What is the Internet's Top 100 Science Fiction List?
The Internet's Top 100 Science Fiction List is a weekly chart for Science Fiction books. The list is compiled from a series of votes that are sent by e-mail and each entry in the chart is ranked according to its adjusted or diffused average (this is explained later). Anyone is eligible to vote.
Why the Top 100 Science Fiction List?
From reading the news groups, there seems to be a lot of interest in `classic' science fiction books, and there are a lot of posts asking for recommended reading. This top 100 list is an attempt to produce a list of the "best" science fiction books, so that the list can be used as an easily accessible source of recommended reading material.
When is the Top 100 Science Fiction List published?
The list is a weekly list, and will be published every Monday. Each Monday publication will be based on all votes received up until the previous Friday. My mirrored copy will be updated shortly thereafter.
Where can I get the Top 100 Science Fiction List?
You can view my copy of the list at:
http://www.gurge.com/amd/top100/index.html
The master copy is available on Tristrom's page, and I believe he maintains a mailing list as well.
Is there an extended version of the top 100 list, with even more books?
Yes. Tristrom publishes a much longer version of the list on his page.
Do you have a list for short stories as well ?
Yes. Tristrom publishes a ranked list of short stories on his page.
What books/short stories should I vote for ?
You can vote for any science fiction (includes fantasy) books, or short stories that you have read at any time (not necessarily recently). Although this is a list of the "best" science fiction works, you are encouraged to vote for works that you don't like as well as those that you do. After all, every opinion counts.
How do I vote?
Send an e-mail message to tcooke@maths.adelaide.edu.au
with an appropriate subject header (please send short story votes in a
separate message from novel votes). The message containing the votes
should have a vote for one book/story per line.
The first part of the line should be the number of points that
you assign to the book/story. This should be an integer from 1
to 10 with 10 implying a perfect score and 1 implying that you
thought it was extremely bad. The second part of the vote
should be the title of the book, and the third part should be
the author of the book.
Here is an example of a typical vote:
What do I do if I want to vote for a book that is part of a
series or is a short story collection?
There are two ways of voting for books in a series. You can
assign one vote for a series, in which case every book in the
series is given the same vote, OR you can vote for each book in
the series separately.
Because the quality of books within a series may greatly vary,
I think it is best to vote for each individual book in the
series separately but the choice is up to you.
If you decide to vote for each book individually, you should
include some extra information to tell us this. This example
shows some votes for books from Piers Anthony's Incarnations
of Immortality:
Similarly, if the book is part of a short story collection, or
anthology, just include either a {C} or {A} at the end
of the title (a short story collection has all works by one author
whereas an anthology contains works by various authors). For
instance:
How are the books ranked?
The books are ranked according to their diffused averages. After the
books have been on the chart for a while, the diffused averages will
be very close to the actual average, but the diffused average really
only has a great effect on a book that is new to the chart.
The diffused average acts to slow down the rise and falls in the
averages of the books. If there are a large number of voters for a
particular book, then the average is likely to be fairly accurate, and
so the diffused average converges to the actual average fairly
quickly. If there are a small number of voters however, the diffused
average converges to the actual average rather slowly.
Suppose that Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams is given a score
of 10 by its two voters. Then although its average is very high, the
score is not likely to accurately show the quality of the book due to
the small number of voters. Instead of Mostly Harmless going
straight to the top of the list, the diffused average greatly slows
down the rise of the book and so it may not even make it onto the list
for a couple of weeks.
What formula do you use to calculate the diffused average?
All new books start off with a diffused average of zero. The
diffused average for the next week is calculated by the
formula:
Can I use the top 100 list in my own publication/WWW site ?
Please see Tristrom's policy, at the bottom of the master
FAQ.
10 Dune F.Herbert
1 Lies Inc. Philip K. Dick
9 Galactic Patrol E.E. Doc Smith
10 Something Wicked This Way Comes R. Bradbury
7 War of the Worlds H.G.Wells
You can only vote for a book once (if you accidentally vote
for more than one, your second vote is ignored), and your vote
will be kept and used for all subsequent charts (it's not
necessary to send me the same list each week).
9 On a Pale Horse {S1} Piers Anthony
6 With a Tangled Skein {S3} Piers Anthony
6 Bearing an Hour Glass {S2} P.Anthony
6 Wielding a Red Sword {S4} P. Anthony
The {S3} indicates that the book is the third book in the
series. If you can't remember what order the series goes in, just
include as much information as you can.
9 The Bicentennial Man {C} I.Asimov
4 The Best Short Stories of J.G.Ballard {C} J.G.Ballard
7 A Science Fiction Showcase {A} C.M.Kornbluth
NDA = Average - (Average - Old Diffused Average)*(C^NV)
where:
The value for C has been fixed at 0.99875 (This may be changed
later).