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Moderator Availability (edit)

Moderator	Current Availability	Time Zone
Ahasuerus – Talk	Daily. Mostly working on automated submissions and the software.	US Eastern (UTC-5)
Alvonruff – Talk	Daily. Working on a major overhaul of the isfdb infrastructure, staged at isfdb2.org. Self-moderating only.	US Central (UTC-6)
Annie Yotova: Annie - Talk	Most days, wildly varying hours. Working mainly on Fixer and international titles but available for questions.	US Mountain/AZ (UTC-7)
Chris Jensen: Chris J - Talk	Available sometime everyday.	Pacific (UTC+12)
Desmond Warzel: Dwarzel - Talk	Most days, wildly varying hours.	US Eastern (UTC-5)
Dirk P Broer: Dirk P Broer - Talk	Self-moderating only.	Netherlands (UTC+2)
Jens: Hitspacebar - Talk	Self-moderating only.	Germany (UTC+2)
JLaTondre - Talk	Intermittent, mainly evenings.	US Eastern (UTC-5)
John: JLochhas - Talk	Intermittent, mainly evenings and weekends.	Germany (UTC+2)
Kevin Pulliam: Kpulliam - Talk	Often missing for weeks and months - Best to email	US Central (UTC-6)
Kraang - Talk	Most evenings	CDN Eastern (UTC-5)
Dominique Fournier: Linguist - Talk	Off and on most days, with occasional blackouts (like now); can help on French or other outlandish titles.	France (UTC+1)
Marc Kupper: Marc Kupper – Talk	Low but not quite zero	US Pacific (UTC-8)
MagicUnk - Talk	Intermittent. Occasionally going into an editing frenzy.	Belgium (UTC+2)
MartyD - Talk	Sporadic, but most days.	US Eastern (UTC-5)
Mhhutchins - Talk	Self-moderating only	US Eastern (UTC-5)
Nihonjoe - Talk	Weekdays. Sometimes evenings.	US Mountain (UTC-6/-7)
Pete Young: PeteYoung - Talk	Most days, although time zone frequently varies.	UK (UTC)
Ron Maas Rtrace - Talk	Most mornings and evenings.	US Eastern (UTC-5)
Rudolf: Rudam - Talk	intermittent	Germany (UTC+2)
John: Scifibones - Talk	Most days, some evenings.	US Eastern (UTC-5)
Willem Hettinga: Willem H. - Talk	Most days, unpredictable hours.	Netherlands (UTC+2)

Currently unavailable

Dcarson (Dana Carson) - Talk - Not seen since 2021-02-20 (marked inactive). US Eastern (UTC-5)

A.C. Clarke - The Last Theorem

Hi, I'm in the process of editing this 2009 printing. It contains 3 preambles and 4 postambles. Whilst looking for the pub dates for the 'ambles', I notice on the 1st printings of the hardcovers (2008-08-00) the dates of the preambles are given as 2008-07-00. Is this correct? I can't figure out where the earlier date comes from.

If those dates should be 2008-08-00, is that the date I should use in the 2009 edition, or should I use the first pub date of the 2009 edition. Seems to me I should use the 1st pub date, but I'm asking anyway.

Also, the Amazon listing herefor my 2009 print gives the pub date as 2009-03-05. The full Amazon date is commonly used on ISFDB but what's the current consensus? Thanks, Kev --BanjoKev (talk) 15:06, 4 January 2023 (EST)

The current consensus is to read the help page on dates: over here. :) If the exact date does not contradict the printed date, we use the exact date (so if the book says 2009 or March 2009, we use 2009-03-05 and source it to Amazon; if the book stays February 2009, we use 2009-02-00, even if Amazon says 2009-03-05, and we source it to the book (a note on the Amazon date is a good idea as well).

The 2008-07-00 comes probably from an older date on the original publication that was updated but whoever did it, never bothered to fix the title dates as well - if we do not have a book with a 2008-07-00 date and none is known to exist, they need adjusting... If you use the same titles, they will use the original dates. If you need to use new title records (for change of title, author or language/translator), you use the date of the first publication under that specific title/author/language (and translator). Annie (talk) 15:15, 4 January 2023 (EST)

Thanks Annie, that's the clearest explanation I've seen yet on the use of Amazon dates - much clearer than the Help page. The rest of your comment covers everything neatly! Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 15:30, 4 January 2023 (EST)

Careful with old books though - this is valid for new books only (anything pre-2005 or thereabouts is suspect as these are usually second hand records). 2009 is close to that but Amazon was up and running well by then so as long as you use the date from the proper Amazon, it is usable (UK books in Amazon.co.uk, US ones on Amazon.com and so on). Make sure the notes say both what Amazon and the book say (contradicting or not so someone who finds the record knows that for example March 2009 comes from the book and just the date is from Amazon or that just the year is from the book). And that applies for Amazon, publisher sites, contemporary reviews, blogs - any exact dates we can find that are reliable to some extent. :) Annie (talk) 15:40, 4 January 2023 (EST)

Publisher Merge updated

Post-submission pages for moderator-only Publisher Merge submissions have been updated. They now correctly display embedded HTML and properly link to third-party Web sites.

6 more post-submission pages to go, including the three heavy hitters: NewPub, EditPub and ClonePub/AddPub. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:23, 4 January 2023 (EST)

Author Merge post-submission pages improved

Post-submission pages for moderator-only Author Merge submissions have been updated. They now correctly display embedded HTML and properly link to third-party Web sites. 5 more post-submission pages to go. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:11, 5 January 2023 (EST)

corrections/additions

I have the following corrections/additions for a moderator to add (sorry, not good at this myself)

Paul Finch, Terror Tales of the Home Counties, both the tp and Ebook dates should be 2020, NOT 2021
- per the Telos webpage and Amazon
Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Music Hath Charms (2020), should be in Chapel Hollow series
- see author's intro to story, plus read this myself
Chris Mason, The Stars Fell (2021) (novel)
- this is a different Chris Mason than for all of the other entries, the anthology and stories are all by the Australian Chris Mason
- the novel is by the USA Chris Mason if you google "Chris Mason The Stars Fell Mississippi" the first entry notes him as a native of Jackson, Mississippi to confirm this
R. B. Russell, Strawberries and Cream (Gleam, 2019) this story is NOT his, this is a different Elizabeth Brown
- I emailed Ray (RB) Russell, he states that he retired his Elizabeth Brown pseudonym many years ago, all of the other Elizabeth Brown entries on the RB Russell page are correct
- this is almost certainly written by Elizabeth Brown (IV), when I look in Galaxy #3 where E Brown #!V only current isfdb listed story "Honey" was published, the intro states she has had stories published "in other Clarendon House anthologies" Gleam is a Clarendon House anthology, there is no free access to her story Gleam
Lavid Tidhar, The Drowned God’s Heresy (2020) is a Gorel story (see 2nd paragraph of story)
Liz Williams, Sungrazer (The Book of Magic, 2018) is a prequel to the Comet Weather novels
- https://milfordsfwriters.wordpress.com/2020/05/05/liz-williams-comet-weather-interview/
also her novel Embertide (NewCon Press, Jun 21, 2022) is the third novel in the Comet Weather series

Thanks for this Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

I have applied list formatting to the above to make the different items easier to follow. Thank you for identifying these. I will make the necessary changes. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:39, 8 January 2023 (EST)

All changes made. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:03, 8 January 2023 (EST)

Steve Duffy, Finding Yourself in the Dark toc

Here is the TOC for the 2021 Steve Duffy collection Finding Yourself in the Dark this can be confirmed on the Sarob Press blog: 14, March 2021 originals starred Chambers of the Heart (Supernatural Tales 40)

The Other Four O'Clock
The Last House on Mullible Street
The Villa Morozov

The Clay Party (The Werewolf Pack, 2008) No Passage Landward (Supernatural Tales 41) Even Clean Hands Can Do Damage (Supernatural Tales 30)

A Day at the Hotel Radium

Bears: A Fairy-Tale of 1958 (Little Visible Delight, 2013) The Ice Beneath Us (Uncertainties, Volume II) The Purple-Tinted Window (Supernatural Tales 21) The God of Storage Options (Supernatural Tales 42)

thank you —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

Contents added. Thank you. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:09, 8 January 2023 (EST)

Steve Duffy, Finding Yourself in the Dark story dates

My apologies, should have included the year published for the 4 stories in the Steve Duffy Finding Yourself collection listed as year unknown. Please add the year published:

Chambers of the Heart, Supernatural Tales 40, Summer 2019
No Passage Landward, Supernatural Tales 41, Autumn 2019
The Purple-Tinted Window, Supernatural Tales 21, Summer 2012
The God of Storage Options, Supernatural Tales 42, Winter 2019-2020 published in 2019

Thanks again! Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

Updated. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:35, 10 January 2023 (EST)

A Circus of Hells

I have come across a version of A Circus of Hells by Poul Anderson not in the data base. You can find it on eBay both US and UK. There are plenty of pictures. It has an ISBN of 0-451-15113-5 Also a tag of AE5113 and a price of $2.95 US and $3.95 Canada. The vendor says the book says Copyright 1970. It has, what I am told, a very rare Tim Hildebrandt cover. Not sure what to do with it since the ISBN already exists and the version in the data base says 1988 4th printing (Record 343). Goodreads shows ISBN 0-451-15113-5 being published May 1, 1970 but by ROC, it does not show a cover. ISBN Search does the same. It can be found at www.ebay.com/itm/125594585270?hash=item1d3e0548b6:g:nzUAAOSwAxZjY-Ww&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoKrbz98NB7JNkUUO05wUjzjnSkKfh8sdjNSorItVZEhok4RAdnItA8Xofzv68%2FboeRgEG3sb4QDbv64KwrHQK%2F45MQTS6wmFCZuFfAQuw8hYtJGe%2FRUqs7qsc2anHPd7H%2BPENFreXATFyewh5vdAZJMUZYBQyplW4NQdHqj%2Bx18%2BS5V%2FxuCYUMk7rGTf1cnL3GtRxtwBaEA5MmGaSpgT4B8%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR8SohoOzYQ.

www.etsy.com/listing/1318714938/a-circus-of-hells-poul-anderson-vintage?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_-books_movies_and_music-domestic_med&utm_custom1=_k_48265362d7dd14f2c35d30dea9430cc4_k_&utm_content=bing_412372832_1304021088340600_81501381743197_pla-4585100933176896:pla-4585100933176896_c__1318714938&utm_custom2=412372832&msclkid=48265362d7dd14f2c35d30dea9430cc4 Help I need guidance!!! aardvark7 (talk) 15:45, 9 January 2023 (EST)

I hate to disappoint you, but the version you found is already in the database here, only with the wrong cover illustration. The 'Copyright 1970' is for the first Signet printing, the fourth printing was published in 1988 (verified on Locus1. Also $2.95 would have been an outrageous price for 1970). The price they dare to ask ($400.00) is outrageous though, and I doubt it is so rare. There's another copy for sale on eBay here for $7.95

So the only thing to do is replace the cover illustration and add the Tim Hildebrandt credit (there's a signature at the bottom). Hope that helps. --Willem (talk) 10:24, 10 January 2023 (EST)

Yep, thats the copy I was seeing in the data base. I have a garbage version of the Hildebrandt cover, but I found a copy on Etsy for $6 and hope to have in a week or so. I will scan that cover and upload it. The cover was also used as one of the Flight of Fantasy cards put out by Tim Hildebrandt titled Demon Flight. aardvark7 (talk) 12:00, 10 January 2023 (EST)

R. B. Russell corrections

The following stories should be moved to the R. B. Russell page, again from email discussion with RB Russell (one of these stories is already on the RB Russell page) 2 stories from Ray Russell (1924-1999) Company (2009) Mathilde (2011) this should be combined with the Mathilde entry already on the R. B. Russell page

the one story under Ray B. Russell (Delicate Cutters) R. B. Russell states this is his story, does not need a separate page

Thanks again Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

Changes made. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:41, 10 January 2023 (EST)

one last Steve Duffy correction

for Steve Duffy: the duplicate entries for the story "Bears: A Fairy-Tale of 1958" need to be combined (one is "Fairy Tale" and one is "Fairy-Tale", but same story) Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

Change made. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:34, 12 January 2023 (EST)

James White / Hospital Station

I am editing and PVing Hospital Station - Ballantine fourth printing. The story on page 84 is titled "Trouble with Emily" but the Contents section of the pub record has "The Trouble with Emily" so I will correct it. This pub has been PVd twice but both PVs are inactive hence this post. Teallach (talk) 16:15, 13 January 2023 (EST)

Baxter - Voyage... the essay 'Lost Mars'

I'm trying to resolve the titling for this essay; see Baxter's Author Record # 102 - find 'lost mars'. Dirk and I agree that the 3 entries there (Afterword: Lost Mars / Afterword: Lost Mars (Voyage) / and Lost Mars) are all the same essay. A few of the pub records show PVs no longer active. What, if anything can I do to sort this? Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 13:00, 14 January 2023 (EST)

I have the UK 1st ed hc of Voyage. This pub has three PVs, all inactive (I'll get round to PVing it myself... one day). In this pub, the afterword is titled: "Afterword" [over] "Lost Mars". It starts: "In our world, Challenger was the name..." and ends: "... walked on Mars at Mangala Vallis in 1986." It is 5.75 large hc pages long. I hope this assists you in resolving whether all the afterwords are the same. Teallach (talk) 16:40, 14 January 2023 (EST)

Thanks Teallach, that's one of the four inactive PV pubs accounted for exactly. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 17:10, 14 January 2023 (EST)

I have the second printing of the HarperPrism paperback. The afterword is titled "Lost Mars", and is definitely the same as Teallach described. I made the later versions variants of the first (perhaps the title of the first appearance is wrong, but unfortunately there are no active verifiers). Result is here. Thanks for finding this! --Willem (talk) 08:32, 16 January 2023 (EST)

I think that's the best that can be done under the circumstances. Thanks for sorting that out Willem. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 21:26, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Password problems

Hi,

before Christmas I have created a new account (DieFliege) and have added new data. But unfortunately I forgot my password. I have tried to reset the password but I have received no email. And there is no chance to send an email without being logged in. So, I have created another account (Pinudeycos) to be able to send you this message. That's not good organized! Please reset my password of the account DieFliege. My email address ist zukoe@ok.de.

Regards, Erich —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pinudeycos (talk • contribs) . 15:31, 14 January 2023 (EST)

I am sorry I missed this request when it was posted a week ago. Investigating... Ahasuerus (talk) 11:43, 22 January 2023 (EST)

Here is what I have found in the database:

User account DieFliege does exist.
It has one primary verification and two submissions (5518038 - canceled and 5518327 - approved) associated with it.
The user account DieFliege has no email address associated with it. It makes recovering the password safely impossible since we have no address to send a new password to.
User account Pinudeycos is associated with the email address listed above.

Given the evidence, it is quite likely that the two accounts are indeed owned by the same person, but it's not a 100% guarantee. It would be unsafe to start resetting passwords based on circumstantial evidence.

Since "DieFliege" has only one approved submission and one primary verification, I would suggest using "Pinudeycos" from this point on. It has an email address on file, so its password can be reset if the need ever arises again. Sorry about the hassle! Ahasuerus (talk) 13:06, 22 January 2023 (EST)

Thank you, I will use my new account Pinudeycos for further additions.

R. B. Russell and Rosalie Parker additions

I have been in email contact with R. B. Russell and he appreciates the updates/corrections on his page. He has sent some requests to be added to his and Rosalie Parker's ISFDB pages if possible for R. B. Russell

If there is a category for Novellas, then Bloody Baudelaire (2009), The Dark Return of Time (2014) and The Stones Are Singing (2016) were hardback publications. (Bloody Baudelaire is listed as a chapbook, which it wasn't.)
Novels: Can we add Heaven's Hill, published by Zagava (2021)? ISBN 978-3-949341-15-1, hardback, 326 pages
Under non-fiction, can we add the following (all have fantastic content that fit the isfdb remit): (all written by R. R. Russell
- Robert Aickman, An Attempted Biography, Tartarus Press, 2021 (ISBN 978-1-912586-36-3, hardback, 396 + vi pps)
- Past Lives of Old Books, Tartarus Press, 2020. (ISBN 978-1-912586-23-3, hardback, 282 pages)
- Occult Territory: An Arthur Machen Gazetteer, Tartarus Press, 2019 (ISBN 978-1-912586-14-1, hardback, 272+xiv pages)
- Fifty Forgotten Books, And Other Stories, 2022, (ISBN 9781913505509, paperback, 256 pages)
for Rosalie Parker, under collections'
- Sparks from the Fire by Rosalie Parker, 2018, Swan River Press, collection of short stories, hardback, ISBN 978-1-78380-023-0, 40 Euros., 201 pages. here is a TOC for this collection from the Swan River website
  - “The Bronze Statuette”
  - “The Fell Race”
  - “View from a Window”
  - “Holiday Reading”
  - “Sparks from the Fire”
  - “The Birdcage”
  - “Tour Guide”
  - “Wing Man”
  - “Jetsam”
  - “Writers’ Retreat”
  - “House Party”
  - “Job Start”
  - “Productivity”
  - “Voluntary Work”
  - “Messages”
  - “Entitlement”
  - “War Games”
  - “The Attempt”
  - “Breath of Life”
  - “Acknowledgements”

also, The Old Knowledge & Other Strange Tales was reprinted as a hardback 2nd edition by Swan River Press in 2012. and again, thanks for your time on these matters Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) . 17:35, 15 January 2023 (EST)

Regarding the Bloody Baudelaire chapbook, at ISFDB we classify as CHAPBOOK any short fiction that is published by itself, with no other content. So, if a novella (as in this case) is published as a book all by itself, it is considered a CHAPBOOK title type on ISFDB. Please see this page for more details on that.

The Dark Return of Time is considered a short novel (more than 40k words), and is therefore listed here as a NOVEL title type. Same for The Stones Are Singing.

I'll see about adding the other titles you mention. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:23, 16 January 2023 (EST)

Okay, I've added Heaven's Hill, Robert Aickman: An Attempted Biography, Past Lives of Old Books, Occult Territory: An Arthur Machen Gazetteer, Fifty Forgotten Books, Sparks from the Fire, and the second edition of The Old Knowledge & Other Strange Tales. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:07, 16 January 2023 (EST)

Add story credit to my page

Please add to the page of Joseph P. Kervin:

"And Who is to Say, 'Is Redemption not Divine?'"
Shadow Dance (magazine )Number 11, February 1994.

Editor, Michelle Belanger

44 pages

$3.00

digest size

Cover: Kimberlee Traub

Thank you, Joseph P. Kervin —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Joseph P. Kervin (talk • contribs) . 20:54, 15 January 2023 (EST)

This has been done. See here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:50, 20 January 2023 (EST)

Genre help wanted

I've uploaded a shortfiction piece. It's in three files 1 here, 2 here and 3 here. Would you judge it genre or non-genre? Sorry for the poor quality.Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 00:53, 20 January 2023 (EST)

Sure, it's genre: a well-known stone-age family transported into our days it is. A nice find! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:12, 20 January 2023 (EST)

Thanks Christian for that verdict! I'll get on it. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 13:35, 20 January 2023 (EST)

Cleanup Reports

I'm working on the Cleanup Reports for a while. Now I found in the section English Titles with non-Latin characters and without Transliterated Titles several titles that apparent don't need any transliteration or whose necessity is not apparent to me. I don't mean foreign alphabets. Some titles also have apostrophes. What shall I do in this case? --Zapp (talk) 07:38, 22 January 2023 (EST)

This is a bit more complicated than it looks at first glance. Let's use Carl Sandburg's How They Bring Back the Village of Cream Puffs When the Wind Blows It Away⁠ as an example. The title looks OK, but if you pull up the raw data behind the Web page -- Control-U in most browsers -- and search for "Title:", you will find that there is a &#8288 at the end of the title. It's an invisible word joiner Unicode character, which is used to format text in documents. Similarly, P'ei Hsing's Sun K'о looks like it uses the Latin alphabet, but the last letter is actually "&#1086", the Cyrillic "o".

The proper steps to take are different depending on the scenario. When the wrong alphabet is used, e.g. a Cyrillic character instead of a Latin character as in the "Sun K'o" example above, we just need to enter the correct character and the problem will go away. On the other hand, if you come across invisible characters and uncommon Unicode punctuation (Unicode has a lot of special characters for apostrophes, spaces, etc), please post you findings here. We have a special software module which automatically converts Unicode oddities to standard punctuation and strips invisible characters at data entry time. It's not comprehensive because Unicode is huge, with thousands of supported characters, so I need to update the software every time we come across something new.

I am going to review this report later today and see what I can do to update the software. Thanks for reporting the problem! Ahasuerus (talk) 10:26, 22 January 2023 (EST)

I have added the two offending Unicode characters to the list of characters that we auto-translate and fixed the data. I've also fixed the Latin/Cyrillic confusion. Never a dull moment :-) Ahasuerus (talk) 11:42, 22 January 2023 (EST)

I see, thank You. --Zapp (talk) 15:58, 22 January 2023 (EST)

R. B. Russell and Rosalie Parker small corrections

The R. B. Russell novel Heaven's Hill entry has 2 almost identical entries, one has the page count and one has the price. These entries should be combined. This should eliminate the 2 bibliographic warnings. For the TOC for the Rosalie Parker collection Sparks from the Fire, the entry for the story "House Party" has a superfluous "11" this should be deleted. Thanks again, Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

The Heaven's Hill publication records have the note "Publisher's website uses the same ISBN for both the limited numbered edition and the limited leatherbound edition." As these are two different editions, we have separate records even though they have the same ISBN. Looking at the the publisher pages, they only list the page count for one of the editions; hence only one record has a page count.

For Sparks from the Fire, the 11 was a page sort that was missing the | symbol (which causes the number to not show). I added that. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:04, 26 January 2023 (EST)

Urania Help

I need help, information & guidance. I recently added 3 Urania Collezione issues (Pub records 931803, 931815 & 931818). However I see that if I ask the DB to call up the series publication Urania Collezione, these issues are not there (Pub. Series Record # 1632) Instead they are listed under Series Record # 29322. To me this means that either I have done something wrong, or there is something else I need to do. I originally entered these as a new collection since the others in Pub. Series Record # 1632 were also Collections. Help me Obi-Wan. aardvark7 (talk) 09:12, 25 January 2023 (EST)

You entered 'Urania Collezione' and the related #'s in the Title Data Series and Series num. You should have enter them in the Publication Data Pub series and Pub series #.

Two edits will be required to fix each publication.

Title: City - Edit the title record removing the Series and Series Number.
Publication: City - Edit the publication record and enter the information in the Pub Series and Pub Series Number.

Follow the same procedure for the other two. John Scifibones 11:06, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Title Merge problems

I cancelled this submission because when I clicked the submit merge button the result was the exact opposite of the selection I wanted to keep; keep showing as DropId [3131671]. I've tried several times with the same result. Also tried merging 4 Arthur Clarke title records (all slightly different) and KeepId turned out to be one I didn't want to keep - if all that makes sense! Any ideas what's going wrong?

Have a look at this current submission where the same thing has happened. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 19:52, 25 January 2023 (EST)

When merging, ignore the record number. Pay attention to the highlighted fields. The software will always store the resulting merge in the lowest record number. This submission is the reverse of what we want. Here is the merge for 'The Second Preamble'. I'll cancel my submission after I process yours (note: there is no pub date 2008-07-00). Does this help? I'll fix any punctuation or case problems post merge. John Scifibones 20:18, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Thanks for your answer John, but can I ask you not to fix after merge so I can see and learn from it. I did see that the 2008-07-00 didn't exist and would select the 2008-08-00. The 'lowest number' bit I wasn't aware of. I thought the retained title is the title in the green field and not the red, but looking at your Second Preamble, the title to keep, "The Second Preamble: Frederik Pohl says: (The Last Theorem)", is neither the lowest record number nor the 'green field'. I guess I'll just have to pay attention to the radio buttons and hope for the best :) Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 20:56, 25 January 2023 (EST)

In case it's useful, see How merge works in the help. --MartyD (talk) 08:56, 26 January 2023 (EST)

Absolutely on point, thanks for that Marty. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 09:07, 26 January 2023 (EST)

Now I see your confusion. "(The Last Theorem)" at the end of the titles is the disambiguation. This is unnecessary and we want to remove it! John Scifibones 21:02, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Now, that has nailed it, I have been working on so many "Introduction by Joe Schmoe (book title)" that I overlooked that there's no ambiguity with any of these Last Theorem essays. Doh! I also now understand what you meant on Pete Young's page where you referred to "The sixth title just needs a simple edit". Well, another happy customer, thanks for your help.

Submitted 5 merges and 1 edit for all "The Last Theorem" essays. I think that covers everything. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 21:49, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Magic. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 22:03, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Well done, thanks for cleaning this up. I have two more picky points; you asked me not to edit anything. We have one case violation and two missing lengths. Will you take care of them? John Scifibones 22:13, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Submitted 1 case and 2 lengths. Something's not quite right with the Serbian translation titles. The translation linkage seems to be working but not the varianting. Hints please, I'm not familiar with translations, although I note that the translations help says they have to be varianted. On the Serbian titles pages the variants are showing, but not as variants on the English titles. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 00:17, 26 January 2023 (EST)

(unindent) Kev, They are displaying correctly. Check 'My Preferences' under the 'Logged In As' navigation menu. Make sure 'Display translations on Title pages' is checked and 'Display translations on Author and Series pages:' is set to All. I don't believe this is the default setting. John Scifibones 08:28, 26 January 2023 (EST)

Great! That gives me what I was looking for. I was having problems getting the right combination of settings. Many thanks. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 08:55, 26 January 2023 (EST)

Urania Millemondi

I recently added a new series book Urania Millemondi #80 pub record 932195 How do I get Gardner Dozois to be listed as Editor?? I didn't see this option anywhere. aardvark7 (talk) 09:35, 27 January 2023 (EST)

By marking it correctly as an anthology and not as a collection. Done now: here :) A few things here though:

Look at the other Uranias and make sure this does not need to be entered as a magazine (Italian magazines are a bit... confusing). See this series and the other Urania series.
"Those Shadows Laugh as "Quelle ombre ridono" " - is the title printed like that in the magazine or is it from your source(s)? If your source, it is VERY likely that the title in the magazine is Quelle ombre ridono and the rest is just the source way to show what had been translated. If so, the titles you have are incorrect
I changed that Introduction to an essay and added the title of the book into the title as we always do with essays with common titles - all non-fiction parts on fiction books are called essays and not non-fiction.
Where is 2016-00-00 coming from for the stories? We date variants per their own first publication NOT with the date of the original story. So we need the source showing that these stories were published in Italian in these translations in 2016. Annie (talk) 10:49, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Hi Annie. I was basing it on the Urania Collezione series. I have also come across some Urania that are not here. Still looking on how they are done.

The Italian titles come from both Mondourania & Urania Mania. The Urania Mania source also gives the English Title and date. Uraniamania.com is odd in that you have to find the Book name (Urania Millemondi) then find the book number. However the web page stays the same so you can't link directly to it.

The English title as Itialian title I did based on a Urania Collezione that had been entered by someone else. I did it this for both this item and a Urania Collezione that I entered.

will do it anyway folks want, I just need guidance. There are lots of other Urania Millemondi items out there. aardvark7 (talk) 11:56, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Yeah, the titles are almost 100% not printed like that in the magazine and we should be using just the Italian titles and NOT the abomination we have now as a title (and they need varianting - I assume you are working on that, together with adding the notes on the translator in each story)?). Same with the dates - unless you have a source for the date for that story in Italian (and you need to add it as a note into the record once created), use the date of the book. Can you show me the other book where you saw this kind of titles?

I'd advise not to add another one until we sort this one out completely so you can have the correct process and add the next one with less required changes post-approval :) Annie (talk) 12:28, 27 January 2023 (EST)

I am not having any luck find that book yet. I will let you know when I do. As to varinating, from what you said, I am guessing that a book can be a variant of more than one?? Just looking, my Urania Collezione #200 looks to have a number of stories that appear elsewhere.

An easy one is my Urania Collezione #221. It has only one story Luna chiama Terra... that is a translation of High Vacuum. High Vacuum is Title Record 8422. Luna Chiama Terra... is title record 3135055. So for that record I would hit Make this title a variant. In Option 1 I would enter the parent# as 8422 and Link to existing parent, correct??

Each story gets varianted to its own parent. See this one for an example. Incidentally, this is also a good example of how we handle Urania - a magazine with a collection/anthology inside of it. The Italian magazines are... interesting. I will look again over the weekend to see if we may need to convert that to a magazine to match everything else. :) Annie (talk) 16:52, 27 January 2023 (EST)

So actually in Urania Collezione #200 I would not link this , but link to stories to their Original title parent instead, like I think I do for the above example, correct??

Yes - each title gets linked to what it is a translation of. Annie (talk) 16:52, 27 January 2023 (EST)

And I assume as I was linking these, first I would change (as an example) Trouble With Time as "Problemi di Tempo" back to Problemi di Tempo. Do this for all the stories first, then start linking (varinating) after these have their correct names.

Yep. While you are there and editing the title, add also a note with the TR template (each story needs to have one). Unless you change the titles with a Publication edit - in which case you still need Title Edit to add the translator. Annie (talk) 16:52, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Uraniamania shows all of the titles and such in the book, the page they are found on, their original title and original pub date. So the dates should come out too, correct?, as these dates don't match the date of the book.

Nope. The original date is the date of the original in whatever language it is published in, not of the translation. Translations and variants are dated based on their own publication histories. Use the date of the book for these unless you can add a note with the name of the book/magazine where the ITALIAN edition was published first. Annie (talk) 16:52, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Sorry I bounced around, I have entered 3 or 4 Urania Collezione and the one Urania Millemondi so I have work to do. Also it was only recently I found the page/title/date info on uraniamania (have to hit a tab and the site is in Italian) and I have have to update some. aardvark7 (talk) 15:10, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Comments above. Annie (talk) 16:52, 27 January 2023 (EST)

As an FYI, I entered my Urania Collezione as Collections as all of the others were that way. As far as I can tell, my Urania Millemondi #80 is the first one of this series. If you don't decide to change it to a magazine, anthology makes sence to me.

Also I was going to variant out my Urania Collezione #157, City book, but I'm confused. There are two records for City, both share a large number of covers. One is Title Record # 23788 listed as a collection and the other is Title Record # 41546 listed as short fiction. I am thinking my version goes under Title Record # 23788 as it is the collection, not just the short story City. Oh and I checked, Nither mondourania or Uraniamania breakdown City into its parts.aardvark7 (talk) 10:01, 28 January 2023 (EST)

Artist Credit on Harvest Home paperback by Thomas Tryon

The listing for the paperback edition of Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon (https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?293925) incorrectly credits Melvyn Grant as the cover artist. I know that Grant is credited as the cover artist in the book Paperbacks From Hell, but the credit is wrong. The actual artist is William Maughan. I have attached a file showing comparisons of Maughan's signature on Harvest Home and The Infernal Device with Melvyn Grant's signature from the cover of The Black Mountains by Fred Saberhagen. I have also attached images to show the difference in Maughan and Grant's art styles. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Batlash (talk • contribs) . 10:17, 27 January 2023‎ (EST)

Comparing signatures of William Maughan and Melvyn Grant

Don Erikson is the PV for that pub, and he's not currently active here. I agree with your assessment and have made the change. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:13, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Terra SF II: The Year's Best European SF / Karl-Michael Armer -> Karl-Michaël Armer

These edits https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5552335 and https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5552334 seem to be stuck. I see no messages on my talk page. Is there an issue, or a better way to approach this? --Glenn (talk) 15:53, 27 January 2023 (EST)

It looks like you are removing the title in one submission, then adding it back in the other one. Since the only difference is that you're trying to change from "Karl-Michael Armer" to "Karl-Michaël Armer" (basically adding an umlaut), both submissions need to be rejected (which I've now done). Currently, the database software doesn't distinguish between characters like "e" and "ë". That will probably change in the future once UTF-8 is fully integrated into the database, but for now we simply treat them as identical. I have modified his legal name to include the umlaut, though. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:22, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Request: merging two author pages

Hello Mods, I would like to put a request in to merge the pages for author "J.D. Scott" under "JD Scott." I can confirm they are the same author, because I am the same author (and I use "JD" without the periods). Thank you so much.

PS: I just discovered this wonderful resource this week! This is completely awesome, and I hope to contribute more soon. —The preceding unsigned comment added by Jdscott (talk • contribs) 20:18, January 31, 2023‎

I corrected the author attribution for your story in Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, May 2017. Thanks for alerting us to the error. John Scifibones 23:24, 31 January 2023 (EST)

Merging Interview and Essay in House Carfax

JLaTondre is working on House Carfax issues today which I added links to a while back; I merged Pavey's story "Boo-Hoo Forest" in a (pending) edit but got a message saying interview can't be merged with any other type (although when I tried to link that error page here it said something different, "can't merge two types" or something like that, why words changed I don't know) when I tried to merge the Joan Schramm interview/essay re: Clive Barker, so J as a mod probably knows why that is and can merge them himself. I would have asked this on his board but I get an archive page ending in 2022. --Username (talk) 12:59, 11 February 2023 (EST)

Charles de Lint / Moonheart: A Romance

Could a moderator please look at the discussions here:Philfreund and here:GlennMcG and advise me which of "Moonheart" or "Moonheart: A Romance" would be better as the canonical title. Teallach (talk) 18:47, 14 February 2023 (EST)

We don't have a policy. The spirit of "canonical" is that it's the best-known/most popular form. Especially where the subtitle is not actually any sort of title, I'd let prevalence dictate and, if neither is more prevalent, then go with the first appearance. --MartyD (talk) 08:28, 19 February 2023 (EST)

Pratchett & Gaiman / Good Omens

I am editing and PVing Good Omens
Only PV is inactive, hence this post. I propose to:
1) correct title to "Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch" as per title page
2) correct page count to 383
3) correct price to £4.99
4) upload and link cover scan
5) Import content and Coverart record
6) add explanatory pub notes about all this
Because of the different price, my original thought was to create a new pub record for a second 1992 printing. However, the pub records for later PVd Corgi printings such as this 1994 one indicate there is only one 1992 printing. I am aware that publishers' printing histories are sometimes erroneous but I think it is much more likely that the existing 1992 pub record is incorrect, particularly as the record is so skeletal and the verifier PVd it without making any edits. If I hear no objections within one week I'll proceed with the edit. However, if a moderator thinks it's better to create a new record then please let me know here. Teallach (talk) 18:58, 16 February 2023 (EST)

Changing it seems good to me. It looks like the data is just a copy of the record for the 1991 edition. As long as you're making yourself a verifier, I recommend making the changes to match your book and dropping a note about what you did on the inactive PVer's talk page. --MartyD (talk) 09:40, 17 February 2023 (EST)

Will do. Yes, I also thought the pub record looked like a copy and paste job. Thanks. Teallach (talk) 14:13, 17 February 2023 (EST)

Changing Publishers

Re: https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Rtrace#Dark_Music, is there a way a mod can do something so that when a publisher's name is changed whatever info may be in its record will stay the same? A bug fix or something, since I assume it's not supposed to happen and must be a bug? --Username (talk) 10:53, 22 February 2023 (EST)

When you edit a publication and change the name of the publisher from one thing to another, the software interprets that action as "not that publisher, this one". It removes the existing publisher link and makes a new link using the newly-supplied name, just as if you had entered the publication from scratch. It is not a change to the publisher record itself. Why the software implements that behavior is more obvious if you consider changing a publication's publisher from "Doubleday" to "Baen". You wouldn't want that to edit the "Doubleday" record's name. The software does not know your intent. So editing the publisher on the publication switches publishers. Editing the publisher record changes the details of the publisher. This same behavior is true for author credits. Adding to that, the drop-a-reference behavior is such that if the last reference to a publisher record (or author record) is removed, the now-orphan record is deleted automatically, and any information on that record is lost. --MartyD (talk) 08:44, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Atheneum publisher.

I've been having a discussion with Philfreund in regard to the publisher Atheneum. I picked up a copy of 'Ware Hawk. But there seems to be a dispute in regards to what constitues a publisher and a publication series. My copy has "A Margaret K. McElderry Book" on front flap of dustwrapper and on title page and copyright page. Also on copyright page under this is "An Argo Book" with the Argo logo on the spine. So should both "Argo Books" and "Margaret K. McElderry Book" be publication series ?--Mavmaramis (talk) 13:55, 23 February 2023 (EST)

The "A/An XXX Book" often indicates that the book is out by the XXX imprint of that publisher. Not sure what we need to do with this one but just as a note: we can only have one publication series per book so it cannot be both in the DB (we have a template to add the second in case we ever add support for multiple pub series).

PS: I'd argue that with ""A Margaret K. McElderry Book" on the title page, this should actually be in this publisher: Margaret K. McElderry / Atheneum... Annie (talk) 14:02, 23 February 2023 (EST)

There is no Publisher Series set for 'Ware Hawk. What do we do about the Argo Book logo that's also on the title page? This pub has "Margaret K. McElderry / Atheneum" as the publisher and "Argo" as the publisher series but it's also the only pub in the DB that has Argo as the publisher series. Phil (talk) 15:51, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Look at the rest of the books which should have Argo as a pub series and talk to their PVs if any? :) I'd do Argo as a pub series if I was adding the book most likely. Not all sources will have all the data so our data may be a bit fragmented - because they were missing data or because we did not copy the data over. And sometimes it requires some juggling and conversations to sort out what is a publisher, what is an imprint and what is just a pub series. Whichever way you go, document the decision (possibly even with a note about the spine/cover) in the pub series and/or publisher note.

Alternatively, if we decide that Argo is actually an imprint, we probably need a "Argo / Margaret K. McElderry / Atheneum" record. I'll do some digging to see if I can find some information about Argo in this case - Pub series and imprints can be very hard to untangle and in some cases, we do our best to guess and then just keep it consistent.

I also hope someone else who has a better idea of the publisher in these years will chime in. Annie (talk) 16:09, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Looking deeper into this, it's not even clear that the use of "An Argo Book" is correct in the existing publisher records. That phrasing only seems to be used in the LCC description. The 'Ware Hawk title page and dust cover only show a rectangle containing a capital A over the word "Argo" which would lead me to believe that the correct name would be simply "Argo". Phil (talk) 13:10, 24 February 2023 (EST)

"A/An XXX Book" should always be recorded here as just "XXX" IMO - the series/publisher is XXX, the rest is just a way to say that it is a book from that series/publisher. Even when that spelling is on a title/copyright page. Kind of how "illustarted by", "Illustrations:" and so on can prefix the artist... Annie (talk) 13:13, 24 February 2023 (EST)

(Outdent) After thinking about it, I think the correct publisher should be "Argo / Margaret K. McElderry / Atheneum". Is there any way for a moderator to change the publisher name here to that? This publisher and this publisher would need the same change for the Argo portion. Phil (talk) 15:57, 25 February 2023 (EST)

Yes, we can change the publisher name once we decide what to use. However, I think Argo should be a pub series - I cannot find any indication anywhere online that Argo was ever an imprint, let alone an imprint of an imprint. Annie (talk) 16:49, 25 February 2023 (EST)

I'm fine with that. Can you merge two publishers? "An Argo Book / Atheneum" becoming simply "Atheneum" will be the headache if not since there are currently 75 publications under that publisher. The other impacted publisher names only have 3 or 4 publications each. Phil (talk) 18:30, 25 February 2023 (EST)

Yes, publishers can be merged. Let’s give everyone else a few more days to post an opinion (and I will do more digging) and then I’ll merge or rename based on the decision. Annie (talk) 18:39, 25 February 2023 (EST)

Now that I've thought a little further, a merge won't be useful since we'll have to add Argo as a publisher series for each of those publications anyway. Phil (talk) 19:39, 25 February 2023 (EST)

I'm holding submissions to change publisher and remove pub series for this one pending a resolution here. P.S. I think it is correct as is. John Scifibones 10:44, 28 February 2023 (EST)

Also holding this edit for the same above reason. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 11:27, 28 February 2023 (EST) And the following: 1, 2, 3 and 4. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 16:50, 2 March 2023 (EST)

What a challenge it is getting Atheneum publications correct. I just looked at my PVd Susan Cooper books and found that I needed to change the publisher from "Aladdin / Atheneum" to "Aladdin / Margaret K. McElderry / Atheneum" since both are imprints and both are on the title pages. Phil (talk) 12:49, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Welcome to the glamorous world of imprints. We really need a better system to connect pieces and imprints... :) Annie (talk) 12:51, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Missing Grazer

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5587838; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?359518. I'm not sure what happened here. He does exist. --Username (talk) 20:34, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Delete images

Could someone please delete these three images - they're no longer required image1 image2 image3. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 21:57, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Deleted, John Scifibones 22:04, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Thanks John. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 22:19, 23 February 2023 (EST)

The A to Z of Zelazny

Hello ISFDB Moderators,

Thank you very much for adding the Interzone #294 listing.

About the Alexander Glass essay 'A is for Amber', could The A to Z of Zelazny be used as the title of the series? And 'A is for Amber' as the first in that series?

Although it isn't stated in the magazine, 'A is for Amber' is the first in a planned series of 26 essays ('B is for...' and 'C is for...' are in hand coming in IZ 295 and IZ 296; 'D is for...' is on its way). If it could be set up in the same way as Folded Spaces and Climbing Stories, that would be excellent. (But if you need to wait for the second to appear, I completely understand.)

Cheers,

Gareth Jelley --Interzone (talk) 13:15, 26 February 2023 (EST)

We enter the title as per the pub. As this is a verified pub, I have asked the verifier (MagicUnk) to take a look at this conversation and respond. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:54, 26 February 2023 (EST)

Done. Have a look. MagicUnk (talk) 03:07, 27 February 2023 (EST)

Thank you so much, MagicUnk. It looks great. --Interzone (talk) 06:54, 27 February 2023 (EST)

Asimov - The Caves of Steel

I've established from my copy that these two pubs are the same book: date unknown and 1971. I want to keep the latter but then in deleting the former, we lose the inactive PV. Would that be ok, and is there anything else I need to consider? Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 10:31, 25 February 2023 (EST)

How can you tell the PVed one is the same printing? If you can indeed establish that for a fact, I recommend you keep it and fix it up and delete the other one, even though the record for the un-verified one is in better starting shape. Then we don't lose the primary verification. --MartyD (talk) 06:57, 27 February 2023 (EST)

Good advice Marty, considered and implemented. Thanks. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 00:29, 1 March 2023 (EST)

La terra morente

I was looking up this title as I may have a version not on file. Is there a reason why this book is listed both as an Omnibus and as a Collection? As far as I can tell they are the exact same book, ISBN, Title, all the same. Record 1436700 Collection. Record 1436698 Omnibus. aardvark7 (talk) 08:16, 26 February 2023 (EST)

This has an explanation. They are not two records for the same book. Rather, the Omnibus contains the Collection. Both happen to have the same name. Unfortunately, the "Publications" display shows you publications using the title and publications in which the title appeared. If you look closely at this, you will see the one publication listed is not a publication of the standalone collection, but rather is the omnibus (which contains this collection). --MartyD (talk) 06:45, 27 February 2023 (EST)

OK I see, sounds weird but no problem. Thanks for the info. aardvark7 (talk) 09:15, 27 February 2023 (EST)

Urania

Dear Mods, can we come to an agreement on how to treat all of the Urania titles. I come across a number that are not in the data base but I get conflicted on how to handle them. The Urania (collana) look to be all Type Mag. Then we go to Urania Collezione. Here we have types novel, omni, Coll & Anth. Each of these seem to be handled differently when entered. Classici Urania we have novel, Coll, anth and chap. I have entered one item from a new series (to the data base), Urania Millemondi. I entered it as an anth, but now I am thinking may be these should all be mags. I have pending Urania Millemondi 79, which I also have as an anth. It has two full length novels in it. This is all very confusing!!! aardvark7 (talk) 12:01, 27 February 2023 (EST)

Our Italian records are designed based on the input from an Italian editor who is not among us anymore. Thus the almost weird way we had recorded the Urania-s in there - apparently they are considered magazines in Italy so even if they look more like a publication series, they were added as magazines. Series that were added after we lost our Italian colleague had been entered based on the understanding of whoever was entering them and not always cleaned up or cleared by someone who actually looked up the history.

The basic rule is that inside of a single pub series/magazine, we should stay consistent for as long as the format and so on stay consistent. So future Uranias always get added as magazines.

For Italian books, I tend to check Fantascienza and see how they recorded the thing (that's where you get a NILF number from as well for the external IDs). Urania is here. Millemondi. Classici Urania. To me they all look the same so I would argue that if we had decided one to be a magazine, they all should be - and as Urania is established as a magazine, switching to a pub series for all of these does not make sense to me. Why we have Classici Urania as a pub series and not as a magazine is unclear... So for a new series? Pick a way. I favor magazines for these but going for pub series also makes sense.

So as you can see, clear as mud. It is indeed confusing :) Welcome to international publishing... Annie (talk) 17:18, 2 March 2023 (EST)

If memory serves, the first person to work on Urania was Ernesto Vegetti who died of a sudden heart attack in January 2010. He was an extremely knowledgeable bibliographer, but we were still hashing things out in the late 2000s and I am not sure we took full advantage of his background.

The next person to work on Urania was User:Pips55, who was active in the early 2010s but hasn't been seen since 2013. I don't recall what, if any, changes he made to the way Urania was organized. We changed our software to add support for publication series right around that time (2012-2013), so it's possible that he was just taking advantage of a shiny new toy and experimenting with it.

Spot checking magazine issues and pub series collections, I think the choice of the magazine format makes sense for the main series. Consider the very first issue, I Romanzi di Urania #1. It contains a complete Italian translation of one novel and the first part of a multi-issue serialization of another novel. Issue 10 contains 5 stories/novellas and the 4th part of a 4-part serial.

On the other hand, "publication series" makes more sense for Classici Urania, which generally published complete books: novels (mostly translations), some translated collections and a few translated anthologies. I don't think they included any serializations. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:39, 2 March 2023 (EST)

Something else to consider when dealing with Urania is that several translated novels which were originally published in the Urania magazine (and thus entered as serial) were later published as part of, e.g., the Urania Millemondi, or Urania Collezioni series as novel. While (presumably) the same translation, thus the same work, these title records are listed as two separate translations. See The Einstein Intersection, translated as 'Einstein perduto', or Miracle Visitors, translated as 'La doppia faccia degli UFO', for example.

By the way, can someone remind me again why we can't have NOVEL-type title records in a magazine? (is this something to consider and start a rules discussion?) MagicUnk (talk) 08:43, 3 March 2023 (EST)

There is a fair amount of history there -- see Help:Use of the SERIAL type for the gory details. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:19, 3 March 2023 (EST)

I tend to think that the classic Urania series was added erroneously as a magazine series: they may appear as such judging on outer appearance and on the regular schedule of appearance, but so does the German Terra series and other likewise examples. I do own a few of the Urania publications and from those and judging by the general contents (publishing whole novels, anthologies and collections) and by the title pages where exactly those novels, anthologies and collections are stated (and not a magazine), Urania does appear as a publication series. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:17, 5 March 2023 (EST)

Peace Talks audiobook conundrum

There's conflicting information for the audiobook edition of Peace Talks by Jim Butcher. There's an existing record here for the UK edition of the audiobook with a UK price and the publisher shown as Hachette Audio UK. There is also the same audiobook shown on Amazon.com which has the same date with a US price but the publisher is Penguin Audio. The cover art is different but the narrator and length are the same. Both have the same ISBN / Audible ASIN. MagicUnk is holding this submission until we can resolve this issue but we are confused as to the best path forward (discussion here). Suggestions would be appreciated. Phil (talk) 08:18, 28 February 2023 (EST)

Maybe the ISBN on the Hachette one is a mistake. On Hachette UK, the audiobook ISBN is 9781405532488 (ASIN B086C8ZZGF on Amazon.com). On Penguin Audio, the ISBN for that is 9780593290705; you have to go to Buy to see it (ASIN B082YH6QL4 on Amazon.com). --MartyD (talk) 10:36, 28 February 2023 (EST)

I found the problem. The Audible ASIN for the UK edition is wrong. It should be 1405532483 which yields an ISBN of 9781405532488. Right now the UK edition Audible ASIN is the same as the one for the US edition yielding the same ISBN. Since the UK record has no PV, I've just submitted this edit of the UK record. My held submission here should now be OK. Phil (talk) 17:52, 28 February 2023 (EST)

That happens occasionally when there are two separate audiobooks for the same book (as opposed to the same audiobook just carrying the same ASINs but the same ISBN and publisher across markets) and someone either looks at the wrong Audible or clicks on the wrong edition of the one they are looking at. Same happens with ebooks now and again, especially now that Amazon does not show the ISBN cleanly. So I've learned to look and chase down the possibility for the record being a mix between two separate books. Annie (talk) 18:23, 28 February 2023 (EST)

Title Dates Before First Publication Date

Can I draw attention to # 142 on this report. The cover art date is correct in the 2019 printing; the artwork was 1st published on the 2018 printing. Tag Ignore? Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 17:47, 7 March 2023 (EST)

The correct date for this title record is 2019-04-04. The date the artwork is first credited to blacksheep-uk.com in the database. The canonical title caries the date of the first appearance. It only get tricky when the first appearance is credited to an alternate name, but that is not the case here. Please submit the correction and I will approve it.

Referring to an exception report by item number will rarely be correct. It changes when run but also as items are corrected. The title in question is #102 as I write this. John Scifibones 18:30, 7 March 2023 (EST)

Looks like a PV changed the artist attribution for the 2018 printing,now 2018-08-23 is the correct date for the variant. John Scifibones 17:24, 8 March 2023 (EST)

Delete False Variant Message

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/edit/deletetitle.cgi?1369275; 14th Armada Ghost Book link to copy in a pending edit of mine, it's Smeaton in there, too, tried to delete false variant (so many false variants on this site; who entered them and why?) and got the above message, someone delete after my copy link edit is approved (assuming it doesn't get deleted automatically), thanks. --Username (talk) 11:20, 14 March 2023 (EDT)

It seems there's only the Smeaton version existing. So these two titles should have been merged in the first place. Please do so in a follow-up. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:46, 14 March 2023 (EDT)

The Dragon Hunter and the Mage

The above title is not in the db. It is an independently published book by a new author. Everything is cut and dry EXCEPT there is two editions of this book with two different ISBN numbers. Still nothing new but here is where I am having problems. Goodreads and Amazon has the 2nd edition as being published on April 25, 2016. Goodreads gives the date for the 1st edition only as 2016. World Cat only gives 2016 for both editions. OceanofPDF gives the 1st Edition date as April 25, 2015 and Open Library gives it as May 10, 2016. A number of the above sources show the cover of the 1st edition, which is the same as the 2nd edition. So for both editions I have the ISBN, page #, cover artist and publisher. Missing the price for the 1st edition. But how to enter this is driving me nuts. There is an Audio and Kindle version and in 2020, a French version, plus a sequel. But I need to get this correctly started before I can proceed with the rest. HELP!!! aardvark7 (talk) 15:20, 14 March 2023 (EDT)

Self-published books can be a pain that way :) I think you are overthinking it a bit - just add what you know. If I was adding based on the information above, I'd add the first edition with the OceanofPDF date and mention in the notes this is the source of the date and add the dates according to the other sources in the notes and then once approved, clone for the second with the Goodreads/Amazon date and all the other data you have. Open Library showing the first edition after the second is a bit... amusing. So if you add the ID from it, make sure to note the discrepancy in dates. We document what we find - as long as you list your sources and add notes on which piece of information comes from where, we can then update if we can find more information. Let me know if something does not make sense. Annie (talk) 16:18, 14 March 2023 (EDT)

S&S

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Markwood#Spaceships_.26_Spells; In case this guy doesn't respond I'd like a mod to see this because there's some confusion with the dates being those of the library binding edition, which has no month, instead of the trade edition, November, plus there's confusion because note says there's ISBN on back cover but I don't see any and it has trade price but has those brown edges which I, possibly in error, think means library binding. Plus the whole title being entered wrong thing. PV of binding edition is gone so no help there. --Username (talk) 16:22, 24 March 2023 (EDT)

The Odin Chronicles

I'm in the process of indexing speculative material in the general webzine, Page & Spine: Fiction Showcase, and I've been wondering how best to index a science fiction anthology first published on the webzine in serial format. However, the 23 short stories making up the anthology were published on a day-to-day basis in January/February 2022 and this sets them apart from each weekly issue of Page & Spine.

Confusingly, the first episode to be published was number 21 (on 29 January 2022) and appears on a web page that scrolls up from this episode to number 18 (published on 1 February 2022) at the top of the page. Clicking the forward button at the end of that page brings you to episodes 8-17. These can be read in numerical order by scrolling from the top of the page to the bottom. However, these episodes were also published in reverse chronological order with episode 17 coming out on 2 February 2022 and episode 8 appearing on 11 February 2022. The final two episodes (22-23) as well as the first 7, and the brief introduction, all appear on the one page. Episode 7 was published on 12 February and episodes 6-1 were published between 13 February and 18 February, with the introduction appearing on 19 February. Episodes 23 and 22 were published on 5 May and 6 May 2022, respectively. Each story can be read on its own dedicated web page on the webzine (e.g., the Introduction can be found here).

I was thinking initially that each story could be treated as a special issue of the magazine but I think that it would be best to index these stories as a serialised anthology that happens to be published on the site of the webzine. I don't know as yet if the anthology has been printed but the serialised version in Page & Spine would constitute the first edition and so by indexing the stories as an anthology, rather than as part of a magazine, this would facilitate merging editions.

But what is best practice here? Treat the stories as part of an anthology or as part of a serial in a magazine? And if it should be treated as an anthology, is the publisher the webzine or is it the webzine's publisher (N. K. Wagner)?--Explorer1000 (talk) 13:34, 27 March 2023 (EDT)

If they weren't published as part of a distinct issue, their first publication (for ISFDB's purposes) was the anthology. You can note on the title page for each story when it was originally published individually and include a link to the publication on the webzine site. That's how I'd enter it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:28, 27 March 2023 (EDT)

Thanks Joe. I can see how that would work. However, there are complexities. Firstly, though expected to come out in December 2022, according to Jonathan Sherwood, the print book has not, as far as I can ascertain, been published yet. Secondly, Page & Spine is due to be taken offline permanently in about five weeks' time, which means these early versions of the stories will disappear, although it is possible that the Internet Archive will preserve them. Thirdly, (and I only discovered this earlier today) the 23 stories, plus seven more, were published between July 8th and September 14th 2022 on the Stupefying Stories Web site. Again, the stories are not part of individual issues of the Stupefying Stories magazine. Should the print version of the anthology never come out, how should these stories be treated? Should the more comprehensive, thirty-story, collection on Stupefying Stories be considered canonical with the less complete collection on Page & Spine being merely noted in each story's publication note?--Explorer1000 (talk) 13:20, 28 March 2023 (EDT)

The stories in this series have all been archived on Archive.today:

Introduction

"Weber's Place" by Pete Wood
"Amid These Dancing Rocks at Once and Ever" by Paul Celmer
"The Song of Akinyi" by Jonathan Sherwood
"The Two Fathers" by Peter Wood
"Where’re You From?" by Roxana Arama
"Delayed Messages" by Carol Scheina
"Picnic" by Pete Wood
"A Friend for the Machinist" by Jenna Hanchey
"Sloane Dreams of Being" by Travis Burnham
"The Odinian Job" by Gustavo Bondoni
"The Apple" by Pete Wood
"Twelve" by Roxana Arama
"Would Scarcely Know We Were Gone" by Jonathan Sherwood
"Love and Groceries" by Carol Scheina
"No Place" by Pete Wood
"Dreams of Another World" by Jenna Hanchey
"A Question of Timelines" by Travis Burnham
"Memory Vault" by Gustavo Bondoni
"The One Who Walks Out" by Carol Scheina
"Faith and Good Works" by Pete Wood
"Hunt" by Jonathan Sherwood
"Friends Like Binary Stars" by Travis Burnham
"The Disappearing Cat Trick" by Carol Scheina

If we want to make sure we can find information on the stories for the rest of the site, it may be good to go through and archive all of them by the deadline in May. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:21, 29 March 2023 (EDT)

Though, looking through more of the stories on the site, not all are genre. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 10:40, 30 March 2023 (EDT)

Thanks, Joe, for adding those stories to the archive as that will at least preserve them for future indexing if the print volume doesn't come about. Most of the webzine's content is non-genre, but its Outta This World section, which lasted from May 2020 to May 2022 and included speculative stories and poetry, has now been indexed. I also indexed a few speculative poems and stories that appeared in the Crumbs, Kids Stuff, End Notes and The Itch sections from January 2020 to May 2021 (and the Stories and Poems sections for January-May, 2020) as I worked on the Outta This World material. I also already checked through the Kids Stuff section though 2021 and 2022, and I'm currently working my through the Crumbs, End Notes and The Itch sections for May 2021 to May 2022. In the meantime, I've also covered a few speculative items from 2019 (identified from surviving author pages as most of the individual and sectional story/poem/essay archives dating from prior to 2020 have already been deleted). I think the best way of ensuring what remains is to submit the individual author pages to the Internet Archive and the monthly archives for the surviving sections. I'll do what I can about that. Greg--Explorer1000 (talk) 08:29, 31 March 2023 (EDT)

Technically speaking, you can add the non-genre ones in the notes. Non-genre stories are added here as titles under very limited circumstances (when published in a speculative magazine (and sometimes a book but there are some differences) or when written by a over the threshold author). However, when adding a non-genre book/magazine (where we only index the genre contents), noone will stop you from adding the non-genre contents in the notes of either the publication or the title (publication only for -zines as the title record is usually the yearly roll-up. That also has the added benefit of people seeing the complete contents, people not trying to add the rest (because we are missing them...) AND if one of them ends up being genre, it is easier to identify later and know it used to be there. Now, that does not mean to go and index everything but in mixed publications, it does not hurt. So up to you. :) Annie (talk) 13:35, 31 March 2023 (EDT)

Hi Annie. Sorry for not responding sooner. The Rules of Acquisition are quite vague about what is meant by authors "over a certain threshold". If the rule was more clearly defined, e.g. a writer who has written a (specified) minimum number of speculative works, it would be so much easier to decide whether or not to index a non-genre piece. But the rule to exclude non-genre material from a general magazine/webzine as opposed to a speculative one is quite straightforward. However, your point about listing non-genre contents in the publication note is reasonable - I've done this before with respect to reviews of fanzines in Tightbeam - but this would add a lot of extra work with respect to Page & Spine! What I could do is note any non-genre stories or poems written by known speculative writers. For example, I did see a non-genre short story by Robert Runté and a couple of poems by Denny E. Marshall that could be added to the note for the issues concerned. In any case, I fear that a lot of earlier issues will not be possible to cover as I don't think there's enough time to add them all (or rather the surviving author pages for all of those issues) in time before Page & Spine is taken offline in about four weeks. Greg--Explorer1000 (talk) 13:00, 5 April 2023 (EDT)

Well, some of the discussion above is now moot as Page & Spine has been taken offline as of this morning, a month earlier than expected. Some parts of it were indexed in 2017 and 2018 by the Internet Archive, to which has been added more material in the last week or so. Some additional cached portions might be found on Bing and Google. However, I'd say that a lot of material - especially in the years 2012-2016 - has been lost. In relative terms, the amount of speculative stories and poems published in the early years might not be very high at least. What I can say has been indexed and checked are as follows:

The Outta This World section, which lasted from May 2020 to May 2022, has been indexed in its entirety.

The Crumbs section (for short pieces like drabbles and short-form poetry) has been examined in its entirety for the period January 2020-May 2022. Any speculative material in the Crumbs section has been indexed for this period.

The Kid Stuff section has been checked for January 2020-May 2022 with a small number of items indexed.

The Itch section (really a single-author column), which paralleled the existence of the Outta This World Section, was checked for May 2020-May 2021 and this produced three speculative fiction stories. It's possible that the remaining twelve months included a similarly small amount of speculative material.

The End Notes section (normally essays) was checked for January 2020-early May 2021. I can still check the rest of May 2021 as the page concerned is still open on my screen.

The Stories and Poems sections were checked for January to early May 2020, when the Outta This World section was introduced. I did find one speculative story incidentally in the Stories section after this date. It's possible that some other speculative material found its way into these sections, which would have been dominated by general fiction (including crime, cosy mysteries, romance, westerns, etc.). Speculative material would certainly have appeared in these two sections from time to time between 2012 and early 2020.

The Reading Lamp was checked for January 2020 to May 2020, when it came to an end. This was mainly for essays but included stories occasionally. It was replaced by the End Notes section in May 2020.

The individual stories appearing (up to chapter 23) in The Odin Chronicles were saved to the Internet Archive by Nihonjoe (as indicated above). I'd also saved the pages of the section containing the stories.

I indexed a few items for 2019. These I'd found in author pages where those authors had contributed stories or poems in 2020-2022. I had hoped to cover more before the webzine was taken offline. It might be possible to find more speculative material for 2019 in whatever the Internet Archive has for that year - I did attempt to save some of it.

Hopefully, some additional speculative material will be found on the saved portions of Page & Spine going forward. The main thing is that the dedicated speculative section - Outta This World - has been fully indexed at least. Greg--Explorer1000 (talk) 07:55, 6 April 2023 (EDT)

Image delete

Could someone delete the older image here please. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 21:35, 29 March 2023 (EDT)

Done Annie (talk) 22:04, 29 March 2023 (EDT)

Trembling with Fear: Year 2

When I filled out the contents of this print anthology and exported same to the entry for the kindle version over a year ago, I forgot to differentiate the three preliminary uncredited essays ("Horror Tree", "Trembling with Fear", and 'Foreword'), and when I noticed my error it was too late for me to fix it as the contents lists are now grey (meaning "titles appearing in multiple publications; cannot be edited here"). Is this something that can be fixed by a moderator or admin? Greg--Explorer1000 (talk) 12:19, 5 April 2023 (EDT)

All that means is the titles are shared among multiple publications. To avoid the mistake of making a change that applies only to the publication being edited and having it appear unexpectedly in other publications, the software forces you to make a deliberate choice. Where you want the change to apply everywhere, click on the link to each title and then edit that title record. After the submission is accepted, both publications will show the change. Just for future reference: If you want to make a change that applies to only a specific publication, you would add a new content record with the corrected title and remove the shared one; you could make one a variant of the other, if appropriate. --MartyD (talk) 13:09, 5 April 2023 (EDT)

Oh, I see! Thanks for explaining that, MartyD! :) I've edited the titles for the essays concerned in the print anthology, so from what you say, they should change automatically for the Kindle version once these edits have been approved. Greg--Explorer1000 (talk) 14:54, 5 April 2023 (EDT)

Gateway - image delete

Could someone please delete this image - it has differences to the actual printing. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 13:16, 12 April 2023 (EDT)

As requested. John Scifibones 13:40, 12 April 2023 (EDT)

Thanks! Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 23:19, 12 April 2023 (EDT)

Submissions taking really long

Hi, my apologies if this is not the right place to ask, I'm fairly new here. I made several submissons and edits in the past few months, and they all were accepted/corrected quickly, but a bulk of my last edits/suggestions are taking longer than usual to be approved/rejected. My pending edits page says to check my talk page if they're taking too long, but I found nothing new there. Is this normal or is there something wrong?

Thanks! Alittlebook (talk) 14:19, 12 April 2023 (EDT)

Nothing wrong - just a normal bottleneck that happens sometimes. Moderators are human and have real lives and jobs (and their own projects in the DB) - so sometimes things get slowed down a bit in the queue. If the problem is with your submissions, someone will come over to your page and talk to you with questions and ideas on how to improve them. If noone does, it is a capacity problem - more submissions than what can be handled by the moderators who have the time to work the queue at the moment or a lot of submissions which require a lot of time to verify and clean up. Sometimes you can have a submission approved almost immediately, sometimes it takes considerably longer. We try to clear them as fast as possible but... things get stuck sometimes.

So... apologies for the delays and please be patient with us while we try to catch up with the queue. Annie (talk) 15:14, 12 April 2023 (EDT)

Thanks, Annie! I asked just in case I had done something terribly wrong :P I made a questions about one of the edits in my page, I was unsure if it was the best place to answer it (again, I'm very new here so I'm still figuring things out). Alittlebook (talk) 19:14, 12 April 2023 (EDT)

Yep - the basic rule is that you answer where the question is. So if someone asks you something on your page, you answer there exactly how you did answer to my questions; if the question is one another page, you answer there - exactly how you responded here.

Your submissions are not really bad but as is often the case with new editors, they need work and explanations. Which means that moderators need to have time to research them, fix them and then come explain to you how to improve any future ones. So they may stay open a bit longer than usual. We do not expect people to be perfect when they join (noone is - no matter how many times you read the rules - the DB is big and complicated) and we assist as well as we can but it takes time (and sometimes you just know you won't be around for awhile so starting to work with a new editor may not be something you are willing to do - we all step in and help each other in such cases but if I know my time at a certain week is fragmented and I have no idea what time if any I will have for the DB, I may think twice before starting to work with a newish editor - I'd rather be here to answer any follow up questions). Annie (talk) 19:28, 12 April 2023 (EDT)

Unapersson

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Unapersson; Someone just wrote this person a note about one of their PV, I wrote the writer a note saying they should adjust title because there's another thread with same title from 2019, then I noticed that after that 2019 thread PV went silent until a few days ago when they responded to another thread. This PV is one of the oldest, I think, considering how many times I've seen their name, so if they're really back maybe the "no longer active" sign should be taken down. --Username (talk) 12:13, 15 April 2023 (EDT)

J. B. Priestley: The Doomsday Men

The Doomsday Men (1949) shows a cover, which didn't match the Edition I own. I uploaded my scan The Doomsday Men (2) And tried to ask Bluesman, if his scanned cover is really the original one. His scan has an unreadable small mark "... in U.K.", which isn't on my book. According to Bluesman, he isn't active any more. The Data of the book is simular.

Question: Should I clone the pub with my cover scan? I assume, yes, if the small mark on the page is correct. elsbernd (talk) 09:04, 16 April 2023 (EDT)

@@ Line 565: / Line 565: @@
 https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Unapersson; Someone just wrote this person a note about one of their PV, I wrote the writer a note saying they should adjust title because there's another thread with same title from 2019, then I noticed that after that 2019 thread PV went silent until a few days ago when they responded to another thread. This PV is one of the oldest, I think, considering how many times I've seen their name, so if they're really back maybe the "no longer active" sign should be taken down. --[[User:Username|Username]] ([[User talk:Username|talk]]) 12:13, 15 April 2023 (EDT)
+== J. B. Priestley: The Doomsday Men ==
+[https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?591614 The Doomsday Men (1949)] shows a cover, which didn't match the Edition I own. I uploaded my scan [https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/File:THDMSDMNGZ1949-2.jpg The Doomsday Men (2)] And tried to ask [https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Bluesman Bluesman], if his scanned cover is really the original one. His scan has an unreadable small mark "... in U.K.", which isn't on my book. According to [https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Bluesman Bluesman], he isn't active any more. The Data of the book is simular.
+Question: Should I clone the pub with my cover scan? I assume, yes, if the small mark on the page is correct.
+[[User:Elsbernd|elsbernd]] ([[User talk:Elsbernd|talk]]) 09:04, 16 April 2023 (EDT)