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THE INTERNET'S TOP 100 SCIENCE FICTION LIST FAQ
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Last Modified 23/3/97
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Q: What is the Internet's Top 100 Science Fiction List ?
A: 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.
Q: Why the Top 100 Science Fiction List?
A: 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.
Q: When is the Top 100 Science Fiction List published ?
A: 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.
Q: Where can I get the Top 100 Science Fiction List
A: If you are on the mailing list, then you will be automatically
sent a copy of the chart each week. If you want to receive the
new chart every week, then just send me a message (at tcooke@
maths.adelaide.edu.au) and ask to join the mailing list.
If you don't want to join the mailing list, a copy of the list
will be available on rec.arts.books, rec.arts.sf.misc, rec.
arts.sf.written and rec.arts.sf.announce.
You can also get the list via WWW at
http://www.clark.net/pub/iz/Books/Top100/top100.html
or by FTP to ftp.clark.net (the file name is top100list.txt in
the /pub/iz/Books/Top100/top100list.txt directory.
Q: Is there an extended version of the top 100 list, with even
more books?
A: The extended list is a list of all of the books voted for with
at least 2 voters. The list is updated once every 5 weeks, and
can be obtained via WWW at
http://www.clark.net/pub/iz/Books/Top100/top100.html
OR http://joule.pcl.ox.ac.uk/~kevin/books/
OR http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~npt4g/Top100/
If you don't have web access, it's also available by FTP from
joule.pcl.ox.ac.uk in the /pub/kevin/top100sf/ directory.
I do not post this file to any of the newsgroups because it is
very large.
NOTE: This list is ranked by diffused average (explained later),
so a book that is near the bottom of the list is not necessarily
bad. It is just that it has very few voters and so it takes a
long time for it to rise to its average score. In short, it is
not a good idea to use this list to decide what not to read.
Q: Do you have a list for short stories as well ?
A: Yes, but it is only avaliable on the web site. If you want to
find a particular anthology, or short story collection
containing a particular story from the list, then I suggest
you try either
http://www.cu-online.com/~avonruff/sfdbase.html OR
http://www.best.com/~contento/
(there are links to these from the main top 100 list web page).
The short story list will be updated about once a fortnight.
Q: What books/short stories should I vote for ?
A: 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.
Q: How do I vote?
A: 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:
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).
Q: What do I do if I want to vote for a book that is part of a
series or is a short story collection?
A: 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_ series.
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.
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 :
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
Q: How are the books ranked?
A: 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.
Q: What formula do you use to calculate the diffused average?
A: All new books start off with a diffused average of zero. The
diffused average for the next week is calculated by the
formula
NDA = Average - (Average - Old Diffused Average)*(C^NV)
where NDA = New Diffused Average
NV = Number of Voters for that book.
C = A diffusing constant.
The value for C has been fixed at 0.99875 (This may be changed
later).
Q: Can I use the top 100 list in my own publication/WWW site ?
A: I have absolutely no problems with anybody using the list, as
long as they use the entire list, without any modifications. If
you intend to put the list on a web site, I'd also appreciate
you to include a link to the official WWW page.