User talk:Chavey/Archive/2011

This page is an archive of the User_talk:Chavey page. Please do not change the archived discussions below.

The Clone Rebellion

I have approved your changes to The Clone Rebellion and added series information to the title level. It's useful to document cases of "Seriesitis interruptus" at the title level to warn unsuspecting readers who are about to start the "series" about the dangers lying ahead.

Also, keep in mind that the software doesn't check for errors in user-entered HTML in Notes, so a particularly unfortunate typo in HTML can mess a submission up big time. In this case, the typo was minor (<u.> instead of <ul>), so I was able to correct it, but in extreme cases it can make the submission unapprovable and then we have to delete it from the database the hard way and re-enter the data. Ahasuerus 00:50, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I was aware of the problems with html typos in the notes, and sometimes I copy them out elsewhere to preview them, but apparently I didn't this time. I guess I should do it more often. Thanks for correcting it. On the "Seriesitis interruptus", I just submitted notes for Saturn's Child in which I mention that in the introduction the author says that it was intended as the first in a series. But that's not mentioned anywhere else (unlike The Clone Rebellion). Should I put that into a series and add a title note like you did? It seems less important in this case. Chavey 19:03, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Typically, any notes that apply to the text rather than to its physical manifestation are added to Title Notes rather than Pub Notes. In this case, however, a sequel did appear some 7 years later. A few dozen book sellers have copies for sale, so it definitely exists even though Locus doesn't list it. Based on what we have seen over the last few years, my guess would be that the first volume didn't do well in the marketplace and no mainstream publisher was willing to invest in a sequel, so eventually the authors decided to go the self-publishing route. Ahasuerus 20:43, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for pointing out that sequel. ISFDB didn't list it, so I didn't realize there was a sequel! Another book to go buy :-) And to add to ISFDB. Chavey 20:50, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Liavek: Wizard's Row

I was archiving the last few months of my user talk page when I noticed that I'd not responded to your questions about this pub. I agree with most of what you've done to correct the record, but not that Appendix One should be credited to Jane Yolen. Looking further into the appendix, there are two poems by John M. Ford, so I'm pretty sure the title record should represent the group, not just an introduction to Yolen's poem. Unfortunately, the database doesn't handle group titles very well...actually, not at all. But I would want to retain it because the inclusion of Appendix Two (an actual essay) might seem confusing if we omitted Appendix One. As the editors of the anthology, perhaps we should credit Shetterly and Bull for the Appendix One record. What do you think?Another thing: thanks for catching the credit for Stemple as co-author of "City of Luck", but did you notice he also has the same credit for "The Ballad of the Quick Levars" which we both missed as well? I won't make any further edits to the record until you've had a chance to respond to this posting. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:23, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I had to wait until I was down at my office (where I have my collection of "Science Fiction by Beloit College alumni" :-) until I could check this out. Thanks for catching that second credit to Adam Stemple! The reason for my presumption that Appendix One was written by Jane Yolen is that the songs have her name in the location for the person who wrote the lyrics, and her husband's name in the location of the person who wrote the music, so I assumed that she wrote ALL of the words in the Appendix. But reconsidering, I agree with you that this isn't enough to list her as the sole credit for Appendix 1, especially since this includes the "translator's notes" for the other two songs, which may have been done by Jane, but more likely were done by John Ford. I looked at how other sites handled these credits. www.faqs.org gave the entire credit for Appendix 1 to Jane and Adam, with no mention of John Ford. But www.locusmag.com, www.myths.com, and www.shelfari.com (as three examples) all handled it by ignoring the titles "Appendix One" and "Appendix Two", and simply listing 5 items: the 4 songs, and the essay "Handbook for the Magician". Then the credits are straight-forward. (Except all of them missed Adam Stemple.) I suggest we do the same thing, except for omitting Adam :-). Does that seem right? Chavey 20:55, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree. If you make the submission, I'll moderate it. Thanks. Mhhutchins 22:44, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I hope that does it. Since "The Ballad of the Quick Levars" was published before, I couldn't change the attribution here. I am hopeful that adding the author attribution in the title record will change it in both books in which it occurs. (If not, more changes have to be made.) Chavey 23:18, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Changing the author credits (or any field) of a title record changes every publication in which the title appears. If a piece is published in only one publication you can update it from the pub record, otherwise you have to update it from the title record. Mhhutchins 23:33, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Good. I was assuming that the database was normalized enough to ensure that this happened. Good to know professionals designed it! Chavey 23:34, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Hungarian translation of Ryman's Air

Did you intend that the cover image remain the same for this edition of the novel? Mhhutchins 00:00, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

No; that was an error (I've submitted a correction). The Hungarian cover is much cooler, and is the main reason I bought that edition! I'll scan that cover in later. Chavey 01:15, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Amusing story: I showed this cover and book to Geoff Ryman when I had lunch with him a few weeks ago. He really liked the cover, and said it looked exactly like how he viewed Mae. But he had never seen the cover before! That's because the Hungarian publisher never got permission to translate it, and never gave him a copy, much less any royalties! Chavey 13:57, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Almost as sad as the author not getting paid is that we (the ISFDB) give the publication a legitimacy that it doesn't deserve. Yet I see no other way around it. It is a book and it does exist. Mhhutchins 15:25, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Look at it the other way around - ISFDB may help find Authors find their unauthorised translations and finally get some royalties. Too late for John Brunner, who happily signed unauthorised copies of his works so long as he could take note of who published it, but with SF authors dying because they can't afford medical insurance I'd really like to make sure we don't overly promote rip-offs. I suppose we could use the new Multi-Language support to unmerge the Hungarian title, change the Title language, make it a variant of the original, and add title notes that say "THIS IS AN ILLEGAL COPY! SEND GEOFF SOME MONEY!" BLongley 22:53, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Génszimfónia by Joan Slonczewski

Your record of this title is very similar to another verified one already in the database. Are these the same publication? Thanks. Mhhutchins 00:03, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

You're right. For some reason, I hadn't noticed that. Gabor included six pages of advertisements for other books in the series, which I had not included, and we used different abbreviations for Florins, but those are the only difference. Should I leave his page count as it is (those pages are numbered), or change it via our general policy of not counting those ad pages? (I'll bet this will be the first Hungarian publication that gets a Primary2 verification :-) Chavey 00:56, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and I included an "About the Author" content item. Chavey 00:58, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it must be the first Hungarian publication to get even one verification! Because you're more active than the other, I suggest deleting the pub you created, make the changes (adding the "About the Author" and correcting the page count) to his verified pub. Then leave him a note about the changes you've made. I'll accept the submissions. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:23, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I made the updates, and put a note on his page. Chavey 20:40, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Jane Yolan, P.J.F.

I see that my edits to "Briar Rose" are taking a while. I suspect someone is contemplating the claim of authorship as "Jane Yolan, P.J.F.". This is the way her name appears on the title page for that book. This, of course, will immediately be set as a pseudonym for Jane Yolan. For a general discussion of this suffix, I refer you to the "Will Shetterly, P.J.F." discussion earlier. Chavey 01:14, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I was aware of the P.J.F. title from several years back, but wasn't sure that we were creating pseudonyms based on it. Considering variants made for "Sir"s and "Lord"s I suppose we can make a fake American title into a variant as well. I'll accept the submissions, but you 'll have to unmerge the affected books so that we can merge them under a new title record before creating the pseudonym and making it a variant. Mhhutchins 03:27, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The earlier discussion link includes a comment by you on submitting possibly the first submission of a publication using a "P.J.F." pseudonym! But I think I've actually figured out the process for establishing these pseudonyms now, so I'll use this example to try to validate the algorithm. (The "Help" documentation on this process is particularly bad.) Chavey 03:35, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Please feel free to suggest updates to the Help pages as you decipher them! You are in a much better position to do so since you still remember what parts were unclear or misleading when you first encountered them. Ahasuerus

I agree that the documentation needs to be worked on. There's been so many changes in the software over the past year or so, that the Help pages are woefully out-of-date. To be honest, I found them so un"help"ful when I first started here, that it became a matter of submitting and crossing my fingers. Thankfully the moderators here were very kind and generous with their time and their assistance, particularly Ahasuerus. I think it was the overwhelming number of my submissions that helped to increase my learning curve. And for that very same reason I was made a moderator so that the others could do something other than moderating my submissions! Mhhutchins 03:59, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

My previous attempt to suggest a change in the Help pages kind of ran into a group non-decision. So should I try to keep a conversation like that going until there's a consensus? Should I edit the Help pages in the way I think the conversation was leading, and see if it sticks? Or what? Chavey 04:04, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Looks like you're learning how a democracy works (or doesn't). That's another reason why lately nothing in the Help pages gets changed. A lot of discussion, that peters out with no consensus arrived. The one time something changes is when only a few (two or three) editors have a strong opinion over a single matter. Luckily, most discussions are of such minor importance that any results of the discussion would affect relatively few records. Most of the big issues have been ironed out in past years, leaving only minor wrinkles to thrash over. I suppose some are of such minor issues that very few editors bother to join in the discussion. Thus the debate over P.J.F. ... About the rules discussion you've linked to (publication format), if you believe the group came to a general consensus, proceed to change the Help pages to conform. Once you've done so, post the changes on the discussion page and see what others feel about them. Anyone who objects would have a platform for their opinion. Don't change the Help pages without at least notifying the rest of us about the changes. I have a watch over most major pages on the Wiki and am constantly checking the "Recent Changes" page, but I'm not sure how closely other editors follow the changes. Good luck (and if that sounds sarcastic, it's not my intention.) Mhhutchins 04:33, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Archiving your user talk page

This page is getting rather long, so if you need some assistance in archiving the posts and re-starting it with a clean slate, just ask. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:37, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't hard to do the archiving, once I found the "Help:Archive" page, but that page took some effort to find. As best as I can tell, the quickest way to get there from the Main page is: (1) Click on "Help" pages; (2) Click on "Wiki conventions" (not an obvious path to follow); (3) Scroll to the bottom of that page and click on "Wiki Help"; (4) Now you can find "Help:Archive".

I would suggest that either "Help:Archive" should be added to the "ISFDB Help" category, or else the main help page should have a link to the Wiki Help pages.

Good suggestion. I've created a link from the Help:Contents pages to the Wiki Help page (beside the Wiki Conventions link). Mhhutchins 17:28, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Canadian pricing in notes

Hi. I wasn't about to reject all of those edits you submitted, but in my opinion it's not necessary to format the Canadian prices as "C$nn.nn" in the notes, and it's not worth editing existing notes to reformat that way. The currency formatting rules are for the Price field, where we don't want free-form and varying values. But the notes are by their nature free-form, so capturing "in Canada $12.34" or "$56.78 CAN" or whatever variation the book uses adequately identifies the number as a Canadian price. I think it would be a lot of editing to find and change every instance of non-USD "$" in notes. --MartyD 12:11, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

There are about 900 instances remaining of Canadian pricing not marked as such (and about 250 Australian), so I could do it, but it would take a morning's worth of work. I'm willing to do it, because I'm OCD, but if you think it's not worth the effort, I can skip it as well. Chavey 16:43, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Making Briar Rose variant

You'll first have to change the title records for the two pubs here and here so that the author's name is "Jane Yolen, P.J.F." It would be best to merge these two title records before you change the author credit, which will save you a submission. Also once you have one title record as "Jane Yolen, P.J.F." then you make it a variant of the the "Jane Yolen" title record. You should reject the current submissions on hold. (Or I can.) Mhhutchins 17:03, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Forgot to mention: the easiest way to merge the two records is through an Advanced Search, entering "Briar Rose" in the title field and "Yolen" in the author field. You'll see three resulting novel records. Check the boxes for the 1993 and 0000 records. Then submit. Once this has been accepted, edit the resulting title record changing the author field to "Jane Yolen, P.J.F." Mhhutchins 17:07, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

When I did your suggested Merge, it complained that I had date conflict between the two records, and asked me to select which one I wanted to keep (and which to discard). Since I wanted both dates to remain, I dropped the Merge, then changed the authors for each of the two records simultaneously. I'll wait for those approvals, then do the variant title submission. Chavey 17:58, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Those will still have to be merged before you make a variant. An important point to remember: the dates of title records and the dates of publication records are apples and oranges. The date of a title record is the date of the STORY's first publication. The date of a publication record is the date of the BOOK's publication (not its contents which are recorded as title records.) Mhhutchins 18:07, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, so when it was trying to Merge the title records, I wasn't doing a publication merge (that confused me), and that would make both of the dates wrong, so I should have accepted one, and then changed the date to the first publication of Briar Rose? But I'll go ahead with the Merge now, and then the variant. Chavey 18:13, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

You're entirely correct. Publication records can not be merged, but title records can. And when you attempt to merge them, any differences must be reconciled. If the author or title is different, they should only be merged with EXTREME caution. In most cases like this, they should not be merged at all. One should be made a variant of the other. Mhhutchins 19:20, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Clones for The Unicorn and the Lake

I'm holding the submissions to clone two three copies of this pub because the original pub was created incorrectly. It should have been entered as a CHAPTERBOOK type with a SHORTFICTION content of "The Unicorn and the Lake". If I accept the two submissions to clone it, there would be several additional steps to fix those records as well. Once you've fixed the original record (and the one that I unwittingly accepted), it would be easier to clone them for the other printings. If you need assistance in fixing the pub records (and their title record), just ask. Here's the help page for converting a novel into a chapterbook. Mhhutchins 02:39, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I believe I have repaired the original two submissions with the corrections just submitted. I'll cancel the other editions and clone from the ChapterBook versions once those are corrected. Chavey 02:47, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

You followed the help instructions, but unfortunately, it omits an important part of the conversion. It should have told you to add a content record. It's implied, but not clear, that a CHAPTERBOOK type also is a container type (like a one-story collection). So the story contained in the publication must have a record. I'll add those to ALL of the clones you made, and then merge all of them afterward. I'll also correct the help page instructions. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:33, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's always nice if my mistakes can improve the Help pages :-). As the saying goes, "A wise man learns from the mistakes of others", so ISFDB must be getter wiser? Chavey 03:36, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I've also made some changes to the record of the audio recording. The page count field should be either blank or the number "0". I've also removed the INTERIORART record, assuming audio cassettes don't have artwork. Do you think all of these have the same cover art as well? Mhhutchins 03:50, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for those corrections. I overlooked removing the interior art from the audio recording, although I was trying to remind myself to do it. And yes, I'm pretty sure the books all have the same cover. The art, and the cover, are much of the reason the book has been as popular as it has, and the painting for the cover is pretty crucial. Between my copy, two transient verifications (library copies) and online pictures, I've seen covers of 6 of those editions, all identical. I'm confident the same cover was used on all. Chavey 04:00, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

4th printing of Fortress in the Eye of Time

Your Fortress in the Eye of Time duplicated an existing entry for the 4th printing, but your submission had more details, so I accepted it and will delete the other one, which had no verifiers. That one did have a date of 1999-01-00, which I found comes from Locus1, so I propagated that to your entry and added the source of the date to the notes. --MartyD 12:58, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. And sorry for missing the existing one. That type of overlap will probably get easier to see when the "print number" feature gets implemented. Chavey 14:26, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Nella Waits

Where did you get the number "7410" in the ISBN/Catalog # field for this pub? If it's from the dustjacket, that's the month of publication (October 1974). Also by 1974, Putnam's SBN could be converted into an ISBN by adding a leading 0. Another thing, you didn't close the list in the note's HTML. Notice how the display of the fields below are affected in the publication record. Mhhutchins 00:43, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the corrections. You're right, the "7410" came from the dust jacket; I misunderstood its purpose. I've corrected the various errors in the record. When did the SBN get convertible? I put an SBN number in that field once before, and got a moderator complaint about it, so I've been somewhat shy about that since then. Chavey 05:03, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I accepted the submission and restored part of the notes (about the SBN on the copyright page) and included an additional note that the publication month comes from that 7410 code, based on the above. They'll help avoid questions from future verifiers. See what you think. The help does encourage adding the "0" to an SBN to get an ISBN (and documenting it in the notes). --MartyD 11:42, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks much for the help, I'll work on remembering this for other books from that time period. Chavey 13:49, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

HTML in notes

It's OK to leave lines open ( are not necessary), but you must close lists (with ), otherwise it screws up the display of the remaining record. You're probably already aware of this, but I've corrected a few submissions. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:06, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I knew that I'd forgotten one of the </ul> closes, but there doesn't seem to be any way to go back to change a submission once I've submitted it, and I couldn't remember what notes I had added to that pub. But I've changed how I handle "ul" now (when I put in the "ul", I immediately put in the "/ul"), so I hope that's a mistake I'm over now. Thanks for fixing them -- I was set to go back over all of the submissions and see if I'd made such mistakes. Chavey 21:25, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

It was really no trouble to fix them. I can't change them myself until after the submission has been accepted. And you're using one of the methods I use: closing the list before you start entering the line items. Another method I use when updating or creating records, an HTML template that includes things I want to add to the notes: edition and printing statements, LCCN, book design, everything that I feel is important and for which there is no field. All I do then is fill in the blanks. Book club editions have their own template. The templates are written into a Word file which I leave open in another window throughout the day. Thanks. Mhhutchins 23:23, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Forge / Tor

Forge and Tor are separate imprints of Tom Doherty Associates, so it's not likely that both would be used in the same pub. But anything's possible, I suppose. Please double check this pub. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:09, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm so used to translating "Tom Doherty Associates" in my head into "Tor", that I did that automatically here. This should be "Forge / Tom Doherty". That's probably true for Frank's books as well, but I have them in my office, so I'll have to check them down there. I'll correct Coyote Cowgirl now. Chavey 21:15, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Same situation with this pub and this one. Mhhutchins 21:10, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I have the submission, but personally don't think we should add "Tom Doherty Associates" to the publisher field. There are hundreds of pubs that are attributed to "Forge" alone, although Tom Doherty Associates is the official publisher. Sometimes we're more restrictive about giving corporate identities and this seems to be the case with this particular publisher. (Can you imagine the thousands of pubs from 1981 to today that would be affected if we chose to add "Tom Doherty Associates" to every book published under the "Tor" imprint?) I'll hold the submission if you want to bring it up for discussion on the Rules & Standards page. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:27, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

No, you're right. It should be attributed just to "Forge". I had looked at the Publisher records to see how others entered Tom Doherty, and saw that "Tor / Tom Doherty Associates" was one of the publisher values used, so I imitated that. I hadn't gone far enough to realize that there were only 5 books that were listed that way! Those, presumably, should be changed to "Tor". (Do you want to do that; or should I?) Anyway, I'll cancel that Coyote Cowgirl submission and change it from "Forge / Tor" to "Forge". Chavey 21:32, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

I've cleaned up the pubs that gave Doherty in the publisher's field. A couple had been verified by editors that have come and gone, so I didn't both notifying them with the change. Thanks. Mhhutchins 22:47, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for going the "Keep It Simple" way. There will probably be many repeated arguments for "imprint" or "imprint / publisher" (maybe even "publisher / imprint"). BLongley 23:53, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

"Dear Starbear"

I'm don't believe that we came to a consensus about how to handle the credits for this piece during the discussion last September. In such a case, I would tend to let the persons who physically verified the piece have the final word. After all, they have the magazine and know exactly how the piece is credited there. Mhhutchins 03:18, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Red Riding Hood

Instead of deleting this publication, you should merge its title record with the correct title record (the one that credits a co-author). It looks like the ATOM publication (with the incorrect spelling) is the UK edition. If this turns out to be a phantom pub, we can delete it later. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:10, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

It looks like the US record is wrong as well. Blakley-Cartwright wrote the novel based on Johnson's screenplay. Only she should be credited in the novel's pub and title record. His contribution can be noted in the note field. Mhhutchins 04:16, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Even the ATOM website doesn't acknowledge their publication of this title. I guess this OCLC record was based on the publisher's catalog (bad spelling and all), but the book's publication may have been cancelled. Mhhutchins 04:19, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

The British edition was supposed to be released Feb. 24, 2011, but the ATOM website search page claims that they have data for books up to a year out. I also checked their page by title, author, and by ISBN, and as with Michael I was unable to find anything there, so it does seem that this particular project has died. So do we put an 8888 or 9999 date on the book? And if we do, do we correct the spelling, merge, or make a (non-existent) variant? This one is above my pay grade. The US edition certainly exists (Amazon has it in stock), but per Michael's suggestion, I've submitted a change to put the scriptwriter in the notes and not as another author. Chavey 01:04, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm going to merge the two title records under the correct author's name, and change the date of the UK edition to 9999. I'll try to remember to check back in a couple of months to see if ATOM ever published it. Mhhutchins 05:23, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. At the very latest, when I go to archive this talk page, I'll check also. Chavey 05:25, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Adding a book with a new title

When adding a book which has been given a new title, don't use the "Add Pub" function. You should use the "New Pub" function and then make the new title record a variant of the parent one. In the case of Forbidden, you'll see that it has a title record of Captive Goddess when it should have its own title record. You'll have to unmerge the pub from this title record, and then make the new title record a variant of it. Let me know if you need assistance. Also, it's not necessary to add (Toronto) after "Harlequin" in the publisher's field. All Harlequin titles are published out of Toronto (Don Mills, Ontario). Mhhutchins 05:37, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, I was hoping that was set up to do in one step what I was expecting to have to do as a new novel and then a merge, but I guess I was being too optimistic. I've submitted the unmerge, and then I'll make the variant title. Chavey 05:51, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

About the Author

Hi. This may be a dumb question, but for those three proposed additions of "About the Author" that I have on hold, how do you know Killough wrote it/them? Is there an actual credit? --MartyD 03:20, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

No, there is no attribution. They're written as if by the author, but there's no attribution. Should those all be listed as "uncredited"? Chavey 03:24, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

If they are written in the first person ("I", "me", "my", "myself"), I would credit them to the author and include a comment in the notes about the lack of specific attribution but first-person voice. If they are written in the third person ("Lee Killough", "she", "her"), I would enter them as uncredited -- we don't really know if it was she, the editor, or the publisher who did the writing. I'm going to approve the submissions, and you can edit them as seems appropriate. Thanks. --MartyD 03:33, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Author credit for Stranger From Space

It looks like you were trying to order the credits for the authors of this title. Can't be done. The system doesn't recognize order of credit for co-authored titles, and randomly displays the authors. Mhhutchins 21:09, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

The novel was showing up as a "Stray Publication". I couldn't see what was causing that other than two possible issues: 1) The publication record had a 1953 date, while the title record had a 1955 date, which of course doesn't really make sense; 2) The authors were in one order in the Publication record and the other order in the Title record. So I changed both of those things. And now it doesn't show up as a Stray. So one of those changes fixed the problem, although I'll admit that I don't know which. (Do you?) Chavey 21:50, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Your submission didn't fix the "stray publication" problem. After accepting the submission, I went back to the title record and saw the "stray publication" notification. It was caused by someone creating a variant title record, using the ordering of the names as a basis for the variant. When I removed the variant title record (which had no pubs attached to it), the "stray publication" notice disappeared. Mhhutchins 22:22, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I was going to try that if the changes I made hadn't fixed it. I wondered why all of a sudden the "Variant Title" issue had disappeared. Chavey 22:24, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

The Last Planet

Do you think your proposed Last Planet addition is a duplicate of this entry? --MartyD 13:35, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes it is. I hadn't noticed it because it didn't have a date, and hence was out of order. I'll cancel my submission and update this one with the publication year. Chavey 14:14, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The Gentleman in Black

I'm holding the submission that wants to change the author credit for this pub from "Dalton" to James Dalton. According to this OCLC record only the pseudonym is used. I'm going to ask the man who edited this edition to have the final say in how it's credited. Mhhutchins 20:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I will certainly bow to his expertise. If the decision is not to change the attribution, then a good alternative would be to just list "Dalton, James" as the legal name. Chavey 20:33, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The title record is currently a variant, giving James Dalton as the author. Mhhutchins 20:55, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I see you made "Dalton" a pseudonym to "James Dalton", so that seems to resolve the bibliographic issue. I'll leave it to you as to whether you want to just cancel the submission, or ask Reginald about it. Chavey 21:03, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Robert answered on his talk page. The Arno Press edition is credited only to "Dalton". I'll reject the submission. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:10, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Where did you get the data on interior art by George Cruikshank? If you can add that back with a source I'll accept the submission. But unlike the original submission, don't credit Cruikshank with cover art. Arno Press editions were issued without dust jackets. Mhhutchins 04:14, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I see from an OCLC record that the 1831 edition (from which the Arno Press edition created its edition) had illustrations by Cruikshank. I'll update both records with interiorart records. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:17, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The edition I was looking at is from Google Books. This claims to be an 1831 2nd edition. It has a cover that is a copy of an illustration on p. 2, along with full attributions to "James Dalton, George Cruikshank, John Yonge Akerman". "John Yonge Akerman" is mentioned nowhere inside the actual text, so I don't know what he's doing on the cover. George Cruikshank's illustrations are prominently attributed at the beginning of the book. If, as Reginald says, the original is not attributed to "James Dalton", then either (i) this 2nd edition has different attributions; or (ii) Google added a more modern cover, using a Cruikshank internal illustration, to its scanned version. Option (ii) seems surprising, but may be true. Their 1857 edition has a "cover" very similar in format to their 1831 "cover", with a different Cruikshank illustration, but attributed only to "Dalton, George Cruikshank". The similarity between the appearance of these covers, by two completely different publishers, makes me suspect that this cover is not a reproduction of the actual cover. I guess it's possible that a book of this age had to be rebound at some point in its life, but I hope that this "fake cover" on Google scans isn't a regular policy. I should, presumably, add these other editions of the book to the title listing, but now I'm not sure what attributions to give these editions. What do you think? Chavey 08:55, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Devil's Spoon

Coincidentally I just got through reading this one. I am methodically reading through all the issues of FFM and its companion magazine. If you haven't read it already, "Angel Island" from the February, 1949 issue might be of particular interest; luckily it is also available as a Project Gutenberg freebie (Note the link in Other Sites; a recent innovation for PG titles). The symbolism is a little heavy-handed but it is still an interesting work.--swfritter 22:14, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The Game and "Dark Forces"

Hi. I have your proposed placement of the March 1983 Bantam edition of The Game into a "Dark Forces" publisher series on hold. We already have the title in a Dark Forces title series, which looks more appropriate to me. Publisher series are for publisher-specific groupings of publications of arbitrary works that are usually related by some broad criteria rather than content specifics. What makes you think this should be a publisher series? Thanks, --MartyD 00:24, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

I've likewise placed on hold the proposed placement of publications of other titles in the series into that same publication series. --MartyD 00:27, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

See the discussion at the Community Portal, on Overlapping Title Series, to which no one responded. I have already converted the "Twilight Series" from a Title Series to a Publisher series, and hence was doing the same thing with "Dark Forces", as discussed in that posting. Chavey 03:48, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem with using Publisher Series for this is that it will make a mess when there's a 2nd printing, a 3rd printing, and so on. But I've asked for help on the Moderator noticeboard to see if someone can suggest the best approach within the limitations of the current system. --MartyD 11:40, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Women Worldwalkers

Hello, I've put your submission on hold because my copy (same ISBN but dated 1985) of this HC has a price of $50.00 on upper front flap of the dj, as you proposed a different price, can you have second look at your copy ? Thanks. Hervé Hauck 12:51, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

The price that I have on it could easily be in error. We should go with the price you have. Chavey 13:11, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll unhold your sub and will modify it later. Hauck 13:26, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Utopian and SF by Women

Re-hello. Sorry to bother you again but i've put your sub regarding this pub on hold. On my copy here, the editor is Jane L. Donawerth, so I don't understand why you want to make a variant as you also proposed to make Jane L. Donawerth a pseudonym of Jane Donawerth. Hervé Hauck 14:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Does the variant go the other way? I'm trying to make one a pseudonym of the other, with "Jane L." as the canonical name. Chavey 15:33, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

In fact it seems to my neophyte's eyes a big mess. I'll try to put everything right. Hauck 15:47, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Hope that I put everything back in place now (Jane is now a pseudonym of Jane L.). I'm afraid we lost at least one review of the book (no more, found it and re-linked it). Hauck 16:04, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

It looks like everything's right. They don't do the "automatic forwarding", such as happens with, say, Janet Jeppson. As I understand it, that's what the "variant title" tactic is supposed to implement. Are there some general rules as to when we set pseudonyms up that way (with one bibliography), vs. the way we now have Jane Donawerth (with two partial bibliographies)? Chavey 16:34, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Miracle ;-), It seems that I've stumbled on a way to do this. I started with the Jane items and make new variants with Jane L. (the bottom part), when they were none left, the "Pseudonym. See: Jane L. Donawerth" appeared. It's not very satisfying in the intelectual sense (titles under Jane simply disappear from her bibliography), but it looks like it works and regroup everything in one page. Hauck 17:19, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I thought I was working on back at the beginning of this discussion. I've managed to be successful with that a couple of times also, but it always surprises me when it actually happens! A great feature, but not exactly "intuitive" to carry out. Chavey 17:24, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's appallingly unintuitive. Particularly with house names like John Cleve - I was trying to track down the first two titles in the "Spaceways" series earlier today and the "Show All Titles" option really doesn't help with such. BLongley 19:14, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies

This appears to be more of a publication series than a title series. I'll accept the submissions if you're certain, but I can find nothing in common with these titles other than being from the same publisher. The question I ask myself when determining what kind of a series to place a pub into: if this were published by another publisher would the title itself still be considered part of the series. It appears that there already is a publication series of this name. Mhhutchins 19:07, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

You are absolutely correct. The existant series by this title is a publication series, and I will correct these entries to reflect that. I have cancelled my submissions. Chavey 19:10, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

You make it so easy. With some editors it's like ramming my head into a brick wall, just so they can see another point of view. (Not that I'm always right, mind you. But I strive to be open to other viewpoints.) Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:15, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm a teacher. So I'm used to being wrong :-) And, of course, it's important that you recognize you're wrong before you dig yourself into a hole. Chavey 19:25, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

You've got a nice series to work with there: the series is quite an important one, as the Science Fiction Foundation Collection is based at that university. BLongley 19:20, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's exactly the page I'm working off of to fill out the full series. There are a couple of "New Publications" that I'll be adding, but I'm starting by putting in the existent ones. Interestingly enough, the University of Chicago now appears to be publishing the "Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies"! I don't quite know what's up with that, and several of the titles in the series were also published by Syracuse University, but apparently not under the "Liverpool" series, as best as I can tell. I'll try to research them more before I complete working on this series. Chavey 19:25, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I've got the Chicago/Syracuse thing figured out. Liverpool arranged for several titles to be "Published in North America by ...". Looks like they first worked with Syracuse, and then with Chicago. So the Chicago/Syracuse editions should still go in the publication series. (There are a few other publications in these title records that clearly don't go in the publication series.) It seems this would be a worthwhile note to put into the Publication Series record, except that there's no place for such a note. Should I ignore this detail, make a note to myself to add it when that feature gets added, or put a note into each relevant publication (a bit more work)? Suggestions? Chavey 19:57, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Missing month

Hi. I accepted your change to The Detached Retina, but you only added the note saying the month came from Liverpool University, you didn't supply the month in the date. I couldn't tell what the month was supposed to be, so I couldn't do anything about it. --MartyD 11:34, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Two Detached Retina submissions

Hi. I have two of your Detached Retina submissions on hold. They appear to duplicate THDTCHDRTN1995 and THDTCHDRTC1995. Let me know if I am mistaken. --MartyD 12:11, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

You're right, I had just failed to add them to the "Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies" Publishing Series, and hence thought they were missing as I'm filling out that series. I'll cancel those submissions. Chavey 15:50, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Donald (E.) Palumbo

I approved your Donald Palumbo edits. Nice job, but there are still five titles left that need variant-making, and the author data (legal name, birthdate) should be transferred to the canonical name. Do you want me to clean up the rest? --Willem H. 16:07, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I can do that, I just wanted to check how it looked part way through. Plus I had a PubUpdate submitted on one of his pubs, and I thought it would be safest if I didn't try to do a Variant if the title I was doing that to changed while it was in the queue. Chavey 16:09, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I just wanted to check. Go ahead! --Willem H. 16:10, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Impressive research! I approved all of them, so you could see the results. There are a few things I noticed: In the Image of God has the ISBN repeated as pub series #, Erotic Universe: Sexuality and Fantastic Literature (#18) is listed twice here and here, Offensive Films is entered as a novel (should probably be nonfiction) and Contours of the Fantastic has Michele K. Langford. We already had Michelle K. Langford (two l's) in the database. Can you recheck these? Thanks, --Willem H. 16:46, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

One "l" is correct (according to the OCLC record). The two "l"ed Langford is based solely on a review, which is either an entry typo or a misspelling in the publication. Either way, it can be removed by correcting the spelling of the author's name in the review record. Bill Longley is the verifier of the pub in which the review appeared. Mhhutchins 17:25, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I've finished the entry of the series data -- I just added the last 18 books. I had gotten a spreadsheet from Greenwood with almost all of the data, so it wasn't too hard (just tedious) to connect all the books we had and add the new ones. The only data they were missing were the actual series numbers, which I got from WorldCat, and book #9 in the series. Of course I knew I was going to have to review the data afterward, but that "double ISBN" was kind of obvious! I will be comparing the rest of the entered data against the Greenwood data later. I'm glad to see the "Michele" was the correct spelling - I copied it directly from their spreadsheet. One oddity in their series is that "Flashes of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the War of the Worlds Centennial, Nineteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts" is both #94 and #107 in the series. I've entered it as #107, because WorldCat has several records with that number, but I'll add a note later that it's also (apparently) #94. Chavey 18:25, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Also, #31 in the series is missing. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:44, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I've noticed some dates are missing, and I've filled in a few from OCLC records. Also, the page count from Greenwood differs from the OCLC records. For example this record gave the page count as 226, but OCLC gave it as xxv+201 which is closer to the ISFDB standard of presenting page counts. Mhhutchins 18:52, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I will be filling in the missing dates in my "data review" stage. I also noticed that the Greenwood page counts seem to not meet our normal standards. In the few cases where there were existing page counts, they were always like your example, totaling to somewhat less than the counts from Greenwood. I suspect that theirs are accurate counts if you were to include all the blank and unnumbered pages (e.g. they're always multiples of 4), but are only approximate counts from the viewpoint of our normal standards. If others thought this was important, I could add a note to the books to this effect, e.g. so that a primary verifier felt confident in overwriting those numbers where appropriate. Chavey 19:24, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

If you're up to the task, you could also enter the contents of those books which are collections of essays. I added the contents to this pub from data in the OCLC record. Mhhutchins 22:07, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I will work on that. I did the contents for some of the Liverpool series I was working on, and got pretty good at moving stuff from OCLC into our contents fields. Unfortunately, that will have to wait until later next week (too many work-related deadlines), but I should be able to get to them. Chavey 22:35, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Removing the white frame from Amazon images

When linking to Amazon images, be sure to look at the URL and remove any characters between the two "dots", which will load a larger image and/or remove the white frame from the image. For example, in this pub you gave the URL http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FDSV4RBWL._SL500_AA300_.jpg and you get this. If you remove every character between the dots/periods (leaving one dot before "jpg") and enter http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FDSV4RBWL.jpg, you get this. Pretty neat trick, huh? Mhhutchins 01:31, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Very nice! Thanks for showing me that. Chavey 01:34, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Foreign language variants

I had to reject the submission that wanted to create a variant title (Trommeln in der Dämmerung) for Bradley's Drums of Darkness. We currently add foreign language publications under the English language title record, without making it a variant. (See here for an example.) The exception is made for works that were originally published in another language. The parent title record is the title it was first published and then the English title becomes variant of that title, as here. The Help page that covers this is here. Mhhutchins 01:41, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I'l re-do that. Also, I just entered "Das besten Stories von Frederik Pohl", and entered the German titles of all of the stories in that collection. Once that's approved, do I then Merge those individual titles with the original English story? Chavey 17:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

That would take many edits to get straight. You should clone the Pohl collection, changing all the applicable fields, leaving the English titles of the content section intact. In the note field you can give the names of the German translated titles. If I accept the submission currently on hold, you'd have to merge individually each of the content title records, obliterating the German titles. It's up to you. I'd rather moderator a cloned submission. Mhhutchins 18:40, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Tor Books merged into Tor

Please see this message when you get a chance. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Importing contents

I accepted the submission adding the same essay contents to three different pubs of the same title. These essays will now have to be merged. It would have been better (and a whole lot easier) to enter the contents in one pub, wait until the submission is accepted, then import the contents into the other two pubs. Looking down the queue I see you've done the same to two other titles with four publications. I would suggest canceling the submissions for three of the four submissions and import the contents to the remaining pubs. Also I've noticed that most of the titles don't use normal English capitalization. If this info came from OCLC, be aware that it is standard for librarians to capitalize only the first word and any proper names, but it is not the ISFDB standard nor most publications. I would bet that the essays as published were capitalized as standard English. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:14, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I had checked the "Help" pages to see if there was anything there about importing contents, and found nothing, so I thought it wasn't possible and that it had to be done by hand. (I hadn't noticed that sidebar menu under Publications.) I've cancelled those additional submissions and will use the import when the (one set of) contents are approved. I've done the Merges for "Anticipations", and will correct the capitalization after the merges are approved. I'd actually felt pleased that I had thought to correct all of their "V.T."s and "I.F."s to add the extra space that is our standard, but didn't think about that capitalization difference. Chavey 19:59, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

A question: When I did the merge on M. Hammerton's essay Verne's Amazing Journeys, I noticed that there were four copies of the essay: three from different editions of "Anticipation", which I merged, and one from an 8-year-earlier issue of Foundation. I would hope that the 1995 version of that essay was substantially updated from the 1987 version, but similar as well. Should they be merged into one title? Should they be left as is with Title notes about the about version? Chavey 20:07, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Merge all the titles and then note in the title field if you're certain which, if any, of the later printings have been revised or updated. The variant function should not be used to indicate a variant in text, although, unfortunately, (and incorrectly) you'll find it used that way throughout the database. Variants are made for changes in title or author credit only. Some editors get around this by appending "(revised)" or "(expanded)" to the title, and there's not a stated policy (that I'm aware of) which prevents this. Mhhutchins 20:27, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The Great War with Germany

Approved the addition of contents to [this] then checked [Locus1], which has the complete contents listings and page numbers, though for the TP edition [no reason to think they would be different for the HC]. Seems most are extracts, but more than triple the number you've added. Just an FYI. --~ Bill, Bluesman 01:11, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the TP & HC versions should have the same page numbers -- they always have the same total book length. As the note mentions, I got this data from WorldCat, so it seems they didn't list enough. I'll check out the Locus reference and add the rest, although it may take me until Saturday to get to that. Chavey 01:41, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Locus will nearly always have the pagination, but better yet the story lengths are always noted, though their abbreviations are slightly different than ours. Plus the original date of publication and where is noted. --~ Bill, Bluesman 01:53, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Do you really mean to remove the ones you started with, instead of simply adding others? I will approve the removal, but that is a lot of work to redo, so I am just checking to be sure that is what you want. --MartyD 12:20, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I meant to do that. While I was working on the Liverpool series, I had added the contents of "View From Another Shore" into this book instead! So I imported those contents into "View", and to update this book I need to then delete all of those other titles, 'cuz they're not in there. Then I'll add the correct ones. Chavey 15:21, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Got it. Done. --MartyD 16:22, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

(The) Glass Bottle Trick

Entered as "Glass Bottle Trick" in your verified pubs but also with "The" in the title. Since the two pubs you verified also credit the full title and the award nomination is for the full title would it be a good idea to merge the titles with the full name? There is also a discrepancy in year of publication between the titles and I don't know if the award nomination is for the year published or the year given. Thanks.--swfritter 15:11, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I've submitted a merge changing the title to "The ..." and using the 2000 date instead of the 1999 date. I own at least one edition of each of the 4 publications that printed that story (I'll complete verifications tomorrow after one of the trade pb clones I submitted are approved). One of my editions is at the office, so I'll check it then, but the other three all list the copyright date as 2000, and all of them have "The ..." on the story's title page. You asked about the award year. The Tiptree list is for the year of publication, not the year the award is given. (I'm part of the Tiptree group, so that's one I know.) I also checked our official list of winners and nominees, and it's "The ..." there as well. I'll update my note after the merge is approved, to keep the comment about the 'wrong' title in parts of "Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root". Chavey 05:05, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge accepted. --MartyD 10:04, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Dark Matter submission

Hi. Your proposed Dark Matter addition looks to me like it duplicates DRKMTTRRDN2005. But you probably cloned it, so I imagine I am missing something.... What is different? Thanks. --MartyD 10:02, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

It looks like I erred, because the existing one didn't have a contents list, so it didn't come up as I was looking for the books that contained "The Glass Bottle Trick". I'll cancel that submission and do an import of the contents instead. (There's one change in the contents, which is the page location of the introduction.) Chavey 14:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

That's odd. When I do a "contents import" it registers it as a NewPub (both in the submission button and in the "Pending Edits". Is it supposed to do that? Chavey 15:00, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The submission looked o.k. (from the moderators viewpoint), so I approved it. I'll try it myself one of these days. --Willem H. 15:58, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I suspect it's just an oddity in the "Import Contents" interface, i.e. that the code for that began by using code from "New Pub" and that piece of it didn't get changed to something more natural, even though it doesn't create an actual "New Publication". I'll submit a bug report about it. Chavey 18:36, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Cloning a pub used to call it New Pub, but that was recently changed. I suspect the common content-copying heritage was actually a copy (a clone? ha ha) of the processing and is another spot where "New Pub" could be changed to something more accurate. Just a guess. --MartyD 23:35, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a pretty good guess. Internally, many of the "add"/"clone"/"import"/etc submission share the same underlying submission type, "NewPub". If we change them to another type, we'll need to change quite a few places which expect "NewPub" and that's time consuming and error-prone. The way it works on the Submission Queue page (after the last fix) is that every "NewPub" submission is examined before it is displayed. The display logic then decides whether the putative "NewPub" is actually a "ClonePub", an "AddPub", an "ImportContent", and so on. I need to add the same logic to "Recent Edits", "MyEdits", etc. Ahasuerus 17:49, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Crossing of Ingo

It's already in the database here. Mhhutchins 05:05, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I thought I'd searched for it, but apparently I didn't, or mistyped something. I'll add it to the Ingo title series though, since it's not in there yet. Whoops, somebody else just added it! I know it wasn't there 10 minutes ago. Ok, I'll add its Wikipedia link! (I have to do something :-) Chavey 05:12, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Mystery solved. From the Recent Integration list: 2011-02-07 22:55:43 / 1532586 - NewPub / Ahasuerus / Ahasuerus / The Crossing of Ingo. Your submission was about two minutes later. You have to be fast on the draw round these parts, pardner. Mhhutchins 07:42, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

View from Another Shore

Moderator: The submission I have in the queue is fixing up an error I made. I entered WorldCat data from one volume in the Liverpool Science Fiction series into the wrong volume of that series. The submitted import moves those contents to the correct location, and I will the correct the flawed contents in the other volume when that is completed. Chavey 05:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Submission approved. In the future, notices like this should be posted to the ISFDB:Moderator_noticeboard. Some moderators may not watch every editor's user page. Thanks. Mhhutchins 05:55, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense. I put it here 'cuz I figured that if a moderator went to my page to query what I was up to, they would notice it. But I can see that the Moderator page is more natural. Chavey 06:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The Ballad of the Quick Levars" in "Liavek: Wizard's Row"

Please see this. I added "song" to the title of the Jane Yolen / Adam Stemple entry is Liavek: The Players of Luck. Thanks, --Willem H. 21:13, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that discussion. It seems to me that that's the right solution. I was thinking, though, that it might be useful to add to the notes in each version a direct link to the other version. If you agree, I can do that. Chavey 21:16, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Of course! Go ahead. Thanks, --Willem H. 21:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Done. Seems to look and work well. Chavey 02:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Pseudonyms

Hi Chavey. Before creating the title variants it's best to create the pseudonym relationship first, if not it leaves the name empty. It can be done afterwards but it's best to do it first. I'll approve the submission and let you see the authors page[1]. If it gets forgotten it will be hard for most users to figure out. I and other mods know what they are and how to fix them but most users don't. Thanks!Kraang 03:08, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

My mistake it's stay pubs that are created. Odddly the last lot you put through left the authors page blank? I wonder what the difference was?Kraang 03:14, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Found the difference shortstories leave blank author pages and novels leave stay pubs.Kraang 03:25, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that bit of information; I hadn't noticed the difference before, but it's useful to know it. Chavey 00:21, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

This is one of those unusual cases where the pseudonym is for two authors who are not in the database already, because their true authors don't have other publications on their own. Based on the advice of BLongley, in these cases I enter the variants first, that forces the authors to exist in the database, and then I can connect the pseudonym to the (now existing) authors. As you say, I have to make sure I remember to do that, but I have a system to ensure that I don't forget. Chavey 03:18, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

And it leaves the author's page blank, because all of the titles are now assigned to the true authors' bibliographies, and there's nothing left to display here. Of course as soon as I assign the actual pseudonyms, then the "blank" page will be replaced by two links pointing to those two new authors. Chavey 03:18, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

You know whats happening thats good. Thanks! :-)Kraang 03:25, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The Christening Quest

Is this really by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough or just Elizabeth Scarborough? BLongley 19:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

My apologies for taking so long to reply -- my books were not well organized. (They will be in about 8 hours :-). The cover says "Elizabeth Scarborough". The title page says "Elizabeth Ann Scarborough". So, presumably, we leave it as "Elizabeth Ann Scarborough". Chavey 04:53, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Blackburne

Hi. What do you intend by "O'B." as the middle name in Blackburne's legal name? I searched around a bit, and I think the legal name should be "Casey, Elizabeth Owens Blackburne". I did not find any references to "O'B."? --MartyD 02:36, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. The "O'B." comes from Locus1, and I wondered myself what that stood for, so I'm glad you discovered it. I'll replace the submission. Chavey 02:51, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Colin Andrews

It's not likely that the person who designed the covers of two books from UK publisher Michael Joseph in 1968 is F. Paul Wilson, who used the pseudonym on a few titles in the 1990s. I've disambiguated the records by adding "(artist)" to the cover designer credits. Thanks. Mhhutchins 07:56, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for that correction, and that disambiguation. Chavey 09:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Linking to Locus1

I noticed that you're linking to Locus1 as a source for pseudonyms. Noting the source is fine, but linking to Locus1 is not a good idea. Those links are not static. They shift when Contento adds entries into the database. That's one of the reasons you never (or should never) see linking to Locus1 in the ISFDB database. It's OK to use them in the Wiki discussions, which take a chance that the link won't shift in the short period when the discussion is current. But the Wiki Author Bibliographic comment pages are linked to the ISFDB database and it would be impossible to update all of the links on a continuous basis. Noting the source should be sufficient. Mhhutchins 16:37, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for noting that; I didn't realize the links weren't stable. To make it easier for someone to look up a reference if they wished, can I link to the (Year, Novel vs. Story) link? For example, do you know if the link for 1999 short stories be stable? Or should I maybe say something like "Locus1 - 1999 stories"? Chavey 02:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

The only links that I'm certain of their stability are the TOC start pages for each of the various parts: 1984-1998, 1999, 2000, etc. Honestly, I don't think the links would add much value. Ordinarily "Locus1" is sufficient to indicate your source. If one were to give Rock's Who's Goes There? or Bates' Pendex as the source, or even Tuck, Reginald, Contento, or any number of secondary sources, you wouldn't be expected to link them. I'll leave that decision to you. Mhhutchins 05:58, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I'll just leave it as "Locus1". Chavey 13:46, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Utopian and SF by Women

I'm assuming you entered the contents for this book, including this title record. Is the spelling supposed to be "Foreward"? (Don't laugh, I've seen this word actually used in the foreword of a book, and couldn't tell if they were being ironic or just bad spellers.) Thanks. Mhhutchins 06:04, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

My mistake! Silly one too. I've corrected that. Chavey 13:46, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Her Progress Toward Utopia

More than half of this consists of fiction by Gilman, which under the current rules would qualify it as a COLLECTION type instead of NONFICTION. And I wonder if the first 114 pages could be considered a lengthy ESSAY titled "Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Her Progress Toward Utopia" by Carol Farley Kessler. What do you think? Mhhutchins 06:12, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea. It's also likely that the "Collection" part is what will be of the most interest to potential viewers. I'll change that. Chavey 13:46, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Everything looks good but I forgot something. The book should be credited to Gilman alone. Kessler, as the editor, is only credited in the notes. (Maybe someday we'll give the editor of collections their proper respect. Until then...) Mhhutchins 18:20, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that's a good idea. Kessler isn't just the editor, she wrote 116 pages of the book. Amazon lists both Kessler and Gilman as authors; the Liverpool series lists Kessler as the sole author; Locus1 lists Kessler as the sole author. I think we should include Gilman, but dropping Kessler's name completely is inappropriate. Chavey 19:45, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

The only way to credit both is to revert the type back to NONFICTION, and that would rub against current standards. If we credit both, Kessler would be considered a co-author of the collection, and that's not correct either. Regardless of the length of the essay, it could just as well be considered an introduction to the fiction which follows. If you don't make Gilman the author of the book, this collection of her fiction (60% of the book) will not appear on her summary page, an even more troublesome state. Giving the editor credit in a collection also establishes a precedent which could be used by other editors to make changes in hundreds of books already in the database. That's my stand. Feel free to present your case on the Rules and Standards page. (Also, it's not a good idea to use Amazon as the basis for authorship. They've been known to give author credit to illustrators, narrators and other contributors.) Mhhutchins 20:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Look at the Evidence

I see you made a single content record for the reviews in this pub. It would be better to create records for each of the reviews. Barring that, just placing a statement in the note field about the number of missing reviews should suffice. A content record for "56 Reviews (various books)" on Clute's page and the pub record really doesn't add value to either. Mhhutchins 05:17, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good; I made the change. Chavey 05:21, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

That Darn Squid God

You can't change the author(s) of this title record. That was how the books were credited. You have to create a variant if a pseudonym was used. I've rejected the submission. Mhhutchins 01:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I thought I had created a variant. I'll try again. Chavey 03:28, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Nope, it was a title update in which you were changing the author from James Clay to Phil Foglio. The subsequent submission was a Make Variant, and it worked. Thanks. Mhhutchins 05:09, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

And that's why we have moderators :-) Chavey 05:10, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Peter Garrison science articles

I have mixed feelings about accepting the submissions making the Omni articles into variant records written by Craig Shaw Gardner. Nothing in his background or other writings would lead one to think he's a writer of science articles. The fact that he used the pseudonym for a series of novels isn't sufficient evidence to assume he also wrote the Omni pieces. Do you have any solid sources to indicate otherwise? There happens to be an author whose real name is Peter Garrison who has written articles for Smithsonian, Conde Nast Traveler, and Flying magazines. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:33, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

The three novels that were listed under that author's name are attributed by Locus1, e.g. at The Magic Dead, to a pseudonym of Craig Gardner. I think you're quite likely right though that this is a different Peter Garrison than the one that wrote those essays. In other words, we had already confused two different authors into that one listing, and we need to disambiguate them. Can you do that, or do you want me to try? (I have very limited experience trying to do that.) Chavey 03:39, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll disambiguate the two authors. Give me some time to think about what we should name the science writer. Do you have any suggestions? Mhhutchins 03:45, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

The Wikipedia page refers to him as "Peter Garrison is an American journalist ...", so I suggest "Peter Garrison (journalist)". By the way, did you notice the last line in his Wikipedia article? It says: "Mr. Garrison is sometimes confused with Peter Garrison which is the pseudonym used by Craig Shaw Gardner, a prolific science-fiction writer born in 1949." Yup, that's us! But we keep getting better :-) Chavey 03:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

It had been a while, so I went ahead and did the disambiguation myself. I needed a little practice at that anyway. Chavey 19:31, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for not following up on this. Your solution works pretty good. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:17, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Disturbed by Her Song

I accepted the submission creating a variant of this title, but changed the author of the parent title to simply Tanith Lee, who is apparently the canonical author for both of her co-authors. Don't you just love bibliography? Mhhutchins 03:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Wow, I hadn't noticed that. I was trying to reduce the authors to two, but I didn't realize that Judas Garbah was another pseudonym for Tanith Lee. I just read the introduction to that book, on Amazon, and that certainly is right. Yup, bibliography is fun! Chavey 03:56, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Charlotte Corday-Marat

I noticed your "discovery" of this pseudonym of Philip José Farmer. I should have noticed it myself of course, when verifying Pearls from Peoria, but it slipped past me. I corrected the credit ("The Princess of Terra" is on it's titlepage as by Charlotte Corday-Marat), and notified my friend (and fanatic collector of everything by Farmer) Rias Nuninga. This caused quite a stir in the Philip José Farmer universe (Rias, Mike Croteau, Paul Spiteri, Chris Carey, Win Eckert and probably others). My friend's website already has several items about "the other Charlotte Corday-Marat story", and the Official Philip José Farmer Home Page will devote it's february 9 update to it. They are now desperately trying to find out if "The Many Dooms of Harold Hall" was really written by Farmer. How a small stone in a pond can cause enormous ripples... :-) --Willem H. 17:12, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

A question, Willem: was the story "The Princess of Terra" actually credited to Farmer in Pearls from Peoria? Thanks. Mhhutchins 00:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes it was (on the story's titlepage), I hadn't noticed it when verifying the pub. --Willem H. 10:28, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I see my response here was wrong. The story's titlepage credits Charlotte Corday-Marat, the pseudonym is explained in a note. --Willem H. 20:18, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Very cool! Thanks for letting me know about this sequence of events! I've been trying to enter all of the pseudonyms that Locus1 has that we don't (I'm alphabetically up to the M's). Of course most of them are fairly unknown authors, but I was a little surprised by this one not being listed. Which was why, for example, I tried to be careful about the bibliographic notes I added for Corday-Marat. I followed your links, and it will certainly be interesting to find out what their conclusions are. I hadn't remembered that Corday-Marat was a real person, and the assassin of Jean-Paul Marat. I probably should have, but it's been 35 years since I read Peter Weiss's play The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat, as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. I can certainly appreciate the excitement that a new story can bring. I'm a diehard collector of James Tiptree, Jr. material, and about a year ago I discovered that Alice Sheldon had submitted to Amazing, and had rejected, a short story under the name of "Ann Sheldon". No one knew about that pseudonym, especially since she never published anything under that name. The executor of her estate is a friend of mine, and he knew nothing about it either, but is convinced the signature on the submission letter is accurate. So now he has to try, once more, to go through all of her material and see if he can find something that might be that missing submission (which she summarizes in her letter). Knowing how exciting it would be to find another Tiptree story, I can appreciate the experience for Farmer fans. So I'm proud to be a small stone causing ripples :-) Chavey 08:55, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

John D. MacDonald = Scott O'Hara

It's hard to believe, despite Locus's assertion, that the writer of an original story in a 1997 anthology of gay supernatural stories is the mystery/sf writer who died in 1986. MacDonald used the pseudonym in some 1940s pulp mystery magazines, so that may be how Locus wrongly attributed the 1997 story. Mhhutchins 00:15, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that! I've been trying to watch out for some of the mistakes that Locus1 makes, but I didn't get this one. I'll cancel that submission and update the bibliographic notes to prevent someone else from the same mistake. Chavey 00:21, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Dear Monkey

All of the submissions were accepted but I made a few changes, added the interior art credit, and corrected the price of this pub from "0/35" to £0.35. (In 1975, the UK had already converted to decimalized currency.) Mhhutchins 19:42, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for those corrections! And apparently, I entered that British price incorrectly, so I'll correct it to £0.45. Chavey 19:53, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Mike, the bibliography for Alison Waley lists all of these 4 publications as "Stray Publications". I'm guessing that's a side effect of having a title by Wu Ch'eng-en have a variant that's by him and by Alison Waley. It seems there should be a way of fixing this, but I don't know how. Suggestions? Chavey 20:31, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

We're gradually moving toward better foreign language support and once we get "language" support for titles out of the way (only four more changes to go before Ahasuerus gets that testing headache!) then "translator" and "adapter" support may not be too far behind. (So long as we get volunteers to work on such.) Some of the recent improvements already help - e.g. you can now search title or publication notes for "translated by" or "translator" or "traducción", etc. I'm a bit reluctant to "clean up" things that will be improved shortly. (For a very large value of "shortly" maybe - I noticed when I submitted Step 2 of the changes that the plan was already 3 years old.) BLongley 04:50, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Dr. Death publication dates

Hi. I have your proposed publication date changes for the two Dr. Death novels on hold, but you should cancel them (or I can reject them). For books, we use the first book publication as the title's publication date, even if the novel appeared previously in a magazine. See Help:Screen:EditTitle#Date. To record the magazine appearance, we make another title that is of type SERIAL (e.g., Dr. Death: 12 Must Die (Complete Novel)), with the date of the appearance, and make that a variant of the NOVEL title, which retains the first book publication date. If the novel appeared over several issues, we would do the same with each installment (e.g., Dr. Death: 12 Must Die (Part 1 of 5), Dr. Death: 12 Must Die (Part 2 of 5), and so on, each with its date of appearance). For an example of both of these treatments, see A Man Called Destiny. You can enter the magazine appearance without setting up the full magazine. See Help:Entering_non-genre_magazines. If you don't want to do that (you are under no obligation), let me know and I will accept your submissions and change the date back, keeping the notes about the first appearance. Thanks. --MartyD 11:57, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The Dweller in the Pot

Do you have The Tindalos Cycle? I approved your "Dweller in the Pot" title change, and in researching it, I think the Frank Chimesleep Short "author" credit is mistaken and that Price should be the sole author -- the "by Frank Chimesleep Short" is part of the title, not an author credit. What do you think? --MartyD 12:24, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't have the book, but I was trying to reconcile what we have with what's in Locus1. But now I think they were just wrong. After submitting those changes, I also did more research, and I agree with you. The title of the story should be "The Dweller in the Pot (OR, THE PASTA OUT OF SPACE EATERS) By Frank Chimesleep Short", and the author should be "Robert M. Price". It's annoying that neither Google Books nor Amazon will show us the actual ToC, that we have no primary verifier, and that WorldCat shows NO library with a copy. But the publisher's web site listing of the ToC makes this conclusion pretty clear. I'll submit those changes. Chavey 13:35, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I approved it. The change in authorship removed the author, so I had to hard-reject the subsequent pseudonym removal (it couldn't be processed because Frank Chimesleep Short was gone). --MartyD 13:46, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I also added a note to the title about the Locus1 discrepancy. Now the remaining question is whether "(OR, THE PASTA OUT OF SPACE EATERS)" should be added to the title. In this case, I think it probably should, since it's in the middle of the title. --MartyD 13:54, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I think you're right on the title for this appearance of the story. There is also the question of how to handle the other copy of The Dweller in the Pot in the system, without the longer title "... By Frank Chimesleep Short", in Blasphemies & Revelations. Almost every place I can find that has a ToC for that book (including WorldCat) lists it just as "The Dweller in the Pot". Librarything lists it as:

The Dweller in the Pot - (or, The Pasta Out of Space Eaters [parody], as by "Frank Chimesleep Short": Dagon (British) # 27 [90] - Crypt of Cthulhu # 74 [90] [revised version]) and THE TINDALOS CYCLE 2010 - 1990

So it may be that we need one to be a variant title of the other, but without actually looking at the book, it's hard to be sure, or to know which is the variant of the other. (At least this book appears in WorldCat, but the only library that has it is the Toronto Public Library.) Suggestions? Chavey 14:05, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the best we can do for now is record it as the other sources present it. You can always make a note in the pub and on the title about it. I'd make "The Dweller in the Pot" by Price be the canonical title, and make the longer version be a variant of it. If you put "By Frank Chimesleep Short" in the title, someone who has the book will understand and will be able to figure out what to do. By the way, I found this stating that "Frank Chimesleep Short, Jr." is Frank Belknap Long, Jr., and I found this stating that Lovecraft called Frank Belknap Long "Frank Chimesleep Short". There's also a little info in the Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Unfortunately, none of that helps us know the title or attribution of this particular work in The Tindalos Cycle. --MartyD 12:05, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not an authoritative source, but I also found this Cthuluwiki entry that interprets the "by Frank Chimesleep Short" as part of the title, with authorship attributed to Price. --MartyD 12:08, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I had noticed that one also, and it helps convince me that we are correct on the new listing for "The Tindalos Cycle". (But notice that they don't include the "PASTA OUT OF SPACE EATERS" portion of that title.) Unfortunately, that site doesn't have an entry for "Blasphemies & Revelations", the other place where this story appears, so it doesn't help us in resolving how the story should appear there. Chavey 14:22, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

You seem to have found lots of sources, haven't you found someone you can actually, you know, ASK? ;-) BLongley 00:50, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh sure, look for the simple solution! ;-) --MartyD 02:05, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

LeGuin pseudonym

Hi. I've put your proposed edit making Ursula K. LeGuin a pseudonym of Ursula K. Le Guin on hold. It looks to me like "LeGuin" exists only because of two Analog reviews: this in August 1988 and this in August 1982. Both of these pubs are verified by Rkihara. We recently clarified the help (see "Author") to specify that the canonical name should be used (and the "correction" noted) when the review doesn't use an existing pseudonym. Here, I think the credit for the two reviews should be changed, which will delete the "LeGuin". If you would like to do it, just get the OK from Ron first. If you'd rather I did it, let me know -- I'm happy to take care of it. Thanks. --MartyD 02:03, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

The name "Ursula K. LeGuin" existed solely because of these two review records. I corrected the records to reflect the author's canonical name, according to ISFDB standards, and noted the change in each of the records. This automatically deleted the "LeGuin" name from the db. I made these corrections after seeing the submission, but before seeing this message. I apologize if I stepped on anyone's toes in doing this, but it was the proper steps to take to remove the false name from the db, regardless of whether the appearances were in verified pubs. I'll let Ron know what I did. Mhhutchins 02:58, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

All fine with me! Chavey 04:54, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Not a problem. No toes were stepped on in the correction of these records. --MartyD 10:32, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

No problem with the correction, the reviewer in both cases spelled it "LeGuin," a note should be added to pub in addition to the review.--Rkihara 18:02, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I've submitted those updates to the publications. Chavey 18:07, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Ghost Hunters

Hi again. I also have your proposed variant of Ghost Hunters on hold. On what basis do you want to have a canonical title using "Ed Gorman" in place of "Ed Warren"? I haven't been able to find anything supporting either the idea that Gorman wrote as Warren (or vice versa) or that Ghost Hunters was published with a different set of authors. Thanks. --MartyD 02:17, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

If that's what I submitted, it's certainly wrong. I had meant to use "Ed Gorman" in place of "Robert David Chase", per Locus. I probably re-arranged the order of the authors to agree with the alphabetical ordering required by the TitleFields:Author statement on collaborations, in which case it's possible that (i) I entered the wrong full set of authors; or (ii) that it looks like I replaced "Ed Warren" when I had just moved him to a different location in the list. My apologies for whichever mistake I made. Chavey 05:02, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the submission kept Chase and Lorraine Warren and replaced Ed Warren with Ed Gorman. I will fix it up. By the way, there's no real point to reordering, and anything you read about "alphabetical order" is mistaken. The software displays multiple authors (or editors or artists) in a fixed-but-random order -- they're always in the same order, but what that order will be is not easily predictable. --MartyD 10:36, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

As a result of the current conversation in the Community Portal I've come to understand that that part of the Help page descriptions was wrong. Which simplifies some things, such as submissions like this one. Chavey 13:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Miranda Seymour and Locus date

I updated Author:Miranda Seymour to fill in more detail. You had created the original page and included on it "Locus1 claims (in 2002)..." Do you have a copy of the Locus1 CD from 2002? I'm trying to figure out where that date came from as the current database says "revised January 2, 2010" and does not indicate when a record, such as the Miranda Jane Sinclair / Miranda Seymour was added nor the source for that addition. --Marc Kupper|talk 00:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

No, I don't have a copy of the CD. I've worked strictly off the online version. It references her twice: in the 1984-98 combined index, and in the 2002 index. My reference to "in 2002" is just a reference to that 2002 online index, which was the last time they mentioned her. My experience, though, is that once Locus1 lists an alias for someone, they carry that through all later indexes without revisiting the question of whether that is, any longer, the author's actual name. My memory is that I did not look at any sources except for these Locus entries and her Wikipedia page. Chavey 01:27, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the response. Have you seen an example of where the pseudonym for someone changed from one index to another? I suspect there's a master db of all the authors and if we were to send in a correction about Miranda Seymour then presumably both the 1984-98 and 2002 would get revised at the next update. I've e-mailed Bill Contento about this.

Miranda Seymour's first marriage ended in 1984. Although that does not mean she stopped using Miranda Jane Sinclair it could be a basis for updating both the 1984-98 and 2002 Locus indexes. I found a 2001 interview in the Gale Cengage DB where she was addressed as "Ms. Miranda Seymour" implying that either she'd dropped the use of Sinclair or did not use it as she was being interviewed as the author Miranda Seymour. --Marc Kupper|talk 09:56, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Bill Contento responded with "I have one master database of pseudonyms and birth/death dates that's used when generating the indexes. There is a method to link name changes, but since there are no works in my databases by her with a name other than Miranda Seymour I think I'll leave the entry as is for now." --Marc Kupper|talk 20:56, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I think both ISFDB and Contento have the problem that neither of us have good ways of dealing with a change in legal names during an author's life time. (And, having not seen any places where the names changed between indexes, I had pretty much come to the conclusion that this was how Contento did things.) Both ISFDB and Contento seem good at being able to handle the changes in the names under which someone writes, but we both keep a single "legal name"; even though ISFDB and Contento have different definitions of what "legal name means". In the case of my own obsession, James Tiptree, Jr., I have works by her when her legal name was "Alice Bradley", when it was "Alice Davey", and when it was "Alice Sheldon". But with many authors it becomes extremely difficult to know when they switched from one legal name to another, as witnessed by your attempts to identify such boundaries for Miranda Sinclair <--> Miranda Seymour. If we ever get the ability to include multiple legal names for one person over time, we will then be faced with a very daunting task of trying to identify marriage and divorce dates for all these authors -- not an easy task. Chavey 22:27, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

In thinking about it more - it would not be hard to add support for multiple names. A precursor to doing that though would be to document the names in wikitext for various authors to see what information should be in the database. We can put those Author bio pages in a category to make it easy to find them. Wikitext may be better in the long run simply as it makes it easier to explain where/when/why a particular name exists. --Marc Kupper|talk 11:29, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea. The documentation for the various name changes in an author's life is going to be too free form to fit into standard fields, and we will want to keep that documentation separately, e.g. in the "Bibliographic Comments" field. Were you thinking about putting them there, or is some other wikitext area? Assuming we put the data there, your idea of keeping their names in a "Category" is a good approach. Should there be a "sample format" that we generally imitate (e.g. a separate section in the "Bibliographic Comments", with multiple lines of [chronological data + documentation]), or just leave that to individual editors? I can imagine, for example, trying a variety of formats for such data, seeing what seems most effective, then eventually settling on one format, with a "Help" page, on how to list such name change data. Chavey 18:11, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking to use the Bibliographic Comments areas. I have no idea on if and what the format would be. My own style is to list the sources I have found and to document what they say. Sometimes it's that I looked and there was nothing but at least someone knows that potential source did not have anything. My own interest is in more on finding and documenting information and less on analyzing it. I try to chase things back to the original source. I suspect end result for something like a person's legal name(s) will often be inconclusive. We'll be able to say "this is what these sources say" but can't state firmly, for example, "this is when the name Miranda Sinclair was used." --Marc Kupper|talk 10:28, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Changes to The Best of Leigh Brackett

I'm holding the two submissions which will change or add a couple of records to this verified pub until you've heard back from the primary verifier. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:33, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Charlotte Stone

Did you put the notes on [this] page? There is a new [editor] wanting to make Stone a pseudonym of Maxim Jakubowski. I have his/her submissions on hold, unfortunately you can't look at them! The notes would seem to negate that relationship? Thanks! --~ Bill, Bluesman 23:09, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I wrote the second note, but not the first one, so I don't know who the "source: e-mail from Maxim Jakubowski, January 2007" was sent to. I accepted that claim as authentic, but didn't research it any further. In doing a little research though, I notice that Wikipedia claims that Stone is a pseudonym of Maxim Jakubowski, with a note "pseudonym acknowledged by the author." However, the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Third Edition, by John Clute, David Langford, Peter Nicholls and Graham Sleight (i.e. pretty darn definitive) says that their earlier claim that Jakubowski was Stone was in error. In particular they say "A former version of the addenda claimed that as Charlotte Stone, Jakubowski wrote Cheon of Weltanland: The Four Wishes (1983 US). This book was written by Charles and Dominique Nightingale; Jakubowski merely acted as agent." So it appears that "Charlotte Stone" is a pseudonym, but not for Jakubowski. (This may explain both the email someone at ISFDB received and a misinterpreted message that some Wikipedia editor received.) I would suggest that we change the pseudonym to the one that Clute, et. al. endorse, drop the first note, and add a comment that Wikipedia and many other sources are just wrong. Chavey 01:11, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Addenda: Silly me, the other comment must have come from Marc Kupper, the verifier in the same month and year as the email message mentioned. By the way, I know RedDragon, and have bought quite a few books from him. I suspect that he's here because I told him about this site as a good way to identify editions and data for books that he sells through his bookstore. Chavey 01:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Thought it might have been Mark, but he's less active these days. I'll point RedDragon to this discussion and drop a note to Mark. Between the three of you this can be worked out to get the pseudonyms correct and probably rework the notes. Thanks for the feedback. --~ Bill, Bluesman 01:31, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Red Dragon Books here. Not sure what to make of this. I took my copy of the Charlotte Stone book to Jakuboski at a mystery convention and he inscribed it 'alter ego!' and didn't mention anything about not being the author. Not sure what year this was but it was sometime ago. I think the convention might have been the Bouchercon in Monterey in 1997. RedDragonBooks 02:07, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I checked my source for why I originally thought the book was written by MJ and took it to him to be signed, Hawk's Guide to Pseudonyms lists Charlotte Stone as his pseudonym. Hawk identifies his source as being another pseudonym guide with the title of Who's Hugh, An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms by Roy Robinson, 1984. Ron RedDragonBooks 02:23, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

(Hi Red Dragon! Still pleased with my 20 signed 1st editions :-)

It wouldn't surprise me that a 1984 book on pseudonyms would be wrong; or that it would be less authoritative than the current edition of Clute et. al. And it doesn't surprise me that Wikipedia is wrong. But the conflicts between Marc's email from Jakuboski, Jakuboski's signing of Ron's copy of the book, and the statement from Clute's encyclopedia are seriously problematic. I wonder if we can contact either Clute or Jakuboski for more precision? If we're lucky, Marc's email might have enough detail to specify what the story really is. Chavey 02:49, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I should be up front and say that I am the person that edited to the entry on Wikipedia with the comment mentioned above. It seemed to me that autographing a copy of the book and inscribing it with 'alter ego' is an admission of authorship. If the consensus is that that is unfounded, I will be happy to alter the entry again. I can't help wondering if MJ might have decided he now doesn't want to acknowledge authorship. I can't really remember if I ever read the book so I can't comment on the quality of the writing, but the book was obviously intended to be the first book in a series. However, no additional books were ever published. Was that because the author just lost interest in the series, or were sales so poor that DAW decided to not purchase any additional books in the series? Sales would have had to pretty bad if the latter, DAW published quite a few books that had fairly small print runs. RedDragonBooks 06:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

(unindent) I was the one that added the note about the e-mail. I thought I added the second note too about the "Weltenland" spelling. Unfortunately, I did not document who the "some sources" are that claim Jakubowski is the author. Also, unfortunately, I can't find the original e-mail I sent to Jakubowski. He replied by creating a new message and changing the subject line. I'll assemble what I can find here.

• E-mail to myself 1/22/2007 with subject "Maxim Jakubowski - Summary Bibliography."
  • Cheon, Witch Warrior (Paperback) by Charlotte Stone link to Amazon.
  • About the Author from the iUniverse edition: Charlotte Stone lives in England and has authored a number of novels, short stories and articles, in both English and French. Her interests include history, languages, art and science. She is married with two teenage sons. She is a frequent visitor to the far South-West of France.
  • pseudonym for Charles and Dominque Nightingale, according to the SF Encyclopedia
  • JAKUBOWSKI, MAXIM (p637): As Charlotte Stone, MJ wrote Cheon of Weltanland: The Four Wishes (1983 US).
  • STONE, CHARLOTTE: New cross-reference entry to Maxim JAKUBOWSKI.
• E-mail to me from Maxim Jakubowski sent 1/23/2007. He's obviously replying to me but I can't find that e-mail.

Thanks for your mail.

The Cheon book has been attributed to me in the past, and I had some involvement in it (which caused the mistake) but I was not the author.

The Witch Warrior incarnation is the same text as The Four Wishes (Daw).

I'd e-mailed myself about Charlotte Stone as the bio is familiar. One of the ways I've tracked down pseudonyms is that authors rarely write completely false details about themselves.

The iUniverse edition has an Amazon Look Inside[2] and the back cover says "Credit for Graphic: Charles Nightingale."

Hunting down the Nightingales seems easy enough. For example this seems to be one of their web sites. This page has an article by Dominique. At the bottom it says "Dominique Nightingale's first book, a fantasy for children was published in 1978, in France. She has had another fantasy published in the US, Cheon of Weltanland." While it seems authoritative, the note at the bottom is in italics and written in the third person meaning it's possible Dominique did not write it. I've e-mailed her asking about if she and Charles are the author.

Chavey, it's fine with me if you want to clean up the note that's on the ISFDB title record. I probably should have added a hint that I was the one who added the note. My intent at the time was documenting the source (Jakubowski) --Marc Kupper|talk 09:48, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I have received an e-mail reply back from the Nightingales and so created Author:Charlotte Stone.

Something I did not add to the new Charlotte Stone page is an attempt to chase down the source cited by Ron. A Google search for "Hawk's Guide to Pseudonyms" only finds the Maxim Jakubowski Wikipedia article. That reference was added to Wikipedia 4-April-2011 with this edit. The same editor then added "DAW Books ISBN 0-87997-877-5 - pseudonym acknowledged by the author." Both edits have been reverted to remove the "Hawk's Guide to Pseudonyms" mention from the Wikipedia article.

Ron also mentions "Hawk identifies his source as being another pseudonym guide with the title of Who's Hugh?: An SF Reader's Guide to Pseudonyms by Roy Robinson, 1984."

Ron, do you have a copy of the Hawk's guide? If so, it would be great if you could document what it states on the Charlotte Stone page. If the title is "Hawk's Guide to Pseudonyms" then it may be worthwhile to fully document the publication as is not listed on Google, Amazon, AbeBooks, Link+, nor Worldcat.

If we really want to beat this to death it looks I can get this copy of Who's Hugh? though that page reports "c1987 1st ed." That confuses me as it's three years after the date Ron reported which presumably came from the Hawk book. Who's Hugh? is on ISFDB as 1987, Worldcat reports 1987, 1989, and 1990, Abebooks has 1987, Amazon(hc, pb) is 1987.

As an aside, there have been a number of edits to the Maxim Jakubowski Wikipedia article that attempted to make him the real author behind a number of people. In the edit history I see attempts to credit him as Adam Barnet Foster and M.A Foster,^[3] as Alan Bard Newcomer,^[4] and as Charlotte Stone.^[5] --Marc Kupper|talk 20:19, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Ron, I'm not sure what to do with the 'alter ego' inscription. I guess you could document the facts on Author:Charlotte Stone. I'm guessing that he considered his role as agent as an author's alter ego. There is a possibility that the Nightingales are a false flag operation... --Marc Kupper|talk 20:36, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi Marc (by the way, that is my grandson's name!) The entry in Hawk's Guide just has Maxim's name and under it Charlotte Stone with '[2]' after it as source. On the pages that list sources it gives the information I've already reported, it doesn't give publisher. I've emailed Pat Hawk to see if he can clarify the reference. Information about Hawk's books can be found on his website ^[6]. The third edition Pseudonym guide that I have is pretty awesome, being over 1,600 pages and almost 3 inches thick. There are copies available on abebooks but only two are third edition, the rest are editions one and two. Each addition got progressively larger, as collectors and authors feed him more information and he included information for more writing genres (and make corrections to errors in the earlier books). Bye the way, the link on his website to send him an email doesn't seem to be working, so I sent my email the address he gave in the front of the book, hawk@koyote.com —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RedDragonBooks (talk • contribs) 13:43, 5 April 2011.

Thank you. It looks like the title is Hawk’s Authors’ Pseudonyms and not Hawk's Guide which is why I could not find this earlier. I'll see if I can get a copy of Who's Hugh? which is the source Hawk used.

I have removed my note from The Four Wishes which stated "Some sources attribute Cheon of Weltanland book 1: The Four Wishes to Maxim Jakubowski. He had some involvement in it (which caused the mistake) but was not the author. (source: e-mail from Maxim Jakubowski, January 2007)." This information is now on the Author:Charlotte Stone page along with a note about Hawk’s Authors’ Pseudonyms.

I made Charlotte Stone a pseudonym for Dominique Nightingale and Charles Nightingale. --Marc Kupper|talk 22:43, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

D**n you guys are good! And that's why ISFDB is going to become the definitive authority on such matters. Chavey 01:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I heard back from Pat Hawk, the copy of Who's Hugh that he used was in a library, he says that it is possible he got the date wrong. He will incorporate the changes for Charlotte Stone into the fourth edition. RedDragonBooks 18:33, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I got a copy of Who's Hugh? and so will be updating Author:Charlotte Stone. --Marc Kupper|talk 00:25, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I have a copy of "Who's Hugh?" too - somewhere. I also have met the compiler/Editor many times - I've even stood in for Roger on some SF convention program items. (One tall skinny bearded four-eyed fan is as good as another at times.) It might be interesting to see if he now refers people to us rather than vice-versa. BLongley 00:40, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Jack variant

Hi. I rejected your proposed variant for James Frenkel's "Jack". It was a duplicate of one that was already a variant of the James R. Frenkel title. I merged it with that duplicate instead. "Check for Duplicate Titles" has the VERY unfortunate behavior of not showing you titles that are variants of other titles. You need to use "Show All Titles" to see all of the titles. They are sorted in alphabetical order, so the duplicates are usually easy to see. --MartyD 11:52, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. I need to get better at checking for such things before creating a VT. Chavey 14:35, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Judgement Day

I'd prefer that spelling myself, but the cover suggests that "Judgment Day" may be more correct? BLongley 00:23, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I hadn't entered that book, but I should have caught that error when I verified it. I corrected it to "Judgment Day", which is the way it's spelled on both the cover and the title page. Chavey 02:00, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Bradley's The Forbidden Circle

Please check the Canadian price given for this pub. Thanks. Mhhutchins 01:56, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Looks like my keyboard needs cleaning :-) -- I corrected the price from $1.99 to $10.99. Chavey 01:58, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Notes about author credit discrepancies

It would be better to note the differences between ToC credits and title page credits in the publication record itself and not the title records (here and here). There's always a possibility that the stories might be reprinted in another publication, and the notes in the title records wouldn't apply. Mhhutchins 02:01, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Good point. Will do. Chavey 02:08, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Bradbury's The Illustrated Man

Several of the records you added for later Bantam printings retained the cover image of the October 1954 printing (showing the price as 25 cents). It's possible other editors may see this and try to "correct" the prices of the later printings to 25 cents. Mhhutchins 14:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll remove the covers, and the $0.25 price that I accidentally left on a couple of the clones. Chavey 02:53, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Also, two of the records (for the 2nd and 3rd printings of the new edition) are dated September 1963. Is this correct? Mhhutchins 14:54, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

That is correct, but I'll add a note to the 3rd printing to the effect that it was the same month as the 2nd printing, so that others don't think it's an error. Chavey 02:53, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Map entries

I accepted the submission adding a record for the map in Walk to the End of the World, but changed it to the standard for non-titled entries: "Title (map)". We append the title of the book to generically titled entries, e.g. "Introduction (Title)" or "Afterword (Title)". Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:11, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The terms "map", "introduction", and "afterword" all seems to be equally generic titles to me, so I don't understand why maps are treated differently. Is it that introductions and afterwords apply to publications, while maps occasionally apply to series? Chavey 04:03, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

No. In this case, we're not talking about terms, we're talking about titles. Most maps aren't actually titled. If they are, then that's what you would enter in the title field. Those that aren't titled should be handled like other interior art. Interior art credits are given as only the title of the work, while maps are given the title of the work with the appendage "(maps)" to specify that it's a special kind of interior art. This is the same method we use for that other specialized interior art, the frontispiece, which is titled the same as the novel with the appendage "(frontispiece)". We enter introductions, afterwords, etc, exactly as they're titled. So when an introduction is titled "Introduction" we add the title of the work to disambiguate it when searching for a particular work on an author's summary page. I know the Help documentation isn't very clear on this, but there are things you learn as you go along. Mhhutchins 06:17, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks much, that makes it clear. Chavey 21:02, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

List of primary verifications

I've submitted some improvements to the first attempt - I appreciate you're not feeling ready to attempt testing yourself, but any feedback on the first version (attempt 2) or discussion on the potential author-sorted second version (or even type-sorted version that Mike would like) are welcome. I don't want to waste time on coding something that will never be desired, and I'm sure Ahasuerus would rather not spend time testing such. But we do need more feedback on what's potentially coming, so please keep commenting! BLongley 23:57, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

It's now live, although we've discovered the first glitch already. What do you think? BLongley 20:16, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I checked it out, and added comments in the Community Portal discussion. Thanks! Chavey 21:10, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. Keep the comments coming - I'd rather fix/improve our software than work on "X, the Y Fairy" or yet more "Classic Out-of-Copyright novel, with Zombies/Vampires/Werwolves" submissions from Fixer.:-/ BLongley 23:14, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

The Virgin by Coon

The pub record that gave the title as Virgin was in error and was a duplicate of a record which was properly titled The Virgin. So the former was deleted. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Mhhutchins 15:52, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I wondered about that, but I didn't have a copy of the '83 cover to check, so I thought it might have been a variant. But it was clearly the same book. Chavey 20:07, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Superluminal

Added a decent image to [this] --~ Bill, Bluesman 15:38, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The Crystal Ship

There is a note in [this] record about the cover artist. Can you make out the signature on your copy? The style doesn't look like Szafran and the image is too grainy to make anything of the signature. Thanks! --~ Bill, Bluesman 15:59, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Here's a scan of the signature. It's too small for me read anything on the cover itself, and I can't make out what this is, even from the 600 dpi scan. But maybe you can see something recognizable in it: Chavey 19:28, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Love those puzzles. It's Norman Adams. See here. First row, 6th image. --Willem H. 19:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Great! I submitted the appropriate update and note to the book. Chavey 19:49, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Changeling artist credit

I noticed your note [here] when you submitted the change. Take a look at the [SFBC] cover, which includes more of the painting than either the trade paperback or the MMPB editions. Maroto's signature is clearly visible on the bottom right. Just an FYI! Cheers! --~ Bill, Bluesman 20:24, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I submitted a correction to the notes on the verification of the artist. Thanks! Chavey 19:31, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Krensky's adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol and db shortcomings

I accepted the submission adding, what I thought, was a new publication of this title. Then I saw it was already in the database, and saw from the note what you were intending to do. The biggest problem was that you can't have the same book in the database with two different records, just so that it would display differently, depending upon how it's credited. The book has to be recorded as credited. The trouble is due to the database's inability to handle adaptations of another work. A field for the role of adapter, as opposed to author, is not part of the database. I personally would like to have it, but it's been on the back burner for awhile. I did a little manipulating and got the title of the chapterbook to Krensky's summary page, but the content record for the fiction can't be displayed because it is a variant of a title which already exists in the database, i.e. "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. Variants for text also don't exist in the database, and is handled here as if they are identical except for the author credit. (That's why it doesn't appear on Krensky's page, because the system thinks it really is the Dickens story, but it's credited to him and another author in these chapterbooks.) Now if we made the chapterbook title record into a variant, it would also disappear from Krensky's page. But, because chapterbooks title records represent the book and not the content, we are able to make it a unique title and not a variant. Hope this explains what I did and why. Maybe one day the db can handle variants in text and different roles other than author. Mhhutchins 01:18, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to handle this right. Seems the chapterbook appears on Krensky's bibliography, I think that does a pretty good job of handling the problems with this: Anyone looking at Krensky's stuff can follow that link and see the other publications associated with it. But I agree with the idea of supporting a more general "adapted by" field. There seem to be a lot of "Stray Publications" that arise from not being able to properly handle such adaptations. (E.g., Alison Waley's entire bibliography. Chavey 05:17, 2 May 2011 (UTC)