Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fictional book

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep‎. Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 08:14, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Fictional book

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Following the recent and still ogoing Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/False document (2nd nomination) I was motivated to try to rescue that article (for result, see found manuscript, which seems to be the term used in literary studies - not sure if pseudobiblia wouldn't be more popular, however). But I also noticed we have the usual mess at fictional book. Surprisingly, I am not seeing that term used in RS in a way that meets WP:SIGCOV, although common-sense wise it would be a better place for this topic than the more esoteric terms I mentioned earlier. However, before any move, we should also discuss what to do with the mess at the nominated article: first, we have pure WP:OR intro, then de-facto list of fictional books, which has some references, not many. I couldn't find a list to support keeping this as a list (for WP:NLIST), but I expect someone might be able to dig something. The question is, should be just move the content here to a list (after presumably shortening the lead to remove OR) or just nuke it? And should fictional book be a disambig, or a redirect to the list, or to my new article, or should my new article be moved...? I'll ping editors who commented in the relevant AfD linked above: User:Blackballnz, User:TompaDompa, User:Shooterwalker, User:Pokelego999. PS. Interwiki (de/it) should probably be moved to my new article. It article lists some potentially interesting sources (but in Italian/offline...?), de is less useful, sadly. Neither is a list, they are prose (hence, a better fit to my rewrite). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:01, 13 March 2025 (UTC) PS. I did not notice yesterday, but Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional books (2nd nomination) existed - and was deleted. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:47, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Fictional elements, Literature, Popular culture, and Lists. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:01, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm ignoring the introduction; but that list seems to be classic cargo-cult encyclopaedia article writing. It's a fairly haphazard mixture of macguffins, story within a story (a.k.a. embedding or hypodiegetic narrative according to the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Narrative Theory, if anyone wants to fix the missing redirects and disambiguation entries and alternative names), discovered manuscripts, plain old just-something-fictional-like-everything-else-in-the-story items, and a couple of others. The RENT also tells us that storyworld doesn't mean what our article says, in narrative theory; and has an entry for framed narrative that uses the word "diegetic" a lot, ☺ in addition to saying that a found manuscript that the fictional author has to make public is one type of framed narrative. So this is one argument for not renaming the new, and not preserving the list. Uncle G (talk) 05:43, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- See also mise en abyme, by the way. Uncle G (talk) 14:14, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's certainly more cohesive than false document. Could it be pruned back to a literal interpretation of only fictional books found within other books? (Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin could be added). Should it be be merged with found manuscript, as they are both covering essentially the same topic? Blackballnz (talk) 06:44, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom and WP:OR. Abhishek0831996 (talk) 13:03, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Well, there is also Story in story#Nested books as a not identical but closely related subject to consider. And there is Category:Fictional books, which has enough entries to justify a list from a WP:CLN/WP:LISTPURP-NAV point of view. I am also thinking along the same lines as Blackballnz.

What really surprised me language-wise is that sources often seem to use "fictional book" in the same meaning as "book of fiction. Which makes looking for sources hard but also may indicate that the idea is relevant but this should not be the article title. Still, what looks like a very promising source is Made-up Stories: What can fictional books tell us about real ones?, but I cannot access it. What I can access is Books Within Books in Fantasy and Science Fiction: “You are the Dreamer and the Dream”, which deals with our topic and our Wikipedia article, whatever that means for usability. Additionally, the sources used for that paper are likely relevant. Daranios (talk) 16:15, 13 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Story in story, which is the real home for this topic. This article veers into WP:OR when the more common term is used in the same sense as fiction book (a redirect to fiction). If there is more than one potential target, I suggest a WP:DISAMBIG, but perhaps at a less confusing title (e.g.: book within a book). Shooterwalker (talk) 02:57, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and improve through normal editing, possibly renaming. There are the above source, as well others based on the synonymous term "imaginary book", like this and The Guardian article it refers to, Imaginary Books and Phantom Libraries, Early Modern Catalogues of Imaginary Books; a Scholarly Anthology, looking at a subtopic, i.e. 16th to 18th century, this paper covering the "screen" sub-topic, “I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books”, and more. So this topic is certainly notable. If we want to make this a list, the WP:INDISCRIMINATE concerns of that deletion discussion can easily be solved by introducing a selection critereon. As usual, I'd suggest to include those notable by Wikipedia standards, i.e. useful for navigation parallel Category:Fictional books and those talked about by secondary sources, a very few of them present in the current version of this article, showing that what we have now is not a case of WP:TNT. All the related topics and potential merge destinations, Story in story, found manuscript, framed narrative seem to be sub-topics of this one, but do not cover all aspects. Notably, what I would consider among the most prominent examples, Lovecraft's Necronomicon, fits none of them, as it is not a story which appears within Lovecraft's fiction, but an item which does have a function there. This type should be covered somewhere, while the article can refer to the articles of the other subtypes. Daranios (talk) 12:09, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, now I see that Found manuscript does seem to include this type in scope, as it has the Necronomicon, even though that does not fit the article title. A problem which would not appear for Pseudobiblia or Imaginary book, I assume. @Piotrus: I assume The Tales of Beedle the Bard or the Encyclopedia Galactica, which are one step further removed from the actual world through their universe, would fit in there, too? If that's the case I personally still tend to keep this and reorient it as a list as described, but a merge to Found manuscript would fine scopewise, too. Daranios (talk) 13:52, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Daranios I am afraid it may be few days before I can research this more. I am all for rescuing this, but I could not find good sources. I'll review the ones you found when time permits (a cursory glance suggests they look promising). I'll note that common sense wise, found manuscript should be a subtopic of this, but the term is sometimes used to refer to fictional books too, which add a layer of confusion (see sources cited). Pseudobiblia seems to be a rare synonym, not often used in English. Sources may exist in other languages (ex. the Italian term seems reasonably popular and it wiki article cites some sources that may be worth pursuing). And yes, there are obviously notable fictional books (and found manuscripts), although the usual issue of "NOTLAUNDRYLIST" (WP:NOTTVTROPES) is an issue. If someone finds time to use the sources we have to write something and WP:HEY this, it would be great. Preferably not with a merge to found manuscript, as I think that is a separate topic (but again, sometimes this term is used in a confusing synonymous way...). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:22, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another source reference which sounds very promising but which I personally could not get access to would be: de Camp, Lyon S. 1947. March 29. ‘The Unwritten Classics’ in The Saturday Review of Literature. Vol.30, No.13, pp.7–8. Daranios (talk) 11:11, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The more one looks, the more is there. The article actually already links to Made-up stories - What can fictional books tell us about real ones?. And Jackcauffle at the talk page has already pointed out that "fictitious book" might be a better term (in addition to "imaginary book"), and indeed that gives us quite a few more secondary sources in e.g. a Google Scholar search. So I've no doubt any more that this is a notable topic. Daranios (talk) 16:11, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Daranios I would agree the topic is rescuable, but what we have in here is WP:TNTable for current scope. However, moving this to the List of fictional books might be fine - but do we have sources to show such a list would pass WP:NLIST? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:25, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am generally opposed to creating lists for these kinds of topics. There's a reason that we don't have any high-quality list articles but several high-quality prose articles on these topics. TompaDompa (talk) 06:35, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am for rearranging the scope to be a List of fictional books based on all my previous arguments and WP:LISTPURP-NAV, WP:CLN, WP:ATD-M, and including an introduction which covers the difference in scope between this and Story in story, found manuscript, framed narrative. What do we have with regard to WP:LISTN? What about all sources listed at Fictional book#Further reading and all listed above, which discuss fictitious books as a group to various degrees? Daranios (talk) 10:48, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I've now updated the article to contain only information and examples which are either referenced to secondary sources or refer to existing Wikipedia articles. While this is not a great-looking article yet, in my view it shows that a List of fictional books is very well possible through normal editing, taking care of the WP:OR and WP:INDISCRIMINATE objections raised in that deletion discussion, while the listing of sources above and in the article take care of the WP:LISTN concerns. Daranios (talk) 11:07, 19 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm hesitant here. The general concept of written works that exist solely within works of fiction does seem to be notable; see these sources, for instance [1], [2], [3]. The source material that I have seen is diffuse, however, dancing over many related concepts in typically dense literary-academic vein. Someone could conceivably write an article here, but it would be a difficult undertaking. A List of imaginary books is on the face of it more promising, but my impression so far is that genuinely notable examples are rare: usually, we would consider the frame story notable, not the imaginary book within it; and in a handful of cases (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Tales of Beedle the Bard) the two have the same name, blurring the lines further around the notability of the fictional work. At a first pass I'm only seeing three genuinely notable examples of imaginary books: Necronomicon, Encyclopedia Galactica, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (fictional). I don't know that that's enough by itself. Ultimately I come down as a keep; the concept is just distinct enough from metafiction, story within a story, found manuscript, and other related ideas, there's not enough examples to make this a list of notable items, and it does have notability. I would perhaps suggest a rename to imaginary book: I have not done an exhaustive analysis of which term is more common, but both that and fictional book are used, and I believe "imaginary book" conveys the distinction from "work of fiction" more clearly. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:57, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Vanamonde93: There should be some more notable examples in Category:Fictional books, like the Book of Thoth, De Vermis Mysteriis and Unaussprechliche Kulte. Daranios (talk) 07:23, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that "fictional/imaginary/fictitious book" is notable, and lots of good sourcing has been found here. It's definitely distinct from found manuscript and other related concepts, and could be a standalone article. Of the terminology options, I prefer "imaginary book", followed by "fictitious book" (but an AfD doesn't have to sort that part out, a regular move discussion can handle it). I am ambivalent about whether WP:TNT (mentioned above) would help someone write the useful version of the article, or if it better to keep the current material; it doesn't seem so bad to me, so I lean keep. If there is a desire for TNT, I would prefer calling this "List of imaginary(/fictitious/fictional) books" to 'clear space' for a proper "imaginary book" article to be written. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 02:31, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.