Emphyricist
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2017
- Messages
- 47
I've mentioned repeatedly that I have an impression of six names in SF constituting a tier of writers unto themselves, insofar as popular awareness of them goes. People who generally may have no familiarity with SF have often heard of the "big three": Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein, while literarily-minded people who "don't read science fiction" will still sometimes read Bradbury, Vonnegut, and Dick. Dick is to some degree the odd one out, since popular awareness of him stems from the adaptations of his books into films, and yet literary snobs are happy to read him.
I got into an argument in another thread (which I also started and don't want to derail) over my assertion that Dick used to be "second-tier" in another thread, by which I merely meant that he didn't initially have the name-recognition of other SF writers until Hollywood started adapting his books. I presented a Google n-gram which demonstrates my point, as well as the distinctiveness of five of these authors. Robert Heinlein appears to occupy the second tier, however this appears to be because results for "Robert Heinlein" and "Robert A. Heinlein" are almost exactly evenly divided. If you were to add those results, he would presumably score similarly.
It occurred to me that there are several science fiction writers who are often mentioned by people who don't read much science fiction. Margaret Atwood is someone who usually comes up in conversations about gender studies rather than science fiction; I've never heard anybody say "I don't usually read science fiction but I like Margaret Atwood," the way I've heard people do with Bradbury, Dick, and Vonnegut. While, like Bradbury and Vonnegut she doesn't consider herself a writer of science fiction, unlike them she's written only two science fiction books, and only one is widely read. This puts her probably closer to George Orwell and Aldous Huxley: a writer of a a particularly powerful piece of dystopian fiction who does not make a habit of writing science fiction.
The other SF writers people multiple people who don't read much SF have mentioned reading are Ursula Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, and Douglas Adams. I've also met a lot of people who've read Ender's Game, but this seems to be because it was required for a class, and I don't think I've yet to meet one who remembered who wrote it. Ursula LeGuin presents a similar problem for Google N-grams to Robert Heinlein, which two spellings of her name almost equally common, however even if you added the results together you wouldn't approach the popularity of what I think of as "the big six."
I present this n-gram, which has all of the names mentioned except Ursula LeGuin. We see that indeed the dystopian writers occupy a tier above the ones I think of as "the big six" (I've removed Heinlein on account of the aforementioned problems), though Orwell and Huxley have always held such a position, while Atwood's celebrity appears relatively recently. We also see that Ellison, Gaiman, Adams, and Card pattern below the "big six," but that Adams has enjoyed a steady rise in popularity which resembles a delayed version of Dick's. It's possible that I might be talking about "the big seven" in a few years, particularly since n-grams only go up to 2008, and most people I know who've read Adams have probably done so in the last decade.
I'm discussing all of this because I feel like, in this case at least, there's a fairly solid basis for asserting that those six (or seven, if you want to count Atwood was one of them and Orwell and Huxley in their own league), are in a class of their own, at least so far as notoriety goes. I'm not asserting that it means they're the best; the only one of those six (or nine) who numbers among my own top favorite authors is Arthur C. Clarke. But they're broadly accessible, and I enjoy them all.
However when I try to use n-grams to gauge tiers beyond that, it becomes less easy, since once I get beyond the second tier (SF authors who won a lot of awards), Google n-grams is often dealing in absurdly small sample sized, finding only one result of H. Beam Piper for example. I like Google n-grams as a rough tool, but it seems only useful for judging popularity at the highest level. Arguably you can also distinguish a few writers such as Ted Sturgeon, L. Sprague DeCamp, Harlan Ellison, and Douglas Adams, who have at various times risen noticeably above the second tier while still not approaching the first. It's also useful for identifying trends: it's gratifying to note that Jack Vance's popularity has seen a slow but steady uptick.
But the point of this is: I think that to some degree, it's useful to distinguish levels of notoriety among SF writers, and I think that there are objective ways to do it. Google n-grams is one way, but I'm sure there must be others as well.
And on a different note: can anyone find any writer who predominantly writes in SF yet approaches the popularity of the big six? I will note that Jules Verne doubles the popularity of any of the big six currently (though Asimov surpassed him at his peak), and H. G. Wells collapses the table such that all SF writers except Orwell, Verne, and Huxley look pretty much the same. However they basically founded the genre, and I think a lot of those mentions refer primarily to their influence. I don't know anybody who's generally not into SF who has read them.
I got into an argument in another thread (which I also started and don't want to derail) over my assertion that Dick used to be "second-tier" in another thread, by which I merely meant that he didn't initially have the name-recognition of other SF writers until Hollywood started adapting his books. I presented a Google n-gram which demonstrates my point, as well as the distinctiveness of five of these authors. Robert Heinlein appears to occupy the second tier, however this appears to be because results for "Robert Heinlein" and "Robert A. Heinlein" are almost exactly evenly divided. If you were to add those results, he would presumably score similarly.
It occurred to me that there are several science fiction writers who are often mentioned by people who don't read much science fiction. Margaret Atwood is someone who usually comes up in conversations about gender studies rather than science fiction; I've never heard anybody say "I don't usually read science fiction but I like Margaret Atwood," the way I've heard people do with Bradbury, Dick, and Vonnegut. While, like Bradbury and Vonnegut she doesn't consider herself a writer of science fiction, unlike them she's written only two science fiction books, and only one is widely read. This puts her probably closer to George Orwell and Aldous Huxley: a writer of a a particularly powerful piece of dystopian fiction who does not make a habit of writing science fiction.
The other SF writers people multiple people who don't read much SF have mentioned reading are Ursula Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, and Douglas Adams. I've also met a lot of people who've read Ender's Game, but this seems to be because it was required for a class, and I don't think I've yet to meet one who remembered who wrote it. Ursula LeGuin presents a similar problem for Google N-grams to Robert Heinlein, which two spellings of her name almost equally common, however even if you added the results together you wouldn't approach the popularity of what I think of as "the big six."
I present this n-gram, which has all of the names mentioned except Ursula LeGuin. We see that indeed the dystopian writers occupy a tier above the ones I think of as "the big six" (I've removed Heinlein on account of the aforementioned problems), though Orwell and Huxley have always held such a position, while Atwood's celebrity appears relatively recently. We also see that Ellison, Gaiman, Adams, and Card pattern below the "big six," but that Adams has enjoyed a steady rise in popularity which resembles a delayed version of Dick's. It's possible that I might be talking about "the big seven" in a few years, particularly since n-grams only go up to 2008, and most people I know who've read Adams have probably done so in the last decade.
I'm discussing all of this because I feel like, in this case at least, there's a fairly solid basis for asserting that those six (or seven, if you want to count Atwood was one of them and Orwell and Huxley in their own league), are in a class of their own, at least so far as notoriety goes. I'm not asserting that it means they're the best; the only one of those six (or nine) who numbers among my own top favorite authors is Arthur C. Clarke. But they're broadly accessible, and I enjoy them all.
However when I try to use n-grams to gauge tiers beyond that, it becomes less easy, since once I get beyond the second tier (SF authors who won a lot of awards), Google n-grams is often dealing in absurdly small sample sized, finding only one result of H. Beam Piper for example. I like Google n-grams as a rough tool, but it seems only useful for judging popularity at the highest level. Arguably you can also distinguish a few writers such as Ted Sturgeon, L. Sprague DeCamp, Harlan Ellison, and Douglas Adams, who have at various times risen noticeably above the second tier while still not approaching the first. It's also useful for identifying trends: it's gratifying to note that Jack Vance's popularity has seen a slow but steady uptick.
But the point of this is: I think that to some degree, it's useful to distinguish levels of notoriety among SF writers, and I think that there are objective ways to do it. Google n-grams is one way, but I'm sure there must be others as well.
And on a different note: can anyone find any writer who predominantly writes in SF yet approaches the popularity of the big six? I will note that Jules Verne doubles the popularity of any of the big six currently (though Asimov surpassed him at his peak), and H. G. Wells collapses the table such that all SF writers except Orwell, Verne, and Huxley look pretty much the same. However they basically founded the genre, and I think a lot of those mentions refer primarily to their influence. I don't know anybody who's generally not into SF who has read them.
