Aka, the effect of gamma rays on man in the moon marigolds

July 24, 2014 5:00 PM

Which nation has the most science-fiction readers per capita?

Really, I am just wondering if there is a correlation between populations that are science-fiction readers and education/national spending/social services, GDP, GNP, quality of life, etc.

posted by Mike Mongo to Society & Culture (4 answers total)

Remember that general literacy rates will also affect this and you'll need to take them into account--otherwise you run the risk of mistaking a correlation with general literacy and those indicators with that of science fiction readers, since people who read science fiction can only come from the proportion of the population that is already literate. And I suspect general literacy rates would be the much stronger correlation!
posted by foxfirefey at 5:12 PM on July 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

What do you mean by science fiction?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:29 PM on July 24, 2014

I know that Dutch, American, British, and Japanese share sci-fi ebooks on bittorrent. Russians, Germans, and Poles like to write military sci-fi fan-fiction.
posted by irisclara at 6:44 PM on July 24, 2014

Response by poster: What do you mean by science fiction?

Dostoevsky as opposed to, say, Tolstoy.

In modern parlance, Douglas Coupland rather than Chuck Palahniuk. Or Douglas Adams rather than J.K. Rowling.
posted by Mike Mongo at 8:48 PM on July 24, 2014