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A thread for those who like science fiction and want to learn a little about social networks (or if who like networks & scifi already!) We start with this cool map of 2,633 popular science fiction novels, with keywords harvested from GoodReads 1/8 app.openmappr.org/play/100YrsOfS… 
Now, just to make it interesting, think of the books like people. Which of these books have the best social position? We can use Social Network Analysis (SNA), a common tool in sociology, to find out. For more on the science of this, see this link 2/8 faculty.chicagobooth.edu/ronald.burt/re…
First, lets find "clusters" - subcommunities in the network. There are lots of ways to find these, this uses an approach called "cosine similarity" to find communities based on keywords that commonly go together (e.g. feminism-time travel-humanity-alt. history-steampunk). 3/8
Clusters are cliques when they essentially mostly link to each other, as in this little genetic engineering-post scarcity theme cluster off to the side. Cliques have high levels of internal trust, but are often cut off from other information that makes them less innovative. 4/8
For individuals in a network, the number of connections matters, having lots of connections makes you "prominent" & influential, which makes networks work for you. In this example, books w/many keywords are very connected, like @nealstephenson & others known for complex epics.5/8
How you are connected also matters. If you have lots of connections in a cluster, you are "embedded," which tends to make your more trustworthy & important to that community, but also pushes towards conformity. If the Outlander books were a person, they would be very embedded.6/8
You can also be connected across communities. Bridging clusters, especially if they are mostly unconnected with empty "structural holes" between them, makes you a "broker" and leads to creativity and innovation. Halting State by @cstross, for example, bridges structural holes.7/8
Thus, network structure & connections both matter! If you want to see a great case of how networks can lead to advantage (outside of our fictional science fictional example), the classic paper on the rise of the Medici is readable and fascinating. 8/8 stats.ox.ac.uk/~snijders/Padg…
