Geek Test: I Failed

Looks like I have some seri­ous read­ing to do:

  1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
  2. The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Isaac Asimov
  3. Dune, Frank Herbert
  4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
  5. A Wiz­ard of Earth­sea, Ursu­la K. Le Guin
  6. Neu­ro­mancer, William Gibson
  7. Child­hood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
  8. Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
  9. The Mists of Aval­on, Mar­i­on Zim­mer Bradley
  10. Fahren­heit 451, Ray Bradbury
  11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
  12. A Can­ti­cle for Lei­bowitz, Wal­ter M. Miller, Jr.
  13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
  14. Chil­dren of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
  15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
  16. The Colour of Mag­ic, Ter­ry Pratchett
  17. Dan­ger­ous Visions, edit­ed by Har­lan Ellison
  18. Death­bird Sto­ries, Har­lan Ellison
  19. The Demol­ished Man, Alfred Bester
  20. Dhal­gren, Samuel R. Delany
  21. Drag­on­flight, Anne McCaffrey
  22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
  23. The First Chron­i­cles of Thomas Covenant the Unbe­liev­er, Stephen R. Donaldson
  24. The For­ev­er War, Joe Haldeman
  25. Gate­way, Fred­erik Pohl
  26. Har­ry Pot­ter and the Philoso­pher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
  27. The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dou­glas Adams
  28. I Am Leg­end, Richard Matheson
  29. Inter­view with the Vam­pire, Anne Rice
  30. The Left Hand of Dark­ness, Ursu­la K. Le Guin
  31. Lit­tle, Big, John Crowley
  32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
  33. The Man in the High Cas­tle, Philip K. Dick
  34. Mis­sion of Grav­i­ty, Hal Clement
  35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
  36. The Redis­cov­ery of Man, Cord­wain­er Smith
  37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
  38. Ren­dezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
  39. Ring­world, Lar­ry Niven
  40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
  41. The Sil­mar­il­lion, J.R.R. Tolkien
  42. Slaughterhouse‑5, Kurt Vonnegut
  43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
  44. Stand on Zanz­ibar, John Brunner
  45. The Stars My Des­ti­na­tion, Alfred Bester
  46. Star­ship Troop­ers, Robert A. Heinlein
  47. Storm­bringer, Michael Moorcock
  48. The Sword of Shan­nara, Ter­ry Brooks
  49. Timescape, Gre­go­ry Benford
  50. To Your Scat­tered Bod­ies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

I’ve put the one’s I’ve actu­al­ly read, from cov­er to cov­er, in bold. I’m being very hon­est here. Frankly, as some­one who thinks he’s a fair­ly well read geek (I even took a class in col­lege on this stuff, no kid­ding!), this is very hum­bling. I’m not claim­ing to any that I’ve seen the movie ten times on or have talked about enough with oth­ers that I know every­thing that hap­pens. No, only the one’s I’ve hon­est­ly read.

So how about you? I know a lot of the peo­ple who read my site read many more books than I do. Care to put up your list? No fudg­ing the truth, now (Sor­ry, Stephen, the graph­ic nov­el of Elric I got you does­n’t count since it’s a dif­fer­ent book than Storm­bringer.).

Also, I would like to say that I’ve read a cou­ple that are old­er than 50 years that would sure­ly make the list for the past century.

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

1 comment

  1. 1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
    2. The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, Isaac Asi­mov* (I’ve only read the first book so far, so do I get a third cred­it for this one?)
    3. Dune, Frank Herbert
    6. Neu­ro­mancer, William Gibson
    7. Child­hood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
    10. Fahren­heit 451, Ray Bradbury
    26. Har­ry Pot­ter and the Philoso­pher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
    27. The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy, Dou­glas Adams
    33. The Man in the High Cas­tle, Philip K. Dick
    42. Slaughterhouse‑5, Kurt Vonnegut
    46. Star­ship Troop­ers, Robert A. Heinlein

    And wait a minute. You’ve nev­er ready all of the Hitch­hik­er’s Guide?

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