Over at Science Blogs, some grumbling about Diana Comet’s periodic table and how unscientific it is. I think the exact words are “good idea, hideously executed” but my eyes blistered and I had to click away (see the movie and the slide “How Many People Will Complain About This Periodic Table”). All my hard work, so easily dismissed! Hurts the soul. But not really.
What’s interesting is the proposition that there should be more organization to it besides the chronological aspect. As if writers can be reduced and measured. I knew early on that I wasn’t going to list birthdates. It’s not as if I was going to count how many books or stories each wrote and group them by how prolific they were. I could put, hmmm, dragon fiction in one group, space cowboys in another, some slipstream over here . . . but that would require an encyclopedic familiarity with everything any of my 117 writers ever wrote.
The one criticism I will agree with is that if you get the color chart, the colors are purely aesthetic: then again, ain’t nothing wrong with aesthetics.
I will say that the post has some great links or mentions of other periodic tables:
– The Beeriodic Table (Periodic Table of Beer)
Diana Comet Presents 