Daddy, where you a geek when you were little?

So asked my youngest daughter last week. Despite pretty damning photographic evidence from my childhood, I would probably deny this - and I'm certainly not one anymore... I think. I don't even own a beanie, and I can't find my pocket protector (useful though it was when in multi-pen mode).

The Guardian Unlimited's Technology blog has compiled the best geek novels written in English since 1932:

1. The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four -- George Orwell
3. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip Dick
5. Neuromancer -- William Gibson
6. Dune -- Frank Herbert
7. I, Robot -- Isaac Asimov
8. Foundation -- Isaac Asimov
9. The Colour of Magic -- Terry Pratchett
10. Microserfs -- Douglas Coupland
11. Snow Crash -- Neal Stephenson
12. Watchmen -- Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
13. Cryptonomicon -- Neal Stephenson
14. Consider Phlebas -- Iain M Banks
15. Stranger in a Strange Land -- Robert Heinlein
16. The Man in the High Castle -- Philip K Dick
17. American Gods -- Neil Gaiman
18. The Diamond Age -- Neal Stephenson
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham

I have read 12 out of these 20 (maybe 13; did I read all the Wyndhams?). Well, I think that's inconclusive, surely. Of those, about 10 were read twenty or more years ago. That points to was geek, but grew out of it.

Should I, would I have a crack at any these days? The Orwell and the Huxley are worth a second shot. I have never read any graphic novels, so Watchmen is tempting. Iain M Banks is much better when he writes without the "M", I've always thought.

I've never even heard of Neal Stephenson. Hah! I am out of the geek loop! Then again, I do have my own blog... so the jury's still out on the geek stuff.