Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Time's Arrow (short story)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was speedy keep as withdrawn (non-admin closure) Andrew🐉(talk) 10:33, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Time's Arrow (short story)

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I am afraid that's another short story by a famous author that nonetheless seems to fail WP:GNG/WP:NBOOK. I tried looking for references (and I expanded this tiny stub a bit) but the best I found was a passing mention in one book that this story could be seen as an early exampls of criticism of the time travel concept in fiction. But it's a passing mention that has problems with WP:SIGCOV, and I am not seeing anything better. The story doesn't seem to have won any awards; it is mentioned here and there in the context of being included in the first issue of of the magazine Science Fantasy (and perhaps the current article could be merged there, into a section about noteworthy stories that debuted there)? Other than that, it was included in an anthology The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century, so reading between the lines, the notable editors of that anthology (which right now fails NBOOK itself) made a judgement to call it "one of the best..." but they don't explicitly say so, and referencing the title of the anthology as a claim of significance is rather far fetched. Inside the anthology there is another one-two sentence (so, SIGCOV-failing) discussion of the story ([1]), so sadly, it doesn't appear the editors had anything to say about the story that would help. Likewise, I found a similar one/two-liner about the story in another anthology here. It doesn't help that both of those tiny descriptions are anonymous (the first could be attributed ot the book editors, but I wasn't even able to determine who is the editor of the second anthology). And there is so little analysis in those two snippets anyway I wasn't even able to figure out how to add them to the current article as references. Closing, I'll note that the story has been included in a number of other anthologies (ex. [2]) but I none that I found seem to be digitized to allow checking if there is any analysis in them. Anyway, Clarke is famous but it doesn't appear that this story of his warrants a stand-alone article. But I am open to being proven wrong, and I am looking forward to see if anyone can dig up something more about this story. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science fiction and fantasy-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • So far I'm not seeing much. This link goes to a thesis, but I'm unable to access it, possibly because it's geoblocked to only come up for people in Australia. If it's a doctoral thesis and it discusses the work, it could be usable. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:19, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm starting to find more, but I'm mildly hampered by lack of access to books that aren't completely available on the internet. I'm leaning more towards a keep with this one, but I want to keep searching. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:27, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • ReaderofthePack ignore that thesis, I downloaded it and Time arrow is not mentioned, it talks about Dick's "A Little Something for us Tempunants" and mentions "The Minority Report" and "Paycheck" in a footnote which relate to a book by Arthur Neal.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:51, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ah, boo. I was hoping for something good. Oh well. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:56, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry I was wrong - I missed a small footnote " Later tales such as ‘Time Trap’ (1948) by Charles L.

Harness, Fredric Brown’s ‘Letter to a Phoenix’ (1949), Asimov’s ‘Day of the Hunters’ (1950), and Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘Time’s Arrow’ (1950) evoked the same themes of cyclical or ‘looping’ destruction, death, or conflict. This theme was also evident in SF fandom’s self-penned stories, such as ‘Paradox of the Time Circle’ (1947) by Rex E. Ward in his self-published fanzine Time Travel Tales21."Davidstewartharvey (talk) 08:01, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. I've found some coverage and added it to the article. From what I've seen, it looks like this was more discussed back in the pre-Internet age and coverage just sort of dropped off since then. It looks like it was discussed favorably in other sci-fi mags, per this and this in Amazing Science-Fiction and Amazing Stories. I can't get beyond a snippet view to see who is saying it and to what length, but the general language gives off the reasonable impression that there's almost certainly more coverage out there that's not online. Enough for my end, anyway. It's not Clarke's most lauded work, but I think that there's enough. I also expanded the article, so it's not a stub anymore. (Admittedly I did that more for the practice, before I found the coverage I had.) ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:56, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fair enough! Something I recommend with Google Books is to try re-typing the content in parentheses. For some reason recently, Google Books has had issues with bringing up content with any sort of punctuation. I've had to re-type the search query (ie, "query") to get it to process properly. Dunno if that's the issue, but it's a big one I've run into lately so passing the info along. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 08:11, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Withdraw. While I am still somewhat concerned about the letter of SIGCOV, WP:IAR comes to mind. This is borderline, maybe a bit on the wrong side of GNG, but I no longer have the heart to see this deleted. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:28, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Post-withdrawal keep for confidence. An important short story, as they go. Hyperbolick (talk) 08:36, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep As per good work done by ReaderofthePack. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 09:15, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Possibly another reference John Hollow, Against the Night, the Stars: The Science Fiction of Arthur C. Clarke. There is a whole chapter named Time's Arrow (Science Fiction Studies
  1. 33 = Volume 11, Part 2 = July 1984, BOOKS IN Review, Cockeyed Optimist, John Hollow. Against the Night, the Stars: The Science Fiction of Arthur C. Clarke. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. 197pp.)Davidstewartharvey (talk) 09:34, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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