User talk:CoachPaul/Archive 1

Welcome!

Hello, CoachPaul/Archive 1, and welcome to the ISFDB Wiki! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! --Marc Kupper 01:01, 26 Jan 2007 (CST)

Civil War Stories - is it speculative fiction?

Hello Paul - I'm looking at your submission for Civil War Stories by Ambrose Bierce and am wondering if it's speculative fiction. On Amazon it looks like a collection of satirical essays. Please take a look at ISFDB:Policy#Definitions and see if the stories seem to be speculative fiction.

Overall, the formatting and all that looks great. One comment is you set the price to "$150" which it should be $1.50. --Marc Kupper 01:01, 26 Jan 2007 (CST)

I'm dropping this update but just in case, here is the data that was submitted.

Metadata

Column	Proposed Values
Title	Civil War Stories
Authors	Ambrose Bierce
Tag	-
Year	1994-00-00
Publisher	Dover
Pages	123
Binding	pb
PubType	COLLECTION
Isbn	0486280381
Price	$150
Artists	-
Image	-
Note	-

Contents

Title	Authors	Date	Page	Type	Length
What I Saw at Shilo	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	1	SHORTFICTION	ss
Four Days in Dixie	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	19	SHORTFICTION	ss
A Horseman in the Sky	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	27	SHORTFICTION	ss
An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	33	SHORTFICTION	ss
Chikamauga	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	41	SHORTFICTION	ss
A Son of the Gods	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	47	SHORTFICTION	ss
One of the Missing	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	53	SHORTFICTION	ss
Killed at Resaca	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	63	SHORTFICTION	ss
The Affair at Coulter's Notch	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	69	SHORTFICTION	ss
The Coup de Grace	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	77	SHORTFICTION	ss
Parker Adderson, Philosopher	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	83	SHORTFICTION	ss
An Affair of Outposts	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	89	SHORTFICTION	ss
The Story of Conscience	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	99	SHORTFICTION	ss
One Kind of Officer	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	105	SHORTFICTION	ss
George Thurston	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	115	SHORTFICTION	ss
The Mocking-bird	Ambrose Bierce	1994-00-00	119	SHORTFICTION	ss

Marc Kupper (talk) 02:08, 15 Feb 2007 (CST)

Sorry it took me quite a while before I accidentally stumbled onto my Talk page, and then longer to figure out how to contact you through you on yours. I would like a chance to defend my position that it is Speculative Fiction and not Satirical Essays. Should I do it here, or on my Talk Page, and then let you know when I have it ready?

CoachPaul 14:55, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

If you believe it's speculative fiction then please go ahead and resubmit the entry but also include a note here as to why it's speculative fiction so that people who chance upon the listing in the future will understand. Or, if you want, you can write the note here and then we can resubmit the entry. I'm sorry about deleting the previous submission. I kept it in the queue for a couple of weeks thinking you'd check back once a week or so. Marc Kupper (talk) 20:35, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Actually some of the stories are speculative fiction while others might not be. Is there a rule of thumb in cases like this for collections/anthologies where some stories fit the rules, while others dont? CoachPaul 21:16, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Marc, how do I go about resubmitting this pub? CoachPaul 13:05, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Changes to publication contents

When you are viewing or editing an ISFDB publication record the upper part of the page is the publication record and and the Contents section is composed of ISFDB title records. ISFDB has one big "gotcha" in that if you make changes to the anything in the Contents section other than the page numbers that you will be updating the original title record. Thus with your proposed update to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Summer 1950 you wanted to change An Ounce of Prevention to Ounce of Prevention you would be affecting other publications that include that title. Please see Help:Screen:EditPub#General_contents for how to correct the Contents to match your publication. Marc Kupper (talk) 17:10, 26 Mar 2007 (CDT)

The Dragon Masters

Related to the previous item on "Changes to publication contents" is a publication update to 58677 Galaxy, August 1962 where you wanted to change the title type for The Dragon Masters from SERIAL to NOVEL. At the moment you would need to do this using a method similar to that outlined in the change publication contents. Once difference is there is already an ISFDB record for The Dragon Masters as a novel and so there's one extra step of merging the new type NOVEL record with the existing one.

However, all of this may not be necessary as the link to the existing SERIAL record may be fine. I am uncertain if the original magazine appearances of this story were a "complete novel" or if the standalone novels of this title are revised/expanded from the original story. The original story seems to run to about 90 to 100 pages while the standalone novel versions are 100 to 140 pages and so it's likely it's the same story. Something I tried to get clarified, without success, a month or so ago is exactly how this should get structured in ISFDB. ISFDB has a title type called SERIAL where you would put multi-part magazine stories and they get linked up by title to novels of the same name. If a story gets published as a "complete novel" in a magazine then you have a SERIAL record for that but the area where I'm uncertain is where one files anthology or collection appearances of the story. They can go under either the SERIAL or NOVEL title. I personally prefer to use then under the SERIAL title and to reserve the NOVEL version for instances of the story as a standalone novel or one half of a dos-a-dos. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:43, 26 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Anthologies/Collections

When an anthology/collection contains both Speculative Fiction and non-speculative fiction how is it judged if it shoulld be added to the db?CoachPaul 23:28, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

That's a good question and one I'm wresting with now. Last week I picked up one of my daughter's books, Tales from the Secret Annex by Anne Frank which turns out to be a collection that contains a couple of speculative fiction stories out of 30 stories/essays. In this case I decided to enter the book in ISFDB but am still going through the stories classifying them. When I'm done Anne_Frank's page will show a couple of stories under SHORTFICTION and the rest will be Nongenre and I'm undecided if I'll call the non-fiction "essays" or "non-fiction" (the way she writes is not always 100% factual).

Thus - if you have something that's borderline I would enter it anyway but add notes to the story titles explaining that something is classified as a novel or shortfiction but may not quite be specfict - Explain enough so that it's not a spoiler fir the story. For example, a detective mystery may have solved the case except for one seemingly mysterious element that could be explained by a <music type="spooky">phantom</music>. You could explain in the ISFDB note that it's 99% non-genre for ISFDB and that there was a specfict element to the ending.

BTW - we have had similar discussions on what to do about authors that normally write non-genre have a couple of specfict titles. We used to only catalogue the specfict leading to partial bibliographies. These days we lean towards keeping the non-genre titles if they are already in ISFDB but flagging them as non-genre but normally do not make an effort to hunt down all of the author’s non-genre titles and to add them.

I don't know if you have seen it but ISFDB:Policy#Contents.2FProject_Scope_Policy lists what should be added (or not) Marc Kupper (talk) 23:55, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Strange Bedfellows

Yes, a variant title is the correct thing to do and your note is perfect. As the steps below each needed moderator approval before someone could move to the next step I went ahead with.

• I removed the question "is this the right thing to do" from the title record.
• Change the title for the publication you added 177805 from Strange Bed Fellows to Strange Bedfellows
• Unmerged the Strange Bedfellows publication from 36383
• Merged the Strange Bedfellows variant title record you had created with the Strange Bedfellows title that was created from the unmerge.

Normally it's not that painful - if you have a publication that's a variant title that's new to ISFDB you would add it using new-publication and once approved go to the new title record and point it at the existing parent title. But, because it was a collection where it was less work to clone an existing publication the steps would normally be

• Clone the existing publication
• After approval of the clone then unmerge it. This will create a new title record with just your publication in it.
• After approval of the unmerge then set up the variant title relationship using the "Parent #" thing.

It's still awkward but fortunately is something that should be rare. If you leave a note in the notes field of the first publication about what to do then the moderator will probably go ahead with the unmerge and then variant title while also removing your note. Marc Kupper (talk) 01:09, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Thank you. If I see this problem in the future I now know where to look to solve it. CoachPaul 08:16, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Artist Roles

I approved your update to publication #87745 Space Cadet but then did an edit as you had Steele Savage(Cover)+Clifford N. Geary(frontispiece). If you take a look at 87745 you will see how I handled the frontispiece. Marc Kupper (talk) 01:11, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I had seen it done as I did it on another book, can't remember where it was now, but if I find it again, I'll edit it to the way that you did it. CoachPaul 08:13, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

An author search for "(" dug up three books which I went ahead with fixing. Marc Kupper (talk) 11:52, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Time Enough for Love

Re: the proposed change of the date from 1974-03-00 to 1974-01-00, I wonder if there may have been a later printing that was published in March? Does your copy specify the printing number, by any chance? Ahasuerus 19:25, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I think that I meant to Clone the pub, but accidentally pressed edit. My copy is the fourth printing, so maybe the other one is the 5th or 6th printing. I'll be more careful from now on. CoachPaul 20:09, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

No worries, we are only human! Well, at least I bet most of us are :) You may want to note the printing number in the Notes field in the future since it can help disambiguate multiple printings of the same edition. Ahasuerus 20:13, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Can you give a quick glance at the two last questions I posted at the bottom of the Community Paotal? Thanks. CoachPaul 20:22, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Done! :) Sorry about the delay, I had other complicated submissions to process first. Ahasuerus 00:11, 7 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Nebula Award Stories Six

I have unmerged it from the Anthologies heading, because it is another edition of the "6 Nebula Award Stories 6 (1971)" listed as the series "Nebula Awards" under Anthology Series. I now want to add it in it's proper place. CoachPaul 10:52, 7 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I wondered about that :) but approved the Unmerge since it's mostly harmless. Take a look at the results in the Simak bibliography: we now have the old and Publication-less Title record plus a new Title record with the old Title's Publication record plus the Title record under the Nebula Awards series. The way to get them all together is to use the Title link on the left (in the navigation bar) and merge these three titles. That way we will end up with just one Title record for this anthology with 2 Publication records under it. We will then need to examine these two Publications (editions) to see whether they are really two separate editions or whether they reflect the same edition. Hope it all makes sense! :) Ahasuerus 11:00, 7 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I think that I got it right. Did you help any? As for the two publications, I don't have either of them, but do have a US pb edition that I added. CoachPaul 11:26, 7 Apr 2007 (CDT)

It wasn't me, it was [User:BLongley|Bill Longley] who approved the Merge submission and the New Publication submission and then further massaged them. I was soundly asleep for 4 hours trying to catch up for the week :)

If there was any major error in the massaging, please let me know. I try to treat books and associated data with respect, but when tired, "fondle" might become "fold, spindle, mutilate". :-/ ( It could be worse: "Abort, Retry, Fail"?) I usually take my Mod hat off when I'm tired or under the affluence of incohol, but might edit a little longer still: I'll either deal with my own messes when refreshed or someone else will have stamped all over my edits in the meantime. When compos mentis though, I'll try and help editors get through their multi-stage edits, although often I really wish we had a direct AIM connection or some other real-time chat: trying to guess the intentions hurts my brain. (If I could do that perfectly, I'd still play Chess!) BLongley 15:24, 8 Apr 2007 (CDT)

When I checked the results, everything looked good at the Title level, so I clicked on the Diff Publications link in the navigation bar and compared the contents of the three editions that we now have. (Note: you can only compare 2 at a time.) We had Simak's "Introduction" listed as 2 separate Essays and also as an "EDITOR" entry (a big non-no!), so I merged all three into one Essay. I then similarly massaged Thomas D. Clareson's "Foreword".

At this point the Contents sections of the 1972 and 1973 reprints look the same, so we are in good shape there. The original 1971 hardcover edition is a different story, though. It lists Sturgeon's "The Stars Are the Styx", which was first published in 1950, so presumably it doesn't belong in an anthology of 1970 stories. Also, it is not in Contento's list. I have posted a Verification request for it. Also, according to our record and to Contento, the hardcover edition apparently includes "Science Fiction and Literary Tradition", an essay by Thomas D. Clareson, which the paperback reprints do not seem to include. Could you please check your edition to make sure that it's not hiding somewhere? Thanks! Ahasuerus 16:19, 7 Apr 2007 (CDT)

It's in my copy, it's on my list of things to do to this pub when I go back and double check to see that my page numbers are ok. I just went back and looked, it's called "Foreward" in the two pb editions, so when I cloned it I couldn't change the name to it's proper one. I'm going to change it now. CoachPaul 23:12, 7 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I'm tired and I did it wrong. If whoever is reveiwing my name change of the essay from "Foreward..." to "Science Fiction...", please disaprove it. I know that I need to remove the previous name, and then add the latter one. CoachPaul 23:30, 7 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Are we just assuming that the name of the essay in the British edition is the same as the US? CoachPaul 23:55, 7 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Well, we know that it's "Science Fiction..." in the original US hardover (according to Contento and Worldcat) as well as in your US paperback reprint. We don't know for sure what it was in the UK hardcover and paperback reprints, so I will post a query on the verification board. Thanks! Ahasuerus 00:26, 8 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The Chilekings/Little Men

There is discussion on this in the Community Portal under the author's name, Jessamyn West. CoachPaul 11:28, 7 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Novelets of Science Fiction

FYI, I have approved both submissions and then deleted the first added publication since it was identical except it was missing the page count and the page numbers. Hope that's what you had in mind! :) Ahasuerus 01:12, 8 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The first submission was only a partial that was done accidentally. The second was the complete one. I figured that the second would just overwrite the first as an edit. Was that a correct assumption? I was then going to remove the previous existing pub after the new one was added, so to make a long story short, yes that was what I was going to do. CoachPaul 01:17, 8 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I have another couple problems with this pub. My edition has the story "And the Truth Shall Make You Free" titled as "...And the Truth Shall Make You Free", which is different from the earlier edition that I cloned the information from. "...And the Truth Shall Make You Free", is also in another publication "Future Science Fiction, March 1953, (1953 , Robert A. W. Lowndes, $0.25, 98pp, magazine) Cover: Milton Luros". I would say that these are the same two stories, although I have no physical proof of that. I will change the name of the title in my edition. Should we assume that the title in the previous edition is a misprint, or just leave it alone? CoachPaul 01:30, 8 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I am pretty sure the version of the title without the ellipsis came from Contento and is likely an oversight on his part. I can check that issue of "Future Science Fiction" when I am briefly reunited with my collection between April 28 and 30. Ahasuerus 01:08, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Next, my pub lists "Night Fear" instead of "Night-Fear" as the name of a story. It's listed as "Night-Fear" everywhere else in the db, except as the name of a Collection by the same author which is named Night Fear, and contains Night-Fear. There is one pub that this story was published in that has been verified, that pub was verified by Ahasuerus. Could you check it for me please? "Dynamic Science Fiction, October 1953" is the pub and you verified it in December of last year. CoachPaul 01:30, 8 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Sure, I can double check when I have access to my collection later this month. It sounds like your copy dropped the hyphen, so we will presumably want to list it as a "variant title". Keep in mind that you don't have to wait for me, you can always post a verification request on the ISFDB:Verification requests page. P.S. Sorry about the delays, it's been hectic here :( Ahasuerus 01:08, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I have checked both magazines and here is what I found. The title of the Simak story as published in Future was "...And the Truth Shall Make You Free". Lengthwise, it's right on the border between a short story and a novelette since ~10 pulp pages are approximately equivalent to 20 paperback pages modulo the font size. I made it a short story because of the illustrations and such. The first line of the story is "They knew when they stepped out of the ship and saw it." The last paragraph reads "David shook his head. "Let's go back home," he said". I have also checked the first (1963) Belmont edition and the title and the text are the same as what is in the magazine, including the ellipsis. So it sounds like the ellipsis part was dropped in a subsequent reptint. Edit: Oops! Upon rereading your message I realized that the reprint does have the ellipsis after all. In other words, the ellipsis-less title was in error, so I have merged the two. I will also e-mail Bill Contento about this issue. Ahasuerus 16:18, 30 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The Frank Belknap Long story is listed in Dynamic as "Night-Fear" both in the table of contents and on the first page of the story, so it looks like we have a variant title on our hands. Ahasuerus 15:55, 30 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Silverberg/Three for Tomorrow

The original entry listed Silverberg as editor. I thought about changing it to unknown but decided to leave it as such for the moment. But upon reflection i think it should be changed to unknown.Kraang 11:48, 8 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I'm pretty sure you'll find it was Arthur C. Clarke. As my version has "EDITED BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE" on the front cover and "THREE FOR TOMORROW ARTHUR C. CLARKE" on the spine. ;-) Title page doesn't actually credit him with more than the foreword though. :-( Still, I'm confident to add mine, have a look and see if you can find anything that doesn't look right. BLongley 15:59, 8 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Further research suggests that there may be a difference between the US and the UK versions. Contento lists the book as fllows:

Three for Tomorrow ed. Robert Silverberg (Meredith Press, 1969, hc)

• Editor’s Introduction • Robert Silverberg • in

• Foreword • Arthur C. Clarke • fw

• How It Was When the Past Went Away • Robert Silverberg • na *

• The Eve of RUMOKO [Nemo] • Roger Zelazny • na *

• We All Die Naked • James Blish • na *

The Library of Congress lists the book thusly:

Personal Name: Silverberg, Robert.

Main Title: Three for tomorrow; three original novellas of science fiction, by Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, and James Blish. With a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke.

OCLC files the book under Silverberg and has 7 editions listed. But the 1972 Sphere reprint is listed as:

Three For Tomorrow

Silverberg, Robert. / Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, James Blish ;

[edited] with a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke.

I wonder if Sphere listed Clarke as the editor because he was more popular in the UK in 1972 than Silverberg? Ahasuerus 00:47, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I tried the drastic step of actually READING some of it. ;-) Apart from cover and spine, there's an "About the Author" which is about Arthur C. Clarke. On the reverse of that the 'Also published in Sphere' section lists three Clarke works and one Silverberg. The Title page has "Three for Tomorrow" "Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, James Blish" "With a Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke". Copyright lists the three main works as copyright 1969 by their respective authors. It also mentions first publication in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz in 1970, so presumably there's another edition which is suspect. Table of contents doesn't credit "Editor's Introduction", a reader would assume it was Clarke from the cover or "About the Author" though. More interesting though is what it says: "Arthur C. Clarke [...] was asked to write a brief essay setting forth a general theme for a science fiction story. Clarke's theme was then offered to Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny and James Blish". So both suspects would have been writing about themselves in the third person. I'm leaning more towards Silverberg now - he might ask Clarke for the essay then offer it to two people and himself. Clarke surely wouldn't ask himself to write an essay, he'd just do it. How do the other editions' introductions read?

Finally, checking Clute/Nicholls gives it to Silverberg, with a note that the UK edition was credited to Clarke. And Clarke's (much shorter) "As Editor" entry shows another example of taking credit for someone else's editing... you naughty boy, Arthur! :-( I think I can understand why UK books now come with a copyright page line "The right of X to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988". BLongley 05:19, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

According to Majipoor.com, "The Quasi-Official Robert Silverberg Web Site" endorsed by Silverberg himself, this book was edited by Silverberg. CoachPaul 10:38, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

So what's the consensus, Clarke, Silverberg, both, or neither? CoachPaul 17:12, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Well, they're both still alive (I hope), why not ask them? ;-) I wouldn't give it to Clarke on the evidence so far. Maybe Clute or Nicholls have a source we don't. And why doesn't this wiki-thingy allow us to post polls when we want a vote between us? :-/ BLongley 18:46, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I've readed my Editor's intro. and it reads like it was written by a third person, not Clarke or Silverberg. So i guess i'am back to Editor "Unknown" :-)Kraang 19:24, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

(unindent)Actually, if the editor's introduction is unsigned, then our policy is to enter it as by "uncredited". "Unknown" is reserved for cases when the author/editor may have been credited, but is currently unknown. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes we would be entering an early SF story from a circa 1900 magazine and the only source we would have would be a photocopy of the story, but not the rest of the magazine.

In this case I would suggest using "uncredited" as the editor and then creating a variant title for Silverberg as the real editor plus a detailed note explaining what we know about this situation and what our sources are, e.g. Silverberg's quasi-official Web site and Clute/Nicholls.

By the way, Bill, it's not clear just how naughty a boy Sir Arthur was. Publishers have ways of making authors/editors do what they want them to do. Sometimes they even do it without authors/editors' permissions. Need I repeat the famous stories of Laumer's Swedish translation and Shatner/Goulart's "collaboration"? :-\ Ahasuerus 23:16, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The Stories of Ray Bradbury

This 4th Edition publication I'm working on is a work in progress.

Double Check page numbers.

Change title of "Mars is Heaven!" to "Mars is Heaven", then add "Mars is Heaven" as a variant title to "Mars is Heaven!"

Check to see if stories not in my edition are variant titles of stories that are.

CoachPaul 14:30, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I've approved the variant of "Mars is Heaven", but am holding up on making "Jack-in-the-Box" as a variant of "The Jack-in-the-Box", because I think all of the listings with "The" are incorrect. I've been unable to find any instance where the "The" is part of the title. I think we need to merge the two titles as simply "Jack-in-the-Box". Mhhutchins 15:38, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

My library's entry of "The October Country" by Bradbury in it's catalog on the web, lists the title as "Jack-in-the-Box". This is from the DelRey 1996 edition. I've placed a hold request for all three different editions from one of my local library systems, so we will see what they have to say. CoachPaul 15:59, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

My copy of The October Country [Ballantine 22760 (12th printing) 1974] doesn't have the initial "The". Mhhutchins 16:59, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

You're the Mod here, how much confirmation is needed before dropping the "The"? CoachPaul 17:10, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Contento lists the story without the article and the only verified editions that we have on file don't have the article either, so normally I would suggest dropping it. In this case, I am slightly hesitant since we have 10 (!) publication using this apparently incorrect form of the title... Ahasuerus 23:23, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I've just done my Bradbury, and score one more for the no-'The' verifications. BLongley 12:48, 13 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I'm having another problem. The story in my edition is called "The Traveler", which is the Anerican spelling, the story in the db is called "The Traveller", which is the British spelling. Contento says "Traveller", my edition clearly has the American spelling in both the Contents Page, and at the begining of the story. Bradbury was American and not English. Should I just add a variant title? CoachPaul 00:28, 10 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I've just verified my UK "The October Country" has "Traveler" in contents and on the first page of the story, although the copyright page says "The Traveller" came from 'Dark Carnival'. I'm happy using the traveler variant, and have added notes so that they hopefully won't get merged again, as I suspect has happened before. BLongley 12:48, 13 Apr 2007 (CDT)

"Other Worlds, Other Seas" & "The Computer That Fought a Dragon"

Check out this link to Lem's web site. http://www.lem.pl/cyberiadinfo/english/bibliografia/biblintro.htm The "All English editions TOC" gives a nice doc of his works. From the doc, this is the appropriate section.

1970 The Twenty-fourth Journey of Ijon Tichy, The Computer that Fought a Dragon, The Patrol and The Thirteenth Journey of Ijon Tichy in: Darko Suvin (ed.) Other Worlds, Other Seas: SF Stories from Socialist Countries NY: Random House, 1970 pp. 5-76 Notes: 1. The Twenty-fourth Journey of Ijon Tichy was transl. by Jane Andelman from "Podróz dwudziesta czwarta" of Dzienniki gwiazdowe (1957); also transl. by Joel Stern & Maria Swiecicka-Ziemianek in Memoirs of Space Traveller (1982). 2. The Computer that Fought a Dragon was transl. by Krzysztof Klinger from "Bajka o maszynie cyfrowej co ze smokiem walczyla" of Bajki robotów (1964); also transl. by M. Kandel as "Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon" in Mortal Engines (1977).

This gives the pub date, in Polish of 1964, the date of "Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon", first English translation as 1970, and "Tale of the Computer That Fought a Dragon" will have the date of 1977. That would make "Computer..." the parent title, and "Tale..." as the variant. If you have no objections, I will change the title in the hb of "Other Worlds..." to "Computer...", and make "Computer..." the parent of "Tale...". CoachPaul 00:20, 11 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Clarke's Tales from the White Hart

I'm not sure about your submission creating a variant title for this collection. Wouldn't it be better to leave it as just another publication of the original title? I found a graphic of the cover of the August 1979 edition and noticed it was titled Tales from the "White Hart". If you were adding the apostrophes, they didn't come through in your submission. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:16, 11 Apr 2007 (CDT)

If you think it would be better just to leave them out, that would be fine. I forgot to add them, and realized it, but figured I could do it when I removed the two titles that had different names then in the pub I cloned. CoachPaul 18:28, 11 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Are the quotation marks on the book's title page or on any running header? If they're only on the cover, it's probably best to leave them out. Mhhutchins 18:38, 11 Apr 2007 (CDT)

They are on the front cover, the back cover (twice), the spine, the title page, and everywhere inside the book in every story where I have seen the words White Hart, they are there too. Maybe they're what make this edition "special". CoachPaul 19:18, 11 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Good enough for me. Go ahead and submit a variant with the quotation marks. Thanks. Mhhutchins 20:09, 11 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Mona Lisa Overdrive

I approved your update but also cloned it back to create the $4.95 version - it seems there ARE copies at that price out there with the same ISBN, just not your one. BLongley 08:10, 13 Apr 2007 (CDT)

OK, I'll just clone from now on in this type of situation. CoachPaul 11:25, 13 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Niven, The Smoke Ring

I see you have verified the first paperback publication of this title, showing it as published in 1987. Locus gives the publication date as April, 1988. Could you double-check your copy? (Scott Latham 19:33, 13 Apr 2007 (CDT))

I wonder if there may have been confusion between the hardcover (0-345-30256-7) edition published in May 1987 and the paperback (0-345-30257-5) edition published in April 1988, at least according to Locus? The ISBNs are pretty close... Ahasuerus 19:47, 13 Apr 2007 (CDT)

My copy of the mmpb with that ISBN says on the copyright page, "First Hardcover edition: May 1987; First Mass Market Edition: April 1988". --WimLewis 20:51, 13 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I have removed my verification as it was obviously incorrect. My mmpb agrees with WimLewis, and is in fact a third printing dated April 1989. Is there a way to see what pubs I have "Verified", so I can go back and double check them all? If I made this mistake, I might have made others too. My edition also has an Interior artist credited, "Diagrams by Shelly Shapiro". I should probably clone the pub, make the new one the third printing with the April '89 date and add the interior artist. CoachPaul 21:20, 13 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Sounds like a good plan! You can see all recent Verifications here and then search for your user name in the page. Ahasuerus 21:23, 13 Apr 2007 (CDT)

(My copy also has the interior-art credit. I can't tell what printing it is, though. WimLewis 02:31, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT))

Italo Calvino

I have approved the Calvino collection that you are so diligently working on, but you may want to take a look at the way Jules Verne's bibliography is currently done in the ISFDB first. Basically, the title of each story/novel/collection in its original language of publication is supposed to be the main title and any English language titles that derive from it are Variant Titles.

We had a rather extensive discussion of this issue over on the Bibliographic Rules page a while back, but I don't think we have updated the Help pages yet :( Ahasuerus 02:38, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

It's not much of a problem for me to add the storie's Foreign Language names to the author's biblio pages and then make the English names variants, just more work, and I don't mind doing it. The Verne pages however only seem to have the French names for the novels, and not the Short Fiction.

I do have a question about the Headnotes. They started out being long, some of them take up almost 2 whole pages, but by the end of the book, they get much shorter, some barely being what you would call a proper paragraph. Since it is fairly common in a Coll/Anth to have the Author/Editor to add something before each story, (Ellison does it quite alot), and I don't seem to see them really attributed in any of the other books I've checked, should I take them out? CoachPaul 08:34, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

All the Calvino entries with "(Headnotes)" need to be deleted. It seems easiest to me if I just use the Title function to merge them all into one Title, and then just delete that, instead of deleting each one seperately. I had already done the "Historie du demoniaque Pacheco" delete when I thought of this. CoachPaul 00:39, 15 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Good point, I have approved both submissions! Ahasuerus 00:45, 15 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the quick approval. It's nice to know that this book is finished before I go to bed...that is until my purchased tp that I ordered tonight comes in next week. After doing all of this work on a Library copy, I felt the need to buy it. That, and I spent all of my time entering it, and none of it reading it, and it's due. CoachPaul 00:51, 15 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Foreign Language Titles

I am attempting to make all of the English language titles from Calvino's book variants of their Foreign language titles. I am attempting to do that by making the foreign language titles variants first, then un merging them, then making the English titles the variants, as that is the only way that I can figure out how to do it at this moment. If anybody has questioned my method when doing the Mod bit and has an easier way for me to do this, I would appreciate the help. If not I will just carry on. CoachPaul 10:10, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The easiest way to do what you are trying to do (that I can think of) is to first enter the English language version of the book using English Titles. Then, once the book is fully entered, you can pull up every English language title in ti and make it into a Variant Title of the Italian Title -- see Help:How to record a variant title for details. I have done it many times and it's only two steps per Title, so it's not very time consuming.

Also, keep in mind that at this point we don't create separate Title records for any books or stories that were originally published in English and then translated and published in a foreign language. If we did, we would end up with humongous Bibliography pages with dozens of Variant Titles per English language title for popular writes like Heinlein. Instead we just list non-English translations as Publications under the Title, e.g. Der Mond ist eine herbe Geliebte is listed as a Publication under The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It's not an ideal solution and we have plans to beef up our software to handle it better at some point, but that's how it works for now.

As far as Jules Verne goes, we simply haven't had a chance to enter the original French titles of his short stories yet. We also need to record the fact that his posthumous books were either completed or, in some cases, completely ghostwritten by his son. The work of a genre bibliographer is never done! :) Ahasuerus 15:53, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the help, I finally finished the Cavino book with all of the foreign language titles, and I think, in the end, I finally got it right! CoachPaul 23:19, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Very good! I have reviewed the Publication and restored a section of the Notes data that you eventually deleted, but which looked like it may be useful to our users. I also reversed the direction of two Variant Titles where the English language title was accidentally set up as the primary and merged a couple of duplicate Variant Titles. I then compared the result with the Locus Index entry and we are doing reasonably well -- a bit more data than Locus has in some cases, a bit less in other cases. I have also corrected a typo in the spelling of one French word and checked the spelling of all Russian and German titles, which were all correct. Not bad for a first encounter with the monster that is our foreign language support! ;-) Ahasuerus 00:06, 15 Apr 2007 (CDT)

"The Holes in the Mask"

Re: "Les Troud du Masque" aka "The Holes in the Mask", I have approved the variant title submission, but it looks like you used the lower part of the Variant Title page, which created a new parent title. In this case, the French language title already existed in the database, so you could simply link the English language title to it. An explanation of how to do it is in our Help pages:

display the title record (for the version with the canonical title), and look at the URL in your browser. It will end in a string like this: " . . ./title.cgi?17331" Those last few digits are the title id. Make a note of them, or just copy them onto your clipboard.

Now display the other title -- the non-canonical one, or the one that's going to be the child (as "The Man Who Upset the Universe" was the child in the example above. Click on the navbar link that says: "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work".

Under the prompt "If the parent title already exists, enter the record number of the title below" there is a field labelled "Parent #". Enter the parent title ID, from the URL (see above), in this field, and click "Submit Data". Note that the second half of the screen allows you to enter a new title; the use of this function is deprecated because it's always better to get title data directly from actual publications, but it does permit the creation of a parent title if you know it.

And there you go! :) Ahasuerus 15:40, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I read what you said, and it just seemed easier to create a new title, and then merge them under the Title link. Maybe not easier, but what I was used to...it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. If you can call someone with less then 300 edits an old dog. CoachPaul 23:24, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The Weapon Shops of Isher by A. E. van Vogt

This one is ugly and needs a lot of help. A lot that needs to be done I'm not totally sure of and I hope that I don't cause a lot of trouble for the mods.

1. The Weapon Shops of Isher / Gateway to Elsewhere by van Vogt/Leinster is listed as a NOVEL and should be an Omnibus.

2. Inside the NOVEL The Weapon Shops of Isher / Gateway to Elsewhere, is listed Gateway to Elsewhere by Leinster, and The Weapon Shops of Isher / Gateway to Elsewhere, by van Vogt. Gateway to Elsewhere is obviously by Leinster, The Weapon Shops of Isher is by van Vogt, there is no novel called The Weapon Shops of Isher / Gateway to Elsewhere by van Vogt.

3. Can an OMNIBUS be placed in a Fiction Series Novels?

4. The Weapon Shops of Isher, (1951 , A. E. van Vogt, Greenberg, $2.75, 231pp, hc, coll)

There are three of these listed in the db, none of them are verified, and they all seem to be the same. Did they all come from contento? Inside there are two versions of The Weapon Shop(nv) listed. Why two of the same story in the same book? Also multiple versions of The Weapon Shop listed in van Vogt's biblio.

5. The Weapon Shop(nv) seems to be a rewrite of some of the chapters of The Weapon Shops of Isher. Some of the passages are verbatim, some just have the paragraph starts and ends in different places, while some parts aren't in the longer work at all. Need to look up rewrites in the help section to see if this could be handled better in the db than it is now. What is the best way to show the relationship between a rewrite and the original story?

#3. Yes an omnibus can be in a fiction series, it will appear with an [O] after its name. You can enter the number of novels in the omnibus in the story length field with a / in front, i.e. /3N, in which case it will appear as [O/3N] against the title. Collections can be listed under titles as well and will acquire a [C] on the end. --Unapersson 15:27, 16 Apr 2007 (CDT)

#4. Oh dear, that's one screwed up publication! Somebody tried merging a couple of titles and messed things up. Hold on a second, let me fix it... Ahasuerus 23:06, 16 Apr 2007 (CDT)

OK, #4 has been fixed. It was one of those nasty cases where somebody had merged 2+ (in this case 4!) titles in the same Publications, which causes all kinds of problems.

Anyway, to answer question #5, you have run into what is known as a "fix-up" or "fixup". The term was invented by van Vogt in the 1950s, so you picked a good place to familiarize yourself with the phenomenon :) Basically, van Vogt was a very prolific contributor to SF pulp magazines from 1939 to 1950, at which point he, along with L. Ron Hubbard and John W. Campbell, Jr. (the editor of Astounding SF and the creator of modern SF) concentrated on Dianetics, with Hubbard in charge of the organization. Within a year or two, the whole thing fell apart amid allegations of financial improprieties and mutual recriminations and Hubbard moved on to found Scientology in 1952.

Now, Campbell had been smart enough to keep his day job (where he used his magazine, Astounding, to popularize Dianetics) and after the break with Hubbard he continued editing and pushing various far-out pseudoscientific theories like psionics and the Dean Drive. Van Vogt, however, had ceased writing new stories althogether and spent much of the 1950s experimenting with Dianetics privately. Of course, he still had to pay the bills, so he came with an ingenious way of making money. He would combine and "fix up" different, sometimes only tenuosly related, stories and sell them to publishers as novels. Thankfully, there was more and more commercially published science fiction from 1950 on, so it kept him out of the poor house through the 1950s. He would start writing SF again in the 1960s, but would never regain his earlier status in the field, which had largerly outgrown him during the 1950s.

Which brings us to the issue at hand: how do we handle fix-ups in the ISFDB? Unfortunately, there is no cookie cutter rule for them. Generally, if the changes made during the "fixup" phase are major, we will file the end result as a novel and document which stories it was based on in the Notes section. That's what I ended up doing with The Weapon Shops of Isher. On the other hand, if the constituent stories are still clearly visible and remain pretty much intact (perhaps with some interstitial material included), then we can file the book as a collection and list the stories in the Contents area.

Hm, let me see if we have anything in the Help pages about fix-ups, I think I saw something added a while back... Ahasuerus 23:47, 16 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Here we go:

• Fixups. Sometimes an author will assemble material published separately into a novel. This will generally be classified as a novel. Some fixups are less coherent, consisting of largely independent stories, formed into a whole by the addition of linking material between the stories. In this case it is acceptable to call the book a collection or a novel; the decision should be discussed on the author's project page if there is any doubt.

Ahasuerus 01:22, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The Weapon Shops of Isher / Gateway to Elsewhere

Re: the proposed addition of The Weapon Shops of Isher / Gateway to Elsewhere to the Weapon Shops series, we generally only add omnibuses to series if they contain works that all belong to the same series. If we added this Ace Double to the Weapon Shops series, it might mislead casual browsers into thinking that Leinster's Gateway to Elsewhere is about the Weapon Shops, which is probably not what we want :) Would you agree? Ahasuerus 22:59, 16 Apr 2007 (CDT)

OK, that makes sense. CoachPaul 23:02, 16 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Roger Moore

http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showcreator&creatorid=411 lists Roger E. Moore as the author of the book that we have credited to Roger Moore, as well as many of the items we have listed under Roger E. Moore, making it a psuedonym. CoachPaul 08:34, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Dragon Magazine

I have the first 200 issues on PDF which were sold by WotC earlier this decade. I will add them, well the Short Stories from them anyway, to the db. I will NOT be adding the gaming articles as essays, nor all of the interior art, but I will be adding the cover artists. Eventually in the future I will probably go back and add in all of the book reviews too. What kind of Pub Type do I put for an 8 1/2 X 11 size magazine? CoachPaul 09:45, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Well, pulps were a bit smaller (7 by 10 or so) and bedsheets were a bit larger, so, er, "8x11", perhaps? Probably best asked on the Help Desk page, though. Ahasuerus 12:37, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I have put the proposed Cloning submissions for Dragon on hold to make sure that we are all on the same page. Cloning takes an existing edition (Publication) of a book and creates a new edition. Since copies the contents of the exisitng edition to the new one, it is very helpful when you need to enter the contents of multiple editions of the same collection or anthology. For example, when you get that trade paperback edition of the Calvino anthology in the mail, you will be able to clone the hardcover that we currently have on file, which should save a lot of typing and subsequent Title merging.

However, you can't create a whole new Title (a book or a magazine) by cloning an existing one. The cloned Publication will still point to the original book/magazine and any changes you make to its Contents will change the data in the parent title, which will create a huge mess. I am afraid that, when entering new magazines, there is no way around selecting "New Magazine" and entering their contents manually :( Ahasuerus 15:01, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

OK, disaprove those two too. Once I get the first one up, much of the work will be cut and paste from there on anyway. As for the existing editions of Dragon Magazine in the db, they are a real mess, being catogorized mostly as novels. I'll see if I can clean up some of them too. CoachPaul 15:19, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Do you think it looks cleaner if I use "#" as in issue 1 or "No." as in issue 2? CoachPaul 17:50, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

This is a more complex area than it may appear at first glance. Take a look at what our Help pages have to say on the subject, there is quite a bit there :) Ahasuerus 17:54, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

(unindent)Isn't the purpose of the db to make things easier to find? It seems counter productive to only list a date in the magazine title when a number is available and the magazine doesn't have it's date on cover too. If for instance, I wanted to read a story that was in the January 1979 issue of Dragon Magazine, and needed to buy it from Amazon, how would I know whether to buy issue 41, 42, 43, or 44? CoachPaul 21:38, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

A magazine is typically identified in two ways. First, there is the month and year nomenclature and then there is the volume and number nomenclature. Most (but not all) magazines use both nomenclatures, so if we used their full titles, we would have something like "Space Science Fiction, May 1953, Vol. 1, No. 6". That would be rather hard to read, so instead we enter the month and the year in the Title field and then enter the volume and the number (when available), in the Notes field. Thus, Space Science Fiction, May 1953 has "Vol 1, No 6" specified in its Notes field. Hm, I can't find the latter latter convention in the Help page, I wonder if we forgot to mention it?

Also, nothing is cast in stone, especially since we are in still in beta, so if you find that the current approach is not very clear, you may want to repost your question/suggestions on the Rules and standards discussions board and see what other editors have to say on the subject. Ahasuerus 23:17, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

It's probably due a discussion anyway, as Brin1 seems to be adding or verifying Volume numbers to "Interzone" pubs, inconsistently. For example, with "No.", with "#". Most pubs still have no number, so there's still time to nip it in the bud if needed. . BLongley 16:02, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Actually, I went back and changed them all, and have started doing it the way is says in the Help files, while adding the "Vol ?? No ??" and the Issue # in the Notes field, and I am actually happier with it that way then I was originally with the issue number in the title. CoachPaul 16:29, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Since it seem that which ever method I choose to enter contents has a problem with it. For entering new magazines. Would I go under the the title for the whole year's set and choose "add a publication for this title" or use "New Magazine" from the home page? I going to see about enter a year or two for a change of pace. Ray 17:03, 7 Aug 2007 (CDT)

I finished the years 1994, 1995, and 1996. The year 1997 was a turbulent year for Dragon, only a few issues produced. After the change over the PDFs were terrible. Just scan dumps minus the advertising. No table of contents. So all entries need to be retyped and the metadata more difficult to find. I wasn't going to go below issue 201. I will see how painful it is transcribing the later years versus cut and paste. Also 1995 is a little bit of a mess with Kim Mohan leaving as Editor n chief. I think they were missing an Editor for a few issue until Pierce Watters took the Job. I think I entered Wolfgang as the Editor even though he was an Associate(?). I think this confuses the isfdb method of entering title for an year's worth of issues in one title. 1997 is going to be fun too. One issue doesn't have a month. Ray 14:29, 8 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Gary Gygax

Information on pseudonym found at http://www.aeolia.net/dragondex/fiction.html CoachPaul 17:45, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Garrison Ernst is now listed as a pseudonym of Gary Gygax, but none Garrison Ernst's works show up "as by Gary Gygax" as I have seen on other pages. Is there somewhere in the help files that can help me? CoachPaul 23:37, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

keyboard remapper

http://www.download.com/KeyboardRemapper/3000-2347_4-10652742.html

Free copy allows 2 keys to me remapped. $1 allows a lot more.--Swfritter 20:28, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The Dragon Magazine, April 1977

I am not quite sure how to interpret the art credits for The Dragon Magazine, April 1977. Could you please clarify?

Here is what the fields currently read:

Artists: Bradley W. Schenck

Note: WIP Cover by Morno (Bradley W. Schenck) Issue # 6

Content

"The Forest of Flame" Bradley W. Schenck 1977-04-00 SHORTFICTION sf

Does it mean that the cover was drawn by Bradley W. Schenck using "Morno" as a pseudonym? Or was it drawn by Morno (a different person) and illustrated a scene from Schenck's story? Ahasuerus 23:27, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

"Morno" is a pseudonym used by Bradley W. Schenck. All three, cover, story, and interiorart for story are credited to Morno. There is no db entry for Bradley W. Schenck, so my intention is to make Morno a psuedonym of Bradley W. Schenck, then change the story to read Morno as the author and artist. That seemed like the easiest way to do it, since I saw no other way to add a new author. Please check my new problems under Gary Gygax above when you get a chance. CoachPaul 23:35, 17 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Oh, I think I finally see where the misunderstanding lies! When entering books and magazines, there is no need to worry whether the related Author record already exists or whether it's a pseudonym. If an author is not already defined in the database, the software will create a new Author record for him automatically. Similarly, when you delete the last story/book for a particular author, the software will automatically delete the associated Author record. To quote our How To page:

• Note that there is no way to directly delete an author. If all the title information for an author is deleted, the author will disappear from the ISFDB, but there is no "Delete Author" function. Similarly, there is no way to directly create an author; once a work by that author is entered, an author record will appear automatically.

As far as entering pseudonyms vs. canonical names, that's not something we have to worry about at data entry time either. To quote the New Publication help page:

• Author - The name of the author of the publication. The name should be entered exactly as it actually appeared in the publication. This includes pseudonyms, abbreviated names ("I. Asimov" instead of "Isaac Asimov", "Robert Heinlein" instead of "Robert A. Heinlein"), etc.

Once we enter all titles and author names exactly as they appear in the publication, then we can then go back and set up Variant Titles and Pseudonyms as needed, but that's the next step. Hope this helps! :) Ahasuerus 00:07, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Ok, since I sent it twice, the first time is an incomplete and can be discarded. On the second if you change all of the entries that read "Bradley W. Schenck" to "Morno"and that issue should be good to go. Sorry to cause you all of the trouble. CoachPaul 00:55, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

No worries, that's why I am here! I have set up variant Titles and the pseudonym link, so the issue should be OK now. Please take a look when you have a chance. Thanks for editing! Ahasuerus 01:34, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

(unindent)This is great, thanks, but why does the Morno page you did look so different from the Garrison Ernst page that I did? Where did I go wrong? CoachPaul 06:11, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Sorry about the delay, it's been a busy day today, never had more a few minutes of free time. The reason that Garrison Ernst's Summary Bibliography page looks different is that although you have set him up as a pseudonym used by Gary Gygax, you also still need to make all "Garrison Ernst" Titles into Variant Titles. When you pull them up, e.g. The Gnome Cache (Part 1 of 6), you will see "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work" as an option on the left hand side. If you select it and scroll down to the middle of the page, you will see "If the parent title does not exist, enter the title information below to create it". That's where you will change "Garrison Ernst" to "Gary Cygax" in field "Author1" (while leaving all other fields unchanged since only the author's name is affected in this case) and click on "Submit Data" at the very bottom.

It can be rather annoying to have to create Variant Titles for each and every title published under a pseudonym, but we have to store this information in each Title record since the same pseudonym can be used by multiple writers, e.g. "Victor Appleton", "V. C. Andrews", "Ellery Queen", etc. At some pont we may be able to automate the process so that a single submission would result in all Titles published under the same pseudonym getting assigned to the same author, but we are not there. Hope this helps! Ahasuerus 22:02, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The Dragon Magazine, June 1976

Re: the proposed change to the EDITOR record for The Dragon Magazine, June 1976 that would assign it to The Dragon Magazine 1976, it looks logical, but we generally handle magazines somewhat differently.

First, we merge all EDITOR records for the same magazine/year into one EDITOR record. That record will point to the individual issues (Publications) for the year.

Then we group these aggregate one-per-year EDITOR records into Series. For example, see John W. Campbell, Jr.'s bibliography -- you need to scroll down to the "Magazine Editor Series" section to see how it is done. Ahasuerus 22:17, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I see that you have started merging the EDITOR titles -- which is usually best done via the "Titles" option on the left -- but I have already merged them and assigned them to a series.

The only catch was that the 1978 issues were published as by "T. J. Kask", but that was resolved by merging all 1978 "Timothy J. Kask" Titles first and then merging all 1978 "T. J. Kask" Titles. By the way, there is a way to access all variant Titles for "T. J. Kask" even though they only appear under "Timothy J. Kask" once they are turned into Variant Tiels. If you select the "Title" option for "T. J. Kask", you will see all of "his" Titles. It's not exactly intuitive, I am afraid, but neither is the rest of the Magazine business in ISFDB, at least not at the moment :(

When I was done, the remaining 1978 T. J. Kask title was pointing to the remaining 1978 Timothy J. Kask title and everything looked OK.

Once you are done entering the rest of the magazines, feel free to let me know and I can quickly merge the new ones as well. If you want to merge them yourself, please keep in mind that we should never merge Titles with different Author names, in this case "Timothy J. Kask" and "T. J. Kask". Again, thanks for editing! Ahasuerus 23:28, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

"The Stolen Sacrafice"?

A question re: Gardner F. Fox's "The Stolen Sacrafice" in The Dragon Magazine, April 1978. Is "Sacrafice" a misspelling of "Sacrifice", perchance? Ahasuerus 22:48, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for catching my typo, it should be "sacrifice". CoachPaul 22:54, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Merging Editors

When I went to merge editors, none of the options was for a date of 1976-00-00. Did you just choose one of them, and then edit the date to 1976-00-00? Also when I add new editors I just go ahead and merge in the new ones? CoachPaul 23:18, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

That's right, you just pick one and change the date to YYYY-00-00 and the title to "The Dragon magazine - YYYY". As far as adding new editors, do you mean merging new EDITOR Titles with the existing ones for the same year? If so, then the answer is "yes" as long as they are all for the same year. Ahasuerus 23:31, 18 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I approved a merge of

• 538469 - The Dragon Magazine - 1978
• 538877 - The Dragon Magazine, August 1978
• 538889 - The Dragon Magazine, September 1978
• 538945 - The Dragon Magazine, October 1978
• 538953 - The Dragon Magazine, November 1978
• 538961 - The Dragon Magazine, December 1978

Ahasuerus, is this how editor records should be handled for a magazine? There's one type EDITOR title record per year. I guess that makes the bibliography cleaner but had not seen this before.

Also - since January is not included would you want to make the title something like The Dragon Magazine (February through December, 1978) to make it clear he did not edit the entire year? Marc Kupper (talk) 19:45, 19 Apr 2007 (CDT)

There was no January issue in 1978, nor March. The publishing schedule at TSR Periodicals was very eratic the first several years, as was the physical editing of the magazine. Both would be better once the second Editor got promoted from assistant around Issue #30. CoachPaul 19:56, 19 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Yes, that's the current approach that Mike and Bill discussed back in February:

• That's one that catches everyone the first time; took me a while to understand what was going on there. What happens is that the title records for magazines are of type "EDITOR". These are created automatically by the "New Magazine" version of the newpub form. They have the editor as the owner of the biblio, so if you go to Campbell's biblio (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?John%20W.%20Campbell,%20Jr.), for example, you would see all those records there -- and at one record per issue it was a huge, and rather unreadable, list. So what is done is to merge all the title records for a given year into one title record, and give it a title of the magazine, plus the year, with no month. This gives one record on the biblio but means you can't search for the title of a single issue.

• To see what's going on, go to Advanced Search and put "Analog" in for title, then tab down to the second field in the Title section and put "1966" in, also for the title. That will return 13 records -- 12 cover art records and the year title record. Then go back to Advanced Search and enter the same things for the publication: "Analog" and "1966" (separately) and you will get 12 records -- the 12 individual issues.

I can't say that I am 100% hapy with the current approach because of the search problem mentioned above, but it's vastly superior to the "unreadable mess" alternative, especially once you assign all years to Magazine Series. Ahasuerus 20:19, 19 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Overall, I thought it was an interesting idea when I saw the merge. I had thought ISFDB had some code to compress the magazine lists for editors but now realize it's done manually. A agree that searching for a magazine is a pain at the moment though fortunately many of them have cover art records. Maybe it should become a policy that for magazines we always have a coverart? e.g., rather than blank use "unknown" or something similar so that every magazine can be searched by issue. Marc Kupper (talk) 03:09, 20 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Dragon, Feb 79

The first was an accidental submission. The second is good. CoachPaul 18:19, 20 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the clarifiecation -- I wondered about a review with no associated reviewers, so I had it on hold for a few hours :) Discarded/approved now.Ahasuerus 01:52, 21 Apr 2007 (CDT)

John Eric Holmes

While doing research for a piece he did for Dragon Mag, I came across the following article at Wikipedia.com, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eric_Holmes which shows that he used both John Holmes and J. Eric Holmes as pseudonyms, and was an MD and a Proffessor of Neurology at SoCal School of Medicine, so I have made both of those names pseudonyms. I also found collaberating evidence at, http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15888&highlight=john+holmes CoachPaul 23:44, 20 Apr 2007 (CDT)

On second thought, I did not make John Holmes a pseudonym because his only credits are artwork, and I have no evidence that John Erik Holmes had anything to do with art. Writing is an art, but you know what I mean... CoachPaul 00:02, 21 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Elohir/Elrohir

Elohir was a typo on my part it should have been Elrohir. 1. Elrohir= Elladan Elrohir=Ken Rahman according to Jake Jaquet assistant Editor of "The Dragon Magazine" in his column, "Cover to Cover" in Issue #34, Feb, 1980. Ken Rahman is the brother to Glenn who is in the db.

I had searched and searched the web for information on the man who signs his paintings Elrohir. I finally found it inside Issue #34 of The Dragon Magazine. CoachPaul 12:35, 22 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The Year 2000 ed Harry Harrison

The pb edition change, actually there were none, was made in error. Since there weren't any changes to it, just delete the Edit. CoachPaul 20:34, 23 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The Fantasy Hall of Fame

This one that I unmerged is a completly different book from the other. Different stories, Greenberg was not an editor, and the Introduction by Silverberg is dated October 1996 and not the date of the Intro for the other book with the same title. CoachPaul 00:00, 25 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Unicorn Variation vs Unicorn Variations

There was talk of this on the Verification Requests page under 8 Miscellaneous suspicious title pairs, and 8.3 Zelazny. Nothing ever seems to have been done about this pair of titles. The Zelazny site I quoted on the VR page states that the title is correct without the "s" at the end, and the one with the "s" at the end in a typo. Unfortunatly this typo occurs in more than one Anthology. I have physically both titles and stories, and the story is the same, OK, I didn't do a word for word check, but I did check the beginning, the end, and several places inside the story. Between this fact, and the information from the Zelazny site, we should make the one with the "s" at the end a variant title, and change the copyright date to concur with the story without the "s". CoachPaul 18:45, 25 Apr 2007 (CDT)

"Highway i" & "Highway J" by Charles Eric Maine"

This information is from the following website, which contains a bibliography and a biography on Charles Eric Maine, http://www.waldeneast.fsnet.co.uk/cemaine.htm

"Highway i" Authentic Science Fiction 39, November 1953 pp 74-111; illustrated by Gerald Notes: Slightly revised vt “Highway J”; book version Timeliner

"Highway J" Planet Stories November 1953 Other Worlds, Other Times, ed Sam Moskowitz and Roger Elwood Macfadden-Bartell 75-238 1969 192pp 75c pb (cover by Jack Faragasso) pp 66-97 Manor 532-95310-095 1974 192pp 95c pb pp 66-97 Notes: Slightly revised vt of "Highway i" (although the story appeared in two different magazines bearing the same cover date, the editor of Authentic, H J Campbell, stated that "an American magazine" had also bought "Highway i" a few weeks after he had); book version Timeliner CoachPaul 09:02, 27 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Malzberg's two-in-one story

Verification results posted on Scott's Talk page. Ahasuerus 00:46, 28 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Novelets of Science Fiction verified

Two stories verified against Future and Dynamic as well as against the first paperback edition -- see above. Ahasuerus 15:57, 30 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Orbit 8

Do you have the page number for the Gene Wolfe story from this anthology? It was missing from your submission. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:17, 30 Apr 2007 (CDT)

The Last Leaf by Macfarlane

Did you intend to create a variant title under "Wallace Macfarlane" for this story? Your submission showed an identical title and author. Also, there appears to be a variant already for this story. Mhhutchins 16:31, 30 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Just disapprove it. Not sure what I wanted to do, but it seems ok now. CoachPaul 18:57, 30 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Orson Scott Card Hyphen Problems

"Eumenides in the Fourth-Floor Lavatory" and "Deep-Breathing Exercises" both have the hyphens in the db. Neither appears with a hyphen in my copies of "The Changed Man" nor "Unaccompanied Sonata and Other Stories". The bibliography on OSC's homepage, Hartack.com, shows the titles without the hyphens. Contento lists both stories without the hyphens. I'd like to remove the hyphens. CoachPaul 23:11, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

I am sure it's OK to correct the spelling of the title for these two Publications. It would probably be best to have somebody verify "Chrysalis 4" before we change the title across the board, though. I don't have a copy in my collection, so perhaps we could post a request over on the Verification board? Ahasuerus 23:37, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Deep-Breathing Exercises

• Title 43668 Deep-Breathing Exercises - I approved the change but added the following publication note to all five publications asking whoever verifies to pay extra attention to the title.

Some sources list Deep Breathing Exercises as Deep-Breathing Exercises. When verifying this publication please pay extra attention to the title in both the table of contents and in the body of the publication to see if it uses a hyphen and if so to add a variant title for it. It turns out there's more title records.

• Title 561845 Deep Breathing Exercises
• Title 573161 Deep Breathing Exercises

Eumenides in the Fourth-Floor Lavatory

• Title 67784 Eumenides in the Fourth-Floor Lavatory - Almost a ditto. The exception is Locus has one pub [1] (Strange Dreams) that uses the hyphen in their contents. ISFDB has a record, STRNGDRMSN1993, for a Dell edition of Strange Dreams but it has no contents... ISFDB has seven publications under this title record and ... two more title records.
• Title 573165 Eumenides in the Fourth-Floor Lavatory
• Title 561837 Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory - this could be a long night and I don't have time to deal with thinking about the best way to deal with this in ISFDB. I left the submission on hold for now though suspect we should approve the original submission, merge all three titles, add notes like what I did before, and perhaps add the pub Locus has as with a variant title. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:34, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

(unindent)I hit up a local used book shop today and while I was not able to come up with "Chrysalis 4", I did find a copy of "Fantasy Annual III" however, and it does have the hyphen in the name of this story. Cancel the Title Edit, I will change the titles for this story in the two books that I have, and make the title with the hyphen the variant title since hatrack.com's bibliography lists the story without the hyphen. CoachPaul 11:25, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

Done, thanks! Ahasuerus 12:14, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

In "Chrysalis 4" there is no hyphen in the title of the story as listed in the TOC, but there is one in the title on the first page of the story, which trumps the TOC. So the ISFDB has it right for this pub. Mhhutchins 16:27, 18 May 2007 (CDT)

Clarke's The Other Side of the Sky

Re: the proposed change of the value in the Publisher field from "NAL/Signet" to "NAL/Signet (17th printing)", I have seen this proposed approach mentioned in a recent Wiki discussion, but there are some ramifications here that make me hesitant. The Publisher field is not just a free text in the database; internally, it's a pointer to our list of publishers. The original idea was that we would eventually be able to clean up that list and make it useful by, e.g., enabling lookup on publishers. That way a user could quickly find out what books a particular publisher printed in a given year. If we were to start adding printing information in the Publisher fields, it would make it much more difficult to decouple them later on and make publisher data useful again. I will post about this issue on the Rules and standards discussions page. Thanks! Ahasuerus 22:20, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

I saw it suggested by Marc Krupper in my "Tomorrow 1 by Robert Hoskins" question that seems to have been hyjacked by the mods. :-) I keep looking at that discussion to see if anybody is going to take it back to being about Tomorrow 1. It's been a very interesting discussion. I won't do it anymore. Change whatever you need to to make it right, or kill it and I'll redo it, whichever you feel like. CoachPaul 23:06, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

Thanks, I will massage this Publication then. And to answer the question that you just posted on your main User page, yes, I keep an eye on all Wiki changes, but I figure that User pages are semi-private areas, so I rarely comment on them unless they affects ongoing operations or other users :) Ahasuerus 23:31, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

The Analog Anthology #1: Fifty Years of the Best

FYI, I have Unmerged the second printing of this anthology and made it into a Variant Title of the first printing since they have different titles. Also, could you please check if the copyright date is 1980? If it is, then we can make a note of it and then change the Title date to 1981 and delete the contents-less 1980 publication. Thanks! Ahasuerus 23:36, 16 May 2007 (CDT)

Continued discussion of this Publication on Ahasuerus's Talk Page. CoachPaul 21:48, 22 May 2007 (CDT)

Answered on my Talk page. Ahasuerus 00:49, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

Sacred Visions

You seem to be trying to change the author order for Sacred Visions from "Michael Cassutt and Andrew M. Greeley" to "Andrew M. Greeley and Michael Cassutt". I have approved the submission, but, unfortunately, the ISFDB software doesn't support author order at this time. Author names will be stroed and displayed in an order independent of the order they were entered in :( Ahasuerus 12:20, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

Greyhawk

I remember you asking about a Greyhawk sub-series "Justicar". I've just verified "Quag Keep" by Andre Norton and discovered that's also set in the Greyhawk Universe. I presume the sequel is too. Is that of interest? BLongley 15:34, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm not sure what you are asking. I verified my copy of Quag Keep, but didn't put it under the Greyhawk Series at that time. The whole Quag Keep Series should probably be a sub-series of Grayhawk. When you do a Title search on Greyhawk you come up with a listing of three novels, of which only the first one seems to be a novel, and it is part of Gygax's Gord the Rouge Series, which started out as a Greyhawk series, but about half way through Gygax sold TSR and the Greyhawk franchise, so the rest of the books were set elsewhere. I started reading these 20 or so years ago, but never finished them, and couldn't tell you which were which. They are all hard to come by today. As far as Quag Keep and its sequel are concerned, I have not read either, so I really can't comment much about them. Quag Keep is sitting on my night stand next to my bed, with about 20 other books, waiting to be read, but I seem to be spending a whole lot more time lately entering my collection or short story books to ISFDB then I seem to spend reading. CoachPaul 16:02, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

OK, you spotted the connection anyway: I'm not trying to push you into sorting out the series/universe or anything, I just thought that if you WERE interested in sorting out the whole D&D novels/series thing you might appreciate the tip. Personally, when I find one in my collection it gets verified as best I can then put on the "trade/sell this or discard it" piles. I've enjoyed PLAYING D&D many times, but I find reading the officially-sanctioned books actually narrows the mind afterwards, rather than letting people explore opportunities they don't have in their mundane lives. I don't know if "Quag Keep" is official enough to fall into that category - it was on my "to-read" bed-side pile for a while, before it got moved to the "to-read" book-case, then I gave up and admitted that I have so many books there's not a lot of difference between the "to-read" and the "to-re-read" books, so I just put them all in alphabetical order over the other dozen book-cases so I can at least make a proper list and stop buying the same books again and again and again! BLongley 17:41, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

What we right now have under the Series "Greyhawk" were a series of books put out by TSR/WOTC back atround 2000 that were novilizations of classic TSR Modules from around 1980. We can change, the "Greyhawk" series, to the "Greyhawk Module Novelization" series, and put it under a new series called "Greyhawk". We can also then put the Quag Keep series under the new Greyhawk series, and begin a new series "Gord the Rogue" for the Gygax novels that take place in Greyhawk too. I'll do some internet research on it and make the changes. How far can we go with series steps? Should we then put the Greyhawk series a step under say a Dungeons and Dragons Novel series, along with the Dark Sun novels, the Forgoten Realms books, the Ravenloft Books, and any others I may have forgotten? CoachPaul 00:03, 18 May 2007 (CDT)

Well, series don't have any limits that I know of (although there are feature requests about sub-series ordering, and for more notes and links options) so you can probably take it as far as you want. Forgotten Realms already looks scary enough to me - I verified one subset and keep finding a few stray pubs that belong somewhere in the "Dungeons and Dragons" universe. But it's not something I want to tackle overall: I've sorted out a few Star Trek sub-series, and worked on the major Doctor Who one, but D&D looks like a HUGE task, comparable with Star Wars and Perry Rhodan. If you want to tackle some, feel free! But I would recommend starting small! BLongley 14:03, 18 May 2007 (CDT)

(unindent)I'm not going to try and straighten out the whole DnD novel mess, but I will tidy it up some. Maybe if I make a start, those who come behind and Verify and/or edit books will be able to straighten it up a little bit more. I have ONE of the Perry Rhodan books, and I'm thinking about burning it before I even try to enter it. :-) My Collection/Anthology collection is now close to 300 books strong, and the end seems to just keep getting further and further away...I think that I just need to stay out of thrift stores and stay away from eBay. CoachPaul 16:25, 18 May 2007 (CDT)

Bill is correct, there is no limit on the number of nested series after the last database redesign, although it indirectly resulted in an unfortunate side effect: empty series never go away and are displayed in their parent superseries biblios. Also, FYI, we have a fairly decent list of D&D references over at ISFDB:Series Cleanup, including:

• Dungeons and Dragons:
  • TSR - SFSite's list of titles with world-specific sublists.
  • TSR archives with book covers.
  • Birthright.
  • Dark Sun at SFSite.com. Reconciled with Wikipedia. Ahasuerus 09:41, 1 Jun 2006 (CDT)
  • Dragonlance at SFSite.com.
  • Dragonlance novels.
  • Eberron. Reconciled with Amazon and Wikipedia. Ahasuerus 21:43, 4 Jul 2006 (CDT)
  • Endless Quest
  • Forgotten Realms novels.
  • Forgotten Realms at SFSite.com.
  • Greyhawk.
    • Gord the Rogue.
  • Mystara.
    • War of the Spider Queen.
  • Planescape.
  • Ravenloft.
  • Ravenloft at SFSite.com.
  • Spelljammer.
  • Books published as by "T. H. Lain".
  • WotC Novels Page.

Based on my experience with the Warhammer universes -- and unlike, say, Perry Rhodan -- this universe can be cleaned up by one person in a few weeks, but it will likely be a grueling process. Ahasuerus 18:43, 18 May 2007 (CDT)

I'll add this to my list of things to do after the Dragon Project. Looks like fun. I ought to have several thousand edits by the time all is done. CoachPaul 20:17, 18 May 2007 (CDT)

Ambrose Bierce

Publishing dates for the Ambrose Bierce stories that I edited can be found by following links for the individual stories at http://www.ambrosebierce.org/works.html CoachPaul 21:31, 21 May 2007 (CDT)

If you are entering information into a publication record from a source other than the publication itself then please indicate the source for each data item in the publication notes. Without source indicators someone could look at the ISFDB record vs. their book and go nuts trying to figure out how someone figured out the date, cover artist, or some other thing that's not apparent from the publication. Marc Kupper (talk) 05:25, 22 May 2007 (CDT)

New Soviet Science Fiction

Could you please double check if the author of "Cheap Sale" and "Beware of the Ahs!" in New Soviet Science Fiction is listed as "Vladen Bakhov" or as "Vladlen Bakhnov"? Thanks! Ahasuerus 11:28, 22 May 2007 (CDT)

Actually it's neither. Vladen Bakhnov is how it is in the book. Both on the ToC and on the pages of the stories. Contento also has it spelled Vladen Bakhnov, both for these two stories, and several others. Thanks for catching my typo. CoachPaul 12:08, 22 May 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the clarification! I have approved the submission and corrected the spelling. We will definitely want to have a pseudonym set up for it, though, since the author's canonical name is "Vladlen" -- see Worldcat, which has dozens of entries for "Vladlen Bakhnov" and 0 for "Vladen Bakhnov". As an aside, "Vladlen" stands for "Vlad[imir] Len[in]", which happens to be the name of the Soviet founder. Lenin died in January 1924 and Bakhnov was born the same year. See Nina Tumarkin's Lenin lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Harvard University Press, 1983, xiii+315, ISBN 0674524306) for details. Ahasuerus 12:47, 22 May 2007 (CDT)

Variant on "Trouble with Water" by Gold

Of the two records that you submiited to be merged, the only difference was the capitalization of the word "with" in the title. I'm not sure if this was exactly what your intention was. I noticed that there are records of the title by "H. L. Gold" and "Horace L. Gold". Were you intending to create a variant of the author's name? Mhhutchins 16:49, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

I have a system for entering stories in anthologies with none yet attached. I enter the stories and put the date of the pub down for the dates of all the stories. Then after the pub has been approved, as a work in progress, I go into all of the author's biblio pages, and use dupe finder to merge the stories with copies that are already in the db. While doing that, I check the dates with the stories in the book with the dates of the stories in the db. I find this to be faster than looking up the dates from the copyright page while entering the stories into the pub, and then having to merge the title records anyway. I normally catch any Pseudonyms at the same time, but this time I missed it. Probably because there were still Titles listed on the Horace L. Gold page. It should probably be made a variant of the one by H. L. Gold. However there is the issue of the capital W in with. It appears in the Title in my pub, everywhere, ToC, top of all pages the story is on, copyright page, and at the beginning of the story. Shouldn't it be a variant title and a pseudonym? CoachPaul 17:12, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

We will certainly want to have one of the Gold records made into a pseudonym of the other, but the case situation is covered by the Help pages thusly:

Case. Titles should have case regularized unless there is some specific evidence that the author intended certain letters to be in a specific case. For example, if the title is "EXTRO" in all caps, the title should be entered as "Extro". This applies to the titles of short stories as well as books. Typesetting style is not important; for example, Fantastic Universe typically printed story titles in lower case, but these titles are regularized for the ISFDB. Regularized case means that the first word is capitalized, and all later words are also capitalized except for "and", "the", "a", "an", "for", "of", "in", "on", "by", "at", "from", and "to". Hyphenated words have the first letter after the hyphen capitalized. ::Ahasuerus 17:19, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

We need some better examples of case differences that SHOULD be preserved in the help though. I was hoping to use MUgwump Four as an example, but people seem more worried about the "4/Four" difference than whether the first "U" needs capitalisation. This isn't an example, but such eagle-eyed editors should look out for a better one! Maybe ORA:CLE would do?BLongley 17:50, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

I'll create a variant author and merge those titles with a capital "W". Mhhutchins 18:01, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

Thank you! CoachPaul 19:03, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

Thimgs

"Thimgs" is correct, "Things" was a typo when I entered the contents of a pub into the db. CoachPaul 18:59, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

Thanks, approved now :) Ahasuerus 19:00, 24 May 2007 (CDT)

Nova 1

FYI, I have checked the hardcover version of Nova 1 and the 1982 Asimov/Greenberg/Waugh reprint. They both list the story as "Jean Duprès", so I simply changed its title to "Jean Duprès". If we ever find a Publication with "Jean Dupres", we can create a Variant Title at that point.

Could you please check your paperback copy of "Nova 1" to see whether "Hexamination" by Chandler Davis (as per Contento) is actually "Hexamnion" as by Chan Davis, which is what my hardcover copy has? Also, was "The Higher Things" attributed to "John R. Pierce" (as per Contento) or to "J. R. Pierce" (as per my hardcover copy)? Finally, is the title printed on the title page of the paperback version "Nova 1" (which is what my hardcover has) or "Nova One"? Thanks! Ahasuerus 17:21, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

Ok, I'll work backwards. Title page is "nova 1". "The Higher Things", is J. R. Pierce, which I added and made a vaiant/psuedonym. It is "Hexaminion", I blew it on the title, as I left it with the other spelling, but I did change the author to Chan Davis which is correct. CoachPaul 20:58, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

Thanks! I have fixed and verified the hardcover and will send Bill Contento an e-mail with the corrections. I have also unmerged the 1976 (UK) edition and made it into a Variant Title since it drops 3 of the original stories as per Contento. I will post a Verification request in case anybody has the 1976 UK edition. Ahasuerus 22:53, 27 May 2007 (CDT)

P.S. Bill Contento has responded and explained that his software had no support for diacritics at the time he entered Nova 1. He will fix it in the next update. Ahasuerus 22:47, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

Dragon Magazine cover art

Several of your recent submissions state "Cover art can be viewed at" but the URL is not coming through. Do you want me to go ahead and approve the submissions, then you can go back and add the missing info? Thanks. Mhhutchins 09:42, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

My plan is to go back and add about a years worth at a time, I think that this will be faster in the long run. I noticed that I've also got mistakes in some of the pubs that I entered earlier today, and will have to go back and fix those too. For the time being, all Dragon Magazine entries should be considered as Rough Drafts Entries only, and should not be considered compleated until I remove the "WIP" from the notes section. Once the "WIP" is gone, then any mistakes that you find, please bring them to my attention, of course, any problems that you find at any time that will really mess up something else needs to be brought to my attention at once. I find that the hard part of entering the spec-fic from a gaming magazine into the db, is trying to determine what is truly spec-fic, and what is background for some game or other, sometimes it's both! I have one piece, it's maybe 10 paragraphs long or so and would take up maybe two pages in a pb. It reads like spec-fic, and when you get to the end you find that it's a joke, literally the last line is a punchline. It's credited to "anon". So I think, I'm not going to put that into the db, however if it were written by Ray Bradbury and appeared in one of his Collections it would surley go in. In the end though, until we get a category for spec-fic jokes, I'm leaving it out since it comes from a non-genre pub. Another series, which I first started putting in, "Minarian Legends" by Glenn Rahman, read like an early chapter out of just about any Fantasy book ever published. They are histories about various countries or peoples from his board game "Divine Right". No matter how well they read, I've decided to omit them, and will go back and remove the ones I've already put in. Now I'm not reading all of the fiction that I put into the db, and I'm sure that I will put in a few things that probably don't really belong here, but it's going to be nothing compared to the problems that currently appear under the guise of Dragon Magazine in the db. CoachPaul 10:39, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

Michael Carroll

We currently have the following entries in the db. "M. Carroll", "M. W. Carroll", "Michael Carroll", "Michael W. Carroll", and "Mike Carroll". Using the web site at http://www.spacedinoart.com/ I can show that M. Carroll (this was my entry to the db) is him by looking at the signature on the painting on the Intro page and comparing it with the signature on the cover of "Dragontales". They also call him Mike during the audio introduction, and list him from time to time as Michael W. Carroll. I am going to makeing the other four of these Carrolls psuedonyms of Michael Carroll based upon this evidence and further evidence gathered from this site. CoachPaul 16:25, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

It looks like I did "Michael W. Carroll" twice. CoachPaul 17:00, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, I caught it and kicked it out. Mhhutchins 18:12, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

If the Mod approving my making titles Psuedonyms catches it, MakeVariant Cover: Dragontales -

MakeVariant Cover: They’d Rather Be Right - MakeVariant They’d Rather Be Right - MakeVariant Cover: Best SF of the Year 14 all have a space after "Michael Carroll" making then psuedonyms of "Michael Carroll ". If you didn't catch it, I'll go back and fix it as soon as they have been approved. CoachPaul 19:26, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

Dragon Magazine Bibliography Problems

On this page, http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?19249 , why are the lines for issues "33-34" and "35-41" out of order? CoachPaul 21:39, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

I am not 100% sure, but my guess would be that the logic sorts series entries by year, then by editor and then by title. Let me leave Al a message and see if he can confirm/change this behavior. Ahasuerus 22:01, 28 May 2007 (CDT)

It seems that the logic does sort by year, not sure about what comes next though. Title didn't matter much at all, because the title that started "Dragon" came after the titles that started "The Dragon". However it looks like using the "Day" entry to the date field will solve the problem of multiple editors(authors) across the same year on Magazine Series. Since we are using the Year portion of the Date Field for the year of the magazine only when placing all of the magazines for that year, with the same editor, we can use the "Date" portion of that field to force the Editor listings into the correct order. At least it has worked so far. I only added the "Days" to the two Editor entries that were giving me trouble. That put the third entry for that year before the two that I changed before going to bed last night. When the third entry gets approved, we'll find out if it works or was just a fluke. I hope I was able to explain all of this so it could be understood. CoachPaul 07:43, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

It worked! CoachPaul 08:11, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

Excellent! :) Ahasuerus 10:37, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

Worlds Beyond Jan 1950

I notice that you verified this issue in March 2007. I just acquired the magazine and there are some additions and modifications that need to be made to comply with standards. The authors and stories seem to be correct but there is more data that could be added, the date on the magazine and stories needs to changed from 1950-00-00 to 1950-12-00, etc. Is it all right if I make those changes and let you know when I am done? Will you be doing any work on other issues of Worlds Beyond? Hope that macro program is helping you out - my big clumsy fingers cannot seem to stay away from the Enter key.--Swfritter 20:05, 29 May 2007 (CDT)

Any magazines that I "Verified" back in March are suspect, and please, feel free to add and/or change anything about them. I probably have close to 100 sf type mags from the 40's through the 80's, but they are very low on my to-do list currently. Just click over and you can see how low and what will come before them. CoachPaul 00:27, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

Tom Kidd/Thomas Kidd

Both of these artist entries point to the same wikipedia site, the first entry under Thomas Kidd is called, Kiddography: The Art and Life of Tom Kidd (2005), and they both show work on the same series. I think it's safe to say they are the same person. I'm going to make Tom the psuedonym mostly because Thomas has more entries, but he also has more entries for 1981 the first year that either is creited with anything. CoachPaul 22:10, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Now that I've done it I'm havin g second thoughts and think that maybe Tom Kidd should be the parent. Is there an easy way to change this without having to redo every individual entry in the two bibliographies? CoachPaul 22:23, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to flip flop a pseudonym relationship. You have to break every single one of them by entering "0" in the Make Variant screen, then go through the process of creating new variant title relationships. It's a total pain in the tail and one of the top "new features" to add when Al re-emerges. Whenever that may be ::( Ahasuerus 22:31, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

If you would be so kind as to disaprove all of my associated Kidd edits I would appreciate it. CoachPaul 22:56, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Done! Good thing there were no other moderators on or else the submissions would have been approved an hour ago :) Ahasuerus 23:25, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Thank You Very Much! Maybe when I come back from vacation, I'll nominate myself for Moderator so I can just DISAPROVE my own edits. :-) CoachPaul 23:30, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

A vacation sounds nice! Enjoy! Ahasuerus 23:43, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I'm now making "Thomas Kidd" a pseudonym of "Tom Kidd" and changing all of the individual entries. CoachPaul 23:39, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Yup, I have approved the first two submissions so far. Ahasuerus 23:43, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

A Logic Named Joe

The 2005-05-24 date found in the ISFDB record for A Logic Named Joe is probably from Amazon.com, which typically lists the first date that the book became (or was projected to become) available. If you have a copy of the book in your hands, you can safely overwrite that data with whatever the book states. Paperbacks follows magazines in that their stated published date is typically a month (sometimes more) later than the actual availability date, but we use whatever is stated in the book since it makes verification and cross-checking easier. It does result in occasional eyebrow raising situations, e.g. if a book or a magazine was "officially" published in January 2005, but was first reviewed in December 2004. Oh well, such is life :) Ahasuerus 23:34, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

If you don't mind you can change the date. If not I will go back and fix it after approval. CoachPaul 23:37, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Done! Ahasuerus 23:43, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Planh on the Death of Willy Ley: June 23, 1969

Just checking if this poem on page 160 of The Unicorn Trade is really spelled that way? Ahasuerus 23:43, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Don't blame you, I checked it, then double checked it. It's spelled "Planh" on both the first page of the story and on the copyright page. CoachPaul 23:46, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Thanks! You can never be too careful :) Ahasuerus 23:55, 1 Jun 2007 (CDT)

The Innocent at Large/The Innocent Arrival

This parent/vairant relationship is from a copyright note in the acknowledgements of "The Unicorn Trade". CoachPaul 00:38, 2 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Amazing Stories - 1929

For an explanation of this issue please see Dragon Magazine Bibliography Problems. The long third paragraph in particular. CoachPaul 19:22, 4 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Merging the Palmer editor records

Are you sure you want to merge the 1938 records with the October and September 1939 records? I've put the submission on hold. Mhhutchins 23:21, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)

You are correct, I do not. I must be too tired to have noticed. I'll just finish up for the day. CoachPaul 23:23, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Where did you make the two 1939 entries disappear too? I can no longer find them on the Palmer page. CoachPaul 23:32, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Those records were created by making a new pub record which duplicated the issues already in the database. I went back to the original records (all issues of 1939), added an EDITOR record to each one, merged them, and created one editor record, which I then made part of the series. Then I went back and deleted the duplicate pub record for those two issues. See "Amazing, May 1929" to see how to create EDITOR records for older magazine pub records. Mhhutchins 00:38, 6 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Galaxy date changes

I'm not sure if a finger slipped but when you updated title 137197 Galaxy - 1969 to add the "Galaxy Science Fiction" series you also changed the date from 1969-00-00 to 1969-00-01.

Likewise, when you updated title 137189 Galaxy - 1961 to add the "Galaxy Science Fiction" series you also changed the date from 1961-00-00 to 1961-00-02. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:03, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)

No, I actually did it on purpose. Go up this page to "Dragon Magazine Bibliography Problems", the third entry there explains why I did it here too. CoachPaul 08:55, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I suspect the practice of manipulating the date to achieve certain affects is uncommon enough that you should include a note each time you do it. For example, with publications I sometimes put the printing number in the DD of YYYY-MM-DD but each time also have a boiler plate publication note I use with this:

• Note – the printing date for this publication is unknown. Rather than using 0000-00-00 this publication in ISFDB has been dated using the YYYY-MM of the first printing and the day of the month is set to the printing number to get the publication sorted into a reasonable spot relative to other printings for this edition.

I'd recommend you do a similar note for those titles where you are using YYYY-00-## to adjust the order of the magazine entry within a series listing so that people down the road looking at the title record will understand why the date is set the way it is and not try to "correct" it. Marc Kupper (talk) 12:05, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Frost & Fire by Zelazny

Your submission included an ISBN for the hardcover edition published by William Morrow. Are you certain this is the same number for the Avon paperback? Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:46, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Also, you can start merging the Galaxy editor records. Let me know if you'd like some help. I can start from the end and go backwards. Mhhutchins 16:46, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I may have forgotten to change the ISBN, it should be 0-380-75775-3. CoachPaul 16:55, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Got it. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:58, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)

James Patrick Baen

Were the last three issues of Galaxy under Baen's editorship credited to "James Patrick Baen"? All of the previous ones (up through July 1977) are in the database as by "James P. Baen". Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:48, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I was only creating Editor Records, I left the data just the way it already was in the db using cut and paste. Those three pubs did have his full name listed in the db, to find out what was in the actual pub, we would need to ask Alibrarian who verified them.

My copies are pretty accessible. I'll check them out later this evening. Mhhutchins 17:00, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I also noticed a fair amount of changing between James Baen and James P. Baen in his Galaxy issues. You might want to double check a few of those. CoachPaul 17:02, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)

A random check of issues from his first (July 1974) up through 1977, revealed that he used "James Baen" until May 1977. All the remaining issues (5 more) has "James Patrick Baen". I've changed those, but am leaving the rest until I have time to do a throrough check of all other issues. I found no issues using "James P. Baen", his canonical name! Mhhutchins 19:53, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Beyond Midnight

I see that you updated the pub-note for 155601 and am wondering if you have a copy of Beyond Midnight by Kirby McCauley? . The existing pub-note has the comment "Several copyright dates for the stories in the book differ with the ones in the db. I have stuck with the dates already in the db." Which stories do not match ISFDB? Marc Kupper (talk) 12:24, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I did the original pub note yesterday when I entered the contents of the book to the db, as all we had had previously was the metadata with no notes, then did a minor update this morning.

Here are the stories which have different dates. I didn't change them because of the notorious incorrectness of copyrights on acknowledgements pages. Another book that I did yesterday had one story listed as first having appeared in Orbit 14 in 1974, yet it was actually in Orbit 12 from 1972. Maybe I should go and make a note of that too.

"The Nameless City" by HP Lovecraft book 1938 db-1921 I'm willing to bet that 1938 was the date that it was renewed by Derleth.

"The People of the Pit" by A. Merritt book 1917, 1945 db-1918

"A View from a Hill" by M.R. James no date given in book

"A Watcher by the Dead" by Ambrose Bierce No date given in book, but see the note I left on the biblio page of this short story. I'd give the link here, but I just did a merge of two entries for this story and don'tknow which one will be good when you read this. CoachPaul 16:39, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Lovecraft's is a tricky case. He published a significant number of stories and articles in amateur and semiprofessional publications in the late 1910s/1920s. Many of them were reprinted in the 1930s, 1940s and beyond in more familiar places like the pulps and Arkham House, which is why the same piece may appear as first published in, say, 1921 and 1946 in different bibliographies. Our Help pages currently state that we should use the "original publication date of this title", but do we want to count amateur and semipro publications for our purposes? My guess is that we do because we opened the database to fanzines some months ago, but we may want to clarify this policy. Ahasuerus 17:19, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Sisters in Fantasy 2

Hi, i made one minor change to this title [2], i deleted the CDN price and moved it into notes. We generaly only put in one price in this spot. Thanks!:-)Kraang 21:59, 18 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Fine by me, I didn't put it there. CoachPaul 22:45, 18 Jun 2007 (CDT)

The New Kid at School

You asked: "By changing the Author field from K. H. to Kate it will just change this pub from 2003, and ont the one from 1997 too, correct?" - you're correct. It now looks like:

   * The New Kid at School, (1997 , K. H. McMullan, Grosset & Dunlap, 0-448-41592-5, $3.95, 92pp, pb) Cover: Bill Basso
   * The New Kid at School, (2003 , Kate McMullan, Grosset & Dunlap, 0-448-43108-4, $4.99, 110pp, pb) Cover: Bill Basso 

BLongley 14:28, 24 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I was fairly certain I was correct, but better safe than sorry. CoachPaul 14:32, 24 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Cele Goldsmith's extra EDITOR record

Hey CoachPaul, you did exactly the right thing when confronting a magazine with two editor records. Change one to an ESSAY (in this case the one that had not been integrated into the Amazing Stories series). Once the submission has been approved, go back to the issue with the extraneous ESSAY and choose "Remove Titles from This Pub" (which I have already did for this issue.) I learned this trick from Ahasuerus a few weeks ago, and have had a couple of chances to see it put to work. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:27, 25 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I'd be willing to bet that that was one of mine too, which was how I knew, or thought that I knew, about how to fix it. I still don't know how the other one ended up with two Editor Records, but I do know with this one. CoachPaul

Moderator?

CoachPaul (or do you prefer just "Paul"?), reviewing your submissions over the last couple of weeks, it looks like you are getting very close to the point of self-sufficiency in the ISFDB world. You understand collections/anthologies, pseudonyms and magazines, you communicate well, and you are not afraid to ask questions when you run into unknown areas. Do you think you are ready to start approving your own submissions? If you do, I can nominate you for moderator. Of course, a moderator can also approve other editors' submissions, but there is no expectation of doing so on a regular basis since we all have different schedules and time budgets. Ahasuerus 23:09, 25 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I work out at the gym at about 10PM at night most weeknights, and on Mondays they always have WWE RAW on one of the TV's. In my 20's and 30's I used wo watch it all the time, but now I only watch it at the Gym, and only if there is nothing else on. Tonight as I was working out, I noticed what looked like a retrospective of a wrestler that I always liked because he was always a hard worker and always could be counted on to put on a good show. Sure enough after watching a few minutes, it turned out that not only he, but also his family had been killed. A few minutes later, ESPN was reporting that the Atlanta PD was investigating it as a Murder/Suicide. As they ended the retrospective, one of the announcers for the WWE made a speech about how he needed to go home and tell his GF and kids that he loved them, and even though I was only minutes away from home, it touched me, and made me sad. Of course when I got home everybody was asleep in the house and it left me feeling kind of empty inside. Now you have to realize, that June 25, was my 46th Birthday, and this was a bummer of a way to end the day. However then I got this just before midnight. It's nice to know that your work is appreciated. Even if it's from somebody that you don't really know. If you feel that my work is up to standard, I will accept the nomination, and will be happy to accept any criticism that may be coming. Oh, by the way, Paul or CoachPaul it doesn't really matter. I guess Paul is quicker to type, and there aren't too many Paul's here, which is usually why I use the Coach in front of it on-line. CoachPaul 23:59, 25 Jun 2007 (CDT)

It's still June 25th on the left coast and so happy birthday. I'm sorry it turned out to be such a downer with what happened with Chris Benoit and the (lack of) reception when you got home. From what I've seen you write, you have a good understanding of ISFDB and the work is up to moderator standard. I'm still learning things about both the bibliographic process and ISFDB every day and so far the bureaucrats have not complained (too much) about me. Marc Kupper (talk) 01:15, 26 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Happy belated birthday! Glad you accepted the nomination, but I am in an awful hurry right now and will go through the nomination motions later today. Ahasuerus 09:31, 26 Jun 2007 (CDT)

A belated Happy Birthday from me too, Paul - feel free to borrow some of mine if you like, I haven't used it. :-/ It's my birthday today, the 26th, and like you I came home to no special event. (Although as I live alone, and have no wife or kids, I didn't really expect one - a few cards and emails will have to do.) But there was the unexpected plus point for me too - some Metropolitan Police users we cater for visited us at work today, and praised the system I work on in my non-ISFDB times as "the best of all we have to work with", without knowing it was my birthday. "Nice Warm Glow Time" for me!

Anyway, having mentioned I now know it was your birthday, it may make you suspicious of the sentiments ahead - but you HAVE done outstanding work, and I'll be happy to support the nomination. Or make the nomination if Ahasuerus doesn't do so in a timely manner - it's a comparatively rare event, so I'm not able to recall the process immediately. I think I was threatened with having to pick the next Mod after I was suggested, fortunately they don't enforce that rule - so do keep an eye out for good editors, but don't feel pressured to do anything more than you feel comfortable with, when (as I suspect will happen) you become a Moderator too.

I waffle too much don't I? Basically the above paragraphs should be - "Happy birthday, you're a great editor, hope to welcome you on board soon as Mod." BLongley 17:40, 26 Jun 2007 (CDT)

We may not enforce that rule literally, Bill, but you may want to re-read the last section of your Talk page :) And happy birthday! Ahasuerus 17:46, 26 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, I know there's another blackjack-passing opportunity going on, I will check that out again in my copious free time (of which I have seem to have none for the moment). The "THUD" does feel so much better coming from a Bureaucrat though, I feel? ;-) BLongley 17:56, 26 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Hey, it was your idea, you won't be able to talk your way out of it! :) As far as Bureaucrats go, we used to flip that flag almost randomly for new users back pre-beta when we were trying to recruit new editors to test the software. A few of the "early adopters", e.g. PortForlorn, haven't been active for months, so we may want to review admin privileges at some point. For all practical reasons, though, the only difference between moderators and bureaucrats is that the latter can set the "admin" flag, which automatically gives moderator privileges in the ISFDB. Since the decision to promote editors has to be first made by the community as a whole, it really doesn't matter who flips the flag. I'd much rather have another 1,000 edits under my belt than have this bit set in my user profile. Ahasuerus 18:09, 26 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Q.U.R.

I approved the creation of a variant title for Q.U.R., then took a closer look and realized that the parent title record and the variant title record were identical. Besides, there were no publications under the variant title, so I broke the relationship. I wonder if you want to review this "odd couple" and perhaps simply merge the two titles? Thanks! Ahasuerus 02:19, 28 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories

This series has a few problems. First is the title. The series up to either book 10 or 11, (I have #10 and #12, but not #11) are titled differently on the title page than are the books from 12 up through 25. The titles that we are using for all of the books, "Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories..." is the Title found on the cover. All of the books are titled this way on the cover, although some contain colons while others don't. This is also the way that books 12-25 are titled on the Title Page of the books, although none of them contain colons, some of the books contain "#" in the title before the number of the book. The books between 1- 10, possibly 11, are titled "Isaac Asimov Presents The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume x, 19xx". I am in the process of changing all of the titles in this series so that they match the title on the Title page, but will leave notes as to the difference of titles between the Title page, the cover and the spine.

Next comes the Introductions. They are all named the standard way Introductions without names seem to be entered in the db, with the word Introduction followed by, in parenthesis, the name of the book. I am not planning on changing those, even if I change the title. If there is a problem with this I am willing to discuss it further though. Also some of the introductions are credited to Asimov, while others are credited to Greenberg. I have not seen either actually given credit in one of the books, but in an Essay titled "Survivors" in his Collection Gold, Asimov credits Greenberg with writing all of the Introductions to the books in this series. I will note both the source of the change and the changes in the notes field of the books also. I probably won't get to any of this before Monday though. CoachPaul 16:59, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)

"Gold" is becoming a major pain in the backside. :-( There's a lot of interesting information there, but in all the wrong places! Four pages of acknowledgments that could be summarised in one line: "everything copyright Nightfall, Inc". It even contains an introduction (with credit, but not listed in ToC) that makes you go re-read all the Help here. :-( I'm going to have to READ the darned thing before I can really comment on Asimov edits now... and I probably have to read "I. Asimov: A Memoir" too. BLongley 17:16, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I just got this book through Paperback Swap this week, and have less then one page in it. When it came in the mail, I had been working on the "Great SF" series by Asimov/Greenberg earlier in the day, and was wondering where the credits for the introductions had come from as none of the 19 books in the series that I have give anyone credit for having written the introductions, and some of the entries in the db have Asimov, and some have Greenberg. As I pulled the book out of the wrapper, and opened it at random, it was right to the page for the Essay "Survivors", and here I am reading the answer to the question that I had earlier, and was going to go and see if I could hunt it down on the web later in the day! I'm now afraid to open it, who knows what it might reveal to me next? CoachPaul 18:40, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Talk about striking Gold! :) Ahasuerus 18:43, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)

"Strike" may be a bit too much - but the editors do deserve a "slap with a wet fish" or suchlike. If anybody wants to hunt down John Silbersack and make him do it RIGHT, you have my permission! ;-) BLongley 19:01, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Moderatorizing

Paul, congratulations, you are now a moderator! <insert the standard With Great Powers Comes Great Responsibility speech here>

The Moderator Screen help page is not perfect, but it's a good place to start. Which reminds me that I really need to update it :( Please feel free to update it as you get more comfortable with the process. A bibliographer's work is never done... Ahasuerus 01:00, 2 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Congratulations from me too! It's not as bad as we make it sound, really. Well, until you find you're the only Mod online and you have 10 newbie editors starting to post.... BLongley 14:01, 2 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Oh by the way, congratulations. It's obvious that you really care about the quality of the data being placed in the ISFDB.--swfritter 10:59, 5 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Wollheim's 1973 Annual

Can you verify that in this pub the name of the author of "Thus Love Betrays Us" is spelled as "MacLennan" or "MacLennon" (as it is in the hardcover edition that I just verified)? Thanks. Mhhutchins 09:51, 3 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Checked and fixed. CoachPaul 10:12, 3 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Since we're double chacking these pubs, the pb version has Changing Women by W. Macfarlane, and not Wallace Macfarlane. Is it truly Wallace Macfarlane in the hc? CoachPaul 10:21, 3 Jul 2007 (CDT)

It's by W. Macfarlane in the hc. I'm going to pull out my copy of Galaxy, Sep/Oct 1972 to see if it's by W. or Wallace. Mhhutchins 20:00, 5 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Just checked. It's by W. Macfarlane. I'll make that correction soon. Mhhutchins

My Day in the ISBN Barrel

Rats. Fixed the Thief of Time entry. Didn't know about the other one. Thanks for the info and for catching the goof...

--Dsorgen 23:25, 7 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Cover art (c) by Bantam Books

A couple of minutes ago you approved my Homeworld pub edit, so you are "it" :-) I figured I could ask you for advice on the following: On the verso of the title page of my copy it states "Cover art copyright (c) 1980 by Bantam Books, Inc." At first I decided not to enter this information into ISFDB because I did not consider it to be very useful, but now I have second thoughts. What is your opinion? Add a note to the pub or leave it out? Herzbube 15:49, 10 Jul 2007 (CDT)

If you want to add it to the notes it may be useful in the future, but for now we can't really do much with it without knowing who did the CoverArt. CoachPaul

Coverart Copyright by the publisher is unlikely to be useful. Coverart credits to a company, rather than an individual artist, seem to be creeping in, e.g. Black Sheep. I suspect we'll need to work on the rules for inclusion, or the ones for artist merges at some point. BLongley 16:25, 10 Jul 2007 (CDT)

I won't enter the (c) statement since you both agree that it's not really useful. Thanks for your answer. Herzbube 16:34, 10 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Accidentally approved "or else" title merge

In case you were wondering where it went. Since it was a merge it probably was not something you needed to do sequentially.--swfritter 10:48, 11 Jul 2007 (CDT)

No problem! Since I updated to Mozilla Firefox for my editing here, I can now keep well over a half dozen windows open and active without crashing Windows 98, so when I need to something sequentially, I just do it right away. This way I don't forget and mess things up. CoachPaul 11:22, 11 Jul 2007 (CDT)

The Uncertainty Principle

Paul, the Collier edition of Bilenkin's The Uncertainty Principle is not verified, but I seem to recall that you were working on it a couple of months ago. If so, could you please check whether the currently listed page count (164) is accurate or whether the OCLC page count (xii+163) is correct? Thanks! Ahasuerus 00:42, 15 Jul 2007 (CDT)

I make it as 163 numbered pages, followed by an additional, unnumbered "About the Author/Translator/Series" page. Sturgeon's Introduction ends on xii, which is followed by an unmarked page with "The Uncertainty Principle written across the top, with a blank page behind it, followed by page 1. So by my count, that is 164+xiv, because I feel the need to count the two pages between xii and 1, even though one of them is blank. I find a precedence for this in that both pages ii and iv, although not having any page numbers on them, are clearly counted in the Roman Numeral Page group. I went ahead and double checked all of the information I entered earlier, fixed the page numbers, (I just recently started adding the Roman Numerals in the page information), and Verified the pub. CoachPaul 01:20, 15 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Ah, I see! As far as "xii vs. xiv" issue goes, I agree that those blank pages between book sections can be quite vexing. At this time our Help pages standard is "When a book has a section with Roman numeral page numbers for introductory material, followed by Arabic numerals for the main text of the book, enter the page number as e.g. viii+320, where viii is the highest numbered page with a Roman numeral page number. Pages without numbers that fall between the two types of page numbering can be ignored." We are basically trying to follow the industry standard by using the highest numbered page so that we don't confuse people who are used to other catalogs. Unfortunately, it's not always cut and dry, so even professional bibliographers sometimes disagree on the "correct" page count. Oh well, we just try to do our best :) Ahasuerus 01:35, 15 Jul 2007 (CDT)

The Best of Murray Leinster (1978, US)

While working on my Leinsters, I noticed that you Verified The Best of Murray Leinster (1978, US) on 2007-07-27. When I compared the Contents section with my copy, I noticed that two stories, "A Logic Named Joe" and "Symbiosis" were listed as by "Will F. Jenkins". There is no trace of "Jenkins" in my copy, so I assumed that the misattribution was due to somebody misinterpreting Contento's list a while back and did the usual add/remove thing. Could you please check if the end result matches your copy? Also, I have removed J. J. Pierce from the "Author" field since, as our Help pages say, "If the book is a single-author collection, but has an editor, as occasionally occurs for deceased authors, the editor does not appear in this field." Thanks! Ahasuerus 21:53, 29 Jul 2007 (CDT)

All stories in the book are credited to Leinster. CoachPaul 09:10, 1 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Looks like we are in good shape then, thanks! Ahasuerus 09:48, 1 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Star Science Fiction Stories No. 3

Hi CoachPaul. I'm a new user/contributor here and I'm nosing around with entries for some of my favorite authors. I came across this entry and note that it doesn't list the contents. Is there a reason for that? I'm trying to work my way through the help info mostly by doing and trying and I didn't want to touch this entry if you either had a reason not to or were planning to do so. ThanksTFRANK 01:02, 31 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Welcome to the group and thanks for pointing this out to me. While strictly not against the rules here, verifying publications and leaving out contents is taboo with more then one mod here, me included. I did this early on in my time here. I have since learned that Verifying pubs is more difficult then it seems and I am slowly going back and checking all of my early ones to make sure that I did them right. I am finding that most of them really need work. I've fixed this pub and it should now be ok. CoachPaul 09:31, 1 Aug 2007 (CDT)

You are so right about this being more difficult to get right than I had expected. Thanks for following up on this. TFRANK 23:20, 1 Aug 2007 (CDT)

New Dimensions 3

Paul, can you verify a couple of stories in your paperback edition of this anthology? My hardcover edition shows the author of "How Shall We Conquer?" is "W. Macfarlane", and the author of "The Last Day of July" is "Gardner R. Dozois". Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:13, 16 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Anything I verified that long ago is suspect! I just checked it, it's wrong, and I'll fix it tomorrow, I've only been back from the mountains for about three hours and spent over 12 in the car today. CoachPaul 20:30, 19 Aug 2007 (CDT)

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

I've added book reviews, a poem, and pagination to your verified pub, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Summer 1950.--Rkihara 16:40, 29 Aug 2007 (CDT)

I've added book reviews, two poetry listings, and pagination to your verified pub, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1952.--Rkihara 14:27, 2 Sep 2007 (CDT)

I've added book reviews, and pagination to your verified pub, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1955.--Rkihara 23:49, 9 Sep 2007 (CDT)

I've added book reviews, and pagination to your verified pub, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1956--Rkihara 14:24, 12 Sep 2007 (CDT)

When you change this much stuff on my Verified Pubs, go ahead and change the Verification to you. I did those Magazines when I was new here. I don't consider them to be Verified very well. Since you are doing all of the work on them now, your name should be the one who is listed as the Verifier. CoachPaul 08:42, 14 Sep 2007 (CDT)

Sweet Myth-tery of Life

Added cover, excerpt and about to Sweet Myth-tery of Life. Dana Carson 22:46, 28 Sep 2007 (CDT)

Myth-ing Persons

Added cover for Myth-ing Persons. Please check. Dana Carson 16:17, 1 Oct 2007 (CDT)

verified pub Future #32

Added a substantial amount of data. The only changes I made to existing data were to credit the cover to Emsh (as credited in magazine) and changed the length of "Made to Order" to novelette - it is about 16,000 words.--swfritter 19:25, 19 Dec 2007 (CST)

Orbit 10

Can you please check your verified pub to see if the story is Gantlet or Gauntlet? BLongley 11:45, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

It's Gantlet. CoachPaul 19:45, 9 Jan 2008 (CST)

The Fantastic Universe Omnibus

Correct cover? BLongley 07:04, 6 Jan 2008 (CST)

YUP! CoachPaul 19:47, 9 Jan 2008 (CST)

Welcome back! Hopefully the new year won't be quite as hectic :) Ahasuerus 21:42, 9 Jan 2008 (CST)

Ditto.--swfritter 22:01, 9 Jan 2008 (CST)

Thanks for the welcome, I've gotten my feet a little wet with a few edits and I'm really rusty!CoachPaul 16:46, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

Good to see you back again! Don't worry about being rusty. It won't be long before you're zipping along. Mhhutchins 18:06, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

Your verified pub The Fantastic Universe Omnibus

"The Robot Who Wanted to Know". Felix Boyd is a pseudonym for Harry Harrison as documented on his website.--swfritter 20:43, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

Astounding, April 1958 & July 1952

These are pubs you verified and I will be adding several additional entries, interior art, reviews, etc. Please fell free to reverify when I finsh which might be in as much as a week. As I am doing a lot of old Astoundings, there may be others. Thx, rbh (Bob) 19:10, 10 Feb 2008 (CST)

Astounding, March 1959 (& maybe others)

This is a pub you verified, and it appears that you just checked the existing contents (which is fine, I think). I will be adding many additional entries: standard departments, interior art, reviews, notes, etc. Please feel free to reverify (or unverify, if you don't want to be responsible for my additions) when I finish. As I am doing a lot of old Analog & Astounding issues, there may be others. Any comments are welcome. I've already submitted a change to the Editorial title (should not have "Editorial:" in title, made it part of appropriate series.) Thanks -- Dave (davecat) 14:26, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)

I should have also said: if you want a detailed list of changes to appear here, let me know & I can provide one. Thanks. Dave (davecat) 14:28, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)

Dave, if you do that much work, go ahead and change the Verification so that it reads as Verified by you and not me. CoachPaul 16:04, 21 Feb 2008 (CST)

Thanks. Do I just verify the thing, or do I have to unverify it as by you first? (I guess I can find out.) -- Dave (davecat) 15:58, 22 Feb 2008 (CST)
OK, done. Thanks. Dave (davecat) 21:17, 22 Feb 2008 (CST)

Glory Lane

Coverart has been added to your verified pub, please check. BLongley 15:24, 16 Feb 2008 (CST)

Blood of a Dragon

You verified this publication with the title Blood of a Dragon, but the trade paper reprint calls it The Blood of a Dragon, and the cover image on your pub also appears to have the article present. The author's web site also uses the title with "The". Can you check if this is actually a variant title? -DES ^Talk 15:05, 22 Feb 2008 (CST)

This one is currently in storage. What is listed on the Title page of the book? CoachPaul 13:04, 1 Mar 2008 (CST)

On the title page of the trade paperback, the title is the same as on the cover, that is The Blood of a Dragon. The author's web site starts the title with "The" also. I don't have a copy of the Del Rey edition that you verified, so I don't know what is on the title page of that edition, but if syas simply Blood of a Dragon it is the only place that I know of to call that work by that title. -DES ^Talk 13:10, 1 Mar 2008 (CST)

Naturally, it was in the bottom of the bottom box in the storage closet. You were correct and I have changed it. Nice catch. In truth, everything that I Verified before May of last year is suspect. If any of the other Mods are reading this and know of a way that I can list my Verifications like I can my Edits? CoachPaul 13:29, 1 Mar 2008 (CST)

Thanks for checking and fixing. As far as I know there is no way to display "My verifications". One would be helpful. -DES ^Talk 13:36, 1 Mar 2008 (CST)

There is no way to do it via the regular user interface, but the feature has been requested a few times. For now, we could write an ad hoc script. I'll volunteer to do it once I have defeated this virus. Ahasuerus 14:00, 1 Mar 2008 (CST)

I put a simple version of the SQL for "My verifications" up here. If you can't run SQL against a back-up yet, feel free to ask me for a list. BLongley 15:28, 1 Mar 2008 (CST)

Tanks Bill, Id appreciate te list. I uess I need a new keyboard, apparently several keys are not workin on tis one since I spilled coffee on it earlier. CoachPaul 21:19, 3 Mar 2008 (CST)

No problem, I'll just need your internal ID number and details of where to put/send the results. BLongley 12:19, 4 Mar 2008 (CST)

Bill, it's xxxx. Go ahead and put them on my User Page, thanks. CoachPaul 13:12, 4 Mar 2008 (CST)

OK, posted. Is that format OK? BLongley 13:56, 4 Mar 2008 (CST)

It's great, thanks! CoachPaul 14:09, 4 Mar 2008 (CST)

Emerald Magic

I accidentally approved Emerald Magic. Hope that didn't mess up what you were doing. Dana Carson 02:06, 6 Mar 2008 (CST)

Not a problem, you saved me the trouble. CoachPaul 23:53, 6 Mar 2008 (CST)