Poll Analysis

[coalescent]

So I was waiting for brassyn and korovyov_x to cast their votes and give yesterday's poll at least a semblance of balance, but it appears they're not going to, so here's the current top ten:

1. Dune, by Frank Herbert (25)
2. Ringworld, by Larry Niven (23)
3. Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthur C Clarke (22)
4. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes (18)
5. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K LeGuin (17)
6. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman (15)
7. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K LeGuin (15)
8. The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov (13)
9. Babel-17, by Samuel R Delaney (9)
10. A Time of Changes, by Robert Silverberg (6)

The poll sample was an amalgamation of the winners of the Nebula award for best SF novel 1965-1975, and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction 1965-1977 (because there were ties for the Nebula, that works out to 12 entrants from each award). The poll was inspired by something Pat Cadigan said at the Oxford Street Borders' SF group meeting on monday evening: That nobody remembers who won the Pulitzer in 1967, but everybody remembers who won the Hugo.

On one level, as snowking pointed out, this is trivial - SF fans being the type of people they are, obviously they're going to remember this sort of thing. On another, however, if you look at the winners - look at the list above - you see a decent SF reading list. Those books aren't just remembered because they're Nebula winners and we're trivia geeks, they're remembered because they're damn fine books and each of them has a place in the history of the genre.

So then I wondered two things: One, whether these books were known outside the genre; and two, whether the Pulitzer was as accurate a barometer for the quality of the genre it measured - if I wanted to know what the great books of the 60s and 70s were, could I go and look at the Pulitzer winners? Hence, the poll - which, yes, was deliberately phrased so that if you've heard of Dune but don't think it's an important book, you could ignore it. Unfortunately, the poll sample is somewhat biased, being composed as it is of my friends list. It's not surprising that the SF books came out top by such an enormous margin. On the other hand, my friends list isn't that genre-insulated and I might suggest that three Pulitzer-winners with zero votes and a further four with one vote apiece is telling; heck, I only recognise half the authors on that list, never mind specific titles.

Anyone got any other comments? I went for Nebulas rather than Hugos since it seemed fairer to compare like with like (Hugos being voted on by SF fans, rather than decided with a panel), and I went for the oldest available Nebulas to gain the maximum possible historical perspective. What I'd really like to know, and what the poll doesn't really tell me, is which of those books are generally best-known - discarding Dune, which would win for obvious film-related reasons. If you gave the poll to Joe Public, would Le Guin and Haldeman still rate as highly as they did here? I'd like to think so.

(As an addendum, I've missed out on the Larry Niven thing entirely. I don't think I've ever read anything by the man, mostly because it wasn't in my Dad's SF collection when I was thirteen. So whilst I'm aware of Ringworld, I wasn't expecting it to place quite so highly...)

Comments

Pulitzer woes

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Several years ago, the late media magazine Brill's Content ran a very illuminating article about the worthlessness of the Pulitzers, and how its standards had been dropping for the last twenty years. While I'm inclined to agree, seeing as how someone actually saw fit to give Bloom County a Pulitzer for Editorial Cartooning in 1987 (and I agree with Pat Oliphant when he asked "So what next; do we give a Pulitzer to Garfield?"), I think we have another factor at work.

Simply put, you're half-right about how aficionados of the Hugo and Nebula Awards are more likely to obsess about the winners. The other fact is that the Pulitzers cover a HUGE range of literature, and a Pulitzer isn't likely to lead to a spike in sales because you so rarely hear about the latest winners. (Truth be told, the only way most people would hear about it would be from journalistic magazines such as Editor and Publisher: the one constant in the universe is that journalists like to obsess about themselves.) The Hugos, to pick one example, are in a genre with such serious self-esteem issues that ANY award is reason for celebration (can you think of any reason why anyone would give a fart in a high wind about the Saturn Awards outside of the skiffy community?), and as such get bandied about in general conversation among fans. You just don't get that with the Pulitzers.

[greengolux.livejournal.com]

I think one reason why Nebula award winners might score higher in this kind of poll than Pulitzer winners is that SF is a relatively new genre, and things like the Nebulas have been going, if not quite since the genre's inception, then pretty much ever since the genre became a litarary force. The Pulitzer prize, however, has not been going anywhere near as long as important works of literature have been being produced.

If you try to pick out important works of literature, then you've got centuries' worth to choose from, and the Pultizer won't have been around when many key works were first published. With SF, however, you're looking at decades rather than centuries, and the Nebulas have been around for much of that, so key works in SF are more likely to be represented on a Nebula award winning list.

Basically, Nebulas and Pultizers are measuring different things - the Nebulas may well provide a guide to important works of SF because of the size and history of the genre, whereas the Pulitzer can't hope to provide a guide to important works of literature in general, because there is and has been too much of it to be able to do that. All it can do is pick out some well-written books in particular years.

[hawleygriffen.livejournal.com]

Balance? What kinda balance?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Votes from people who don't like and don't know about SF, is what I was getting at.