User talk:AlHazred

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I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Ahasuerus 06:17, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

The Necronomicon

I have approved your changes to Price's The Necronomicon and have a couple of questions if you happen to be working off a physical copy of the book:

• Could you please confirm that the title of Price's introduction is "The Figure in the Flying Carpet" and that it starts on page vii? (We support both roman and arabic numerals, by the way.)
• Is "Demons of Cthulhu", which appears on page 62, credited to Robert Silverberg or to "Charles D. Hammer", his pseudonym?
• Similarly, is "The Mantle of Graag" (p. 11) attributed to Frederik Pohl, Henry Dockweiller and Robert A. W. Lowndes or to "Paul Dennis Lavond", their collective pseudonym?
• Are the page numbers listed by Locus for the currently unnumbered Lin Carter micro-stories correct?

Thanks! Ahasuerus 06:23, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I do, in fact, own a physical copy of this book -- I started picking up the Call of Cthulhu Fiction line from Chaosium with #1 and have almost all of them. I am adding them to my Book Collector software, and plan to submit changes to ISFDB as time permits.

• Price's introduction is, in fact, named "The Figure in the Flying Carpet." It is in the typical Price style of combination Introduction/Literary History/Homage. The headers of the pages it's on, however, do say "Introduction." Similarly, all of the stories are started with a short bibliographical intro.
• "Demons of Cthulhu" is attributed to Silverberg. Price mentions the pseudonym in his intro.
• "The Mantle of Graag" is attributed to Pohl, Dockweiller, and Lowndes. Price mentions the pseudonym in his intro.
• The page numbers for the microstories appear to be correct.

Stories are listed as starting with the page containing Price's intro. --AlHazred 06:38, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that helps! I have removed the title record attributed to "Charles D. Hammer" and added the one for Silverberg. (It's a common issue with reprints.) I also added a note about the slight discrepancy in the way the introduction is listed.

Now, re: the proposed removal of the micro-stories, the question is whether we want to enter "The Dee Translation" as a single novella title or as multiple short story titles (or perhaps both). All of these micro-stories originally appeared in various magazines and we will eventually want to create publication entries for them and enter their contents. Once that is done, it will be useful to show that these stories were later reprinted in an anthology, something that we will not be able to do if we enter just the novella record. Would you agree? And again, thanks for your contributions!

P.S. I may have to drop off for the night since I am on the East Coast this week and it's 2am here. There may be other moderators popping up over the next few hours, but if no one else chimes in, I will pick it up in the morning. Ahasuerus 06:56, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea. However, the stories in these anthologies come from a bewildering variety of minor fan-made magazines spanning decades -- putting them all in the database is the chore of a lifetime. Verifying them will be difficult if not impossible -- I doubt some of the magazines still exist in more than a handful of physical copies.--AlHazred 07:06, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Primary verification can be indeed problematic when more obscure fanzines are involved. However, we do accept secondary verifications from reliable source, although primary verifications are, of course, preferred.

In this case, some of the micro-stories have appeared in other reprint anthologies, e.g. "The Doom of Yakthoob" appeared in 4 publications that we list.

Also, you wanted to remove Steffan B. Aletti 's "The Castle in the Window" from this publication. Does Locus list it in error? Or is it, perhaps, attributed to another version of the author's name? Thanks! Ahasuerus 23:19, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm... That was in error. Aletti's "The Castle in the Window" is in there. It starts on page 73 -- the first page is a short intro to the piece by Price, and then the story itself spans seven more pages. I blame a current bout of insomnia.

I should also mention I own two copies of the Necronomicon anthology -- one from 1996 and the later 2002 edition. I do not own the edition currently being sold on the Chaosium.com website. I will have to sit down with them later today and compare them to find the discrepancies. --AlHazred 18:32, 29 November 2010 (UTC)