I’m in the process of taking a more comprehensive look at the past 60 years of science fiction or so (ending at 2010 for now, to avoid the potential noise of the recent ebook explosion, independent press, and general diversification of the market), but an intriguing development has emerged.

Have you ever retired a human by mistake?

Some have argued that one of the reasons that the 1960s may rank so well among readers is because the best from that era has been given enough time for nostalgic fans to have forgotten the forgettable but popular books of the moment, and the cream of the crop is the only set that attracts attention. This “Classic Effect” unfairly pits a settled canon of supernovels against today’s as yet unfiltered greats. It boils down to: “The good old days were not as good as we think they were, and today’s era will be the good old days…given enough time.”

I have uncovered a tantalizing bit of evidence that appears to argue the opposite.

GoodReads, a social media site for book lovers, draws upon thousands and even hundreds of thousands of apparent user and other reviews in order to rank its books. It also contains lists of books about which the participants are particularly fanatical. The users there have a user ranked “Best of Each Decade” list that we are examining for head-to-head comparison.

My side theory to this has been that if the “Classic Effect” is true, then the most recent decade (2000-2009) should suffer from “unsettled canon” drag upon reader ratings, while the settled stuff from the 1960s should have the benefit of less political argument and more zealous “pure” fans. The Classic Effect anticipates that the now-Classics from 1960-1969 will necessarily rank higher than the unsettled recent ones.

According to GoodReads, they don’t.

Looking at GoodReads top 15 Classics from the 1960s, the novels rank an average of 4.0 stars by users there. This is identical to the GoodReads ranks of the 2000s: 4.0 stars.

The “Classic Effect” does not show up there, and, because it does not, I suspect it is not a reasonable explanation for any discrepancies that may occur at Amazon. After all, if nostalgia should have an impact, it is more likely to occur at place for book fans who don’t have to have purchased the book to opine on it, rather than a place for book buyers, like Amazon. (Note: I realize that you can rate a book at Amazon without buying it, as well, but it is weighted toward verified purchasers.)

But that calm equivalence is actually where the chaos begins.

Not only are there some remarkable discrepancies on the GoodReads lists from both eras — for example, Stranger in A Strange Land “ranks” number #2 on the user list, but if you were to rank the list purely by user rating, the novel falls out of the top 10 altogether, and in the contemporary era, a similar thing happens to Perdido Street Station — but there is not one book from the 1960s list whose GoodReads star rating is higher than its correlated Amazon Star Rating. In fact, Classics Lord of Light (Zelazny), A Clockwork Orange (Burgess) and The Stainless Steel Rat (Harrison) lose more than a half-star from their high at Amazon, to their drop at GoodReads.

The 2000s do not suffer this effect. Where both eras enjoy an identical star rating at GoodReads, the reviewers at Amazon expose a significant gulf: The average star rating for 60s Bests is 4.3 at Amazon. For Contemporaries? 4.0

In other words, if anything, GoodReads is burying the Classics by comparison, providing a false sense that the overall quality of the best of each era has not declined. Their lists are hiding more than a quarter of a star on average from beloved old books. This is the opposite of the “Classic Effect”. Call it “Contemporary Bias” instead.

The evidence:

Best of the 1960s (According to GoodReads)

Best of the 2000s (According to GoodReads)