The results of the Apocalyptic Sweet Sixteen of the 2020 Tournament of Zeitgeisty Writers are in.
Round Three had some really tight match-ups. Dark horse José Saramago, whom I seeded 59 of the initial 64 writers, was neck-and-neck with recent Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, but surged near the end of the poll to win.
Ursula K. LeGuin also ran a tight race against Kurt Vonnegut before edging him out:
Philip K. Dick was competitive against Don DeLillo, but never got out ahead. My gut feeling is that PKD might’ve advanced if he’d ended up against someone else, but I guess the same is true of most of these brackets.
After initially trailing for a few hours in the poll, Aldous Huxley surged past Angela Carter, who never caught up again.
Yvegny Zamyatin kept it close with Margaret Atwood, but never took the lead on her.
Three of the match-ups were decisive victories. J.G. Ballard beat William Gibson by a healthy margin, Tommy Pynchon bested DFW, and Cormac McCarthy came out strong over George Orwell.
Here are the results of the Apocalyptic Sweet Sixteen, as well as the match-ups for Round Four, the Elite Armageddon Eight:
For me, the most interesting match-up is going to be Pyncon vs. DeLillo.
As always, this is only meant to be dumb distracting fun.
Full twitter poll results:
Biblioklept 