Hello wonderful person! And Welcome to my intro page on the Hi-Sci-Fi Society. Have you ever found yourself in good company but due to failures in communication — not that you have any negative feelings towards acquaintances and loved ones — you still felt that you wished you could find someone who understood what you wanted to say, or who knew some things in common with what you know, or at least had an interest in matters that the average person simply finds too esoteric to bother with. Having failed to find such mind-mates for much of my life, I am setting up the HSF Society with the hope of connecting with some who have a high measure of intelligence and imagination and would like to meet similar people.
I’m Glenn Lazar Roberts. My background: I acquired a degree in Cultural Anthropology (specialty Middle East Archeology and history of religions) and almost also completed degrees in business and geology. I got a Master’s degree in history of Russian-Islamic relations (including a formal degree-equivalent in modern Russian history plus years of instruction in Islamic History in an Ivy League PhD on full scholarship which I never finished), and a law degree which I used in International Law & Immigration Law. I have translated both Russian and Arabic professionally (written translation). I have also read (long ago) Hebrew, classical Greek, French, Spanish, and (we’re really reaching back now) Esperanto. At UCLA I was reading the Old Testament in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek, and the Quran in Arabic. I am intoxicated by words — I am perpetually floating on a sea of script. I have written 11 novels, both formally published and self-published. The self-published are perhaps my most imaginative books, pushing the limits of English language in wild torrents, which is likely why they were impossible to formally publish. And 4 “faction” books, 3 of which are my college theses.
Click here for my books. I spend my time reading books in Arabic, learning shorthand in English, and playing loud electric guitar. There exists also shorthand in Russian, maybe one day I will have a chance to learn it.
My GRE Verbal was 99.9 percentile, translating to 146 IQ on the Wechsler scale and 149 IQ on the Stanford-Binet scale, if you buy all this IQ stuff. GRE Verbal + Math was 99.895 percentile, at least that’s what the charts say, and who am I to argue? I have also been a member of Mensa off and on for 30 years. Pretty good, I suppose, for a high-school dropout. I am now also a member of Atlantiq, IHIQS, Intertel, TOPS, IIS, ePIQ, and ISI-S. Being accepted into ISI-S suggests 99.93/2 or about 151-150. Nice, I suppose, if true, but In the world of the truly bright that makes me just mid-range or pretty much “bush league” and an “also-ran.” As ISI-S states, 151 “is not astronomical.” (Boy they sure let the air out of that balloon.)
What’s it like to be unique? Here’s a graph.
Postscript: I queried the Triple Nine Society but they said No. As I mentioned, TNS requires triple 9 with both verbal n math. For them it is not good enough to be triple 9 in just one test, but you must average triple 9 in both subjects together. Again as mentioned, I am considerably above triple 9 in verbal, but lower in math, so that when both are joined my GRE score is below the required 1460. I made 1440, so despite the verbal being considerably above triple 9, when joined with my math score the total is only 99.895, which TNS says is not good enough. Other societies look at only 1 test, not 2 tests as TNS does. And at least one (ISIS) considers high creativity as more than enough to make up for the slight deficiency in math. It does seem to me that TNS is a bit misleading since scoring above triple 9 in a difficult nationwide graduate exam should qualify one, but they insist on very high scores on a second exam also n then average them. So I am indeed triple 9, but not in the way that TNS demands. After all, there are many tests n if one is required to submit the scores of every exam ever taken, no one at all would qualify. One difficult test should be enough.