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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Beyond Fantasy Fiction

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 01:32, 14 October 2007.

Beyond Fantasy Fiction

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Passed GA. This would be one of the shortest FAs, but I believe it's as thorough as it can be, given the sources available. A recent FA on a similar magazine is Fantastic Universe. Thanks for all comments. Mike Christie (talk) 22:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know of any lower size limit for FAs, so I'm not sure how to respond to the first point, except to say I don't think it's a valid FA criterion. For critical reception, here's an edited version of my response to the same question for Fantastic Universe: It would be interesting to get a sense of current opinions of the magazine amongst sf readership, but I don't think there will be any contemporary sources for this that could be cited. At that time it wasn't usual for review columns in magazines to review other magazines, and I would think that Beyond Fantasy Fiction received no critical attention outside the field of sf. There are probably passing comments in fanzines, but in addition to being impossible for another editor to verify, any quotes from fanzines are the opinions of the editor, and I don't think would be reliable sources for overall critical reception. The best sources for the relative critical importance of sf magazines tend to be survey works written by researchers, and memoirs (etc.) of writers who were closely involved. I've included Tuck's opinion on the magazine's quality. As for memoirs, I've looked through what I have and found nothing of interest. It wasn't one of the major mags, so memoirs tend to ignore it in favour of Astounding, F&SF, Galaxy, and If.
For the last point, "not comprehensive", is there anything other than critical reception that you feel is missing? I think the article is in fact quite comprehensive, as there's not a great deal to say about the magazine. The article is much longer than the corresponding entry in the Nicholls/Clute Encyclopedia of SF, which is the standard SF reference. Mike Christie (talk) 11:07, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Read my oppose comments together, not seperately. The article is not comprehensive because its less than 10kB and no Reception section. A short Reception section is enough, if the section is well-written, well-referenced and all the FA criteria. A few comment below about references you did not use. --Kaypoh 12:10, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'll take a look at pulling a separate reception section out of the existing material; I'm not sure there's enough material to justify a new section split but I'll think about it. If I understand you, though, you're saying that that's the problem; that there needs to be more information on critical reception and that if there were, the reception section would be large enough to be justified, and hence the size problem would go away. The problem is that I don't think there is much more to be found on the magazine's reputation, particularly if we're looking for contemporary reception.
On your comment "A few comment below about references you did not use": yes, I was unaware of those, so it's certainly possible there's further material out there I haven't found yet. But in my defence I would like to point out that none of the additional material related to contemporary reception. One was a historical work by Michael Ashley; I had quoted from another of his books, but this one had a little extra material I was able to use. Another was a short memoir by James Gunn which turned out not to have anything usable; it simply mentioned the magazine in passing. The third was an account of awards given in 2004 at the SF Worldcon; no stories from Beyond actually won awards, but two were nominated so I was able to support the inclusion of those stories in the "notable stories" list by reference to the list of nominees.
I'll keep an eye out for more sources, and see what I can find, but I'm afraid I'm not very hopeful. Mike Christie (talk) 12:41, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Who says reception must be contemporary? --Kaypoh 13:51, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I did find one more source; a newsgroup post prompted me to dig through my 1963 magazines to find reviews of the anthology drawn from Beyond's pages, and I found some comments by Schuyler Miller in Analog that are relevant. I've added those, and also broken out the comments about the magazine into a reception section as requested. Let me know what you think now. Mike Christie (talk) 15:43, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I like the recent split, you got my support. I am not that satisfied yet with the first sentence and its source of the reception-section, though: "some very good material" vs "good quality throughout its life". That thing addressed, I'd be out of complaints ;) I'd maybe think about joining the Ashley comment to follow the first paragraph, preceding the list of notable stories and condensing the Hugo part a bit. Johnnyw talk 17:08, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    I've modified the sentence to match the ref; take a look. I also added Malcolm Edwards' comments from the original Nicholls Encyclopedia of SF to the footnote on Beyond being the heir of Unknown; I don't think it's worth having in the body of the article but it does support the "often cited as" statement. I moved the Ashley para up; I think it works better up there but I felt it could stay separate from the first paragraph. On the Hugos paragraph: it is a wee bit long, but it's a complicated situation to summarize concisely, and I wanted the paragraph to be quite clear. Can you think of a way to improve it? Mike Christie (talk) 18:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    How about this? "Although no Hugos were awarded in 1954, the 2004 World Science Fiction Convention awarded "Retro Hugos" for that year, where two Beyond stories appeared as runners-up: ..." I know it doesn't tell the Hugo story in full, but maybe it suffices for the Beyond article? And the other changes look fine! Johnnyw talk 18:40, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    I've used a version of that -- see if you like it. What's missing is that Beyond did not win any Hugos first time round, though it was eligible in at least one year in which they were awarded. If you're OK with that not being included, I'll leave it as it is. Mike Christie (talk) 19:03, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'd like to see shorter FAs here and there as long as the article is comprehensive. Of course if it's possible with a little creativity to get a reception section going that would be great. I think fanzines would be fine, and your reputation would probably suffice for verification as well as good faith. Sometimes this reliable source business goes too far, and an article suffers for it. If you have seen reviews of the magazine here and there use them. FAs do differ case by case and in this case I would encourage the use of blogs, fanzines & etc when they aren't crazed. The idea behind this FA is more or less to shed light on an obscure magazine, rather than the usual concern of offering a NPOV on a popular article. I'm leaning towards support because if this article truly is comprehensive and the author has done his best then the FA star lends credibility to an article that deserves it.-BillDeanCarter 12:21, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Additionally, have you searched for references to Beyond Science Fiction in Google Books? 4 pages of results popped up when I did a search.-BillDeanCarter 12:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    As well, I would create a section describing how one can find the magazine nowadays? Is a search of WorldCat the only way? Do people reprint them? IF it's difficult then say so. Is it only to be found is special collections of collectors or libraries?-BillDeanCarter 12:40, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the good ideas -- a quick look at Google Books gives me a little more I can add (also from Mike Ashley, but that's not surprising given the limited number of books on this topic). I will also put in something about the relative rarity of the magazine. ; it's not one of the rarer ones, but it can take a little time to get a set of ten in good condition. I'll post again here when I've made those changes -- tonight if I get time. Mike Christie (talk) 17:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    I've added several additional tidbits from Mike Ashley's "Time Machines", courtesy of Google Books. I also added a note on rarity. On fanzines: unfortunately I have very few fanzines, and none from the fifties, so I can't do anything there. I hope the additional material from Ashley suffices. Mike Christie (talk) 01:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah, I'd be surprised if there was a lot of critical reception for a magazine that didn't last more than 10 issues. But maybe there's something in the stuff that Johnnyw found.-BillDeanCarter 15:02, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Take a look at this link, Mike. Seems as if some of the stories published in Beyond have been nominated for a Hugo in 1953 (the very first edition of the awards). Also, in the introduction to "The Witching Hour", author James Gunn talks about Beyond. Hope that helps.. Johnnyw talk 12:29, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I added some info based on the retro Hugo award -- there's nothing that was contemporary, but it's nice to note that the stories were honoured later on. Thanks for the link. The Gunn seems less useful; he doesn't really talk about Beyond at all; he just says he wrote a story that he thought would be published there and wasn't. So I didn't use that. Let me know what you think now. Mike Christie (talk) 01:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Gunn also said that one of his Beyond stories (lead story, May 1954 issue) would later be recognized as a "classic" by Encyclopedia of Fantasy further down in the article I linked above.. maybe adds to the general praise.. Johnnyw talk 01:14, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for making me looking at that again; you're right that I hadn't fully mined it. I went back through and took a quote from Gunn about Beyond's place as a fantasy magazine; that's a nice addition because it's someone I hadn't quoted from. I also added his "Sine of the Magus" to the list of notable stories, but I reffed it to the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, since that's what Gunn is quoting; they list several more stories as classics but I think the list is long enough as it is. I should mention, though it might hurt my case, that the apparent multiplicity of sources is something of an illusion; the author of the Beyond entry in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy is Michael Ashley again. The original entry in the 1978 first edition of the Enc of SF was written by Malcolm Edwards, who I understand has one of the top magazine collections in the UK (well, now he does; he was still working on it back then), and in that edition Edwards says "Beyond was a fantasy magazine conceived in the same spirit as Unknown", which sentiment Ashley echoes in the later entry. I could re-cite this to the 1978 edition to make it clearer that this opinion is held by multiple people, if that would help show comments from multiple critics.
I've been through all the memoirs and critical works I have that seem to have a chance of mentioning Beyond (e.g. Knight, del Rey, Aldiss, Blish, Pohl, Amis); I've found a couple of slight references but nothing worth adding. I've also pinged an editor who has a good deal of background in sf criticism, and may get some leads from her; we'll see. Mike Christie (talk) 02:24, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose—1a and 2a.
    • "in 1953–55" doesn't work; the ellipsis "the period ..." is too much. Spell it out "from ... to ... ". Why is it a short period. Kind of begs a question I'd rather the readers didn't have to query right at the opening.
    • The lead is far too short. (2a)
    • Remove dot in second caption (not a real sentence—see MOS).
    • Can you do something about the stubby paragraphs, particularly at the end of the first section? Elsewhere too.
    • MOS breach: no hyphen after "-ly".
    • Consider removing the square brackets around the ellipsis dots. Then a different formatting is used—those ugly widely spaced ones, three then four, unspaced. Read MOS on it.

And more. Tony 14:53, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • I reworded the opening. Not sure how to deal with the reader's surprise at the short duration; it's explained in the second para of the lead, which says the magazine was not a commercial success. I do think the dates should be early in the lead -- it's a basic fact about the magazine.
  • I've expanded the lead; I agree it was too short. It's still quite short but it is a short article and I think more might make it top-heavy.
  • I removed it but I'd be glad of a ref; WP:CAP doesn't seem to say anything about punctuation in a caption. Or is it another page you're referring to?
  • The stubby paragraphs have been merged, I hope smoothly, with their neighbours. I deleted the note about the rarity of the magazine; I think that's ephemeral information and not encyclopedic.
  • MOS breach repaired.
  • I've switched to the &hellip; entity, which I found on WP:MOS; hadn't known about that. Very handy.
Thanks for the comments. Anything left? You say "And more"; the only one of your comments I was able to fix in multiple places was the stubby paragraphs, which I think is now cleaned up. Please let me know what else you can see -- thanks. Mike Christie (talk) 22:53, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, tons. I've had a go at rewording the opening para, and now the second para (except for the reference) is kind of redundant. This suggests that you need to invent a new second para, which would make the lead more meaty. It's still too slender. Perhaps brief statements about its history and significance, being careful not to use exactly the same wording as below? Tony 01:22, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I added a second paragraph; see what you think. You also had a comment embedded in the lead about the statement that Unknown was "noted for printing logically worked-out fantasy tales". This was intended to refer to the fact that Campbell, Unknown's editor, had "sought to ensure the fantasy elements in [Unknown] obeyed some set of laws, in effect treating the supernatural as another science." That's a quote from the Clute/Grant Encyclopedia of Fantasy from the entry on Unknown; they cross-reference to an article called "Rationalized Fantasy". An example would be Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think, which introduces werewolves by way of a new evolutionary form of human. I didn't want an extended explanation of Unknown in the article (and certainly not in the lead) so I tried to convey this with "logically worked-out". Is there a better way to phrase this? Mike Christie (talk) 16:12, 9 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking about something along the lines of "stories with conclusive backdrops/settings/concepts" or "stories that gave special attention to a conclusive, well-elaborated backdrop/setting"... The "logically worked-out" isn't really satisfactory right? Hope the opposing reviews give your changes another glance and voice their opinion. Greetings! Johnnyw talk 21:01, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I had another go at wording this, using the example from the encyclopedia I quoted. It now says "The publication has been described by critics as a successor to the tradition of Unknown, a fantasy magazine that folded in 1943 and was noted for printing fantasy with a rational basis, such as stories about werewolves with a scientific explanation." Is that an improvement? Thanks for the good wishes -- I did nudge Kaypoh again earlier today, but he/she's not much on Wikipedia right now and may not see the note. Mike Christie (talk) 22:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments Support Being short doesn't prevent it being comprehensive, in my book. A few comments below.
  • Ref 9, Introduction to the Witching hour, I think would be better formatted as a ref to the 1970 publication, with a courtesy link to the online reprint. That way, it's clearer that Gunn was a contempory, and means that if the link dies, the original ref is still valid.
  • Ref 12 "The long list of..." needs a "retrieved on" date, and publishing site (eg NESFA).
  • The ISFDB references are to another wiki which holds details on the contents of the original magazines, right? If so, I'd again suggest referencing the original source, and providing the modern source as a link.

J.Winklethorpe talk 09:52, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The first two are done; I've also cleaned up a couple of other ref issues I spotted going through. On the third point: yes, the ISFDB is a website that holds an index -- it's the most detailed index available online. I've switched two references (1 and 6) to give cites to individual magazines, and then mention the ISFDB afterwards. The others (now refs 4 and 15) are more difficult, because they don't refer to individual items, but to things such as "the stories were printed in . . . two-column format". I don't see how I can cite to specific issues for that. For those two refs, would it be best to say something like "See the individual issues" as well as the cite to the ISFDB? Mike Christie (talk) 12:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that those sorts of statements are so uncontroversial as to barely require a specific ref anyway, so any of those approaches would work. J.Winklethorpe talk 13:47, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I added text along the lines I suggested to those two references. Thanks for the review, and the support. Mike Christie (talk) 14:26, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I gave the "some very good material" an attribution so it is clear that it was one person saying it, not wikipedia presenting it as an undeniable fact. I rearranged the part about the British version to bring the dates (1950s) forward. --maclean 03:03, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Two things:
    • This statement in the lead: "The magazine was regarded as the best of the fantasy magazines launched in the early 1950s by one science-fiction historian with another saying it printed very good material" needs the critics' names; otherwise, turn it into a more general statement ("received (two) positive reviewers"?). I didn't look closely, but I presume they are named below.
    • There's no info on where the collections of the 10 editions are housed. Links to collectors' groups in which members have the complete collection? Or archives? Or museums? This could be flagged at the end of the second para in the lead, and detailed below. Important. Tony (talk) 01:19, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • How about "The magazine was regarded as the best of the fantasy magazines launched in the early 1950s by science-fiction historian James Gunn with another, Donald H. Tuck, saying it printed very good material."? Indeed, they are named in the Reception section. --maclean 02:44, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Tony, Maclean has changed the lead, per his note, and I think that addresses your first point. On the second point, I did at one time have a note about the accessibility and cost of purchasing a set secondhand. The pricing information was removed by another editor for being unencyclopedic, which I think was the right decision. I eventually removed the note altogether as without the pricing info all it really said was that you could obtain them secondhand if you wanted to. If you search Addall for "Beyond Fantasy Fiction" you'll get 344 hits: because of duplicates this probably represents about fifty or a hundred issues for sale. The other way to talk about accessibility is, as you suggest, to identify collections where the magazine can be found. However, I know of no collections that indicate their contents in enough detail to do this. The Merril collection includes an image of the first issue of Beyond at the top of the page, but doesn't include it in the example list of the magazines they carry, at the bottom of that page. I would be surprised if they don't carry it, but I can't be sure from this. The SF Foundation does not include a catalog, and nor does the Eaton collection. These are the most prominent publicly accessible sf collections I know of. The bottom line is I'm not sure how to address this problem because I can't point to any library that carries the magazines. Should I reintroduce a comment about the accessibility of the magazine through second-hand dealers? Mike Christie (talk) 12:57, 30 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've added the Worldcat link to the external links; it works fine for me, so that's very handy. Thanks for that. On the lead, is there anything specific you can see to improve? Mike Christie (talk) 23:38, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I like the old version, which didn't name Tuck or Gunn there; but if we must, that is too much weight for a passive construction to bear. Make it James Gunn, the historian of science fiction, regarded.... Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:48, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely an improvement to leave the passive behind. I've rejigged it as you suggest, with a couple of minor differences; take a look at it now. Mike Christie (talk) 00:17, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately the Worldcat no longer works -- evidently it preserved some password state information in the URL you gave me, and when that timed out it asked for a password. So I've removed it for now; if I can find another way to access Worldcat I will put a link back in. Mike Christie (talk) 01:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've copied the list to the talk page, in case we want to add some summarizing statement. I think the active works nicely; encyclopediast sounds better to me, but both words exist. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:05, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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