Talk:Heroes in Hell

Number of books / book order

There are actually 12 books in the series. The missing book is titled The Little Helliad by Janet and Chris Morris (1988 Baen Books ISBN 0-671-65366-0) and is written from the perspecive of Homer, who is confronted by Satan and forced to write an epic depicting Satan as a hero, much as Homer did for Achillies in the Iliad. Unlike most of the other books in the series, this novel is not a collection of short stories, but it does contain many characters previlant throughout the series including Alexander the Great, Tanya Burke, Welch, Nichols, Altos the Angel, Achilles, Lawrence of Arabia and of course, The Master of Lies himself, Satan. I also noticed that the order of the books in incorrect. I have the sequence as follows, despite conflicting publishing dates:

1. Heroes in Hell 2. Gates of Hell 3. Kings in Hell 4. Rebels in Hell 5. Crusaders in Hell 6. Legions in Hell 7. Angels in Hell 8. Masters in Hell 9. The Little Helliad 10. War in Hell 11. Prophets in Hell 12. Explorers in Hell

Good stuff. I added The Little Helliad and changed the order around to as above with one exception: Rebels has a publication date of 1986 and Kings has a publication date of 1987, so I left those in the order of publication. Does that make sense? Fairsing 17:45, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

New book pages

This is quite a respected series, relevant to a number of authors' careers. I propose creating individual (summary) pages of the individual books, linked-to from this main series page.

Among other things, CJ Cherryh's three Heroes In Hell books are the only ones in her bibliography that do not have their own pages, which is a visible gap in that bibliography.

Would there be any objections to creating a page for each book? Relevant linking, outside of the Cherryh biography, is from the various authors' biographies; most of the people who have contributed to volumes in this series are major, noteworthy, names with their own Wikipedia entries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luke Jaywalker (talk • contribs) 22:39, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I have no objection and in fact would welcome the creation of new articles for these books, particularly the three Cherryh novels. If you're new to Wikipedia, please have a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels#Article structure first. Your help here would be greatly appreciated. —Bruce1ee^talk 05:57, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We couldn't create articles for every one of them. I suppose the most notable ones could. Marcus Qwertyus 06:03, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I would argue that most or all of them would be notable, on the basis that: a) This is a highly prestigious series, with most of the individual authors being quite notable (and having their own pages), b) Many series of far less notability (such as the Starfist military-SF series) have short pages for each book. The information is already on this single large page; I'd essentially just be looking to break this page up into individual ones for each title, and listing the titles (as well as the stories in the series-naming first book) on this one page. --Luke Jaywalker (talk) 21:09, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'm available if any help is needed. Marcus Qwertyus 21:21, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Restructuring of existing page

As discussed above, I've created pages for each of the individual volumes in the series, except for the first, Heroes in Hell itself. I'm looking now to: a) create a separate page for that book, as with the others, leaving this page to cover the overall series, and then b) remove the short stories from 'Books in the Series' (since those are now listed under the individual books), leaving 'Books' as just the list of volumes. Thoughts/objections? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luke Jaywalker (talk • contribs) 00:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for starting articles on all the book titles. I think removing the short story titles from this page, as I see you've already done, is fine – there's no need for that detail if it's covered in the individual books. —Bruce1ee^talk 06:16, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Many notable book series do not have articles for every book in the series. I've tagged each of the completely unreferenced sub-stubs for books in this series for merger to the series article as notability for the individual books has yet to be proven with reliable third-party sources for any of them. I do encourage any interested editor to improve these articles and, if notability for an individual volume can be proven, then it need not be merged. - Dravecky (talk) 00:48, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

• Agreed, a merger here for many of the books in the series is appropriate due to a lack of reliable and in-depth coverage in independent, third-party sources. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 18:12, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Merge proposal

Do not merge. This is an important series, seminal to the development of the shared universe form, and was sometimes referenced or discussed as a series as a whole, without specific volumes being called out. Two of the stories sold first serial rights to magazines. Two volumes had Nebula award finalists. One volume had a Hugo award winner. One volume had a cover nominated for a Locus award. The first volume was on the Locus best of the year list. Some WP editor decided to apply more stringent standards to this book, such as possession of paper reviews, than to many other books: how many citations are verifiably linked to possession of the entire review in question for other books on WP? Proof of existing reviews in non-trivial sources should be adequate demonstration of notability; content of the reviews is largely immaterial. For completeness alone, with different authors in each volume, each volume needs its own page. Many other books, including every other book (but not these three) by CJ Cherry, whether important or not or reviewed or not, have their own pages on Wikipedia, many of these with lesser credentials than these books as part of this landmark series. The debate over this topic was vicious and unprofessional, perhaps biased. The new volume Lawyers in Hell demonstrates that this series and this form continue to be viable, no matter the author's choice of publishers or perhaps because this series was chosen by the editors as a candidate for a modern marketing approach not dependent on old-style publishing methodologies, and is noteworthy because it brings the series out of a twenty-year hiatus using alternative publishing. Each volume should have an overview and each story a synopsis, and this is too much text for a single page. Nor will any sensible person put time into expanding the Wikipedia volume pages until the debate over merge is settled. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.88.2.177 (talk) 15:37, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

This is mostly irrelevant rubbish; the AFD discussion on the new volume show strong sentiment for a general merger. Virtually none of the individual book articles include any significant content beyond basic bibliographic data, easily merged into the main article. The contrary argument is just a mixture of peacockery and uncivil attacks on people who disagree, and most of its proponents seem to have been recruited for the dispute. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 21:14, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Merged

If you didn't notice the ridiculous number of merge tags at the top of this page, I have merged many of the books which contained no references or had poorly references concerning notability. There was a great deal of consensus for a merge during the AfD discussion, and there continues to be during the merger discussion. This action was done in accordance with WP:BOLD. Objections to a merge were not grounded, either stemming from claims from NPOV editors (e.g. authors of the book series) that the series is notable for being in-universe with multiple authors, or simple claims of WP:ILIKEIT. Books not merged have suitable references and they will remain on their own pages (for now).

If you wish to contest the merger, please discuss as such here with evidence of notability ((WP:NBOOKS that any the merged pages should have their own page. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 21:25, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Also, any clean-up efforts would be helpful. This merging has taken me a long time to complete. *sweat on brow* I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 21:26, 19 July 2011 (UTC)