On 1 Jun 2004, at 4:12 am, David Hobby wrote:
William T Goodall wrote:
Hyperion, Dan Simmons 1...
I never read this one, so I resisted the temptation to rate it "useless".
It is the highest rated sf book among brin-lers who have voted.
I did rate the C.S. Lewis books, _Perlandra_ etc, as "useless". Mentioning other planets does not make an allegory into science fiction. (Similarly for _Animal Farm_.)
C S Lewis' Cosmic Trilogy is sf according to the the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. The first two parts are 'planetary romances'. Obviously classification can be difficult in some cases, so using an authoritative source seems the best way to go.
It's a good site,
Thanks!
but I do have some criticisms that I can't seem to repress. The voting process is not at all intuitive, where one has to select the votes to change (from "none"), go to another screen, enter the numbers with drop-down menues, and then confirm the votes. Why not just have a drop-down menu for each book, with an additional option "not voted on" preselected?
I'm sure there was a reason for that design, but I can't remember what it was :) It was my first DAMP* system so there was a learning curve...
The selection of books seems to be very haphazard.
The idea was to be a listing of books recommended and rated by brin-l list members, since we may have more in common than a random bunch of people. So apart from a core of likely candidates to get the ball rolling (in the sf section that would be Hugo and Nebula winners) books are added by being nominated by list members. I also add books mentioned in postings.
I sort of admired the humor in Harry Harrison's _Stainless Steel Rat_ series. But I couldn't remember which ones I had read, and so just voted for the first one as a proxy for the series. And in a similar vein, why was Keith Laumer's _Retief_ series omitted?
The first in Baen's reissue of the series, _Retief!_ is now added. If you like Retief, what do you think of Poul Anderson's _Flandry_ series?
These two could be partially remedied by giving most authors an "other books" entry. Then if I wanted to vote for Michael Swanwick's _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_, I could approximate my true feelings by voting for it as an "other book". As is, I had not read the two books of his that were listed, and simply did not vote on him at all.
_The Iron Dragon's Daughter_ is "a savage revisionist fantasy which can be understood as an expose of faerie" according to the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, and hence is listed under Fantasy rather than Science Fiction. Entering 'swanwick' in the Author's Name field and leaving category at 'All' will bring up all four Swanwick books in the database, including _The Iron Dragon's Daughter_ and _Jack Faust_.
(Not that this would have helped me vote for Jeff Noon's _Vurt_, since none of his books are listed...)
_Vurt_ is added now.
* Darwin, Apache, MySQL, PHP. -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/
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