12.22.00:	General scores update Books added Imajica The Great and Secret Show Everville Clive Barker Raising the Stones Sideshow The Family Tree Gibbon's Decline and Fall After Long Silence Sheri S Tepper Guilty Pleasures Laurell K Hamilton Moon-Flash Patricia A McKillip The Rogue Queen L Sprague De Camp Pawn's Dream Eric S Nylund General statistics Number of Books: .......................... 4969 Number of Authors: .......................... 619 Number of Series: ............................ 937 Number of Books with 5+ votes: ... 1320 Number of Books with 0 votes: ..... 1565 A lot of books this time were pretty borderline, as far as fitting into the genre(s) of F/SF goes. In the end, they all passed muster, but just barely. "Muster" in this case involves me hitting amazon.com and similar places, reading synopses and such, and making a judgement call. In all cases when I do so, if someone out there feels I've ruled the wrong way, drop me a line with a reasoned argument why it does indeed fall under this site's jurisdiction, or why it does not. It is a tricky call to make, especially when books (like Guilty Pleasures, this time) dip into horror structures but aren't really meant to be horror, and in other similar cases. The border between F/SF and horror (and sometimes, romance) is pretty blasted blurry. Oh, and, on another note, I noticed a great many votes submitted for Herbert's Dune, making me suspect a certain miniseries (which I, alas, couldn't watch, curse you AT&T Cable) provoked a number of people to go reread the book for comparison purposes.
12.11.00:	General scores update Books added Primary Inversion Catch the Lightning The Last Hawk The Radiant Seas Ascendant Sun The Quantum Rose The Veiled Web The Phoenix Code Catherine Asaro General statistics Number of Books: .......................... 4957 Number of Authors: .......................... 618 Number of Series: ............................ 937 Number of Books with 5+ votes: ... 1314 Number of Books with 0 votes: ..... 1568 Pretty standard update, not too many new votes, but a few. Finals week approacheth for me, and others, I'm sure, so not a huge amount of reading time (well, lots of time for reading TEXTBOOKS, but those are rarely fantasy/sf).
11.28.00:	General scores update Books added Return to Mars Moonrise Moonwar Ben Bova Kirinyaga Santiago Ivory Mike Resnick Operation Luna War of the Gods Poul Anderson The Stone and the Maiden Dennis Jones Lucifer's Hammer The Legacy of Heorot Beowulf's Children The Gripping Hand Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Steven Barnes General statistics Number of Books: .......................... 4949 Number of Authors: .......................... 617 Number of Series: ............................ 935 Number of Books with 5+ votes: ... 1308 Number of Books with 0 votes: ..... 1571 Lots of votes entered this time around, so dig in and enjoy. Oh, and if anyone notices that I already have any of those books by Niven somewhere else, please tell me. Those names sound way to familiar to not have been in there already, but I couldn't find them. Particularly Lucifer's Hammer. Oh well.
11.20.00:	General scores update Books added The Last Dragonlord Dragon and Phoenix Joanne Bertin Mathemagics Margaret Ball By Blood Alone William C Dietz Faces Under Water Saint Fire Red Unicorn Tanith Lee Wind in the Stone Andre Norton Tamsin Peter S Beagle Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire J K Rowling Snow White, Blood Red Black Thorn, White Rose Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears Black Swan, White Raven Silver Birch, Blood Moon Black Heart, Ivory Bones Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (editors) Winter's Heart Robert Jordan Rejected books Coldfire Trilogy C S Freedman Reason: Already there, under C S Friedman Wizard's First Rule, etc Terry Goodkind Reason: Aleady there General statistics Number of Books: .......................... 4936 Number of Authors: .......................... 616 Number of Series: ............................ 934 Number of Books with 5+ votes: ... 1244 Number of Books with 0 votes: ..... 1617 Sorry for the long delay in updating, I've just been busy with a number of different things (not book 9 of WoT, that only took 3 days, now another 2 years until the next one...). And added to being busy, @Home, true to their nature, let their webservers bounce up and down for a week or so, making updating (or even accessing) the site very difficult. So I apologize for the delay as well as any downtime people have experienced. Hopefully both my ISP and I will get our collective acts in gear, now.
10.29.00:	General scores update General statistics Number of Books: .......................... 4916 Number of Authors: .......................... 613 Number of Series: ............................ 932 Number of Books with 5+ votes: ... 1226 Number of Books with 0 votes: ..... 1657 Fairly quiet week. From what I've heard there are quite a few people madly skimming book eight of the Wheel of Time, preparing to delve into Nine, upon its release on the seventh. Oh, and a Happy Halloween to everyone too, just as a preemptive strike. Best costume idea I've heard so far is the Escaflowne guymelef from the anime series of the same name. If only I were that motivated...
10.21.00:	General scores update New books added Thor's Hammer The Spear of Mars Orion's Sword Schimmelhorn's Gold Gilpin's Space Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot Reginald Bretnor The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov Top Dog Dog Eat Dog Inhuman Beings Jerry Jay Carroll The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman Angela Carter Nightmares and Geezenstacks Angels and Spaceships Daymares Fredric Brown Angel Fire East Terry Brooks General statistics Number of Books: .......................... 4916 Number of Authors: .......................... 613 Number of Series: ............................ 932 Number of Books with 5+ votes: ... 1224 Number of Books with 0 votes: ..... 1664 Lots of books and votes added this time. Not much more to say than that.
10.13.00:	General scores update New books added Slaughtermatic Steve Aylett Brittle Innings Count Geiger's Blues Michael Bishop Talking Man Terry Bisson Land of Dreams James Blaylock A Civil Campaign Louis McMaster Bujold Rejected books Obernewtyn Isobelle Carmody Reason: Already there Sabriel Garth Nix Reason: Already there The Woman Who Rides Like a Man Tamora Pierce Reason: Already there General statistics Number of Books: .......................... 4901 Number of Authors: .......................... 610 Number of Series: ............................ 930 Number of Books with 5+ votes: ... 1189 Number of Books with 0 votes: ..... 1688 A moderately busy week, but unfortunately, it looks like a few of the vote submissions got truncated, and from the pattern, it looked like they were submitting new books for me to add... So anyway, if you submitted some book suggestions but don't see them listed above, send me an email with them and I'll work from there. Some of the individual pages are getting a little long, and some specific versions of netscape and ie truncate after a certain length, for some unknown (and seriously annoying) reason. I'll have to repartition them when I have some spare time.
10.07.00:	Stand down from red alert General scores update New books added The Book of the Sword The Book of the Spear The Book of the Cauldron The Book of the Stone Diana L Paxson Diplomacy of Wolves Vengeance of Dragons Courage of Falcons Holly Lisle Colors of Chaos L E Modesitt Brothers in Arms Margaret Weis and Don Perrin Rhapsody: Child of Blood Prophecy: Child of Earth Elizabeth Haydon Shadow of the Hegemon Orson Scott Card The Redemption of Althalus David Eddings Rejected books Millenium Orion Ben Bova Reason: Already there Removed book The Wandering Stag Diana L Paxson Reason: Never written General statistics Number of Books: .......................... 4895 Number of Authors: .......................... 609 Number of Series: ............................ 930 Number of Books with 5+ votes: ... 1182 Number of Books with 0 votes: ..... 1702 Ok, it's a week later than I anticipated, but I've reconstructed the .dat files from backups and recovered all the damaged data. Things should be fully functional at this point, so if anything looks really wrong, drop me a line to tell me about it. That includes page layout problems, most of which I hopefully have resolved by now, but you never know. Lots of books added this time. The last two may cause followers of those authors to start, so let me just say now that neither is out yet. The Eddings book is due in late December and the Card book in early January. However, both of them turned up at one of the local used bookstores here, in the form of advance proof copies (labeled NOT FOR SALE pretty clearly, I might add, heh). So, since they're out there in that form, I thought I'd add them now. I was tempted by both, I must say, especially 'Hegemon', except I still haven't read Ender's Shadow, and I doubt I could get them both done before the end of the year anyway, given the other books I already have lined up. Also, I must mention that I had the distinct pleasure of receiving the Paxson books to add from the author herself. It's quite an honor to have such well-published writer interested enough my site to correct my mistakes :). Given that the average is still under 50 hits a week, I believe, that really made my day. Anyway, Happy Reading, all, and hopefully I will be able to get back into a pseudo-regular schedule of updates now that all the backend tinkering is resolved.
09.27.00:	Danger Will Robinson (or whatever) Ok, when I added the new datafields to the main data files, I damaged them. (If you're curious, because of my idiocy, the program that added the new stuff to every line had the variable set to hold the average score dimensioned as an Integer. Ouch.) Anyway, I have backups of the files, so the data is not lost. However, that means I have to redo the process to add the new fields to those backup files, and re-enter the last batch of votes. School started today, and I'm incredibly tired, so that's not going to happen today, or probably tommorow. Hopefully this weekend. Feel free to keep submitting votes, and the new feature, the votespread breakdown, is still valid. It's just the average scores (and, by extension, the top lists), that are temporarily botched. I'll get it resolved as soon as I can.
09.25.00:	Vote Spread Breakdown added! General scores update New books added Look to Windward Iain M Banks Soldiers Live Glen Cook Storm of Swords George R R Martin Faith of the Fallen Terry Goodkind Past Echoes Mindancer Reave the Just Stephen Donaldson A Fortress of Grey Ice J V Jones Sky of Swords Sir Stalwart The Crooked House Hero Strings West of January Shadow A Rose-Red City Dave Duncan Probe Counterprobe Carole Nelson Douglas Weaveworld The Thief of Always Clive Barker Rejected books The Strange Power The Possessed The Passion Lisa Jane Smith Reason: Not SF/F General statistics Number of Books: .......................... 4883 Number of Authors: .......................... 607 Number of Series: ............................ 926 Number of Books with 5+ votes: ... 1165 Number of Books with 0 votes: ..... 1720 Yes, I'm still alive. Just today I finally finished up the work I was doing on the program backend, and processed the ~150 vote submissions that had been piling up while I did so. You're sure to notice the new data, in the form of small bar charts to the right of every book. That chart signifies the spread of scores that book has been given. (Well, actually, only a rough estimate right now, since I only had the last few months' votes on hand to generate the initial seed; therefore, they're not totally accurate. With time, they will improve, though.) So now, you can see the difference between two books with the same score, if that interests you. It displays the somewhat subtle difference between books that everyone scores the same and books that get a huge range of responses. What significance you attach to that info is of course up to you. Hopefully with all that done, I can get back to a regular updating schedule. Of course, classes start on wednesday, so I'll be a little hedgy on what my pattern of updates will be until I see just how demanding my schedule is. Anyway, enjoy the new data, the new books added, etc. I know of one person in particular who's been calling for a few of those books for a while now...