User talk:Mike Christie

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Possible pulp era of science fiction article

Hi!

I've been toying with the idea of creating an article about the historiographic concept of the pulp era of science fiction. The idea struck me when I realized that although numerous sources mention a "pulp era" in this sense (as opposed to the broader sense of the era of the pulp magazines regardless of genre; pulp era currently redirects to pulp magazine), it is rather difficult to find sources that define the term or specify when this era was. Most sources I have come across seem to take for granted that the reader knows roughly what they mean by "pulp era", and the few that comment further upon the concept as such don't really seem to agree about what is included and what is not.

By contrast, I have found it fairly easy to find sources discussing the Golden Age of Science Fiction as a historiographic concept (and it's probably not a coincidence that we have an article on the Golden Age), and even though they don't entirely agree in their definitions there is actually some discussion about those disagreements and the attempts to define the period. I see that you looked into this as well at Talk:Golden Age of Science Fiction#Sources for particular time periods back in 2016.

I figured I would ask you about this since you have written numerous high-quality articles about the various magazines and so on and are as far as I can tell very familiar with the relevant sources. Do you know if there are any sources that discuss the topic from the angle "what do we mean by the 'pulp era' of science fiction" or similar?

To be clear, I'm not talking about creating an article covering the history of science fiction in this era—we already have History of science fiction and History of US science fiction and fantasy magazines to 1950, and trying to cover the History of science fiction in the pulp era would likely result in overlap to the point of redundancy. Rather, I'm thinking about an article covering the notion that science fiction had a "pulp era" in its history (and what time period it encompasses).

What do you think, would creating such an article be a good idea or should I abandon it? TompaDompa (talk) 22:10, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like the topic you're considering is the intersection between definitions 2 and 3 here -- is that right? I wonder if perhaps definition 3 would be the way forward -- that would cover retro-sf, for example. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow comes to mind; I don't think you could exclude that from a discussion of pulp sf even though it was made relatively recently -- unless the article became so long that you needed a subarticle to cover it, which is not impossible. There might be quite a bit of academic coverage to wade through -- I don't have much of that sort of source myself, other than historical or biographical material; I don't have many sources that cover the literary discussions. I do have Gary Westfahl's The Mechanics of Wonder which is probably relevant. I also just discovered that Foundation is online, here; there are other journals you'd have to look at but that's probably got something useful in it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:34, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would rather say that I'm thinking about an article that would answer the question "when was the pulp era of science fiction?" Another way of putting it might be that I want it to serve mainly a glossary function for the reader who comes across a sentence like "this theme first appeared in the pulp era" or "it was common in the pulp era for [...]" and ends up wondering "when was that, exactly?" (as was the case for my the first time I encountered the term). TompaDompa (talk) 19:55, 7 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Found a source that I think illustrates what I mean fairly well: "Three Decades That Shook the World, Observed Through Two Distorting Lenses and Under One Microscope" by Gary Westfahl (in Science Fiction Studies, March 2004) spends the first paragraph briefly discussing possible definitions of the era in terms of starting and ending points. TompaDompa (talk) 22:14, 7 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't worked on the history of science fiction article, but even though the pulp era refers to magazines, I think the glossary function you're considering would belong more naturally there than in the relevant sf magazine history article, and the importance of the pulp era lies largely in its relationship to the rest of sf. You might make a separate article out of it, as you suggest, but I don't see that it's necessary yet. As an aside, the concept is closely tied to that of genre science fiction, which doesn't have an article but probably could. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:47, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Right. I'll see how I end up approaching it. Thanks for your input! TompaDompa (talk) 10:48, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I took a stab at it: Pulp era of science fiction. Check it out if you are interested. TompaDompa (talk) 23:25, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good -- you did a better job on it than I would have thought possible, and I can see why you thought an independent article was worth it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:15, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FAC bot

The FAC statistics for the user Keivan.f [1] appear to be inaccurate. He and I were co-nominators for the archived nomination of the article Catherine, Princess of Wales. However, the statistics page lists him as a "Content" reviewer rather than a nominator. Could you please look into this? MSincccc (talk) 06:54, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed; data entry error on my part. Thanks for spotting that. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:57, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

TFA

Thank you today for Fantastic Novels, introduced (in 2014) as "a minor science fiction and fantasy pulp magazine of the 1940s, a companion to Famous Fantastic Mysteries, which was promoted to FA last year and which reviewers may find useful as a comparison. Fantastic Novels had a shorter run, and was less well-known"! - My story is about music that Bach and Picander gave the world 300 years (and 19 days) ago. Listen ;) -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:57, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to stop by and say congratulations on the TFA. Aoba47 (talk) 02:13, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Abingdon (causewayed enclosure)

I hope that you will excuse an inexperienced editor. As the information this article that was in addition to that in Abingdon-on-Thames was small, I have incorporated it in the latter article, rendering the small article, in my view, redundant. TedColes (talk) 10:10, 23 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi -- I think that was a reasonable thing to do, but I think the article on the causewayed enclosure could be expanded quite a bit, and so deserves to be separate, though at the moment it wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest a merge. I've long meant to expand the article and perhaps this will prompt me to do so. Thanks for the note. 10:14, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Question

Hi Mike, I was reading through Wikipedia talk:Good Article proposal drive 2023 and am curious why proposal 9 was never implemented? IAWW (talk) 18:08, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In fact it was implemented, but it was removed again. There was a discussion (early last year, I think, but I don't recall exactly) which you can find in the WT:GAN archives which was in favour of reverting to the old sort. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:49, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you IAWW (talk) 19:03, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

GAN Error

Hi Mike Christie, Hope you're well. Recently, I have nominated Barsha Raut for GAN but Bot didn't placed the nominator name. Please check it. Thank You! Fade258 (talk) 15:25, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It looks OK to me -- what's the problem you're seeing? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:41, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Mike Christie, I am concerned about this error but it is solved now. Fade258 (talk) 15:58, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Books & Bytes – Issue 68

The Wikipedia Library: Books & Bytes
Issue 68, March–April 2025

In this issue we highlight two resource renewals, #EveryBookItsReader, a note about Phabricator, and, as always, a roundup of news and community items related to libraries and digital knowledge.

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