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Ask Slashdot: How Could You Statistically Identify The Best Sci-Fi Books?

Posted by EditorDavid on from the turning-thinking-over-to-machines dept.

jimharris writes: Over at SF Signal I wrote a piece "How Well-Read Are You in Science Fiction?" There are three databases that collect lists of popular science fiction books that try to statistically identify the best books of the genre, [offering] combined list that shows which books were cited the most. They use different sets of best-of lists, but their results are often similar. The final lists are, Classics of Science Fiction, Worlds Without End Top Listed, and Premiosylista Comparativas: Comparativas: Ciencia ficcion (Spain).
Interestingly, each list has a different book in its #1 position (though both "Dune" and "Frankenstein" make the top four on at least two of the three lists). But is this really a good methodology for determining the classic canon? What would be the best way to statistically identify the greatest sci-fi books? (And have you read any good science fiction novels lately?)

5 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. define your terms first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You need to define best, greatest, and classic before you can go further in your quest.

    1. Re:define your terms first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And not in the least decide what the definition of the term science fiction is (it's not as easy as it sounds).

  2. You can't by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Art/literature/music is subjective. You can't rank them, except personally. Next question.

  3. Re:Why Limit This Contrived Gimmick to Just SF? by mwvdlee · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem is that you can't really state your preference.
    If they offered a choice to say "thanks for the recommendation, but I won't be buying this. Ever", the recommendations could be improved.
    On a site like Goodreads, you can state which books you like, and it uses that information to recommend others; worked quite well for me in the past.

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  4. Re:Looking backwards, not forward... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, the best you can do is just judge people by their individual merits instead of worrying about group X or Y.

    Unfortunately, people will look at a book and decide not to read it because a women wrote it. As several commentators on Slashdot has already mentioned: "the best science fiction is written by men." In fact, some women writers wrote under a pen name because of this obvious bias.

    http://io9.gizmodo.com/5077952/women-who-pretended-to-be-men-to-publish-scifi-books