Top 20 Geek Novels 563
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?
Show some love for Arthur (Score:5, Insightful)
Enders Game (Score:5, Insightful)
What?! No J.R.R?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Ringworld... (Score:5, Insightful)
What about Tolkien? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bruce Sterling (Score:4, Insightful)
s/Stranger /Moon Is a Harsh Mistress/ (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Re:The Colour of Magic is a weird choice... (Score:5, Insightful)
chronicles of narnia (Score:5, Insightful)
Rant (Score:3, Insightful)
top 20 is a little vague (Score:2, Insightful)
"books by rating" at iblist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Colour of Magic is a weird choice... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
No Umberto Eco?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about Tolkien? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SurveyMonkey (Score:3, Insightful)
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".)
Catcher in the Rye (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about Tolkien? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Summary of Comments (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Show some love for Arthur (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What?! No J.R.R?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:s/Stranger /Moon Is a Harsh Mistress/ (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Enders Game (Score:3, Insightful)
Kirby
Missing: Egan, Stross, Sterling (Score:5, Insightful)
http://home.austin.rr.com/lperson/lame.html [rr.com]
Re:The Colour of Magic is a weird choice... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Enders Game (Score:4, Insightful)
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2
Seems like he defines a great geek novel as one that expands your horizons instead of confirming your expectations and worldview.
On a related note, here's a list of books that will induce a mindfuck. http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1016251 [everything2.com]
The Shockwave Rider. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a great book. It's given us so much terminology.
Take it as a recommendation.
Re:Show some love for Arthur (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Enders Game (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What?! No J.R.R?!?! (Score:1, Insightful)
On the other hand his books' medievalist anti-technological bias is enough to make any real geek vomit. Anyway who would want to ba wasting their time on that crap when they coukd be doing something cool on their computer.
Not only is it unscientific... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nah. (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:The Colour of Magic is a weird choice... (Score:3, Insightful)
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....
Re:The Colour of Magic is a weird choice... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if only the first books could be rewritten by the current Terry Pratchett... oh lord...
Re:Ringworld... (Score:2, Insightful)
Either you haven't read books in the ringworld series or you haven't played halo. Indeed, both the books and the game feature a giant ring-shaped object in space, the inner surfaces of which contain whole ecosystems. That's about where the similarities end, however. The actual story plots and universes have few if any elements in common. Whoever modded you +4 insightful must have just modded something up that sounded intuitively like it was accurate.
Re:First Prime Factorization Post (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Brunner's Shockwave Rider (Score:2, Insightful)
What are terrorists if not muckers?
Re:s/Stranger /Moon Is a Harsh Mistress/ (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Verne and 1932 (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/verne.htm [kirjasto.sci.fi] : It says "1828-1905"
Clearly the man (JVerne) had the brains to fool somebody that the books are written in the FUTURE.