Epilogue
Every future here
was written in the past.
These twelve series were chosen because readers and award juries keep returning to them. Their facts come from open data; the summaries are original. Pick one up — the data cannot tell you how they feel to read. To see how real forecasts did, go to Predictions vs Reality.
Data sources
Notes on the data
Publication years are original first editions. Page counts are approximate, for typical English editions. Awards list major wins only (Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Clarke, BSFA, plus two reader-voted awards marked as such). Story time spans are estimates from the books, and some are rough.
The idea genome is an editorial reading of each series, not a database.