Favorite sf character poll
Will points to an article about a poll done by SFX (a British magazine that claims to be "the biggest, brightest and boldest science fiction magazine in the world"); they surveyed readers to determine "the top 100 SF/fantasy characters of all time." Presumably it's a TV/movie magazine, since all the characters in the top 10 are TV and movie characters rather than characters from books:
- Doctor Who
- Spike (from Buffy)
- Buffy
- John Crichton (from Farscape)
- Aeryn Sun (from Farscape)
- Han Solo
- Willow (from Buffy)
- Darth Vader
- Angel
- Gandalf
Btw, the magazine site doesn't list the full top 100 but does mention that 84 of the 100 are male.
As Will noted, it would be interesting to see how different such a list would be if done by an American magazine. I suspect it would depend a great deal on who you asked and (as Will noted) when. Presumably there'd be Star Trek characters on the list whenever you did the survey, but which ones would probably vary over time.
Of course, results might also vary based on how you asked the question. I'm guessing these are "favorite" characters rather than, say, "best portrayed" or anything like that.
I'm also interested in top 10 written-speculative-fiction characters. I'm guessing if you got a big enough sample of people who consider themselves fans, you'd end up with Honor Harrington and Miles Vorkosigan on the top-10 list, and if you spread the net even wider to include the general public, you'd get Star Wars and Star Trek characters from the novelizations.