[Found this image on Facebook. Does anyone know its source? What an amazing idea.]
I want to revamp this site. We created a new version of the database which users can customize. It’s located at https://csfquery.com/. But the old lists and essays are still here, so there are actually two versions of the Classics of Science Fiction lists on the web now: the old longer version 4 with lots of alternative list views and essays and the new dynamic shorter version 5 with a list generator and no essays. We want to consolidate and make one consistent site. It’s really a big mess. Part of the problem is WordPress limits how we can present text and data, so we might need to go back to a web site where we have complete programming control.
Mike and I are talking about starting the whole project over from scratch. I’m thinking about making this site just a blog about nattering about science fiction and moving the Classics of Science Fiction lists to a website that’s database-driven. Mike and I both think we need more than just lists, but I don’t think we need a lot of essays. The goal is to encourage people to read science fiction books. Our lists show which science fiction books and short stories have been the most popular over the decades and we assumed revealing their popularity might encourage readers. And we do get people telling us they printed our lists and use them as guides to book buying and reading. However, we figure just plain lists are boring to web surfers.
We want to create a site with more pizzaz. So I’m thinking about different ways to present our data. Since neither one of us are artists the only way we can spice up the site with visuals is by using book and magazine covers. And I’ve always wanted to do more with science fiction themes. Right now we present our results by title, author, and year, but I’m thinking by theme might be more appealing for encouraging reading. My current plan to test is to create a home page of book covers, each representing a theme. I figure I could have a grid of 5 x 5 covers, or 6 x 6. That means 25 or 36 themes. So I organized the 108 books on v. 5 of the Classics of Science Fiction list by theme:
- Alien Archeology
- 1960 – Rogue Moon
- 1968 – 2001: A Space Odyssey
- 1977 – Gateway
- Aliens – First Contact
- 1898 – War of the Worlds
- 1963 – Way Station
- 1970 – Solaris
- 1972 – Roadside Picnic
- 1973 – Rendezvous with Rama
- 1974 – The Mote in God’s Eye
- 1996 – The Sparrow
- Alternate History
- 1941 – Lest Darkness Fall
- 1962 – The Man in the High Castle
- Apocalypse / Post-Apocalypse
- 1949 – Earth Abides
- 1951 – The Day of the Triffids
- 1954 – I Am Legend
- 1962 – The Drowned World
- 1966 – The Crystal World
- 1967 – The Einstein Intersection
- 1975 – Dhalgren
- 1976 – Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
- 1978 – Dreamsnake
- 2006 – The Road
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Robots
- 1950 – I, Robot
- 1952 – City
- 1954 – The Caves of Steel
- 1966 – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
- 1968 – 2001: A Space Odyssey
- 1968 – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- 1989 – Hyperion
- 1990 – The Fall of Hyperion
- 1995 – The Diamond Age
- Artificial Life / Clones
- 1818 – Frankenstein
- 1976 – Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
- 1896 – The Island of Doctor Moreau
- 1968 – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- 2009 – The Windup Girl
- Colonizing the Solar System
- 1966 – The Moon is a Harsh Revolution
- 1992 – Red Mars
- Cyberpunk
- 1984 – Neuromancer
- 1992 – Cyberpunk
- 2002 – Altered Carbon
- Utopia/Dystopia
- 1924 – We
- 1949 – Nineteen Eighty-Four
- 1962 – A Clockwork Orange
- 1985 – The Handmaid’s Tale
- 2008 – The Hunger Games
- Ecology
- 1989 – Grass
- 2009 – The Windup Girl
- Evolution
- 1930 – First and Last Men
- 1935 – Odd John
- 1937 – Star Maker
- 1946 – Slan
- 1953 – Childhood’s End
- 1953 – More Than Human
- 1968 – 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Extrapolation – If This Goes On …
- 1968 – Stand on Zanzibar
- 2009 – The Windup Girl
- Extrasensory Perception – Psychic Powers
- 1946 – Slan
- 1952 – The Demolished Man
- 1953 – Childhood’s End
- 1953 – Fahrenheit 451
- 1953 – More Than Human
- 1961 – Stranger in a Strange Land
- 1968 – Dragonflight
- 1969 – Ubik
- 1972 – Dying Inside
- Fantastic Ideas
- 1971 – The Lathe of Heaven
- 1971 – To Your Scattered Bodies Go
- Far Future
- 1895 – The Time Machine
- 1930 – Last and First Men
- 1937 – Star Maker
- 1956 – The City and the Stars
- 1980 – The Book of the New Sun
- Galactic Empires
- 1951 – The Foundation series
- 1980 – The Snow Queen
- 1986 – Speaker for the Dead
- 1988 – The Player of Games
- 1989 – Hyperion
- 1990 – The Fall of Hyperion
- 1991 – Barrayar
- Gender
- 1969 – The Left Hand of Darkness
- 1975 – The Female Man
- 1986 – A Door Into Ocean
- 2013 – Ancillary Justice
- Humor / Satire
- 1953 – The Space Merchants
- 1959 – The Sirens of Titan
- 1963 – Cat’s Cradle
- 1979 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- Immortality
- 2002 – Altered Carbon
- Mars
- 1917 – A Princess of Mars
- 1956 – Double Star
- 1961 – Stranger in a Strange Land
- 1992 – Red Mars
- Matter Transmission
- 1956 – The Stars My Destination
- 1960 – Rogue Moon
- Military SF
- 1959 – Starship Troopers
- 1974 – The Mote in God’s Eye
- 1985 – Ender’s Game
- Ocean Space
- 1872 – Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
- 1986 – A Door Into Ocean
- Parallel Universes
- 1972 – The Gods Themselves
- Political Speculation
- 1992 – China Mountain Zhang
- Religion
- 1958 – A Case of Conscience
- 1961 – Stranger in a Strange Land
- 1962 – A Wrinkle in Time
- 1989 – Hyperion
- Sexuality
- 1969 – The Left Hand of Darkness
- 1975 – Dhalgren
- 1992 – Ammonite
- 1992 – China Mountain Zhang
- Sociology
- 1961 – Stranger in a Strange Land
- 1965 – Dune
- 1969 – The Left Hand of Darkness
- 1974 – The Dispossessed
- 1975 – Dhalgren
- 1978 – Dreamsnake
- 1986 – A Door Into Ocean
- Space Opera
- 1966 – Babel-17
- 1967 – Lord of Light
- 1968 – Dragonflight
- 1970 – Tau Zero
- 1974 – The Mote in God’s Eye
- 1981 – Downbelow Station
- 1982 – Startide Rising
- 1988 – Cyteen
- 1988 – The Player of Games
- 1992 – A Fire Upon the Deep
- 1992 – Ammonite
- 1999 – A Deepness in the Sky
- 2002 – Altered Carbon
- 2013 – Ancillary Justice
- Space Travel: Interplanetary
- 1938 – Out of the Silent Planet
- 1950 – The Martian Chronicles
- Space Travel: Interstellar
- 1970 – Tau Zero
- Super Science
- 1954 – Mission of Gravity
- 1970 – Ringworld
- 1985 – Blood Music
- 1995 – The Diamond Age
- Time Travel
- 1895 – The Time Machine
- 1962 – A Wrinkle in Time
- 1969 – Slaughterhouse-Five
- 1980 – Timescape
- 1992 – Doomsday Book
- Unexplored Earth
- 1864 – Journey to the Center of Earth
- Uplifting
- 1966 – Flowers for Algernon
- 1983 – Startide Rising
I figure clicking on a theme would take visitors to a page showing covers, titles, quotes from the book and about the book, along with useful links. The books and stories would be in order chronologically to show the evolution of a concept in science fiction. Our database would generate the list of the most popular stories and books for that theme to create the page. Using this visual approach we might expand the definition of classics. We try to keep the lists short, but a list of books for any particular theme would probably always be manageable – at least if we only include the most remembered titles. On Wikipedia, some SF themes have extremely long lists of titles. We’d only want to use the titles people are likely to enjoy reading.
The list of themes above is very close to a 6 x 6 grid, however, these aren’t the best theme labels. I’m wondering if I couldn’t consolidate them down to 25. I have Space Travel: Interplanetary and Space Travel: Interstellar. I could simplify with Space Travel that shows how science fiction imaged humans expanding away from Earth. But how is Space Travel different from Space Opera? Right now I’d say some SF books are about the efforts to explore, while others assume exploration is over and we’re busy living in space, colonizing, creating empires, developing new societies, fighting wars with each other and aliens.
I’d like a set of labels that immediately help readers find the kinds of science fiction books they want to read. Imagine going to Barnes & Noble’s science fiction section and seeing it subdivided by theme. (We focus just on science fiction, no fantasy.) I’d like if B&N did that, but would other people?
First all, does the science fiction genre neatly break down into definite sub-genres? I had trouble, which is why some books are under multiple themes. I do know readers who strongly prefer Alternate History and Military SF. But I also think of themes as a fascinating way of studying science fiction’s history. What was the first story about the end of the world or artificial intelligence? How did later writers expand and handle the theme? How often do readers encounter a theme, say Time Travel in the Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, and then want to read another time travel book? And do writers wanting to work a particular theme go back and see how other writers have explored it?
So I’m asking folks: What are your favorite SF themes and sub-genres? And if you’ve got the time, how would you categorize our genre’s main sub-genres?
Here’s an older effort I made to organize SF. If you like mind maps or any other visual tool, you’re welcome to show us them too in the comments.
James Wallace Harris, 10/18/19
Classics of Science Fiction 
Off the top of my head and keeping it brief.. you could have 1 database table for each book, 1 for each theme, then a joining table to connect them. In this way you wouldn’t be limited by the number of themes you could assign to a title, and you could present different views of the same data.
You could possibly add a relevance field in the joining table to represent the relevance of each theme to the title in question.
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We have something like that now for the book citations. It won’t be hard to add a themes table. We’ve also thought about reviews and links tables. For example, here’s a list of all the citations for The Left Hand of Darkness.
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Nice.
Have you considered an option to return a random book option? Some of my best finds have been completely random.
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If we rewrite the site in HTML and a scripting language, I wanted to add some randomization. But I haven’t thought about how to implement it. I was thinking my main menu would show book covers for each theme, but randomly cycle through the different classic books for each theme as one idea.
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SF is a fictional mode that contains a mega list of themes that seems to have no perimeters, which is why it is difficult to define other than by what is in the actual genre.However,I think that the’re basically two types of SF within it,these being straight science fiction and speculative fiction.The first of these,as would be expected,is a more typical type of science fiction,that can be said to be represented by authors such as Robert Heinlein,while the other one is more varied and has elements of fantasy,Gothic horror and general fiction,which is usually written by more complex and visionary authors.
This isn’t meant to be a definition with hard lines,but is rather a paradigm.Some straight science fiction might contain some ingredients usually expected in speculative fiction,while speculative fiction might sometimes resemble to some degree,straight science fiction.Both can also have any of the themes you list.It is a much easier way though I think to define a complex genre.Generally though,speculative fiction will appear to be less generic than what I call straight science fiction.
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