Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

Ok, ladies and gentlemen, ROUND 1 is officially underway. I have the match-ups in a SurveyMonkey survey, for this round there are 4 separate surveys. I have posted the links a couple of posts below this one.

The actual bracket can be found here http://challonge.com/Sci_Fi_Fantasy_M... for your reference.

Round 1 ends at Midnight CST on Thursday March 14.

Let the fun begin!!

Stefan, why not just put the links here? Am I missing something?

To re-cap the "rules":

Stefan wrote: "Hey there, fellow Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy peeps! I thought that it might be fun to run our own NCAA Tournament-style game matching up Sci-fi/Fantasy novels (or series) head-to-head in order to crown our own Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy Champion!

"For those who may be unfamiliar with the NCAA Basketball Tournament, how it would work is that I would set up brackets with 64 Sci-fi/Fantasy books or series, each one matched up head-to-head with another book or series. Each week, the group would vote for one or the other in each match-up and the field would be divided in half each week until only 1 was left standing.

"I have found several Top Sci-fi/Fantasy lists that I am combining together into 1 master list with which to select my 64. I'm not sure if this is the best method to use, but it's what I came up with at this point in time anyway."

For our non-US members: This elimination tourney is modeled on the American college basketball tournament held this time of year, traditionally called "March Madness". In the US this time of year, "filling out your bracket" (guessing who will win each round) is a popular form of sports betting, both legal, illegal, and in informal pools in offices and campuses. (Except here, instead of a bunch of tall guys trying to stuff a ball through a hoop, these titles will be competing to be your favorites.)

Round 1 — 64 "seeded" titles in 32 one-on-one matches.
Round 2 — 32 winning titles from round 1, in 16 matches.
Round 3 (Sweet 16) — The 16 winning titles from round 2 in 8 matches.
Round 4 (Elite 8) — The 8 winning titles from round 3 in 4 matches.
Round 5 (Final 4) — The 4 winners from round 4 in 2 semi-final matches.
Round 6 (Championship) - The 2 victors from round 5 in the championship match.

Be sure to vote in all 4 polls (SurveyMonkey has a limit of 10 questions per poll, so you need to visit all 4 surveys to cover the whole bracket)

Check back in this folder weekly to vote in the next round!

Because I'm slow and didn't realize that clicking SEND Survey would give me a link.

Match-ups 1-10

Match-ups 11-20

Match-ups 21-30

Match-ups 31-32

Excellent idea! Some tough choices.
Thanks for that

Suvudu.com does a similar thing each year, but with characters.

This looks cool! One question, if you don't know either of the books in a match-up, should you just vote randomly? It won't let me skip questions.

I would go with the random vote on those. Gives a little nod to chance in the competition.

Done!! There're some really tough choices to be made... ;-)

Some good choices, it's given me some ideas on what to read next too! It'll be interesting to see what comes out on top.

When I was compiling the list, I kept adding things to me "To Read" list. There are a lot of books there that I either hadn't heard of or the list reminded me that I hadn't read but needed to.

Also, less than 48 hours to get your votes in!!

Stefan wrote: "When I was compiling the list, I kept adding things to me "To Read" list. There are a lot of books there that I either hadn't heard of..."

The list you compiled has some excellent entries, but it also seems to have some oddballs few scifi fans would readily embrace (a strong literati influence from somewhere.).

(There is a cartoon in this month's The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction showing a publisher passed out on the floor while a flying saucer hovers outside the window with an alien asking "do you publish science fiction?" It made me think of your list of 64, full of titles whose publishers would faint dead away if confronted by a UFO.)

Some omissions (in my opinion):

· Jules Verne. The token old French author is William Beckford, whose actually a Brit writing in French and whose lone fantasy book has more in common with the Marquis de Sade? (Usually I pull out Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam when I want to name an obscure old French sci-fi author; his Tomorrow's Eve at least has the historical noteriety of being the first use of the term "android", decades before R.U.R.. Not that I'd be likely to vote for either over Journey to the Center of the Earth.)

· Arthur C. Clarke. One of the "big three". Of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood's End, Rendezvous With Rama, and many others, none made the cut? Head explodes.

· Stanislaw Lem. (Whereas the token Russian is Mikhail Bulgakov)

· Larry Niven. Ringworld is a classic of hard science fiction by the dominant SF author of the 1970's.

· Roger Zelazny. One of the most prolific of the New Wave authors. Amber, Lord of Light, nothing?

· John Scalzi's Old Man's War has topped locus magazine's "best science fiction novel of the 21st century" three years in a row (since it was published, really.)

Oh well, I guess you can't please everyone.

Most of what you mentioned fell just off of the top 64 when everything was averaged together and some were ranked much higher on a list only to be lower in the top 100 or totally excluded from other lists.