about and FAQ
[plain text: about and FAQ]
who are you? do you have any association with the mod of the previous blogs?
just a guy who loves to read sci-fi and fantasy! I have no association with the previous blog's runner, other than having followed both poll blogs from when they started, but I loved the blogs and the format in which they were run so much that I volunteered to step up and carry on the torch, so to speak.
what happened to the old blogs?
see these posts [post 1; post 2] from the owner of the old blogs, which are no longer active.
i submitted to the old blog, but it got archived before my submission was ever posted! should I submit again to you?
no fear - the old blog's owner has compiled all submissions into a document for me so that I can pick up where they left off and work through the backlog!
are you going to change anything about the poll format/the way that the blog is run?
highly unlikely, other than perhaps some behind the scenes changes to how information is gathered and posts are queued. I am also starting off with submissions closed and a less frequent queue as I figure out my pace and get my bearings, but I hope to ramp it up to at least 4 posts/day (what the old blogs were running on) eventually.
FAQ carried over from the old blog:
[plain text: FAQ carried over from the old blog:]
a note re series: I am more than happy to queue up an entire series on request! if this is what you want, please indicate that explicitly in your submission, especially in cases where the first book in a series and the series as a whole have the same title. otherwise I need to ask for clarification, and it slows down the process of getting your submissions queued up.
where do I submit books?
submissions are currently open!
[plain text: submissions are currently open!]
here. before you submit books, though, please check the list of books that have already been posted or queued. (note: if you’re using the mobile app on an Android phone, you may have to copy the link into your browser in order to access it.) *yes, this link leads to a page on the old blog. I will add a page like it to this blog closer to when I'm ready to start posting polls! for now, you can see what has already been posted.
when submitting multiple books, please submit all of them in a single ask so it’s easier for me to keep track of, especially if you’re submitting them anonymously. also, please include the author’s name!
what counts as having “read” a book?
did you finish the book? then you’ve read it. if you did not finish the book, you have not read it.
do audiobooks / having a book read to you count as having “read” a book?
do you think you’ve “read” the book? then you’ve read it. I’m not here to police your experiences or your relationships with physical books / ebooks / audiobooks / whatever.
does [graphic novel / manga / manhua] count as a “book”?
for the purposes of this poll, a book is a prose narrative, so graphic novels and other visual media with text do not count as “books”.
does [“novella” / “novelette” / short story] count as a “book’?
if a short story was originally published in a single issue of a periodical, in a multi-author anthology, or as part of a single-author collection, I will most likely not accept it unless it has subsequently been published as a standalone volume of more than ~75 pages. if you submit a text where this applies and you think it should be accepted anyway, please elaborate on why with your submission.
however: if a short story was originally published in the form of a standalone volume (i.e., not as part of a collection of texts), then yes, under normal circumstances that counts! I don’t care if it was a 10-page pamphlet or a 1000-page behemoth: if it was first published on its own, including as an ebook, it’s a book.
you can see my more detailed guidelines for short fiction here.
the one exception is things like (e.g.) The Fellowship of the Ring, which is explicitly the first volume of a single, larger book — in a case like this you would submit The Lord of the Rings, rather than its component volumes.
I encourage you to submit short fiction to @have-you-read-this-short-fiction even if it’s not eligible here!
does [short story collection] count as a “book”?
for the purposes of this poll, no, unless the stories are linked into some kind of overarching whole. simply sharing a common setting does not qualify (so Yoon Ha Lee’s Hexarchate Stories would not count as a “book”).
what about [series] as a whole?
no. this blog is asking about single books. feel free to submit multiple books in a series if you’re so inclined, though!
what counts as “sci-fi”?
if you think something should count as sci-fi, feel free to submit it. I haven’t read every book, and I have a flexible definition of the genre. there are some limits to my flexibility, but as long as it is set in the future, has some kind of futuristic technology, is set an an alternate timeline, or includes other non-realist phenomena that are explained (pseudo)scientifically, I’ll probably consider it sci-fi.
I’m a bit more ambivalent about older texts — I tend to think that something like Lucian’s True History (for example) can’t really be meaningfully said to be science fiction, for all that it involves space travel. once we start getting into early modern philosophical novels like More’s Utopia we’re on somewhat firmer ground, but really only in the nineteenth century do we start getting things I would unequivocally consider to be science fiction.
note that I am definitely willing to include works of science fantasy like Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb books or Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality, as long as there’s clearly sci-fi stuff going on along with the magic.
what about fantasy?
there’s a blog for that. :-)
does it have to be in English?
no! I read a number of languages and would be more than happy to include books in any language. the demographics of tumblr mean that you’re probably unlikely to get an overall “yes” result for something not in English unless it has a very popular English translation, but I’m happy to post the poll anyway — and maybe get some book recommendations in the languages I read. :-)
you can see links to all the language tags on this blog here.
why don’t you include blurbs for the books in these polls?
there are both practical and ideological reasons for this. tl;dr, it’s a lot of work, presents logistical problems for books not originally published in English, and there are books and authors that I categorically don’t want to promote beyond showing people the cover.
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check the #faq tag [including the old blog's #faq tag here] for additional questions and answers.
previous blog here, if you would like to see polls from before october 2024: @haveyoureadthisscifibook