Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[dragoner]

It's not a 15 year cutoff. You misread "of the 21st century".

RP1 is 15 years old. The linked list is of novels published since 2000 and which have been rated on Goodreads at least a thousand times.

Best Science Fiction of the 21st Century (1315 books)

1,315 books based on 9257 votes: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, The Martian by Andy Weir, Old Man's War by John Scalzi, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Co...

www.goodreads.com

The Martian is #2, Old Man's War is #3, and Hunger Games is #4 (Leviathan Wakes, the first Expanse book, is #5).

There are a lot of good books in the list. I haven't read Ready Player One, so no comment. The nice thing about books is one can read another, they don't get jealous.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Ready Player One as the best sci-fi novel of the last 15 years hurts my head.

But why the arbitrary 15 year cut off? That cuts off The Hunger Games, The Three Body Problem, Old Man’s War.

Note that the article is reporting on a list ranking on Goodreads. Not a literary analysis, review of overall popularity*, a ranking (where you specifically put one book above another), or even a timed survey (where people have an incentive to rally their like-minded friends to get a vote in before a time limit). Just a list where an editor posits a category, people can nominate any book** in the category, and then Goodread members upvote them (and it looks like you can upvote as many as you want, so you voting for RP1 does not mean you cannot do the same for Old Man’s War) in an ongoing basis. All we know is that more people that care to do this process clicked for RP1 than any of the others. It is a very special kind of popularity contest -- one where having the most people that say 'oh yeah, I think I kind of liked that, I'll give it a thumbs-up' is the dominant measure of success.
*or of purchase, if discussing the book from a sales/economic perspective.
**with at least 1000 overall ratings.

Note also that the reporting of this as newsworthy is an article in Parade -- the pamphlet quasi-magazine included in Sunday papers in the middle with the sales ads. So kind of weighted in audience towards younger boomers and older gen-Xers (people who still get physical newspapers) -- the same people nostalgic for when Spielberg and Back to the Future were the biggest of deals that made Ready Player One a success. Mind you, Parade did not make RP1 end up at the top of that list. However, someone there saw that it had and decided that this was an article waiting to happen.

None of this is meant to diminish the actual book Ready Player One. It was... fine, I guess. Certainly not my idea of epic or enduring literature, but not actively worse than whatever Michael Crichton novel probably would have held a similar position on a similar list when I was growing up. My point is more that it being at the top of this list does not prove anything particularly grand and informative about the state of science fiction or of reading audiences.

 

[VashVet]

Note that the article is reporting on a list ranking on Goodreads. Not a literary analysis, review of overall popularity*, a ranking (where you specifically put one book above another), or even a timed survey (where people have an incentive to rally their like-minded friends to get a vote in before a time limit). Just a list where an editor posits a category, people can nominate any book** in the category, and then Goodread members upvote them (and it looks like you can upvote as many as you want, so you voting for RP1 does not mean you cannot do the same for Old Man’s War) in an ongoing basis. All we know is that more people that care to do this process clicked for RP1 than any of the others. It is a very special kind of popularity contest -- one where having the most people that say 'oh yeah, I think I kind of liked that, I'll give it a thumbs-up' is the dominant measure of success.
*or of purchase, if discussing the book from a sales/economic perspective.
**with at least 1000 overall ratings.

Note also that the reporting of this as newsworthy is an article in Parade -- the pamphlet quasi-magazine included in Sunday papers in the middle with the sales ads. So kind of weighted in audience towards younger boomers and older gen-Xers (people who still get physical newspapers) -- the same people nostalgic for when Spielberg and Back to the Future were the biggest of deals that made Ready Player One a success. Mind you, Parade did not make RP1 end up at the top of that list. However, someone there saw that it had and decided that this was an article waiting to happen.

None of this is meant to diminish the actual book Ready Player One. It was... fine, I guess. Certainly not my idea of epic or enduring literature, but not actively worse than whatever Michael Crichton novel probably would have held a similar position on a similar list when I was growing up. My point is more that it being at the top of this list does not prove anything particularly grand and informative about the state of science fiction or of reading audiences.

Oh I totally get all that. I’m just being a hater for hate’s sake.

 

[Reynard]

I don't think Ready Player One is the best personally, i'd say The Martian is so far

This 15-Year-Old Novel Is Considered the Best Science Fiction Story of the 21st Century So Far

The 21st century is really still only in its infancy, but there is one novel that stands out as the best science fiction so far. It also has a movie and sequel!

www.yahoo.com

If The Martian and Ready Player One are the top contenders for Best Sci Fi of the 21st Century, I would suggest the creator of that list doesn't particularly like Science Fiction.

 

[trappedslider]

If The Martian and Ready Player One are the top contenders for Best Sci Fi of the 21st Century, I would suggest the creator of that list doesn't particularly like Science Fiction.

Reading the article reveals a few facts:
Fact one: The list is made up of votes from Goodread users, with this particular 15-year-old novel 251,954 with 2,543 votes.
Fact: two: The martian was my own addition
Fact 3: "SO FAR"
Fact 4: I did not actually click on the list
fact 5: Here is the list, which puts The Martian at number 2 Best Science Fiction of the 21st Century (1315 books)

 

[trappedslider]

There are a lot of good books in the list. I haven't read Ready Player One, so no comment. The nice thing about books is one can read another, they don't get jealous.

so,why does my TBR pile keep glaring and muttering at me when i bring home a new book?

 

[Reynard]

Reading the article reveals a few facts:
Fact one: The list is made up of votes from Goodread users, with this particular 15-year-old novel 251,954 with 2,543 votes.
Fact: two: The martian was my own addition
Fact 3: "SO FAR"
Fact 4: I did not actually click on the list
fact 5: Here is the list, which puts The Martian at number 2 Best Science Fiction of the 21st Century (1315 books)

Ah. I replied too quickly.

Goodreads -- you know, Amazon's astro-turf book site -- doesn't actually tell us much past popularity. "Quality" does not really come into it. Of course those people would pick RP1.

 

[trappedslider]

Ah. I replied too quickly.

Goodreads -- you know, Amazon's astro-turf book site -- doesn't actually tell us much past popularity. "Quality" does not really come into it. Of course those people would pick RP1.

snob much? After looking at the list again, there's quite a few that I haven't heard of, some i have heard of but still haven't read.

 

[trappedslider]

April fools day means nothing to me. My life is a joke as it is.

 

[VashVet]

April Fool’s Day feels antiquated and inappropriate to the era of the Internet and social media. Online pranks, viral jokes - (the entire existence of the Onion ) plus the tendency for people to take actual pranks too far just makes the entire concept kind of lame.