Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Uncanny Tales (Canadian pulp magazine)/archive1

Uncanny Tales (Canadian pulp magazine)

Featured article candidates/Uncanny Tales (Canadian pulp magazine)/archive1

Nominator(s): Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:05, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a Canadian pulp magazine from the 1940s that is now extremely rare. It carried no memorable fiction, but has some interest for historians of sf because it was the setting for an episode of one of science fiction fandom's early feuds, between Sam Moskowitz and Donald Wollheim, later both important figures in the field. The article is very short but I think contains everything that can be said about the magazine. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:05, 24 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

HF - support

I'll review this soon. Hog Farm _Talk 00:00, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Was the Coblentz novel serialized?
Yes; I added the details. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:34, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is it known why it took almost a year off after moving to the bimonthly schedule?
Not as far as I can tell. I would guess difficulties caused by the war -- perhaps paper shortages -- but nothing I can source. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:34, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"For the first four issues the format remained unchanged, and almost all the stories were by Kelley or other Canadian writers" - Ketterer's Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy (here notes that the first six issues were "all-original" before US reprints began.
Interesting; I hadn't seen that -- thanks for the link. I think Ketterer is wrong, though; see here -- the sixth issue included one reprinted story, "The Thought Monsters". I've added a sentence about the first five issues, citing Ketterer and also giving a note with the correction. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:34, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good work as usual; I expect to support. Hog Farm _Talk 01:09, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Suggest adding alt text
Added. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:34, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
File:Uncanny_Tales_logo.jpg seems likely simple enough to not qualify for copyright protection. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:08, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Probably, but I guess there's no harm leaving the FUR in place in case someone disagrees. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:34, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

UC

A nice little article -- I hope these comments/suggestions/queries are useful. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 08:56, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is the lack of infobox a conscious choice?\
No; added. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
to stop buying Moskowitz' submissions: MOS:' would prefer Moskowitz's
Done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
the science fiction magazine field was booming: probably needs punctuation somewhere: the textbook solution is an endash between fiction and magazine (MOS:DASH)
"science-fiction" does get hyphenated (rather than connected with an en dash) when used as an adjective, so I've gone with a hyphen here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the publishers: is it worth being clear that we're talking about American publishers here and in the preceding few sentences?
Done -- I was thinking it was clear from context, but you'd have to know that the pulp business was fundamentally American rather than Canadian for that to be sufficient. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
a low word rate: hyphenate word-rate to avoid ambiguity (MOS:-)
Done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
a quarter of a cent per word: my usual refrain on currencies -- can we contextualise this? Was that a lot? How did it stack up with what writers usually got?
Done; it was a low rate, and I've been able to dig up some comparisons to show that. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:22, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The first issue was digest-sized: this paragraph is very long, and I must admit I had lost the thread of it by the end. Could we perhaps spin off the feud with Moskowitz into its own thing?
Split. The feud is most of the paragraph, but I split it at the point where we switch to Moskowitz's version and also separated the lead-in. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think risqué is a naturalised English word, but if we're going to treat it as French, we need to put it in language templates.
Removed the italics. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
C.V. Tench: space after both initials.
Done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can the table in "Bibliographic details" be right-aligned to preserve a left margin (MOS:ACCESSIBILITY)?
Done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The table itself can be formatted for accessibility, though MOS:LTAB takes precedence as it's isn't, strictly, being used as a table.
I've added a caption, row scopes, and column scopes; I haven't added scopes before so can't be certain I have it right, but it looks OK. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:01, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The price was 15 cents throughout except for the last issue, which was 25 cents: currency context once again.
I don't think I can do this without synth or OR. I've added an inflation template to show the roughly equivalent current price, but I don't think I have a source that talks generally about pulp prices and what was cheap and what wasn't. As it happens fifteen cents was at the cheap end of the scale; Astounding had been 20 cents since 1930 and went up to 25 cents in 1942, but there were others such as Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories that were 10 and 15 cents respectively. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:01, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with a footnote to the effect of "by way of comparison, here are three other contemporary prices", which would aid comprehensibility, but I can understand the WP:SYNTH concern. Competing priorities, so one rule has to be ignored either way -- happy to agree with the solution you have chosen. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:09, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some replies above; more to come. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:43, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

UC, all responded to. Thanks for the review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:01, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support -- that's my lot, and all seems to be in order. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 16:09, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Haven't read through the above so apologies for any duplication.........
In the lead you say "Wollheim's and Moskowitz's later accounts of the relationship with Colby differ." but then only elaborate on one account. Maybe mention the other one for completeness.......?
Perhaps it could be clearer, but both accounts are there -- it might be easier to parse now I've added more paragraph breaks per UC's review above. Moskowitz's account starts with "According to Moskowitz" at the end of what is now the third paragraph of that section. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:07, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"The stories supplied by Sam Moskowitz included Moskowitz's own "The Way Back"" => "The stories supplied by Moskowitz included his own "The Way Back"
Done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:07, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"which appeared in the February 1942 issue; Stanton Coblentz's novel" - semi-colon should be a comma IMO
It was inconsistent with the rest of the sentence, but I've gone the other way and made one of the other commas a semicolon -- there are commas inside the list elements so I think this is a better solution. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:07, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's it :-) -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 16:01, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:07, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - BennyOnTheLoose

Sources

Sources all look appropriate.
No issues that I could see with source formatting.
The links to Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines and directly to page 685 give "This item is no longer available", so the links might as well be removed.
Done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:49, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Spot check on "Kelley provided the entire contents of the first issue". This is verified on p.86, so the citation needs a slight tweak.
Tweaked; thanks for spotting that. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:49, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Spot check on "Although science fiction had been published before the 1920s, it did not begin to coalesce into a separately marketed genre until the appearance in 1926 of Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine published by Hugo Gernsback. By the end of the 1930s the science-fiction magazine field was booming, with multiple new magazines launched in a short period" - no issues.
Spot check on "According to Moskowitz, Wollheim heard rumors of the new magazine, perhaps via Nils Frome, a Canadian fan whom he knew. Wollheim obtained more details from Chester Cuthbert, a Canadian author he was in correspondence with, and contacted Colby to arrange reprints of stories from Stirring and Cosmic" - no issues
Spot check on the para beginning "Moskowitz had also heard of Uncanny Tales..." - no issues except that this is all from Moskowitz's account; do we need some more caveats of the type "According to Moskowitz..."?
The last sentence of the previous paragraph starts "According to Moskowitz"; I put the paragraph break there because that's where the story switches from Wollheim to Moskowitz, but if I moved the paragraph break before that sentence it could be justified as signalling the change from Wollheim's account to Moskowitz's account. Would that work? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:49, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Happy to leave this to your discretion, but that sounds like a good idea. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 08:15, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Spot check on "one of which, "Lure of the Lily", had been rejected by Wollheim for the American magazines for being too risqué" - no issues.
Spot check on "The magazine is now hard to find and complete runs are very rare"; no issues, although the source goes further on the first part of the statement and says that "The magazine has always been uncommon". The structure is somewhat similar to the source but WP:LIMITED applies.

Pass for source review. I leave dealing with the "According to Moskowitz" point to the nominator's discretion. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 08:15, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

General comment

No free to use cover or other images? The pictures in these old SF-and-similar magazine articles are normally a delight.
This page lists the artists for the covers; if you click through to the artist links, in every case all that is known is "fl. 1940s" -- i.e. they were alive then and no more is known. Canada's copyright term is life plus 50, per this, so I don't think we can assume any of these are out of copyright -- an artist in their thirties in 1942 would only have been in their sixties if they'd died in 1974, fifty years ago. So sadly I don't think there's anything that can be used. Here are the covers, if you're curious to see them. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:49, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks for letting me know. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 08:15, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the review; responses above. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:49, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support I'm satisfied that the article meets the FA criteria. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 08:15, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]