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Last Updated:
Tuesday, 20 December 2022 15:43 EDT, © 2022
Analysis:
The characters in the Persistence of Vision series invent a
Hilbert space of literature characteristics, so it seemed appropriate to use
that concept on my novels (and, not shown here, my scientific books). Each
dimension in this literary Hilbert space spans the values of a particular
descriptive variable, such as Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and action scenes per
5000 words of text. The concept is that similar works should have similar
dimensional-values - or directly explainable differences, such as the number of
words in a short story versus the number in a novel.
The entire Hilbert space can be contained in a SAS JMP file;
however, visualizing dozens of dimensions is difficult. However, JMP
provides a 3-D tool that allows for rotation of the visualization. I've
provided three salient views that I rotated so that their 2-D renderings provide
some information.
Size
The size metrics include page count, word count, number of
chapters, and number of figures.
Overall, the novels average 350 pages, with the Dark Energy series being
slightly longer, averaging 360 pages, and the Sense of Gravity series being
shorter at 340 pages. The word count average is 113,500 and is fairly
consistent across the series, with a standard deviation of 13,000 words.
The number of chapters range from 18 to 26, with an average of 23. The
number of figures has the largest variation, ranging from 1 to 20 per novel;
however, most have about 7 figures.
Content
The content variables are science, religion, sexy scenes,
action, travel, business, and figures. The occurences and intensity of
each of these are divided by the word count for each novel and converted to
per-5000-word metrics.
The first scatterplot shows the values of science, religion,
and sexy scenes per 5000 words for each of the novels. The data are
color-coded by series. The Dark Energy series shows more spread in both
the sexy scenes and the religion dimensions; however, the averager values for
each series are close in all three dimensions.
The second scatterplot compares the values in the action,
travel, and business dimensions. There are major differences in all three
dimensions; however, again, the averages for each series are close together.
The final content dimension, figures per 5000 words, is not
displayed. The Dark Energy and Sense of Gravity series contain books with
significantly more figures than their series averages and more than in the Persistence
of Vision series.
Style
The style variables are dialog per 5000 words, reading grade
level, and passive sentence fraction. As above, the data are coded by
series in the scatterplot. The Dark Energy novels are written at a
slightly higher grade level, 7.5, than the other two series, 6.3 and 6.4.
But generally speaking, the dialog and passive sentence values are comparable
among the series.
Conclusion
In some dimensions, there are differences among the series;
however, they are generally similar. The 3-D scatterplots have a reference
in the legend to the Springer-published scientific books; however, they aren't
shown in the views, as they are widely separated from the science fiction data
points. Thus, the Hilbert space concept can produce the desired
differentiation among literary works, clumping scientific works in one volume
and science fiction in another. Further differentiation within these
novels would be possible. For example, separating the different sciences
that are used would separate the series and some intra-series separation.
(Anthropology is strongly used in the latter three novels of the Dark Energy
series, but not in the first three - or in the other two series, for that
matter.) Similarly, identifying the science-fictional theme would allow
differentiation - and, if combined with analyses of other SF works - would allow
for clumping along that set of dimensions.
This analysis serves no purpose other than being fun.
However, there are people who do literary scholarship in SF and they might find
the technique to be useful.
Return to Dean Hartley Science Fiction
Return to Dr. Dean S. Hartley III Entrance.
