Our new ratings system.

As editor of Avatar I decided a while ago to look into developing a ratings system which could be applied by all reviewers to all of the different things we review and which could serve as a quick and handy reference for the reader when comparing like with like, or like with unlike, or even unlike with unlike.

While other publications might use a percentage rating system or marks out of ten or even star based ratings, we are STARBASE Leicester so for all future reviews we will be using our own unique rating system based, not just on stars, but on their Spectral Class.

As I'm sure you all know, this Stellar Classification system categorises suns based on their size, luminosity and temperature. From the O-class which is the hottest type of star (between 28,000 and 50,000 degrees Kelvin), to B (10,000 to 28,000 degrees Kelvin), then A, F, G, K and finally with M as the coolest (2,500 to 3,500). Under the Morgan-Keenan System these Classes are further subdivided into 10 sub-classes, O9 being hotter than O1, which in turn is hotter than B9 etc. 

By this system we will define the best movie, book, video game, etc, that could ever be created (which may be a theoretical impossibility) as O9 while the worst ever would earn the rating M0. The hotter something is, the better. The cooler, the worse it is, unless or course you happen to confuse the word 'coolest' with something being good, but I'm sure that won't happen.

In addition to this vector we also have the Luminosity of a star, denoted in Roman numerals i, ii, iii, iv and v. We will be using this rating in our reviews to measure the success of a work when compared to the other works by the same Author, Director, Publisher etc. 

All of this is of course in the hands of the particular reviewer, but under this system a great book such as Neuromancer might be rated as O6v (being rated very high and the best of Gibson's works by the reviewer) while a dreadful (even by its Directors own admission) movie such as Transformers 2 could score as low as M4ii (not the worst film ever and not Michael Bays worst film, but close).

Conversely our own Sun which is a medium class main sequence star rated as G2v would be roughly equivalent to the Bill Cosby film Ghost Dad.

So I hope that will all be very clear to anyone with even a passing interest in astrophysics and provide you, the reader, and them, the reviewer, with a simple and clear method of grading and comparison. Enjoy!

Mark E. Cotterill