The Sword and Laser discussion
March Madness 2026 - Information Thread
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You can create a prediction bracket between now and when the first round of voting ends.
I will be creating a round 1 thread when I have a few minutes
What is the Sword & Laser March Madness tournament you ask?
Each year we take nominations from our members for the Sci-Fi and Fantasy books they think the group should read and narrow it down to 16. We create two brackets, one for each genre. That means there are 8 Sword picks, and 8 Laser picks.
The 16 books are selected by our benevolent leaders based on your suggestions in the nomination thread and a super secret criteria of their own making for seeding etc.
Once the brackets are set we have 4 rounds of voting. Rounds 1-3 will take us from 8 Sword books and 8 Laser books down to 1 of each that will go head to head for our to be our pick for April.
This single elimination style tournament is inspired by some sporting event that takes place every year during the month of March. Does your nomination have what it takes to win 4 straight head-to-head matchups and become our April book pick? Let the madness begin!
This thread will serve as the main information center for the tournament and I'll be creating separate threads for each round.
Nominations thread
Bracket: https://challonge.com/aluqf5ow
Round 1 thread
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Round 2 thread
Round 3 thread
Finals thread
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Schedule & Details
Here is the schedule for this year's tournament:
Nominations: February 5th - February 19th 7pm ET
Round of 16: February 22nd - 28th 11:59 PM ET
Round of 8: March 1st - 7th 11:59 PM ET
Round of 4: March 8th - 14th 11:59 PM ET
Final Round: March 15th - 21st 11:59PM ET
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Nomination FAQ
How Many books can I nominate? One. No seriously ONE BOOK.
If you're not clear I'm either going to pick the first book you mention or simply ignore your nomination all together.
How do I nominate a book? Post in the nominations thread your choice with the following format:
I'd like to nominate book title by author(s) for the bracket name bracket.
Example:
I'd like to nominate Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan for the Sword bracket.
Can I second someone else's nomination? Sure but that's also YOUR nomination. See Question 1 about how many books you can nominate. Still just One.
What if I want to nominate a Sword Book And a Laser Book? Did you read question 1? You can only nominate ONE book.
Can we nominate any book we want? The only criteria is that it's a Fantasy or Sci-Fi book we haven't read. That said, it's preferable that you also nominate a book by an author we haven't read as well. Those nominations will likely have a better chance of making the final bracket.
We also have a rule to prevent authors from nominating their own books. In addition we'd like to prevent people from nominating their friend's book etc. If I see you doing this, I will first warn you to pick another book, and later simply ignore your nomination all together.
Can I change My Nomination? Yes, but if you do so, please specify which book you are changing it from, as I'm doing this by hand.
What if I make a mistake in my nomination? No problem. Just please make another post correcting your mistake. Please Do Not Delete or edit your original post as I may miss the change. Thanks.
How many books will be selected? 16 (8 Fantasy, 8 Sci-Fi)
When do nominations close? Thursday, February 19th 7:00 PM EST. This will give me some time to do the final roll-up of the nominations and Tom & Veronica some time to make the final bracket.
Which books will be selected? Whichever books Tom & Veronica want. They will simply use the nominations in this thread for suggestions.
How will the books be seeded? This is entirely up to Tom & Veronica. They may take into account how many people have nominated a book, but there is no guarantee.
The book I want was already nominated. You can second a nomination made by someone else, and I'll count how many people have nominated that book and sort accordingly.
No one else is nominating my book, should I change my vote to something more popular? In my opinion, you're better off just nominating a book you're interested in us reading than hoping to game the nomination system by changing your vote. Most years some of the books in the final bracket had only a single nomination, while several books with multiple nominations didn't make it. Multiple nominations may help it get noticed or in the seeding, but really all of that is up to Tom & Veronica.
How are the Nominations Sorted? The numbering is based on number of nominations, followed by when they moved up the list (i.e. based on post order). This number will likely not reflect the actual seeding as that will be entirely up to Tom & Veronica.
My nomination is missing/wrong! Sorry about that. I'm doing this by hand. Please post again and yell at me for missing, or not grouping it with another nomination for the same book, or marking you down for the wrong book, etc. If you're not clear about your nomination (or you nominate 2) I may add the "wrong" book. Please be sure you're clear, and I can fix it.
What if I don't know what bracket my book belongs in? If your book could be a sword or a laser, please just pick one.
What if someone nominated a book I want to also nominate, but they picked the wrong bracket? Too bad. The first person who nominates a book gets to pick the bracket. This tournament is for fun, not a debate on if a book is more fantasy or sci-fi.
You put my nomination in the wrong bracket If you specify a bracket and I messed up and put it in the wrong place, please let me know and I'll correct it. If you DIDN'T READ my instructions and forgot to tell me the bracket, I'm going to do my best to guess which bracket its supposed to be in. So please don't do that.
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