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Top 20 Geek Novels
Malacca writes "The Guardian's computer editor Jack Schofield has posted a list of the Top 20 Geek Novels in English since 1932. The polling method is unscientific, but it throws up some interesting choices. Definitions of 'Geek Novels' aside, the usual suspects like Neal Stephenson and William Gibson feature, but Terry Pratchett's 'The Colour of Magic' at #9? Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" at #17?" What would you put on that list?
It should be Small Gods, and it should be higher.
Where the hell is the Arthur C. Clarke?
The Guardian's computer editor Jack Schofield has posted a list of the Top 2*2*5 Geek Novels in English since 2*2*3*7*23. The polling method is unscientific, but my factorizations are geeky.
Hmm pratchett... has a fan newsgroup where he regularly interacts. What a geek!
qualified!!!
looks good to me. I agree with #9, Colour of Magic is a fantastic book. I was surprised by American Gods though, I would have thought Good Omens would have made it in its place. Maybe it was selected for a different reason then what I'm thinking for. I think part of the reason is the question was about "geek" novels, not just science-fiction, but also fantasy.
The top 10 are all novels which (while I havn't read them), I definately think of as geek novels that (such) people highly recomend.
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
Pick any one of them. While not the greatest in literature, from the time my father gave them to me to read as a kid I have always loved tinkering with stuff.
Also, 13% against Neuromancer? WTF?
Where is "Ender's Game"?
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Comon, a list of the top 20 geek stories and Lord of the Rings isn't on it?! This is a list made about nerds, not BY nerds!
I thought the "Ringworld" series by Larry Niven would have been worth a mention.. whatever happened to the movie that was supposed to be in production?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Sorry, can't take this seriously at all.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
RTFA... its freeking #1 on the list.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
You would have thought The Guardian could have sprung for the $19.95/month to get a thousand responses a month for a few months. Posting anything about 100 responses is weak. Anyone a subscriber to Surveymoney (or similar) and willing to post a more realistic survey?
If you look at the list, it's at the top, in the #1 position :p.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
Wah, no Bruce Sterling? But he has a powerbook and writes for Wired! Surely this is enough to be in the pantheon of geek writers! I am shocked and apalled.
E. Abbot's Flatland
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is in some ways a recap of the same idea: replace the human raised on Mars who doesn't understand normal humans with a newly sentient computer who doesn't understand normal humans. Although both are satires, Mistress is the more effective one, IMO, because it concentrates on satirizing one thing (republican government) rather than everything all at once. (And don't make the mistake of missing the satire in Mistress, as many people do. Life in the original penal colony as portrayed as a kind of anarchist utopia, whereas the revolution screws everything up by creating the evils of government.)
Find free books.
True geeks will not read these books until they are published online. Print is dead.
That's Bigboo TAY! TAY!
Where many young geeks got their start.
...
Usual rant about Tolkien and Clarke. But are we seeing only Sci Fi type novels here? I thought a lot of people would've loved stuff like Robert Heinlein, and Philip K. Dick's books. The moon is a harsh mistress, and Riverworld are amazing books.. And who in the world voted AGAINST the king of cyberpunk - Neuromancer?!
If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...oh, wait a minute - he already does.
"I, Robot" was not a novel. It was a collection of short stories.
I wish people would be more specific in asking for the best "geek" novels. Is it really fair to compare early, groundbreaking cyberpunk like SnowCrash with fantasy genre stuff like LOTR? Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of both, but how can you expect them to end up on the same list?
This is not quite the same thing, but iblist maintains a list of top books by rating. Geeks are disproportionally represented in their user base, so this is a not entirely unlike a "favorite geek books" list.
V for Vendetta, which is apparently coming out as a movie, is a great graphic novel. So while it's not a novel per se, it's hard to beat the geek factor of it being a graphic novel.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
...It's top 10 at the very least.
No Out of Harm's Way by Jack Thompson. I can't imagine why...
Running Weblogs with Slash. ISBN: 0596001002 You wouldnt be reading my *bullshit* if the origins of that book werent written.. right?
The culture novels own.
I am sad to see Vernor Vinge missing from the list. I really liked "A Fire Upon the Deep" pack mind network topography was great.
aka Soylent Green.
Make Room! Make Room!
ohh... geek novels... I thought they said Greek novels.
Ender's Game has to be the ultimate geek novel. I've read almost all of the books in TFA's Greatest Hits list, but Ender's Game beats them all.
It seems like only a few days ago that I saw this on the front page of Slashdot. Boy, I had forgotten that #11 on the list was Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Fortunately, Zonk was here to refresh my memory!
No Heinlein. No George O. Smith. Neil Stephenson is overrepresented. "Dune" really isn't that good. Especially since we all now have a much better idea how wars in deserts really go.
H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, C.S. Lewis, men who had command of the English language as well as futuristic imaginations. Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" also falls in that category.
More recently, there's J.G. Ballard's "High Rise", which is sadly out of print. But you can buy a used copy through Amazon's seller network for an arm and a leg.
I just started Cryptonomicon recently and was persuaded to do so after reading this Wikipedia article. It's incredible. Bruce Schneier invented a crypto system based on playing cards for the novel. It's this depth that I find so fascinating with Stephenson. It may be fiction but there's a great deal of fact/truth underneath.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
In complete agreement. I read The moon is a harsh Mistress first, and my friends told me to read Stranger in a Strange Land, I was disappointed.
-everphilski-
Look, we're all discussing Science Fiction, or whatever you want to call it. While it's true that lots of geeks love SF, I would argue that not all great SF novels are "geek novels". (Otherwise let's just make it a list of great SF novels and forget the 'geek' qualifier).
Ferinstance: Heinlein's characters weren't geeks, and he wasn't a geek himself. Stephenson, on the other hand, fits the bill, and whoever mentioned DFW's Infinite Jest is getting at what I'm getting at. Forget about whether it's great SF, where are the great Geek Characters?
Now that I've broadened the definition, I give you my nominee:
Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim.
Face it, a few decades later, and Jim would have been a programmer.
Read the best of all of Slash: seenonslash.com
How did Harry Potter not make this list?
Notably missing from the list is Vurt, by Jeff Noon. It is perhaps the most sociologically aware of the cyberpunk novels if the 80s and 90s.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
One root to rule them,
One grep to find them,
One cron to bring them all,
And in the subnet bind them.
Brunner's Shockwave Rider should be there, as should be the Adolescence of P-1.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The Amber Chronicles. That is all. If you haven't read it, do so.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
I've only read one... 1984 by Orwell. Great book.
Foccault's pendulum should definitely be in any top 10 list worth the name
The Andromeda Strain, or a lot of other books by Michael Crichton.
XaNk: now I remember why I hated the girls in high school
XaNk: because none of them would talk to me
OK, ok. I'll give them a couple more years before I insist. But, believe me, he's going to make the list someday soon! Check out his ebooks at www.craphound.com. My favorite is "OwnzOred," which is actually a short story in "A Place so Foreign and 8 more."
I am not left-handed, either!
A *great* geek book that is often overlooked by Geeks because it is not SciFi is "The Power of One" by Bryce Courtenay. I don't have time to write a full review of it, but perhaps someone else here who has read it could?
I've read 8 of the first 10 but only two of 11 - 20. Since I've been reading S.F. for 25 years I find that a little odd.
What would I add? Off the top of my head:
- Utopia - Thomas More
- News From Nowhere - William Morris
- Startide Rising - David Brin
- A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
- Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
- Little Fuzzy - H. Beam Piper
- The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Leguin
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein
- Ringworld - Larry Niven
- To Your Scattered Bodies Go - Philip Jose Farmer
- Inherit the Stars - James P. Hogan
And what about Tolkien? Can't have a geek list without a Hobbit or an Elf getting in the way!XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Here are the links to the books. Remember, if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Nineteen Eighty-Four . Brave New World. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Neuromancer. Dune . I, Robot. Foundation . The Color of Magic. Microserfs . Snow Crash. Watchmen. Cryptonomicon . Consider Phlebas. Stranger in a Strange Land.
What about the hard scifi writers like Greg Egan and Ken MacLeod? These authors present great reads about speculative science, cosmology, futurist ideas, singuarity consequences, social change, what it means to be human, etc. Just try and use this stuff as a casual conversation starter. Perfect geek talk to maintain isolation at a party! Should be on the list.
"The Adolescence of P1" by Thomas Ryan
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Is there list of the best geek history books?
:P
I'm currently reading "Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything" by Steven Levy. I recently read "Hackers" by Steven Levy and "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" by Alan Deutschman. This is more or less in preparation for my first Macworld conference in January.
You know you're getting old when books you read years ago as teenager are now Penguin Classics with the orange spine.
Am I the only geek around who loves Contact? I mean, its not nearly as geeky as H2G2 but I thought it was great nevertheless. One of the better science fiction books around.
I, Robot is a good book, but where are some of the other key Asimov books? The Foundation series should definately be up there - I mean, come one, it was his writing that helped make sci fi what it is today.
Don't get me wrong, 1984 and Brave New World are probably MY two books. I read them both several times and they had a profound impact on me. Problem is, I don't view them as geek books. Am I the only one who think that?
I'm glad someone mentioned "Good Omens". For anyone who has heard of Neil Gaiman OR Terry Pratchett and hasn't read this book: you're really missing something. It happens that my favorite author for a while was Pratchett, and a good friend of mine was into Gaiman... we recommended the book to each other with serendipitous timing, and it's been a favorite ever since. Highly recommended.
given this is Slashdot, i am surprised that this wasn't mentioned yet. of course my tin-foil hat is at the cleaners right now. better go now.
Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Small Gods is a fantastic book, but it's so good that it can't be relegated to a strictly defined audience like geeks. It's one of the greatest satirical takes on religion that there is. Every time I hear people say that Dogma was a good satire about religion I shudder, just because I think about Small Gods and how satire is supposed to be.
... geeks think in binary, not BCD!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Pick up a copy of Peter Hoeg's Borderliners
That book gripped me by my shirt and threw me into a descent into School Hell. To say that it's well written is an understatement.
Trust me.
--
BMO
Oh.. you meant geek as in computer geek. Not geek as in a circus performer that bites the heads off of chickens. Sorry.. my mistake.
It's such a small sample but missing is:
The Book of the New Sun
Stand on Zanzibar
Ender's Game
Ring World
Great 70's book on a computer program taking over. Worth a read.
...that would be bridge. The bidding system is clearly some form of secret communication, privy to only those dumb enough to think that bridge is a real game.
I'd never heard of Greg Egan until now. As your taste includes the sensational Ken MacLeod, I'll definitely make a point of reading Egan's stuff.
MacLeod's early work, The Fall Revolution is simply the best Sci Fi I've ever read. Near future (at least in the beginning) dystopian sci-fi that extrapolates current social, technological and geo-political trends in an incisive manner. Want Unix shell commands in the fiction you read? Dreading the breakdown of the social fabric due to the inevitable result of rampant capitalism? Ready to take up arms to resist American hegemony? MacLeod is the author for you.
Also, while Heinlein clearly had non-geeky characters, others pretty clearly were geeks by almost any definition -- Andrew Libby was the most obvious, but when Lazarus Long meets Andrew (in Methusalah's Children) and they start talking about Lazarus' modifications to Andrew's design for a ship's computer ("Integrator" IIRC) it becomes pretty clear that Lazarus is at least a part-time geek as well (then again, live long enough and you'll do almost everything at least part of the time). It is sad that one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time is represented only by one he openly stated was one of his worst (IIRC, in one of his later books, he has one of his characters comment on it saying something like "it's sad how far some authors stoop when they're desparate for money" (anybody remember that, or is my memory playing tricks on me?)
Then again, any list that has science fiction but no Frederik Pohl, Stanislaw Lem, David Weber, Niven/Pournelle or Theodore Sturgeon clearly has some pretty large holes, to say the least (and that's still far from an exhaustive list...)
--
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
"True Names". A short story rather than a novel, but way, way ahead of its time. Seems banal now only because Vinge was so damn in tune where the geek community was going.
The cake is a pie
I remember reading almost all of this series of books in the early 70's. Some of them had some cool ideas. I always liked the Diving Seacopter.
Did anyone else notice the glaring omission of AD&D novels? What about Forgotten Realms or DragonLance?
If you're curious as to what the Baroque Cycle is about, the quotes here give a pretty good idea about the novels' setting without really blowing much about the plot: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neal_Stephenson
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
It has cool technology, some geeky ( and other just plain weird ) characters, and lots of abstract philiosophy. What could be better. Listen to the Big Wheel!
I think they polled a not-so-well read segment of the geek population. Anyone who loved 1984 and H2G2 (which made spots 2 and 1 on the list) should have also read Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan. It fills the space inbetween those two seemingly disconnected books we love so much; in many ways it is the literary bridge from 1984 to H2G2, and one of the greatest works of modern fiction on its own. A fan of either (or both) would see the connections readily, and appreciate it, and it certainly belongs in that list with them.
11*43+456^2
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Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Where's "The Cuckoo's Egg", by Cliff Stoll?
(available here)
I agree that Robert Heinlein deserves a place, but why select Stranger? This book was an essay about religion, and the result of a debate with Ron Hubbard. At the end of the day RAH remained a writer.
My pick would be "Friday", which was a pretty good go at cyberpunk, written at the same time as Neuromancer.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
This happens every time someone/something posts a list of the "Top xx" in any category... You're bound to disagree with some if not all of the choices on the list, but it's there to foster discussion, not flame wars to decide who's "masterpiece" is the be-all end-all.
I'd just like to put in a good word for my favorite obscure young adult scifi novel, Invitation to the Game by Monica Hughes. Behind that cheesy, 80s cover art is a wealth of immersive fiction goodness. (Man, I'd forgotten how ugly that book is. That probably turned off a lot of readers. :/ )
It's missing the Cowboy Neal option. Didn't he write a geeky romance novel a few years ago?
Sort of a P.K. Dick on drugs ... and that's saying a lot.
Since he didn't even make an honorable mention, perhaps he is still obscure enough to be true geek fodder.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
For great science fiction novels online, Baen Free Library has a nice selection of stories.
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
Carl Sagan's Contact?
And LOTR?
and HG Wells' Time Machine?
I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
The two authors mentioned in the subject line are worth a look by anyone that likes the kind of books mentioned in the list. I'd vote these books: Perdido Street Station - China Mieville Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather - Tim Powers And maybe also Tad Williams for his Otherland series.
I'm really surprised a Red Dwarf book wasn't listed. Sure they aren't as popular and well known as many of the others listed but since when have geeks cared about that?
It's well recieved in the UK and Australia, but I guess some countries out there just haven't caught onto the brilliance of it just yet
PS - Just noticed there was only 132 responses. THAT must be the reason.
It seems to me that this list is lacking horribly! I think that he should have put sub categories so that the more popular books would be seperated from the less... everyone knows Geeks love Sci Fi... but what about fantasy? or non-fiction? I've read 5 of the 20 books up there and I would say Hitcher Hiker's Guid is probably my least favorite. The Foudation being my favorite on the list. Now what about Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card? I really think some fantasy books should be up there. Like Robert Jordan's "Eye of the world" ... or the Dragon Lance Chronicles by Tracy Hickman to name a few... I think I must be the only person to have found JRR Tolkien to be quiet a bore... but the Hobbit was good =)
I'm not sure why 1984 qualifies as a geek novel. It's something we studied at school, and something I believe should be mandatory reading for anyone who lives in a democracy and believes that "that stuff" can never happen to their society.
It serves as a warning to those who would surrender their liberty for their safety.
it's a top 20 dude!!
Actually, I thought Small Gods was a bit juvenile. If you're already familiar with the ideas of Shinto and religious satire, there isn't much there to surprise you. Some aspects of it were pretty shallow - for example, great care was taken to describe the way Vorbis thought, but he seemed to have no particular reason or motivation for his beliefs, which leads me to believe that Pratchett was simply attacking a straw man. And of course, half the jokes assume that you've read the other books, which, to be honest, is probably why The Color of Magic is in the list: it's the only Discworld book that actually stands on its own.
.. by Dan Simmons. As with Dune, Enders Game (also missing), etc, the rest of the serie could not be as good as the 1st book, but still, is one of the best sci-fi books i had read so far.
All of the Dune books..
Jimi Spier
www.jimispier.com - My tunes
I'm quite disappointed that so few people have read 'The Shockwave Rider'. It's understandable as the book is a tad difficult to get (at least it was difficult when I got hold of it.. it hadn't been in print for 10-15 years or so).
It's a great book. It's given us so much terminology.
Take it as a recommendation.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
I enjoyed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Also Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars.
Quite frankly I am not a huge fan of the Earthsea Trilogy, but the Lathe of Heaven is a pretty interesting and deep book. It is about a man whose dreams come true and a few people who decide to manipulate this to change the world, literally. The book has a certain amount of discontinuity reminiscent of Slaughterhouse 5 but is far deeper and easier to follow (Slaughterhouse 5 comes across as a set of portraits which are more important than the storyline, while The Lathe of Heaven comes across as a pretty stern warning about messing with reality).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
A veritable bible! How could this be missed?
Why is all of a sudden the term "geek" being predmoninently used?
A Geek is generally regarded as someone who is anti-social, yet lacking any complimentary talents or skills.
WHEREAS, a Nerd is someone who may exhibit anti-social tendencies, but it's usually due to being absorbed in some sort of passionate, technical pursuit.
Slashdot's motto indicates and understanding of the distinction between "geeks" and "nerds" and it would be nice if they didn't run stories clouding the definition of these terms. A geek is someone who isn't necessarily talented or skillful at ANYTHING. Geeks read comic books. Nerds read novels and tech manuals.
I've always considered 1984 to be less geeky and more required reading for the general public. I also cannot think of many geeky (I'm beginning to cringe when I use that word) friends who haven't mentioned Childhood's End at least once.
Kevin Milne has published Z4CK: A SciFi Novel about a Zaurus Linux PDA recently. From the LinuxDevices review: "It's 2031, and Microsoft advertises Linux on Edinburgh's largest billboards. Duncan Steele roams a brave new world, besting technoproles and fighting to extricate himself from a bogus murder rap, his trusty Sharp Zaurus by his side. So begins a cyberthriller from Scottish security professional Kevin Milne.
Milne's novel, entitled "Z4CK," was written entirely on a Sharp Zaurus PDA. "Z4CK was written on the train, whilst on my way to and from work," says Milne. "My Zaurus SL-5500 equipped with Open-Zaurus, and the Pockettop wireless keyboard was used to write the story.""
I'm about 100 pages from the end of the final book and I've been enjoying the trip thoroughly.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
No Naked Lunch? What about the cut-up trilogy? Too obscure even for geeks?
Stephenson is great because he writes about technology in a way that doesn't shatter the illusion for anyone who knows anything about technology. Unfortunately, most writers do this, because they don't know beans about technology. Stephenson is an ex-hacker (though since he is now in the business of propagating memes, and he described this in his first book as "neurolinguistic hacking", maybe he still considers himself a hacker).
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
LOTR forever, bitch!
Maybe the list would be better if more than 132 people had voted. Hell, it looks like there are more comments on that page than people who voted.
But I think for me the best Geek novel I have read recently (and the best Geek Novel Of the Century) is Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow.
Looking forward to the Bichun Revolution :)
The strength of the Chronicles of Amber was enough to make me go out and read a bunch of other Zelazy -- it didn't measure up.
The Chronicles of Amber, a ten book series (while the books are of good quality throughout, I like the first couple the most), is one of my favorite fantasy series. It mingles the the normal world with a very unique fantasy one -- no trolls or elves here. Unfortunately, few people seem to have read it.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Bad choice. That book is terrible!
Goedel-Escher-Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Douglas R. Hofstadter)
Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig)
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (Richard Bach)
The Xanth series (Piers Anthony)
The Mode series (Piers Anthony)
The Black Tower series (Stephen King)
THE FSCKING LORD OF THE RINGS. (J.R.R. MotherFSCKIN' Tolkein.)
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Yeesh, not in a million years. It was only somewhat readable at the time, and otherwise I've completely forgotten it. (And I own a copy somewhere.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
My favorite is Marge Piercy's He, She and It. From Danny Yee's Book Reviews:"Stand aside William Gibson and Bruce Sterling! Body of Glass (He, She, and It in the United States) is a combination of future history and cyberpunk that is a match for Neuromancer in excitement and breadth of vision, but it is also a far greater novel. Not only is it better written, with a less artificial plot and deeper characterisation, but it also works through the consequences of its ideas in a far more sophisticated fashion. Shira has lost custody of her son to her husband, and has left the Y-S "multi" that employs her to return to her home "free town". One of the town leaders, feeling danger threatening, has built Yod, an illegal cyborg (full artificial intelligence in a human shaped vehicle) to defend them. But Y-S is after Yod... The narrative contains enough political intrigue, biologically enhanced assassins and data piracy to keep the cyberpunk fans happy, but it also has some serious meat in it. It tackles head-on some of the philosophical and ethical dilemmas likely to be involved in the development of artificial intelligence. Interlaced with the main story is a secondary narrative. This is the story (as told to Yod by Shira's mother Malkah) of a Jewish Rabbi in 17th century Prague who creates a clay golem to defend his people from a threatened pogrom."
William Gibson wrote one truly great novel. The problem is that he kept writing it over and over again.
While we were getting over our longing for stories short enough to read in one sitting, it seems like Zindell's four sf tomes (Requiem is a trilogy) slid under almost everybody's radar in the rush to get to the new millennium.
Without a line of mathematics, it is surely a sufficiently geeky approach that FTL travel is achived in Zindell's universe by master pilots proving mathematical theorems on the fly to safely navigate a "thick" space between portals into "near space" at stars.
A gifted copy of Neverness sat neglected on my bookshelf through the '90s, but having finally decided to give it a try, I soon turned up the trilogy and read them in quick succession.
Personally I'd rate all of them ahead of half that list and Tbe Broken God on a par with Dune and Neuromancer, the latter of which I just finished rereading.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
There does seem to be a large amount of dissension over what novels should be on this top 20 lits so i must as what books would you personally put on a top list, mine are over at my blog http://rogueleadzer0.blogspot.com/2005/11/geek-boo ks.html
what about the rest of you geeks out there(i know you want to say)
In that case, Giles Goat-Boy by John Barth should be somewhere on the list.
But perhaps it's a generation or two too old.
The Left Hand of Darkness is coma-inducing? It's under three hundred pages, and moves along pretty briskly.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I don't know if it rates as a geek novel, but I like it.
A well planned set of slashdot polls might actually make for a valid survey.
(for the obvious sample population)
Std poll setup might require some mods, but I think it could work.
Taco? Anyone?
KHAAANN ! OK, it is not a book. But still couldn't resist it
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Where the hell is "Cat's Cradle," by Kurt Vonnegut?
Around 1980 when I read The Hobbit and LotR for the first time, it was only the geeks who read it. Later when I saw the first LotR movie (the mixed movie/comics thing, that ran out of budget) it was also the geeks that went there. They were the only people to know the book.
The Hobbit and LotR are both large geek books.
I also miss Ringworld. Lary Niven is big in science fiction.
I would have thought "Hustler" by Larry Flynt would have been #1.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Trouble with Lichen isn't that great a book. I can remember hunting it out and reading it after enjoying Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids as a youngster, and it was pretty disappointing.
In other news, I can't believe Slaughterhouse Five didn't make that list.
Or are they not counting the Players HandBook as a novel?
--LWM
H. G. Wells? # The Time Machine (1895)* # The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)* # The Invisible Man (1897)* # The War of the Worlds (1898)* # The First Men in the Moon (1901)*
On the other hand, I, Robot was the first 'real' book I ever read (as opposed to one with pictures in it), at the age of five, so that undoubtedly started me along the path to geekdom. And I was very disappointed to learn that the robots weren't real. It's now over 30 years later and I'm still waiting, damn it!
You must think in Russian.
Could the bias be explained by the fact that the paper is a UK publiction, thus the voters (all 132 of them) are probably Brits, or expats....
anyone who read all of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu is a geek. and anyone who understood half of Finnegans Wake is much more of a geek.
I recognize that Gaiman is quite talented in the graphic novel field, and that American Gods has been widely lauded (winner of the Hugo [i]and[/i] Nebula, nominated for the World Fantasy awards, etc.) but I just don't see the appeal. I think he paints some vivid vignettes, but I think his novel characters are generally quite thin and the plot arcs suddenly halted.
:p)
I still remember with annoyance the constant reminder in American Gods that "a storm is coming." He engendered in the reader a long-simmering anticipation of a thrilling climax, with constant (and IMHO) and heavy-handed foreshadowing. Unfortunately, the narrative fulcrum occurred in the space of perhaps two paragraphs, and I found it incredibly unconvincing (and aggravatingly brief after a leadup of several hundred pages). I think there are much better books to be found in the Hugo- and Nebula award libraries, and it puzzles me how Gaiman managed to nab both nods for I thought was a middling novel, albeit one with an original mythology and those vivid vignettes (like when Shadow showed a sleight-of-hand trick to an unsuspecting boy in the library).
I wish Gaiman the best in his professional efforts, and I hope to see another novel from him soon; but I just don't get the admiration this novel has acculumated. (And no, I'm not a bitter also-ran
How can you call yourself a geek, and not have read Dianetics. Honest question!!
One thing you need to realise is that JRR Tolkein is more of a kids book (these days I know it wasn't when released) than a "Geek" book. The second thing you have to realise is that the UK and US definitions and groups of Geeks are very seperate.
Basically the UK can't hope to compare with the US Geeks in the "never getting laid stakes" and equally the literature is a little less "hard-core", hence things like the superb Terry Pratchett books get a high rating.
I always thought I was a geek until I went to my first US Developer conference...
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Each time the scifi topic comes up on /. I mention Jack Vance and all I get in return is the equivalent of a blank stare. And I find it strange that none of his books have - to my knowledge - been turned into a movie.
Vance is a master at creating bizarre worlds, societies, technology and characters. The books are seriously funny (the "dry British humor" way), have a decently twisted plot and are baroquely decorated with myriad minutiae.
Granted, some books could be considered more "space fantasy" than scifi, but you will always find more than a dash of unfamiliar science and technology structuring the studied society.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
I mean, Cthulhu references are widespread among geeks, and so are some of his other novels (mountains of madness, ...).
I'd love to see him in the top 10 somehow.
Try reading some of Jack Schofield's columns in the Guardian online. The man is an arrogant boor, convinced he is always right and trashing anybody who doesn't agree with him. He is also a devoted microserf and seems to delight in putting down anyone who takes exception to their software or business practices.
... and every time some British magazine publishes one of these lists, Americans basically go, "wha...?"
Try and view this list through, uhm... Britishness, and it makes slightly more sense.
... is Stanislaw Lem on that list?
Smart, funny, sexy, violent and with one of the greatest heros around, this book deserves to be on that list.
He's since written 2 more Kovac novels (and another non-Kovac book that I think was an adaptation of an old short story). They are excellent but Altered Carbon stands out as a truely excellent story
but you don't appear to own a reb1100 (rocket ebook 1100). Once you do, you'll agree reading a machine is just as easy as reading a page, and easier in bed.
Yay me!
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman is a must-read, IMO. It raises some points about war that hold true even on today's tiny scale (who started it? why is it still going on? what the hell are we fighting for?)
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
This novel changed my life and made me write a doctoral thesis! If Otherland by Tad Williams isn't geek literature at it's best... well maybe it has a too large char[] for many ;)
This sig is stolen from someone who had a much better idea than I had.
So far, 132 people have voted for the best geek novels
With 132 votes, the result is complete random. Why don't we start a poll on /. ?
Regards, Martin
The results make a lot more sense if you look at the poll. Basically, this isn't a top 20 geek novels list, but a "which books have been read most often" list, picked from about 40 books chosen based on some random message board comments.
I mean, I consider Stephenson's books to be far more deserving of being labeled as a geek novel than the foundation, but I'm not going to label the foundation as being bad.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Halo doesn't resemble ringworld much at all - it's got a lot more in common with the Orbitals of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels.
James P. Barrett
Slaughterhouse-Five
Cat's Cradle
Besides, where is "The Story of 'O'" ?
Okay, high-brow litterature it isn't but I still enjoy Rick Cook's Wizard series. The main character is a geek that gets transported to a parallel world where magic works and computers don't. He is like a fish on land until he figures out how to program magic. From there the fun begins. Also, the references to programming and computers are mostly correct.
My opinion? See above.
Just the subtitle should make it qualify for that list... "Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage"
Excellent book by Clifford Stoll, he details how he got involved in computer security.
It's really a quite exciting thriller like story.
Book Description
Cliff Stoll was an astronomer turned systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Lab when a 75-cent accounting error alerted him to the presence of an unauthorized user on his system. The hacker's code name was "Hunter" -- a mystery invader hiding inside a twisting electronic labyrinth, breaking into U.S. computer systems and stealing sensitive military and security information. Stoll began a one-man hunt of his own, spying on the spy -- and plunged into an incredible international probe that finally gained the attention of top U.S. counterintelligence agents. The Cuckoo's Egg is his wild and suspenseful true story -- a year of deception, broken codes, satellites, missile bases, and the ultimate sting operation -- and how one ingenious American trapped a spy ring paid in cash and cocaine,and reporting to the KGB.
Read more at Amazon
Lots of Crichton books are made for geeks I think :D
And I'll take this time to shamelessly plug Hyperion and its sequels, which should be SOMEWHERE on some list like this. ok
Sex - The formula in which one and one makes three.
... has the geekiest type of humour since adams. that's why it fits in.
I read Jules Verne, and it was clearly after 1932.
Summer of 2nd grade, I went to the bookmobile with my older neighbor. I was on a submarine kick at the time, and picking out submarine books appropriate to a 2nd grader. She was several years older, and chastised me for getting, "those 2-page kids' books." In response, I checked out "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." It took me several renewals to read, and I really didn't understand it all, but I stuck to it to the end. I was a bit disappointed, because after all of the comic-book intimations of the Nautilus being nuclear-powered, ISTR it turned out to be really good batteries, pardon me, accumulators.
Perhaps it was THE turning point for me, though on can easily arguably if it hadn't been 20,000 Leagues, there would have been another science fiction book. I've read, and re-read much since then, but I've never gone back to 20,000 Leagues. One of these days I really should.
On a similar note, when she was in 5th or 6th grade, my daughter read, "The Hot Zone." I had to help her through a rough patch, telling her, "This is as gross as it gets, it won't get any worse." She's now in high school, gets great grades, and is tentatively headed toward a career in medical research.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Isn't that a little obscure? I've read it, many years ago. It didn't strike me at the time as anything significant.
You guys/gals read? Nerrrrrrds! Sorry, what?
i guess either im no longer a geek (w00t!) or im a bigger geek than i thought. (sigh.) ive only read two or three books on that list and im a "reader."
It has been observed that all the authors are male. A "Geek Girls Canon Challenge" has been set up to rectify this. I don't have the link at the moment but it's not hard to find.
Final Victim http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380728168/104-81 19741-8893512?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v =glance is written by Stephen J. Cannell. Its the typical law enforcement vs. serial murderer novel but with technology thrown in. The reprint was issued in 1997 yet the story details how the serial murderer's use of Linux.
While the author mentioned the lack of Brunner's Shockwave Rider (which has all sorts of cool stuff like an internet, worm, anonymous sites and a distributed attack), no one mentioned Pynchon. Gravity's Rainbow is awesome, what could be better than a paranoid chasing the remnants of the V-2 across 1945 Europe and suspecting World War II was started by a conspiracy. It's the forefather of cyberpunk.
Also, Gravity's Rainbow was nominagted for a few minor awards, heard of the Hugo and Nebula?
Best. Unintentional comedy. Ever. ...no, wait, it was just shitty. Nevermind.
Martian Chronicles gets my vote. We had to read in in junior high school, and that book turned my on to the whole SF genre (and doomed me to a life of geekdom)
One grep to find them,
One cron to bring them all,
And in the subnet bind them.
I thought for certain there would be a DNS reference on the last line.
The greatest hindrance to success is a well-rationalized excuse
And if you like pTerry, but you're pretty sure you're not getting all of the jokes (or, better yet, if you actually think you are), you have to check out LSpace (ie: Library Space) and read the annotations. Woefully out of date, they're worth spending a couple of hours on in no uncertain terms.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
...Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon? I don't know if I would call the book necessarily "geeky," but it definitely is the sort that appeals to geek-types. Same with his The Crying of Lot 49.
Well I haven't read the list (come on this is /. after all !) but I bet it doesn't contain my favourite namely "The Great Explosion" (which is actually a fleshed out version of "And Then There Were None") by Eric Frank Russell.
:)
Absolutely brilliant bit of work and you can even read the shorter version online. Best link I can come up with at the moment is at abelard.org although I did once find a less "garish" (i.e. ad free) version which I now can't seem to track down.
Ah... if only more people had the sense to live like this
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
There are many who could be this list, but I don't get Robert Anton Wilson over Bruce Sterling.
"is the Lord of the Rings not geeky enough?"
Fuck no. First, the sheer length of the tome is enough to prevent almost anybody from reading it. Second, it's a *fairy story*, the sort of thing 9 year old girls obsess on. Geek books have science, spies or aliens in them.
Besides, the correlation between "geek" and "bible" seems to be awfully low from my observations.
Need Mercedes parts ?
132 people voted?!?! And that's supposed to be indicitive of exactly what?
Now if it was a slashdot poll that sample space would carry some statistacal validity.
Where is Harlan Ellison? Not only did I consider his stories "geeky", but half of them made me question my own existence, and the other half ("I have no mouth but I must scream") about made me wet my pants.
How on earth could such a list exist without the name Peter F. Hamilton at or near its top? I am outraged! If you've not read his Reality Dysfunction and Neutronium Alchemist series, drop everything you're doing and read them now.
Speaking of things discworld did anyone think that Thud! is an indication that the discworld series needs to wrap up? It's the first one to come along that I've actually almost stopped reading. Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan....
Because if you managed to get all the way through it, you were a dedicated SF fan with way too much free time. Now thats a good partial definition of a geek:)
when there's only 132 people voting on it. (as of now, anyway)
I agree that Vinge should be represented, but I'd favor A Deepenss in the Sky over A Fire Upon the Deep. I thought the pacing in Fire was a bit slow at times, but Deepness was better in that respect. I also thought Focus was really interesting and the society around it really well done.
Are we talking about authors who are geeks, or authors who write about geeks?
Don't get wrong, I love Neuromancer. But Gibbons isn't a geek. Verne wrote a story (20,000 leagues under the sea) and include LONG (boring?) passages of every known fish as they travelled the world's oceans. Like Heinlein, they both wrote stories based in Mathmatics (Verne calculated escape velocity).
What? Shockwave rider, the book that first publicised the idea of a self-replicating, self-distributing computer program, aka a work, not in the list? Even worse, "not cared about"? Bah.
Holden Caufield is the ultimate social cretin. Started the new gendre of the cretin and Salinger's career. Supposedly stimulated several assassins like Mark Chapman.
can't believe there's not something by KSR in there. the Mars Trilogy is (imho) the most geeky, covering any number of sciences. maybe too political, though?
another great one is "The Years of Rice and Salt", wel worth a read (an alternative history based on Europe being hard hit by the black death, and science as we know it being developed elsewhere... neal stephenson's baroque cycle reminded me of it at times.
both highly recommended.
-duncan
"1984" and "A Brave New World" are required reading in most American High Schools.
While I think both books are excellent, the fact that both are ranked #2 and #3
infers that most geeks don't like to read fiction beyond what they're told to.
Not well known, but a great geek read. What's not to like about a novel featuring a vampire on Mars, a somewhat kinky human/android meld, genetically engineered people and animals. And an awesome entertainment industry!
You only use 2% of your DNA
Those novels are mostly old and read by older geeks.
...
For me "Ender's game" and "Harry Potter" are the two most obvious omissions on the list
Every geek needs to have read the writing of Stanislaw Lem. Given they are old and I do not know if there is a proper english translation, but they are the end of science fiction, as they are the ultimate science fiction and the ultimate parody of science fiction. Nothing similar has ever been there.
The list itself is pretty good, but I can't believe that 441 comments later nobody's mentioned "Headcrash" by Bruce Bethke. Not necessarily high literature, but a must-read if you've ever tried to recover from sysadminery.
Also, deepness has AWESOME use of large scale steganography, plus the whole concept of "focused" people for intelligence amplification. :D)
One of my favorite books all time (which should make it a geek book
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I actually liked that one a bit better than P-1, I think.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Well at least someone in the comments mentioned Ursula le Guin's "The Dispossessed".
Nothing was listed for Elaine Cunningham http://www.elainecunningham.com/ even though she did both some of the best D&D books of all time and some Star Trek. IMHO The Songs and Swords series should have been there.
I don't know wtf they were thinking by not including "Red Mars Green Mars Blue Mars", Kim Stanley Robinson. Her novel Icehenge gave me chills.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Dude was Douglas Adams before Douglas Adams was, in the same sort of way Gahan Wilson was Gary Larson before Gary was.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
Heinlein's best geek was Manny, from his best book, "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress." He was definitely a geek. And, barring RAH's usual sexism, it is an excellent work.
And Pohl should have had Gateway on the list.
Gibson. Feh. I have tried to read Neoromancer probably a dozen times. It sucks, at least it sucks for me.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I was both pleasantly surprised and struck by the irony of seeing Brave New World come in at #3 on a "Top 10 Novels read by people of a certain subculture" list. Good to see geeks are getting their Huxleyan philosophy and the important insights into the modern world it brings.
Now if only people would read Island. That's the one that tells us what we should be doing.
Checking the list and it seems almost all the books are more scifi than fantasy. Tolkein, Narnia are fantasies so maybe that's why they didn't make the list.
man, this story is straining my budget. I'm just filling up my amazon shopping cart with all the great books that have been mentioned in this thread. This is why I love slashdot, you always find so much interesting in the comments (sometimes, that is).
Doolittle :
Bomb no.20 : To explode of course.
However, in keeping with the theme, I think his geekiest would be "Cosmic Computer".
I do agree that he should have a place in any serious SF list, but a "geeky" list? Not so much.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
No Elric? Dark fantasy hero who winds up killing and destroying everyone and anything he loves in the pursuit of knowledge. What could be more geeky than that? Can't wait for the movie, if it ever gets filmed.
...is for Daniel Keys Moran's novel, The Long Run. I don't think it's been in print for years, which is probably the only reason it's not on the list. I'd also recommend the other novels of the Continuing Time, including Emerald Eyes, but The Long Run is a good start.
Sixty-two thousand years before the birth of Yeshua ha Notzri, whom later humans knew as Jesus the Christ, the Time Wars ended, for reasons which no sentient being now knows. With that ending, the Continuing Time began.
What? No Ender's Game? Not even listed in the first page of Comments?
House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski.
Just like "Gödel, Escher, Bach" it manages to be an awesome geek book and a bestseller.
Frog blast the vent core.
Ach, ye great gaggle of bletherin' scunners! The Wee Free Men are the greatest, and if ye don't agree I'll bash ye in the foreheed wi me ane skull and steal all yehr 'special sheep liniment'.
Nae Keng! Nae Quin! We'll no be fooled again!
By the way - if you want to really delve into the question of "where did cyberpunk and transhumanism spring from?", a good place to start is with "Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler (from which Brunner notes he gained inspiration for Shockwave Rider) and "Optimism: One" by FM Esfandiary (arguably one of the first, if not the first, books to define the philosophy and ideas behind transhumanism). Some weird (as well as provocative and prescient) shit came out of the backend of the 1960's and the hippie era; these two authors and books are by no means the only examples...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Best example I could find quickly
6 05,1127802,00.html
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3
Same thing for "Small Gods". I love Pratchett, but "Small Gods" was pretty pathetic. Maybe I just can't relate to any "gods" novels because I'm an atheist, but I loved "Good Omens", and plenty of other Pratchett stuff ("Soul Music" comes to mind).
Plus, where's Egan's "Diaspora"? Or Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon"? I'll admit I'm not that well read in sci-fi, but Diaspora and Cryptonomicon are both geekier and beat "American Gods" hands down.
Nathan's blog
'Freefall' by Hoffer is an awesome book which is actually non-fiction but reads like a novel.
6 39831-6353510?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glance
It details the events leading up to, and covering a Canada Air Boeing 767 that ran out of fuel in mid-flight. But it wasn't all drama - he went into GREAT detail about how the internal systems of the plane are tied together. Describing everything from the fuel quantity processors, to the electrical distribution systems, to the metric conversion at the time, to the multitude of human errors that caused the incident.
A MUST read for ANY and ALL ENGINEERS!!!
Check it out here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312922744/104-3
Libertas in infinitum
Gleaning the Cube by Isaac Asimov, the inventor of satellites, the laws of robots, etc. It interested me intensely at the time. Doctor Who is also good geek literature with its young lady apprentices, Cybermen and a Police Box that was a time and space craft. --- Coder of computers for over two decades. http://dreamfrequency.com/
Alfred Bester was a master at his craft. I still to this day love reading this book.
If only it would get made into a feature film. If any book could ever be easily made into a movie this is it. But it could be so much more. Not sure how one would go about the last part of the book when Gully's senses are reversed. (not much of a spoiler)
To this day the word jaunt now seems so much crappier because I cannot jaunt in that way.
Oh well.
There are so many choices, narrowing down to a short list will always be controversial--and a good opportunity for reflection and diversifying your to-read list. I enjoyed thinking about this, and playing with the distinction between "geek novel" and sci-fi. FWIW, here's my (alphabetized) top 10 list:
Anderson & Beeson, Assemblers of Infinity
Asimov, Foundation
Card, Ender's Game
Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
Lem, Solaris
McDevitt, The Engines of God
Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz
Niven, Ringworld
Reed, Marrow
Stephenson, Snow Crash
Anyone want to try "best geek novels translated into English"?
As well as the 'normal' - The William Gibsons that follow-on or revolve around Neuromancer in some way, e.g., Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Johhny Mnemonic (or was that the film?), Burning Chrome. Dan Brown - Digital Fortress Alan Dean Foster - Dark Star Peirs Anthony - Macroscope (I fell in love with Afra!) Counterfiet World - Daniel Galouye Contact - Carl Sagan Tau Zero - Poul Anderson Ring World - Larry Niven The Lure - Bill Napier
@peetm
Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man, Jurassic Park, Sphere, Timeline, etc. Something of his should be on the list.
> No, there's just many different types of SF.
:p ;)
So, say, Tolkien is SF? I don't think you're going to get much buy-in for that theory (although I can, when I'm in the mood, argue in support of that thesis -- see Clarke's law.)
> There's people who focus the SF label to what used to be called "hard SF"
Those people reject the notion that EITHER of "Creatures of Light and Darkness" OR "Lord of Light" are SF. I'm propounding a much more moderate (and much more widely, if informally, accepted) definition here. One that many people I know have found pretty easy to accept once they hear it, even if they've never articulated it themselves.
> most fans laugh at those folks and put dirt in their hair.
Most people laugh at SF fans in general and put dirt in their hair. So what does that prove?
> In the middle is "science fantasy" and a dozen other subgenres.
'SFunny, but in my experience, the ones who insist the hardest about labels like "Science Fantasy" are the ones who insist that only "hard SF" is "real SF", i.e. the people you were just complaining about.
> Read what what you want to read.
I do, thank you. I read SF, fantasy, mysteries, mainstream, and other categories, and enjoy them all (or, at least, certain instances of "them all"). Categorization is not rejection (except among the kind of idiots who enjoy rubbing dirt in people's hair).
> It really not worth having an "arrogant opinion" about.
ANYTHING worth anything is worth having an arrogant opinion about. If you don't have opinions (or if you're one of those pathetic losers who only has "humble opinions"), you ain't worth squat in my book. If you're going to have opinions, stop being a wuss, and make it an arrogant one! People who think opinions aren't worth being arrogant about are the people whose hair I rub dirt into!
Joking or not, you missed the irony. Ayn Rand became so stanuchly anti-collectivist because of her experience of the onset of totalitarianism in Russia. Her mother helped her to leave the country when contemporaries, including teachers and classmates, began to disappear in the middle of the night. Rand (then Rosenbaum) was an independent-thinker from a young age, but she was mainly just a lover of romantic cinema until the Bolsheviks ruined her country. Rand honestly believed that the tiniest intrusion of collectivism could lead to the persecution and deaths of people who like to speak their minds. Your "joke" was exactly the reason why she felt the way she did. I recommend the Oscar-nominated documentary titled "A Sense of Life," a biography of Ayn Rand. Ignore her flawed philosophy. (The flaw is the assumption that we are rational beings, when clearly we are animals foremost.) The first third of the film will give you some compassion for her deep fears.
Disclaimer: I haven't read any part of the Quicksilver triology but I've read most of his other stuff (if not all of it). Favourites are Cryptonomicon and The Diamond Age.
:)
Personally I'm too occupied thinking about the details and consequences of his ideas/concepts to notice the quality of writing. I know this must sound strange when replying to your complaints about filler material
So I guess I more or less unconsciously filter out any filler material (but it doesn't always work so the line has to be drawn somewhere and I'm never again buying anything new written by Peter Hamilton unless it makes shockwaves through nerddom (not likely)).
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
I think I may have stumbled upon the ultimate geek book. Charles Stross writes like English is his second language. Assembler is his first. It's been a while since a book has made me feel like I dropped some slightly speedy acid. I highly recommend this book, but be prepared to get a headache if you read it for more than 30 minutes at a time.