I guess it's because the 'typical' fan (whatever that is) fulfills the stereotype - and that dorky stereotype hardly fits with mainstream behaviour.

I've read six of them... I embrace my inner geek.

Hitchhiker's Guide
Dune
Neuromancer
Nineteen Eighty Four
Brave New World
Stranger in a Strange Land

Not sure why these are called 'geeky' though. Just because many are sci-fi and/or have lots of fans?

read 1, 4-8, 13 and 15. i'm just starting to read american gods, which i'm excited about. of the ones listed, i'd have to say the cryptonomicon is the archetype of the geek novel due to the subject matter that it deals with and the lengthy technical explanations, although it has enough action and espionage to appeal to all kinds of readers - which makes it an excellent book. i read stranger in a strange land in high school and LOVED it. i had no idea what it was about or what to expect from it and it blew me away.

i'd have to agree with everyones take on do androids dream of electric sheep. i saw blade runner first and read the book not long ago. i liked both, but i've seen the movie a dozen times and will continue to re-watch it. ask me if i'll read the book again.....

i'm surprised the lord of the rings trilogy isn't in this somewhere? maybe because the movies have made them mainsteam?

Yes, the industry producing sugar-coated pseudo-novels is a huge one, but we were talking about famous novels which, in my opinion, means that it's still known a few years after being published

I guess about 80% of all readers; see the respective bestsellers.

Yes, I've seen that film, too. It's good enough in my opinion, although many seem to hate it for two central changes: The 'two legs bad' part and the ending which is a lot more positive than that of the book. In the book, the animals overthrow Napoleon, but everything just seems to be starting again after that - a circle from which their 'society' apparantely can't escape.

That movie is a lot better than the 'live-action' one from the late 90s (?), though. That one ends with a happy all-American human family (=the capitalists) taking over again and everything being fine after that.

Yes, well, who wants to read about everything being good and everyone being happy? It's boring

Not completely. Starship Troopers is quite unique in its way as happy, pessimistic story with political undertones.

I'm with you on your view on stalinism. Thousands randomly killed per day, only to create fear. Hunger in Ukraine. Gulags. Violent actions against the army and the own party... Hard to believe, this could stand so long or even there were enough "killers" and political commissars, which really believe in what they did...

I have'nt read animal farm, but I remember there was an animated film based on it that was proyected in my school when I was a child, even thought I doubt any of us would understand the political overtones that seem to be a good part of the book.

All of this discussion made me think in what always is said when talking about pessimistic stories, the happy ones do not sell. Or at least I can't think in any that have received fame.

In my case I liked the book because through it I knew about the Stalinism, which shocked me as I can't understand how the people could allow living something like that for that long.

That's right. Orwell also took some features of Great Britain of the late 1940s and used them in the book. Therefore it's too simple to read it as a critique of stalinism or totalitarianism.


Mostly, it's (inflationary) used as a symbol of total state control. In my opinion, one of its more interesting aspects is the degeneration of the language in order to make criticism even more impossible. As far as I know, this was a really new idea, although the importance of language was already widely discussed in philosophy when he wrote the book.

It's been quite a few years since I read it, but I don't remember it being a book having a lot of 'points'. It's not preachy, basically just a sad story of a guy who isn't even politically minded, but still can't fit in.

Yes, Animal Farm is great!


I couldn't say it's not a good book or good to read, since I never read it. I'm just biased and think to know most of its points already, by reading about it and reading/listening to the words of the readers. This may be not very intelligent or wise, but because of that I'm human, am I?

Talking about Stalinism, Animal Farm is a better suited example of criticism about that. One thing I especially like about Nineteen Eighty-Four is that it's pretty much 'neutral' when it comes to the political systems of the world back then, because they all degenerated into the same thing in the continuity of the book.

I do understand your point, though, dregenrocks. Of course it's 'over-cited' and it's hardly the first book of its kind. In many ways, it can be called overrated. Still, it's a good read in my opinion.

:D

Yes, this ability of adaptation in any environment has brought mankind onto the top of the food chain.


Yes, in Stalins USSR, but not the whole world. IMHO there will be always opposites in the world in every kind it's possible. Even by the USSR-administration that followed, stalinism was frown on.

1984 is just too one-sided and often cited, in too many discussion, by too many wannabe-intellectuals. Maybe I'm only annoyed of that.

The main point of 1984 is that too many things of the book aren't invented, they are based in Stalin's Russia.

In the book they have to keep the TV all day on, in Russia they had to have a radio wired to a special network all day conected and turned on to receive special broadcasts.

In the book the dissidents are sent to psichological prisons similar to the gulag network.

In the book the mythical "great brother" is threated as a god. In Russia the "great father" Stalin was treated as a god.

And so on.

There is a book about the gulags called "Gulag archipielago", by Alexandr Soljenitsin, who was in one of those prisions. What he tells reminds me of 1984, even though the pessimism of the book, it is not worse than what it is based in.

I didn't read Nineteen Eighty-Four as "Uhh! Mankind is so evil...". More like "mankind is passively accepting pretty much every situation" which as far as I can tell isn't far from the truth.

Illuminatus: Agreed

Edited by Mr Creosote at 20:23 on January, 25th 2006

My pics:

1. The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
Read.

2. Nineteen Eighty-Four -- George Orwell
Not read. It's just to often cited. This annoys me, also it's too negative... "Uhh! Mankind is so evil...". Don't want to read it.

(...)
Mostly heard enough about those book and their plots, I didn't wanted to read them anymore.

But
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy
is just too stupid to even bother!

Currently I'm reading a lot of Hermann Hesse. That was a great writer!

I only read 1, 2, and 6.

I'm also surprised 1984 is listed.

American Gods: Sorry, but I can hardly imagine anything geekier than a fantasy novel about 'gods' from all ages and all cultures walking across the earth and fighting amongst themselves. I doubt anyone but geeks is interested in such a topic. Also, the author is only known to geeks, really.

Do Androids Dream of Electic Sheep: I do agree that it most likely owes its place in this list to the movie, and I also agree that other books by the same author should probably be ranked higher if it comes to the 'geek factor'. However, I certainly have read the book (got it as a present when I graduated from school - the headmaster presented it to me for being the top student of the year; totally irrelevant trivia ), and I was strongly impressed by it. It's one of the two books which I just (literally) couldn't put down once I got into it until I got to the end (the other being Watchmen). The movie is great on its own right, though it doesn't owe much more than the general setting to the book, of course. It didn't try to be like the book, as far as I can see, and that's alright with me. So, to recap it, while it's certainly sad that the book is listed for the wrong reasons (link to the movie), it absolutely deserves to be remembered.

I haven't read THE DIAMOND AGE (number 18 on the list), though I expect I'll get to it eventually. I have read the rest, some this year (AMERICAN GODS), some about the time they came out (MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, DUNE, etc.)

That said, it doesn't strike me as an especially "geeky" set of books. AMERICAN GODS is a riff on long ago Norse mythology. MICROSERFS is pretty much a straight comic novel about characters who happen to be early Dot-com-era programmers. Almost anything by Arthur C. Clarke would seem to be more geek-ish than John Wyndham's novels. Dick's DO ANDROIDS DREAM became a classic SF-noir film, but the original novel was pretty minor stuff -- I suspect that most people who believe they read the book have gotten it confused mentally with the film.