[Next Project] Short Fiction by Robert Sheckley

[maticstric]

I want to do Robert Sheckley’s short fiction next. Made a spreadsheet with all the stories: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h4hc5fpSzQITkiUo-X_tL9iHKBTX0DFKBwTaCVbyj4Q/

The only one I think we shouldn’t include is The Status Civilization (aka Omega). It’s a novel that was published in a pulp sci-fi magazine as a serial over two months and comes in at 48,000 words so it should probably have its own ebook.

So far everything seems pretty straight forward. Only have one question:

He sometimes uses italics where there would usually be unsemantic small caps. Should I just use an <i> tag?
Examples: bottom of this page https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v18n02_1959-12/page/n15/mode/1up and two on the bottom left of this page https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v18n02_1959-12/page/n30/mode/1up
         

[Alex Cabal]

OK, sounds good. The notes about the work titles would make good
endnotes, in case someone gets confused as to why a story is here under
a different name.

Re. italics, you can convert those to small caps with <b>, I think
that's fine.

On 8/26/21 3:38 PM, maticstric wrote:
> I want to do Robert Sheckley’s short fiction next. Made a spreadsheet
> with all the stories:
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h4hc5fpSzQITkiUo-X_tL9iHKBTX0DFKBwTaCVbyj4Q/
>

> The only one I think we shouldn’t include is /The Status Civilization/
> (aka /Omega/). It’s a novel that was published in a pulp sci-fi magazine

> as a serial over two months and comes in at 48,000 words so it should
> probably have its own ebook.
>
> So far everything seems pretty straight forward. Only have one question:
>
> He sometimes uses italics where there would usually be unsemantic small
> caps. Should I just use an <i> tag?
> Examples: bottom of this page
> https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v18n02_1959-12/page/n15/mode/1up and
> two on the bottom left of this page
> https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v18n02_1959-12/page/n30/mode/1up
>

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[maticstric]

Ok will do. I just made a pull request for similar endnotes on the Bradbury collection I just finished. Here's my spreadsheet for that one https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WB5Nt4LMVabt3KAUs1KxsfHfdpjU5OTs13dYITJcfLA/edit#gid=0

Do we have a way of indicating that these endnotes are written by an SE producer, not the author? In this particular case it should be obvious, but still.

[maticstric]

As I've been proofreading I realized one of the stories, "Bad Medicine," (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9055/pg9055-images.html) is actually a copyrighted Gutenberg ebook. Obviously I need to remove it but I'm wondering if there's any problems with the story being in the history of the git repository. It's been there since the second commit so I don't even know how I would go about removing it without restarting.

[Asher Smith]

It's a bit of a pain to rebase the repository, but if you use a GUI (like Sourcetree) I find it's a doable thing, and there's plenty of guides online. Happy to help with that if it would be useful.

[Alex Cabal]

You'll have to rebase it out of the repo, sorry. See
https://docs.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/removing-sensitive-data-from-a-repository

Make a copy of the project folder somewhere else, so that if you blow up
the repo you can just copy it back in. But assuming you committed the
copyrighted story into its own file, it shouldn't be too hard to remove
it from the history completely.

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[maticstric]

Possible cover: https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/work-247.php

PD Proof: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015014058963&view=1up&seq=48&skin=2021

The stories don't really have any striking imagery so I can't find anything more specific than the fact that they often take place on odd planets.

[Alex Cabal]

That works, thanks! Great find!

On 9/28/21 1:04 PM, maticstric wrote:
> Possible cover: https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/work-247.php
> PD Proof:
> https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015014058963&view=1up&seq=48&skin=2021
>
> The stories don't really have any striking imagery so I can't find
> anything more specific than the fact that they often take place on odd
> planets.
> On Tuesday, September 21, 2021 at 7:47:39 AM UTC-7 Alex Cabal wrote:
>
> You'll have to rebase it out of the repo, sorry. See
> https://docs.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/removing-sensitive-data-from-a-repository
> <https://docs.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/removing-sensitive-data-from-a-repository>
>
>
> Make a copy of the project folder somewhere else, so that if you
> blow up
> the repo you can just copy it back in. But assuming you committed the
> copyrighted story into its own file, it shouldn't be too hard to remove
> it from the history completely.
>
> On 9/20/21 10:23 PM, maticstric wrote:
> > As I've been proofreading I realized one of the stories, "Bad
> Medicine,"
> > (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9055/pg9055-images.html

> <https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9055/pg9055-images.html>) is

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[maticstric]

Ready for review! https://github.com/maticstric/robert-sheckley_short-fiction/

Notes:

1. Make sure to double check my unsemantic italics. I think I did everything correctly but I never know.

2. The last story has a bit of a weird structure. It has two parts but the second part is split into 7 more parts.

I'll start my work on Soldiers' Pay now as I finish this up, if there are any problems. I should start a new conversation on google groups even though the book isn't in the public domain yet, right? I'm guessing that, besides the git repo being private and the review being done privately, everything else should be done as normal.

[Alex Cabal]

Vince, can you review this?

You can discuss production on the list, but don't create a github repo.
Just work locally for now.

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[Vince]

Will do.

[Vince]

Great job as usual, Matic, really thorough. I opened an issue with some minor nits. Let me know if you have any questions.

[maticstric]

Hey Alex I've fixed all the issues that Vince brought up except one: https://github.com/maticstric/robert-sheckley_short-fiction/issues/1 (the one not checked off. Third one)

Could you just take a quick look and see if you agree since I think it's a big enough change to get your opinion as well. This is the story being referenced: https://archive.org/details/Imagination_v03n03_1952-05_LennyS-cape1736/page/n75/mode/2up

[Vince]

So you won’t have to go digging through the story to figure out what we’re talking about…

Here are the other-worldly dialogs. They are italicized in the story to indicate they’re coming from off-world. We don’t normally use italics and quotes, but in this case the setting apart is warranted, I think, to indicate it’s not just normal dialog. I suggested possibly putting them in blockquotes, since they’re standalone paragraphs. Leaving them italicized is another option.

At the end of the story:

That feels to me like a normal blockquote situation, no italics.

[Alex Cabal]

I don't think we need to make them blockquotes. You can use <em> to
indicate that it's spoken in a different tone of voice, and keep the
quotes, I think that will be fine.

On 10/7/21 12:16 PM, Vince wrote:
> So you won’t have to go digging through the story to figure out what
> we’re talking about…
>
> Here are the other-worldly dialogs. They are italicized in the story to
> indicate they’re coming from off-world. We don’t normally use italics

> /and/ quotes, but in this case the setting apart is warranted, I think,

> to indicate it’s not just normal dialog. I suggested possibly putting
> them in blockquotes, since they’re standalone paragraphs. Leaving them
> italicized is another option.
>
>
>
>
>

> At the end of the story:
>

> That feels to me like a normal blockquote situation, no italics.
>
>> On Oct 6, 2021, at 11:53 PM, maticstric <matic...@gmail.com

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[maticstric]

Should I use <em> on the last one too or keep it as <i>? That one is more like the beginning of some journal entry and isn't really "spoken" in a different tone of voice.

[Alex Cabal]

You can target both of those for italics with nth-last-of-type

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[Vince]

All right, I believe this is ready for you, Alex.

[Alex Cabal]

OK, I've gone ahead and released it. Great work Matic, thanks! I've
never heard of this guy but the long description makes it sound like
something I'd be very interested to read.

On 10/7/21 2:30 PM, Vince wrote:
> All right, I believe this is ready for you, Alex.
>
>> On Oct 7, 2021, at 1:49 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org

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[David Grigg]

You’d never heard of Robert Sheckley? Wow. Mind you, I’m old!

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[Vince]

I am also old, and a reader of SF since childhood (my dad’s a big fan of the genre), but I don’t recall running across him, either. Thanks to Matic, I’m reading him now, though. :)

[David Grigg]

One of the best writers of humorous science fiction.

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[B Keith]

On Oct 7, 2021, at 6:12 PM, David Grigg <david...@gmail.com> wrote:

One of the best writers of humorous science fiction.

+1

 :-)

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[maticstric]

Thanks for the help everyone!

I hadn't read Sheckley before this either. After reading a few of his stories, I have a suspicion he had a much bigger impact on scifi than people give him credit for. I think that if he just had one real "hit", which it looks like he never did, he'd be mentioned right alongside Bradbury, Clark, Dick, etc.

Some of my favorites from this collection: Watchbird, Final Examination, Beside Still Waters