Tai Xiang's Random Projects

Coding is hard, so is math, so is English: these technical bits of this research process all yielded obstacles I was prepared to overcome, to understand, to learn about.

Yet I was ill-prepared for the most difficult task of them all, the most daunting plight in which this entire process hinges upon: Who the heck even has a comprehensive science fiction corpus that details major science fiction works throughout the ages?

So thus begins a wild goose chase that actually did yield a nifty little goose: The hunt for the ultimate Science Fiction data-set.

I started with one of my English Professors, popped into an office hours: Hey do you by chance know where I could grab a nice and comprehensive science fiction corpus?

Two little paths came out of that meeting: A resident digital humanities expert at the Claremont Colleges and the Stanford Literary Lab.

Stanford Literary Lab did not reply to my email unfortunately. They were probably up to some other things. Our resident digital humanities specialist however did redirect me to a guy at Temple University, who had created a new-wave science fiction corpus of over 250 books! Pretty cool stuff. It certainly was very helpful.

However, there was still a couple holes to fill: New-wave unfortunately does not cover the historical timeline this project runs through, and thus a dreaded final conclusion was reached: I had to vet and create my own science fiction corpus through the ages.

To do this, I had to deem whether a work of science fiction was considered a strong work representative of the genre and the time period. This also proved to be a little tough, as To ensure consistency of results, I created a general criteria to classify each work I looked through. Here is the criteria:

Popularity at the time: How did this book sell when it first came out? If your book doesn’t really sell when it first comes out, it either did not resonate with the public all too well or got lost in the sea of print that gets tossed to the masses on a yearly basis. Obviously this will be a little bit harder the earlier we go since statistics aren’t readily available.

Influence: Does your work influence later authors to come? If your writing inspires later figureheads of the genre, then you’re doing something right.

Awards: Has your work won any awards? Hugo, Nebula, Locus, British Science Fiction, all that good stuff. If your work is popular with the critics, it has to have some sort of artistic merit. Right?

Controversial: Oh no, the present masses can’t take the dire futuristic predictions you make in your work! Are the schools rushing to ban your novel on the futuristic society of sexualization and violence? Is Grandma Sue appalled by the excessive drug use in future utopian societies?

Author Reputability: Are you a famous author? Are you later considered to be a major figure in science fiction? You’re probably good at writing then if that’s the case, so your work gets some extra merit.

Predictions of the Future: One of the big components of science fiction is the futuristic predictions that come through it all the time: Did you get it right, or are humans never going to get cars that fly through the air at the speed of sound? If you are correct, your work will get a little bit more merit.

Now this criteria does fluctuate based off certain time periods, as trends and literary flourishes and stylistic aspects ebb and flow, so the weights are slightly different for each time period. Science fiction didn’t really find its feet until the 1940s and 1950s, and thus works created during that period are a little hard to evaluate due to the relative thematic and stylistic immaturity. On the flip side of this, more modern works are also difficult to evaluate due to their recency and the whole lack of a the ‘test of time’ thing. However, a fairly formidable data-set was still compiled with this data-set and I hope to add some more stuff to later on. Here it is:

1900 – 1920

Darkness and Dawn – England

The Moon Pool – Meritt

With the Night Mail – Kipling

Herland – Gilman

The World of a Department Store – Peck

Iron Heel – London

Princess of Mars – Burrough

Ralph 124C 41+

1920 -1939

Armageddon 2419 AD – Nowlan

Skylark Three – Smith

The Martian Odyssey – Weinbaum

Anthem – Rand

Lest Darkness Fall – de Camp

Slan – Vogt

Who Goes There – Campbell

Moon Maid – Burroughs

1940 – 1959

If This Goes On – Heinlein

IRobot – Asimov

Vintage Season – Moore, Kuttner

First Lensman – Smith

The Big Time – Leiber

Foundation – Asimov

Farenheit 451- Bradbury

Second Variety – Dick

The Little Black Bag – Kornbluth

To Serve Man – Knight

1960 – 1979

Stranger in a Strange Land – Heinlein

2BR02B – Vonnegut

Dune – Herbert

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress -Heinlein

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Dick

The Left Hand of Darkness – Le Guin

The Word for World is Forest – Le Guin

Dreamsnake – McIntyre

Gateway – Pohl

1980 – 1999

Contact – Sagan

Ender’s Game – Card

Hyperion – Simmons

Foundations Edge – Asimov

The Uplift War – Brin

Neuromancer – Gibson

Speaker for the Dead – Card

The Vor Game – Bujold

Snow Crash – Stephenson

Red Mars – Robinson

2000 – 2019

The Road – McCarthy

The Martian – Weir

Old Man’s War – Scalzi

Anathem – Stephenson

Story of Your Life – Chiang

World War Z – Brooks

After the Fall, During the Fall, Before the Fall – Kress