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Martin,
What you seem to be doing is using a Publication Date as an Original Release Date.
Unfortunately the Publication Date is not a reliable indicator of the proper reading order for fiction. Authors back-fill events within their historical timeline on a regular basis. Also, especially recently, there has been a move to posthumously expand popular series - frequently using a time differential to minimize differences in the various author's writing styles / tones. Note that a Pubdate is tied to the release of a specific printing of a book. By itself it does not take into account: language, updates/revisions, altered content (story re-write), altered title (renamed), timeline forking, perspective forking, etc.
To continue with the idea of an Original Release Date, you would have to establish a custom column and find a reliable source for this information. If you get lucky you might be able to leach it from another online source - assuming you're capable of doing the necessary programming. If not you're looking at per book searching and data entry.
Since this is a very specific task with questionable usage, I cannot foresee any of the calibre or plugin programmers being willing to invest the time to handle something like this. You still might want to inquire with the Extract ISBN plugin creator, but I'm doubtful, despite the underlying similarity between his efforts and your desire. If the source code is available, you might be able to modify that code to fit your needs.
Gridlewak,
Normally, the primary metadata for any publication is not something I recommend altering, but in this instance, I think it might be the best way to handle things. Change the title of the book to include some differentiating term would be best. Changing "Vacuum Tube Review" into "Vacuum Tube Review, Spring 1967", or something similar.
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