Talk:Reach for Tomorrow

Merge of the articles on the several short stories into this article - updated: into Short fiction by Arthur C. Clarke (July 7, 2011)

I suggest the articles on the several short stories of the collection should be merged into this article. The short stories have been published separately, but Reach for Tomorrow is the decisive collection they have been published in. Though there are good sources for some of the short stories, for others there are not. It has today been claimed that there should be added sources to the article that I have written on "Technical Error". I have created this article, because there had already been own articles on eight of the thirteen of the short stories of the collection (many of which are stubs resp. also not yet strengthened by third-party references) and because it seemed to me only to be recommended to add third-party sources to articles on such works of fiction. Nevertheless, as everything can be challenged in Wikipedia that is not based on such sources, I have to say that I strongly doubt I would be able to provide such sources for "Technical Error". Merging the articles on the several parts of the collection into this article on the collection ifself would probably be the best way to guarantee that the several short stories would be treated in a uniform and therefore pleasant way. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 12:28, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I disagree, fairly strongly. First of all, absent a "definitive" edition of the author's work, there's no useful basis for selecting a merge target. Why should the first collection to include the story become the primary target? Why not The Nine Billion Names of God or Clarke's Collected Stories or Across the Sea of Stars or Prelude to Mars or Of Time and Stars, to list some of the other collections in which stories from Reach have also appeared?

Second, I strongly disagree about the availability of secondary sources. While the title mentioned above is unusually common as a general search term, a Google Scholar search on ("Technical Error" Arthur Clarke) turns up several viable sources (among many irrelevant hits, but that's a problem whenever one searches a common phrase used as a title); and a parallel Google Books search turns up a half-dozen useful sources on the first page alone. A GNews search turns up a handful of paywalled comments, and a ProQuest/NYTimes search (GNews doesn't handle the Times very well) turns up a review of Reach which not only discusses "Technical Error" in some detail but identifies it as a variation on a theme from Conan Doyle. Other reviews of the collections in which it appears likely also include useful content.

I don't mean to suggest that all short pieces by notable authors are notable, but quite a few major authors have been the subject of substantial commentary to the point where most if not all of their works meet the GNG, including genre writers like Clarke and Chandler, Heinlein and Hammett. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 16:21, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I also disagree. There is no fundamental relationship between this story and some random book of collected stories (which, after all, is just designed to sell more copies of existing works). This story's history is that it's Clark's first published work, and it was published as a work by itself. That's the definitive form of the work. Nairebis (talk) 19:59, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Also disagree. Too arbitrary. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 20:52, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, I would not have thought of internet sources, at all. I have tried to find some, now that You say there were so many, and really found some, quite quickly, on "Rescue Party", "The Forgotten Enemy", "Technical Error", and "The Awakening". I am very delighted that there are these sources. I, personally, would not doubt that essays consisting of a plot summary and some quotes of these sources could be kept as independent articles. What I for my part could not provide would be quotes from real academic sources in a more restricted sense, as I only can access Richard Bleiler's Science Fiction Writers, in which there is hardly said anything about these short stories. So, if there should not be uttered all-too strong doubts, here, I would try to supply the existing articles on short stories from Reach for Tomorrow with quotes of such internet sources.

There would then still be the question what to do with stubs on short stories on which one would, eventually, not find any secondary sources, on the internet. I for my part would not insert "Refimprove" tags, in them, and think one could very well let them in Wikipedia and wait for users who would replenish them with quotes of some tertiary authors. An other option could be to create an article like Short fiction by Arthur C. Clarke, to link to independent articles on single short stories that are supported by tertiary sources, from there, and to describe possibly remaining shortfiction works by Clarke in this article, itself. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 21:39, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

I`d like to mention that I have moved the "Merge from" template into the new article Short fiction by Arthur C. Clarke, now. Articles on single short stories by Clarke could be kept, there, as long as they lack reliable third-party sources, and be re-created as independent articles, once that has changed. --Hans Dunkelberg (talk) 16:16, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I disagree, too. Where stories have been collected several times into anthologies, (like with these) it makes more sense to have the stories on separate pages, to avoid repeating the story details each time. It’s also easier to put publication details on a short story page than to try and link them through a series of anthologies. And it's not as if we are going to run out of paper... Swanny18 (talk) 23:00, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

(addendum)

There’s not been any support for this merge proposal, so I’ve removed the tags.

If anyone disagrees, I suggest they re-list it, with a new rationale. I trust that’s OK with everyone. Swanny18 (talk) 22:59, 4 January 2012 (UTC)