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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?

19 of 563 comments (clear)

  1. First Prime Factorization Post by 2*2*3*75011 · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  2. Summary of Comments by NilObject · · Score: 5, Funny
    Let me save us all a great deal of time and summarize the oncoming flood of comments:

    My literary preferences are better than yours!
  3. Re:Show some love for Arthur by Doctor+Sbaitso · · Score: 4, Funny

    Somewhere in Sri Lanka, I presume.

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    ---
    Hello, Slashdot user. My name is Dr. Sbaitso. I am here to help you.
  4. No Heinlein? by Animats · · Score: 1, Funny

    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.

  5. What?! A geek list with no Tolkien? by Fractal+Dice · · Score: 2, Funny

    One root to rule them,
    One grep to find them,
    One cron to bring them all,
    And in the subnet bind them.

  6. Re:What about Tolkien? by JeremyALogan · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...I myself am wondering about the conspicuous absense of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Is the Lord of the Rings not geeky enough?
    I think that counts as the Geek Bible.


    Shamelessly stolen from Chris in the original thread.
  7. Re:Ringworld... by aldeng · · Score: 5, Funny

    They re-did the story and called it Halo.

  8. Re:What about Tolkien? by asb · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is the Lord of the Rings not geeky enough?

    Nope. It's way too nerdy.

    --
    Antti S. Brax - Old school - http://www.iki.fi/asb/
  9. Re:What about Tolkien? by snookums · · Score: 4, Funny
    I've personally re-read it 4 times in two different languages

    It doesn't count unless one of those languages is the original Quenya.


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    Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
  10. Re:What about Tolkien? by nizo · · Score: 5, Funny
    You haven't read the Silmarilion until you've read it in the original Elvish.

    Anyone who knows the similiar Star Trek quote this is derived from can safely assume right now that he will die a virgin by the way.

  11. Re:What about Tolkien? by zaxus · · Score: 1, Funny

    I know precisely where that quote came from (Christopher Lee, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), and I am MOST CERTAINLY not a virgin. I even have the wife and kid to prove it! :-)

    I also somehow managed to get through the Silmarilion, although I think I may reread it. I almost liked it better than the LoTR proper.

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    /. zen: Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf clusters...
  12. Re:The Colour of Magic is a weird choice... by bfree · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actually the group is the Smoking GNU and GNU alone is a magic "packet header" for control messages (G) which are not logged (N) and are turned around and sent back at the end of the line (U). Of course that's something any good 14 year old girl of a clacks operator who had studied her manuals would know and if you aren't one of them how the hell did you ever find this truly bizarre corner of L-Space ... is that you Hex, Ponder? Oook?

    --

    Never underestimate the dark side of the Source

  13. Re:What about Tolkien? by Anubis350 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I even have the wife and kid to prove it!

    Ahhhh.. so you mean you're not getting laid *anymore*?

    Burn karma, burn!

    --
    "goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
  14. Re:Show some love for Arthur by IngramJames · · Score: 4, Funny

    Forget Arthur, and forget Pratchett!

    Are they seriously trying to tell me that "The Complete ZX Spectrum ROM Disassembly" doesn't make the list?

    OK, it's not fiction, but the sheer beauty...

    </uber geek>

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    'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
  15. Re:What about Tolkien? by meringuoid · · Score: 4, Funny
    You haven't read the Silmarilion until you've read it in the original Elvish.

    Nobody alive in the world has ever read the Silmarillion in the original Elvish. JRRT read it in the Red Book of Westmarch, where it was included as Bilbo's Translations from the Elvish; this would have been written in Westron, the common language of the countries of northwestern Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age. He translated the Red Book into the English with which we are familiar, and later published Bilbo's diary There and Back Again and Frodo's The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King as fiction because nobody would take all this elf stuff seriously otherwise. The Translations from the Elvish seemed to have posed more difficulty in translation to English and in editing, though Christopher has done a pretty decent job in cleaning up the conflicting versions to give us the Silmarillion we know today.

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    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  16. Schofield clearly an Illuminatus by willmorton · · Score: 2, Funny
    (From TFA)

    19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson 23%
  17. Re:What about Tolkien? by LocoMan · · Score: 2, Funny

    The real trick would be to read it in old entish... though it would probably take a few months of non stop reading just to finish the first page.. :)

  18. The Godless whorde. by rs79 · · Score: 3, Funny

    "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 ?
  19. Re:What about Tolkien? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    You haven't read the Silmarilion until you've read it in the original Elvish.

    Elvish is everwhere.
    Elvish is everything.
    Elvish is everbody.
    Elvish is still the king.

    Thank you. Thank you very much.