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Spaceways, v. 4, issue 6, whole no. 29, 1942
Page 18
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18 SPACEWAYS FROM THE CONTROL ROOM benignant and financially aiding papa of the plan. But for the present, contact me about the thing, please--and let's make the next bundles much larger!) Fred Senour's article in this issue brings up several points that call for comment. First, about my rating system. When I read a prozine, I give each story a rating, from 1 to 10--1 worst, and 10 best, as requested for Spaceways' material. If I read everything in the issue, then I figure out the rating for the issue as a whole. It's done this way: If the first story in the issue is, let us say, twenty-five pages long, and I rated it at 6, I multiply that 6 by 3, and arrive, through a stroke of genius, at 18. If the next story happens to be twelve pages in length, and rated 4, I multiply the rating by 2, and get 8. This is done to each story in the issue; its rating is multiplied according to how many ten pages and fraction thereof it occupies. (This saves embarrassment when averaging an issue like the first Fantastic Novels, which contained the superb "Blind Spot" and one bad short. I gave, I believe, the former 9 and the latter 4. By counting each story as a mere equal part, the issue would have rated 6.5; but through the adjusting system, "The Blind Spot"'s rating carried twelve times the weight of that for the short, and the average for the issue was well above 8--as it deserved.) O f course, when all the stories' ratings have been multiplied, it's simple to add the products and the multipliers, divide the latter into the farmer, carry out to three or four decimals if necessary; and there you are. Some years ago, I started a card-index of prozine stories. That was when I had plenty of time--before starting Spaceways--and when I became immersed in fandom, the index had to be put aside. I've not yet taken it up again, but still hope to get around to it some day. It had merely been started--I had finished only four or five years of Astounding. However, the completed portion is quite as perfect as possible, I think. Each story has a card to itself--two in cases of collaborations. They're indexed under authors' names. Each card contains name of author or authors, title of story, number of pages it occupied in the magazine, number of illustrations and illustrator's name, a word or two about its subject matter, indication of whether it was part of a series of stories, rating, date of issue and magazine; if I ever get it finished, I'll have outSwishered Cock Swisher. I even had plans of cross-indexing under titles, although that naturally wouldn't be so elaborate a scale, since all the information would be down already on the original set of cards. And the letter of Miller's, suggesting an index of the subject matters of stf., made me ponder, too. Such an index would be very handy for such a file, or for something like Julius Unger's bibliography. I think it'r practical, although it would take a lot of thought and careful planning. Best method, it seems to me, would be that used in public libraries--the decimal system used for non-fiction. Each book is given an index number, consisting of three digits followed by a decimal and possibly other figures for very close sub-dividing. History has one hundred numbers; the arts another hundred; and so forth. The system is followed by virtually all libraries, and all follow the same allocation of subjects to numbers; thus, the plays of Shakespeare are under the same number in every library. I've never seen the scheme applied to fiction, but it should be possible. The trouble would come in thinking out the subdivisions. Let's suppose we wanted to index stf. subjects, ignoring fantasy and weird. First, we'd have to decide on the ten main types of stf. stories, each of which would have one hundred numbers for sub-dividing purposes. How? The traditional methods of division come to mind first: space-travel; time-travel; biological development; lost civilizations; and a few more less important. Presume, please, that we decide to use them. Next, sub-divisions would need to be settled. How to go about it? Space-travel stories, for instance, might be given all numbers from 600 through 699. (As a matter of fact, it would be better to give one hundred numerals to interplanetaries, and another hundred to those that go beyond the solar system, since space-travel is by far the most popular stf. story subject. But we'll forget about that.) There are three or four possible methods of sorting out the
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18 SPACEWAYS FROM THE CONTROL ROOM benignant and financially aiding papa of the plan. But for the present, contact me about the thing, please--and let's make the next bundles much larger!) Fred Senour's article in this issue brings up several points that call for comment. First, about my rating system. When I read a prozine, I give each story a rating, from 1 to 10--1 worst, and 10 best, as requested for Spaceways' material. If I read everything in the issue, then I figure out the rating for the issue as a whole. It's done this way: If the first story in the issue is, let us say, twenty-five pages long, and I rated it at 6, I multiply that 6 by 3, and arrive, through a stroke of genius, at 18. If the next story happens to be twelve pages in length, and rated 4, I multiply the rating by 2, and get 8. This is done to each story in the issue; its rating is multiplied according to how many ten pages and fraction thereof it occupies. (This saves embarrassment when averaging an issue like the first Fantastic Novels, which contained the superb "Blind Spot" and one bad short. I gave, I believe, the former 9 and the latter 4. By counting each story as a mere equal part, the issue would have rated 6.5; but through the adjusting system, "The Blind Spot"'s rating carried twelve times the weight of that for the short, and the average for the issue was well above 8--as it deserved.) O f course, when all the stories' ratings have been multiplied, it's simple to add the products and the multipliers, divide the latter into the farmer, carry out to three or four decimals if necessary; and there you are. Some years ago, I started a card-index of prozine stories. That was when I had plenty of time--before starting Spaceways--and when I became immersed in fandom, the index had to be put aside. I've not yet taken it up again, but still hope to get around to it some day. It had merely been started--I had finished only four or five years of Astounding. However, the completed portion is quite as perfect as possible, I think. Each story has a card to itself--two in cases of collaborations. They're indexed under authors' names. Each card contains name of author or authors, title of story, number of pages it occupied in the magazine, number of illustrations and illustrator's name, a word or two about its subject matter, indication of whether it was part of a series of stories, rating, date of issue and magazine; if I ever get it finished, I'll have outSwishered Cock Swisher. I even had plans of cross-indexing under titles, although that naturally wouldn't be so elaborate a scale, since all the information would be down already on the original set of cards. And the letter of Miller's, suggesting an index of the subject matters of stf., made me ponder, too. Such an index would be very handy for such a file, or for something like Julius Unger's bibliography. I think it'r practical, although it would take a lot of thought and careful planning. Best method, it seems to me, would be that used in public libraries--the decimal system used for non-fiction. Each book is given an index number, consisting of three digits followed by a decimal and possibly other figures for very close sub-dividing. History has one hundred numbers; the arts another hundred; and so forth. The system is followed by virtually all libraries, and all follow the same allocation of subjects to numbers; thus, the plays of Shakespeare are under the same number in every library. I've never seen the scheme applied to fiction, but it should be possible. The trouble would come in thinking out the subdivisions. Let's suppose we wanted to index stf. subjects, ignoring fantasy and weird. First, we'd have to decide on the ten main types of stf. stories, each of which would have one hundred numbers for sub-dividing purposes. How? The traditional methods of division come to mind first: space-travel; time-travel; biological development; lost civilizations; and a few more less important. Presume, please, that we decide to use them. Next, sub-divisions would need to be settled. How to go about it? Space-travel stories, for instance, might be given all numbers from 600 through 699. (As a matter of fact, it would be better to give one hundred numerals to interplanetaries, and another hundred to those that go beyond the solar system, since space-travel is by far the most popular stf. story subject. But we'll forget about that.) There are three or four possible methods of sorting out the
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