Talk:Galaxy Science Fiction

Galaxy Magabooks

So what were the other two? Adding them to the footnote would be fine. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:23, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Per Tuck, vol 3, p.746, they are:

1. del Rey, L. The Sky Is Falling & Badge of Infamy
2. Williamson, J. The Legion of Time & After World's End
3. Sturgeon, T. And My Fear is Great & Baby Is Three

I'll add them to the article at some point; just wanted to jot them here to remind myself since I'm in the middle of something else tonight. Feel free to add them yourself if you like. Mike Christie (talk) 00:57, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Done, unless you want to tweak the reference. A nice selection; I have the first and did not realize it was unusual. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:16, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Tweaked. Thanks! Mike Christie (talk) 01:48, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Recent revert

Some quick notes on the recent revert by Ylee.

• The rewrite of the sentence about the rear cover substitutes Gold's opinions for the quote from the parody; I think this is less effective for the reader. The heading should be "See", not "Find", and I think all caps are unnecessary.
• The addition of the quote from Gold about female endomorphs seems excessive to me -- we already have a discussion of the sober covers, cited to a third party, which is better than citing Gold. In particular the quote is from 1952 but that discussion is about the first few issues so it isn't ideal.
• The long sequence of quotes and comments about bad stories seems far out of balance. This is all sourced to Gold himself, not to a secondary discussion. At most this should be compressed to one or two sentences.
• Finally the information about circulation and volume is out of place and unnecessary. The circulation is discussed in the publication history section, and if no secondary sources use Gold's numbers, nor should we.
• I didn't remove this sentence, but think it should go: While other "new magazines—and many of the old—are dying of literary cirrhosis. The cause? Poisoning due to decayed fiction", Gold stated,"; this is privileging Gold's voice too much by using his opinion to set the context for Galaxy's success.

I'll place a note on the SF project page to ask for more opinions. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:42, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Note posted. Also pinging Dank, Jimfbleak, Ealdgyth, and Wehwalt, the TFA coordinators, since this is going to be TFA soon, in case any of them have an opinion -- I know at least two of them are fairly familiar with sf. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:47, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

The discussion of what Gold considered bad stories is two quotes (one lengthy), but desirable because a) it's difficult to paraphrase in a shortened but accurate way. Gold didn't dislike stories about alien-human combat in space; he disliked those explicitly evoking Western tropes. He didn't dislike stories about radiation mutating children; he disliked those in which the normal are killed by the mutants. b) It's clear that receiving too many of such submissions was an ongoing problem for the magazine, especially early on, thus his repeated discussion of it. c) WP:SECONDARY doesn't apply here because there is no interpretation of Gold's claims, only quotes and attributions, and Blish's quote helps to establish secondary-source context for them. d) Gold's vivid language effectively sets the imagery for the bad stories he is partly-serious, partly-joking griping about and is hilarious to read, which always helps. (Same with the "female endomorphs" quote. In addition being funny and vivid, what's the point of paraphrasing it to "unusually attractive women wearing little clothing"? It's both longer and, by interpreting his words, possibly distorting Gold's intention.)

There is no privileging Gold's voice too much about "literary cirrhosis"; again, he is quoted, the quotes are established as such, and the reader can decide whether Gold's claim is unreasonable. A secondary source discussing it would of course be welcome.

I have no objection to relocating the circulation discussion to where it is discussed elsewhere, although we should not eliminate Gold's claims entirely but put it in conjunction with secondary sources that may claim otherwise. Ylee (talk) 18:07, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

PS - Regarding the "see"/"find" issue, the headline of the advertisement uses the former but the text uses the latter. WP:ALLCAPS doesn't apply because all caps is what the text (again, not headline) uses. Ylee (talk) 22:54, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

• I'm here because of the notice posted on the WikiProject Talk page. I assume we're talking about the difference between this version and this one. I see that the discussion above has been focusing on some rather subtle nuances of "balance", "privilege" and other such notions. Although both of you are raising valid points, I see the issue on a more fundamental level -- too much quoting makes for a less compelling narrative. Or, to say it another way, if you're relying on the words of others, then you're not doing a good job of "telling the story". Either way, Mike's version is the better "read". NewYorkActuary (talk) 06:28, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I left this a couple of weeks to see if anyone else would comment, but since nobody has I've gone ahead and removed the material Ylee added, as we have a majority, albeit a small one, to do that. If other people comment we can revisit this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:30, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Undefined references

I think I have the first undefined reference <gold195210> fixed (it was at the end of the caption of the cover art image at the top) by using a reference to the covers from the body of the article. I can't tell where the second undefined reference <gold195201> can be defined. Geoff | ^{Who, me?} 20:49, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Now fixed; the problem was because when I removed some material (see the section above) I didn't take all of it; I took the part where the ref was defined, but not all the places it was used. I've now removed all the material relevant to the section above and I think it's OK now. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:25, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Infobox

Shortride, I don't think there's a generally agreed standard that all magazine articles should have infoboxes. I'm not against infoboxes in general -- I've written many articles about Anglo-Saxon kings which benefit from them -- but they're not automatically a benefit to every article, and I think that in this case the fields that are true across the whole life of the magazine are few enough that it's pointless to have one.

I think it's also worth mentioning that this article was promoted to featured article without an infobox, so there are at least some other editors who see no reason to add one. Per WP:BRD I propose to remove the infobox again; please discuss here before re-adding it. I'm not absolutely opposed to it, but I don't see the value, and would like to hear other opinions. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:04, 15 May 2018 (UTC)