Here at Tor.com we happen to know for a fact that there are a multitude of undiscovered colors floating around in the multiverse. Certain members of our staff have even seen them! But when it came to terrestrial colors, we really wanted to know just how many SF&F novels featured a color in their titles. As we often do, we turned to our loyal Facebook and Twitter followers for answers. Here’s what happened when you looked at your colorful bookshelves and compared apples with Clockwork Oranges.
There were 108 unique titles. Good work color diggers! (What do the shovels of color diggers look like?)
6 titles had more than one color
44 (41%) were actual colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink)
39 (36%): absence of color (black, white, or grey)
22 (20%): metals (gold, silver, copper, brass, chrome)
7 titles (6%) were not actually colors! Jade & opal are definitely stones. Meanwhile, while we love rainbows, (double or otherwise) “rainbow” is not a color. Nor is the world “color” a color. Or colour.
10 titles (9%) didn’t contain actual colors if you include the 3 that featured “amber.” Is amber a color in addition to being a rock-type substance? [Edit: Percentage of this stat updated as of 2/11.]
47 occurrences in which some kind of noun is directly modified by modified by a color word. (i.e. people, skies, planets, and a certain golden compass)
18 people beat out 16 creatures in the kingdom of colorful titles. Hooray for people! Those orcs/aliens/dragons/robots can’t get us! (Remember the pink robots from that Flaming Lips song?)
There was a trifecta of colorful dragons. (We’d like you to imagine dragons racing like horses now) Also 2 unicorns, and 3 gryphons.
“The White Dragon” is apparently the name of two different books! (One in Anne McCaffrey’s Pern Series, while the other is by Laura Resnick and part of the In Fire Forged series.)
There was a lot of colorful royalty with 9 princes, emperors, kings, princess, etc. Also 3 knights! Though we’re not entirely sure, Sir Gawain & The Green Knight might be the first colorful knight to be featured in a title of book.
In our survey there was only ONE orange. And it’s famous! A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
And now, we’re off to discover new colors through magic and space travel!
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