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An Observation
Jan. 5th, 2016 11:41 amI was browsing through some old posts of my own and, aside from noting some irritating typos I really should go back and fix, I noticed that in a post I had made earlyish last year on SF popularity I had identified a set (the intersection of the LT top five nominations and the Bakka bestsellers list) which had, later on, turned out to be a pretty good predictor (4/5 -- missing only the Cixin Liu book which, naturally turned out to be the winner) of the novels which would have been on the Hugo Awards nomination list in the absence of the Puppies' slating.
This actually makes some sense, when you come to think of it, because the process of saying "these are my top five books of 2014", although not constrained to books published in 2014 (as the Hugos were) is very similar for Hugo nominations and submissions to the LT list.
This year's list has about half the number of participants as last year's, but it's already interesting in terms of what it suggests are popular choices. The SF novels on the LT list which (a) have more than one member adding them and (b) are eligible for Hugos for MidAmericon II are:
Unsurprisingly, the list also corresponds to the general set of books which I've seen regularly noticed positively in SFF fora.
It's also still in progress – yesterday there were two sponsors for The Library at Mount Char, but one of them has shifted their support overnight and it's down to one vote.
All three Ancillary books are in the top 100. Interestingly, The Three-Body Problem is in slot 111 (with one sponsor), but was not on last year's list at all. The other Hugo winners on the list with more than one sponsor are Among Others, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and Doomsday Book (there are many more with only one sponsor).
This could still change -- more members are likely to post their favourites to the LT list -- but it's certainly an easier way of handicapping the "core" (non-puppy) Hugo nominations than going through the extensive analysis that Chaos Horizon goes through.
ETA: The Bakka bestseller list for last year is now out, and the intersection is a bit smaller than the set given above.
It is:
This actually makes some sense, when you come to think of it, because the process of saying "these are my top five books of 2014", although not constrained to books published in 2014 (as the Hugos were) is very similar for Hugo nominations and submissions to the LT list.
This year's list has about half the number of participants as last year's, but it's already interesting in terms of what it suggests are popular choices. The SF novels on the LT list which (a) have more than one member adding them and (b) are eligible for Hugos for MidAmericon II are:
- Uprooted (Novik) - 10 members
- Ancillary Mercy (Leckie) - 7 members
- Seveneves (Stephenson) - 3 members
- Sorceror to the Crown (Cho) - 2 members
- The Shepherd's Crown (Pratchett) - 2 members
- The Just City (Walton) - 2 members
- Aurora (Robinson) - 2 members
Unsurprisingly, the list also corresponds to the general set of books which I've seen regularly noticed positively in SFF fora.
It's also still in progress – yesterday there were two sponsors for The Library at Mount Char, but one of them has shifted their support overnight and it's down to one vote.
All three Ancillary books are in the top 100. Interestingly, The Three-Body Problem is in slot 111 (with one sponsor), but was not on last year's list at all. The other Hugo winners on the list with more than one sponsor are Among Others, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and Doomsday Book (there are many more with only one sponsor).
This could still change -- more members are likely to post their favourites to the LT list -- but it's certainly an easier way of handicapping the "core" (non-puppy) Hugo nominations than going through the extensive analysis that Chaos Horizon goes through.
ETA: The Bakka bestseller list for last year is now out, and the intersection is a bit smaller than the set given above.
It is:
- Uprooted (Novik)
- Ancillary Mercy (Leckie)
- The Shepherd's Crown (Pratchett)
- The Just City (Walton)
- Foxglove Summer (Aaronovitch) - only one sponsor, but on the Bakka list
