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Worlds Without End Blog

SF v. Fantasy (1999 v. 2016) Posted at 8:00 AM by James Wallace Harris

jwharris28

list_ClassicsOfSFI’m researching fan polls for favorite science fiction books for v. 4 of the Classics of Science Fiction list, and I came across something curious. In the “THE INTERNET TOP 100 SF/FANTASY LIST” there seems to be greater love for fantasy in 1999 than in the 2016 Goodreads poll “Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books.” Both polls involved thousands of voters, which is a good sample. Now I’m just looking at the top 100 books, so many of the popular fantasy titles from the Internet 100 list might show up further down on the Goodreads list. If you look at the second and third hundred books on Goodreads, fantasy starts appearing with greater frequency.

However, comparing just the most popular 100 books suggests that fantasy is less popular in 2016 than in 1999. Do you think that’s true? Both lists where voted on by people who like to use the internet. My hunch would be more males voted in 1999. Both systems allow for multiple ranked entries with the Internet 100 using 1-10 and Goodreads using 1-5. There’s no telling what the voter demographics are like for each. My guess is younger readers voted in the Internet 100, and Goodreads appeals to all ages. If that’s true, does that mean science fiction sticks with people as they get older?

Any other ideas?

7 Comments

Stephen   |   07 Sep 2016 @ 23:28

My guess is the Goodreads list is skewed towards SF, because it started out as a Best SF list, but they kept getting fantasy books, so eventually gave up trying to weed them out and broadened what they accepted, but without starting from scratch. See the comments at the top of the list.

Speculations Afoot   |   08 Sep 2016 @ 08:12

What does it mean on goodreads when it states 400,000 something ratings for a title, but also says only 8 people voted?

Jim Harris   |   08 Sep 2016 @ 08:51

Speculations Afoot. Ratings come from people adding books to their database of books in Goodreads and giving it a star rating. They didn’t participate in the poll, but it indicates how many people own that book. Voting is from people participating in the poll. The number of reviews, is also unrelated to the poll. It’s the number of people who took the time to write a review.

Stephen, there is a Goodreads list just for Science Fiction. I was trying to compare apples to apples by using two lists that allowed people to vote for SF & F.

Here’s their Best Science Fiction list:

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/19341.Best_Science_Fiction

Notice how many of the most popular books show up in both lists, and with nearly the same rankings. Over time the most popular SF books change. A few are constants, like Dune and The Left Hand of Darkness, but others go up in the polls, and then down.

My efforts to maintain the Classics of Science Fiction list is to spot the enduring books, and hopefully predict what people 100 years from now will think of as the classics of science fiction.

Speculations Afoot   |   08 Sep 2016 @ 11:30

“The number of reviews, is also unrelated to the poll. It’s the number of people who took the time to write a review.”

So, the act of writing a review “is” the vote? And the number of people that did that is the number of people that voted? Although correlated, technically the sheer number of reviews isn’t the point? How would it be otherwise though, unless one person were able to write more than one review or some of the database/raters were allowed to also write reviews unrelated to polling. Thanks, and forgive me if I’m confused.

Jim Harris   |   08 Sep 2016 @ 11:43

Goodreads allows for two things primarily. One is to catalog the books you own. The second is to write reviews of what you’ve read. When you catalog a book, you can rate it 1-5 stars. You don’t have to write a review. The activity of cataloging and reviewing books is entirely separate from the poll of favorite books.

There is a third function for Goodreads users (and there are many extra features) which allows them to participate in polls. There they can vote for books in a poll. The votes count for how the books are ranked in the poll. But when the ranked books are displayed, Goodreads also shows the total times the book has been ranked by people cataloging their books, and the total times the book has been reviewed by people reviewing books.

It would be interesting to see if there is any mathematical correlation between votes a book gets in a poll, how often a book is marked owned, and the times a book is reviewed.

Most people use Goodreads to catalog their book collection, and don’t do book reviews or book polls. That’s why those rating numbers are so high. Most people do rate the book they add to their library, so they can remember the books they personally like. Few people vote in polls or write reviews.

Like the book you mentioned. It’s owned by 400,000 people, but only 8 of those people actually voted for it in a poll.

Speculations Afoot   |   08 Sep 2016 @ 14:59

Thanks Jim, that was helpful! Keep up the good work on the list. I love the meta-analysis approach. It’s tough to predict the lasting power/classic status of the most recent works. Also, as I’m sure you know, some books can last a long time and even have classic status, yet not necessarily be considered a ‘true” classic by many. Such is the case with Clifton’s “The Forever Machine”. Many consider it to be the worst of the Hugo winners, but because it is an important part of Hugo history it’s likely to persist, to varying degrees, with the label of “classic”.

Stephen   |   08 Sep 2016 @ 20:44

Jim,

That’s right, there is a SF only list. But the Goodreads list that is now the SF and Fantasy list started out as a SF only list, and later changed to both. At the top of the list it says “This list used to be for science fiction, but got out of control”.

Which means that a lot (not all) of the first people who voted on it put SF only (I know I did), which means don’t be surprised when it has a higher percentage of SF than you’d expect from other SF & Fantasy lists. I think it’s an artifact of the way the list has developed, not necessarily a sign of a trend in people’s tastes.

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