Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

Yes, the day that you all dreamed of is FINALLY here! It's time for round 1 of our Tourney!

Here's how it works:
- On each page of the survey there is a list of match-ups (Survey Monkey will only let me as 10 questions, so each match did not get it's own question.)
- Please make a choice for EACH match-up before proceeding to the next page.
- There are two separate brackets: One for Sci-Fi, one for Fantasy

Have fun!

Sci-Fi Bracket Round 1

Fantasy Bracket Round 1

I'll collect votes and move on to Round 2 on Saturday morning.

World War Z is a SIXTEEN seed???

That's the way it all worked out.

Bobby wrote: "World War Z is a SIXTEEN seed???"

Yeah, "World War Z" high on the seed list was an eyebrow-raiser for me, too. (Not that the book isn't always better than the movie. :)

My theory is that a TV show or movie, especially a big budget movie, vastly improves the rating of a book when measured as a public Internet poll. (And Stefan derives his seed list from an amalgam of on-line ratings lists.) In terms of "popularity", voting on a public poll often boils down to, "I've heard of this!" Instead of "I've read this." In politics it's called name recognition.

Of course in this group, I'm sure we would never judge a book by its movie :)

By the way, the 16 seeds are ranked 61-64, so it was at the tail end of the rankings.

Nice lists. I voted in both.

Thanks!

Thanks for the organisation Stefan!
I'm ashamed to say that in a lot of matchups I hadn't read both books, so I could not make an educated choice and voted for the one I've read if I liked it.
There were easy choices, but a few I found really hard (how am I supposed to choose between flowers for Algernn and The left hand of darkness?)

Based on the matchup of Larry Niven (Ringworld) vs. Larry Niven (The Mote in God's Eye), I confidently predict Larry Niven will make it into the round of 32 :)

But I think the marquee matchup (the one I'm going to take a sick day to stay home and watch live on TV :) is over in the Fantasy bracket: Earthsea vs. Harry Potter . It's an absolutely classic head-to-head sorcerous battle, true names vs magic wands, sparrow vs owl, the 60s vs the 00s, old vs. new, legendary doyen vs popular upstart, big-budget motion picture series vs crappy SyFy miniseries, insecure boy going off to magic school vs insecure boy going off to magic school.

Good work Stephan. Some challenging match ups. Were there a handful of crossovers between the two groups?

Yep, there were a couple that showed up on both lists. I thought about picking one or the other for them but then decided to just let it stand as it was.

Great idea, thanks Stefan! I see The Blade Itself appears twice in the fantasy poll though (up against Neil Gaiman both times). Man, you've got American Gods up against The Blade Itself in round 1. It's like you're asking me to kill one of my children!

Don't know how I missed that! Maybe one is THE Blade Itself and the other is Southeastern The Blade Itself?

Good fun voting here. There's quite a few I haven't read, but tried to make a judgement on each. Think I shot down some real classics in the voting though, but then books can't just get by on their reputation alone.

Hardest choice for me was 2001 A Space Odyssey v Contact. Both great, awe inspiring books. Tough one.

Glad that you enjoyed.

Last day for ROUND 1 Voting

Steve wrote: "Hardest choice for me was 2001 A Space Odyssey v Contact. Both great, awe inspiring books...."

I thought that was an interesting matchup, too, partly because the subject matter was similar. In the end I went with Contact, mostly because 2001 was just a version of Clarke's Sentinel expanded for the movie, and partly because I thought Clarke's Childhood's End did a better job of exploring the inscrutable alien contact theme. But also because I thought Contact did a great job of merging hard sci-fi with metaphysics, and because Contact frankly surprised me with its ending.

Results are in! (Sorry it took me so long, had a plumbing problem to deal with that took up a good part of the day).

Updated brackets and scores can be viewed here:
Fantasy Bracket
Sci-Fi Bracket

Good, interesting results there and looking forward to round 2! :)

Well, no huge upsets to my expectations (though I'm out of Warren Buffett's challenge. :)


On the Fantasy side, I shed a small tear to see Earthsea lose to Harry Potter, though I suspect that generational shift is inevitable.

Mildly surprised Madeleine L'Engle lost out to Homer. I wonder if "A Stitch in Time” would have polled better than "The Time Quartet". But, "the Odyssey"? Inconsistent magic system, and half a dozen deus ex machina :) L'Engle did so well last year, I went out and read her book; and now that I read it, nobody likes it anymore. :(

Also Fred Saberhagen (barely) beat out Philip Pullman. Maybe "Golden Compass" would have polled better than "His Dark Materials"? Or maybe I'm underestimating the popularity of the Book of Swords.

A little surprised to see Stephen King vanish in all 3 seeded positions. He is, after all, popular.

The most one-sided contest being "Lord of the Rings" crushing "Witch World”, no surprise, as well as "Mists of Avalon" trouncing "Five People Yo Meet in Heaven" and Amber dumping "A Shadow in Summer".

On the whole, the fantasy results seemed far more decisive than the sci-fi.


On the Science Fiction side, I'm not surprised the Hitchhiker's Guide beat out Miles Vorkosigan, but I am surprised at the margin. I thought Bujold had a stronger following.

The most one-sided contests were "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" beating out Ballard's "The Drowned World" and " "Old Man's War" beating out "Brown Girl in the Ring". I should probably read the latter; but then I should probably read lots of things.

Yeah, I had the same generational question. Glad to see The Martian Chronicles make the cut, but like you, sorry to see A Wrinkle in Time not make it, though Stefan, I couldn't help but wonder if you substantially crippled its name recognition by using the name of the series. I've never even read the other three and I love that first one. There is an entire generation of children profoundly affected by that book -- but we're all getting older now.

In the future I expect Watchmen and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Warand graphic novels in general to do much better. Though, the one that shocked me was China Mieville's The City and the City getting whipped by...The Wonderful Wizard of Oz??? Maybe that's my generationalism showing.

And I was glad that the The Elric Saga Part I beat out The Silmarillion but shocked by how close it was. Tolkien's going to be hard, if not impossible to beat if even that book is carrying that much weight because, interesting as it in terms of fleshing out the world and history of Middle Earth -- it's not even finished and it's certainly not easy to get through.

I know what you mean about series titles. Maybe next year, if a series is in the mix, I just go with the title of the first book. Although that makes it difficult as The Lord of the Rings for instance was originally intended as one full-length novel not a three part series.

I thought Earthsea vs. Harry Potter was one of the hardest match-ups, so although I gave my vote to LeGuin, I wasn't surprised to see Rowling win out.

For the sci-fi, I thought 1984 vs. Caves of Steel was probably my toughest choice.

I did find myself voting with the high seed more often than I expected to.

Stefan wrote: "I know what you mean about series titles. Maybe next year, if a series is in the mix, I just go with the title of the first book. Although that makes it difficult as The Lord of the Rings for instance..."

Yeah, series are hard to handle. Some books, such as Lord of the Rings are better known by the series title. Some books in a series standalone (e.g. Ringworld, Pern, Vorkosigan, Earthsea), while others are tightly integrated (e.g. Foundation, Lord of the Rings, Riverworld, Amber, Wheel of Time). And some series take their name from the first book of the series, making the designation ambiguous (e.g. Dune, Ringworld, Foundation). And some are better thought of as individual works than as collected series, because the sequels were less than the original (e.g. Rendezvous with Rama, Dune, Ringworld). And then there are series that have multiple story-arcs (e.g. the first 5 books of Amber ("Corwin"), the first two Hyperion, the first three Black Company ("North"), first 3 Mistborn.) And some books cleverly include the series name in every title (Harry Potter and the....)

I think you may just have to wing it.

Get those last minute votes in for Round 2! I'll be collecting final tallies and posting the new bracket sometime this evening!