SciFi Sister Suffragettes: You have got to be kidding me.

August 18th will be the 94th anniversary of an important landmark in American history. (I'm busy that day and I want to talk about this now, so you're getting this post today.) On that date, back in 1919, the 19th amendment passed the final hurdle between being an idea and being the Law of the Land [1]. What a lot of people don't know is that when it passed the US Senate and was turned over the states for ratification, the bill was already 41 years old.

Those 41 years on the road from the pens of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to ratification was a rocky one and not necessarily the gist of this essay, but it's worth remembering that it took longer than I have (at this point) been alive to get the bill from the pen to the people.

The message it sent was as simple as it was revolutionary: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

What a freaking concept.

It would be ratified by the states a year later when Tennessee cast the deciding vote and women's suffrage became the law of the land.

I didn't want to have to follow that with the not-at-all-shocking news that "Women and men should be equal" is somehow still shocking 93 years later. . . and somehow it's even more shocking among a group of men who bill themselves as "futurists".

This post, by the way, is about sex and gender. If you can't handle that, get out. I don't want to turn this blog into a place where I never get down from atop the soapbox, but people keep doing things that put me up here. Seriously, people, cut it out. Treat people the way you want to be treated because I'm getting tired of being up here so often.

We're going to start our conversation in the obvious place: penises and vaginae.

Yes, vaginae; I looked it up.[2]

Why do I want to talk about penises and vaginae? I honestly don't, but for the life of me, I've never been able to fathom why my penis and my Y chromosome would make me superior or inferior to someone who has a vagina and two X chromosomes. And I've spent my entire life trying to figure out why some people with Y chromosomes think that I'm wrong about that. I find it deeply embarrassing that we had to specifically write "Women are people too and shut up about it" into our constitution. It's probably the second most absurd thing we've ever had to do as a nation.[3]

What's worse, this summer it's become clear that there are some who believe that my ability to pee my name into the snow (in flawless Parker penmanship, thank you very much) makes me better qualified to write a science fiction novel[4] or just generally be a nerd. I can't personally vouch for Elizabeth Cady Stanton's views on literature or Science Fiction, but I'd wager she would disagree with that premise.

And so do I.

But it's pointless and condescending for me, as a man, to explain sexism to you. So I'm going to send you away for a bit to read someone else's blog from a few months back to find out what I'm talking about from someone who experienced one of the many forms of it.

Then please come back when you're done, because we're not finished here...

This week in SF

by Anne Aguirre

"So this week, two notable things happened. First, two dinosaurs went on a rampage. Granted, that didn’t happen this week, technically, but this is when the backlash occurred, first for the initial column that ran in the (Science Fiction Writers of America) bulletin, and then there was the rebuttal, bemoaning the spate of anonymous complaints..."

When does it ever end?

It's the "imitation nerd girl" thing all over again. And I find it deeply shameful that I keep having to repeat myself. And I think you should too.

By the way, while I like David Brin and generally think the world of the man's books and his intellect, I think she's wrong to give him a pass. I'm sorry, Dr Brin, but you're not off the hook. Guys who quietly come over later and apologize later are not part of the solution. Going along to get along and apologizing later when no one can hear you isn't a solution, it is the problem.

It's not a solution to sit quietly in the room and laugh uncomfortably while someone is being a bitter, racist, sexist, and/or misogynist asshole. Someone on one of the forums where I saw this posted said "Be David Brin". With respect, no. Don't be the guy who will walk up to your victim later and chuck her on the shoulder and say "Hey, we're not all like that."

Stand up and call the bitter, racist, sexist, misogynist asshole to the carpet. The lack of a negative response from the audience is what perpetuates this kind of behavior.

And if it ends my career because you're too well connected to be touched by a nobody like me, that's how it goes. I would rather fail for the right reasons than succeed for the wrong ones. This industry, this country has had too many years of people doing the wrong thing because they're afraid to do the right one.

Aguirre's post is a bit old and an isolated case, you say? Sadly, no. I was reminded of this today by a friend linking me to Maureen Johnson's suggestion that the gender of the author is the primary concern of cover designers.[5]  Her fans responded to her challenge to re-imagine the covers of male authors' books as they would look if the author had been female. The results are distressingly accurate and generally speak for themselves.

It gets better?

Maybe a little. Honestly, I think it just gets more complicated.

During Comic Con last week, an internet-based music group called The Doubleclicks put out a video called "Nothing to prove" in defense of the geek girl (embedded at the bottom of this post) and they were greeted by the geeky Great and the Good with open arms. The geekiest geek guys of them all, John Scalzi, Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage were all in there, holding up signs saying "C'mon guys, join us in the future. You'll like it here, we have equality and jet packs... just kidding about the jetpacks."

As I said last time sexism in nerd culture reared its unsightly head: This shouldn't be necessary. This kind of thing is beneath us. It is beneath our intellect; it is unworthy of our ideals; it stands opposed to our own quasi-Utopian ideal that humanity can be better than it is.

The 21st century is shaping up to be a time when formerly nerdy/geeky enthusiasms are pursued with furious abandon. When science fiction rules the marketplace just as it rules the silver screen and it feels like anything is possible if we could just stop hating and turn our energies to accomplishing something. Together. And while we nerds haven't quite built Utopia, it is a world where - as predicted by Herbert Gerjouy - the illiterate is not the one who cannot read, but the one who cannot learn, unlearn, and re-learn.

It's time for us all to prove we're worthy of our reputation for literacy and our earnest wish to live in the future.  We supposedly had this figured out 93 years ago. So catch up, wouldya?

Now someone help me down from this soap box before I fall off and break a hip.

-----

[1] My home state of Missouri ratified it on what would someday be my birthday. It's long been one of my favorite trivia tidbits about that day.  
[2] I don't advise doing that, by the way. Certainly not in public. If you must search for "vaginae", use a dictionary, or a medical text book, anything but the internet. Just trust me on this one. 
[3] For those who slept through American history class back in grade school, it took several laws, a constitutional amendment, and a catastrophic war to convince certain people that they didn't get to own certain other people just because those people had darker skin.
[4] Not by peeing in the snow, for the record. Not even I drink that much coffee.
[5] For the record, you shouldn't necessarily hate on cover designers for that. They do what art directors and editors tell them to do at the big houses and at the small houses or for indie authors, we do what the author asks for. Graphic design is a service industry and we don't exercise a lot of personal volition about design content. 

Storms Both Real and Imaginary: Sandy, Star Wars, and Disney

I will talk about NaNoWriMo tomorrow.

I have been finding it hard to focus as I, along with most of America, wait to hear from friends, family, and colleagues who were in the path of superstorm Sandy. I quickly grew tired of the apparently irresistible term "Frankenstorm" as well as the political candidates and leaders showing us their best and their worst as they either sought political advantage or shut up and did their jobs/got out of the way.

So it was that I -- along with most of the internet -- were primed for a fight when news broke that Disney was buying Lucasfilm in toto and planning three new Star Wars movies.

Cue rending of Star Wars tee shirts and gnashing of nerd teeth.

(Stop that, it's bad for your teeth!)

The rage was palpable on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and elsewhere. At one point, the top five subjects being discussed on Twitter were Star Wars or Disney related, pushing the hurricane off the national list. This may or may not have been a bad thing, considering the fact that knee-jerk platitudes don't lower flood waters or light homes.

It was something else to talk about that allowed our existential dread some imaginary place to go and hide. T'were it ever so with Science Fiction. So I sent money to the Red Cross and talked about Star Wars. 

I think it might've been better that way...

Full Disclosure: I think this is a Good Thing. Star Wars has new hope. Disney is excellent at managing franchises and is well suited to stage manage the revival of Star Wars just as they did with the Muppets and Marvel.

(Incidentally, I think this means the Mouse has Indiana Jones now too. Next up, Indiana Jones V: The Nathan Fillian reboot? Let's make that happen, Internet!)

Many disagree with me.

While I cannot hope to counter all of the arguments, nor do I disagree with all of them, these are the ones that I had lobbed at me most often yesterday, along with my responses:

This is awful because...
It's the worst thing ever!
I can't respond to hyperbole. Give me a reason.

We can't trust Disney with the fate of the franchise!
You mean you trusted Lucas with the fate of the franchise? Really?

They're just buying it to cash in!
Better than a decade of Lucas cashing out. Seriously, take it from someone who had a room full of Star Wars toys, bedding, curtains, and miscellaneous paraphernalia, and has two nephews with even more of it: nothing has happened since 1977 that wasn't profit-driven. When they started introducing ships and characters just to make toys out of them (A-wings and B-wing fighters, anyone?) Sorry to burst your bubble, but movie making is and always has been a business. You weren't really paying attention when you watched Spaceballs, were you?

Now that they have The Muppets, Marvel, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars, they OWN MY CHILDHOOD!
Hard to argue with. If they bought Dungeons & Dragons and my old typewriter, I'd be contractually obligated to wear Mickey Ears at all times. That said, I don't necessarily agree that this is a bad thing if it means the things I loved as a kid remain viable for my nephews to love in turn.

They'll ruin the old movies!
If you've seen Lucas's endless special editions and re-edits and prequels and you are still making this argument... I don't know what to say to you.

The hero was Darth Vader and he's dead, so there's nothing left to make movies about.
Most cogent argument I've heard so far. And I strenuously disagree on several points. First, there are a half hundred post-Jedi novels that argue otherwise. Some of them are quite good. Also, it's an entire universe, you don't think there are other things happening that we can tell stories about?

Also, no matter what Lucas tells you, Vader wasn't the hero, he was the protagonist. There's a difference. Luke was the hero of episodes IV - VI and Ben Kenobi was the hero of episodes II and III. Episode I was a figment of your imagination. (Waves hand)

They'll have no respect for the franchise!
Remember how much it sucked when Disney bought Marvel and gave us almost a dozen awesome super hero movies, culminating in The Avengers? Gosh, that was awful, wasn't it?

By the way, go sign this petition I created. We'll be here when you get back...
Disney: Please Hire Joss Whedon to Direct a Star Wars Film that Doesn't Suck
Back? Good. Share it with your friends. Seriously. What could it hurt?

They'll make it (shudder) cute!
Everyone wearing a "Wookie the Chew" tee shirt or who shared a link or image from James Hance's site has to sit down now. I think that might be everyone. If there's anyone left, please remember that you are defending the aesthetic honor of the man who gave us Ewoks and Jar Jar Binks. 

Seriously, though, go buy yourself a Wookie the Chew tee shirt. That guy is aces.

But now there will be Mickey-themed Star Wars everything!
I took this photo two years ago. Your argument is invalid.



Here’s my prediction: There will be three new Star Wars movies. They will not be as good as the ones we saw as kids. That’s not really possible because those movies aren’t as good as the ones we saw as kids anymore either. (Looking at you, George.)

Because Disney is pretty good at franchise management, they will more than likely be competently written and directed. They will at least have dialogue that doesn't make your hair melt. They will have stories that kinda, sorta make sense. They might even be quotable. They will sell lots of new toys and there will be more rides at the theme parks.

We will survive. So will Star Wars.

We will probably pay our money to go see them for the novelty of seeing well-written, competently-directed Star Wars movies in the modern era. Lucas will finally have to stop screwing around with (and screwing up) the old movies. If nothing else, and if only because the Mouse never turned down a chance to sell us something, we will probably finally get to see the original theatrical releases on Blue Ray might finally see a re-release of the original theatrical movies on Blue Ray (if they can negotiate a deal with Fox, which holds the distribution rights in perpetuity).

In all, it sounds like a good thing to me.

In the meantime, there was this a hurricane that came ashore and punched in America's most populous region in the teeth. People are homeless, cold, and it will take time and money and a national effort to clean up and recover.

The people of the East Coast don't need our tweets as much as our more concrete efforts to help. Here is an excellent list of organizations that are already on the ground in the hurricane zone, helping our fellow countrymen put the pieces back together.

How about we release some pent-up some nerd energy in that direction...
Sandy's Aftermath: How You Can Help(via NBC news)

Nerd World Order: We Won... Now What?

I don't know if I will post this, but I had to write it for the same reason that I write anything: because things build up in my head and I can't do anything else until I've let them out. It's how I cope with a world that often befuddles me.

Close your eyes and picture a nerd in your head. Seriously. Close your eyes and think about "Nerds" for a minute.  Summon a mental image that embodies the essence of Nerd Kind.

Got it?

What was your mental image?  Did you picture Bill Gates? The guys from Big Bang Theory? Or maybe Anthony Daniels from Revenge of the Nerds? Awkward, brainy-but-socially-stunted men with questionable hygiene and tape on his glasses suffering under the knuckles of the school jocks...

Me, basically?

Congratulations if you imagined Felicia Day. You are ahead of the curve if you did. When I was a kid, nerds and geeks were synonymous, and they did not as a general rule look like Felicia Day (at least none of the ones I knew did) but we'll get back to Ms. Day in a minute.

When I close my eyes and picture a nerd, I picture myself.  At around the age of 12 or 13, usually, but any age will do. Bespectacled, awkward, desperate to fit in. Talking to my peers with the ineptitude of a foreigner speaking a language with which he is only passingly familiar, always a page behind in the guidebook and wearing the local garb like it's a Halloween costume.

This is going to sound dark, and it was. And it might not jive with the stories I usually tell of a childhood out of an Archie comic if it had been ghostwritten by Ray Bradbury. Those stories are true and so is this: No true story is entirely light or entirely dark. It's mostly a matter of what bits you choose to leave out.  Humor, as is often the case, has been a defense mechanism of mine for as long as I can remember.

I was a nerd before anyone thought it was okay. I was tormented and sometimes quite literally tortured by bullies under the uncaring gaze of teachers -- mostly gym teachers. Once, after I had been bodily picked up and slammed down on a larger boy's knee as one might when trying to break a stick, cracking two of my ribs, the gym teacher who had watched it happen ordered me to get up out of the dirt and run laps for the sin of being an asthmatic wimp who would rather read a book than toss a football. I managed a quarter of a mile out of shear fear of punishment before saying "screw this" and stumbling off to the nurse's office without permission.

What I remember most is that I got in trouble and he did not.

That sort of thing happened over and over again. From the relatively innocent glasses getting stolen and thrown in a toilet to my head getting stomped or my testicles randomly punched. From early on, classmates singled me out as someone they could make cry if they were heartless enough. These memories are rife with adults standing by, ignoring what was happening, apparently under the impression that getting my ass kicked on a regular basis would build character.

I don't know if it built character. It might have made me stubborn or I might've been born that way. I do know that it built, deep in my heart of hearts, a deeply-embedded suspicion of authority. So congratulations for that.

I was told that if I just wouldn't cry, they would leave me alone. That turned out not to be true. I was told again and again to ignore them and they would stop. That wasn't true either. I ignored them so well that I developed the ability to become vacant -- to retreat so far inside myself that it was as if my body was a costume and I was simply pretending to be Scott. Which is a handy thing when the other kids view kicking you in the crotch as a hobby.

Being smart or talented didn't seem to matter once you walked out of the classroom and into the halls or onto the gym floor where might made right.

I was uncoordinated and I was (and remain) almost painfully thin. If I sit still for too long, the pressure on unprotected arteries will put my extremities to sleep. I have historically had very little meat on my bones or the ability to acquire it, much to the frustration of the same gym teachers that thought what I really needed was more laps, more weight lifting, more basketballs to the face.  More time to suck it up, wipe the blood off my face and get back to moving a ball from one end of a pointless expanse of grass to the other end of the same pointless expanse of grass.

If a foreign government did half of the things that happened to me to an American soldier, the United States would bomb them back to the stone age on principle.

My parents helped as much as they could. God bless them, they tried and I wasn't an easy child at the best of times. They were as understanding as two adults can be who have no idea what I was going through because I wouldn't tell them most of it. It wasn't fair to them, but I was a kid, what did I know of fair? Very little of my experience of life outside of the house was about what was fair.

Talking was too painful anyway. Far easier to escape to my room and bury myself in books -- escape into fantasy.

I spent nights and weekends in basements with like-minded friends, rolling dice and sending characters with more impressive attributes than my own down dark dungeon hallways.  I gravitated toward bards because what I really dreamt of wasn't strength, but charisma. I yearned not to punish the monsters that tormented me day in and day out, but to communicate with them. To somehow get across to them that I was human too.

Because I don't think most of them believed that I was.

What does this painful reminiscence have to do with anything?

It's to underline the fact that when I tell you I, by God, earned my nerd glasses and if anyone has the right to be a got-here-first, these-damn-kids-have-it-too-easy, nerdmudgeon, it's me.

But I can't.

I didn't endure all that only to force those who came after me to go through it too. That's insane.

While I was in the trenches, up to my ears in a fight against an enemy that had no idea they were losing, somewhere, out beyond the schoolyard, the heroes of nerd kind were inventing the personal computer, creating video games, piecing together the internet, and conquering the world on my behalf.

If it was a war, then we won.  Comics, computers, games, books... The things that got me beat up are the things that now define our culture. Our President is a nerd. There's a picture of him posing in the Oval Office with Nichelle Nichols, the lady that played Uhura in the original Star Trek. He's throwing the Vulcan salute which is the closest thing nerds have to a gang sign.

Nerds rule.

Literally.

Which brings us full circle. Now that we have the upper hand, will the Nerd World Order rule benevolently? Or is it time for us, in turn, to give as good as we got?  Are we to now become the closed clique against which the outsiders run headlong in hope of belonging?

Recently there was this piece at CNN.com by one Jon Peacock titled "Booth Babes Need Not Apply", which implies that we should go exactly that route. Peacock was apparently set off by the influx of girls pretending to be nerds so they can dress up and go to Comicon. You see, being a nerd is cool now so everyone wants a piece of the action. Pretty girls that were never seen in those dank basements are popping up at Comicon and other conventions dressed like Lara Croft and Catwoman and Princess Leia and "sexy insert noun here". Peacock implies that these pretenders can be discerned from the "real" nerd girls by dint of being too sexy. By making him feel uncomfortable and drawing attention away from the nerdiness of the event with their feminine wiles.

Peacock's rant struck me and many others as inherently sexist. It also resonated deeply with some part of me that I am ashamed to admit exists. The part of me that was snubbed by the pretty girls that saw me as sub-human.

They're too pretty to be real nerds. They never suffered like I did, how could they?

Even I found myself thinking that and I damn well know better.

My wife is, hands-down, one of the smartest people I've ever met and a mechanical engineer to boot. Told from an early age that she would never be good at math because she was a girl. She is also the prettiest girl I've ever met and a nerd at the same time. She hid her grades from her classmates so they wouldn't know she was the one who blew the curve in physics class and was told by fellow engineering students and professors alike that she didn't belong in engineering because of her looks and gender.

Those men who said those things were wrong; no one had more business being there than she did. Who were they to tell a brilliant, articulate woman what she could or could not accomplish because of her gender?

And who are we to do the same to any woman in any other sphere?

Did we all really suffer through the travails of growing up nerdy just to perpetuate that horror on the next generation? Are we truly going to demand that others endure that hellish existence before we let them play our particular reindeer games?

Or did we claw our way to the top of the societal heap so that no one else ever had to go through that again?   To win the right for everyone to pursue their interests and enthusiasms as suits their whims?

The truth is, we've created a world where everyone is a nerd, or can be if they put their minds to it. Felicia Day is a mogul of internet video, in the vangard of the new entertainment, built on the uber-nerdy and self-referential gamer comedy "The Guild".  Steampunk has rewritten fashion and film. The Maker movement is generating real inventions and real revenue for the creators.  Comic books are the film industry right now.

The 21st century is shaping up to be a time when formerly nerdy/geeky enthusiasms are pursued with furious abandon.  And while it's no utopia, it's a world where - as predicted by Herbert Gerjouy predicted  - the illiterate is not the one who cannot read, but the one who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

And if it's really a nerd world, then that makes all of us nerds. No glasses or pocket protector, or background as a bullied minority required.  We went through it so you wouldn't have to.

Sure, we're "the ones who are cool" but that means we get to define what that means this time. Playing 'we got here first and you're too late to play this game' is nothing but rank hipsterism.



Postscript: Peacock's rant launched a thousand blog posts in response, but the one that most resonates with me is this one by John Scalzi, once and future king of the nerds, who dismantles not only Peacock's standing as someone who can decide who has nerd cred or doesn't, but everyone else's.

Kitchen Geekery 101

What I'm reading and what I'm listening to...

Scott W.Perkins, Adventure Nerd?

At the recent PNWA conference, I was pinned down by an enthusiastic cohort questioning me about the nature of genre and writing in general.  He was an affable sort and I really wanted to answer his questions and react to what he was saying about his work, but the caffiene needle was hovering around E and he had strategically placed himself between me and the coffee cart.

I'd been listening to others at the conference coin new subgenres for themselves and most of them were incredibly clever.  ("Historical Balderdash" was my hands-down favorite.)  So in a moment when I was desperate for a cup of Joe, I found myself babbling semi-coherently about how what I really write is 'Nerd Adventure'.

Nerd adventure?  Really, Scott?

While in general I have no wish to be held to the sort of things I say on the cusp of caffeine withdrawal, I find that this isn't far from the truth.  Most of my characters have an above-average intellect and below-average social skills. There isn't a Navy SEAL or Green Beret in the bunch, none of them would feel comfortable dancing in front of people and most of them are only gregarious in situations where everyone around this is just as goofy as they are.  Even the one character I have with military experience is a misfit failed revolutionary (ex IRA, actually).

The drama and conflict comes largely from seeing these people yanked out of their comfortable, academic existance and tossed into the fire.  Scene: A bunch of people who don't know one end of a handgun from the other find themselves in a firefight.  Action!

And why not?

Nerds are big business.  In fact, it's beginning to look to me as if the mad scientist will be the meme that supplants vampires.  Old school, retro scifi mad scientists.  It just doesn't get any nerdier than that.

So in a world where a logline is necessary to get an agent or publisher to look at your manuscript, is it such a bad thing that I can walk up to them and say I'm selling "The Big Bang Theory meets DaVinci Code"?  Nope!  And that's the story of how a subgenre was born.

Making a Spectacle - An Open Letter to Hollywood

Dear Movie Producers (et al);

Some of your viewers have glasses. I'm not sure you're aware of this fact since you have yet to come up with a workable set of 3D glasses that accommodate this simple and common affliction.

Perhaps in Hollywood no one would be so déclassé as to wear glasses if they needed them or admit that they can't see the screen without them, so it hasn't occurred to you. I feel compelled to bring this to your attention on behalf of nerds everywhere who are suffering in silence, the quiet indignation of piling one pair of special eyewear atop another pair.

I feel it's important to point out that in many ways we are your target demographic. We are the ones who will watch your movies and then go discuss them endlessly on the internet, giving you the word of mouth validation you so desperately crave. We will not continue to do so if the only option you give us for movie enjoyment is piling a pair of goony glasses on top of our already goony glasses. It is not a good look even for us. And it's not terribly comfortable or prone to increasing our moviewatching experience.

Your failure to serve our needs is... shortsighted. (Ahem)

We have enough headaches in our lives already, believe me. And giving us one more is not going to increase the chance that we'll like your latest plot-deficient blockbuster. Please come up with an option for those of us saddled with spectacles so that we can better appreciate your spectacles. A clip on option for your 3D nerd glasses would be adequate.

I admit that clip-on sunglasses are about as sexy as a pocket protector... perhaps less so. But since you decided to go with the nerd glasses aesthetic for your new generation of 3D watching equipment anyway, we won't look any goofier than the people sitting next to us. And that's all we ask... to not look any goofier than the people next to us and yet enjoy the movie just as much. Perhaps more.

Sincerely, Scott Walker Perkins (Nerd)
cc. World HQ - Nerd World Order

Out-Liars

Reuters reports that 2 out of 3 Britons lie about what books they've read in order to appear more literate and cultured than they really are. The same study indicates that rather than George Orwell, the Brits like nothing better than curling up with a little something by JK Rowling on a cold winter's night.

"According to the survey, 65 percent of people have pretended to have read books, and of those, 42 percent singled out "1984." Next on the list came "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy and in third place was James Joyce's "Ulysses."

I can't find statistics on the USA but I'd wager that the numbers are similar.

There's a certain cachet to being seen as well-read but how many people really put the time in necessary to really be well-read? Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I'd wager that it's probably fewer than we'd all like it to be. Then again, a buddy of mine who went to college in Buffalo told me about a bar near the college that was called "The Library" so maybe people weren't lying... maybe they were confused.

None of this is a howling revelation about human nature, but it occurs to me to wonder why people feel the need to do this. Anyone who is on Facebook has probably been hit with the "The BBC thinks we're howling idiots because we've only read six of the following 100 books" meme in one of it's many forms. Setting aside the fact that the meme is of specious origins and ignoring the fact that it would be difficult to have graduated high school without breaking the putative "six of these books" mark, it's not hard to see how these things might lead to a bit of truth-stretching. After a quick troll through Facebook I'm inclined to give anecdotal witness that this is indeed happening on a wide scale.

People are lying about being well read.

Lying about their reading habits... to impress people! Which means it must be "cool" to be well read, right?

The first thing that strikes me about of this is the idea that there's some sort of waiting list to get into the Book Nerd clique. It certainly wasn't like that when I was in high school. Did we take over the world when I wasn't looking? That's nice. I must've missed that issue of the newsletter. We shall endeavor to be benevolent masters. Get thee to the library... no, the one with books in it!

All of that sounds a bit snobbish, and I apologize. When you rule the world, it can go to your head. Don't worry, we won't insist upon swirlies except in those cases where there's a "ticking clock" and the jock in question has refused to relinquish his lunch money to the people hurling Shakespearean insults at him.

Regardless of who rules the world I would like to encourage you to join the nerd coalition. Just remember that true nerddom isn't about knowing stuff. And it's not about glasses and pocket protectors. It's a bit about being unathletic and unpopular, though, now that we're in power, I've tabled a resolution to repeal that line of the nerdstitution. (How else are we going to explain Danica McKellar?) It is about learning and enjoying learning.

And maybe a little bit about being in a marching band.  

Joking aside, the only way to become truly, actually, honestly well-read is to read. Read anything. I don't care what it is. Read mystery novels. Read thrillers. Read adventure yarns. Read history books. Read novels with ripped bodices on the cover. Read kids books. If you don't have time to read books, read short stories. Just read.

I'm wagering that a decent percentage of you will get over the taste of your literary Happy Meals and wonder what else is out there and begin sampling the Kobe burgers and filet of the bookworld. Before you know it, you'll be a book nerd too, part of the new ruling class. It could be that you were already among us and just don't know it.

Don't lie though. Because there might be a quiz later, an entrance exam that you won't find on Facebook so I would invite you to actually improve your literacy instead of lying about it.

Just be thankful we're not making you take the math version of the test. Welcome to the Nerd World Order.

What are YOUR must-read books? What's on your "Desert Island List"? Loan us a book or ten in the comments, wouldja?! I don't enjoy reading if someone else if forcing me to do it, but in case you need a list, the ones below are worth your time...
Literature  
100 Best (English) Novels (according to Modern Library) 

100 Best (Western) Novels (according to Time Magazine)

Genre  
100 Best Mystery Novels (according to HRF Keating)
100 Best Adventure Novels (according to National Geographic)
100 Best Romance Novels (according to TheRomanceReader.com)
100 Best Books for Teenagers by the ALA (American Library Association)
1000 Sci Fi Novels "Everyone must read" (according to The Guardian)

Coffee Break

Physics Central asks: "How long would you have to yell to heat a cup of coffee?"

Answer: Zero minutes, of course. One should never heat a cup of coffee. Once the coffee is brewed, it should be enjoyed at the temperature at which it was brewed on a declining scale as it cools and new flavors are made available to the palate.

Trick question, but some really neat math. ("Really neat math" now there are three words I never thought I'd say.) Though... come to think of it, yelling at my coffee is not, like, an unknown occurrence.

Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing...

Note: Any rumors you might have heard as to the existence of "Free Kittens" are to be regarded with suspicion. "Free Kitten" is an oxymoron. When I spend my time in veterinary waiting rooms, you get reminiscences of novels past.

You have been warned. (The cats are doing just fine, btw... the little pickpockets) ~ Scott

---

I began writing my first novel in the fourth grade. Every writer says that, I suppose, but it's worth dwelling on these things on rainy days. Where was I? Oh! Right... The Fourth Grade. 

I can’t say for certain that it was the cause of me taking up the pen at this time, but it happened to be the point when dad began handing me Things To Read. Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain… dad's desert island list of great authors and titles. I didn’t like White Fang but I loved Treasure Island. I just couldn’t get into Dracula or Frankenstein, and didn’t much like Ivanhoe.

I had opinions and wasn’t afraid to express them (except for White Fang which I pretended to like because for some reason it seemed like I should) and dad guided me in the directions my tastes seemed to be leading. I can’t say this injection of classics to the juvenile paper I was shifting was the tipping point toward being a writer. I can say with 100% certainty that it’s the reason my boyhood reminiscences are often woven of wildly divergent and overlapping themes and reading levels. To this day, I never disdain to read a book that was "beneath" me and never feared to assay a book that was allegedly above me. Don't worry; if I don't know something, I'll raise my hand. That's what parents, encyclopedias and dictionaries are for, after all.

If I enjoy it, or think I might enjoy it, I read it. I don’t much care in what section of the bookstore or library it is shelved. Jack P. McGurk, Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown, Henry Mulligan & Homer Snodgrass stood alongside Tom, Huck, Holmes & Watson in the misty byways of my imagination. These guys joined Allan Quartermaine & Henry Curtis, David Balfour & Jim Hawkins in a sort of prototype for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (I’m sorry to say Mina Harker wasn’t there, but I don’t really like Epistolary fiction). This reading list – you might note – was very very Boy’s Life. It's only to be expected. Anne of Avonlea doesn't hold a lot of interest for a fourth grade boy (at least it didn't for me).

The television programs I watched and the movies I enjoyed were of the same stripe. I don’t personally believe that this is the Bad Thing that some make it out to be – I turned out just fine, after all with a fully-developed sense of myself in relation to the other gender. I’m personally convinced that one’s attitudes are only formed by one’s fictional choices when there are no countervailing parental attitudes to balance them out. But what do I know?

All of this is a long way around to telling you that I first put pencil to loose-leaf page at the point in my life when active imagination and play is still encouraged yet the real world has become real. As real as the world has ever been for me, anyway. A binder or notebook of clean paper is very much the same as a blank sketchbook to me: Meant To Be Filled. What are you waiting for, kid? Grab a #2 pencil and get crackin’!

The adolescent novel is a direct reflection of all the things you’ve read or seen on the screen up to that point. Everything that you’ve enjoyed and absorbed gets melded and regurgitated in some manner. The verbal equivalent of a Rorschach Inkblot. My literary alter-ego was named “Indiana Perkins” and all the rest of the characters were my schoolmates, focused through the lens of some pop-culture phenomenon ranging from The A Team to Goonies (heavy on the Goonies).

If I was in fourth grade now, I imagine it would be heavy on the Harry Potter. Thus is life.

Lest I take all the credit for this, it's time to confess that I had a co-author. A schoolmate signed on to co-write this piece. Gannon was more popular than I, and being a kid who was painfully shy, insular, unathletic and never “popular” in any real sense of the term. I was the kid that spent his life pretending to be someone else somewhere else -- not because where I was or what I was doing was bad but because it provided a buffer between me and a world that gave me panic attacks. Anyway, Gannon’s name on the cover page made what I/we were doing almost cool, or at least acceptable to the other kids. At the very least, it became a bit less weird. I was only too honored to share the byline (and frequently the blame).

The premise was that of a school trip to another city gone awry, hijacked midflight by terrorists who took our class hostage (Pan Am Flight 73 had a huge impact on us). In the ensuing story, the kids banded together (led by my character and my buddies) in a MacGuyver/A Team sequence of events which were spiced with a healthy dose of Mad Scientist Club for spice. I would credit Toy Soldiers, but it came long after this, no doubt germanated in the fertile imagination of some other kid.

It was fun. It got taken away at various times by various teachers (I never lost a comic book to a teacher, they took away my novel) and it didn't get finished until grade five, but I had a blast writing it. It also taught me more than any writing teacher before or since. I discovered authorial voice and writing my own novel taught me to really LOOK at the things I was reading and watching on TV and I began to understand how to structure a story and how to write dialogue.

My playtime shifted accordingly. My GI Joe men stopped being GI Joes and began taking on personas of my own creation, each with a back-story I created independent of what Hasbro might have put on the back of the box. They worked through full story arcs with complex twist endings and the tale frequently ended badly. They waged personal conflicts, sought revenge for past slights, investigated mysteries, got involved in Flemingesque dramas… and when I discovered Tolkien and Fritz Leiber, I even created medievalish costumes for them out of craft felt and pounded nails flat to make swords and daggers. Shakespearean tragedies and even a strange version of The Ring Cycle were acted out on the conrete floor of my parents' basement.

What that first novel did not teach me was how to collaborate. It should have, but it didn’t. I would like to tell you that ultimately I was far more into it than my coauthor and believed far more strongly that it was worthwhile. Both of those things are/were true but really it’s because I wanted to make things so complex that for other people it began to look like work rather than play.

Or so I guess, I don’t really know because I wasn’t yet self-aware enough to make enquiries.

My penchant for ignoring what was so obvious and prepackaged didn’t enamor me of the other children in any case. In my life I rarely had more than one friend at a time. Honestly this was owing about half to the tendency to live inside my own head to the exclusion of all else, and the rest was because I rarely got through half the explanation of what I was doing or wanted to do before the other kids lost interest.

I would give almost anything to have a copy of that novel. Alas that it has fallen into the dust of history, remembered only by me (and maybe Gannon) as yet another book that only I remember with characters and an author that only I know are missing from the pages of Books In Print.

---
Photo by Me ... from my collection of antique children's books

They're on to us!!!

Red Alert! Red Alert! Red Alert!!

Our spies at the New York Times are reporting that the jock-strap crowd is finally catching on to our secret weapon!

It's almost nice to see that someone is finally noticing something writers, academics & philosophers (you know... nerds) have known for centuries. Think the introduction of coffee corresponding with the advent of the enlightenment was a coincidence?

Oh, I forgot. The (thoroughly caffeinated) nerds are the ones assigned to keep track of that kind of thing. We can make you stronger, faster, better than ever before! We have the tools, we have the technology... we have the espresso machines. Steve Austin wasn't really bionic. We just patched him up, handed him a Starbucks Card and sent him on his way, pocketing a cool ten million (minus the cost of bandaids and Steve''s Latte addiction).

Who knows where this epiphany might lead? The International Olympic Committee needs to hurry up and ban this "newly-discovered" performance-enhancing drug before all of our star athletes are sitting around in cafes, drinking lattes, talking and generally trying to make actual, measurable contributions to society.