging is needed after determining what names and titles are actually used in it. --Username (talk) 21:02, 2 December 2023 (EST)

Best of John W. Campbell

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1212025; I have a PENDING edit adding Archive.org link to '76 US PB and another edit adding month to intro but the afterword has a variant with neither having a month. PB doesn't actually say afterword on that essay's title page so this may be a false variant that needs merging into one. --Username (talk) 19:26, 4 December 2023 (EST)

Best New Romantic Fantasy

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?29658; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5827168; Re: this series, I don't think #3 was ever published like a lot of announced Juno books. There's almost no info online, nobody ever entered contents, etc. I think it should get an unpublished date here. --Username (talk) 13:58, 5 December 2023 (EST)

Sanjulian

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?914; Should this be changed to Sarjulian and made a variant of his parent name? Because it's supposed to be what's on the page, not what PV thinks it should be. --Username (talk) 19:03, 5 December 2023 (EST)

Dutch Plot

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?28987; '79 Plot doesn't belong with the others. --Username (talk) 10:50, 6 December 2023 (EST)

Very Special People

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5828417; A copy of the rare 1977 horror novel The Soul of Anna Klane was uploaded to Archive.org earlier this year and I just came across it, it's a second impression so I cloned it, uploader messed up because the jacket is from an awesome book about circus people (or freaks as they were called back in the day) that anyone my age probably remembers reading or at least looking at the photos. Would anything by the author, https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL529624A/Frederick_Drimmer, qualify to be on ISFDB? --Username (talk) 20:59, 6 December 2023 (EST)

Is "Frederick Drimmer" the author of The Soul of Anna Klane? The covers say the author is Terrel Miedaner. The only one from the list of Frederick Drimmer's works that looks like it might be includable is The Body Snatchers, but it depends on what it's about. All his other works seem to be nonfiction about non-genre topics. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:33, 7 December 2023 (EST)

Other works by Miedaner that might be includable include [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181242.The_Mind_s_I The Mind's I, in which he has a story or essay (not sure which as the book contains both). It has a work by Stanislaw Lem in it. I couldn't find anything else by Miedaner that could be included. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:40, 7 December 2023 (EST)

Miedaner wrote the novel, Drimmer wrote dozens of non-fiction books including some about genre-related topics that I thought might qualify. Maybe someone will find one or two with something in them that can be entered. The novel seems to have had a lot of other editions not on ISFDB including some foreign editions with weird covers so maybe someone fluent could enter those. Also, the Mind's I book you mentioned is on Archive.org, https://archive.org/search?query=terrel+miedaner, in case you think that qualifies to be entered here. --Username (talk) 12:55, 7 December 2023 (EST)

Gary Allen

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?87741; The author of None Dare... died long before the other works on his page were written so obviously by a different Allen; he has his own Wikipedia. However, I don't think there should be a variant but rather the novel removed because it's not really a novel, it's an anti-Communist diatribe by a member of the John Birch Society that's been reprinted endlessly. --Username (talk) 13:42, 7 December 2023 (EST)

Book has been deleted. Clear nongenre, nonfiction by a different author than the speculative fiction Gary Allen. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:16, 7 December 2023 (EST)

Twice Twenty-Two

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL103175W/Twice_twenty-two?edition=key%3A/books/OL26558953M; 2 copies, one searchable and one not, searchable one has a gutter code on p. 405, "03 N", which is not in the book club edition's note about gutter codes on ISFDB. Non-searchable one has no code. So if anyone knows how to identify dates from the code they may want to enter at least the copy that has a code. --Username (talk) 11:58, 8 December 2023 (EST)

Schrecksekunden

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5830404; Does anyone recognize the cover I added? I'm almost sure I've seen it before on an English-language book; if so, artist is likely on ISFDB for that and can be added to this. --Username (talk) 09:44, 9 December 2023 (EST)

https://www.michaelwhelan.com/galleries/emergence/ and that conveniently also has From the Heart of Darkness cover. Looks like we have this. --MartyD (talk) 11:05, 9 December 2023 (EST)

The PV of the affected pub is active and a moderator, so I pointed him at this. --MartyD (talk) 11:10, 9 December 2023 (EST)

The cover of [Schrecksekunden] is correct. Regards Rudolf Rudam (talk) 05:43, 10 December 2023 (EST)

Submission approved. Cover credit added to Schrecksekunden with a publication note specifying the secondary source & new cover art record varianted to the prior one. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:19, 10 December 2023 (EST)

Aiken's World Well Lost

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?915733; I don't think Joan published a book with this title but rather it was her brother, John, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?135, so Joan's record for that book should probably be deleted. --Username (talk) 19:06, 9 December 2023 (EST)

Deleted. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:24, 10 December 2023 (EST)

Pan Mystery Walk

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?556649; Someone just uploaded a foreign cover for Baal, one of Robert R. McCammon's novels, which led me to do some edits for other of his books (there's a lot left to do even though I've done many previously). There's a $75 Subterranean Press signed limited edition of The Night Boat which has been on Archive.org since April of last year which I somehow never noticed before so I added a link to that but the Pan edition of Mystery Walk only has a 2nd printing uploaded; the question is whether the 1st printing also says Stephen Crisp on back cover instead of Steve Crisp, which is what's on ISFDB. So if anyone owns a 1st printing (I don't see anything online except 1 eBay auction where they took photos of everything EXCEPT the copyright page) and it says Stephen then that needs fixing. --Username (talk) 17:38, 11 December 2023 (EST)

International Polygonics Edition of Liars and Tyrants and People Who Turn Blue

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?20274; I've made a few edits for this before but noticed today a copy was uploaded to Archive.org earlier this year so I added a link, replaced postage stamp-sized Amazon cover with their cover, and added LCCN (their site screwed up entering the title). However, the copy has a big thick sticker obscuring the cover art credit on the back; it seems to start with Kev so probably Kevin; no other books on ISFDB from the publisher have that in the artist's name so if anyone has/can find a copy can you let us know what the artist's name is? --Username (talk) 19:51, 12 December 2023 (EST)

Brennan's Riddle

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?308567; Been doing some Joseph Payne Brennan edits and this one is odd; there's no content. Is it possible that it contains his 1964 poem "Riddle"? It's likely not a collection but a chapbook or something similar. I added cover image and FantLab ID in a PENDING edit. --Username (talk) 12:29, 13 December 2023 (EST)

Dedications in Poems

I'm holding this submission to alter the title of this poem based on this web page from the magazine's web site. My question is whether "(For Edgar Allen Poe)" should be considered as part of the subtitle, or whether that is a separate dedication that should not be included in the title field. If we go with the latter, it could be added to the notes. My recollection is that poems occasionally have "For XXX" listed in a smaller typeface under the title though usually without the parenthesis. I don't think we usually include these as part of the title field. How do other folks feel about this. If there is disagreement, we can move this to the rules and standards page. Thoughts? Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 09:50, 14 December 2023 (EST)

Personally, I wouldn't include this as part of the title. It is somewhat similar to the way some sources treat additional information, for example for series - like in The Death of a Hero (Star Wars), and it is a dedication. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:35, 14 December 2023 (EST)

Dedications are a common occurrence, I never include them in the title. If someone wishes to put then in the note section, I would not object. John Scifibones 13:25, 14 December 2023 (EST)

Hearing no differing opinions, I will reject the edit. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 15:08, 22 December 2023 (EST)

Pocket Pulse

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?269828; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?251391; Should these very old entries by the late PV be changed to Pocket Pulse as the publisher so they merge with all the many others on ISFDB? --Username (talk) 13:08, 14 December 2023 (EST)

Martha Wells / All Systems Red - Code P1

Some copies of the original tp of All Systems Red have a code "P1" underneath "First Edition: May 2017" on the copyright page. Other copies have no code; the corresponding area is blank. Does anyone know the meaning of this code? Some online booksellers says this code denotes the first printing (or first state of first printing) but this seems to be their opinion. Is there any independent, documented, verifiable evidence of its meaning? Secondly, how should this be recorded in the ISFDb? We have two records: PoD and non-PoD. Should I create a new pub record for the P1 code version or should I just add a pub note to an existing record stating that some copies have this code? Teallach (talk) 18:41, 14 December 2023 (EST)

Rich Grote

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?176753; I added, in a PENDING edit, archived site (online now is dead) richgrote.com and Behance page and wickedlocal.com article which revealed he's from New Jersey. There is a Rick Grote credit, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?112933, but his bio at various sites online says he started in 1976 while this book is from 1975. Also, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?123700, where one actually says Grote in the book while the other was not named but editor entered it from cover signature. So if anyone can say for sure that Grote or Rick Grote are Rich Grote then those can be made variants. --Username (talk) 19:42, 14 December 2023 (EST)

Ash of Stars

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?102752; I was doing a bunch of James Sallis edits recently (links to several short stories, archived link to Shores Beneath, adding a massive collection from 2007 titled Potato Tree) and noticed this book about Delany. I don't do many edits for Delany because I can't stand him personally but I'm sure many people here like his work so I'll mention that the copy on Archive.org, https://archive.org/search?query=sallis+delany, the copy on Amazon.com and the copy on Google Books all have the same ISBN on back cover with the barcode saying 53950 which means price is $39.50 but ISFDB says $42.50. Also, ISBN is for HC supposedly but archived copy looks like TP to me. So if anyone wants to add a link to the copy and fill in anything else or change anything, please feel free. --Username (talk) 08:58, 15 December 2023 (EST)

Scheduled server maintenance - 3pm 2023-12-15

The ISFDB server will be down for scheduled maintenance between 3pm and roughly 3:10pm server (EST) time on 2023-12-15 (today). Ahasuerus (talk) 13:39, 15 December 2023 (EST)

The server is back up. Thank you for your patience. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:08, 15 December 2023 (EST)

Brian Keith Evenson = Brian Evenson?

Any thoughts/objections on making Brian Keith Evenson a variant of Brian Evenson? The former has just 2 pieces of short fiction in 1986 and 1989 (both with difficult to Google titles), which slightly predates the earliest work of the latter. Howevever (a) "K." is listed as the middle initial of the legal name of "Brian Evenson" (with SFE saying this it is "Keith"), and (b) the 1989 story was published by Brigham University, which Wikipedia says is where Brian Evenson got a degree and was later employed. Evenson's site doesn't have any detailed bibliography that might help clarify those two early stories are his. ErsatzCulture (talk) 14:39, 15 December 2023 (EST)

The source given for The Leading Edge, September 1989 is FictionMags Index. Checking them, they have these as the same author. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:50, 15 December 2023 (EST)

Thanks - I've now set up variants/alternates for the author and two title records. ErsatzCulture (talk) 18:37, 17 December 2023 (EST)

Conan the Valiant

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?982255; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5836070; Added a few archived links to some of Roland Green's Conan novels, went backwards so first novel was looked at last, it already had a link added by someone last year, as can be seen in my edit above the cover is not the same as the later editions, any Ken W. Kelly experts who know his style can say if both are his work in which case art needs unmerging or if Tor mistakenly carried over Kelly's credit for the later art by someone else. --Username (talk) 21:07, 16 December 2023 (EST)

F. Piatti

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=co+piatti&type=Name; 2 credits for each, one should be parent assuming credits are correct; maybe they're all really spelled the same and someone just entered one or the other name wrong here. --Username (talk) 11:38, 17 December 2023 (EST)

Done. Thanks for this find! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 04:36, 18 December 2023 (EST)

Abridged editions?

Do we include abridged editions? I know we don't include dramatizations but the help doesn't seem to say anything about abridged editions. Thanks! Phil (talk) 15:02, 17 December 2023 (EST)

Sure we do! It's possible to add them to the general title (and add a note to the publication), or if the abridgement does alter the story in a major way to add it as a variant, or if another hand is credited for the abridgement to add it as a stand-alone title, like in this title. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 04:44, 18 December 2023 (EST)

Thanks for the clarification. I've started to run across a number of audio items that have abridged versions but haven't been sure if I should add them. Phil (talk) 07:37, 18 December 2023 (EST)

I have been told that abridgements are certainly accepted, but that they are never added as variants. How to deal properly with them was incorporated when dealing with translations, which are made variants but the difference in language makes it possible to distinguish them from name/author variations. ../Doug H (talk) 08:39, 18 December 2023 (EST)

That's certainly true for audio versions/readings: here it is quite a regular case that they are abridged, so they should just be added with a note under the respective title. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:33, 18 December 2023 (EST)

(unindent) Abridged editions are included. The FAQ says:

• If an individual story is rewritten or revised, then we create a Variant Title for it and add the nature of the changes, e.g. "expanded", "abridged" or "restored", in the Notes section. Please note that these conventions are likely to change in the foreseeable future as we beef up our software in this area.

The original Feature Request to change the software to display "relationships" between titles was created back in 2008, but it hasn't been implemented yet.

Of course, when dealing with drastically changed titles, e.g. novels reduced to excerpts or short stories expanded to novel length, we create separate title records. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:33, 19 December 2023 (EST)

To the original question - abridgements are in. I am questioning the varianting advice. I also once noted the lack of documentation on abridgements specifically. The original place I was told not to variant abridgements was in this conversation. The argument was that variants were for title / author variations or translations as a special case due to limitations in the software. Only one moderator said so, but no one contradicted, so have been going by this since. There were earlier and later discussions (I doubt I found them all) with varying degrees of agreement but no resolution.

And the FAQ reference above was answering a question about portions of a story appearing earlier in a novel that is expanded or created from a series of shorter stories. The HELP on variants says at the beginning that they are only for title and author variations, but later talks about how to deal with translations (with a link to how-to details). ../Doug H (talk) 23:50, 19 December 2023 (EST)

Help:Screen:MakeVariant says:

• Two title records are variants if they are in fact the same story, but have either a different title, or use alternate names for the author.

Translations are effectively "the same story" for our purposes, but I agree that it's not made clear in the statement above. We should probably update it. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:16, 20 December 2023 (EST)

It sounds like abridgements should not be varianted. But there's no help on how to document the relationship to the original - be it in the Notes or a linking template. ../Doug H (talk) 23:50, 19 December 2023 (EST)

I'm following this closely since most audio abridgements are significantly shorter than their unabridged brethren (should they exist for comparison). Often 2-3 hours compared to 8+ hours. The source novel is often in the 270 page range. Phil (talk) 08:57, 20 December 2023 (EST)

I would expect a version that contains only 25-33% of the original material to be considered a separate derivative work. Kind of like E. Nesbit's juvenile adaptations of William Shakespeare's works are listed as separate works with the word "(abridged)" appended to the end of the title: "A Midsummer Night's Dream (abridged)", "The Tempest (abridged)", etc. Except, of course, there would be no additional co-author. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:52, 20 December 2023 (EST)

To me, this makes the most sense. If it's significantly abridged, it should be a separate work (for example, I think the abridged audio releases of The Courtship of Princess Leia should be separate as they are only 3 hours as opposed to the unabridged version of 14 hours (finally being released in January)). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:00, 20 December 2023 (EST)

Based on this guidance, the title above has now been split into The Courtship of Princess Leia and The Courtship of Princess Leia (abridged). Phil (talk) 18:02, 20 December 2023 (EST)

Présence du Futur

Ex-editor Hauck entered some entries in this endless French series but only basic info. I came across a manual which I added as a link, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5837420, although I have no idea if it contains anything useful, then I entered several missing bits of info for Gravité à la manque from Open Library, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5837421. I then came across a title with an actual copy, but rather than stumble my way through entering info from books in a language I'm not fluent in I'm just going to list this, https://archive.org/search?query=%22une+collection+d%27inedits+au+format+de+poche%22&sin=TXT&and%5B%5D=collection%3A%22inlibrary%22, so if anyone can find anything useful to enter from those they can do so. --Username (talk) 00:34, 19 December 2023 (EST)

Crash Override

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?659223; I added archived link and a few other things in a PENDING edit to the other book by the publisher, the novel The Secret. Publisher actually has no space between the 2 words in its name so I fixed that and then was going to check online to see if it was the same for this much later book but realized this probably shouldn't be here since it's not by a known author and it really has nothing to do with genre. So should it be deleted? --Username (talk) 10:54, 19 December 2023 (EST)

I was advised some time ago and it is my understanding that any works shortlisted for a genre award (in this case a Hugo) are considered in. This exception is called out in our policy page but only for online publications. Perhaps we should be more specific. Aside from that, my recollection from reading the book in 2018 is that it is chiefly about the Gamergate event which is tightly coupled with the Sad/Rabid Puppies movements. I don't recall how much Quinn went into the latter, but if at all, it would certainly qualify this as a book about speculative fiction. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 11:51, 19 December 2023 (EST)

OK. It's PublicAffairs in Amazon look inside so I'm going to fix that so both books on ISFDB will be by the same publisher. EDIT: There's 1 archived copy which was uploaded in May, 2021 but wasn't added until January, 2023 (?!?) so I also added a link to that. --Username (talk) 12:14, 19 December 2023 (EST)

Napoleon

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?31091; I added archived links to Minstrel Boy and ...Overhead and fixed formats to TP for both; publisher was also changed to Napoleon Publishing for those 2 and ...Yard because Napoleon & Company, as explained on the copyright pages, is a parent company and Publishing is the actual imprint. The problem now is the 2 e-book Gargoyle editions don't actually show a copyright page on Amazon and, more importantly, Time Thief's beautiful Napoleon cover is nowhere online and ISBN defaults to the Dundurn Press edition's less beautiful cover. Looking at Dundurn's Wiki page they bought Napoleon in 2011 which makes sense because Blogspot page linked in Napoleon's record on ISFDB ends in February, 2011, a month before their Time Thief edition was supposedly published. So maybe someone can say whether Time Thief Napoleon edition should get an unpublished date of 8888-88-88 and whether that and the 2 e-books should have their publisher changed to Napoleon Publishing just to keep everything together. --Username (talk) 19:13, 19 December 2023 (EST)

John Allen

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?186482; Likely 3 or 4 different authors on the same page in case anyone can find info to separate some or all of them. --Username (talk) 19:32, 19 December 2023 (EST)

I split the entry into three. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:18, 20 December 2023 (EST)

Stateham Banners

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?3575; Archived copy uploaded in 2020 so I added a link in a PENDING edit; note about frontispiece is wrong as it is credited on copyright page (an editor of Canadian edition noted this correctly) so maybe one of the active editors (Willem, GlennMcG, Spacecow) can fix note so it says the same as Canadian edition. --Username (talk) 19:23, 20 December 2023 (EST)

Speedy In OZ

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?366452; Oz fans, a request. I saw a lot of Oz edits in the queue recently and discovered many of R.P. Thompson's books were reprinted in PB in the eighties. I added archived links to the 4 I found but Speedy has a missing cover and most online ones are of the weird $19.00 reprint that nobody seems to know much about; the archived cover sucks because it has 3 huge stickers on the bottom obscuring things and a cover on Biblio.com is shot too far away, has a Barbed Wire Books business card in front of it, and has some plastic holder or something at the bottom of it. So if anyone can find a clear and clean cover, can you upload it? Thanks. --Username (talk) 19:45, 21 December 2023 (EST)

The Dread

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?22179; Year and subtitle (Allen, seen on sfpoetry.com) different than other ISFDB record; poem here, https://poetrynz.net/pdf/PNZ48.pdf, says Allan. --Username (talk) 16:16, 22 December 2023 (EST)

Knock on Wood

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=0-671-04070-7+&type=ISBN; Cover says Vornholt; why is Friesner credited for the same book? EDIT: Also Witchopoly, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=0-671-02806-5&type=ISBN. --Username (talk) 17:37, 25 December 2023 (EST)

Deleted the two Friesner ones. All reliable sources show these two ISBNs as by Vornholt which matches cover. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:06, 30 December 2023 (EST)

Yesterday We Saw Mermaids

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?55736; Cover is the Tor edition but it's on the Wiki so the Pan cover would need uploading to replace it; problem is I can't find it because all eBay copies are Tor. So either it's rare or vaporware. Help, if you can. --Username (talk) 18:00, 25 December 2023 (EST)

Finding forgotten horror story

Hi, all. I hope you all had merry Christmases (if you celebrate). Someone on Goodreads is trying to find a horror story he or she read in the '70s about gentle hand-shaped creatures who live in a forest near a town or village. But then several people are found strangled with hand-shaped bruises on their throats. (Spoilers ahead.) The creatures are rounded up and killed. But the killings continue, and the townspeople realize the creatures were all shaped like left hands, while the bruises on throats are from a right hand (or vice versa). Does this story sound familiar to anyone? Thanks! —Rosab618 (talk) 01:40, 26 December 2023 (EST)

Sidgwick & Jackson Prices

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5843103; I was looking at the Science Fiction Specials (added a couple more links because a few of them were hiding on Archive.org using a title of one of the contents instead of the overall title) and also am adding links and other stuff to books from the publisher by the authors in the Specials. I've noticed their prices on the front flaps are a mess with some being old pre-decimal prices and others being stickered with decimal prices. In this Asimov case you can see a pre-decimal price under the sticker that looks like 35s to me but I can't find any copies online that show the flap. So if anyone knows what the original price was, thinks it should be cloned, etc. let us know. --Username (talk) 09:29, 27 December 2023 (EST)

Silverberg and Neverness

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:SFJuggler#The_Time_Travelers; Linking this here in case anyone else might own a copy of the Donald I. Fine edition of Neverness. Also, should we make the Silverberg thing a pub. series? There's got to be more than 2 books in it; Archive.org search isn't the most accurate and there could be books not archived that are part of the series. --Username (talk) 17:40, 27 December 2023 (EST)

I have the Donald I. Fine 1st hc edition of Zindell's Neverness. It does state "A Robert Silverberg Science Fiction Selection" on rear flap and also "RS/SF" on spine of dj. I have also discovered that Sturgeon's Godbody has the same features. Looks like a pub series to me, even if it didn't last very long and didn't have many books in it. I have Godbody so I will PV both these pubs and edit them to create and add the pub series. Teallach (talk) 18:40, 2 January 2024 (EST)

Great, thanks! A search for the exact series title on Google only finds the ISFDB record for Godbody and my message on the SFJuggler board. --Username (talk) 18:55, 2 January 2024 (EST)

Where the Southern Cross the Dog

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?326635; Does anyone own the August 2002 issue of Locus? I added cover/interior artist and intro by S. R. Tem but I can't find the titles of the stories anywhere, 3 supposedly, and it was reviewed by Edward Bryant in that issue. Maybe he mentioned them. --Username (talk) 18:05, 27 December 2023 (EST)

Siergiejew

https://readfrom.net/michael-aronovitz/364512-the_voices_in_our_heads.html; It's Marius Siergiejew in that link, no z in first name but also no "Noistromo", I checked Unlikely Entomology issue and it is Mariusz, so both should be variants assuming all the ones under Marius "Noistromo" actually have the correct name entered; now that the link above shows there's at least one with just Marius maybe that should become the parent after name is fixed and the nickname should be the variant. I added a Blogspot link to the Marius record. --Username (talk) 18:47, 29 December 2023 (EST)

Alternate name created. I would not consider that site reliable enough to change a verified pub. Unfortunately, the verifier is no longer active so we will have to wait for someone else to re-verify it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:58, 30 December 2023 (EST)

Webs of Time

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pub_history.cgi?54122; Does anyone think the replacement cover I used is better than the old one? Mod didn't agree. --Username (talk) 22:35, 29 December 2023 (EST)

Well, the overall quality (= colour likeness) seemed better with the amazon source, and I do assume that this source will be more stable than Fantlab (and presumably that's the line of thought Chris_J also tended towards). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 06:26, 30 December 2023 (EST)

I guess; anyway, my replacement cover will still be in edit history so that's something. --Username (talk) 08:53, 30 December 2023 (EST)

Fanni S.

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=fanni+s&type=Name; Probably the same person, maybe entries under the first name really don't have the special "u" or maybe editors didn't enter it that way. --Username (talk) 00:21, 30 December 2023 (EST)

The three records with Suto all had Amazon Samples available which showed they should have been Sütő. Only one was verified and that verifier is showing as not active in several years. I made the changes. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:46, 30 December 2023 (EST)

Pandora Effect

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?45062; I added Archive.org link in a PENDING edit, do any of the active PV think an August month should be added to dates as notes say? --Username (talk) 11:10, 31 December 2023 (EST)

Great Tales of Action and Adventure

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5846199; Cover question about this '67 10th printing I just added. It says Richard Powers on copyright page but Robert Shore on back, Powers credit possibly left over from earlier printings? Should Shore be entered instead? --Username (talk) 18:23, 31 December 2023 (EST)

My copy doesn't have the credit to Shore on the back, but the cover is different than the Powers original. Seems like we should have a Richard Powers (in error) created as an alias to Shore. Tom (talk) 18:43, 2 January 2024 (EST)

Through the Budgerigar

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?925198; While adding LCCN to Jones novel Transplant I noticed this book was added not long ago and while SFE mentions it and even a cover artist there seems to be no evidence of a cover online; can anyone find one? --Username (talk) 18:06, 3 January 2024 (EST)

To the Sound of Freedom II

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Community_Portal/Archive/Archive53#To_the_Sound_of_Freedom; I came across this record again today; should it get an all-8's date? --Username (talk) 18:24, 4 January 2024 (EST)

HG Wells and His Critics

https://archive.org/search?query=wells-and-his-critics; Anyone know a way to tell which of the 3 publishers these copies are from so I can add links? The USA one has no record; maybe it was never actually published by them. --Username (talk) 22:38, 5 January 2024 (EST)

Top Science Fiction

https://archive.org/search?query=pachter-josh+top&sort=-addeddate; Someone added intros to this anthology recently, I added archived link long ago, just noticed a Spanish-language edition, La crema de la ciencia ficción, was upped to Archive.org in 2013 in case anyone fluent wants to enter that. EDIT: From the same publisher is La Crema del crimen, https://archive.org/search?query=crema-del-crimen, which includes a few stories from ISFDB judging by back cover. --Username (talk) 09:40, 6 January 2024 (EST)

I will add the Spanish one. What the heck. --MartyD (talk) 13:12, 6 January 2024 (EST)

Pachter

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1914279; Josh Pachter is credited as "with" on title page of 2015 English edition on Archive.org. Should he be added as co-author? --Username (talk) 10:21, 6 January 2024 (EST)

I didn't check the Archive.org copy, but the Look Inside on Amazon shows that "with" citation, but then on the copyright page it says the English translation is copyright 2015 Dhooge and Pachter. There is also a copyright 2014 for Dhooge and the original publisher. I interpret that to mean Pachter's role was (co-?)translator. I found Pachter's bibliography page, and this listed in the "Translations" section. But just to avoid having anything be too clear, he also has this, where he talks about previously translating another Dhooge work and being asked to "collaborate on an American version" of this one. So does that mean this isn't a translation but is actually a major revision? Dunno. Given that Pachter only takes credit for translating it, I think noting him as translator and documenting the "with" citation and the copyright statements (could throw in the Pachter site references as a bonus) should be sufficient. --MartyD (talk) 13:30, 6 January 2024 (EST)

Star Gors

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5851689; I was adding links and adding/fixing other stuff in some Gor editions, mostly UK Star PB, when I noticed an artist's signature for Players of Gor, Star edition, is on the cover but ISFDB had no credit. I tried several names I thought it could be and finally got Tony Masero who, as far as I can tell, is credited exactly once on the entire net for doing this cover, an AbeBooks/Biblio seller's description, but AbeBooks show the wrong (Daw Books) cover and Biblio's scan of the right cover is much too small to see the signature clearly. So I think I got a rare one. As can be seen here, [8], there are 5 other Star editions with no cover credit; if anyone can find a signature on any of them, beat me to it and enter them yourselves. --Username (talk) 21:49, 6 January 2024 (EST)

Night Mayor Cover Art

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?474; I noticed that the cover art for the original UK HC and the US C&G HC, which is the same, is credited to 2 different artists here. It's easy to find photos of the back flap of US online which does say design by Roy Colmer but of the several eBay sellers who offer the UK none thought to show the back flap. There are many C&G Colmer design credits online so I'm thinking Kemp did the art and US just didn't credit him, only their designer. So should we make C&G artist Jon Kemp with a note about him not being credited? --Username (talk) 19:11, 10 January 2024 (EST)

I have the UK hc of Kim Newman / The Night Mayor. The rear flap of the dust jacket states: "Jacket Illustration: Jon Kemp" and "Jacket Design: Bostock & Pollitt Ltd." Teallach (talk) 18:44, 18 January 2024 (EST)

Darrah Chavey's Passing

I was saddened to read this morning of Chavey's passing in File 770 (Number 7 in the Pixel Scroll). It was always a pleasure to work with him here and he will be missed. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 06:49, 11 January 2024 (EST)

I replaced link on his page with an updated one; also, while adding a link to the issue of the zine, Aurora, where his Walton essays appeared I discovered that most issues of Aurora and its predecessor Janus are on Archive.org, he PV most (all?) of them, but some have full contents while others have nothing. I imported a few poems from Robert Frazier, Steven M. Tymon, etc. but there's a ton of other book reviews and articles and stuff for anyone who's interested. --Username (talk) 19:15, 11 January 2024 (EST)

Sad news indeed. He had a heart attack a few years ago and has been less active since then, but he was only 69, so it was unexpected. Thanks for updating his User and Talk pages. I have updated user rights on his account. Ahasuerus (talk) 23:11, 12 January 2024 (EST)

Rtrace, thanks for letting us all know. I echo your sentiments. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:47, 13 January 2024 (EST)

Barn Owl

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?4296; I made an edit for City of Hermits long ago and today added some more stuff; I think this Barn Owl is not the same as the other that published much later. Ann Jungman who wrote a few of the later ones has a Wiki page where it says she founded Barn Owl in 1999 so I think the 1983 one should get a USA or California or something added to it. Whoever wrote the note about Frances Lincoln here seems to have conflated the 2 publishers; the England location probably belongs with the later publisher. --Username (talk) 08:27, 11 January 2024 (EST)

I separated out Barn Owl Books (UK) and Barn Owl Books (USA) based on the ISBN's. I also updated the notes for Barn Owl Books (UK) based on this article. When untangling publishers, the Global Register of Publishers can be of help. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:11, 13 January 2024 (EST)

Pat Frank Title

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5856366; I added cover image long ago; just came across archived copy which was there years before my edit so I'm not sure why I didn't add it back then but I did now and also added dash in title, H-Bomb, but I noticed there's another part of the title that people can't decide on. Mhhutchins entered it with 3 dots but title page has one GIANT dot while facing page has long dash and LOC/WorldCat has comma. So what's the consensus? --Username (talk) 11:44, 11 January 2024 (EST)

Sue Robinson

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?16675; I added archived link and a few other things to the HC of Amendment; author is a respected American newsperson. She should be differed from the Australian author. 1992 story in Weird Tales may be by either of them or another person since there's no bio in that issue. Also, does anyone own Amendment PB? It has nice cover art but there's no back cover photo online where I assume the artist would be credited. I see some weird blocks in the lower right, P and another letter, maybe initials or maybe just part of the art. --Username (talk) 19:10, 11 January 2024 (EST)

I separated out The Amendment to Sue Robinson (I). The author blurb for The Amendment does not align with the bio for the more prominent newspaper reporter of the same name, nor does that person list The Amendment as one of their works on their personal or faculty website. So probably two different reporters with same name. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:55, 13 January 2024 (EST)

Peter Goodfellow

http://petergoodfellow.com/index.php/2-uncategorised/18-misc2; I added a few credits for this artist but the last one has me stumped because the 1992 edition had the same cover as the last image here, http://petergoodfellow.com/index.php/2-uncategorised/18-misc2, but that was wrong because archived copy has the same Posen cover as the later printing on ISFDB. Goodfellow cover has an M for Mammoth so was it an earlier or later edition and why can't I find the original Methuen cover anywhere? --Username (talk) 12:54, 12 January 2024 (EST)

French Swastika

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5857839; French speakers, I made my usual shaky attempt at entering a foreign-language edition but I felt a book of such fame probably deserved it; after approval if anyone cares to look it over I'm sure it can be improved. I also made a follow-up edit changing date of French variant to a year earlier to match the date of this book. Also, those Feminist Press editions, https://archive.org/search?query=swastika-night&sort=-addeddate&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22texts%22, are a mess, the one with the white cover matches the UK Lawrence & Wishart edition's cover but has the info of the '85 Feminist edition, while the other 2 with the face on the cover either a) have no price on the back and totally different back cover text but copyright page is the same or b) are a 4th printing from 2003, I think, with cover info on copyright page the '85 edition doesn't have and a missing back cover so no way to tell what was on there. If anyone cares to figure all that out. For some reason the French edition I mentioned above is in English according to Archive.org which is obviously wrong. --Username (talk) 18:59, 12 January 2024 (EST)

UK Omni

https://fantlab.ru/edition356174; I added archived links to the 6 volumes of Best of Omni and noticed FantLab has a photo of #6 with a UK price on it in case anyone knows more about that; maybe all 6 were published there but, if so, none are on ISFDB. --Username (talk) 10:23, 14 January 2024 (EST)

Tiret-Bognet

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=bognet&type=Name; same Verne illustrator, same book in different languages, one should be parent and maybe some of the art needs merging, Holmesd worked on many of these Verne books so he'd probably know. --Username (talk) 19:48, 14 January 2024 (EST)

Server maintenance 2024-01-15 at 3pm EST

The ISFDB server will be down for maintenance on 2024-01-15 (today) between 3pm and 3:10pm EST. The database and the Wiki will be unavailable. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:09, 15 January 2024 (EST)

The server is back up. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:06, 15 January 2024 (EST)

N. Katerli

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=katerli&type=Name; I found a huge (380+ pages) thread on FantLab's message boards with people who have died, many of which were never entered on ISFDB (not all genre, though, some footballers and other non-genre people are included, too) and while adding many dates and photos I came across Katerli; I added Wiki link, day of death, and photo to Nina's record but is that other spelling the same person? If so, some variant would probably be needed. --Username (talk) 12:25, 17 January 2024 (EST)

It's very possible, given how things get romanized from Eastern European languages. Perhaps one of our Eastern European language people can do a little digging? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:30, 17 January 2024 (EST)

Looking into it a bit myself, I'm 100% sure they are the same person. Working on connecting them. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:57, 17 January 2024 (EST)

Okay, everything is here, now. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:27, 17 January 2024 (EST)

Thanks for working on her stories. I have added dates and updated the author record. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:51, 17 January 2024 (EST)

Terry Venables

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5861442; Is this the famous footballer (or soccer, as we Yanks call it)? There seem to be a lot of photos of him but some of them look like a different person so just making sure this is the right guy (he wrote some novels including Bornless Keeper which is on ISFDB but online info seems to suggest he didn't actually write any of it, Gordon Williams did). --Username (talk) 12:44, 17 January 2024 (EST)

Yes, things like that do happen: there are several titles in the database for which it is doubtful if the featured prominent author did actually write them; and so, jugig from the photo and the theme of the listed title it is the Terry Venables. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 07:38, 18 January 2024 (EST)

I can confirm that the photo in your submission is indeed of the English footballer Terry Venables. Teallach (talk) 18:42, 18 January 2024 (EST)

Alchemy Magazine

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/seriesgrid.cgi?35135; Luminist.org has a lot of magazines not on Archive.org and while replacing cover and adding link to Alchemy #2 I noticed all 3 issues have a different format, TP/unknown/pulp. Those who know about such things may want to adjust those since I'm assuming they all should be the same format. --Username (talk) 01:11, 18 January 2024 (EST)

Dinotopia Digest Novels

I just made about 20 edits for this series (https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5862661 through https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5862859) and as usual with series books it's a nightmare; I think I did as much as I could with what's available (oddly, only 1 book, Survive!, didn't have its original Random House edition entered on ISFDB so I had to scrounge up a copy on Google Books to enter info from). I think only one thing may raise questions and that's this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2230051, where an editor here in 2017 entered James Gurney as cover artist but even though he's mentioned on all copyright pages because he's the creator/owner of Dinotopia it was actually Michael Welply who did all the covers. Problem is after I removed cover credit (I didn't enter Welply because while it does say that in archived 3rd printing copy there are some 1st printings of books in the series that misspelled it as Welpley and then corrected that in later printings) I noticed the nomination for best cover in the art record. So I don't know what to make of that; was Gurney nominated because he's the creator or did someone make a mistake and not nominate the real artist, Welply? --Username (talk) 12:58, 18 January 2024 (EST)

Pratchett's Eric - converting into novella?

I did a word count on a digital version of Eric, and it's around 35000 words, i.e. clearly a novella. Comments on the title and various publication records point out how unusually short it is. Locus calls the first edition a novella, but later editions a novel. I think the novella classification is correct, but am hesitant in converting such a high-profile title. Any opinions? TerokNor (talk) 08:01, 19 January 2024 (EST)

My electronic copy contains 34.2K words, so it's a novella. That said, I wonder about Locus changing its classification after the first edition. Is there any indication that later editions may have been longer? Ahasuerus (talk) 11:43, 19 January 2024 (EST)

I can find no indication of there being different editions of the text. I noticed however that after the original illustrated edition (which was billed "A Discworld Story"), it usually says "A Discworld Novel" on the covers, so Locus might have just gone with that. TerokNor (talk) 13:59, 19 January 2024 (EST)

It sounds like it's a novella whose subtitle (but not the word count) was changed in later editions. I suggest we wait for other editors to share their thoughts before we change the type from NOVEL to SHORTFICTION. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:49, 19 January 2024 (EST)

I added an Archive.org link in a PENDING edit to The Illustrated Eric, 2010 Gollancz HC, so that may help with the counting; page count said 144 but it is actually 131. --Username (talk) 12:26, 19 January 2024 (EST)

I have approved the submission that corrected the page count and updated the Note field to indicate where the corrected page count comes from. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:49, 19 January 2024 (EST)

(Chime) Not surprised, don't care, go ahead. ../Doug H (talk) 21:26, 19 January 2024 (EST)

(unindent) Hearing no objection, I have left a message on TerokNor's Talk page asking him to proceed with the proposed changes. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:38, 24 January 2024 (EST)

Thank you. I have submitted the first edit to begin the process. TerokNor (talk) 05:19, 2 February 2024 (EST)

Late Mods

I had a thought while adding FantLab ID to a PV Brian Lumley book today; is there a way to remove the necessity of adding a note to the mod about what changes you made if the mod is deceased? There have been several mod losses recently, most of whom PV countless books, so it would save time to not have to write anything if the only PV's are ones who are not going to read those notes. --Username (talk) 12:23, 19 January 2024 (EST)

I think there are two sides to this issue.

The first one is technical, i.e. whether it would be possible to modify the software to check each primary verifier's Talk page to see if it starts with the "Deceased user" template. The short answer is "Yes, it would be possible, although it would also make our core software more closely intertwined with the Wiki software, which may become a minor nuisance during the next Wiki upgrade".

The second one is functional, i.e. whether making this kind of change would be desirable. I am not sure it would. It would save some keystrokes, but there is value to having more detailed Edit History for primary verified publications even if their verifiers are no longer available. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:42, 19 January 2024 (EST)

Moll/Head Virgin Planet

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5864268; I added cover and prices but I think publisher should be changed to Wyndham, either Star or Tandem or Target which are all on ISFDB related to Wyndham, since their logo is on front and back covers, https://www.ebay.com/itm/143869122299. The other issue is the cover is the same Charles Moll art as earlier US paperbacks; Michael Head was a designer with 1 other ISFDB credit that notes say is just a photo and a Mike Head I noted in an edit earlier today as the designer for Piatkus edition of M. Bingley's Waiting Darkness did a cover which is just a photo of a fist. So where Head credit came from for Virgin Planet I don't know but I think Moll credit should replace it. --Username (talk) 23:09, 19 January 2024 (EST)

One Hundred Years of Science Fiction

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5864915; I'm guessing this Gollancz edition is rare judging by the fact there's almost no photos of the cover online. As can be seen in my edit, notes about year (probably very old and entered by the long-gone Bluesman) are obsolete now because the year is on the title page. Also, the price was entered by Mellotronman from his copy but for a 1969 UK book the pre-decimal price should be entered so that's what I did; problem is in his note to mod in edit history he says other price is 32s, not 30. So if he's still around he may want to PV and add a note about the alternate price (I'm assuming the archived copy's flap is badly framed which is why the other price is not visible) and delete year notes and add a new one saying the date is on the title page. --Username (talk) 12:31, 20 January 2024 (EST)

It doesn't help that two different printings share the same ISBN. Mine says 1970 on the front of the title page and 'second impression 1970' on the back of the same page. The price is most definitely listed on the dust jacket as '32s', an unusual way of writing 'shillings'. The more usual way would be '32/-'. Perhaps the first impression was 30s and the second 32? Mellotronman (talk) 16:55, 20 January 2024 (EST)

OK, I think it makes sense now, copy on Archive.org is '69 1st pr. with just s-price while your 1970 2nd pr. has both s-price and pounds. So after my edit is approved you may want to clone it and enter yours with new date and prices and PV it, too. --Username (talk) 19:07, 20 January 2024 (EST)

Tom Palmer

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?98449; 2 or 3 different Palmers here; novels are by the guy pictured but the art credits are by the recently deceased (2022) famous comic artist who had a still-online site, tompalmerillustration, and a Wiki page as Tom Palmer (comics); the poem, judging by the bio at the archived Aphelion link, is by another likely American Palmer. --Username (talk) 21:58, 20 January 2024 (EST)

Lone Star Law

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?80404; Anyone think this should be deleted? --Username (talk) 17:34, 21 January 2024 (EST)

The Note field says:

• Western story anthology. It may have some spec-fic stories, but otherwise, there's no reason for it to be in the database.

Have we been able to find this anthology's table of contents and determine whether any of the stories are SF? Ahasuerus (talk) 15:23, 24 January 2024 (EST)

I was able to look at the ToC via the Amazon Look Inside feature for the pb edition (ISBN 978-1982153069) and I don't see anything there that looks like SF. Phil (talk) 15:38, 24 January 2024 (EST)

Reading the editor's introductions to each story I noticed that two stories were called "eerie". After reading them, I can confirm that one is an unambiguous ghost story while the other one is an ambiguous "curse" story. I have added them to the publication record and updated Notes. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:13, 24 January 2024 (EST)

Recording plagiarized work

A couple of days ago File 770 reported (item 5) that "After the Flood" by John Kucera was plagiarised from another author. I've added a note to that title record, but I'm wondering whether anything else should be done, e.g. making it a variant? ErsatzCulture (talk) 01:36, 22 January 2024 (EST)

Unless the poem uses the same wording I'd think the only thing we can do is to add notes to the title (and likely the publications the plagiat was published in). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:32, 22 January 2024 (EST)

All three of the works "by" this author that are listed on ISFDB appear to have been plagiarized. I've added notes to the title entries as well as the publication entries. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:59, 22 January 2024 (EST)

Thanks all! ErsatzCulture (talk) 15:22, 22 January 2024 (EST)

At some point, we should probably make them variants since (in all the reports I've read) only the title were changed by the plagiarizer. Similar to this one. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:34, 22 January 2024 (EST)

I've added the variants for the two I could figure out. Still unsure who originally wrote "Summer 1993" and what the original title was. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:15, 22 January 2024 (EST)

How about this one, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2951283? --Username (talk) 16:29, 22 January 2024 (EST)

Looks like it's the same guy per a Google search that brought up this (archive), which is the same thing but under his Kucera name. Now to try to figure out who really wrote it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:06, 22 January 2024 (EST)

Some additional archive links to help us figure out all of this: Wild Word, Lothlorien Poetry Journal (archive), One Art Poetry on X, One Art Poetry, The Fictional Cafe, Sparks of Calliope (see also this page), New Reader Magazine (archive), Wendy N. Wagner loves pie on BlueSky, and I'll add more later. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:31, 22 January 2024 (EST)

(unindent) I suspect that the issue of plagiarized works is going to become harder to deal with in the near future. In the past we had to deal with two types of scenarios:

• word-for-word reprints with the title/credits changed, usually by shady publishers or self-publishers
• more elaborate schemes whose perpetrators plagiarized sections of other authors' works

The first type is fairly straightforward, but the second type is hard to catch. For example, volumes 29 and 33 in the Casca series were retroactively removed from the series over allegations of plagiarism in April-June 2013. It happened 3-5 years after their original publication even though the Casca fandom is very active. It's not something that we, bibliographers, can realistically identify on our own.

Over the last few months I have seen a number of reports of plagiarists using software to scrape Web-published stories, massage them using ChatGPT and put them on Amazon, e.g. this episode over the Christmas holidays. I suspect it's going to be a pain to deal with. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:29, 24 January 2024 (EST)

Bard II

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?291859; Wrong cover, it has price and ISBN of earlier printing, I can't find right cover, if anyone else can, can you upload it and replace this one? --Username (talk) 10:47, 22 January 2024 (EST)

Also, The First Long Ship (or Longship on some sites) which has no cover online I can find so if it exists and someone can find it that needs uploading, too. --Username (talk) 11:03, 22 January 2024 (EST)

Galactic Central Images

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5867682; The only other site I can find that has this cover is Camelot Books; I was going to upload it when I thought of checking Philsp and found it hiding there. Is the owner(s) of that site ever going to upgrade to HTTPS? Right-click and "open image in new tab" does show the image but it still would be better if that didn't have to be done. --Username (talk) 12:43, 22 January 2024 (EST)

Last I heard, the owner said that he had no plans to upgrade to HTTPS. That said, browser vendors have been making it harder to access HTTP sites, which puts pressure on site owners to upgrade. It remains to be seen how it may affect Galactic Central in the future. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:21, 24 January 2024 (EST)

German Playboy

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?757; While replacing sideways Amazon cover with better straight cover for one of these books I noticed there are 8 or 9 that don't have cover credits (last book was unpublished so likely no cover exists); since most covers in the series were originally on English-language books it's likely the missing ones were, too, so if anyone can recognize the art then artists can be entered and variants can be made. --Username (talk) 09:08, 24 January 2024 (EST)

Brian Ames Title

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?119003; I added a link to a MOTA anthology over a year ago and there's a 2002 story by Brian Ames which editors before me seemed to have trouble deciding how to enter (see extensive title edit history), eventually settling on a symbol; however, in his collection someone entered the title as "grey blob", which is what it actually looks like in the anthology. So the 2 stories are the same and should be merged but what should the title be entered as? This reminds me of that David J. Schow horror story where nobody can ever decide how to enter it and eventually settled on "scribbled graffiti" or this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?76213, but at least Oates can get away with that because most of her work is pretentious "literary" stuff, anyway. --Username (talk) 12:22, 24 January 2024 (EST)

Merged here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:39, 24 January 2024 (EST)

Duplicate finder -- NOVEL/CHAPBOOK?

The "Duplicate Finder" program, which exists in three incarnations -- one for Author pages, one for Title pages and one for Publication pages -- searches for potential duplicate titles and then lets you merge them. Its default mode of operations is "exact", which means that two (or more) titles need to have the exact same spelling as well as the same authors in order to be considered potential duplicates.

The "exact" mode also ignores unlikely title type mismatches. For example, if one title record is SHORTFICTION and another one is NOVEL, they won't be flagged as potential duplicates. However, the "exact" mode currently flags NOVEL and CHAPBOOK titles with identical titles and authors as potential duplicates. I am thinking that this is likely more harmful than useful and would like to propose that we change the behavior of the "exact" mode to skip identical NOVEL/CHAPBOOK pairs. Ideas? Ahasuerus (talk) 17:35, 24 January 2024 (EST)

I agree. As it is currently, we could accidentally merge titles incorrectly. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:40, 24 January 2024 (EST)

I also agree. --MartyD (talk) 13:21, 25 January 2024 (EST)

I use that one a lot especially when adding juvenile chapbooks to prolific authors (mainly Fixer's) - because of how Amazon has these, they rarely make it to addPubs and not having the duplicate finder highlight the previously entered novel (a lot of these are stored as novels and need conversion) makes it more likely not to see the other version on the page. So I would rather not lose it... Annie (talk) 18:43, 25 January 2024 (EST)

Let me clarify that the Duplicate Finder's "similar" mode would continue to flag NOVEL, SHORTFICTION and CHAPBOOK titles as potential duplicates after the proposed change. Would it be sufficient for Fixer-originated use cases? Ahasuerus (talk) 21:41, 25 January 2024 (EST)

But we do not have a similar mode in the pubs/titles Duplicate finder. The one I use is the one that triggers when you click on "Check for Duplicate Titles" after a Pub/Title Edit. Which I believe is "exact". If I need to go to the author page every time to run a separate similar mode check, it will add steps. Plus in some of these authors, it will highlight a lot of things which is different from the current case where it is a quick check that finds usually a single match when it does. I can make it work - but it will add to the workflow. One option may be to allow the similar as an option on pub/title duplicate finder - keep the exact as a default but allow a similar to be run with a click how we do it on author page's find duplicates? A separate click which is right there will help.

And this is not just for Fixer usecases - I've needed it when moderating as well often enough in a similar usecase - we have chapbook/novel and a new(ish) member adds the same as the other.

If the proposal is to remove it from the 'Author' exact duplicate finder only with no change for the pub/title duplicate finder, then I am fine with removing it there. But the way the proposal reads, it sounds like we are not going to show it in the default mode in either :) Annie (talk) 10:45, 26 January 2024 (EST)

Thanks for the clarification. I forgot about the fact that the versions of the Duplicate Finder software used on Publication and Title pages do not support "similar" and "aggressive" modes. If memory serves, the reason was performance -- there can be thousands of titles with "similar" spellings where "similar" is defined as an 85% overlap, the current threshold value.

It sounds like what we may need is a new Duplicate Finder mode. Something that would be the same as the "exact" mode except that it would also flag identical CHAPBOOK/NOVEL title pairs. It would be made available on all three Duplicate Finder pages.

If it sounds workable, I can look into what it would take to implement it. I suspect that it should be a fairly straightforward change, but I am not 100% sure. We'll also need to come up with an intuitive name for the new mode. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:11, 26 January 2024 (EST)

That will work for me. And if you are going to do it, we may think about throwing an anthology/collection/omnibus format mix in the same mode (same usecase essentially - especially around juveniles and novellas previously added as novels). And even poem/shortfiction? Maybe simply pull all the format discrepancy matches out from Exact (requiring a format match in it) and move them to their own type of duplicate finder mode. That will also make it less likely for someone to merge by mistake based on the standard duplicate find.Annie (talk) 12:27, 26 January 2024 (EST)

You could have "type" be an independent modifier applied to any of the three modes. Something like "Match identical types only", on by default. That would also be easy to extend to other criteria (e.g., language) in the future without having a cross product of mode choices. --MartyD (talk) 14:26, 26 January 2024 (EST)

Good point! Ahasuerus (talk) 14:43, 26 January 2024 (EST)

(unindent) After experimenting on the development server and paying closer attention when working on the Clean Authors cleanup, I think I have a better appreciation for Annie's concerns. At this point clicking "Check for Duplicate Titles" post-approval is second nature for moderators and self-approvers. When a submission adds a NOVEL publication, it's very helpful to know that a CHAPBOOK pub with the same title already exists in the database, especially if the submitter is a robot. Requiring the approving moderator to click yet another link/button would mess with the workflow.

I suppose we could change the Duplicate Finder logic to ignore CHAPBOOK/NOVEL duplicates by default, but display a yellow warning -- and a link to the more relaxed version of the Duplicate Finder -- if they exist. I am not sure it would be ideal, though. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:34, 31 January 2024 (EST)

As long as it is a link and not a need to go elsewhere or to go to the author level, that will work for me.

I'd also want to ask for the anthology/collection/omnibus and the poem/short fiction checks to be added to the chapbook/novel both for the yellow warning and the more relaxed one - both of these happen often enough to be annoying if we lose the ability to see them on the duplicate finder. Unless the plan is to leave these into the default one - in which case, we are fine. Annie (talk) 11:45, 31 January 2024 (EST)

After thinking some more about this issue, it occurs to me that there may be another way to approach this issue. Currently, most post-approval Web pages display links that let you view/edit the updated/added record or, for some submission types like Make Variant, multiple records. A few post-submission pages also link to the Duplicate Finder or other pages.

However, there is nothing preventing the post-approval software from quietly checking the status of the added/updated record(s) and displaying appropriate warnings. For example, the post-approval page for NewPubs could run the Duplicate Finder behind the scenes and then display a message like:

• The added publication record includes a title record with the same title and authors as another title record. Use the Duplicate Finder link above to see the details.

This warning message would be easy to implement and moderators would no longer have to worry about forgetting to click "Duplicate Finder" after approving NewPub submissions. Does this sound useful?

If we choose to add this warning message, we could still decide to tweak the Duplicate Finder logic later, but I think the message should be implemented first since it changes the workflow. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:53, 2 February 2024 (EST)

Moondust

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?22737; I added a whole bunch of edits for Rosemary Harris books and also found a PDF link for her early uncollected story "Hamlin" at Galactic Journey. Looking through their list of PDF's I noticed a Swann link and, thinking it would be a short story, I clicked it and it turned out to be the full original edition of his novel Moondust which has no copies at the usual places like Internet Archive or Luminist. I'm guessing there's more novels hiding in that list but for now I'll just ask if anyone owns the book and wouldn't mind transcribing the text on the last 2 pages and adding it to the record because those are missing in the PDF. I'm not sure what copyright rules are for a 50+-year-old book but I think a page or two would count as an excerpt and wouldn't bother anyone, right? --Username (talk) 11:43, 25 January 2024 (EST)

That can get complicated. Since this was first published in 1968 in the United States, and if it was published with a copyright notice, the copyright expires at the end of 2063 (meaning it becomes public domain on January 1, 2064). If it was published without a copyright notice, since it was published between 1964 and 1977, it is now in the public domain. See here for more details. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:27, 25 January 2024 (EST)

Looking at the PDF copy from the link you submitted, the copyright notice is very clear on the back of the title page. This means the copyright doesn't expire until 2064, so we shouldn't be linking to a pirated PDF copy. I rejected the link addition. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:30, 25 January 2024 (EST)

So does that mean that all the 330 or so Luminist.org PDF's currently linked on ISFDB are pirated, too? Because I don't think most of those are public domain; I would know because I'm the one who added most of the links. Has any mod in the history of this site ever gotten a request from anyone to remove a Luminist PDF? I'd be curious to know. When someone pirates something and uploads it, they love to add their name, fake as it may be, to the upload, similar to how computer game crackers decades ago loved to add their names to the crack, usually with some animation and music (which were sometimes better than those in the game itself); believe me, I could easily add hundreds of Internet Archive links to rare books right now except for the fact that the uploaders converted them to crap e-editions with removed page numbers. I don't see anything like that in Moondust so it's likely someone's personal copy they converted to a PDF; it's clearly the original paperback with page numbers and a bookstore sticker on the cover and everything. Since Swann died in 1976 and the last reprint as far as ISFDB (and WorldCat) say was in 1977 I doubt anyone would care if a PDF was linked to here; any serious collector would want a physical copy. My suggestion would be to un-reject it. Barring that, I'll just go ahead and make a note with the address of the PDF but not hot-linked so people know where it is but actually have to paste the URL into the address bar themselves in order to get it. --Username (talk) 17:47, 25 January 2024 (EST)

This guy, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?286234, runs the site. Looks legit to me; he even published a magazine of the same title. --Username (talk) 18:08, 25 January 2024 (EST)

The question about the status of Luminist-hosted PDF files is an interesting one. I should first note that I became aware of the Luminist Web site back in 2010 when we were given permission to link to Luminist-hosted images. I was under the impression that the files that they host were similar to Gutenberg-hosted "copyright-cleared" files, which is why I have been approving their addition for the last few years.

However, reading the copyright statement on the main Luminist page:

• This collection may contain copyrighted material which has not been specifically authorized for our use. The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) provides for making “fair use” copies of copyrighted materials under certain conditions, including that that the reproduction is not to be used commercially or “for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.” By accessing files linked to this site you are agreeing to abide by these restrictions. If you do not agree, do not download. If any copyright owner objects to our inclusion of their material on this web site, please do not harass our hosting providers; just contact us with the pertinent information. We will remove contested content promptly upon receipt of legitimate requests. Readers who wish to obtain a permanent copy of any item are encouraged to acquire one from a bookseller of their choice. Readers may contact us for assistance in locating copies for purchase.

I see that they expect their users to download PDF files for "private study, scholarship, or research" purposes and, apparently, not for permanent use. This relies on an interpretation of the "fair use" doctrine which seems a bit too stretchy to me, but I am not an expert in the field. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:09, 25 January 2024 (EST)

OK, sounds good to me, "private study" clearly can mean reading the book and since they're being linked at ISFDB that covers the scholarship/research part. Also, what I took to be a Galactic Journey magazine is just a few random pages from the webzine with a couple of essay links, 1 of which is movie-related and probably doesn't qualify, but there's some Hugo Award nomination so I guess they count; the first entry is totally blank and was actually entered by user "galacticjourney" himself with mods questioning on his page why he entered it since it's a webzine. The site is still running currently and has hundreds of essays, many of which would be suitable for entry here, I'm sure. --Username (talk) 18:25, 25 January 2024 (EST)

Let me clarify what I meant by "a bit too stretchy". The part of the Copyright Law that they cite -- "for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research" -- doesn't come from the "fair use" clause (Section 107 of the Copyright Act.) Instead it comes from Section 108, "Reproduction by libraries and archives". Section 108 is a lengthy section with a set of provisions that are completely different from the "fair use" provisions in Section 107. It's odd that the Luminist Web site cites Section 108 ("libraries and archives") language to support what they state is a Section 107 ("fair use") exception.

I should add that both Section 107 and Section 108 lawsuits can get complex and technical as we saw during Hachette v. Internet Archive in 2020-2023. My knowledge of these topics is very limited, but hopefully other editors may have more in-depth knowledge and/or relevant experience in this field. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:38, 25 January 2024 (EST)

I have started a Rules and Standards discussion to see if we can come up with unambiguous rules for linking to third party-hosted texts. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:50, 26 January 2024 (EST)

Reactor?!?

I was at my awful local public library printing out various articles and short stories for free which is the only positive thing about libraries these days and after my hour was up I realized I forgot to check Tor.com to see if they published any new fiction (horror only, please, no SF or fantasy) so I checked when I got home and got a scary-looking page which made me think a computer virus had finally taken hold of my laptop after not having one for many years but it turns out that Tor apparently has re-named themselves Reactor. Is anyone else aware of this? --Username (talk) 17:08, 26 January 2024 (EST)

Yes, they announced it a few weeks ago. New site, new name (to differentiate them from the Tor.com publisher), same team, same contents. All the old links to their old site should be forwarding cleanly to the new one. Annie (talk) 17:30, 26 January 2024 (EST)

And the announcement and Q&A about it. Annie (talk) 17:31, 26 January 2024 (EST)

I suspect that the part of the FAQ that is most likely to affect us is this:

• SFF literature is still the heart of what we do, and that’s our priority. We’ll just also be open to related subjects of interest, from nonfic to romantasy, pirates to gardening, and so on.

So it looks like they will have more non-genre content going forward, but they expect to remain primarily SF-oriented for the foreseeable future. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:23, 26 January 2024 (EST)

Chinese Godzilla?

https://archive.org/search?query=%E6%80%AA%E7%8D%A3%E3%82%B4%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A9&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22texts%22; If anyone knows what this is about and decides it warrants entering, thanks. --Username (talk) 18:18, 29 January 2024 (EST)

Magic German Cats

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?33710; There was a 1999 German edition under a new title, https://archive.org/details/katmagie13katten0000unse, in case anyone fluent wants to enter that. --Username (talk) 10:02, 30 January 2024 (EST)

ZOLTAR

[9]; Polish primary verifier seemed to be very active in 2012 and then nothing, they left a lot of their 300+ PV unfinished with missing info, mentioning this in case anyone fluent in Polish wants to follow up on any of them and add or fix anything. I thought of this before but remembered it today after finding a photo for Jerzy Sosnowski on FantLab and an archived copy of the anthology PL +50 which his story on ISFDB appears in. --Username (talk) 12:45, 30 January 2024 (EST)

verification email

I have tried several times to elicit a verification email but nothing has arrived. I've checked junk & trash as well. Is this simply not working? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Starman99 (talk • contribs) .

I am afraid this is a common occurrence, which we discuss in the ISFDB FAQ:

• Different email servers have different automated rules which may block email coming from certain Web sites, which makes it hard to tell what's preventing ISFDB confirmation email from being delivered to your mailbox.

• Note, however, that confirmation emails are optional as far as ISFDB is concerned. As long as you can log in, you have full access to all ISFDB features including Advanced Search, display preferences, submission creation etc.

Since you were able to post the message above, you should be all set :-) Ahasuerus (talk) 18:11, 30 January 2024 (EST)

Ace Dates

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5872024; Can someone on the long list of editors find out where someone got month from? Whoever entered many of these old PB long ago was very random about noting where they got the month, but I remember it was a checklist or something so that's likely where this one came from, too. I thought it would be obvious why I added the month since it's there throughout the contents but I guess not. --Username (talk) 23:27, 30 January 2024 (EST)

Berthon

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=theodore+le&type=Name; Space in first entry separates same essay from its appearances elsewhere; no essay title page I can find but I did see a contents page of Frankenstein File that says, um, Ted Le Berthon, https://www.ebay.com/itm/334647759422. So, if anyone can verify, a merge or variant will be needed. --Username (talk) 00:08, 31 January 2024 (EST)

I'm looking for a book title

Hello everyone, I'm looking for a book title. I read the book years ago probably in the 80s. A quick summary the world is divided by a massive mountain range. I think that the protagonist must climb the mountain range in order to become the ruler. They climb the mountain only to find a deep valley on the other side with an even higher mountain range behind it. The protagonist ultimately climbs the second mountain range where they find another land on the far side with another intelligent species. This has been driving me batty and I would appreciate it if anyone knows what this books title is and who wrote it. Thank you. —The preceding unsigned comment added by Firefighterbgrg (talk • contribs) 19:21, February 1, 2024‎

If no one here is able to help you, we have a section in our FAQ that gives several places where you can ask for help finding the book. Good luck! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:15, 2 February 2024 (EST)

Darrah Chavey

I learn via Ansible today that Darrah Chavey left this mortal coil on 6 January. He was always a learned and consistent editor to work alongside at the ISFDB... Happy trails Darrah, Rest In Peace. :( PeteYoung (talk) 10:39, 2 February 2024 (EST)

Yes, indeed. There was a brief Community Portal discussion on 2024-01-11 and Darrah's database record was updated. RIP. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:01, 2 February 2024 (EST)

Gardner F. Fox's text story in "Strange Adventures"

Earlier today a Usenet poster pointed out that Gardner F. Fox published "The Magic Maker of Rann", a text story, in the comic Strange Adventures #226. The story is lavishly illustrated, but the text works just fine even if you were to reprint it without illustrations, which is how we determine whether a story is "graphic".

The whole thing is available online, illustrations included. Should we treat Strange Adventures as a non-genre periodical and list this story? Ahasuerus (talk) 16:32, 2 February 2024 (EST)

I've entered a number of Eando Binder stories from the Lieutenant Jon Jarl of the Space Patrol series that originally appeared in Captain Marvel Adventures comic, and I entered them in exactly the manner you suggest. I believe some of these stories have been reprinted as text alone, so I felt I was on pretty safe ground. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 16:43, 2 February 2024 (EST)