Talk:Timothy Zahn

The firebird
Hotlinks to Stravinsky... I doubt that was intended. --K D Faber

I'm removing "The Firebird(1979)" from the list of Zahn's novels as I am certain it must be a mistake. It only comes up in search results that look like bibliographies all erroneously copied from the same source.

I think that the mistake was made because the alphabetically close "George Zebrowski" actually published a book called "The Firebird" in 1979.

This page http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/bibliography/fsfstorieswhoz01.htm references Zebrowski's "The Firebird", referring to it as a young adult novel.

These other bibliography sites are not to be trusted. This one http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?181740 claims that Zahn published something called "Perfect Joy of St. Francis" in 1974, a year before he actually launched his writing career.

This whole thing is both hilarious and a bit unsettling.

--

I get a title record error on that isfbd link, now, too bad, it sounded interesting.Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (talk) 03:25, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Autistic
If most of His characters are in that one form of slowly building information... that sounds vaguely autistic... --Anon.

Writing Style
Everything in the writing style segment of the entry is centered in his Star Wars books. As good as those books are, they only form a small part of his writings. Is there anyone who has read his other books or can take other views and bind them into a cohisive entry? TychoZzyx

I've read the Thrawn Trilogy, I've also read the Cascade Point collection, Spinnaret, A Coming of Age, The Icarus Hunt, Angelmass, Manta's Gift, and The Green and the Gray. But anything I'd be putting in the entry would be original research. The Literate Engineer 02:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Why bothering to post that? Really, I don't see how your descriptions of Zahn's writings would be OR if they are neutral and unbiased. -Fnlayson 04:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * To make the point that without reliable third-party sources, we can't put together any cohesive entry, no matter how much of an expert any of us may think we are on the matter. My description would be just that: my descriptions.  That absolutely would be original research.  The Literate Engineer 17:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The whole style of that section screams of OR, which is why I have added the OR tag. StephenBuxton 11:27, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The entire section should be removed. How is any of that original research encyclopedic? --mc machete 00:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

For several years I read everything that Zahn brought out. Since he won a Hugo for Cascade Point, and he'd written eight novels by the Thrawn trilogy, it would seem fair to say he was fairly "well known" before then. It seems peculiar to say in the intro paragraph that he is "best known" for a period in his writing career, which, to put it delicately, might be considered for a lesser writer a period of diminished energy and creativity...doing serial books for a major corporation. So not only does the Writing Style section seem original research, it may be research on his less distinctive works. They certainly didn't win a Hugo. Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (talk) 03:22, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Star Wars Insider
Didn't Zahn write a brief serialized story in the Star Wars Insider fan club magazine? I seem to remember it was a Clone Wars era story, but I don't see it listed under "Star Wars Works". Twineball 00:37, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Not likely anything from Clone war era written in the 1990s. See Timothy Zahn page for more Star Wars details. -Fnlayson 00:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Who said anything about the 90s? I'm talking 2003-ish. Twineball 20:25, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I found it anyway. I was thinking about "Changing Seasons" in Insider 76 and 77 in 2004. Twineball 20:28, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Two subsections
Why are there two subsections labelled "Other Novels"? Should these be melded together? --chiefhoser 20:18, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No. The first one is under the Star Wars group, meaning other Star Wars novels. I'll try to clarify that. -Fnlayson 20:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Missing Article?
I didn't really know where else to ask this, but does anyone know for certain that there have been no articles written about the Dragonback series? I have been searching, but so far, nothing has come up. If it is true that there is no article already created, I was thinking about working on one. I just wanted the thoughts of the people who have worked on the Zhan article, because if I do eventually write the Dragonback article, there should be a link between there and here. (Silverbow5 (talk) 00:58, 31 July 2008 (UTC))

Shorter Works wikilinks
I've removed some of the wikilinks in the Shorter Works section. The one for Teamwork led to an article about the concept of teamwork, not the short story. The ones for Spinneret led to an article for the anatomical structure. There is an existing article for the novel Spinneret, but there doesn't appear to be one for the short story.

Also, why are there entries for Spinneret (part 1 of 4), (part 2 of 4), and (part 3 of 4)? Were there actually three parts, or was there a fourth one which was never published? Nick Number (talk) 15:25, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Just tried to correct the name of the collection "Distant Friends and Others" which is incorrectly called "...and Other Stories" on the page. Got my change immediately reverted for "unexplained removal of content." I suppose that in principle, the string " Storie" is content, but my comment on the change was fairly descriptive. Anyway, I've now burned like 10 minutes on this, which is past my threshold of caring about my contribution.

If anyone wants to correct an inaccuracy in the page, here's a reference link to document it: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?195689 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.202.140 (talk) 08:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

'Shorter works' content confusion
The 'Shorter Works' subsection is under the 'Star Wars' section, but it seems to have accumulated a lot of non-Star Wars works in it. Should these other works be split off into a new main section? It certainly seems like there's enough of them. 141.211.198.115 (talk) 17:26, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Career
This sentence in the [| career section] (pasted below) is unclear and needs editing:

"Lucasfilm at times referred to some of the more detailed Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game supplements from West End Games, and when Zahn started work on a new trilogy of Star Wars books, boxes of West End sourcebooks were delivered to him."

I'd edit it myself, but I'm not even sure what it's trying to say. 73.133.206.210 (talk) 14:48, 16 January 2022 (UTC)DJL 1-16-2021