The YouTube channel SciFiScavenger recently conducted a poll of their viewers’ favorite science fiction novels. Viewers were asked to submit their Top 10 SF novels in order. SciFiScavenger received around two hundred submissions. They assigned point values, with ten points for #1, nine points for #2 down to one point for #10 to determine the final ranking of the Top 75 books. Watch the video to see the results and hear comments on each book.

I thought this was a good survey and added it as a citation list to the Classics of Science Fiction database. We like to regularly add new polls, lists, and awards to the database because our two lists are generated on the fly listing the most popular novels and short stories. Keeping up with the times reflects the changes in readers’ tastes. Each list, poll, award, scholarly recommendation, etc. is considered a citation. To get on the Classics of Science Fiction v. 5 requires receiving at least 12 citations. Currently, the book with the most citations is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin with 53 citations. As of today, we have 138 books with 12 or more citations.

SciFiScavenger’s results overlap well with our list. Of the 75 books ranked, 56 were already on our list. One title, Parable of the Sowers was pushed onto the list because of this poll. The novel only had 11 citations before the poll, so with SciFiScavenger’s citation, it now had the minimum 12 to be on v. 5 of the list.

We do have one ongoing problem with our system. Some famous series books get on lists by the name of the series, and sometimes by the name of individual titles. For example, Foundation by Isaac Asimov was voted onto SciFiScavenger’s list. We put the vote with The Foundation Trilogy since most people think of the trilogy as one work, and its sometimes even published in one volume. We put The Shadow of the Torturer with The Book of the New Sun.

By continually adding more citation lists we reveal the most popular books over time. We don’t think of our system as recognizing the absolute best books but recognizing the most remembered books and short stories. You can read about the history of the project here. If v. 5 of the list gets too long, we’ll up the minimum citations. This way books that are being forgotten over time drop off. We like to keep the list in the 100-150 range. For v. 6 we’ll probably make the cutoff 14 citations. If you look at the v. 5 list, you’ll see books with 12 and 13 citations will get knock off unless they get additional citations. If you click on the citation number in the v. 5 list, you will see which citations put it on the list.

Here is a list of all our current book citations. If you scroll down to the bottom, you will see SciFiScavenger’s 2024 Poll. Click here to see it. You will see the 75 books on the survey. Each book in bold is on our v. 5 list. Because there is so much overlap, it suggests that SciFiScavenger’s survey correlates well with the aggragation of all the other citation lists.

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James Wallace Harris, 12/1/24