BSFA long list: Goodreads/LibraryThing stats
The BSFA Award long lists are out!
This is the third year of the three-stage process, similar to the one which was rejected (as I hoped it would be) by WSFS for the Hugos at last year’s Worldcon. It works better for the BSFA. First, because there are far fewer categories - only four, compared to 18 for last year’s Hugos (and 19 for this year’s) - which makes the demands on voters much less. Second, it is only a matter of voting positively for stuff you like rather than for or against particular candidates. I think there are still problems - a glance at the table below will demonstrate that some works can get on the ballot despite being near-invisible to the wider public - but it spices up the process considerably.
The table below shows the 48 novels on the BSFA long-list, ranked by their combined Goodreads and Librarything ownerships. I have listed the number of owners on each system, and the average rating by those who have rated them; and I have bolded the top quartile in each column (ie the top twelve, except for the last column where there are a number of null returns and it’s only the top ten).
This doesn’t have tremendous predictive power about the outcome of the BSFA voting. Last year’s long list had 34 novels; the finalists ranked 9th, 23rd, 26th, 28th and 29th on my equivalent table. In 2016 the finalists were 19th, 22nd, 27th, 41st and 44th out of 57 (my table was less complete but ranked on the same system).
Still, it’s a guide of sorts to which books have been getting buzz, and might therefore figure on other final ballots this year.
As usual I have read none of these yet. I note that Red Sister, by Mark Lawrence, is the only book to finish in the top quartile of all four columns. (Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale only just missed doing the same.)
This is the third year of the three-stage process, similar to the one which was rejected (as I hoped it would be) by WSFS for the Hugos at last year’s Worldcon. It works better for the BSFA. First, because there are far fewer categories - only four, compared to 18 for last year’s Hugos (and 19 for this year’s) - which makes the demands on voters much less. Second, it is only a matter of voting positively for stuff you like rather than for or against particular candidates. I think there are still problems - a glance at the table below will demonstrate that some works can get on the ballot despite being near-invisible to the wider public - but it spices up the process considerably.
The table below shows the 48 novels on the BSFA long-list, ranked by their combined Goodreads and Librarything ownerships. I have listed the number of owners on each system, and the average rating by those who have rated them; and I have bolded the top quartile in each column (ie the top twelve, except for the last column where there are a number of null returns and it’s only the top ten).
This doesn’t have tremendous predictive power about the outcome of the BSFA voting. Last year’s long list had 34 novels; the finalists ranked 9th, 23rd, 26th, 28th and 29th on my equivalent table. In 2016 the finalists were 19th, 22nd, 27th, 41st and 44th out of 57 (my table was less complete but ranked on the same system).
Still, it’s a guide of sorts to which books have been getting buzz, and might therefore figure on other final ballots this year.
| Goodreads | LibraryThing | |||
| owners | av rating | owners | av rating | |
| Andy Weir – Artemis | 167277 | 3.73 | 651 | 3.59 |
| Katherine Arden – The Bear and the Nightingale | 125245 | 4.14 | 763 | 4.16 |
| Mohsin Hamid – Exit West | 116349 | 3.82 | 792 | 3.95 |
| Omar El Akkad – American War | 56496 | 3.87 | 460 | 3.87 |
| John Scalzi – The Collapsing Empire | 39852 | 4.1 | 438 | 3.89 |
| Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland – The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. | 32443 | 3.93 | 414 | 3.66 |
| Mark Lawrence – Red Sister | 54808 | 4.31 | 162 | 4.14 |
| Kim Stanley Robinson – New York 2140 | 18919 | 3.61 | 306 | 3.72 |
| Ann Leckie – Provenance | 17527 | 3.9 | 223 | 3.97 |
| Mur Lafferty – Six Wakes | 16578 | 3.86 | 221 | 3.96 |
| Daryl Gregory – Spoonbenders | 20641 | 4 | 144 | 3.93 |
| Kameron Hurley – The Stars Are Legion | 15591 | 3.72 | 162 | 3.52 |
| Peter V Brett – The Core | 24240 | 4.23 | 88 | 4 |
| Nicholas Eames – Kings of the Wyld | 17792 | 4.4 | 97 | 3.83 |
| Jaroslav Kalfař – Spaceman of Bohemia | 7824 | 3.89 | 97 | 4.15 |
| Ada Palmer – Seven Surrenders | 6067 | 4.2 | 117 | 4.14 |
| Yoon Ha Lee – Raven Stratagem | 5709 | 4.23 | 120 | 4.2 |
| Frances Hardinge – A Skinful of Shadows | 6802 | 4.17 | 74 | 4.23 |
| Lisa Carey – The Stolen Child | 3910 | 3.62 | 124 | 3.94 |
| Benjamin Percy – The Dark Net | 4282 | 3.29 | 69 | 3.31 |
| C Robert Cargill – Sea of Rust | 4063 | 4.12 | 65 | 4.37 |
| Jeff Noon – A Man of Shadows | 3274 | 3.52 | 49 | 3.64 |
| Nick Harkaway – Gnomon | 2967 | 3.96 | 43 | 4.4 |
| Paul Cornell – Chalk | 1834 | 3.69 | 36 | 3.96 |
| Ada Palmer – The Will to Battle | 2121 | 4.48 | 31 | 3 |
| Jonathan L Howard – After the End of the World | 2131 | 4.14 | 24 | 3.92 |
| Nina Allan – The Rift | 1455 | 3.38 | 24 | 2.9 |
| Jen Williams – The Ninth Rain | 1963 | 4.31 | 17 | 4 |
| Nicola Barker – H(A)PPY | 802 | 3.5 | 32 | 2.5 |
| Chris Brookmyre – Places in the Darkness | 1339 | 3.85 | 19 | 3 |
| Paul McAuley – Austral | 840 | 3.57 | 23 | 4 |
| Ian McDonald – Luna: Wolf Moon | 264 | 3.99 | 67 | 3.63 |
| Adam Roberts – The Real-Town Murders | 757 | 3.73 | 17 | 3.38 |
| Adam Christopher – Killing is My Business | 806 | 3.73 | 15 | 5 |
| Anne Charnock – Dreams Before the Start of Time | 747 | 3.55 | 14 | 3.75 |
| Adrian Tchaikovsky – Dogs of War | 491 | 4.33 | 8 | 4.5 |
| Peter McLean – Damnation | 440 | 4.13 | 8 | 3.25 |
| Tricia Sullivan – Sweet Dreams | 391 | 3.89 | 7 | - |
| Chris Beckett – America City | 200 | 3.92 | 8 | 3.5 |
| Gavin Smith – The Bastard Legion [The Hangman’s Daughter] | 317 | 3.62 | 5 | 5 |
| Ian R Macleod – Red Snow | 658 | 4.4 | 2 | - |
| Philip Miller – All the Galaxies | 211 | 3.33 | 6 | 2 |
| Justina Robson – The Switch | 214 | 3.67 | 5 | - |
| Andrew Bannister – Iron Gods | 52 | 3.65 | 1 | - |
| Anthony Laken – One Cog Turning | 60 | 4.4 | 0 | - |
| Karen Traviss – Black Run | 23 | 3.7 | 0 | - |
| Allen Stroud – The Forever Man | 7 | 5 | 0 | - |
| Kenneth Steven – 2020 | 4 | 4 | 0 | - |
As usual I have read none of these yet. I note that Red Sister, by Mark Lawrence, is the only book to finish in the top quartile of all four columns. (Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale only just missed doing the same.)