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more about #infoporn more comments → Anekanta - killed by a cacodemon: Unfortunately, correlation does not prove causation. What if it's the other way around, and the demand for Dr. Who follows UFO interest? more » LaserWolf: I suspect the prevalence of sightings in metro areas is directly related to the prevalence of *people* in those areas. We'd need to see a map of, say... more » Jonny_eh: Looks like the number of sightings correlate with the public's interest in UFOs. Which causes which? I suspect the public interest fuels the sightings... more » Roklimber: I'm surprised they're not showing data possibly correlating ufo sightings with crop circle appearances. I mean, after all, don't crop circles nutjobs ... more » reddingofish: There don't seem to be as many as I expected over Cardiff. more » marlowespade: That's pretty cool. It also looks like there's a spike in sightings with the release of each Star Wars movie. /enjoys applying arbitrary theories more » ManchuCandidate: I think the proliferation of Military SF series has a lot to do with it. Or the 50 billion (slight exaggeration) series that David Weber, John Ringo ... more » Grey_Area: But doesn't Tor publish more than twice as many books as HarperCollins? Looking at my stack of ARCs, about half are from Tor and the rest are from eve... more » PrairieGirl: Sequel-mania was going strong as far back as the mid-eighties, but it never seemed as bad for sci-fi as it was for other genres. I always thought fa... more » goldfarb: the Outer Explosions saga really went down hill after book 14... the other trend in publishing has been to disguise the fact that a book is the first... more » TemporalSword: I'm pretty sure Robert Jordan accounted for, like, 99% of the fantasy increase, there. more » Dr Emilio Lizardo: Not surprising. A sequel has a prebuilt audience and is less of a risk for the author and the publisher. I know I'm guilty of reading a sequel even ... more » braak: You are, as usual, completely correct.: Interesting. So, what happened in 1998? more » BeautifulAgony: Buffy Summers rates: 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 I claimed "cool gadgets" because she does often get to use some nifty magical gear, cool weaponry and such. I'm... more » -
#chartporn
British UFOs Choose Their Times And Places With Great Care
Britain's National Archives disclosed every reported UFO sighting from 1959 through 1992. This chart shows the prevalence, by year, and the locations of the sightings in 1990-1992. Can you spot the pattern in this chart from the Guardian newspaper? More » -
#chartporn
When Sequels Took Over Science Fiction Books
If you feel like you've noticed more and more science fiction books labeled "Book Seventeen of the Outer Explosions saga," you're not imagining things. A plague of sequels has overtaken science fiction books, judging from a statistical study in StrangeHorizons. More » -
#infoporn
Why All Female Superheroes Look the Same
This chart compares the body mass index (BMI) of superheroes in Marvel comics with those of typical American women and men. Researchers Karen Healey and Terry Johnson used physical stats from Marvel's Web site to show that the vast majority of female superheroes are underweight, though the males are mostly normal. Just to remind you, in the BMI scale, below 18.5 is underweight, 18.5-24.9 is normal, and over 25 is overweight. Healey's analysis of what this means is hilarious and thought-provoking. More » -
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#chart
When The Economy Booms, Dystopias Rule
Economists agree the U.S. is sliding into recession, and that can only mean one thing — fewer movies about oppressive systems that crush the souls of ordinary people. We charted the number of dystopian movies in the U.S. for each of the last 30 years, against economic downturns, and found that dystopian movies are counter-cyclical. That is, dystopian films do best when the economy is booming, and a fall in the number of dystopian movies may predict a recession. Click through more details, including a bigger version of the chart and a list of dystopian movies by year. More »
