Laboratoria Fantastiki, or FantLab (russian: Лаборатория фантастики, "

speculative fiction Speculative fiction is a term that has been used with a variety of (sometimes contradictory) meanings. The broadest interpretation is as a category of fiction encompassing genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, na ...

laboratory"), is a

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

website dedicated to

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

and

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...

literature. It was founded in 2004 by Alexei Lvov.

Content

The website contains an extensive user-populated database of books, annotations, and reviews. Unregistered users have access to author pages, ratings, news and awards. If users sign up, they can review and rate books, generate reading lists. They can also create their own bookshelves and publish articles. In June 2013, the site had over 88,000 members and over 244,000 works by authors had been added. In April, 2012, the 2000th author (

Murray Leinster Murray Leinster (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975) was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie ...

) was added to the database. Fantlab calls its mission: *To compile bibliographies for any author writing in Science Fiction or Fantasy genres, complete with maximum information about the author, and his or hers biography, including awards and nominations. *Fair rating for books and authors based on reader votes and book reviews. *Recommended titles list, based on individual profiling. *Classification system for books and titles. *Publishers plans, rumors and gossip. *Special awards and recognition *Personal Articles published by Authors *User forums where literature related interests can be discussed *FantLab is not an electronic library, that's why the texts of literary works can not be downloaded.

Author's pages

Collected information for Russian and non-Russian writers is presented on Author's pages. Each author’s page will have biography completed with photos and bibliography. Bibliography is a compiled list of known published and unpublished works, derived from multiple sources by comparisons and additions that characterize its reliability. All author’s works are categorized into cycles, series and epics. Each will have publishing editions information along with edition’s detail. Each item in bibliography displays average rating, count of readers and number of reviews. Any title’s page reflects number of people who read and rated it, an average rating, annotation, comments or synopsis, listing of parent series, epics, collections or anthologies and awards where applicable. Title’s page will also contain any available information for published editions, including cover images, sorted by year and divided between Russian and non-Russian editions.

Awards and Recognition pages

FantLab is tracking all of notable international literary awards such as

Locus Award The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards voted on by readers of the science fiction and fantasy magazine ''Locus'', a monthly magazine based in Oakland, California. The awards are presented at an annual banquet. In addition to the pl ...

Hugo Award The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier a ...

Pulitzer Pulitzer may refer to: *Joseph Pulitzer, a 20th century media magnate *Pulitzer Prize, an annual U.S. journalism, literary, and music award *Pulitzer (surname) * Pulitzer, Inc., a U.S. newspaper chain *Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a non-pro ...

World Fantasy Award The World Fantasy Awards are a set of awards given each year for the best fantasy literature, fantasy fiction published during the previous calendar year. Organized and overseen by the World Fantasy Convention, the awards are given each year a ...

and others. In 2007 as popularity of the site grew and number of daily visitors reached approximately 4 thousand a day, Fantlab decided to implement a voting system that allowed nomination of popular and best reviewed books, this resulted in

FantLab's Book of the Year Award The FantLab's book of the year award (russian: Книга года по версии Фантлаба) are a set of awards given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works published in Russia during previous year. The awards are name ...

. It is given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works of the previous year.

Recommendations

Recommendations are a list of titles suggested for reading. Fantlab's

recommendation system A recommender system, or a recommendation system (sometimes replacing 'system' with a synonym such as platform or engine), is a subclass of information filtering system that provide suggestions for items that are most pertinent to a particular u ...

prognoses how reader will feel about an unread title. To get it, think-alike ratings and titles are analyzed, averaged in weight measures of equal measures of likeness. Resulting recommendations are based on one or more similar ratings. On recommendations page you will see maximum of 3 series, 10 novels, and 10 short stories that reader is most likely to like.

Rating System

System creates ratings of writers and works based on readers ratings. Ratings will be derived by average reader rating of the title and calculated by a complex statistical correlation formulas.

Invisible Connections

Invisible Connections are a result of correlation analysis based on rated titles. When a user is registered, this section will display pairs of users with highest positive (think-alikes) and lowest negative (antipodes) coefficient of correlation.

Author's journal

Fantlab is also an online magazine, published on the Internet through

bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...

. Fantlab's writers journal includes various news, announcements, reviews and articles. Authors publish their works through their

blogs A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

http://fantlab.ru/blogs. Subscribers of the blogs are notified of new publications. All specialty blog 'Columns' are administered by an individual editorial panel. Any registered of FantLab user can create a blog column and publish their work. Among authors currently publishing their work on FantLab are well-known writers and journalists like, Vadim Panov,

Alexey Pehov Alexey, Alexei, Alexie, Aleksei, or Aleksey (russian: Алексе́й ; bg, Алексей ) is a Russian and Bulgarian male first name deriving from the Greek ''Aléxios'' (), meaning "Defender", and thus of the same origin as the Latin Ale ...

, Vladimir Puziy, and many others.

FantLab's awards and recognition

*In 2009, site received "Mech Fantastiki" (russian: Меч фантастики) award on a "Strannik" (russian: Странник) congress. *In 2010, site received a prize "the Internet-Roscon" (russian: Интернет-Роскон) on a Roscon convent. *In 2010, site was nominated on

Eurocon Eurocon is an annual science fiction convention held in Europe. The organising committee of each Eurocon is selected by vote of the participants of the previous event. The procedure is coordinated by the European Science Fiction Society. The first ...

prize for best magazines *In 2011, site won

prize for best magazines

References

{{Reflist

External links

Information about this site in English
Russian literature websites Russian speculative fiction Ukrainian speculative fiction Internet properties established in 2004 Speculative fiction websites