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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.
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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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?
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.)
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Where many young geeks got their start.
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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, 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.
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.
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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!
Foccault's pendulum should definitely be in any top 10 list worth the name
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
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.
Great 70's book on a computer program taking over. Worth a read.
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.
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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.. 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.
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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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.
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.
I don't know if it rates as a geek novel, but I like it.
Boffin
"The word appeared during World War II, where it was applied with some affection to the people who invented radar, early digital computers, the atomic bomb, and other technologies that gave the Allies an advantage over the Axis during the war."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boffin
I've always prefered and will continue to use Boffin. It's a good word that encapsulates all the good of geek and nerd, is a bit more academic. It also has none of the baggage, except perhaps for absent mindedness.
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Colm
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
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.
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!
"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 ?
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.
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.
gtkaml.org
Apparently you read it in school. Please reread (especially "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism", which is the author talking directly to us) and learn more than the schools want you to know.
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.