More Great Geek Books

A few of you raised very good suggestions that I just had to add to my list and that got me thinking about even more...guess this is going to be an on-going process... so please leave a comment or Twitter me your thoughts!

Doctor Who and The Horror of Fang Rock by Terrance Dicks

As random as this may seem to most non-Whovians (they didn't have that term when I was at the height of my Doctor Who fanboy fervor!), I really have to include Doctor Who and The Horror of Fang Rock because it was the first Doctor Who book I ever owned! Up until Fang Rock I didn't even know Doctor Who books existed!  From that point on I set about buying every Doctor Who book that they had in print.

One of my biggest regrets was donating all 200 of the books in my collection to charity when I moved to the U.S. Still, perhaps there's another 8 year old boy out there right now that's discovering them all over again!  Lucky little bastard! ;-)

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

chrissmiths wisely pointed out that I'd left the geek literary god Neal Stephenson from my list...I am suitably shamed!  Cryptonomicon is an amazing blend of historical and futuristic fiction...it's a daunting looking book if that makes any sense, but very readable, very smart and very funny.  The first of his books that I read was another cyberpunk novel called "Snow Crash" that I remember loving at the time!

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland

Ah the early days of the tech boom!  I loved this book...it made programming both banal and beautiful!

Code by Charles Petzold

This shows just how much of a nerd I am...loved this book and boy does it make you feel so superior!

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Don't Panic!  Thanks IIriaa for reminding me! The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of my absolute favourites! Adams has created the Fawlty Towers of Science fiction and it's yet another geek must-have!  The whole series is brilliant and has become the source of endless quotes and nerd legend!

Comments

[Sajina]

Doctor Who = <3
Bet fans will send you now tons of Doctor Who books, if anyone could bear giving them away! ;)

MicroSerfs was one of the funniest books I've ever read. I even wrote once a linguistic paper inspired by one quote from the book!

From other book recs, I'd say Stephen Fry's Making History. It's a clever time-travel-with-huge-consequences story, including killing Hitler.

[caroline burke]

Dan Simmons is a must, his Illium/Olympos books are amazing as are the Hyperion/Endymion ones ... Cryptonomicon is next on my list to read funnily enough!

[visticuffs]

Microserfs is one of my long-time favourites. I wonder if anyone here has read Generation A, Coupland's "response" to Generation X. It's about story-telling in the digital age, apparently, but I felt it was a bit...out of touch. I won't spoil the moral (and there is a moral), but I'm curious to see what other geeks thought of it!

[Villy]

There's quite a few Warhammer books I like, namely the Gotrek and Felix series. Those are my go-to geek books when I want a quick read, since they usually only take me a couple of hours to read.

I, Robot-Isaac Asimov

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -Philip K. Dick

Brave New World- Aldous Huxley *does that count as geeky? I don't care. It is one of my all-time favorite books. :-)*

And does the Incarnations of Immortality series count as geeky?

...

I'm stopping there before I get carried away. I just get so excited when talking about books!

[Kim]

Ooh, you've got two of my all time favorites on this one- Cryptonomicon and Microserfs. Love it!

[Jarodrussell]

If you like Stephenson, I'd highly suggest Daniel Suarez's books: Daemon and Freedom(tm). They're both strikingly prescient, technologically sound, and very fun to read.

[Widow_Lady302]

Love the Doctor Who! Tom Baker on the cover...since he is the only and true best Doctor! *cough*

Hitchhikers should be manditory reading too, like you can't graduate until you read it.

Have not read Cryptonomicon, but now will thanks to you.

The only one that I think belongs in your list, that isn't is : DUNE!! Can you wear true geek stripes without having both read and watched the original movie?

Great blog, CHEERS!

[Kristyna]

Great list of books:). I haven't read any book from this list yet but i'll try to find some of them translated into czech language.

But thanks to your tip i've read the book by R.J.Sawyer called Flashforward(in original, i can't believe it) and i've started reading his trilogy Neanderthal Parallax. I must say it's great inspiration for me.

Thanks again for your list of books and inspiration.

Greetinx,

Kristyna

[visticuffs]

Kristyna -- if you like Sawyer, check out his book "Calculating God". Not only is it a great read, but it's thought-provoking as well. An alien race contacts several scientists all over the world, one of them being the main character, a man who works at the ROM in Toronto. The aliens have discovered similarities in the history of their planet and ours and this leads them on a search for a greater power, not entirely unlike the idea of God (but not entirely like it, either).

[Ladygeeke]

All of Philip K Dick#s books - even the bad ones are astounding.
Justina Robson, Quantum Gravity quadrilogy.
Cary Doctorow, Little Brother.
Ursula Le Guin, Always Coming Home - and all her other books.
Kage Baker, The Company series.
Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series.
Mike Carey's Felix Castor series.
Charles Stross, The Merchant Princes series.
It's a long time since I read all my classic SF but definitely James Blish, Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, etc. etc.

[Sajina]

Another rec:
My sister always recommends Philip Jose Farmer's "Riverworld" series - I've only read the first book so far - but it's great with many historic figures showing up!

[Skiff]

For fast-paced, supernatural British humour, I heartily recommend anything by Robert Rankin. It's probably best to start with the Brentford trilogy (The Antipope, The Brentford Triangle and East of Ealing) or The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse.

[visticuffs]

Skiff, I agree -- Rankin is a delight to read! My first Rankin was The Witches of Chiswick and I was heartily confused the entire time, but absolutely loved it.

Jasper Fforde is another must-read. I just finished "Shades of Grey" and it is just brilliant, but I'd suggest reading the Thursday Next series to start, as it's easier to get into his style with those books!

[Dora_Chloe]

" books which I have liked to read over the years -
This Immortal by Roger Zelanzy

This Immortal" (1966) was Zelazny's first SF novel, and it shared the Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year with Frank Herbert's "Dune," so it is no lightweight post-Apocalypse adventure story. In fact, I think the best way to understand "This Immortal" is to read Lawrence Durrell's chronicles of the Greek Isles, most especially "Prospero's Cell" and "Reflections on a Marine Venus"---or better yet, read Percy Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound," which is referred to more than once in this novel.

info here - http://www.amazon.com/This-Immortal-Roger-Zelazny/dp/0743497848

And for more of a fun read -

Red Dwarf Omnibus by Grant Naylor

Product Description
Here are the first two novels of the cult series "Red Dwarf" in one volume - "Red Dwarf" and "Better Than Life" - plus the first draft of the original TV pilot script. It all begins, when Dave Lister is celebrating his twenty-fourth birthday on a Monopoly board pub crawl round London, and somehow ends up three million years from Earth, marooned in the wrong dimension of the wrong reality, and down to his last two cigarettes. Together with a dead man, a senile computer, a deranged sanitation mechanoid with an overactive guilt chip and the best-dressed entity in all six known universes, the last remaining member of the human race begins his epic journey home.

Info taken from -
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Dwarf-Omnibus-Grant-Naylor/dp/0140174664/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265302405&sr=1-1

If you get a chance add them. I did.

Sheri.

[OHinNJ]

LOVE "Hitchhiker's Guide"! Now I get it when someone asks a questions and someone else answers "42". Also loved Android's Dream - in fact, the 1st few pages, which were very weird, kind of had a Hitchhiker's feel to me, which kept me reading ...and laughing. Haven't read Dr. Who books, but have read and enjoyed the SGA books. And sadly, with no SGA movie in sight, looks like the only chance for fans to pick up where Season 5 left off will be reading the SGA book "Death Game" expected to come out in July. (sigh)

[Kay]

As if my reading list wasn't long enough!
"Pastwatch" by Orson Scott Card is really great. It's an interesting time travel type story about Columbus.

[Amy D]

Glad to see that Azimov, Pullman and Adams have all been referenced!

And Neal Stephenson! Other people who have read Neal Stephenson! :) I'm currently buried in The Baroque Cycle, which is the prequel trilogy to Cryptonomicon, set in the late seventeenth century to early eighteenth century. Would definitely recommend!

[DD]

I just bought the English edition of "The more than complete hitchhikers guide" on a local fleamarket here in Germany... I've read the "Hitchhikers Guide to the galaxy" before & loved it thus I'm really looking forward to read all the books!

[visticuffs]

I just finished Eoin Colfer's HHG book, "And Another Thing" -- it was definitely an interesting experience! He managed to capture Adams's style every once in a while, and the story itself was pretty neat...but it was a little weird to be reading a non-Adams HHG. As a HHG fan, it was worthwhile to get another peek into the universe...but I feel like HHG was done with the 3rd or 4th book already...there didn't really need to be a sixth!

[Emily]

Hitchhikers guide really travels fast! Plus its really inexpensive on Amazon..for a penny! Then again theirs shipping..

[Green]

Same as the comment on the previous entry, except signed in this time.

[Christopher Blevins]

I love the whole Hitchhiker's series. I hope that they would fund another movie..maybe take it a bit more seriously too?

And David - I don't know if you'll see this or not, but I've done Joomla administration for a couple years now on the side and would love to help you out with the "real" dgeek site if you'd like :).

[Susan]

I am enjoying all the suggestions - I have already reserved "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse" from the radio - what a wonderful title.
For Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - try to get hold of the origiinal BBC radio series - it is brilliant.
Orson Scott Card's Ender books are also great - I have been listening to them on audio book during my commute (thanks to Audible).
Tanya Huff does great sci-fi and fantasy with humour woven in. Also Anne McCaffery's Pern and Talent series.

[Susan]

Brain freeze caught me there - I reserved "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse" from the LIBRARY, not the radio.

[K]

The first science fiction I read was the books by Jules Verne. Being a biologist and a scientist, another science fiction favourite is Michael Crichtons Jurrasic park (the book, not the movie). And I love Ursula K. LeGuin.