Talk:The Concept of War (novel)

Investigation

Hey. Admin here. Prima facie this seems to be legit. However, this page was briefly created in 2017 by a user who was since blocked for sockpuppetry, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence. The page was then deleted with the rather bizarre rationale that "Only source is invalid", which doesn't seem to be logically applicable to a real-world page about a story, so I think there was some sort of mistake.

However, all that background is, well, fishy, if you'll pardon the expression.

Thread:190950 gives us a precedent for a completely illegitimate "spin-off" about a DWU species of fish-based aliens, and that is such a specific precedent that I think The Selachians bears further investigation, even if there is no evidence at this time that it is in any way related to whatever was going on with The Piscons.

This isn't an exclusion debate — yet. (It couldn't be, we don't have any forums.) But this is a call to anyone with any information on the matter to provide any data that would suggest The Concept of War was not actually a licensed DWU spinoff. Or, conversely, any additional evidence that it was licensed by Steve Lyons, which would place it beyond reproach (unless it happens to fail Rule 4, but that seems unlikely).

In your investigations, bear in mind the basic summary of our policies at Tardis:Valid sources#Terminology:

We also specifically do not consider the quality of the narrative when deciding whether to exclude a story. Instead, we are guided by the legal status of a work as well as the authorial intent. Those things which don't have the permission of all relevant copyright holders, or those which were never meant to be continuous with the established DWU, are excluded.T:VS

P.S. I'm not going to tag the existing The Concept of War (novel) page as invalid, because either Concept of War is a valid story, or it's fanfic we shouldn't even have a page about. In no plausible scenario could it be covered-as-invalid. But that doesn't mean the Wiki am not approaching this with a healthy degree of skepticism. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 14:57, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

I want to be honest here, and while I would love for evidence to surface that proves this story's legitimacy, with what evidence I can find, I'm not exactly hopeful.

1. The fact that it was published in a physical format in such a small quantity nobody appears to own a copy, and the only way to read it is to purchase this dubious looking ebook for best part of £100, the whole thing seems awfully suspicious to me.
2. As for the author, he doesn't even appear to have a bibliography (so how would an unheard of author get permission to write the first story in a series (unless if it's a pseudonym)), and his writing style, as evidenced by the "look inside" section on its Amazon listing, in my honest opinion, is pretty poor. This struck me the wrong way, in essence.
3. The only evidence of it being licenced is its front cover, which could easily be a lie.

While I believe this should be covered by this Wiki for now, as it seems to be a case of innocent until proven guilty, I'm not holding my breath for this story, and this is coming from a guy who wants to be as inclusive of all stories as possible. Epsilon ^{Contact me!} 15:13, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

I would like to note that I did not create this page. The information was already on the Selachian page, I simply linked the story to another page. Apparently that page was previously deleted, but I did not recreate the page. PoolsideJazz ☎ 15:16, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

Oh, it's not your fault! You were simply being a good editor for fixing a link. (Keep up the good work!) It's my curiosity that lead me to putting some investigation into it. Epsilon ^{Contact me!} 15:20, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

Epsilon, personally, I share your bad feeling. But I don't want to delete this without any hard evidence, either — on the basis of a "bad feeling".

As the paragraph of T:VS I quote emphasises, quality isn't evidence. This is a weird book and by all appearances a pretty, er, bad one. But if we started discounting things because they're kind of shabbily-produced, we'd end up ruling out Troughton-era bases-under-siege by the wheelbarrow, to say nothing of various VNAs or BBV stories!

Certainly only existing as an ebook doesn't in itself make something suspicious. And with the bizarre price, it could be the case that this is some kind of "legal" swindle, as it were — a matter of acquiring the Selachian license for cheap (but legitimately), and then selling the book for a ludicrous price with the expectation that a few diehard completists will buy it anyway, thus turning a neat profit. A pretty bitter reason for a DW spin-off to exist, but the producer being morally bankrupt is also not something that disqualifies a story by T:VS.

I'm not especially keen to keep this story on the Wiki — but if we end up excluding it, let's do this by the book, please. I don't need to remind you of the unpleasantness a year ago when an actually perfectly-licensed ebook release was wrongly branded fanfiction, a crisis to which we lost two admins and the better part of our spirit of community. I'd like to avoid a repeat of that, please.

And even if we do end up deleting it again, the 2017 rationale clearly doesn't hold any water. This is new terrain for all intents and purposes. ---Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:22, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

I never meant that it being an ebook was suspicious, but the circumstances of the oddly limited release of the book, and then the absurd price of said ebook.

Hey, if poor quality of writing would be grounds for the story not to be covered, I'd be actively campaigning for the removal of the Dr. Fifth, seeing as it's a poor copy of Castrovalva. I was merely noting the apparent quality of The Concept of War felt weird as, considering how the first story in the series would be like that, but I would never want it in a million years to be the rationale for it to be kicked off the Wiki. Epsilon ^{Contact me!} 15:35, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

As for why it said “only source is invalid”, that EXACT WORDING was used to delete pages related to this story, that is to say, elements from it such as The Curious Incident of David Cameron and the Pig in the Night Time (lol, by the way), so it seems it may have been a simple error caused but muscle memory to put that summary here (although, to clarify, the actual deletion of the page was obviously deliberate). Talking of links, Number Two, which appears to be referring to the The Prisoner character, actually links to a page on some Dalek from a comic... so... there’s that. As for that references section, it’s really weird. If all this stuff actually happens in the book, it’s one a wild eight-page book! Not least that bit about how Sherlock Holmes actually founded new Labour. Honestly, this page itself is even less coherent than the ebook excerpt. NightmareofEden ☎ 16:30, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

…No, sorry, that bit about Holmes being a politician was just a copypaste error when I tried to starting beating the References section into shape. I have yet to read this thing (I am disinclined to so long as it costs 99 sodding pounds; I'm curious, but not that curious), but I'd guess its plot involves some kind of manmade virtual reality with Remake-type simulacra of various famous figure, among them Holmes and the politicians.

Number Two-the-Dalek really should be dabbed in any case, so at least something useful will have come out of this even if we delete this page again.

And, you're probably right concerning the origins of that edit summary. Digging a little more, I find that User:PicassoAndPringles actually gave some kind of rationale on the talk page of User:HolmestoHomes, although this is of course a pretty irregular place to put an invalidity rationale. The rationale also doesn't seem to quite pass muster. Picasso alleges that it's fanfiction, but their only evidence of this is that "it's self-published".

Not only is this not actually the definition of fanfiction at al (there are licensed self-published products, and unlicensed products put out by recognised publishers; see, for example, Obverse's Cushingverse charity books) — but it doesn't seem to be the case, prima facie, that The Concept of War was self-published. Something called Cacteraldi Publishing is clearly listed on the Amazon page as the publisher. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 16:40, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

It's important to note that as far as I can tell such a publishing house does not exist. It also does not have an ISBN, but instead has an ASIN. The ISBN issue is complicated and discussed in detail in Thread:258247, suffice it to state that there is no clear resolution. However, a search at isbnsearch returned no information, and the ASIN not being in ISBN form heavily implies that there was never a physical release and it's only ever been a digital release.

I suggest someone just ask Lyons, and if he doesn't respond, or if he responds in the negative, we deem it fanfic. Najawin ☎ 19:30, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

I've sent Steve a friend request on Facebook, so if he accepts, I should be able to ask him about the story.

Epsilon ^{Contact me!}

19:44, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

Excellent! I do love a simple solution to a simple problem. Let's wait and see. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 20:12, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

User:GarfielfStuff claims to be a facebook friend with Lyons on their profile, so if Epsilon is ignored, we can ask them to inquire. Najawin ☎ 21:23, October 27, 2020 (UTC)

Just checking in since it's been a while, any news? Never Forget The Day The 456 Arrived ☎ 21:51, November 4, 2020 (UTC)

None for the time being. I think we can give it another week and if we have no positive news I'll delete the thing. After all, we can always recreate it if Lyons answers a month from now in the affirmative after all. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 21:54, November 4, 2020 (UTC)

Conclusion

Well, "one more week" has now elapsed, and no claim of licensedness (even an unsubstantiated one from Cacteraldi Publishing) has surfaced. With this being such an odd and "suspicious" release (due to Cacteraldi Publishing's lack of online presence if nothing else), I think we should be more than a little skeptical.

Note however that we've found no compelling evidence against it either, so there's nothing barring this page from being recreated if evidence of a commercial license from Lyons does indeed surface at some point. Moreover, this Wiki is not to make any potentially-libelous claims that it was unlicensed/fanfiction unless we have hard evidece of that. The paragraph on the subject that I have written at Selachian merely states the fact and explains that we haven't found enough evidence that it was licensed.

Finally, I just want to restate that however the original deletion of this page came about years ago, it wasn't kosher. It wasn't the end of the world either (being that, as it turns out, there were reasonable grounds for deletion), but it's become clear the stated rationales at the time were incorrect, and, regardless, such a decision really should have commanded a community discussion such as the above, exercised in a comfortable timespan and in good faith.

All of which being said, The Concept of War’s legal situation is still too fishy for us. As I said, the page will now be deleted. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 13:01, November 12, 2020 (UTC)