I’m a geek and I’m proud! 

Last night my husband and I watched the movie “Role Models“.  In the movie there’s a kid who’s really into a group that stages mock fantasy “battles” a la Dungeons and Dragons.  They were obviously making fun of a real life group that does this called the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) which I mentioned to my husband assuming he knew all about it being the hearty geek he is.  I was horribly shocked to learn he had never heard of it and told him that his lack of knowledge in this area was a serious blow to his geek cred (since I not only knew about it but have attended more than one “war”). So we had some discussion about what sort of things you have to have in order to be a geek’s geek and here are some of the things we came up with.

1. Science fiction and/or fantasy must be your favorite genre of entertainment including but not limited to books, movies, and for extra geek cache: science fiction/fantasy conventions and extra points if you dress up, and even more extra points if you dress up as some obscure Sci fi or fantasy character such as Taarna from “Heavy Metal“.

2. Comic Books.  You don’t have to collect them but should have some passing familiarity with their style, tone, and content–enough to understand and find hilarious the opening scene in the movie “Chasing Amy”.

3. Must have read at least two (or all for the most cred) foundational science fiction/fantasy books:

—Neuromancer

—Snow Crash

—Dune

—The Martian Chronicles

—The Foundation Trilogy

—Stranger in a Strange Land

—Lord of the Rings

—Brave New World

—Ender’s Game

—Ringworld

—Hyperion

3.  You must be interested in science and/or technology and actively read news/magazines/non-fiction books/journals (such as Nature and Science) in that general area. 

4. Be able to quote and/or understand amusing quotes from classic sci fi/fantasy t.v. shows/movies such as “We’ll nuke the site from orbit, only way to be sure”, “What are you doing Dave?”, “It’s People!”, “You maniacs! You blew it all to hell! Damn You!”.

5. You get extra points if you actually managed to become a Dawinian fit geek and produced a homozygous geek (one having two seriously geeky parents).