Team 1.21 Gigawatts recently concluded our judging for the semifinal round of this year’s SPSFC (the 5th annual competition). All of our reviews and posts can be found at our team homepage.

We nominated two semifinalists from our initial allotment of 25 books. These were:

  • Black Sails to Sunward by Sheila Jenné
  • Who Nuked Silicon Valley? by Mike Donoghue

For the semifinals, each team was given four more books to read from the other teams’ semifinal picks (there were ten semifinalists in total). Our four additional semifinalists were the following, in alphabetical order:

  • ab inito by Jacob Terracina
  • Cold Blooded by Rohan O’Duill
  • Generations by Noam Josephides
  • Time Traitors by Eli Donovan

We’ve posted reviews on our team homepage, so if you’re looking for our thoughts on the individual books, head there. I’ll give you a general summary of how it went here.

We had a target of having at least two of our judges read each book. We achieved this goal. For most of the six books, we had three or four readers, although for two of them, we had two readers. We also wanted to post at least one judge review for each book, and we’ve accomplished that as well.

We liked all of these books and found them worthy of the semifinals. We were required to rate each book on a ten-point scale to combine ratings with other teams. Our average rating for each book ranged from a bit under 7 to almost 10. In ranked order, our average ratings led to positions as follows (including the two books we initially promoted as semifinalists).

  • ab initio (1st place)
  • Black Sails to Sunward (2nd, tied)
  • Who Nuked Silicon Valley? (2nd, tied)
  • Time Traitors (4th)
  • Cold Blooded (5th, tied)
  • Generations (5th, tied)

In some cases, there was not much space between our ratings (including ties, as shown). Our team ratings were averaged with the team ratings of other teams to generate an overall semifinal rating, which was then used to promote the top six semifinalist books to the finals. Of the six semifinalists we read, three moved on to the final round:

  • ab initio
  • Time Traitors
  • Generations

Obviously different judging teams responded quite differently to different semifinalist books, which is common and expected in this kind of competition. Our ratings for these books will carry on into the final round, and we will have no more input on the ones we’ve already rated. Our job is now to read and rate the other three finalists that we have not yet read, and the other teams are doing the same thing. The six finalists will thus have a team rating from each of the five judging teams, and the book with the highest average team rating will be our champion.

Watch our team page for more updates and reviews as we continue with the finals!