Series talk:Science Fiction Chronicle

Use this page for discussing the editing of Science Fiction Chronicle. Separate discussions by subject matter.

Magazine title

I like the number/month method even though many issues don't display it on the cover. I copied this from my post on the series page. As for issues that don't have the whole number displayed on the cover, Doug, check out the covers from 1993, the year I'm currently working on. -John- Syzygy 17:02, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I see that now. Thanks. I'm not sure that that would rule out using the number/month grid system. I still like the clarity of how it looks on the grid that way. I'm assuming the numbers are given inside the mag? Also, here is a discussion that Albinoflea, Pete and I had on these issues a while back where we discussed some of these points. Doug / Vornoff 00:21, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, the whole number count is inside the mag, however the early issues (1-24+) lack that feature, going by volume and number only. We'll continue with the number/month title as it seems to be the preference of the other editors too, judging by their edits. -John- Syzygy 11:49, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Multiple entries for a year in the series view

There are multiple entries for the same year in the series view (1984 has 2 – one empty; 1993 has 7 – one for each week). I expect some kind of merge needs to be done. The total number of issues is the same for following the grid and series views (54). There doesn’t seem to be series entries for 2000 and beyond. I expect we should have entries for up to 2006.

I'm no expert at some of this and I'm still learning so please correct if I'm wrong. I've submitted merges for the above. Some of the EDITOR records have no publications submitted but are there for the awards. As issues are added to that year, their EDITOR records can be merged. I believe that's why there are no series records for some years - they have no pubs and no awards entered. As they are, they will appear. Doug / Vornoff 22:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

• There is one issue that covers two months that cross a year boundary (Dec 95/Jan 96). The grid seems to put multiple-month records in the first month. Does the grid do that automatically or is there something special that needs to be done or is it based on the date entered for the publication? Ditto for the serial summary.

I don't see any such issue. I believe the grid is determined by the magazine issue date, and that goes by the first month of a multi-month entry. Doug / Vornoff 22:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Not there yet, it's in my pile to enter. I was trying to get this stuff figured out before starting. Doug H 00:34, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Naming in the issue grid

Most issues in the grid show issue number and month. There are exceptions, starting in 1997, whence all but one do not include the number. The exceptions are all unverified, so finding the number may be difficult.

This is due to different people entering the data whether verified or not. Some of us tried to maintain the same conventions but stuff happens. It looks like all the unverified ones need to be changed if we want to keep the "number/month" convention. If we don't, we'll have to change the other ones. I like the "number/month" method (as long as the number is shown prominently on the cover) because it shows immediately where there are gaps in subs entered. Doug / Vornoff 22:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

I like the number/month as well and am happy to change the existing. If anyone else has an opinion, jump in. Doug H 00:34, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Remember, if you want to change someone else's verified data, you should talk with him first on his talk page (if we don't get any more response here). I'll say here that I patterned my SFC entries after those of Locus. Check out various Locus pubs to see the various series and formats. Doug / Vornoff 06:25, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I figure this is a discussion forum for getting a reasonable, consistent approach. Once we figure that out and document it, we can identify changes to specific issues and notify the verifier(s). Doug H 13:42, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I also like the number/month method even though many issues don't display it on the cover. Syzygy 14:25, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

John, I looked at most (not all) of the SFC covers on the ones entered and all had the number. Where are you seeing these? Are these for some that aren't entered. Also, I started looking through various magazine grids (by entering "magazine" in the series search) and they are all over the place on magazine titling conventions. I'd vote for the way Locus does it. Doug / Vornoff 18:53, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Check out any issue in 1993, the year I'm currently working on. Syzygy 16:47, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

{unindent some}

Locus seems to go with #nnn, Month yyyy, so I'll put that as the 'standard' and we can deal with the misfits as we see fit. Doug H 23:54, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

I made some remarks about this above (missed your remarks here). I'm good with this method. Doug / Vornoff 00:24, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Bi-monthly publication naming - using - or /

• One of the bimonthly publications uses " - " (Science Fiction Chronicle, #198 July-August 1998) and another uses "/" |(Science Fiction Chronicle, #189 May/June 1996). The one's I have use the "/" notation.

Again, different people entering data. The " - " notation is used by Analog - good enough for me. Doug / Vornoff 22:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Counter-argument is the magazine itself puts the "/". One vote each way, although I'm more interested in consistency so will go either way. Doug H 00:34, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

You're probably right that it should be as shown on the title page of the magazine, if there, and then by the cover if it's not. Remember any questions you have can also be posed on the Help Page. Doug / Vornoff 06:25, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

By title page, I assume you mean page 3, under the title banner, above the table of contents, next to the publication information. The copies I have give me (cover date in brackets): (July / August 1992): July 1992/Volume 13, Number 10/Issn 0195-5365/Whole #153; (October/November 1994): October 1994 / Volume 16, Number 1 / Issn 0195-5365 / Whole #177; (December 95/January 1996): Issue #187 / December 1995-January 1996 / Volume 17, Number 2 / ISSN 0195-5365. It looks like they use only the first month unless it spans a year and avoid "/" because it is a separator for other information. Given the cover is a) more visible / recognizable and b) more complete, I think I'd prefer using its spanned "/" notation. The title page is not only inconsistent about order for Issue/Date, but changes what it calls it (Issue / Whole). Doug H 13:42, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

On this help page it says "A hyphen should be used between two months used for a bimonthly issue." If you go by the Help, it looks like a hyphen should be used. Here's an example done by an experienced editor where he uses the hyphen. Not only that but the month is given as "March-April", the date is "1985-03-00" and the cover shows the month as "April", so inside on the publisher page it probably says "March-April", or "March/April". Doug / Vornoff 18:53, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

So for the copies I mentioned above, we would put

• Science Fiction Chronicle, #153 July 1992 (even though cover says July / August)
• Science Fiction Chronicle, #177 October 1994 (even though cover says October/November 1994)
• Science Fiction Chronicle #187 December 1995-January 1996 (the cover uses / but otherwise matches)

At some point, we'd have to check the three existing ones for what the publication page said - #189 May/June 1996, April/May 1997 and #198 May/June 1998. I'll put it in the Editing Notes this way until someone objects.

Doug H 00:10, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure about those. Does the title/publisher page of 153 give the month as "July" or "August" or "July/August"? I think you could make the argument that you would go with the more complete date, whether on the cover or title/indicia page. What you don't do is add a month that's not there just because there's been a two month gap between issues. So by my reckoning your issues would be "#153 July - August 19XX", "#177 October - November 19XX" and "#187 December 1995 - January 1996". Don't forget spaces surrounding the hyphen. I guess we'll find out as a moderator looks over your entries. Plus the date field of the mag would be the earlier date. Doug / Vornoff 00:49, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

(unindent)I just noticed on the Series page you've decided to go by the title page info regardless of what the cover has. Like I said, I'm unsure about it - I can see reasons for either way, so whichever way you end up with is fine by me. Doug / Vornoff 05:02, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Which features should be included in a Series?

The Obituaries and Editorials are part of separate series, but none of the other regular features use this approach. Is it because there are different names for these, while the other features go by the same name each issue? Would the Releases feature go here (April Releases, September Releases, …)? These two series use a different approach Editorial (Science Fiction Chronicle) and Science Fiction Chronicle Obituary, as opposed to Obituary (Science Fiction Chronicle). The only other obituaries are from Locus and Analog and they follow this naming.

I'm guessing the two you cite were modeled after existing Series conventions. There are many "Editorial (xxx)" series and the only other obit series were from Locus, Analog and Algol, although the latter uses "Obituaries" in the plural. I believe making new series is up to the individual editors; if you want a series for (Releases) you'd have to figure out some sensible way to do that. The question I suppose you have to ask is it worth it? Doug / Vornoff 22:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

As you pointed out in a different section, there are actually four series for Science Fiction Chronicle.

• Editorial (Science Fiction Chronicle) with titles given names matching the editorial's title.
• Obituary (Science Fiction Chronicle) with titles based on the names of the deceased.
• Ed Naha's Nahalywood with titles like "Ed Naha's Nahalywood (Science Fiction Chronicle, Month yyyy)". Two exceptions drop the "Ed Naha's".
• The London Report with titles like "The London Report (Science Fiction Chronicle, Month yyyy)" or "The London Report (Science Fiction Chronicle #nnn)". One exception drops the parenthesised magazine name and issue, and another includes a subtitle. Early issues drop the "The". When the feature was renamed The British Report, by the same authors, it was no longer included in the series. It's interesting to look at the author's listing, which has a section called Essay Series and under "The London Report" lists all the titles. The articles under the alternate name show up in a section called Essays and are in chronological order along with all their other miscellaneous essays.

From looking at these, I think the guideline for using a series is when there is nothing in the title to bring the articles together. This is clear for the Editorials and Obituaries. It's less clear for The London Report, but given the change in name I think it's reasonable, as long as we add The British Report titles to the series. The second part of the guideline might be to include the magazine name in the series name. It seems redundant having "The London Report (Science Fiction Chronicle #94) [The London Report (Science Fiction Chronicle)] essay by Stephen Jones and Jo Fletcher", but consider "The British Report (Science Fiction Chronicle #153) [The London Report (Science Fiction Chronicle)] essay by Stephen Jones and Jo Fletcher". I can see why they dropped it, but it did make it hard to find the series - I'd searched for all series with Science Fiction Chronicle and missed two of them.

Doug H 01:38, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I'll add to what I said below about The London Report. It seems your concern is that you want to be able to do a series search and come up with any extant series for a given magazine and I think that's a reasonable goal. If I'm right then you obviously need the mag name in each series name. One hiccup in the British Market Report is that it also shows up once in the SFWA Bulletin. How about you have "The London Report (Science Fiction Chronicle)", "The British Report (Science Fiction Chronicle)" as base series, with "The London/British Reports" OR "The London Report / The British Report" as the parent series for the first two? Doug / Vornoff 05:32, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Using the issue number or date in feature titles

Most of the features in the issue use “(Science Fiction Chronicle #nnn)” in their name. There are some issues that follow this rule and some that don’t. Two verifications have a mixture within the issues (#134 and #143). This means that if you list all titles for a feature (e.g. “Authors & Editors (Science Fiction Chronicle”), you get a mixture of naming types. Both (and a combination) have been used in various magazines at ISFDB.

Those were done by the same editor, a possible oversight? It happens all the time. This is another case where a consensus is needed and all the prime verifiers should be aware and agree. Doug / Vornoff 22:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Proposal then - for consistency - use the (Science Fiction Chronicle #nnn) and I'll change the existing ones. All in favour (or favor), say Aye, ... Doug H 00:34, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

You're taking about disambiguators here, and I prefer the month year method. I will follow any consensus reached, though. Syzygy 14:25, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

In this example we got around it by using both. They are seasons instead of months but the idea is the same. If that doesn't work for you all, I guess I don't really have a preference - I've used both. Doug / Vornoff 18:53, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

No one seems to have any commitment, although Syzygy seems to prefer month year and is actively entering them. My only counter-argument is we have 470 using #issue and 98 using month year (as of a couple days ago - how busy have you been Syzygy?) Doug H 02:00, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

List of features

Of the features, not all names have been used consistently. Some exceptions (some are possibly typo’s, but some may reflect changes in titles between issues). There are also variations within a publication between the name in the table of contents and at the head of the article.

• • Authors & Editors (27) vs. Authors and Editors (1)
  • British Market Report (1) vs. British Market Reports (1) vs. The British Report (4) vs. The London Report (35)
  • Ed Naha’s Hallywood (1) vs. Ed Naha’s Nahalywood (21) vs. Nahalywood (2)
  • Jeff Rovin’s S.F. Cinema (2) vs. S.F. Cinema (10) [Kay Anderson’s Continuum (3) never appears without the nane {Continuum}, nor does Marvin Kaye’s Nth Dimension (1) or Don D’Ammassa’s Critical Mass (3)]
  • London Report (5) vs. London Report: Or, Beer and Loafing in Los Angeles (1)
  • Newsnotes (4) vs. Newsnotes and Events (8) vs. Notes (1) vs. Small Press Notes (3).
  • Publishers (19) vs. Publisher’s Notes (1) vs. Publishing Newsnotes (26)
  • The Twiltone Forest: Fanzine/Small Press Reviews (1) vs. The Twiltone Forest: Fanzines & Small Press (5) vs. The Twiltone Forest: Fanzines & the Small Press (1) vs. The Twiltone Forest: Fanzines/Small Press Stuff (2) vs. The Twiltone Forest: Small Press & Fanzines (3) [likely should be The Twiltone Forest].

I believe here the rule is enter what is on the title page (or the header of the column), not the ToC. So you will have those variances. I suppose you could gather them together under a Series if they were all definitely related. One choice, though, is whether to add the sub-heading or not. The Twiltone stuff could benefit from a Series, I think. Naha does have a Series. As to "London Report": I can't recall if that column has a sub-title every time, because if it did you could use it as the title and "London Report" as the Series as is done with many columns that have sub-titles. These are things that could be discussed on a column-by-column basis. Doug / Vornoff 22:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

I missed that one, as well as the London Report. I'll go back and check my stats. Is this the right place for those column-by-column discussions? Doug H 00:34, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Missed them because I'd searched the series for Science Fiction Chronicle, which these don't include. Doug H 13:42, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

This seems ok to me but I haven't seen this before. Otherwise it would be on your talk page or some public help page. Doug / Vornoff 06:25, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Why not use the 'Discuss This Page' feature for this magazine series? Discussions here are going to get bogged down. Syzygy 14:25, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I agree - we are rapidly getting confusing with the responses all over the place. I don't see that 'Discuss This Page' on the Science Fiction Chronicle series page. I think we are on it now, aren't we? Doug / Vornoff 18:53, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

If you're logged in on the wiki page, it is the first option under the 'This Page' heading where it says 'Discuss This Page'. It does not currently exist at the time of this posting, but I'll see what I can do to get it started. Syzygy 16:47, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Page has been started. The first heading is 'Magazine title'. Syzygy 18:49, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

{unindent}

I'll start a separate section for each of these. Doug H 02:21, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Feature: Authors & Editors

Stats: Authors & Editors (27) vs. Authors and Editors (1)

I expect the singleton is a typo and will chase it down with the verifier. Doug H 02:21, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Feature: The London Report and The British Report

Stats: British Market Report (1) vs. British Market Reports (1) vs. The British Report (4) vs. The London Report (35) London Report (5) vs. London Report: Or, Beer and Loafing in Los Angeles (1)

I think the Market Reports are separate, but The British Report is a rename of The London Report and London Report. I'd leave the one with a subtitle for now, but include all of them in the same Series - The London Report (with or without the magazine name). Doug H 02:21, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I have no problem with adding "(Science Fiction Chronicle)" to the series name. If that column (as sometimes does) appears in another publication, that could be given the series name London Report (Other Publication) and those two series could be given a parent series. There are some series that could benefit from that right now, I think. For example, Pohlemic, in a single series, appears in at least 3 magazines, including Science Fiction Chronicle, but you can't tell from the series. In this case you'd have to change the series name for each one to reflect the magazine and put them all in a parent series. Is this how you all see it? Doug / Vornoff 19:35, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Feature: Ed Naha's Nahalywood

Stats: Ed Naha’s Hallywood (1) vs. Ed Naha’s Nahalywood (21) vs. Nahalywood (2)

Oddly enough, the table of contents has this as Ed Naha's Nahallywood (two L's). I suspect the first is a typo and the last two are someone choosing to drop the Ed Naha's because they were the author. I'll chase these down with the verifier. Doug H 02:21, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Same situation here as for The London Reportabove. Doug / Vornoff 04:25, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Feature: Jeff Rovin's S.F. Cinema

Stats: Jeff Rovin’s S.F. Cinema (2) vs. S.F. Cinema (10)

I think the first two are using the table of contents instead of the article. I will check with the verifiers. Kay Anderson’s Continuum (3) never appears without the Kay Anderson's name {Continuum}, nor does Marvin Kaye’s Nth Dimension (1) or Don D’Ammassa’s Critical Mass (3)]Doug H 02:21, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Feature: Newsnotes

Stats: Newsnotes (4) vs. Newsnotes and Events (8) vs. Notes (1) vs. Small Press Notes (3).

Doug H 02:21, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Feature: Publishers

Stats: Publishers (19) vs. Publisher’s Notes (1) vs. Publishing Newsnotes (26)

Doug H 02:21, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Feature: The Twiltone Forest

Status: The Twiltone Forest: Fanzine/Small Press Reviews (1) vs. The Twiltone Forest: Fanzines & Small Press (5) vs. The Twiltone Forest: Fanzines & the Small Press (1) vs. The Twiltone Forest: Fanzines/Small Press Stuff (2) vs. The Twiltone Forest: Small Press & Fanzines (3) [likely should be The Twiltone Forest].

Doug H 02:21, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm okay with "The Twilltone Forest" as series name. The essays have "twilltone" with two l's. Doug / Vornoff 04:48, 10 September 2016 (UTC)