Talk:The Book of the Enemy (anthology)

Linking material
The Book of the Enemy is full of material besides the short stories currently mentioned on this page, and I've been thinking for a bit about the best way to cover it. I think I've come up with a plan, and I was just going to move forward with it, but I decided to post it here in case anyone wants the chance to air an objection before I make the decisions.


 * The four "Subjective Interlocks" (numbered Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Omega) are the closest thing BotE has to "linking material", so, like what we did with Playing for Time in Liberating Earth, I plan to create the page Subjective Interlock to cover those four bits. This should be fairly uncontroversial.


 * The 19 "Pre-narrative Briefings", labelled A-S, are much trickier to deal with. But note that each one is designed as a prequel or introduction to the story that follows. (There are only 17 stories, but briefings D&E and N&O are grouped together, so the math works out.) I'd be inclined to give them their own pages, but they're in no way "stories": they're just quotes, closest to the excerpts at the start of each chapter in Weapons Grade Snake Oil. Similarly, combining them onto one page wouldn't do justice to how they act as prequels to the anthology's short stories. So I've decided to try to incorporate them into the pages of the short stories they accompany. I initially rejected this idea as too difficult to implement, but I think it's really the best solution, and when I tried it out on The Short Briefing Sergeant's Tale it seemed to work quite well. The information from the short biographies accompanying each briefing will also be incorporated onto the pages of the accompanying short story.

If no one has any disagreements, I'll move ahead with this change. – N8 ☎ 16:13, March 15, 2018 (UTC)


 * Ok, first of all, a disclaimer: I know nothing of the stories you've mentioned aside from what you've posted. But I do have a suggestion, which you are free to ignore if it doesn't seem to fit.


 * When I was doing the stories for Life During Wartime, I came across the four Lockdown Conversations. These are four stories that have their own titles and are only a page or two long. Instead of making them linking material, I gave them individual pages. I think if your Subjective Interlock stories have individual titles (the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Omega?), you could make individual pages for each one. Especially if they feature different characters, as the Lockdown Conversations do. Like I said, it's just a suggestion, and you may not feel like they are separate enough for their own pages.


 * Your last suggestion for the Pre-narrative Briefings is probably the best - include each one at the beginning of the story it accompanies. It really doesn't sound like we should have 19 individual pages for these, and if you feel it would be too hard to combine them, then that wouldn't be the way to go either.


 * Hope this helps, Shambala108 ☎  00:40, March 16, 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm actually super glad to have your input, since I really admire all the work you did handling linking material for earlier anthologies. Happy to have your support for the approach on the pre-narrative briefings.


 * The Subjective Interlock bits are all told from the first-person perspective of a single anonymous character, and they tell a pretty unified story, so I'm still inclined to group them together ... but I just noticed that the last one is actually titled Subjective Injection Omega. Bugger.


 * Thanks again for your thoughts! – N8 ☎ 04:51, March 16, 2018 (UTC)

I'm going ahead and implementing this suggestion. – N8 ☎ 13:20, March 27, 2018 (UTC)


 * PS: I'm going to cite the fictional Author's Biographies as part of Subjective Interlock. – N8 ☎ 08:48, May 6, 2018 (UTC)

Author Biographies
So I recognize that currently biographies of authors are being cited as part of the Pre Narrative Briefings, but I'm not certain this is appropriate. The briefings as a whole have a goal in the narrative, which the biographies aren't a part of (enemy identification), which you can see from Initial Briefing/The Screens. Rather, Author Biographies strikes me as a separate non-narrative prose piece, that should have its own section/entry, and be considered invalid until we re-examine the validity rules concerning non-narrative works, or another inclusion debate considers it valid. (And do I ever want it to be valid, there's some juicy stuff in here.) Najawin ☎  05:51, October 1, 2020 (UTC)
 * Er, Subjective Interlock, not Pre-Narrative. Even worse issue, that's even more narrative and doing a specific thing. Najawin ☎  05:51, October 1, 2020 (UTC)