Talk:Friday (novel)

message: Was Friday really dark skinned? One of the points of the story was that she "passed" as white, so to speak, with one of her families. This became apparent when one of her kids went on to *date* a dark-skinned fellow and she discovers the prejudice of that family.
So, I'm not so sure that Friday was dark skinned, so much as she had many genetic components from all kinds of human beings. There's even a point where she lists them and is puzzled by the human drama.
But it's been at least a decade since I read the book, so I could be mistaken.
Having read this book several times, I believe you are correct.  I could not find any mention of her actually having dark skin.  There is mention of her various genetic backgrounds, including Native American, but there is nothing to suggest that she has dark skin. Djgranados 01:10, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, in one of the scenes in the novel set in New Zealand, Friday's somewhat dark skin coloration comes up in discussion of why Anita (the head of the group) cut one of the group's daughters off from the family for wishing to marry a man from Tonga. The point was that she explained her skin coloration as due to Native American ancestry (she's actually a recombinant human with genes from about two dozen people of different races), and that in the vote to allow her into the family in New Zealand, it was a negative factor, but not a strong one (as she was also a well-paid woman with Native American ancestry who would be buying into the family with large monthly cash payments). loupgarous (talk) 18:10, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Was Friday dark skinned

message: [This section was totally without signatures. It must have been added before they got Sinebot working. --RoyGoldsmith (talk)]
(Spolier Warning. Are these needed on the talk pages?)
I don't have the book to hand, but I am fairly certain Friday is not pure white. I think she is described as having a natural tan. I belive the S-Family she "passed off" as white in considered her as native american, something Friday only discovers after it turns out the question of her race was discussed by her family before she was allowed into the family. Will try and dig out the book later to get some page refs...
Here we go
Publisher: New English Library
Pg72
... (Friday says) "So? Vickie, this built-in suntan of mine - you know where I got it?"
"Certainly, you told us. Amerindian. Uh, Cherokee, you said. Marj! Did I hurt your feelings? Oh, dear! It's not like that at all! Everybody knows that Amerindians are - Well, just like white people. Every bit as good."
Note that Vickie knows Friday as Marjorie Baldwin.
:Sorry, I think whoever wrote this is wrong. (I can't address that person properly because they didn't sign their name.)
:The full quote is (1st ed, p56-7, underline mine):
::"So? Vickie, this built-in suntan of mine - you know where I got it?"
::"Certainly, you told us. Amerindian. Uh, Cherokee, you said. Marj! Did I hurt your feelings? Oh, dear! It's not like that at all! Everybody knows that Amerindians are - Well, just like white people. Every bit as good."
::(Oh, sure, sure. And "some of my best friends are Jews." But I'm not a Cherokee, so far as I know. ...)
:More pertinent is "Boss"'s final letter to Friday (p260):
::Before your records were destroyed, I once scratched my curiosity by listing the sources that went into creating you. As near as I can recall they are:
::Finnish, Polynesian, Amerindian, Innuit, Danish, red Irish, Swazi, Korean, German, Hindu, English -- and bits and pieces from elsewhere since none of the above is pure.
:So Friday is a genetic everywoman, probably with a skin color halfway through the normal human range. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 21:12, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: For sure.  It's often been pointed out that the cover is inaccurate as regards skin color.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:12, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

text: General Motors, Ford, or Chrysler during their heyday in the late '60s- early '70s would probably have been Heinlein's inspiration, but a much better modern analogy to Shipstone and the corporate empire he founded would be Elon Musk and and the business empire he's building around Shipstone-like efficient batteries for his Tesla cars, the batteries he's making to store solar electricity in homes and his Solar City power company.  Musk's work to rationalize our energy economy comes much closer to what Heinlein has Shipstone doing in Friday than anything Microsoft did. And Musk isn't actively restraining trade (neither did Shipstone in the novel) the way Microsoft was argued to have done in the historic Federal anti-trust suit before Thomas Penfield Jackson. loupgarous (talk) 20:09, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

text: Musk' "work." Please, can we be serious? 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:956C:1C35:22BF:46F1 (talk) 08:13, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Skin-colour 

message: This is sort of interesting.  Friday's research into various cycles that led her to recommend emigrating off-planet is almost identical to the plot of The Year of the Jackpot, which was written thirty years earlier. -- Jim Douglas (talk) (contribs) 04:50, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd call it similar in theme, touching on some of the same cycles.  Probably Heinlein's idea of a bit of a joke, recycling his old material!--Wehwalt 05:08, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: agreed, although I am not sure is was meant as a joke. More generally, the power of maths is a recurrent theme. It appears he had a chip on his shoulder about it, being not as proficient as his "competent man" is supposed to be, and being rather naive about what can be done with it. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:956C:1C35:22BF:46F1 (talk) 08:24, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[The Year of the Jackpot]] 

message: The story occurs against a backdrop of general social collapse, widely thought to represent the theorized decline of Western Civilization.
:If someone can produce two references to such a supposition made by a reviewer or critic, I'll say that sentence can stay. If not, I will move it into talk in a while, or at the very least remove the qualifier "widely", as unsupported. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 05:57, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm just going to take it out.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:26, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Widely theorized; by whom? 

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thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Friday82.jpg

message: The plot summary is terribly written.  Not even sure what it means.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.102.224.166 (talk) 22:40, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Somebody really went to town on this article a few weeks ago, and I really haven't had the time to deal with it.  I'd agree, cut back the plot summary to bare essentials.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:12, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

text: I'm going to look for contemporary reviews of Friday.  I remember reading Spider Robinson's  review of the novel in the Mid-September 1982 issue of Analog but no longer own that issue.  The Speculative Fiction Database page on Friday has links to bibliographic info (but not the text of) nineteen different published reviews of Friday, each of which would be WP:RS-compliant secondary sources both for the plot summary and other areas of our article. loupgarous (talk) 20:17, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  plot summary 

message: The vast majority of this article seems to be pointless lists.  I think that these need to be trimmed right back or (preferably) removed altogether. Euchrid (talk) 14:17, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would agree, it would seem reasonable to delete the following sections completely: Solar System Locales, The Interstellar Colonies, Technology, The Shipstone Complex, Genetic technology, Religious References.  The plot summary is where more detail is needed.  Some of this could be worked into the plot summary but with much less detail, in my opinion.  --Captain-tucker (talk) 14:56, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll work on it, as I get time.  Writing a plot summary shouldn't be difficult, though the story is slightly convoluted.  And the lists are trivial and in universe.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:01, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lists 

message: From memory, Friday is dedicated to a number of prominent female science fiction writers of the day, using their first names only.  There's some controversy over what Heinlein meant by this.  I think that this deserves a mention in the article - I'd do it myself but I don't have a copy on hand, and as such can't include the full list. Euchrid (talk) 09:54, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dedication 

message: Folks,
I'm sorry to have to tell you this but I think that the bulk of the article on Friday does not meet Wikipedia standards and should be removed. The problem is that most of the article has no reliable sources. In addition, my guess is that everything from A New Future History down to Religious references is based on original research with an in-universe perspective, which is also disallowed.
These sections were originally created by two anonymous users: 118.92.189.35 on April 7, 2008, and 203.97.21.90 on October 8, 2008. Unfortunately, many of you have added content to those sections over the past year. Unless we can find sources for your efforts, I'm afraid that all of the work will have to be deleted from Wikipedia. (It will still be available through the History tab at the top of the article.)
Everything published by Wikipedia should have received significant coverage in reliable, independent sources. You, as an Wikipedia editor, should not read a novel and then write how one portion of that novel relates to another portion. This would be original research. ("Original research" is something of a misnomer; perhaps "original thought" would be better.)
*For example, you can say that "Approximately two-thirds of the book deals with Friday's employment in "the boss's" secret organization and the rest deals with her after her boss has died, including her interstellar journey." Since you're only counting pages, that would be allowed.
*But, you cannot say "The Kingdom of Mexico is now no longer a republic, possibly ruled from Spain, or by expatriate Spanish Royalty, but either possibility is conjecture." That would be original research.
Unless the meaning of that paragraph was present, in some concise form, in the novel itself OR we had at least one source confirming this.
* For example, if some Wikipedia editor did have (say) a review of the book and it said that "Within the timeline of the novel, Mexico is now a kingdom. This kingdom is possibly ruled from Spain although it is equally likely that it's ruled as a separate country, possibly by royalty from Spain, although I may be presuming too much." If we did have this source then we could cite it as a reference for that sentence in the article. (The best way is through an inline citation.) Then the judgment is by the reviewer, not you.
However, even if you had such a citation, we should probably not use it, unless there was something in real life that made the novel's description of Mexico pertinent. For example, if the government of Mexico lodged a formal complaint with the US State Department over that description, that would certainly be relevant to the article. But, of course, then we would have a citation (or many citations, like news reports and official State Department announcements) about the real-world incident.
I quote from our guidelines:
:"Articles should rely on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. This means that we only publish the opinions of reliable authors, and not the opinions of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves."
and:
:"An in-universe perspective is inaccurate and misleading, inviting unverifiable original research by relying on primary source. Most importantly, in-universe perspective defies community consensus as to what we do not want Wikipedia to be or become."
In our case, the text of the novel is our primary source. Remember that we're editors, not contributors of ideas. Our job is to summarize and paraphrase information that is already documented, not to come up with new thoughts. For an example of reliable sources and a real-world perspective, see the featured article on Heinlein's Starship Troopers.
In conclusion, let me say that I really liked the treatment of Friday, especially the questionable sections. Friday is my favorite book and I read it about once every two years. It's just that I believe that those doubtful sections do not belong in Wikipedia and I think that most experienced Wikipedians would agree with me. I wish we could find some other wiki that allows original interpretations. Then we could cut and paste our material over there.
I'm going to leave this talk section around for several days, to see what comments I attract. Sometime next week, I'll begin adding warnings to the article, like:
--RoyGoldsmith (talk) 15:04, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unreferenced Sources and possibly In-Universe Original Research 

message: Dear Mr. Goldsmith : User 118.92.189.35 is myself, apologies for writing so much without logging in - my oversight. Subsequent corrections are my own, though other users have neatened up sections (such as the list of colonised stars) for which thanks to all.
Re references - Roy, this is  Science Fiction story. I therefore submit that the only significant reference available is - the book itself. In addition - I am as an avid a reader as yourself. The sections detailed were taken as far as possible from my copy of the novel. Quotations are direct - it was not appropriate to distort the author's intent, as this article is of course a precis. I have been using the NEL Inernational Edition. I am also curious as to why you did not see fit to make corrections ? If there are inconsistencies that you felt would be best to be corrected, the Wikipedia is well designed to accommodate them. As an author I respect others opinions, and so try to build, rather than demolish. My own contributions were clearly appreciated until this point, or else they would not have been enchanced by others (see above). Other readers and contributors are invite to leave comments with regard to this. I will post a reference and ISBN number as well.
I further submit that a requirement for other sources of reference are not pertinent in this regard - as a work of fiction the story is independent, though comments above include references to real-world politics.
Within your own commentary, you have noted that other users have seen fit to leave the entry mostly unedited for over year - while legally speaking "silent assent" may not have great validity, I am personally confident that Hienlein Fans internationally are content with the content and depth of the article as written. Please put forward reasons over and above those written for your requirement for speedy deletion ! Your own opinion matters, but in the spirit of free speech please also do not presume that you are the all-powerful ogre, because that is extremely tyrannical behaviour, and Hienlien Fans in particular will take your actions very badly, I feel sure. I am taking it badly right now, and look forward to private conversation if you would so desire.
Kind regards,
Martin La Grange, Auckland, NZ.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Deepshark5 (talk • contribs) 09:37, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Response to Mr. Goldsmith 

message: Dear Martin (Deepshark5),
Thank you for your kind letter. I shall try to address your points down below. (I’m not indenting because it’s too much trouble for a multi-paragraph response. :) My reply is kind of long, I'm afraid.
First, I’m not talking about speedy deletion (or any kind of article deletion). That type of deletion would remove the entire article, even the name and all history. What I am talking about is a severe form of content deletion: the removal of 9 out of 16 sections. Even if these sections are removed, they still exist in the article's history tab and may be restored at any time, by any editor, through cut-and-paste or the Undo button. (I’m trying to avoid such an edit war; that’s why I created a talk section.) Look here for some of the restrictions on writing about fiction.
While this article is about a Science Fiction story, it is also a Wikipedia article. As such, it must meet the general consensus of all Wikipedian editors, not just science fiction fans or Heinlein fans. In other words, general consensus trumps the consensus of a particular subset. Please, please read the Five Pillars (our foremost rule), if you haven't already.
You must understand that most Wikipedians concentrate on Civil War battles or US politics or Rock Bands of the 1960’s or whatever. They regard science fiction as a somewhat illegitimate form of literature, like fairy tales or historical romances. Early on, there was a movement to eliminate all articles specifically on novels. Then someone pointed out that even an encyclopedia should have an article on, say, Les Misérables. But, if we wanted an article on Les Misérables, what about For Whom the Bell Tolls and The DaVinci Code and (more to the point) Friday? What about some unpublished novel the author posted on the web and so far has received less than a dozen hits. Where would we draw the line? What about films or plays or works of non-fiction?
The solution was to apply the Five Pillars to this problem. By consensus, the article's contents (not the existence of the article itself) had to pass Verifiability (specifically Reliable Sources) and No original research. Any published novel could be included but each significant statement in the article must be attributed (or attributable) to a reliable, secondary source, not the text of the novel itself. (“Attributable” means that you’re sure there is a secondary source somewhere, you just can’t lay your hands on it right now.) Many novels have dozens or hundreds of secondary sources; for example, see Les Misérables and/or Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. 
We can use the text of a novel inside the Plot section but, even there, the plot must follow the book’s chronology. We shouldn’t extract fragments from various places in the story and assemble them to produce a meaningful whole. That’s original interpretation. Even the plot section should act like a linchpin to the rest of the article; it shouldn’t be the be-all-and-end-all of the article itself. (These are rules adopted by the editors of Wikipedia by consensus.)
Addressing your concerns specifically, you seem to want an exception to the Reliable Sources and the Real-world Perspective guidelines for science fiction (or, possibly, for all fiction). Before we continue, please read this and this. These guidelines apply to every article in Wikipedia.
This requirement for reliable sources and real-world perspective has been gone over dozens of times in the past. The problem is: where do we stop? Do we allow someone to add a section to the Battle of Gettysburg all about a recreation (in modern times) of the Battle of Gettysburg? I understand that such recreations happen several times a year. Do we permit a separate subsection for each recreation? Told as a first-person narrative (even if disguised)?
Our solution has been that we do allow a recreation to appear in the article providing that it has appeared in reliable, secondary sources. Let’s say the Harrisburg Patriot-News sent a reporter to a specific recreation and they wrote a fairly long piece in their Sunday edition. And the NY Daily News sent a stringer who produced a two-paragraph slug on Thursday. Then that would be “encyclopedic” enough to pass the reliable sources test for inclusion in the Battle of Gettysburg (probably in a small subsection near the back). If the first author expressed their opinion or interpretation, it would be OK if we included that judgement, making sure that the article is phrased in such a way that it's obvious that the judgement is the author’s opinion, not original thought on the part of the Wikipedia’s editors.
We can't say that the nine sections under discussion are any different than that Battle of Gettysburg recreation just because they’re in an article about fiction. That's against the consensus of all Wikipedians (not just Heinlein fans) so that is what we’re supposed to do. We don't have separate, conflicting rules for separate subsets of articles. (Maybe we should but, as of right now, we don't.)
If someone else took the nine sections and paraphrased them on a blog then you could cite that blog as a reference for those sections. (If you blogged them yourself, that would be against our rule pertaining to conflicts of interest. Even if you got a friend to blog the sections for you, it would be against the spirit of conflict of interest.) 
However, even though that blog would pass the test for a secondary source, we don’t usually allow blogs as reliable sources. But I’m only asking for any sources at all. Please bear in mind that another editor, say tomorrow, might ask for reliable sources or they'd remove the offending sections.
Now you can choose a new pen name and “publish” the offending sections (properly paraphrased, we don’t want any copyright problems, do we?) on any of thousands of websites that allow anonymous user input. Because we always assume good faith, I (and most editors) will allow your inclusion in the article. (A couple of years from now, who knows?)
But then we’re really cheating the consensus system of Wikipedia itself. That consensus is built on what everyone would like our encyclopedia to be eventually (on that great day when everything is reliably cited). Not what science fiction fans (or Civil War fans or whatever stripes they’re wearing this year) want today. “Silent assent” is also not sufficient because, IMO, the article on Friday is visited by mostly science fiction fans and the content of Wikipedia is based on what everyone would want. Would you want a Wikipedia that means one thing to (say) historians and another thing to science fiction fans?
In conclusion, let me say that, in spite of everything, I approve of your intentions. There may be something in allowing an in-universe perspective, based solely on the text (which would have to be cited by edition and page number or chapter). In my opinion, these sections should be in separate, See Also sub-articles, accessed from the main article. Maybe having an article name like (say) “In-novel perspective of Friday”. If you want to start a request for comment (RfC) in favor of this on this talk page, I will support you.
If we get the In-novel-perspective idea approved by consensus then we can retrieve the nine sections from history and cut-and-paste them into a separate article. As a matter of fact, if you want to pursue this, I will leave the nine sections alone until this matter is resolved. We can use them as an example.
Finally, I don’t think I’m an ogre or a tyrant. My personal objective is to get Friday and all Heinlein novels up to featured article status (like Starship Troopers) but that shouldn't affect this decision. I wish there was some legitimate way of doing what we both want. But, for now, the guidelines are what they are and we must follow them or object in some civilized way, like your letter or RfC’s. (By the way, I’m fairly new at this. I believe that most experienced fact-checkers of Wikipedia would simply have deleted the nine sections from the article entirely, with maybe an edit summary, visible only from the history tab, like: removed 9 sects for no RS and OR.)
All of this is simply my opinion. (Obviously I can’t talk for anyone else.) But I’m fairly confident that what I’m saying meets with broad consensus and are in Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines. If you disagree, perhaps we should start a RfC on these nine sections below.
Very sincerely,
--RoyGoldsmith (talk) 19:11, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reply to Martin La Grange 

message: Dear Martin,
It has been over a week and I still haven't heard from you. Do you accept my arguments that the nine sections under discussion should be removed? I don't want to get into an edit war with you, not even reverting a single time.
In brief, my arguments are:
* This is a Wikipedia article and so must be judged by the same standards as any other article, not just science fiction fans.
* The text of any novel is regarded as a primary source about that novel and, therefore, should not be used whenever possible.
* The sections in dispute suffer from: no Reliable Sources, Original Research and a In-universe perspective.
* I offered to support you in a trial exception to the current consensus about in-universe perspectives.
In addition, I have started a venue for others to comment about this matter.
If you have any response, please add your remarks below. (Also, I will send this comment to you via email.)
Thank you. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 22:11, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subsequent developments 

message: I have just received an email from User Deepshark5; that is, the guy named Martin I've been arguing with up above. I will not delete any sections until the matter is resolved. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 10:13, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Email from Martin

message: I'm inserting a fourth warning to the nine sections under discussion like this:
--RoyGoldsmith (talk) 13:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: More developments

message: I have deleted the nine sections (from A New Future History to Religious references) from the article and moved them to User:RoyGoldsmith/Friday. These sections can also be found in the article's history tab for 20:51, 12 November 2009.
In my opinion, a small portion of the deleted material should be moved to the Plot section and/or a new section on Characters. I'm going to wait for a few weeks before I tackle this, just to make sure my deletions aren't reverted. If any of you wish to start adding real-world material yourself, I'd certainly appreciate it. RoyGoldsmith (talk) 21:09, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section Deletion 

message: The section about critical reaction to the book is one sentence long.
As I recall, when the paperback came out, its first dozen or so pages—I don't think I'm exaggerating—consisted of quotations from favorable reviews, many of which said more or less "Heinlein has returned to writing good books after his recent string of unreadable ones."  It seemed clear to me that the point was to convince people who'd given up on Heinlein that they should try again.
Am I remembering correctly?  If so, shouldn't the article say something about this?  (I am not suggesting that Wikipedia take a position on the quality of the books in question; rather that the article could reasonably note that a number of reviewers felt that way.) Briankharvey (talk) 05:38, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you find secondary sources that discuss that?--Wehwalt (talk) 10:25, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: This is the Speculative Fiction Database page on Friday.  It has links to bibliographic info (but not the text of) nineteen different published reviews of Friday, including Spider Robinson's review of it in the Mid-September 1982 issue of Analog.  Hope this helps. loupgarous (talk) 20:41, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Literary significance and reception" 

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thread_title:  External links modified