Friday, February 22, 2019

The Map of Science Fiction


In a parallel universe '100 Years of Sci Fi' is called '100 Years of Non-Fiction'. In a completely different parallel universe it is known as '100 Years of SYFY'. We don't live in either of those parallel universes so we shall call it by its given name.

100 Years of Sci Fi is an interactive map of science fiction novels listed on Good Reads. All the sci-fi novels on the map are organized by similarity. In other words novels which share common sci-fi themes are grouped closer together. Using the map you can search for your favorite novels and authors and find other works of science fiction which share common themes.

Novels on the map are linked when they share common keywords on Good Reads. The novels are placed in clusters of works which share similar keyword signatures. If you click on the 'Legend' button in the map sidebar you can filter the map to show all the works that share a common keyword theme. The map menu also allows you to filter the maps shown by theme, concepts and date of publication.

If you click on an individual novel on the map you can read a brief synopsis of its plot, view its list of keywords and its date of publication. 100 Years of Sci Fi was created using openmappr a visualization tool for mapping networks.

4 comments:

John B said...

You do know that the term Sci-Fi is strongly disliked in the literary Science Fiction community, as it was a term invented for trashly media SF

The captcha here is very irritating, and dissuades me from commenting again

Jo Lindsay Walton said...

John, with respect, why wouldn't you count people who made this tool as members of the literary SF community? So if they're cool with calling it sci-fi I'm cool with that too! I think the distinction you mention used to hold, but it's been eroded in recent years.

Anonymous said...

I've always spelt it like it's pronounced - "skiffy".

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