James Nicoll Reviews

This month sees the addition an entirely new, very boring exciting statistic, for which see below the cut. 

May 2022

22 works reviewed. 13 by women (59%), 8 by men (36%), 1 by a non-binary author (5%), 0 by authors whose gender is unknown (0%), and 8 by POC (36%)

Year to Date

107 works reviewed. 60.5 by women (57% ), 42.5 by men (40%), 4 by a non-binary author (4%), 0 by authors whose genders are unknown (0%), and 39 by POC (36%).

Grand Total to Date

2115 works reviewed. 1184.5 by women (56%), 882.5 by men (42%), 30 by non-binary authors (1%), 18 by authors whose gender is unknown (1%), and 613.75 by POC (29%).

	2022 May	2021 May	2020 May	2019 May	2018 May	2017 May	2016 May	2015 May	2014 May
Women	13	10	11	12	12.5	12	12	14	4
Non-Binary	1	2	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unknown	0	2	1	0	0	0	0	0
POC	8	9	9	9	5	6	4	3	0
Total	22	21	21	21	22	22	23	28	4
% Women	59	48	52	60	57	55	52	50	100
% Non-Binary	5	10	5	0	0	0	0	0	0
% Unknown	0	10	5	0	0	0	0	0
% POC	36	43	43	43	23	27	17	11	0
		2021 TD	2020 TD	2019 TD	2018 TD	2017 TD	2016 TD	2015 TD	2014 TD
Women	60.5	57.5	56.6	57.75	58.5	58	63	77	6
Non-Binary	4	3	4	0	2	1	2	0	0
Unknown	0	3	3.5	2	4	0	0	0	0
POC	39	44	41	42.75	42.5	34.5	25	8	0
Total	107	106	106	103	108	106	105	132	6
% Women	57	54	53	56	54	55	60	58	100
% Non-Binary	4	3	4	0	2	1	2	0	0
% Unknown	0	3	3	2	4	0	0	0	0
% POC	36	42	39	42	38	33	24	6	0

And now for the extremely boring exciting new feature! 

For years I’ve been grumbling about the frequency with which I encounter autocracies in science fiction and fantasy. It occurred to me that perhaps this was merely observer bias, that because autocracies irritate me, I notice them more. Further, it would be entirely possible for me to keep a running count of government types in fiction. And so I shall.

I considered stealing Traveller’s government classification system but for personal convenience I have decided to use the following categories:

Not Applicable: For anthologies, non-fiction texts and other works that lack a single setting.
Unclear: For works where I could not figure out how government functions.
Anarchy: For works with no functioning governments
Pure democracy: For works where all inhabitants have a say in communal decisions
Representative democracy: For works where people select representatives to make decisions on their behalf.
Oligarchy: For works where a small group of people govern without meaningful input from the populace.
Autocracy: For works where a single person governs without meaningful input from the populace.

Works are categorized using the time-honoured ​“I know it when I see it” system. I will not be explaining how individual books were categorized and for even greater clarity I will not be justifying why I categorized books as I did. This isn’t intended as a detailed study, but merely rough statistics to provide me with perspective.

Month	May	April	March	February	January
Government Type
Not Applicable	3	1	3	6	4
Unclear	1		3
Anarchy	1	1		1	1
Pure Democracy	0				1
Representative Democracy	7	8	8	5	3
Oligarchy	6	9	4	7	9
Autocracy	4	2	5	1	3
total	22	21	23	20	21
YTD
Government Type
Not Applicable	17	14	13	10	4
Unclear	4	3	3
Anarchy	4	3	2	2	1
Pure democracy	1	1	1	1	1
Representative Democracy	31	24	16	8	3
Oligarchy	35	29	20	16	9
Autocracy	15	11	9	4	3
total	107	85	64	41	21

Not the result I expected. While Oligarchy is definitely the front runner, Representative Democracy comes in a very respectable close second. This is, I think, because a lot of the works I read this year are set in pre-Apocalyptic Canada and the US, both of which I treated as Representative Democracies, at least of a sort.