Talk:The Maharajah's Star (short story)

Original publication

So, in light of Forum:Charity Stories that are TECHNICALLY licensed..., charity stories are no longer automatically disqualified from coverage, with four specific works validated in the process. However, Scrooge also sensibly decreed that an inclusion debate would still be necessary for the coverage/validity before any future charity works are added to the wiki. Now, The Maharajah's Star was originally published in the charity anthology Voices from the Past on 4 May 2011. As such, I would like to update this article to bring it into line with the conclusions of that forum (including removing outdated talk of charity publications being excluded by the wiki), but in deference to Scrooge's final decree, I thought I'd bring the matter up here, as the status of this story was not specified in the forum. Danochy ☎ 22:13, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Side effects of the above change

If #Original publication is ratified, then perhaps this section should be spun off into a forum post, as this might be a rather complex issue. I've written it here though, because I wanted to lay everything out at once for full transparency.

This second point concerns the validity of this piece if we were to consider its new release date. Currently, The Maharajah's Star and several other Archibald Angelchrist stories are covered under the pretence that Paradox Lost was his first DWU appearance. Strictly speaking, they shouldn't, as The Maharajah's Star was released first, containing no licensed DWU elements, as best as I can tell.

The potentially complicating factor here is that The Maharajah's Star was released just under two months before Paradox Lost. So, it is entirely possible (likely, even) that Archibald was created for that novel before an additional short story was written featuring him. Indeed, the wiki page claims as much, though provides no source at present. I'm not sure of any precedent there, though (Chronotis springs to mind as a similar case, created for Shada before appearing elsewhere). Danochy ☎ 22:13, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

I believe Chronotis still appeared in a DW novel of some sort before Dirk Gently, but that's beside the point. I feel like elements created for DWU stories which happened to be released shortly after a reuse of the element should probably be considered "DWU elements" regardless - not sure if this is reflected in policy, though. Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 22:52, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree, but it's the latter point about policy which is pertinent here, yes. Danochy ☎ 01:06, 28 March 2024 (UTC)