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Spaceways, v. 4, issue 6, whole no. 29, 1942
Page 15
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SPACEWAYS 15 NOTES OF AN INDEXER by FRED A. SENOUR In a recent issue of Future and Science Fiction, P. Schuyler Miller's letter in the readers' section made a point I've been mulling over in my own mind for quite some time--the question of indexing science fiction. If any of you index your magazines, you know what a Herculean task lies behind you--or if you intend to, what a task lies ahead of you. The pitfalls are many, and I sometimes wonder whether the time I've spent on my own index has bee worthwhile. Still, I got quite a kick out of it; maybe it wasn't wasted. As it happens, I was remarkably lucky in one respect in my own indexing. I don't index Weird Tales. I do have a complete list of the stories, authors, and issues in which they were published, but it is made up from the index of Elmer Weinman, a fan friend. I use it once in a long while for reference to some point. My own index covers only the science fiction magazines. Sounds easy, doesn't it? But just try it, and see. All in all, you will be indexing more than seven hundred magazines. They range from one hundred twenty-eight issues of the Gernsback, Sloane, and Palmer Amazing Stories, to the one issue of Amazing Stories Annual. Astounding alone from 1930 to date covers some one hundred forty issues. As for the number of stories covered by those issues, they add up to the rather impressive total of about four thousand, one hundred fifty tiles, by some eight hundred fifty different authors! So if you are starting from scratch--brother, I wish you luck! Miller suggested in his letter that the index cover subject matter of the story. That is, the story should be indexed under a heading, such as "Interplanetary--Mars"; or "Future War". I like the idea. It is a good one, but in view of the fact that I know how much time I've already put in on my own index, I just haven't the nerve to tackle the job. I'll have to be satisfied with what I have: it answers the purpose pretty well, I think. So I'm going to continue to confine myself to the other headings he mentions. In the first place, I list the issue of the magazine and its contents table just about as is. This could be easily amplified to include any information desired. I content myself with listing merely the stories and the authors, and assigning a rating to the issue as a whole, based on a scale of 0-10--a reverse of the system used in rating Spaceways. That is, a 0 on my scale would correspond to a 10 in the Spaceways system. This part of the index could be extended, to include cover story and artist, and illustrator for each yarn if you so desired, as well as a short sentence about subject matter. Then I cross-index it, using this time the author, listing under his name the stories he has written, the issue, and my personal rating of each story, again on the 0-10 scale. And here is where the trouble starts. For one thing, there is the question of pen names. I've got part of the answer to that, but wish I had more of it. If I know definitely that a certain pen name is associated with a certain author, I list the stories under the author's real name-- e. g., Gordon Giles is listed under Eando Binder. To be strictly accurate, Binder ought to be split up again, but that is a place where the average fan will run into trouble. I got around it by ignoring it. The big problem is what to do with names that may be pen-names, but of which you aren't sure. The best way to handle that problem, it seems tome, is to list the pen-name. It isn't perfect, but until you have some way of being sure, it is safer. The question of "house-names" is a mess I haven't been able to figure out as yet. Generally speaking, that gives you enough information to find any of the better stories. I find that when I want to chase down a yarn, I generally remember either which magazine it was published in, the author's name, the title, or some combination of those which enables me to pin it down in a very short time. In this respect, there is one thing that might help. In indexing the stories under the author's name, you can split Wonder Stories up into three eras. First: Air Wonder Stories (AWS) and Science Wonder Stories (SWS). Second:
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SPACEWAYS 15 NOTES OF AN INDEXER by FRED A. SENOUR In a recent issue of Future and Science Fiction, P. Schuyler Miller's letter in the readers' section made a point I've been mulling over in my own mind for quite some time--the question of indexing science fiction. If any of you index your magazines, you know what a Herculean task lies behind you--or if you intend to, what a task lies ahead of you. The pitfalls are many, and I sometimes wonder whether the time I've spent on my own index has bee worthwhile. Still, I got quite a kick out of it; maybe it wasn't wasted. As it happens, I was remarkably lucky in one respect in my own indexing. I don't index Weird Tales. I do have a complete list of the stories, authors, and issues in which they were published, but it is made up from the index of Elmer Weinman, a fan friend. I use it once in a long while for reference to some point. My own index covers only the science fiction magazines. Sounds easy, doesn't it? But just try it, and see. All in all, you will be indexing more than seven hundred magazines. They range from one hundred twenty-eight issues of the Gernsback, Sloane, and Palmer Amazing Stories, to the one issue of Amazing Stories Annual. Astounding alone from 1930 to date covers some one hundred forty issues. As for the number of stories covered by those issues, they add up to the rather impressive total of about four thousand, one hundred fifty tiles, by some eight hundred fifty different authors! So if you are starting from scratch--brother, I wish you luck! Miller suggested in his letter that the index cover subject matter of the story. That is, the story should be indexed under a heading, such as "Interplanetary--Mars"; or "Future War". I like the idea. It is a good one, but in view of the fact that I know how much time I've already put in on my own index, I just haven't the nerve to tackle the job. I'll have to be satisfied with what I have: it answers the purpose pretty well, I think. So I'm going to continue to confine myself to the other headings he mentions. In the first place, I list the issue of the magazine and its contents table just about as is. This could be easily amplified to include any information desired. I content myself with listing merely the stories and the authors, and assigning a rating to the issue as a whole, based on a scale of 0-10--a reverse of the system used in rating Spaceways. That is, a 0 on my scale would correspond to a 10 in the Spaceways system. This part of the index could be extended, to include cover story and artist, and illustrator for each yarn if you so desired, as well as a short sentence about subject matter. Then I cross-index it, using this time the author, listing under his name the stories he has written, the issue, and my personal rating of each story, again on the 0-10 scale. And here is where the trouble starts. For one thing, there is the question of pen names. I've got part of the answer to that, but wish I had more of it. If I know definitely that a certain pen name is associated with a certain author, I list the stories under the author's real name-- e. g., Gordon Giles is listed under Eando Binder. To be strictly accurate, Binder ought to be split up again, but that is a place where the average fan will run into trouble. I got around it by ignoring it. The big problem is what to do with names that may be pen-names, but of which you aren't sure. The best way to handle that problem, it seems tome, is to list the pen-name. It isn't perfect, but until you have some way of being sure, it is safer. The question of "house-names" is a mess I haven't been able to figure out as yet. Generally speaking, that gives you enough information to find any of the better stories. I find that when I want to chase down a yarn, I generally remember either which magazine it was published in, the author's name, the title, or some combination of those which enables me to pin it down in a very short time. In this respect, there is one thing that might help. In indexing the stories under the author's name, you can split Wonder Stories up into three eras. First: Air Wonder Stories (AWS) and Science Wonder Stories (SWS). Second:
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