Talk:Alfred Bester

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Radio Portal
This article is supported by the Radio WikiProject.

This project provides a central approach to Radio-related subjects on Wikipedia.
Please participate by editing the article attached to this page and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards. Visit the wikiproject page for more details.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
This article is supported by the Arts and Entertainment work group.
Photo request It is requested that a picture or pictures of this person be included in this article to improve its quality.
Maintenance An appropriate infobox may need to be added to this article, or the current infobox may need to be updated. Please refer to the list of biography infoboxes for further information.
WikiProject Comics
comics
Portal
This article is in the scope of WikiProject Comics, a collaborative effort to build an encyclopedic guide to comics on Wikipedia. Get involved! Help with current tasks, visit the notice board, edit the attached article or discuss it at the project talk page.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale. See comments.
Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.

[edit] Biography assessment rating comment

WikiProject Biography Assessment Drive

This article is nearly a B-rating though it needs citations, a picture, and possibly an infobox, it is otherwise very thorough.

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 23:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit]  

Just what is "He already knew some people" supposed to mean? Some people "in the business" ? Some people "in high places" ? Some people in the mafia? Some people on the planet Pluto? This passage is pretty slackly written, and if the intention is to portray Bester as some kind of operator or master of self promotion, it should be fleshed out.

Did he ever write a follow-up to The Demolished Man? I always wanted to find out how "Honest Abe" stole the weather. Phil 09:24, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)

  • Unfortunately, no (or perhaps fortunately). The story is complete, and the world he created feels like it continues to exist beyond the scope of that narrative. Does it really need more? DS 23:56, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Why doesn't this entry say anything about his demise? I've found that you can collect enough information about his life but not a single article discussing his death. (Mondongo)


Mondongo, this was the only thing I've found that mentions why he died: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1424376/bio

Articles were usually written in print around the time of Bester's death. He died before the Web - when Usenet and BBSes were the norm instead. However, Silverberg's introduction in _Virtual Unrealities_ discusses Bester's work more than anything else. Locus Magazine, F&SF, and Asimov's are the best possibilities for obits.

=Chica= 04:58, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Is it necessary to mention Alfred Bester of Babylon 5 in both homages and media references? Jariola 06:03, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting the page


OK, so what do we call the new pages. I suggest:

Any different suggestions?

--Phil | Talk 10:47, Jun 25, 2004 (UTC)

Alfred Bester (fictional character) moved to Alfred Bester (Babylon 5)
--wwoods 19:16, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Green Lantern's Oath

If Bester started writing comics in 1942, it seems unlikely that he wrote the original Green Lantern oath, which was published in 1940, probably in All-American Comics #16, July 1940, in the origin story of Green Lantern Alan Scott.

Bester is rumored to have written a new version of the oath for a 1943 story, but no one knows the issue date or which magazine it is supposed to have appeared in (whether All-American or Green Lantern) which seems very suspicious. For every other version of Alan Scott/Green Lantern's oath, and there were many, the exact issue of its appearance is known and documented.

It seems likely that the version of the oath attributed to Bester was written by John Broome, who used it for the origin of the Silver Age Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, in Showcase #22, Oct. 1959.


Reading Bester's own essays in print does answer this question. As I recall, he discusses the original oath - but I refer you to his collections. Bester also writes brief essays in front of the stories, so it would be in one of these:

  1. The Light Fantastic Volume 1: The Short Fiction Of Alfred Bester
  2. Star Light, Star Bright: The Short Fiction Of Alfred Bester, Volume 2
  3. The Light Fantastic Volume 2: The Short Fiction Of Alfred Bester

I just returned two of these to the library. I read _Star Light, Star Bright_ and whichever _Light Fantastic_ has the Asimov essay.

=Chica= 03:56, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Men Who Murdered Mohammed

There really needs to be an article on this story... [1] -- AnonMoos 16:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect errors

- "Hobson's Choice" goes to the play of that name. Most story links by title tend to go to a story summary.

- "Disappearing Act" redirects to an album called Cobblestone Runway, which is not related to the story; the album possesses a track of that name.

- "The Sun" is an article. It may be related to The Sun newspaper, but for some reason I find this unlikely, so I took off the redirect.

=Chica= 03:43, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Running dialog for today's edits:
  • Red links to articles that don't exist aren't great wikipedia practice, so I'm just going to delete all of the ones that don't have articles. --Hurtstotouchfire 06:38, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • [grumble grumble] Ok, I did a little portal research and red links definitely have their uses that many people seem to approve of. I left a few that seemed useful, but linking every single short story is just annoying. It no longer serves to "invite the reader to contribute". There are articles for some stories and books. That makes it obvious enough that you could contribute. I just don't want to see articles being written in those slots with common names and then we end up with redirect errors. I guess I'm saying, use red links sparingly. I also really want to get around to writing an article on Hobson's Choice, my favorite Bester story, and making sure all of the disambiguation turns out ok around that phrase.
  • More alsoer, there's a page for the 1976 Starlight Starbright, but not volume 2. Poopy. I think those pages are mostly stupid though, so I'm not making one. If people want book index info there are better site than wikipedia for it. --Hurtstotouchfire 06:58, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Crikey! These lists are looong. Bordering on needing to be made into list pages, and not just a part of an article. This isn't really a very good structure we've got here... Would anyone be horribly offended if I just deleted all of the short stories listed previously under published collections? I'm gonna do it. --Hurtstotouchfire 07:01, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • After going through it, I'm suspicious that there may be some inaccuracies in our "Works" section. I'm on vacation, but when I get home I shall consult my bookshelf. I think I have all of the questionable works.--Hurtstotouchfire 07:10, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Also added a few links elsewhere in the article. Several novel titles weren't linked everywhere. I think I'd also like to make a page for The Light Fantastic, since it's such a common name. I literally have 3 books by that name. Alright. Calling it a night. I'll probably delete some of this later, we don't need this much talk about bloody everything. --Hurtstotouchfire 07:23, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of works

I would like to suggest considering Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works) and revising the layout of our lists a bit. I've watched this page for a while now and seem to recall it not being terribly active, so I may just do that myself in a bit. --Hurtstotouchfire 23:34, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I've read all of Bester's short stories, and could write a plot summary for each; would this be useful or desirable? Should Wikipedia have a page per short story? Do we want a complete list of the stories in each of the collections listed? Also, in the list of other works by this author in my copy of Golem100, published in 1989, something called Witch Times Four is mentioned. I can't find any references to it anywhere else - the net, bookshops, or Clute and Nicholls' The Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction. From the context, it appears to be a book, though whether a novel or collection of short stories is unclear. Does anyone know anything about it, and should it be mentioned in the article? Wocky 18:15, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

"Witches Times Four" is an anthology of five medium sized stories, Copyright states 1984. As I own only the german edit (1986), I´m unsure about the original titles. The storys are called "Mr. Magus und der elektrische Zulu. Eine Hexe namens Hulda. Aller Anfang ist leicht. Armer kleiner Klon. Galathea Galante." 195.46.248.143 19:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Demolished Man preface

Didn't one of the Bester anthologies have a short 1 or 2 page summary of background information for either the Demolished Man or TSMD (I can't remember which) that was part of the magazine publication, or first edition or whatever and then never included in republication? I was trying to find this today, and can't find any trace of it. Delegan2 10:19, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

  • It was the preface to the original story, as published in Galaxy in 1952. It was republished (for the first time) in Redemolished in 2000. Wocky (talk) 01:38, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Demolished Man

The reference to the sailor who survived for 133 days is probably to Poon Lim, who actually was in the South Atlantic, not the Pacific. Chris 19:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hiatus

I think there should be some mention of his 30 year hiatus between novels and maybe some regard to their (lack of) quality compared to his first two giants. They were certainly noted at the time.--12.152.181.160 (talk) 19:52, 19 January 2008 (UTC)