Talk:Russell Blackford

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Almost everything self-published except a few stories. Fellows of that Institute are not therefore N. DGG 05:23, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to get involved in a debate about whether I am sufficiently notable to be an appropriate subject for a Wikipedia article.
However, the claim made on this page is harmful to my reputation as a working freelance writer, so I must comment. Are you seriously suggesting that almost all my work is self-published except for a few short stories? I assure you that my novels were not self-published, either. Most of them were published by ibooks, part of the publishing empire of the late Byron Preiss. I have never had any financial stake in, or any kind of control of, ibooks beyond what I was owed under my contracts as an author. Nor have I ever had any financial stake or control in Greenwood Press, a perfectly reputable academic publisher which published my co-written scholarly book, Strange Constellations (which is widely considered an important book in its field and has been reviewed in newspapers in Australia, in Australian Book Review, and in all the obvious places that review such things, e.g. Science Fiction Studies (where the discussion occupied several pages in acknowledgement of the book's importance) and the New York Review of Science Fiction). Nor have I ever had any stake or control in respect of Quadrant magazine, where my most important articles appeared when I was writing for that magazine in the late 90s/early 00s. Nor in a whole host of other places where my articles, reviews, and short stories have been published, e.g. Meanjin, the Australian newspaper, the Age newspaper, the Journal of Medical Ethics, Australian Law Journal, the Journal of Popular Culture, Westerly, Monash Bioethics Review, AUMLA, Cosmos, Oceans of the Mind, etc., etc.
I can confirm that I also have never had any financial stake in, or any control of, any of the magazines and reputable book publishers that have published my short fiction.
I will try to keep aloof from this, unless someone wants to discuss it further with me, but I did need to set the record straight. Russell Blackford 03:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for commenting, for I have been encouraged to look more carefully, add the little that was needed, and remove the proposed deletion tag. I can only plead haste---the article was caught up in a general biography cleanup, and was tagged mainly for lack of obvious formal 3rd party sources, & by judging online publishers by whether there is an article on the publisher in WP. As for the sources, I quickly found a few and have put them in, as well as a brief list of academic papers. As for the publisher, the lack of an article is probably due to the difficulty of searching for something called "iBooks", as well as the bankruptcy, so I will make amends for that by writing the article. (I recognized Greenwood, thus the "almost".) I'll add the ones from Quadrant.
I am very thankful for your good humour under provocation, for it has avoided me looking like more of a fool than unavoidable. I will make amends by reading some of your work, the articles to learn things I obviously need to know, and the fiction to enjoy your style. DGG 05:36, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your actions. If you do read any of my published work, I hope you'll enjoy it. Russell Blackford 13:30, 3 March 2007 (UTC)