Dragaera

THE INTERNET TOP 100 SF/FANTASY LIST

Mon Sep 16 08:39:53 PDT 2002

David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
> Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
>
> > > http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/6113/t100249.txt
> >
> > God Stalk is 57!  Woo!
> >
> > Except then I look at the top, and see _Armor_ at 14, and I
> > remind myself Internet votes mean squat.

This list had a much higher correlation to my own rankings several years
ago.  A lot of stuff I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole has drifted up
into the ranks of classics.  I'd like to devise my own ranking system that
took into account the voter's reliability*.  See the following link, and
skip down to the question 'Q: How are the books ranked?' for a description
of how the tIT100SF/F List is generated.

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/6113/top100doc.txt

> Anybody ever heard of _Krew Elfow_ by A. Sapkowski?  (#5)

No, but that doesn't surprise me since it is not available in English.  The
people who've voted on it sure liked it.  About half the votes for it so far
have been 10s.  (Note the {F} in the ranking, and see the following link for
a somewhat outdated extended listing that includes vote distribution
information)

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/6113/extend13.txt

At this point roughly a quarter of the top 100 are books I've read and would
recommend.  About ten percent are books I've read and wouldn't recommend.
About a third are books that are by authors that have been recommended to
me, but for one reason or another I haven't gotten around to reading.  The
remainder are roughly half and half between authors I avoid like the plague
and one's I've never heard of.  A few years back those portions would have
been more like 45/5/30/10/10.


*My idea of reliability would discount readers that consistently ranked a
book either a 1 or a 10.  Also, readers who vote only on a few books would
get much less weight than ones who vote on a much wider population.  I'd be
tempted to also discount contraries votes, but I think that might get risky.
Might drop some number of high and low votes.