Post posting

Another year gone by! April 12, 2017 is six years from when I first compiled a list/overview of what were then the most visited posts here at SF and Nonsense. To my continuing surprise, Postscript (or is that post post?) was itself instantly popular. Six years later, it's number three on the all-time list.

Let the annual tradition continue.

Old posts ...

Here's the latest all-time top-ten list, which I've assembled from data captured a few days ago. The format is: title/link; posting date; last year's rank in parens (if it was in the top ten); and a few words about the post content. Among these all-time favorites, there wasn't much change: it's the same ten posts, with the order among only the lower ranked posts slightly shuffled.

1. Of moons, clouds, and the state of the art(s), 13 August 2013 (1). A science and tech post.
2. Betrayer of Worlds, 12 October 2010 (2). The publication announcement of Betrayer of Worlds, the 4th book in the (in the end, five books long) Fleet of Worlds series.
3. Postscript (or is that post post?), 12 April 2011 (3). The original SF and Nonsense stats post.
4. Of fleet Fleets and Known Space, 1 February 2011 (4). Discussion of the Fleet of Worlds series; reading order within the larger Known Space series.
5. Trope-ing the light fantastic (life-sign detectors), 29 February 2009 (5). One from my tropes-in-SF series of posts. 
6. There is no fate (of worlds) but what we make ourselves, 21 August 2012 (6). The publication announcement of Fate of Worlds, the fifth and final book in the Fleet of Worlds series -- and, as it happens, also the fifth and final book of Larry Niven's Ringworld series. 
7. Humans, Pak, Puppeteers: in one word, 26 September 2011 (7). Another Fleet of Worlds series and Known Space post. 
8. Fleet of Worlds (at last), 9 November 2011 (10). I finally blogged about Fleet of Worlds, the release of which predated startup of this blog.  The occasion: release of a new/TPB edition. 
9. The neural interface you always wanted is (at least, could be) coming, 17 June 2014 (8). Some forecasting about the named tech, inspired by my participation in a days-long MEMS-and-nanotech workshop.
10. Kilometerstone (et. al.), 10 December 2008 (9). Commemorating an early round number (stretching a point just a tad) in my blogging.

... and new

The longer a post has been, er, posted, the more opportunity it's had to attract eyeballs, so, at some level, expecting older posts to have accumulated the most visits makes sense. OTOH, older posts can become dated, ceasing to attract readers -- and many posts have, of course. The entries on the above list clearly have staying power. I attribute some of that continuity to the ongoing popularity of the Fleet of Worlds series ... and I'm okay with that :-)

How about recent visits to SF and Nonsense? I'll give you the most popular ten posts for the past month (meaning thirty days, spanning a calendar-month boundary), Blogger making that compilation easy. (Alas, Blogger doesn't offer visit stats for periods between "all time" and "last month.") Not surprisingly, there's overlap with the all-time list -- but (also not surprising) recent/2017 posts got half the slots for the recent period.

The recent top ten:

1. Betrayer of Worlds, 12 October 2010. The announcement of Betrayer of Worlds, the 4th book in the (in the end, five books long) Fleet of Worlds series. 
2. Yippee ki-yay, 24 January 2017. A physics-news round-up. (What? You were expecting a Diehard homage?)
3. Short stuff, 10 January 2017. Recent news regarding my short-fiction output.
4. Biological bits, 19 December 2016. A round-up of biological news items.
5. Buy-a-Book Saturday (heck, buy books all weekend), 22 November 2016. My most recent annual variant on Small Business Saturday. Who's a smaller business than an author?
6. There is a tide in the affairs of spacefarers ..., 22 March 2011. Space news ... from six years ago.
7. Stranger than fiction?, 10 March 2017, a bit of self-congratulation when three of my 2016 science articles were announced as finalists in the Analog annual readers poll.
8. As hard as ... hydrogen?, 21 February 2017. Breaking news about an incredible form of hydrogen that occurs naturally in the Solar System (if at all) only in the core of Jupiter.
9. Techno-copia, 8 February 2011. Another science-and-tech round-up.
10. Quoth the Gw'oth, 2 April 2013. A wealth of information about the Gw'oth: the intelligent alien species I contributed to Known Space.

Same time next year?