Booklist for BotM Poll for February 2011

[Richard]

Four months of climate change books; perhaps we should change the name of the group? Ah, but none of this month’s choices continue that theme — at least as far as I can tell.

The poll for the month of February 2011 is up for the HardSF BotM at Yahoo groups.

For your research, the books are:
① Solis by A.A. Attanasio
❷ Weapons of Choice , by John Birmingham
③ Childhood's End , by Arthur C. Clarke
❹ The Sands of Mars , by Arthur C. Clarke
⑤ For the Win , by Cory Doctorow
❻ Makers , by Cory Doctorow
⑦ Diaspora , by Greg Egan
❽ Forever Free , by Joe Haldeman
⑨ The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress , by Robert A. Heinlein
❿ The Proteus Operation , by James P. Hogan
⑪ Thrice Upon A Time , by James P. Hogan
⓬ Cosmonaut Keep , by Ken MacLeod
⑬ WWW:Wake , by Robert J. Sawyer
⓮ Coyote , by Allen Steele
⑮ Quicksilver , by Neal Stephenson

[Charlotte]

Diaspora sounds great, but hard to get, and not available for kindle.
Coyote sounds next best, and is available for kindle, so it gets my vote. Also in its favour is that it is the first of a series, with the later books actually getting better reviews than the first.

[Richard]

Charlotte wrote: "...with the later books actually getting better reviews than the first. "

I think this often happens — the people that read the sequels are more likely to be the folks that enjoyed the earlier books, so the readership gets biased more and more towards the author's best fans. Selection bias, don'cha know.

[Daniel]

Richard wrote: I think this often happens — the people that read the sequels are more likely to be the folks that enjoyed the earlier books... Selection bias, don'cha know..."

I'm not entirely sure of this statement, I have found series in which the first book is way better than the ones that follow, as is the case in the Ender series by Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game is a lot better than Speaker for the Dead and its subsequent books. The latter books deal with too much spiritual and esotheric speculation to be completely to my liking; I read all of them though, and enjoyed them, but not as much as the first one.

[Richard]

Oh, I didn't mean to say that books themselves get better — I agree with you about Orson Scott Card. And if the series tanks, then the reviews will reveal it.

But if a series stays relatively even in execution, then each book serves as a gatekeeper to those that follow it — people that don't like the style of the first are less likely to even bother with the latter, leaving only those that are at least inclined towards the story.

An extreme example is Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. Follow that link and look at the series progression.

» Book one, 3.88 avg rating from 15,638 ratings.
» Book two, 3.95 avg rating from 11,711 ratings.

With every book, the number of ratings declines, but the average rating increases. Well, it tops out a bit, but then continues the climb. Until last year's
» Book twelve, 4.48 avg rating — 3,960 ratings.

Actually, as I've mentioned in my reviews, Butcher has actually gotten noticeably better at his craft over the course of all that writing, so some of the climb is perhaps due to that. But he'll be delivering the thirteenth later this year, and only pretty dedicated fans have made it that far.

But take a look at Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles — another clear example.

[Charlotte]

Not so sure about this. Makes some sense, but there is also the fatigue issue - a series may be enjoyable for 2 or 3 books, but then just becomes more of the same, or gets stale, or the author's heart goes out of it, s/he just writes sequels because there is a demand, or the pressure is on to produce the sequels quickly, or whatever. The readers who reach the end of the line on a series for any of these reasons will rate the last book they read much lower.

Look at the Wheel of Time books - the trend does not work there for ratings. For the 1st 4 the ratings were over 4, then dropped under until the last 2 which are again over 4, maybe partly because dedicated readers were uneasy about whether Sanderson would do a good job, i.e. partly a relief vote or whatever. As you say, however, the # of ratings follows a clear downward trend which is logical and is consistent with various comments I have seen from people who are angry about how long the series is getting, accusing the author and publisher of merely dragging it on to make more money, or in the case of the most recent addition, anger over the initial decision to delay the ebook for a year (a decision they revised, maybe because of all the negative response).

Personally, when I am adding books to my booklist on Goodreads that I have read some time ago I have a tendency to rate all the books in a series the same, unless I have some very clear memory that one was better or worse than the others, or if I have just read the last in the series that I plan to read because it no longer interests me - it will then of course get a lower rating. e.g. Susannah Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew series, although in that case I only rated #13, which is where I gave up on the series.

[Richard]

Yeah, I can see that. If the writer starts coasting, resting on their laurels, the series could get old real fast.

And from the average rating, it looks like the Wheel of Time series did just that, starting with ratings in the low fours, then starting a long slow decline.

But note that the number of ratings also declined, just as it did with the two series I mentioned. So I'd say in the case, also, the readers of the sequels are a subset of the readers of the prequels.

While I'd agree that any individual series might or might not demonstrate an increasing trend toward selling-to-the-fan-choir (and the Wheel of Time ratings don't look good), I think there will still be a significant sampling bias (vide Wikipedia). People that strongly didn't like some aspect of the first novel are unlikely to even open the second. Sure, some of those that loved the first will hate the second, or the third, but they at least had the incentive to give it a chance. That, right there, is a form of self-selection.


I know what you mean about the rating everything the same from way back in memory. I did that with Roger Zelazny's Amber series. Actually, taking a look at that one's trends and I see a steady decline there, too.

So, my original hypothesis has some pretty glaring exceptions :-)

Sometimes an author comes up with a great opening, but then can't follow it up with anything quite as innovative. Zelazny's world of Amber was quite stunning in it's conceit (at least to me, at the time I was first exposed to it). But affection for his world-building skills only partially compensated for the weak crisis that drove the series as a whole.

Butcher, in the Dresden series, did better. His original idea wasn't all that stunning, but clever enough to set the hook; then he kept amping up what he delivered in subsequent books.

Hmmm, interesting contrast.

[Richard]

Once again, we have a tie.

Both of the following...
⑦ Diaspora , by Greg Egan
⑮ Quicksilver , by Neal Stephenson
... ended up with five votes. And, at this moment, they each have five votes in the run-off. Although that’s before my vote. I’m perfectly happy to cast the tie-breaker. But if you want to see how I voted, or want to vote yourself (spoil-sport!), go to the run-off poll at the Yahoo Group site .