Wizard's Bane
by Rick Cook · first published 1989
50% recommend38% neutral13% critical
Why HN recommends it
Fun, light fantasy about a programmer summoned into a magical world who builds a compiler for magic; recommended for readers who enjoy programming humor and programming-minded takes on magic.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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…46128404) ## Adrian Tchaikovsky - *Children of Time* — Science Fiction (Evolution, Space Opera) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim... ## Rick Cook — Wizardry Series - *Wizard’s Bane* — Fantasy, Programming/Magic Mashup https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112616.Wizard_s_Bane - *Wizardry Series (overview)* https://www.goodreads.com/series/43084-wiz ## James P. Hogan - *Inherit…
on “Ask HN: What fiction books would you recommend for programmers?” ↗One that has a lot of programming and hackerish humor is the Wizard's Bane series by Rick cook. Fantasy realm mixing programming and magic quite well.
on “Ask HN: Sci-Fi Books for Hackers?” ↗Or Wizard's Bane by Rick Cook, where a programmer gets summoned to a fantasy world and writes a magic compiler in forth.
on “Six works of Computer Science-Fiction” ↗The "Wizard's Bane" series of books by Rick Cook are probably what you are looking for. They are based on the idea of a computer programmer being summoned/teleported into a world of magic and then using programming principles…
on “/* You Are Not Expected to Understand This */ (2018)” ↗The one that springs most immediately to mind is "Wizard's Bane" by Rick Cook, which involves somebody making a programming language out of small spells which could be used to make more complex ones, but the book wasn't actually that good. Much better written (and…
on “Harry Porter's Relay Computer” ↗See also: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/631233.Wizard_s_Bane
on “Transistors are civilization’s invisible infrastructure” ↗Reminds me of "Wizard's Bane" by Rick Cook, where a programmer is summoned into a fantasy world where the magic is highly volatile, and he tames it with Forth.
on “Unsong, a fantasy novel where the universe is programmable with Hebrew (2015)” ↗Wizard's Bane is the first book of the Wizardary Compiled series by Rick Cook. At one time, it was in the Baen Free Library ( https://www.baen.com/allbooks/category/index/id/2012 ) but it appears to have gone back…
on “The Zen of Forth” ↗