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?

The Colour of Magic is a weird choice...

[Senjutsu]

It should be Small Gods, and it should be higher.

SurveyMonkey

[daigu]

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?

Before there were geeks

[Quirk]

E. Abbot's Flatland [alcyone.com]

"I, Robot" not a novel

[harlows_monkeys]

"I, Robot" was not a novel. It was a collection of short stories.

Re:Enders Game

[Otter]

Tolkien? Jules Verne? (I'm not a devotee, but she has a huge geek following -- Ayn Rand?) That other woman who writes those coma-inducing books the sci-fi buffs drool over, ummm, Ursula LeGuin?

Start Neal Stephenson

[Comatose51]

I just started Cryptonomicon recently and was persuaded to do so after reading this Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]. 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.

Roger Zelazny

[farker haiku]

The Amber Chronicles. That is all. If you haven't read it, do so.

Not bad as top 10 lists go...

[H0p313ss]

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:

1. Utopia - Thomas More
2. News From Nowhere - William Morris
3. Startide Rising - David Brin
4. A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge
5. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
6. Little Fuzzy - H. Beam Piper
7. The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Leguin
8. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A. Heinlein
9. Ringworld - Larry Niven
10. To Your Scattered Bodies Go - Philip Jose Farmer
11. 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!

Re:s/Stranger /Moon Is a Harsh Mistress/

[trurl7]

I must respectfully comment on a few of your claims. While I agree with you that Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a wonderful book, I find that your comments about it being "better" than Stranger in a Strange Land, and that Stranger is "a less mature work" to be a little bit...let's say highbrow. First - what are your qualifications in judging one work "less mature" than another? Second, you say Heinlein "succumbs" to the authorial mouthpiece temptation. Whether it is something that one "succumbs" to is, I feel, debatable, but let's consider this from a different angle:

If Jubal is an "authorial mouthpiece", and this is bad, then please elaborate on the roles of Lazarus Long in Time Enough For Love (and almost any other novel he's in), Lt. Col Dubois in Starship Troopers, Prof. De La Paz in Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Boss in Friday, the main character's friend (can't remember his name, he eventually becomes a major) in Revolt in 2100. The list goes on. In almost every serious book that Heinlein wrote (and many of the less-serious, pure fun ones), there is an older/mentor type character that is, effectively, the author's voice. Sometimes this function is distributed (consider Number of the Beast - which almost explicitly switches the authorial mouthpiece), it is sometimes absent initially, but then comes out at the end (e.g. Job: A Comedy of Justice, with the Devil being the mouthpiece). If you feel the "authorial mouthpiece" is a failing, I wonder how you regard the rest of Heinlein's work. And I emphasize - Prof. De La Paz is yet another "mouthpiece".

Finally, I believe your thesis is confused. MIAHM is primarily a political work - it examines the moral and practical questions of political and ruling structures. SIASL is primarily a work on individual morality - one's relationship to oneself, his surroundings, and humanity in general. Likewise, Time Enough For Love examines aspects of morality in love and sexuality, and Starship Troopers examines an individual's responsibility to his country. I feel that they can not be compared in terms of which is a "better" book. I can acknowledge that we can discuss how polished, complete, or "mature" if you will, a work is. And in some sense, I do agree that Stranger is a bit rougher than Moon is a Harsh Mistress. But I hope you will agree that in discussing the works of such a great master, we should exhibit a bit more circumspection in our speech, rather than postulating blithely that A is a "much better book" than B.

No Grey Lensman?

[Jerry Coffin]

With no Grey Lensman, this was obviously compiled by mostly young geeks! :-)

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.

Hyperion...

[gmuslera]

.. 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.

Re:s/Stranger /Moon Is a Harsh Mistress/

[michael_cain]

Especially since this is "geek novels". SIASL is a geek fantasy -- grow muscles by thinking them, beautiful women falling over themselves to have sex with you -- where TMIAHM's leading character is, well, a grown-up geek. I would be reluctant to lose either of my real arms but there have certainly been times when jobs would have been easier if I could just pop on the old "number three arm". Besides, the ending of SIASL was obvious and no one really dies. Two of the central characters don't make it in TMIAHM, a much more grown-up treatment.

Why Stephenson is great

[typical]

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).

Re:No Grey Lensman?

[DoctorFrog]

(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?)

Your memory's fine. The scene takes place in _The Number Of The Beast-_, when the four protagonists are comparing their favorite books. Two of the four voted for _Stranger In A Strange Land_, and one of the other two makes the comment about Heinlein only writing it for the money.

Zelazny

[Quiet_Desperation]

"Creatures Of Light And Darkness" by Roger Zelazny. A science fiction so strange it takes a second reading to realize it even *is* a science fiction.

I don't know if it rates as a geek novel, but I like it.

It's a British list...

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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.

Altered Carbon - Richard Morgan

[bloodredsun]

Probably the best book, sci-fi or not, I've read over the last couple of years. It's probably too new to get into many peoples top lists and as the author is British he hasn't had the exposure that he could have across the states.

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

20 Geek Books ... ok then

[lorelorn]

I'm going to jump right in and put my list down before looking at anyone else's comments - I assume I won't be alone here.

• 1. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (geeks in time! not to be missed)
• 2. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (it's good, and frankly, a samurai sword wielding computer hacker named Hiro Protagonist is what many here aspire to be)
• 3. Ilium by Dan Simmons (good stuff. Greek gods and that... in space!!! and time)
• 4. The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan (ooo, non-fiction. something like this needs to act as our Bible if we are to seriously combat the pseudo-religious waffle that is stifling science and learning these days
• 5. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (the graphic novel that started it all)
• 6. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (probably the best example of welding the science into science fiction and still telling a great story)
• 7. A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin. (unlike most fantasy novels, this one is actaully good. Better than that, it's great!)
• 8. Longitude by Dava Sobel (a great read about those geeks of the past who attempted to solve one of the greatest problems of their day - and bitched and fought with one another instead of working together to get the job done)
• 9. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (what if the antichrist were a geek wunderkind?)
• 10. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (kind of like a geek primer really. How we got to where we are)
• 11. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville (what, steampunk pseudo-Victorian sci-fi? Mieville described it as 'the new wierd' but then disowned the title. I like mine better anyway.
• 12. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (when geeks get to tell the people in charge how to behave, it tends to come out a bit like this)
• 13. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (geeks destroy the world, normal -ie chain-smoking, girl-fucking- guy looks on, nonplussed
• 14. Y The Last Man by Brian K Vaughan (what if the last man alive were a skinny geek?)
• 15. Evolution by Stephen Baxter (ok, now this one takes the long view)
• 16. The Illiad by Homer (because you should)
• 17. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (see notes on 16)
• 18. American Gods by Neil Gaiman (UK residents may prefer to substitute Neverwhere here, this is perfectly acceptable)
• 19. Douglas Adams (whichever of his books you want)
• 20. Slashdot ("hey that's not a book!" - I know but you need to throw the home crowd a bone)

Re:First Prime Factorization Post

[julesh]

What's *really* geeky is that your username is a factorization of your uid. The only geekier thing would have been to wait until the next UID was prime. You'd have only had to wait until 900139!

Re:What about Tolkien?

[WiFiBro]

Aha, but the film did not answer such questions as: WHAT is Tom Bombadil http://tolkien.slimy.com/essays/Bombadil.html#Summ ary [slimy.com], and WE can feel really smug knowing what REALLY happened to Aragorn.

-
Tired he is, thirsty he is, and he guides them and he searches for paths, and they say sneak sneak.

Re:What?! No J.R.R?!?!

[grumpygrodyguy]

A guy who writes FIVE seperate languages just for a book is a hardcore geek. I mean he invented Elvish (including Quenya and Sindarin), Dwarvish (Khuzdul), Entish, and Black Speech. He might not have been a technology geek but he was definitly a geek.

Yep, a linguist geek. From his biography:

Even as a young boy, Tolkien loved languages. He invented his own, but his mother viewed them as a waste of his time. "As a child, I was always inventing languages. But that was naughty," Tolkien recalled wryly. "Poor boys must concentrate on getting scholarships. When I was supposed to be studying Latin and Greek, I studied Welsh and English. When I was supposed to be concentrating on English, I took up Finnish."

Through the door of language Tolkien entered the world of myth. "The seed [of the myth] is linguistic, of course. I'm a linguist and everything is linguistic--that's why I take such pains with names." A language, he believed, could not remain abstract. It must arise within a history and a culture--or, if lacking that, a mythology. Soon he would create for his own languages a most elaborate world indeed.

How many authors write stories like that? It's almost as if the story was an afterthought created by the linguistics. I.e. the linguistics were so rich that a story grew around them.

Most authors write like this: Story(as a rough outline) -> Characters(including setting) -> Details(such as language, customs, etc.)

as opposed to Tolkien who did the opposite:

Tolkien: Language -> Culture -> Characters -> Story

Robert E. Howard is the only other fantasy author I can think of who wrote like that, except Howard built his stories (Conan) over a predetermined geography rather than a predermined language. Interestingly, both J.R.R. Tolkein [wikipedia.org] and Robert E. Howard [wikipedia.org] wrote fantasy in the 1930s, and are considered pillars of the genre.

Vinge!

[Khelder]

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.

scifi v. fantasy

[Shirlockc]

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.