THE ILX ALL-TIME SPECULATIVE FICTION POLL RESULTS THREAD & DISCUSSION

oh my god that IS heartbreaking

065 Gygax & Arneson - 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide 61

lol

I also placed Octavia Butler´s "Lilith's Brood" very highly, those books are amazing. Glad to see it made it into the top 100.

AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS?? WHAT DID YOU PEOPLE DO WITH YOURSELVES, VOTE BY THROWING DARTS AT A BALLOT??

I can't believe how close Good Omens and Small Gods came to the top 50!

Wait so how many pts was a #4 ballot placement worth? I am stung that Aegypt didn't even make the top 100

xp Yeah what's wrong people.

haha good omens would have been in the top 50...if i had voted because that was in spot 5

Also SO FUCKING APT that the DM's guide and The Dying Earth are tied for 61st, since D&D magic was totally inspired by those books.

I'm not sure how I feel about not ranking mine list now.

jjj just imagine all the angry faces I am making at you

(also lol @ such close alignment in our tastes, I guess "formative years" are called that for a reason)

I didn't rank my list because I can't think about things that are special/important to me like that. There's no "winner" and it feels wrong and pointless to insist that there be one. Unfort that attitude clearly hurt my ballot choices.

SPECULATIVE FICTION POLL BALLOTS

So only 8 of my 25 ballot choices even made the top 100! I am a lonely visionary...

Also SO FUCKING APT that the DM's guide and The Dying Earth are tied for 61st, since D&D magic was totally inspired by those books.

This is a dope point imo.

Wait so how many pts was a #4 ballot placement worth? I am stung that Aegypt didn't even make the top 100

i think you may have been the only person to vote for it. but 22 points.

alex yeah part of what hurt the 'hard' sf books is that most of the non-ranked ballots were really sf-heavy. also for whatever reason so many of what i consider big, consensus sf books were placed really low on ranked ballots. i mean forever war got 7 votes! 'riverworld' got 4 votes & only 26 points &c &c

But Riverworld is terrible.

^^^ this. Don't try to write dialogue for Mark Twain, pro tip to Philip Jose Farmer.

I thought it was awfully cold and uncaring, tbh, and 100% based on perceived male needs & goals in a world that was tailored to favor aggressive, non-conformist men, which tbh is just some kind of circle-jerk for its audience.

Also wiki just reminded me that women were re-awakened as virgins, which is beyond creepy and disturbing in its implications.

uh

that sounds uncomfortable

wait Laurel which book are you talking about...?

haha ive never read riverworld i just thought it was a 'major work' or w/e, also i have a memory of seeing this cover every time i went to the bookstore:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IoU3bEFUwWc/SaqfX3pN5TI/AAAAAAAAE9U/AhUWpc89Sas/s400/Strange+Relations.jpg

so he sorta stands out to me

Shakey: It must have been To Your Shattered Bodies Go which I inaccurately and maybe unfairly just think of as "Riverworld."

Scattered Bodies. See? My brain resists remembering anything up to and including the spelling of the title.

Lamp is a hero for doing this

(The poll, I mean--though posting that Farmer cover also)

& Yes, great poll! Thank you Lamp.

I nominate Lamp for running all ILX polls from here on out

ned ragget's post about hitcher's guide to the galaxy is amazing.

it's a shame LOTR won imo but there's still a lot of books i haven't read on this list and that i'm happy for.

All-Time Speculative Fiction You Haven't Read Before is a different poll imho

errr ok fine

i'm sure i'm not the only one approaching this as a way to find out abt classic books they haven't read yet?

No, me too

So glad Stranger In A Strange Land didn't make it, it seemed to be a student favourite for decades.

I am too I guess it's just that, well, worth discovering /= all-time best, really. Like, those are separate categories. This list would have been a lot different if people excluded things the majority of spec fiction readers are already very familiar with (no 1984, no LOTR, etc)

ha i can tell which books (apart from JRR obv) are fantasy ones cos i've never heard of the authors

I think The Past Through Tomorrow is a fantastic brick of nonstop sf ideas -- much of the best of the Golden Age between two covers.

Thanks for all the work you've put in on this, Lamp! Really good work.

Yeah Lamp this was an awesome and surprising joy of a results thread for me to read. Thank you!! I really sort of wish I'm made a ballot now. I will for your next one. :)

To Your Shattered Bodies Go

Sorry I didn't vote but Disch and Sturgeon winding up in the 90-100 zone is some straight bullshit.

Think a lot of you would enjoy reading the Tom Disch book about sci-fi that Elvis Telecom hipped us to, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of.

sturgeon's best stuff is his short stories, tho 'more than human' is really good.

Camp Concentration was my #2

thanks again to lamp for doing this! ha goddamn narnia i thought i was going to get by without a single top 50 thing OH WELL

Stuff I think of as universally loved that I was surprised didn't crack top 50: Ender's Game, Perdido Street Station, Ted Chiang (i voted only for Ender's Game of these)

ender's game is a bunch of fascist fantasy claptrap

wish i'd been around to see this unfold in real time.

lol @ dick
yay @ leguin (left hand was my #1, earthsea #6 - that's a childhood fave but I only read left hand last year and was blown away, as you can tell.) (banks is the only other author i gave two votes to, neither of which made the #50.)
smdh @ narnia
sad for wells, wyndham.

read 32 of the 50, 45 of the 100, voted for 9, 13. The bottom 50 is definitely crazier than the top.