dGeek

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!

Great Geek Books for Nerds!

Hello all,

A number of questions about my reading habits came up this weekend at the fabulous Chevron 7.4 event in Birmingham. In true geek senility I just couldn't remember the names or authors for many of these! So in a bid to save face...after the fact I've compiled a list of titles that I think are worth tucking into.

The list below is by no means exhaustive (though possibly exhausting) but it touches on a few of my favourites...enjoy!

If you want to weigh in on any of these and more feel free to leave a comment and/or twitter with me at twitter.com/dhewlett

These links use our amazon Associates account...the idea being if you want to buy them use these links and the the money will help me with dGeek.com hosting etc.! Shameless I know, but I'm a practical nerd!

Much loved Books in no particular order:

Neuromancer by William Gibson

"The sky above the port was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel"...one of the best opening lines for a cyber-punk nerd like me..suddenly being a computer geek seemed cool.

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold

This is just such an engaging story and so beautifully written...and somehow terribly geeky all at the same time!

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay By Michael Chabon

Comic book nerds before comics were cool fighting more than just a world war...a classic!

 

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

In an on-going bid to stay a few steps ahead of my son I've started to read teen fiction...that and it's about my reading level. Hunger games is quite derivative of some of Battle Royale (an ultra-violent Japanese film) and a short story called "The Lottery" but it's still a thrill a minute read!  Highly recommend it! 

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

This book was given to me as a gift from a very kind stargate fan who visited the set (I'm mortified that I don't know her name)!  I could not put it down!  It's like Harry Potter for adults...I was so upset when it was over because I'd never get to read it again for the first time!

Dune series by Frank Herbert

When I gave up the first time I tried to read the first book in this series...it was like reading the Old Testament.  But once I got into it I devoured them all like a giant sand worm...Delicious!   

Lord Loss by Darren Shan

Lord Loss is the first in Shan's Demonata series.  I read the first few but then moved on to other things...Good gory fun!  But definitely aimed at kids.

 

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

This book just killed me!  I was a complete wreck the whole time I was reading ti.  It's one of the most beautifully written novels I've ever read - 9/11 brought home through the eyes of a little kid.  I get teary just writing about it.  Fabulous!

   

Old Man's War Series by John Scalzi

Brad Wright put me on to this guy and I've read everything he's written...fantastic smart, fun and engaging science fiction...kind of rebooted my love for the genre I'd have to say!  Another one of my favourites is his Android Sheep.

 

The Shining by Stephen King

I seem to be the last person in the world to delcare Stephen King "The King" but I came to this book later in life than most (people I've spoken to read it in their early teens!) but as a father I found reading it one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.  Hideously good!

Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolken

I feel a bit silly recommending such a classic series of novels! Shamefully, I avoided it for most of my life but having finally sat down and read them all... I so wish I'd done it years ago! A must-read for all nerds and aspiring geeks out there!

 

 His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman 

I could not believe that I'd never heard of these books until recently...another series that should be read earlier than I read them...genius stuff!

 

UK Geek

I am a geek. 

Or a nerd, I tend to use the terms interchangeably.  

This comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me or knows my work on Stargate.  I’m often rattling on about my childhood fascination with computers and science fiction (specifically in the form of Doctor Who as played by John Pertwee or Tom Baker)  But it's something that I've started to think about a lot as I think about as I consider my home on the web, dGeek.com.

There are a lot of different type of geeks.  My wife Jane, would call them “enthusiasts”, but she means the same thing, she's just much more diplomatic than I!  I always assumed that nerds were just computer geeks.  That’s how I got myself labelled as one!  But then I met my filmmaking friends, and it became apparent that the same obsessive passion could be applied to movies as well... which naturally I went along with whole-heartedly.  Still, the more people I meet the more the term widens out to embrace all sorts of fellow nerds.  Having been given a series of different hand knitted Daleks I can safely add knit nerds to the mix!  It’s nice to see nerdom spread out from my original image of a solitary geek tapping away at some arcane computer programming language.

I started thinking about all this because I've been discussing how my uncle, a Train Nerd, could go about creating a train enthusiasts community.  He loves the idea of using the railway to teach kids about problem solving, science and the like.  He has built an impressive railway system himself, which runs around my Grandfather's property.  He ran out of room on the flat, so he's now zig-zagged the line down the side of the hill, which definitely gives it little more Indiana Jones-style excitment...something that's not often done in Train Nerd circles apparently.  The cars are currently pulled by an old diesel loco that was once used for mining, but there's a steam-powered locomotive that they are currently rebuilding from the ground up.  When they can't find a part, they create them!  He would probably wince at how simplistic and general I'm being about the whole thing, but then I'm just a train nerd in training!  

The point being, there are a lot of nerds out there... and the thing you'll find about them is that if you get them talking, if you've got a shred of inner-geek in you that is, you'll get caught up in their enthusiasm for these specific nerd niches.  I find myself drawn into all kinds of cyber-steam punk possibilities after just one afternoon up at Grandpa's railway with the train nerds!

I was never a very social geek, in part because I didn't think that I was one.  I was too cool for that nonsense!  But I still wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons.  Seeing as I was such a solitary nerd I kludged together a dungeon master program in BASIC on my Commodore 64.  D&D without all that messy human interaction... what bliss!  Had I been less of a nerd, I'd have sold them instead of writing over the tapes every time (yes little nerd babies tapes!)  Luckily the nerds of today are a lot more social... and probably better organized!

I want dGeek.com to be a place where these different forms of nerd can be discussed, perhaps even cross-pollenated to create evil new ones!  So let's get the 20 sided die rolling here...tell me what you're into. What kind of a nerd are you, and why?

Can't wait to hear what you're up to!

Cheers,

D!

Hello again!

Greetings!

Firstly I'd like to make something perfectly clear.  This is not a fan site. If you want to partake in that sort of thing then there are some great ones out there by people much more talented at that sort of thing than I am.  I'm sure you'll get a kick out of them…i know that I do!  (I'll get you a list of the one's I like when I get a second) 

That's not to say I won't address Stargate Atlantis or SG1 or any of the other acting roles I've had in the last 20 odd years (remind me to make myself younger on my imdb listing will you?)  And be certain that I'll be doing my best to market and publicize any writing or directing projects that I'm working on.  Most of which will follow this basic approach...please buy my movie A Dog's Breakfast

Having said that I feel the need to let you know that A Dog's Breakfast is also available for free on hulu (for those of you living in the U.S.)  My battles with distributors about the so called "International" release is on-going and will probably spill over into these postings as well...look at that I've done it already!

The point being, I really do not want this site to be just about me.  Don't get me wrong, i love me, probably more than most of you do!  It's just I feel a bit odd talking about me all the time!  

dGeek was created as a place for kindred spirits to chat and dream and plot and scheme.  The dGeek slogan, of old will no longer read "the nerd knows" I'm changing it to "nerds know" because like it or not, if you're here then you're a nerd, like me and you should be wearing it like a badge of honour! 

The most important discovery that I have made in my life (so far that is) is that there is nothing cool about trying to be cool (you think I could have got that from Grease, but I'm a slow learner).  As soon as I freed myself from trying to be something that I am not, I was a much happier and more productive human…and strangely, seemingly much cooler by many accounts (dubious accounts probably)!  

My wife, Jane, is a nerd, though she doesn't quite get the compliment in that statement.  My son I leave to be whatever he dares to dream... Mars, my mutt ( because mutts are the best) is most certainly a nerd, though, like me not a particularly intelligent one. What he lacks in smarts he more than makes up for in cute (so he's ahead of me there).  

This site is a community, where we can laugh at ourselves and at each other, where we can learn, where we can play, and where we can help.  This is not a fan site, unless you are a fan of nerds and geeks whether they be writer geeks, filmmaking geeks, science fiction or science fact geeks.  dGeek is my home and adventure on the Web and I invite you all to make yourself a place and revel in all the wonderful things that make you dGeek!

Welcome to my great internet adventure!

David Hewlett