Talk:Arthur Leo Zagat

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In the article as it currently stands is the unsourced statement: "Zagat wrote about 500 stories that appeared in a variety of pulp magazines." Considering that Zagat's writing career spanned the years 1930-49, this claim would mean that Zagat published on average 25 short stories per year every year during his writing career. That is not really believable. I therefore have ammended the article text somewhat.Dan Quigley (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:08, 6 March 2010 (UTC).

I've put the count back in with a footnote (though slightly differently as to keep your improved wording). I opted to footnote from the Tuck reference. However, both the general references for the article state that he had about 500 pieces published. --Rtrace (talk) 22:14, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Just because one source makes a wildly erroneous assertion with no evidence for support, and other sources without using reason use that original erroneous source, must we perpetuate the very same error in Wikipedia? I have read many a table of contents list for many of the pulps during this period. Zagat's name is not found that frequently. It is inconceivable that he published 500 stories. I believe that he published at most 50 short stories during his lifetime. 33 of his short stories are listed at this fairly comprehensive website: http://authors.wizards.pro/authors/writers/arthur-leo-zagat. I am not going to fix or make any changes to remove the ludicrous 500 number again because I do not want to be involved in an editing war. I am just saddened to have to leave obviously false information standing since to do so seems to harm Wikipedia's reliability as a source of vetted (peer-reviewed) information. Dan Quigley (talk) 04:56, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't ignoring published sources in favor of speculation be considered original research? Tuck states "Of about 500 published pieces, only 5% were science fiction, principally appearing in pulp 'action' magazines". Clute & Nicholls state "...extremely prolific in a number of PULP MAGAZINE genres, publishing about 500 stories: of the relatively few that were sf, several were with Nat Schanchner...". They do acknowledge Tuck's work as one of their references. The ISFDB entry, which only details speculative fiction, lists nearly 50 short stories, about twice what is listed on the other site. I don't have references for other pulp genres, but given that both cited sources state that his sf was only a small part of his output, and we can find nearly 50 examples of that, I don't find the assertion that he wrote around 500 stories to be unbelievable. Certainly, if you have some source that gives a different number, we can phrase the statement differently. --Rtrace (talk) 14:03, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

83 of those stories would have been one a month Doc Turner stories as back ups in the Spider Pulps, issue 7 to issue 89. (84.236.152.71 (talk) 22:19, 10 March 2015 (UTC))

John Betancourt wrote the forward for the Arthur Leo Zagat SF Megapack (Amazon ebook). He gives the figure of about 500 short stories and says he tracked down Zagat's elderly daughter last year (2013) and purchased the rights to as many of them as he could. (84.236.152.71 (talk) 22:28, 10 March 2015 (UTC))

Age

Doc Turner in the stories gives the impression of being very old, maybe early eighties as he dodders around with rheumy eyes and such, but issue 9 gives his age as more than sixty years, so 20 years younger. Zagat aged 38 seemed to think early 60's as very old so may have had health problems leading to him dying aged just 53?(84.236.152.71 (talk) 22:19, 10 March 2015 (UTC))