Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Scientific Detective Monthly/archive1

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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 by Laser brain via FACBot (talk) 13:17, 21 June 2015 [1].

Scientific Detective Monthly[edit]

Nominator(s): Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:26, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Scientific Detective Monthly is an oddity; a magazine that tried to appeal to both detective story fans and fans of the burgeoning (in 1930) field of science fiction. It failed at both, and is now one of the rarest of all genre magazines: I hope I've managed to make the story of its failure interesting. This is probably the last of these magazines I'll be nominating for a while; there are only two or three sf pulps left not at FA or GA level now. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:26, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support pending image check -- recusing from coord duties to review a few noms as I'll shortly be putting up one of my own...

  • Copyedited a bit so let me know if I misinterpreted anything.
  • Structure and level of detail look okay for this short-lived venture. The main thing I remember reading about the mag in one of my sf history books (and in hindsight it seems obvious from the title alone!) was that it folded after satisfying neither the sf nor the detective fiction market, and you said just that.
  • Sources look reliable and I couldn't spot any formatting issues.
  • Image-wise, I'll admit I'm not familiar with the licence so that perhaps should be checked by an expert.

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:18, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your copyedits look good, except that I changed "may have" back to "might have" in one case -- could be a BrEng thing but I'm pretty sure "might have" is the right usage there. Thanks for the review and support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:19, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No prob! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:35, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • FWIW, I've reviewed all additions since I supported and after a couple of very minor tweaks am still happy with supporting. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:26, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

Image is appropriately licensed. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:02, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from JM
  • Quotes should probably always be cited- even in the lead.
    Done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Personally, I'd like to see the alternative titles bolded in the lead- preferably in the opening line, if possible- "(later known as Some Other Name)" or something, maybe.
    Done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "At the same time the editor, Hector Grey, was replaced by David Lasser, who was already editing Gernsback's other science fiction magazines." How about "At the same time, the editor—Hector Grey—was replaced by David Lasser, who was already editing Gernsback's other science fiction magazines."
    Done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Gernsback Publications Incorporated, and created two subsidiaries: Techni-Craft Publishing Corporation and Stellar Publishing Corporation" Any of these worth redlinking? Radio Craft? Techni-Craft Publishing Co.? Fiction Publishers, Inc.?
    I don't think so. There might be a future article on Gernsback's companies in general, but he had quite a few and I think it's probable that they should all be covered under the article on Gernsback himself. I believe his companies all tended to be short-lived and so are unlikely to be notable in their own right. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is a fairly short article- while it makes a great GA, I'm wondering whether there might be more to include for FA. Google Scholar is throwing up a lot of potentially valuable sources; have you taken a look at this one? How about this? This and especially this may be valuable. I'm assuming this is the same book as the one you cite? There seems to be a lot of discussion in there. There might be others. If you've already looked at these, please ignore this comment. Josh Milburn (talk) 17:21, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    I was unaware of any of these; thank you very much. I will have a copy of Gernsback Days in my hands on Tuesday, and I have access to Jstor, which gives me one of the others. Can you by any chance get me pdfs of the others? If not I'll ask at the resource exchange. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:51, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    The Extrapolation piece is here. The American Psychologist and Crime Media Culture pieces I've emailed to you. I've not looked if there's anything of value, but for an article so short even a passing mention could be useful. As I say, there may be other stuff out there- I didn't finish looking through the Google Scholar results, and it is not itself comprehensive! Josh Milburn (talk) 02:33, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, it may be worth searching under the other titles! Josh Milburn (talk) 02:36, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    @J Milburn: Done. I was able to get several useful sentences from the Ashley/Lowndes book; and a tidbit from the Westfahl article. The others seem to me to be glancing mentions that don't add anything to what's in the article already. I did notice in the references for one of the articles that Lowndes wrote a reminiscence of the magazine in 1981 for The Armchair Detective, and I've found a copy online and will see if I can order it. However, I'd be very surprised if there's anything in there that isn't in the other references -- he wrote the Tymn/Ashley encyclopedia three years later, and I would have expected him to use that material there. Either way, I should have it this week, and I'll make sure. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:22, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    Great stuff; I'll get to this soon. Josh Milburn (talk) 22:25, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    I get the feeling that while the article currently does a great job of placing Scientific Detective Monthly within the sf pulp tradition, it does less to place it within the detective fiction tradition, which Littlefield (at least) seems to think it is a part of. I was getting the impression that Scientific Detective Monthly is part of the subgenre of "scientific detective fiction", or perhaps the tradition/subsubgenre of "American scientific detective fiction". I know that there's only a passing mention in Littlefield's article, but I wonder if a bit more on this could be brought into the article. (Sorry to be picky, here- I'm just scared we might be missing things that certain subject-matter experts would see as highly important.) Josh Milburn (talk) 22:02, 10 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    I took another look at the Littlefield article with your comments in mind, and I added a sentence about the time frame in which scientific detective fiction was popular in the U.S. I think you're right that there is likely more that can be said about the historical context from the point of view of detective fiction, but I don't think I can get that from Littlefield, who is talking about the combination of the genres, not really about general detective fiction. I suspect little has been written in histories of detective fiction about this magazine, perhaps because Gernsback is far better known for his involvement in sf, so the judgement may always have been that it was "really" an sf magazine, not a detective magazine. However, I was able to locate a bookseller who had Lowndes' article in Armchair Detective and have ordered the relevant issues; I'll take a look at those when they arrive and see if they provide more material. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:38, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    I've now read through the Armchair Detective article, and I don't think there's much I can do with it. It consists of Lowndes' comments about the stories -- he reread most of the issues for this article, and comments on the plots and on the various features in the magazine. I think there's already sufficient detail of that kind in the article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:12, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I appreciate the addition of the "scientific detective fiction" context, and I'm happy to defer to your claim that there's unlikely to be more out there from the detective fiction point of view. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:35, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I think this article is well-written, and it was as enjoyable a read as the others in this series. I trust that if more comes out of the Lowndes' article, that you'll add that in, too. Karanacs (talk) 18:40, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:12, 13 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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