Collective Chronicles Reading Experience - Have We Read Everything?

[J-Sun]

I have not read all the Foreigner books. I stopped reading them about book 10, and there are now 21 books in the series. --- I didn't stop for any reason other than I started reading books that were much, much, cheaper.

Oh, sorry - I knew you'd read a bunch but didn't realize you'd stopped. I guess Cherryh keeps making new fans but I wonder how many old fans fall off along the way for one reason or another (such as sheer exhaustion). And I wonder who can just pick up in the middle of the Foreigner series - if you left off at #10, did anyone pick up at #11? (Not to derail the thread - just thinking out loud.)

 

[Venusian Broon]

Just a bit of fun for the lounge.



(2) I've set a slightly daft hypothesis up - that between us we've read everything - can you specifically challenge the hypothesis and think of a SFF book we haven't read, or identify an author who is under-read among the whole reading membership?

Okay, challenge accepted....

My hypothesis is that we haven't read everything. A fair chunk, but probably not that close.

I looked up the British Library, which is one of the three reference libraries that is required to store everything that is published in the UK. From a very rough search for SF, Fantasy and Horror it appears they have ~47,000 books. (If this count contains overcounting, I'm not sure - it seems that it doesn't, in that previous editions are put in the list as part of a 'related catalogue' and do not appear to be counted by the search engine, however some books do seem to appear multiple times. But only the oldest and biggest like War of the Worlds. So maybe overcounting might remove 5%???)

Now these are just SFF&H books published in the UK, so really for a world-wide market and including non-English, how many more would you add for the US market that are different and everywhere else?

Anyway, just taking that 47k at face value.

How many regulars are there here on the forum? i,e who is 'us'?

Let's say 100.

So that means we will have to have read 470 SFFH books each. And that number of books has to be books that no one else has read to fulfill your quest. That is going to be a kicker.

Now, I know for myself personally as I like Excel sheets, that I own 210 SFFH books that I've read. I've got at least a dozen+ waiting to be read and there are books that I've definitely read but I don't own. But nothing that is going to get me to 470 for SFFH alone. However, I'd guess that most of the books in my list will have been read by lots of others.

So...given that the 47,000 figure is likely to be too low as it is just for the UK, and that I think we will have generally read a lot of the same things, I'd guess that we're probably not close. 20-30% of the total being optimistic ??? There will be a lot of obscure SFFH (i.e. sh*te) that will be difficult for us to dredge up...

(Of course you could say that the 'us' is the 18,000 or so members on the Forum. And if they were all real, then we'd only need to have read 3-4 books each that no one else has read to reach the total. Still, I do think there will be a large number of novels that will still be obscure and forgotten, even with such a big sample.)

Anyway, just a thought

 

[Elckerlyc]

So, what you're saying is that we should establish:
a. the number of regular, SF and Fantasy reading, chroners currently active on this board.
b. the average number of books (a) will have read.
c. the percentage of (b) read by (a) that nobody else will have read.
so we can approximate the number of unique books read by (a).
Which, given the number of new publications each year alone, will be a negligible quantity.

(just thinking, with tongue in cheek)

 

[Venusian Broon]

So, what you're saying is that we should establish:
a. the number of regular, SF and Fantasy reading, chroners currently active on this board.
b. the average number of books (a) will have read.
c. the percentage of (b) read by (a) that nobody else will have read.
so we can approximate the number of unique books read by (a).
Which, given the number of new publications each year alone, will be a negligible quantity.

(just thinking, with tongue in cheek)

To a first approximation, why not?

However I wasn't suggesting we should go that route, just thinking about the big picture.

My guess is that if I were to put the list of SF books I've read, virtually all of them will have been read by most or fair number of everyone here. There might be a couple that are unique to me, but not many.

EDIT oh, I'm not sure about self-pubbing and what the British Library does with these. I think that if you get an ISBN for a book, the library 'officially has to get a copy'. But it might be the authors responsiblity to put it there. At least that's what I had to do with my PhD thesis which was self-published (the other two libraries in the UK are at Cambridge and Oxford store all these thesis)

 

[Hugh]

Well er, you can knock off volumes 1-24 from the list.
My father in law from my first marriage had those, he was forever pressing them on me "Here, try this one now, bloody good stuff" and then discussing plots with me the following week on our next visit.
To be fair he had some good SF books as well

Sterling work, dannymcg, sterling work!
That still leaves volumes 25 - 35 of the John Norman Gor saga that need to be ticked off the list.

 

[Extollager]

Venusian, Bick's original post suggested we see if Chrons people have read "everything" that qualifies as "major." With that limiter, we end up with an uncertain number, but far fewer than 47,000.

I myself would approve a definition of "major" that isn't the same as "classic," but does presume that for a work to be "major" it's seemly that it should have been before the world for at least, say, 10 or 15 years. This would restrain that common phenomenon whereby brand-new books are hailed as "major" or as "masterpieces" by reviewers before more than a few people have even had the chance to read the books in question.

This time limitation would have the practical value of allowing time for the "major" books to be identified as such in books about the field. Such books could be a really good resource for us as we seek to identify major works of sf. It will be found, I have no doubt, that such books proffer far fewer than 47,000 books -- even ambitious books like Peter Nicholls' Science Fiction Encyclopedia from about 40 years ago. I don't know what the best recent equivalent to Nicholls would be. Nicholls did offer some evaluation. For sheer comprehensiveness, one would be thinking of something like Tuck's old multi-volume bibliography, which no doubt caught a great many sf works that are not major, but which we might take account of if the intention here really is to consider whether we have read "everything."

 

[Parson]

You are right that "major" lies in the eyes of the beholders. Here are a couple of ideas which might shake that number down a bit from a S.F. perspective.

Measurables:
1. Major might mean that its sold at least X number of copies. (500,000?)
2. Major might mean that its had at least X number of reprints. (5?)
3. Major might mean that it has/was in print for at least X number of decades. (2?)
4. Major might mean that it's won a major award. (Hugo, Nebula, .... )

Significant but subjective qualifications
1. Major might mean that it's considered to be "must" reading in the genre. (Ender's Game, Dune .... )
2. Major might mean that it's the most widely known books of a well known author. (Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, McCaffery's Dragon's Dawn ... )
3. Major might mean that it's part of the public consciousness. (Frankenstein, 1984, ....)

If we take some combination of these as our threshold for "major" I'd bet the "active" chronners would have read them all.

 

[Extollager]

Check here, please:

A definitive (?) list of classic SF

I found this allegedly definitive list of classic SF on line here. The Classics of Science Fiction list, compiled by James Wallace Harris and Anthony Bernardo, is an attempt to create a definitive list of the best Science Fiction books. Harris and Bernardo collected 28 different recommended and...

www.sffchronicles.com

We've read all of these, surely -- right?

 

[Extollager]

And we've read all of these, right? One hundred and ten titles. Or not -- Nicola Griffiths's Ammonite? That's new to me....

Classics of Science Fiction

Classics of Science Fiction identifies the books and short stories that are most remembered based on how often they are cited by awards, best-of-lists, polls, editors, scholars and other sources of recognition.

csfquery.com

 

[Extollager]

And here is a list of stories rather than books, if we want to get into that subject.

Short Stories by Rank

[total citations] – Title link goes to more information about the story. [16] “Bloodchild” (1984) by Octavia E. Butler [14] “Day Million” (1966) by Frederik Pohl [14] …

classicsofsciencefiction.com

Here's another.

What if SFWA Revoted on the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2020?

The original volume one of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame edited by Robert Silverberg came out in 1970 — 50 years ago. It contained 26 stories that the SFWA members voted on as the best sho…

classicsofsciencefiction.com

I hope it will be felt that I'm trying to be helpful!

 

[J-Sun]

And we've read all of these, right? One hundred and ten titles. Or not -- Nicola Griffiths's Ammonite? That's new to me....

Classics of Science Fiction

Classics of Science Fiction identifies the books and short stories that are most remembered based on how often they are cited by awards, best-of-lists, polls, editors, scholars and other sources of recognition.

csfquery.com

I've read Ammonite, as well as her Slow River. (I even bought her detective novel or whatever it is - I forget the name - but never got around to that one.) If I remember right, it was Norman Spinrad giving Slow River a good review that had me check her out.

It's not a very good batting average, but I can take that list down to

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Female Man - Joanna Russ
Earth Abides - George R. Stewart
Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
Last and First Men - Olaf Stapledon
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany
Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon
The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi
Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey
Roadside Picnic - Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
China Mountain Zhang - Maureen F. McHugh
The Drowned World - J. G. Ballard
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Altered Carbon - Richard K. Morgan
Grass - Sheri S. Tepper
Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne
Out of the Silent Planet - C. S. Lewis
The Crystal World - J. G. Ballard
A Door into Ocean - Joan Slonczewski
Odd John - Olaf Stapledon
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

The bolds are in the Pile, again, I "read" but didn't finish Dhalgren, can't remember what Stapledon I've read, want to get Roadside Picnic (but what would be the point), have a different Russ, have read a couple of the Claw-whatever Wolfe books but can never remember if those are "The Book of the New Sun" or not, I've read some McCaffrey but don't remember which one any more, may have read the L'Engle when I was really, really, young, etc.I I'm sure somebody can remove all these, though, as they're pretty big deals or very popular or whatever.

 

[J-Sun]

Check here, please:

A definitive (?) list of classic SF

I found this allegedly definitive list of classic SF on line here. The Classics of Science Fiction list, compiled by James Wallace Harris and Anthony Bernardo, is an attempt to create a definitive list of the best Science Fiction books. Harris and Bernardo collected 28 different recommended and...

www.sffchronicles.com

We've read all of these, surely -- right?

That's a much better list, IMO, and - other than those few I mentioned above which are common to both lists - I've read all of those except Camp Concentration and Hothouse, and I believe someone mentioned having read Hothouse so, if we've got anyone whose done the Disch (and if they've read more than one, I guess they've "done the Disches"), that list is covered.

 

[Extollager]

Yes, I've read Camp Concentration and Hothouse too.

 

[hitmouse]

I've read Ammonite, as well as her Slow River. (I even bought her detective novel or whatever it is - I forget the name - but never got around to that one.) If I remember right, it was Norman Spinrad giving Slow River a good review that had me check her out.

It's not a very good batting average, but I can take that list down to

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Female Man - Joanna Russ
Earth Abides - George R. Stewart
Solaris - Stanislaw Lem
The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
Last and First Men - Olaf Stapledon
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
Dhalgren - Samuel R. Delany
Star Maker - Olaf Stapledon
The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi
Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey
Roadside Picnic - Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
China Mountain Zhang - Maureen F. McHugh
The Drowned World - J. G. Ballard
I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
Altered Carbon - Richard K. Morgan
Grass - Sheri S. Tepper
Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne
Out of the Silent Planet - C. S. Lewis
The Crystal World - J. G. Ballard
A Door into Ocean - Joan Slonczewski
Odd John - Olaf Stapledon
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

The bolds are in the Pile, again, I "read" but didn't finish Dhalgren, can't remember what Stapledon I've read, want to get Roadside Picnic (but what would be the point), have a different Russ, have read a couple of the Claw-whatever Wolfe books but can never remember if those are "The Book of the New Sun" or not, I've read some McCaffrey but don't remember which one any more, may have read the L'Engle when I was really, really, young, etc.I I'm sure somebody can remove all these, though, as they're pretty big deals or very popular or whatever.

Ok

This is very difficult on a phone.

Assume the bolds are unclaimed as yet. I have read:
Earth Abides
First and Last Men
Day if the Triffids
20000leagues
Drowned World
Journey to the Centre of the Earth

 

[Extollager]

I've read I Am Legend and The Road, but so have bunches of people here, I'm sure.

 

[Elckerlyc]

And I have read:

Earth Abides - George R. Stewart
The Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
The Mote in God's Eye - Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
Altered Carbon - Richard K. Morgan
Grass - Sheri S. Tepper
Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne

 

[Extollager]

Hasn’t anyone read Solaris? If really no one has, I could probably get to my copy fairly soon.

Somebody here at Chrons read We, I’m sure.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Hasn’t anyone read Solaris? If really no one has, I could probably get to my copy fairly soon.

Somebody here at Chrons read We, I’m sure.

I have read both of those.

 

[Extollager]

I have read both of those.

So are we down to just the two Stapledon books, Star Maker and Odd John, as ones that nobody here has read from the list given above--

Collective Chronicles Reading Experience - Have We Read Everything?

I have not read all the Foreigner books. I stopped reading them about book 10, and there are now 21 books in the series. --- I didn't stop for any reason other than I started reading books that were much, much, cheaper. Oh, sorry - I knew you'd read a bunch but didn't realize you'd stopped. I...

www.sffchronicles.com

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

So are we down to just the two Stapledon books, Star Maker and Odd John, as ones that nobody here has read from the list given above--

Collective Chronicles Reading Experience - Have We Read Everything?

I have not read all the Foreigner books. I stopped reading them about book 10, and there are now 21 books in the series. --- I didn't stop for any reason other than I started reading books that were much, much, cheaper. Oh, sorry - I knew you'd read a bunch but didn't realize you'd stopped. I...

www.sffchronicles.com

Actually, I have read Last and First Men and Star Maker (and Sirius and Odd John, for that matter, as well as lesser-known works such as the incomplete Four Encounters [it was supposed to be ten, but he died before finishing it] and Nebula Maker, the early version of Star Maker. )

Stapledon rules OK.