A number of SF-related sites have been talking about the “Periodic Table of Women in SF” put together by Sandra McDonald, presumably passed around at Wiscon. James Nicoll has a list of the authors, and SFSignal has a link to the table, which I will reproduce here to save you the annoyance of opening a PDF:
This is an area where my nerdiness gets the best of me, because while I appreciate the concept– listing a whole bunch of really good female authors as a way to draw attention to them– the execution is dreadful. It’s particularly disappointing given that the whole project is in reference to science fiction, which is a branch of literature that you might hope would have some appreciation of science.
The key flaw– which shows up in lots of “periodic table” lists– is that “periodic table” is not Scientist for “list.” The whole point of the periodic table of the elements is that they aren’t just listed, they’re arranged in a very specific way that gives you information about the elements and their properties. The real periodic table looks like this:
The arrangement of rows and columns is not random, and it’s not a matter of mere graphic design. Those columns mean something– elements in the same column share properties. All of the elements in the leftmost column are highly reactive metals, all of the elements in the rightmost column are non-reactive gases, and so on. The position of an element in the periodic table tells you something about its chemical and material properties– in fact, this feature of the table is one of the crucial steps leading to the modern understanding of chemistry and atomic structure.
If there’s an organizing principle behind McDonald’s table, it’s not obvious to me, and it’s not in the PDF containing the image. The authors– many of whom are outstanding authors, and nearly all of whom are worth reading– are just put on there in some apparently random order. It doesn’t even have the right number of rows and columns.
This is really a missed opportunity. With some thought beyond “let’s see if we can come up with 117 names and two-letter symbols for our favorite authors,” this could’ve been something really cool and interesting. If you grouped authors into columns by some sort of literary similarity, say, that would be really awesome, and even sort of useful, in a “if you liked this author, you might like the authors above or below her on the table.” It’d take a lot of work, but it’d be worth it.
As it is, it’s just irksome to nerds like me.
(I saw it first in James’s post, and went looking for it as a result. I was thinking of copying James’s “which of these have you read” thing (lower bound: 50, but I may have missed a few), but got distracted by my annoyance at the misuse of the term “periodic table”…)
Now, if someone could figure out a way to sing all these names to the tune of “The Major General’s Song”, we’d really have something.
And a page with months, days and numbers in any old arrangement will be the same as a calendar.
By the way does the real P T of E have antecedents?
Antecedents, YES.
Also specialized versions.
Okay, yes, true, I agree with everything you say here about what the Periodic Table is all about and how just amazingly cool it is, BUT:
Man, that’s an awesome idea that the Ms. McDonald did. I applaud her ingenuity.
THANK YOU! This has been irksome for years. I remember learning about the periodic table in high school chemistry and grasping the amount of information that is held in the arrangement of the elements. The “discovery” of the periodic table, including predicting undiscovered elements, is one of the more impressive “aha!” moments in the history of science, if you ask me. (Which you didn’t.)
Yes, but the writer periodic table has “fill in your own!” which the Periodic Table lacks. I should be able to write-in my own elements!
I believe this “beeriodic table” meets the criteria: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45642115@N07/4192616403/sizes/l/
@7
I believe this “beeriodic table” meets the criteria:….
This is actually the “Periodic Table of Beer Styloes”, and does seem to meet the criteria.
The REAL Beeriodic Table
http://www.beeriodic.com/poster.htm
seems to simply find beers that have names that can be related to the actual chemical element names/abbriviations. For example, Na is “Naughty Nellie’s Ale” Some of the references are funny, but I don’t think it meets Chad’s wishes.
Hi Chad, Halfway through your post I was thinking that grouping the authors by some sort of similarity would have been extremely useful (and a lot more colorful). Perhaps someone will take that idea and run with it. And, if the new and improved McDonald’s table actually followed the rules of a periodic table, then as the commenter above pointed out, the “discovery” in the table might actually be “predicting undiscovered elements,” which in this case might be a yet undiscovered outstanding female author.
I haven’t checked every name, but it looks like they’re ordered chronologically — down in columns first and then across, in ascending order. So in effect authors from the same eras, whose work is kind of similar, *are* grouped together in columns, at least vaguely.
I have long wished for someone to make a giant map of all science fiction writers ever, showing who hangs (or hung) out in the same circles — that would lead to a more precise periodic table of writers. But it would also be harder. 😉
Whoa. I’ve been seeing periodic table lists on the internet for years. I’d always read down the columns thinking they were related, not be able to understand it and always think that I wasn’t cultured enough to understand the connections.
It never crossed my mind that to other people a periodic table might just be a big table of random things.
Now the internet makes a lot more sense.
The Periodic Table of the Vegetables is, IIRC, an amusing poster that keeps the sequence and the two-letter abbreviations of the elements, but finds a (semi-)plausible vegetable to fit the letters. No practical intent whatever, just fun.
Thank you.
For reasonably coherent “elemental” groupings, I like the Periodic Table of Awesoments:
http://www.dapperstache.com/dapperstache/content/sots/periodic-table-awesoments
They didn’t get the point of my 2004
PERIODIC TABLE OF MYSTERY AUTHORS
http://magicdragon.com/UltimateMystery/periodic.html
Click on a one- or two-letter abbreviation for your Author (and corresponding element)!
Hotlinks to individual authors, whose names also appear at the “status” line, usually at the bottom of your browser page.
To find out more about Mystery Authors, use the alphabetical listings hotlinked below.
Over 3,444 Mystery/Detective Authors + 1,024 Fictional Characters
|A: Jeff Abbott-E. C. Ayres
|B: “M.M.B.”-Siobhan Byrne
|C: Michael Cadnum-Doug Cushman
|D: Barbara D’Amato-Michael Allen Dymmoch
|E: Arlton Eadie-Hannah Evans
|F: William Faulkner-Jacques Futrelle
|G: Emile Gaboriau-D. Gutterson
|H: Edward Everett Hale-C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
|I: Kozo Igarashi-Peter Israel
|J: Claire Rainwater Jacobs-Francis K. Judd
|K: Hugh MacNair Kahler-Kathleen King Kunz
|L: Ed Lacy-H. P. Lovecraft
|M: Philip MacDonald-Marcia Muller
|N: Frederick Nebel-Ramesh Nyberg
|O: Maxine O’Callaghan-Rodrigues Ottolengui
|P: Frank L. Packard-Parker Pyne
|Q: Robert Quackenbush-Elizabeth Quinn
|R: Clayton S. Rawson-Jay Russell
|S: Robert Sampson-Joseph Szebenyei
|T: Hake Talbot-Peg Tyre
|U: Ed Udovick-Arthur W. Upfield
|V: Heidi Vanderbilt-Ken Vose
|W: C. C. Waddell–Ed Wyrick
|X: Mr. X-Agent X-9
|Y: James Yaffe-Kathy Young
|Z: Fay Zachary-Sharon Zukowski
Return to Mystery/Detective Table of Contents
[Grateful acknowledgment to Professor Erich Friedman for his permission for me to use the table structure and color GIFs of the Periodic Table, above, whose Mystery Author roll-over status names and correlation of Element Abbreviations with Mystery Author names are not the fault of Professor Erich Friedman but purely the work of Professor Jonathan Vos Post]
Periodic Table of the Mathematicians
Thank you for your comments and ideas on the periodic table.
The authors are arranged top to bottom, left to right, by year of first publication. (Approximate, since some authors do not post complete bibliographies, or drop early publications.) The table begins with the pioneers of the 1930’s and ends in the year 2008.
I considered and dropped the idea of grouping around themes or common characteristics because that seemed likely to be more trouble than worth.