Ooh!

[serene]

Gakked from supergee, this list of the top 20 geek novels. I've
bolded the ones I've read, and the unbolded ones go on my to-read list. I
should make a to-read list, huh?

1. The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams 85% (102)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four -- George Orwell 79% (92)
3. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley 69% (77)
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip Dick 64% (67)
5. Neuromancer -- William Gibson 59% (66)
6. Dune -- Frank Herbert 53% (54)
7. I, Robot -- Isaac Asimov 52% (54)
8. Foundation -- Isaac Asimov 47% (47)
9. The Colour of Magic -- Terry Pratchett 46% (46)
10. Microserfs -- Douglas Coupland 43% (44)
11. Snow Crash -- Neal Stephenson 37% (37) [I'm bolding this because I
*tried* to read it and failed, and don't want to try again.]
12. Watchmen -- Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons 38% (37)
13. Cryptonomicon -- Neal Stephenson 36% (36)
14. Consider Phlebas -- Iain M Banks 34% (35)
15. Stranger in a Strange Land -- Robert Heinlein 33% (33)
16. The Man in the High Castle -- Philip K Dick 34% (32)
17. American Gods -- Neil Gaiman 31% (29) [fabulous, fabulous book]
18. The Diamond Age -- Neal Stephenson 27% (27)
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson 23% (21)
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham 21% (19)

Comments

[artemii.livejournal.com]

hey, i couldn't finish snow crash either! :)

[artemii.livejournal.com]

BTW, my favorite stephenson is zodiac, which isn't much bandied-about as it's not particularly SFish.

[leback.livejournal.com]

I finished it, and I can think of lots of things that time would've been better spent on. :-)

Loved Cryptonomicon, though.

[nmc.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

It's one of the few books I've put down in disgust, actually.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

Huh. I didn't have a problem with it; in fact, on the whole, I rather enjoyed it.

Does this make me a book slut?

[redbird]

I know you didn't make the list--but where are the women?

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

pesky feminist! pesky!

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Pat Cadigan should at least be on the list. There's also Virtual Girl by Amy Thomson (I always get her last name wrong)

[nmc.livejournal.com]

Ah-hah! That's what I was going to reread next. Mindplayers. Thanks.

(You'd think with it being big and yellow I wouldn't've missed it when I was looking for the next book to carry around (don't you always go everywhere with a book?), but I did.)

I'll have to finish Mirabile first, though. Oh, woe is me.

[leback.livejournal.com]

If those numbers and percentages refer to results of a popular vote/survey of some sort, I'm not that surprised by the lack of women, sadly. If "Top 20" means "20 most read" (as opposed to best, or most important, or what-have-you), well, that kind of matches my usual impressions.

I'd love to hear what you'd include to remedy the lack.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

do androids dream of electric sheep is really good. bladerunner is based on it, but they're very different.

you will either love or hate cryptonomicon. depends on if you're a math geek or not.

[leback.livejournal.com]

I would qualify that by adding that "math geek" for this purpose need not mean either "person who is really good at math" or "person who regularly spends a lot of time thinking about math"--it just takes being able to follow explanations of some mathematical concepts and experience some amount of "Ooh, neat" in reaction.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

What are the percentages about?

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I assume it's in the article supergee points to, but I got a bad link when I tried it.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

*nod* yeah I got the bad link too. I should probably go check his journal and see if he says anything.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Corrected link (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2005/11/09/top_20_geek_novels_the_results.html), explaining that it was a poll. I like the author's comments, including that Illuminatus! should have finished higher and that John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar and The Shockwave Rider should have made it.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Gracias

[ptigris.livejournal.com]

I have most of Heinlein in first edition paperback. Loved the shorts.