I was interviewed by Alex Howe for A Reader’s History of Science Fiction podcast about the Classics of Science Fiction List. I was surprised by how much I learned about myself from the process. I wrote about that on my blog.
Alex’s podcast has a lot of great interviews with people who love science fiction, and he’s going to interview Robert Silverberg next, one I’m anxious to hear.
However, I thought I would mention something else I learned while answering questions for a podcast. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to easily explain, verbally or in print, how we produce the list. I believe it’s because I don’t have the right term to describe our list-building method. One may exist, but I just don’t know it.
Our system collects any reasonably authoritative list that remembers science fiction books and creates a resultant list by selecting the books which were on the most lists. Is that a frequency distribution? A meta-list? A tabulation list? An accumulation list? I don’t know. If you know, leave a comment.
I wish this system of compiling a list had a name that people knew and understood. No matter how often I explain our system I get people accusing me of personally picking the books for the list, especially when their most cherished read isn’t on the list.
Two wonderful examples of this system of list making are The Greatest Books of All Time that currently builds from 305 lists, and the Ultimate Reading Lists by Literary Hub, especially their end of the year list. For 2023 Emily Temple used sixty-two lists from forty-eight publications, resulting in a final list of ninety-four books that had been on at least five of the sixty-two lists. For example, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Story by James McBride had been on twenty best-of-the-year lists in 2023. I read that novel because of that recognition.
My assumption is, “Why read any book when you can read a great book.”
James Wallace Harris, 6/18/24
