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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?
Where the hell is the Arthur C. Clarke?
Where is "Ender's Game"?
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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?
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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.
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.)
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Discworld needed to be represented in the list and TCoM was simply the first one in the series. I agree though that it should have been a better Discworld book. I'm not sure which one, but Small Gods is definately in the top 3.
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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 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.
Small Gods was indeed amazing... though the night watch books tend to be my favourites.
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I'm not at all surprised to see Terry Pratchett on that list. Part of what make his books so enjoyable for me are all the small geeky touches... a magic manual whose name has the acronym MS-DOS (never actually spelled out for you... only noticed it on my second read)... pretty much anything that has to do with Unseen University - most of it rings oh so true for anyone who's ever been at an engineering or science university... All the references to technology, quantum mechanics, evolution, communications (heck, he's practically got an entire networking book in Going Postal)... Our society's technological history (and not only technological, to be fair) can all be found, in the context of a world where magic exists, and IT ALL MAKES SENSE - in its own twisted Discworld fashion.
Yeah, you could say I'm a Terry Pratchett fan
And my guess is the Colour of Magic is on the list because it's the first of the Discworld series. You can't really put all of them... they wouldn't fit in a top 20
Ahh, just noticed that the poll is from the UK... it makes a lot more sense now. Discworld is - for some reason - not quite as popular on this side of the pond. So if you haven't read any of the Discworld books, do yourself a favour and pick one up - yes, it's technically fantasy, but it's the funniest and most intelligent fantasy you're ever likely to read.
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Foccault's pendulum should definitely be in any top 10 list worth the name
Honestly, with the way online communities band together to stuff the results of polls like this, I'd kind of prefer something small like that. Despite the smaller sample size, it's probably a more fair one than you could get if you just threw it open for extended periods of time.
Throw it out on the Internet and you're liable to "discover" that the Serenity novelization is the #1 geek book of all time.
Reality and easy math (like "normal distributions") don't meet up all that often. A smaller, but more random, sample can be much better.
(We're looking at "small but biased" vs "large but really biased", so I really do mean that "more" as a comparitive statement, not an absolute claim of validity of the original sample, so if you needed this parenthetical note, why not read more carefully? Also note the word "can".... it's not the same as "absolutely will".)
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.
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My literary preferences are better than yours!
Actually, I'd argue this is the last place on earth (or elsewhere in the universe) you'd expect to find arguments precisely to that effect.
The thing is, many of the great works in this so-called geek canon aren't chiefly admired for their literary qualities at all. If there's anything that serves as the basis for self-important pretentiousness in geek reading preference, it's a bias favouring substance over form and ideas over aesthetics. The theoretical or philosophical over the literary or poetical, if it has to be one or the other.
There's many an Asimov fan who while holding up 'hard sci-fi' as the true geek literature, will quite readily admit that Asimov isn't a great fiction writer, considered amongst the elite of great fiction writers in general. He's a great thinker who conceived his ideas in fiction writing, not a great fiction writer who happened upon some interesting observations while he went about the business of crafting masterful narrative and perfecting the storytelling art.
There is of course in stark contrast to this 'hard sci-fi' preference a large demographic who proudly declare their love for imaginative fantasy written mostly for the sake of telling a story and immersing the reader in an impossible universe of the author's conception. But so far in history, this has been a preference declared in defiance of respectable preference more often than in celebration of it, despite the tremendously widespread popularity of fantasy writing in general.
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I'll have to agree with one of the other posters: It's true that Small Gods is better. One of my favorite books of all time. But The Color of Magic is way geekier. ^_^
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.
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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.
"Vorbis...seemed to have no particular reason or motivation for his beliefs."
That was part of the satire. Vorbis, the maniacally religious leader of millions of Omnians, didn't actually believe. The only thing he really believed in was...Vorbis. The deeper satire is that Vorbis was also a stand-in for the entire religious edifice. Its inner workings become of great importance and precision, but end up having no particular reason or motivation. It's a social machine that believes only in itself, relies only on its own power, protects only its own power, and ends up existing to serve no purpose for no reason. Not entirely true of all religions all the time, of course, but that is the satirical point nevertheless.
Of course it's a matter of opinion....
I think Colour of Magic was picked was because it was closer in tone to Hitchhiker's, in is extreme inventiveness and randomness. I agree that the later books are probably better (Small Gods, Reaper Man, Men at Arms, Soul Music, Last Hero), but anything with Rincewind as protagonist will always have a place in my heart....
Now if only the first books could be rewritten by the current Terry Pratchett... oh lord...
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Yup, and even more deserving, IMO, "Stand on Zanzibar" and "The Sheep Look Up" even as both come true a little bit each day.
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I read Jules Verne, and it was clearly after 1932. He would be _this_ Verne, Jules?
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/verne.htm : It says "1828-1905"
Clearly the man (JVerne) had the brains to fool somebody that the books are written in the FUTURE.
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