The Written Weird

Nerd Word of the Week: RKV

2009-07-09T10:00:00.001-04:00

RKV (n.) - An accepted abbreviation for relativistic kill vehicle, a weapon that moves at near-light speeds in order to inflict maximum impact damage on its target. Also sometimes called a relativistic bomb, an RKV is a kinetic energy weapon taken to its logical extreme, combining the principles of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics.

Newton's second law holds that force equals mass multiplied by rate of acceleration. Thus, even a small mass moving at sufficient acceleration can generate significant force. "Conventional" kinetic weapons apply this law by simply dropping large, inert masses from planetary orbit (like the tungsten rods dropped from satellites in Warren Ellis's Global Frequency), allowing gravity to accelerate the payload to destructive velocity. RKVs go one step further, using vast interstellar distances to accelerate kinetic warheads to near-light speed, multiplying the force of their impact to catastrophic--even planet-killing--extremes.

RKVs are often a favorite plot device for hard sci-fi authors, including Larry Niven in his Known Space series, Charles Stross in Iron Sunrise, Joe Haldeman's in The Forever War, and Vernor Vinge in A Fire Upon the Deep. RKVs don't require that civilizations develop faster-than-light travel or communication, as even known, subluminal propulsion systems can accelerate weapons to relativistic speeds given enough time and distance. Thus, wars fought between planets and stars are an ideal theater of conflict for RKVs, especially if you don't have FTL sensors to see them coming.

I bring it up because: Today is the 54th anniversary of Russell-Einstein Manifesto. On July 9, 1955, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and nine other noted intellectuals signed an essay highlighting the unconscionable dangers posed by nuclear weapons and implored world leaders to seek other, non-atomic-armageddon means of guaranteeing security and resolving conflict. Many view the manifesto as Einstein's repudiation of the application of his scientific breakthroughs to martial purposes. Unfortunately for Uncle Al, science has always led the way to new and more efficient weapons. Even setting aside the fission/fusion applications of Einstein's theories, his work on relativity can be applied for mass destruction in numerous ways, including the often overlooked brute-force example of RKVs. Food for thought, and some great science fiction.

How to do social media outreach right - don't use social media

2009-07-07T15:07:00.004-04:00

While I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago, I was the recipient of one of the most professionally handled and forward-thinking social media outreach efforts I've yet come across, and considering that I've done social media for a living on more than a few occasions, that's saying something. Even more impressive, the outreach didn't involve LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or any other buzzword standard-bearer of the overhyped social Web.

The outreach effort was from Tor books (the sci-fi imprint under Macmillan) in relation to their online bookstore. You read that right: A dead-tree book publisher most definitely has a clue of how to play in the digital sandbox, as I'll explain below. The entire communication took place over e-mail, with nary a tweet or friend feed in sight.

I know what you're thinking: Where was the social media? As Chris Brogan and my colleagues at Social Media Explorer (Jason Falls and David Finch in particular) continue to preach but no one seems to hear, social media is about the connections, not the tools. Twitter is a means, not an end, and the Tor group was much better served in reaching their goals through old-school e-mail than overly asynchronous tweetspeak or Wall-to-Wall missives.

What goal, you may ask? Getting an insanely insignificant blogger to give a damn about the new Tor book store. In other words, they wanted me to know about Tor's new project, and went through no minor effort to inform me.

It is no false modesty to say that I am the smallest of small potatoes in the blogosphere. I no longer have my still-not-giant Geekend megaphone, and even my appearances on TechTalk and my tweet exchanges with some moderately well known names in sci-fi and comics don't crank my annual unique visitor levels into the four-figures-a-month range. I'm nobody, and I only barely know a few somebodies, all of whom Tor could much more effectively speak to directly. Using me to ping Mary Robinette Kowal, Lar de Souza or David Gallaher is a pointless effort. Tor has or easily could get all their phone numbers, and they'd all be happy to take the call.

So why waste time with me? Because there is nobody too small in social media. One of my Nerd Words columns made the weekly roundup on Tor's own sci-fi blog, and that was all the validation the digital marketing team at Macmillan needed to consider me worthy of courting as a press source. In the land of Google, every incoming link is worth chasing, and Tor put no small effort into getting some links from little old me.

Not that they ever asked for any link love, mind you. Macmillan's digital marketing manager, Ami, wrote a very brief and straightforward initial e-mail (and the only way to get the address she used would be to read all the way through my bio post) which linked to the new store and the press release covering its launch. Totally professional, but friendly and with enough personalized content to prove she knew who I was and demonstrate this wasn't a blind e-mail blast. Top marks so far, but nothing that out of the ordinary, right?

At no point did Ami ask me to buy anything, pimp anything, or link anything. It was a simple "thought you'd like to know" mail, like she was mailing the New York Times and not Mr. Bloggy McSmallTime, along with a promise to answer any questions I had.

Oh, and the pitch? Tor was launching a sci-fi/fantasy-only online bookstore that carried books from every major publisher, not just Tor/Macmillan. They were selling their competitors stuff side-by-sdie with their own. The boldness of the idea was intriguing, and worthy of its own (future) post.

Naturally, the idea of someone taking on Amazon in the book space when B&N, Borders and Books-a-Million are hemorraging cash intrigued me. I'm a sci-fi geek, aspiring author, and once-and-future Web entrepreneur. Books plus Web plus sci-fi was right in my wheelhouse. So I asked Ami a lot of follow-ups, with lots of gotcha specifics.

She answered the same day -- by looping in the store's project manager who would speak to me directly about the site. Pablo got back to me the next day -- asking me to elaborate my questions -- and he answered them a couple days later with some very thorough responses. He then invited me to ping him again, directly, if I had any future questions.

So, to recap, a major book publisher reaches out to a smalltime nobody with a press release about a bold new Web initiative -- with a personal invite, no less -- and then kicks him higher up the chain when he has questions. At no point do they ask for press, cross-linking, or even a simple purchase. There is no quid pro quo. Everything is professional and pitch-perfect. Oh, and they had to do some research to contact me. No direct, immediate or large payoff, just online community goodwill and knowledge dissemination.

That's how you do social media outreach, boys and girls.

And for what it's worth, it worked. From now on, my Nerd Words column will link to store.tor.com instead of Amazon for my book citations, which is a big deal for me, since I'm an Amazon Associate. I'm leaving (a very little) money on the table because the PR efforts impressed me so. The store is pretty good, too, but we'll discuss that later.

Social media is about socialization, not the media. Remember this and you will succeed.

Here endeth the lesson. Discuss.

Nerd Word of the Week: Megacorp

2009-07-02T10:00:00.004-04:00

Megacorp (n.) - A business entity that has achieved such a far-reaching level of vertical and horizontal integration that its power rivals that of entire nations, often to the extent of fielding its own military force and enacting its own laws. William Gibson gets credit for coining the parent term megacoporation within his Sprawl Trilogy (which actually includes three novels, Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and three short stories, "Burning Chrome," "Johnny Mnemonic" and "New Rose Hotel").

The idea of a superpowerful corporation predates Gibson, of course, with such companies appearing as early as Robert A. Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy and Robert Asprin's The Cold Cash War. The megacorp idea continues to reap fertile returns in contemporary science fiction, including the omninationals from Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, the burbclaves of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, the planet-spanning corporatocracies of Charles Stross's Glasshouse, the ubiquitous Blue Sun from Joss Whedon's Serenity/Firefly universe, and in the government-supplanting megacorp Buy 'N Large from Disney/Pixar's WALL-E. Megacorps are almost always evil, and almost always at odds with the story's protagonist. Capitalism rarely gets a loving nod from sci-fi authors, even in the pro-software-corporation world of David Louis Edelman's Infoquake and Multireal.

I bring it up because: A mere 47 years ago today, the quintessential real-life megacorp was born. Wal-Mart opened its first location in Rogers, Arkansas on July 2, 1962. Wal-mart has neither a standing army nor its own government (yet), but it does wield such remarkable market influence that it inspired the aforementioned Buy 'N Large. This is ironic because the creator of the Buy 'N Large concept, Disney, is itself a much more cogent example of a megacorp, with its staggering multinational diversification and and extraordinary level of legal autonomy within the confines of its Disney World resort outside Orlando, FL. Only Disney employees can own land within Disney World's boundaries, and Disney sets the building codes, establishes utility standards, runs the fire department, and can exercise eminent domain within those borders. And you thought the line for Space Mountain was scary.

Nerd Word of the Week: Multiverse

2009-06-25T10:00:00.003-04:00

Multiverse (n.) - Simply put, multiple universes that are linked together. More specifically, a set of interrelated parallel realities, usually involving characters that jump between universes to visit and interact with alternate versions of themselves and/or their history. While this term has been extended to any parallel universe story, like that found in The Chronicles of Narnia, it is most often associated with comic book franchises, particularly the DC Comics universe, which had its multiverse grow so expansive and unwieldy that it destroyed it in the seminal Crisis on Infinite Earths (and has since brought it back -- sort of -- in the recent Infinite Crisis).

I bring it up because: June 30 is Superman's 71st birthday -- he first appeared in his modern form in Action Comics #1, which came out on that date in 1938 -- and nobody is a better example of the multiverse than Superman, as he has appeared in more alternate versions than virtually any other character in history. In fact, Grant Morrison turned the joke in on itself, creating a Superman Squad of parallel-universe and time-traveling Men of Steel that regularly team up to battle interdimensional threats. (Just for fun, ask a Supes fanboy whether he prefers the John Byrne Man of Steel origin for Superman, or Mark Waid's Birthright; sparks will fly. Or better yet, ask him which Superman Elseworlds story is his favorite. Not superfan can fail to have an opinion. Personally, I'm a Speeding Bullets guy.)

Nerd Word of the Week: Uplift

2009-06-18T10:00:00.003-04:00

Uplift (n.) - The process by which one species genetically engineers another into a more "advanced" state. In most science fiction examples, this involves gene-hacking animals to give them human-level intelligence, and possibly anthropomorphized bodyshapes. This notion was first popularized by H.G. Wells in The Island of Dr. Moreau. In other equally famous stories, uplift by extraterrestrial agents led to the rise of humanity, as was implied by the presence of the monolith in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. (The same aliens/gods/unknowable beings would uplift life on Europa in the 2001 sequel, 2010.) The specific term uplift is today most often identified with author David Brin, who wrote a series of novels set in the Uplift Universe, notably including the classics Startide Rising and Sundiver.

I bring it up because: 151 years ago today -- June 18, 1858 -- Alfred Russell Wallace sent a copy of his theory of natural selection to Charles Darwin, one which matched the latter's own ideas to a striking degree, prompting Darwin to finally publish his theory of evolution. Uplift is often mistakenly referred to as "forced evolution" when evolution itself is a natural process with no more a goal than a rainstorm or an earthquake. We aren't "destined" for intelligence or opposable thumbs, it just worked out that way, and playing with the notion of applying our own human-centric ideas of "advanced states" to other species' biology makes for some philosophically intriguing fiction, and often some pretty compelling space opera, too.

Nerd Word of the Week: Psychohistory

2009-06-11T11:48:00.003-04:00

Psychohistory (n.) - A field of study that uses advanced mathematics to accurately predict the future. Specifically, it's the use of sociological statistics to predict the collective behavior of large groups of people, like galaxy-spanning empires. Isaac Asimov is credited with coining this connotation of the term in 1951 with his Foundation series, which itself is considered required reading by most traditional sci-fi fans. There is a real field of study called psychohistory, which is about analyzing the psychological motivations behind historical events, but most sci-fi fans are either ignorant of this fact, or simply curse its existence when it muddles up their Asimov-related Google search results.

I bring it up because: A mere 58 years ago this week, the first UNIVAC I was dedicated into service at the U.S. Census Bureau -- June 14, 1951. (1951, coincidentally, was also the first year that Asimov's original Foundation stories were collected into book form.) UNIVAC was America's first successful commercial computer, and it made famous the notion of statistical prediction of major events when the fifth UNIVAC I unit successfully predicted the outcome of 1952 U.S. Presidential election based on early poll returns. This practice is now common, and is in some ways the real-world analogue of Asimov's psychohistorical notions. Asimov, in turn, took the UNIVAC name and ran with it, creating the Multivac series of stories about a perpetually evolving supercomputer. The most famous of these is the short story "The Last Question," which Asimov described as perhaps the favorite of his own works, wherein Multivac is asked to "solve" the heat-death of the universe.

Armchair Screenwriter: How I'd pitch the Wonder Woman movie(s)

2009-06-09T10:31:00.001-04:00

A while ago, Rich Lovatt over at Comic By Comic wondered whether we hadn't dodged a bullet in not getting a Wonder Woman movie. This week, Graeme McMillan over at io9 asked why Wonder Woman gets no love. Rich answered this first by saying what nobody is ever willing to admit about Wonder Woman, she's the world's most famous superheroine by virtue of seniority, rather than her actually being a great character.

Wonder Woman's origin is goofy, her powers are all over the map, and she doesn't have any great mission other than being a "warrior for peace," which is such a paradox it became a punchline--from Batman, no less--in Mark Waid's seminal Kingdom Come.

Batman, by the way, is the elephant in the room during this whole "Why can't we get a decent Wonder Woman?" movie conversation. Dark Knight blew the doors off the box office last summer, and in some measure legitimized superhero movies, largely on the basis of its dark, timely, political tones and Heath Ledger's post-humous Oscar buzz.

Thus, the world is primed for a high-profile, serious, major studio production of Wonder Woman. But, as McMillan pointed out in an earlier post, just because Wonder Woman is popular doesn't mean making a good Wonder Woman film will be easy. Nick Nadel over at Sci-Fi Scanner has 5 tips for making an awesome Wonder Woman movie, and I agree with four of them. Sorry Nick, but I'm keeping the Invisible Jet.

Okay, so enough stalling, what's my take on Wonder Woman?

In no uncertain terms, Wonder Woman is the ultimate feminist icon. She's strong, she's wise, she's empathetic, she's Superman's equal, but she also embodies some of the more absurd extremities of knee-jerk feminism. Princess Diana of Themyscira literally comes from a world without men, a world which is presumed to be a paradise, to the point it's often called Paradise Island. And yet she walks around in a pin-up silver-gold-and-American-Flag bathing suit that is just this side of a pro wrestler getup.

So let's explore that contradiction. Let's use Wonder Woman as a character to examine some of the more intriguing and provocative notions of feminist ideals. Diana's not just an icon of feminism, she's an experiment in feminism, a road-test for all the "women are equal but different" notions that have been professed for the last century. There's your Joss Whedon ingredient: A kickass pulp heroine as complex psycho-social metaphor. Thanks, Buffy. (Though I'd style Diana as more a mix of Zoe Washburn and Inara Serra, but that's for a later discussion.)

Given the choice, I'd do a Wonder Woman trilogy set in multiple eras, even though producer Joel Silver said he wouldn't go for any period pieces. Still, my dream film Wonder Woman series would be one part Mad Men, one part Warren Ellis, a dash of Joss Whedon, a sprinkle of Dark Knight, two scoops of Y: The Last Man, the tiniest pinch of Boogie Nights (seriously) and a generous frosting of Gail Simone-inspired kickass. For details (and geek-to-normal translation) see below.

I think doing a multi-era Wonder Woman series would best bespeak her feminist iconicism, as feminism is a moving target, and notions of what constitutes women's equality changes. Here's where the Mad Men comes in. Mad Men is a period piece, brilliantly done, that is ingeniously feminist in its portrayal of how unfeminist--and by extension unpleasant--the 1960s business world really was. There are lots of other themes at work in Mad Men, but this is the one I'd borrow. Thus, when I pitch Wonder Woman, I'm not pitching one movie, I'm pitching three--and two are period pieces.

Wonder Woman I - The classic World War II era, which would thrust Diana into a world where women work in factories but can't fight in wars, where Rosie the Riveter is a national icon, and Eleanor Roosevelt might be in charge, but no one can admit it. Also, that whole Nazi ideal of purity and superiority would make for interesting thematic points, too. Baroness Paula von Gunther would be the villain, hoping to get her hands on the Amazonian genetic technology to breed a race of Aryan superhumans.

Wonder Woman II - Set in the 1970s, the go-go period where Wonder Woman gave up her powers and costume, learned karate, and joined the disco set. (Since Diana's "powers" will be different, she need not give them up in this version.) Contrast that with the era when the women's liberation movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, Roe vs. Wade and the Me Generation came into cultural focus. The tiniest Boogie Nights or--if you prefer--Life on Mars verve would do well here. The Cheetah would be the main villain, in all her disco-esque sass. She's a product of genetic manipulation made possible by Amazonian super-science that has crept into the world, but the catch is that she turned herself into a overtly sexualized werecat as a warped form of self-empowerment.

Wonder Woman III - Set in the modern day, with "I can be anything but can I have everything?" the central concern of the modern American woman. Gay rights--which, for someone who came from an all-female culture would seem a strange distinction--and the sudden possibility of woman president. Here, the villain is Circe, a rogue Amazon out to conquer Man's World and set up a beneficient matriarchal rule--with men as second-class citizens. The notion of some women as more equal than others will inform the action. (This version of Circe will be a blend of the comic Circe, Veronica Cale, and the animated fury Aresia.)

And yes, I do mean there to be action. This won't all be pontificating and prostletyzing about the notion of women's place in the world. Wonder Woman will beat your ass with her Amazonian superpowers. And, so, about those powers...

Backstory and plot outlines:
First the bad news, Olympian fanboys, but we're scrapping the entire mythical overtones of Wonder Woman. This is going to be a sci-fi movie, with a liberal nod to what Warren Ellis hinted at in the Planetary issue "Magic and Loss." The Amazons are a race of matriarchal separatists that broke off from the Ancient Greek civilization during its apex. They never suffered through the Dark Ages, so their science represents largely uninterrupted progress that puts them centuries ahead of the contemporary world.

However, as necessity is the mother of invention, while much Amazonian super-science is powerful to the point of being near-magic, they lack certain other basic technologies we would take for granted. For example, they have highly advance cloning and genetic engineering abilities but have never built aircraft. They have a functioning cloaking device that shields their island from detection but don't have much modern weaponry.

In past centuries, the Amazons made regular journeys into "Man's World" for supplies and to propagate their race but in the last few hundred years have resorted to cloning and gene manipulation to create a race of self-sufficient super-women. They've sealed themselves off from the world, becoming celibate, insular, and xenophobic. Men have become a near myth amongst them, and their segregation has fed upon itself, creating a culture that not only doesn't need men, but is alternately fearful, hostile, and ignorant of men.

Into this world is born Diana, eldest daughter of Queen Hippolyta--yes, this is a monarchial matriarchy, which still worships the Greek pantheon--who is among the first generation born not just genetically perfect, but genetically enhanced. She is stronger, faster, smarter, and more insightful than any human being, Amazon or otherwise, has ever been, and she is curious about a world beyond the narrow confines of the isle of Themyscira.

Those genetic enhancements include a rough form of telepathy and psychokinetic super-abilities, which as you Golden Age comic guys remember were the main tenates of Wonder Woman's power arsenal back in the day (she could even speak with animals). Put simply, she can apply the force of her will--through training--into feats of super-speed and super-strength. She applies these abilities in pacifistic ways--with indestructible bracelets that let her deflect (through super-reflexes) bullets. The telepathy is focused through the Lariat of Hestia, an unbreakable cord that is reshaped and animated by Wonder Woman's will, and which gives her a telepathic link when anyone else it touches--allowing her to read minds and compel truthful confessions. Again, this is a non-lethal weapon, as she is an ambassador, not a conqueror.

The plot is initiated when World War II pilot Steve Trevor crashes on the "invisible" island after a divebomb run on a German destroyer. Trevor is nursed back to health by Diana just as the destroyer, which tracked Steve's plane to the island, arrives and begins to send out search parties.

The Amazons fight off the Nazis--barely, as they are unprepared for the ferocity of their modern weapons--but lose several women as prisoners to the German aggressors. Hippolyta subsequently agrees to ally with the American in return for help rescuing her people, and offers Diana as her representative. Diana fashions an "ambassadorial costume" based on the '40s-era pinups Steve has in his possession combined with American iconography, illustrating her naivete and working in the classic Wonder Woman togs. A smaller version of the island cloaking device is fitted into Steve's Amazonian-repaired plane--which is now an invisible jet--and Diana thus enters "Man's World" on a singular mission of rescue, which of course becomes so much more as she sees the level of female inequality firsthand.

By movie's end, the Amazons are rescued and Wonder Woman agrees to remain as an aid to the Allies in exchange for Paradise Island remaining secret. This sets the stage for a Wonder Woman spin-off series on TV/Web/DVD about her WWII adventures.

However, The Wonder Woman II protagonist will be a second-generation Wonder Woman, Donna Troy, who was raised as a potential ambassador and who is much more world-savvy. Diana is her mother, and Donna is the first Amazon born "naturally" in generations. She will be an outsider in both worlds, and a child of both, making her a prism of ideal versus practical feminism. Plus, 1970s kitsch for the win, and the possibility of yet another spin-off series for this era's Wonder Woman.

The third Wonder Woman will be Donna's daughter, Cassie Sandsmark, who was raised in Man's World and prefers it--for all its faults--to the staid perfection of Paradise Island which, thanks to Circe, is no longer secret. Moreover, 60 years of borrowing from Man's World have allowed the Amazons to ramp up their martial technology and, once revealed, many countries will see them as a threat to be dealt with--a powerful metaphor for both the interdependence of male and female points of view and for the fear of strong women, even in modern, enlightened times.

Recasting Wonder Woman allows us to literally evolve the character, costumes, and methods (and it's cheaper for the studio). The final battle at the end of the trilogy will see all three Wonder Women united in battle against Circe and her aids, with a massive Amazon super-science fleet involved. The result will be a world forced to confront all that Paradise Island and the Amazons represent and, of course, the possibility of yet another spin-off series.

That's my convulted premise, which I think we'll all agree stands no chance of ever getting made.

Nerd Word of the Week: Unobtainium

2009-06-04T10:00:00.002-04:00

Unobtainium (n.) - Snarky term for either a scientifically impossible substance that makes some fantastic device or process possible, or an exotic real-world substance that is conferred with implausible or impossible properties for the sake of a story. The classic examples are Cavorite, a metal that creates antigravity fields as first imagined by H. G. Wells in The First Men in the Moon, and scrith, the impossibly strong material from which Larry Niven's Ringworld was built. A more contemporary example would be dilithium, the crystal from Star Trek that regulates matter-antimatter annihilations and makes warp drive possible.

Science fiction fans (and, more importantly, critics and editors) refer to these blatant wish-granting elements and minerals as unobtainium, as they are unobtainable in the real world. Equivalent phrases include: Unattainium, wishalloy, buzzwordium, handwavium (for technical handwaving), and element 404 (as in Not Found).

I bring it up because: 14 years ago this week, the first pure Bose-Einstein condensate was synthesized. A BEC is an extremely weird state of matter with behaviors that cannot be fully explained by current science--including a propensity to spontaneously crawl out of containment vessels. Bose-Einstein condensates are often used as contemporary stand-ins for classic fictional unobtainium in modern science fiction stories, as it "sounds" more real and the author at least has the flimsy cover of "science doesn't understand it" to explain how BECs can turn raw matter into a Jovian mooncastle using only a souped-up inkjet printer (I'm looking at you, Charles Stross's Accelerando.) Plus, Bose-Einstein condensate is just fun to type, even if it sounds vaguely like the residue from a lightspeed subwoofer.

Geek Lotto Dreams: A 'Serenity' Restaurant

2009-05-29T14:12:00.003-04:00

Adding to my increasingly unrealistic blogging workload, I am toying with another column called Geek Lotto Dreams, chronicling what geeky things I would do with an obscene nine-figure lottery payout. First up, I'd start a Serenity-themed restaurant.

I'd call it the Blue Sun Grill, after I'd paid Universal and Fox and Joss Whedon all the necessary royalties for this boondoggle of a saloon to do it up right.

Say what you will about the counter-factual probability of a U.S.-Chinese collaborative entity colonizing a retro-Western terraformed solar system, but an Asian-Western fusion steakhouse with Serenity's frontier-plus-high-tech design sensibility would be fun as all get out to eat at. Rustic decor, polished teak, mahogany, and butcher block tables (some with bench seating, perhaps) surrounded by metal-and-wood walls adorned with flatscreen digital "paintings" and fictional 'Verse travel posters. Digital meets frontier, east meets west, subversive meets sublime.

Pepper the traditional steaks and stir-fry menu with experimental soy-and-gelatin experiments derived from the works of Homaru Cantu or Wylie Dufresne, just like colonists had to do with their multicolored protein rations. Every meal would be served with forks and chopsticks, and just for kicks, only sliced apples would be allowed inside the doors, lest they contain grenades. (The fact that said grenades are called Grizwalds is amusing, if only for the implied association with Clark W. Griswold of National Lampoon's Vacation fame. Perhaps a Grizwald Crumble would be a hard apple-cider cocktail.)

Dishes would be named for the planets upon which they "originated," and as those planets were all given symbolic or referential names in Firefly, the dishs would all be gastronomic entendres. The fact that Heinlein was a gas giant planet in the series is a joke not lost on many, so a Heinlein souffle would be no small or simple dish.

This isn't a Planet Hollywood amusement-park parody of Serenity we're talking about, but a serious bistro with legitimately complex and inspired fare and a sublimated snarkiness to its sci-fi verve. I'd wager lots of folk would eat there, not just the out-of-the-closet Browncoats. In fact, if the vision is executed correctly, non-fans won't even know this is a theme joint; it'll just be a somewhat off fusion restaurant. And if not, I'll be imaginarily rich, so I can keep it going as a vanity concern whether it's profitable or not.

That's one Geek Lotto Dream. What's yours?

Nerd Word of the Week: Light cone

2009-05-28T10:09:00.006-04:00

Light cone (n.) - A simplified diagram for explaining causality, brought to us from relativistic physics. The diagram on the left (blatantly stolen from Wikipedia) is a light cone based on Minkowski spacetime, which is a fancy term for a uber-simplified diagram of the universe as a flat, two-dimensional plane; no Einsteinian curving to confuse us. Time is the vertical axis, so everything below the center is the past and everything above it is the future. At the very center is an event--typically, a flash of light, which gives us the term light cone. The lower cone represents all the possible events that could have caused the flash of light to happen at the exact time and place it actually occurred. The upper cone is all the events that could be influenced by the flash of light after it happened.

As you get closer to the event in time, fewer and fewer other events could have caused it, as the particular circumstances surrounding the event get more specific. For example, if the flash of light is caused by an LED in my office, any LED that existed in the world a year ago could go on to create the flash of light, so long as in the intervening year any of those LEDs found their way to my office. As we approach the time of the event, the vast majority of those LEDs are ruled out, as they are destroyed or simply stationed too far away to reach my office in time to emit the flash, even if they move there at the fastest possible speed. Finally, only one LED is in the exact right place at the exact right time to emit the flash--the one at the center of the light cone.

At the moment of the flash, I may be the only person in my office, so for simplicty's sake, I am the only observer of the flash (though in reality the exact electrons used to generate the flash, the heat produced, the bacteria incinerated or mutated, and so on all are influenced by the flash in some fashion). I note the flash, and remember it. For every subsequent moment of my life, I could potentially mention the flash of light to someone else, thus passing on the flash's influence. Each person I mention it to could mention it to someone else, and every one they tell could mention the flash to someone else, and so on exponentially until the end of time. Thus, the flash's light cone--its potential realm of influence--expands as we move forward in time.

That said, there were innumerable objects in the past that could never have emitted the flash of light no matter how their circumstances progress, and there are incalculable persons, places, things and events in the future that can never be influenced by the flash of light, if only because all the non-causers and the un-effectables exist so distantly in the universe that they could neither reach my office at any point in the universe's past, nor could lightspeed information from my office reach them before the heat death of the universe. All of these events and objects outside the flash of light's realm of influence exist outside its light cone. Sci-fi writers occasionally invoke the light cone when discussing time-travel and its myriad consequences.

I bring it up because: Because, quoth Wikipedia, 90 years ago tomorrow (May 29, 1919), "Einstein's theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington's observation of a total solar eclipse in Principe and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil." Any excuse to discuss spacetime relativity and its sci-fi applications is a good one.

Further reading: Author Charles Stross makes light cones somewhat central to the plot in his Timelike Diplomacy series, Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise. In the series, there is a godlike artificial intelligence called the Eschaton that forbids any time travel that intersects with its own light cone because it doesn't want humans erasing it from history. This leads to a great deal of political and technical intrigue when humans tried to use time travel to conduct interstellar war. Fun stuff.

Nerd Word of the Day: Canon

2009-05-22T10:00:00.004-04:00

Canon (adj.) - Describes the accepted, official, sanctioned events and elements of a fictional universe, as opposed to all the stuff that fans and tie-in works have made up. For example, persons, places, things and occurrences that appeared on the actual Star Trek television series are considered canon; stuff from Star Trek tie-in novels, comic books, video games? Not so much. (Though the new movie may have reset Trek canon; that's a discussion for future nerd words.)

I bring it up because: May 22, 2009 would have been Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 150th birthday, and Doyle pretty much made the study of fictional canon necessary. Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, whom everyone knows wore a deerstalker cap and often prefaced his famous modus ponens deductions with the catchphrase "elementary, my dear Watson." Except that Doyle never described Holmes as wearing a deerstalker cap or saying "elementary, my dear Watson" in any Holmes work he wrote; those aspects of the character are assumed parts of Holmes' description based on popular illustrations and derivative literary, stage, film, and television adaptationsbut are non-canon. There are actually more non-canon Holmes works than canonical ones, so it's easy to see how the popular conception of the character has been stretched beyond its original canon. And the new Sherlock Holmes movie is going to stretch it even further.

Nerd Word of the Day: Mechanical Turk

2009-05-21T10:00:00.002-04:00

Mechanical Turk (n.) - A geek term for any "fake" artificial intelligence, as in an intellect that is presented as artificial but is in fact operated by a human being, or other conventional intelligence. Anyone or anything that cheats on the Turing Test is a Mechnical Turk. The term is a reference for "The Turk," a chess-playing robot that was exhibited in Europe for over 80 years starting in the 1770s--defeating both Ben Franklin and Napolean--until it was revealed to be operated by a human chessmaster hiding inside. In some tech circles, the term Mechanical Turk refers specifically to a service offered by Amazon.com, which quickly answers user information requests by routing them to human researchers.

I bring it up because: Terminator: Salvation opens today, and that's always a good excuse to discuss artificial intelligence, especially those that are clearly fake. More appropriately, a prototype artificial intelligence that precedes SkyNet in The Sarah Connor Chronicles was called The Turk, referencing the same 18th-century hoax chess-bot. Above all, concepts like the Mechanical Turk are abuzz in AI circles and tech message boards thanks to Wolfram Alpha, a so-called "computational engine" that seeks to analyze text questions and research its own answers to them, effectively automating the human process that is at the heart of Amazon's Mechanical Turk. So far, the Amazon fleshlings are much more effective than the Wolfram proto-AI--which means the deathbot rebellion isn't likely this week, no matter how much McG's new Terminator flick may scare you into thinking so.

Nerd Word of the Day: Retcon

2009-05-20T09:58:00.001-04:00

Retcon (v.) - Short for "retroactive continuity," it is the geek-slang term for the rewriting of backstory or fictional history to accommodate a new chapter in an ongoing franchise. This is a pretty common practice in comic books (and, quite frankly, soap operas) where characters are revealed to have very different pasts than previously assumed. For example, at various points Spider-man was said to have received his powers from either a radioactive spider-bite, because he was a totem warrior of a spider-god, or because he was a clone of the original Spider-man. (Currently, I think we've doubled back to option 1, radioactive spider-bite, but don't quote me.) Of late, George Lucas has cornered the market on cinematic retcons with all his Star Wars prequel nonsense rewriting Jedi history.

I bring it up because: The summer movie season has a lot of retcons going for it, either from Wolverine's rewriting of X-men movie history to Terminator: Salvation's resetting the date of Judgement Day--again--and ignoring pretty much everything that happened in The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which was just cancelled). Retcons should not be confused with reboots, which is when a franchise just chucks everything and starts over, much like Batman Begins basically ignored the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher lineage of batfilms. Thankfully.

Nerd Word of the Day: Jonbar Hinge

2009-05-19T10:00:00.001-04:00

Jonbar Hinge (n.) - An event in history with two (or more) distinct possible outcomes, one of which leads to our familiar present, and the other which leads to an appreciably different world. A Jonbar Hinge is usually (though not always) small and unappreciated at the time, and its consequences are usually only felt in the distant, subsequent future. The term comes from the Jack Williamson short story "John Barr," wherein the protagonist's choice to pick up either a magnet or a pebble ultimately leads to either a utopian future, or global tyranny. And you thought the soup versus salad option at dinner was irelevant.

I bring it up because: JJ Abrams keeps using Jonbar Hinges to tell stories, either in the new Star Trek movie, the Fringe season finale or pretty much all of LOST, though we didn't know it until recently. Dude, seriously, you do good work but get a new schtick, preferably before the Star trek sequel.

Nerd Word of the Day: Fanboy

2009-05-18T10:00:00.004-04:00

Fanboy (n.) - Quoth Merriam-Webster, "a boy who is an enthusiastic devotee (as of comics or movies)." Once upon a time this was perjorative within geek circles, describing fans who had lost objectivity about the subject of their passions (like, say, people who can't admit that recent Star Wars movies are pale imitations of original Star Wars movies). Female fanboys are called fangirls. The term has of late been reclaimed by by geeks as a self-described badge of honor, denoting "true" geekdom as opposed to the passing contemporary coolness of being called a "geek." Bottom line, if I call myself a fanboy--as I do in the right column of this blog--it's okay. If you call me a fanboy, it's usually an insult.

I bring it up because: The movie Fanboys, about a group of guys trying to break into Skywalker Ranch in 1997 to see Star Wars, Episode I before its release, comes out on DVD tomorrow. Also, because of the recent backlash against the I am a Geek campaign, which conflates using a computer (or, more specifically, Twitter) with actual social geekdom. The term fanboy has some nuances that both these memes highlight, to varying degrees. Discuss.

Armchair Screenwriter: How I'd pitch the Star Trek sequel

2009-05-18T09:38:00.003-04:00

Despite some rather glaring plot holes, I very much enjoyed the Trek reboot and have seen it twice. A sequel has already been greenlit, and the good folks at SFSignal wasted no time asking what the first Trek reboot sequel should be about. Here's what I suggest.

What I'd really like to see (barring the possibility of an ongoing TV series with the current cast) is an actual, ethical/moral dilemma, which is what Trek has always been about. Moreover, I think you can get that done based on what happened in this film.

[SPOILERS]

We know that the Federation has lost a founding member in Vulcan, that Starfleet has basically lost an entire Academy class and a half-dozen ships to Nero, and that the Klingons lost an entire fleet to the rogue Romulan. Everyone in the galaxy knows that A) there's something called Red Matter that can make black holes, which is every bit as dangerous as the Genesis Device ever hoped to be, and B) that in a little over a century, Romulus is going to get obliterated by a supernova.

Basically, Romulus has the motive and the opportunity to finish what Nero started and take out both the Klingons and the Federation. They don't have the luxury of waiting this out, both because someone else might develop Red Matter before they do, and because unless they have an invincible position in 129 years they'll be at the impotent mercy of their enemies.

You could do a great non-proliferation allegory as the Enterprise has to forestall all-out war with the Romulans and Klingons and prevent anyone or everyone from getting their hands on Red Matter, possibly by kidnapping Spock (who, one assumes, can make it if his future self figured out how) or tracking down the new, presumably hidden Vulcan survivor colony where future Spock is hanging out.

You can some of those great Kirk/Spock/McCoy ethical debates about whether what the Romulans are doing is moral, whether now would be a good time for a preemptive strike against the weakened Klingons (and if such a thing is ethically defensible), if the Federation should compel future and/or present Spock to create Red Matter as a deterrent--all while enjoying some great space battles and chase scenes as the Enterprise stands alone between the entire Romulan Empire, a bloodied and enraged Klingon Empire, and all-out, galaxy-consuming war.

Just my wish list, anyway.

Introducing the Nerd Word of the Day

2009-05-17T14:00:00.004-04:00

In what can only be categorized as an act of insane hubris, I've decided that the Written Weird is going to in fact host a follow-up to my late, lamented Geek Trivia column called the Nerd Word of the Day. It will be a small hybird of my previous trivia work and my glossary of science fiction words. My initial goal is to make these entries brief, timely, snarky--and to do them every weekday. Whether I can pull that off remains to be seen, but if ever I was to do a sequel to Geek Trivia, this would be it. It should start tomorrow, so stay tuned.

On the impossibility of reading enough books

2009-05-15T14:32:00.004-04:00

Because you're all just dying to know, I'm already behind on my resolution to read 25 books this year. To date, I have polished off the following in 2009:

Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi. (Review - plugs some holes in The Last Colony, fun if you've read the other Old Man's War stuff)
Fathom by Cherie Priest. (Review - atmospheric, but a little plot-light for my taste; enjoyed Four and Twenty Blackbirds much more)
The Rainbow Connection by Ian Harac. (Review - He's my friend and he's funny and this book reminds me how much so)
1633 by Eric Flint and David Weber. (Review - More dense than 1632, and ends on an unsatisfying cliffhanger; left me wanting much more, including a copy of the roleplaying game)
Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card. (Review - Best thing I've read by Card since Ender's Game, if only half as good as his magnum opus)

I also read about a quarter of Hal Duncan's Vellum before bailing out. Suffice it to say, I'm reading at about half the necessary pace. Somebody needs to cure this pesky need for sleep.

The new Star Trek movie is the best possible Trek film--which is why they shouldn't make another one.

2009-05-11T10:04:00.012-04:00

Yes, I saw the Trek reboot on Saturday. Yes I liked it. No, it wasn't perfect, but that's not just me being a fanboy or an impossible-to-please critic (though I am both of those things). The movie had flaws, but they were outweighed by one inimitable factor that the film had in spades--and which almost every other Trek movie in the last 20 years has lacked--fun.

The new Star Trek is fun. It's funny. It has action. The characters are designed to be likable and interesting, not just allegories for whatever social group or psychological foil was necessary to drive the plot. There was no larger message about tolerance or human potential, it was just about the popcorn and the whiz-bang spectacle.

That, quite frankly, is the best we can hope for from a mainstream Star Trek movie. It's also why no mainstream movie can ever do justice to Star Trek.

I'm not talking about the bad science or the bad tactics or the plot holes (and more and more plot holes) you could fly a Klingon warbird through--those have been staples of all versions of Trek and, to a larger extent, nearly all filmic science fiction since day one. I'm also not talking about the inevitable (or imagined) knee-jerk fan backlash against anyone new taking on the classic Trek roles. I'm talking about what Star Trek stands for, and what is missing from this Trek movie--a moral.

Star Trek has always been a morality play dressed in sci-fi drag. The lessons were sometimes ham-fisted or cloying or maudlin, but there were lessons. Even as bad as Voyager and Enterprise got--and they got really bad--they still fumbled towards a moral or a theme in almost every episode (the dreadful series finales notwithstanding).

In the new Star Trek, the closest we get to a moral or a comment on the human condition is Spock's outrage at how racist the "logical" Vulcan leadership seems to be against humans and halfbreeds, or the notion that Kirk shouldn't let his father's death be an excuse for wasting his potential. These appear more as character inflections than social commentary.

Put more damningly, the new Star Trek is of closer kin to Independence Day than to "City on the Edge of Forever." That makes a real gee-whiz fun action ride, but nothing really approaching art. Many, many Trek episodes stand as some of the finest hours of television ever produced. No one would ever make the same claim about a Trek movie, except perhaps Wrath of Khan, which is really just a tightly scripted Moby Dick pastiche.

In fact, I'd argued that making Trek serve a mainstream cinematic audience is what killed it (and it certainly killed the Borg). Trek is at its best when it isn't trying to please such a wide swath of the viewing public, and is content--or, rather, not content unless--to tackle why and how the extraordinary artifice of science fiction can illuminate and instruct our own contemporary experience. That's the job of a television series, which has 20 or so hours every year to tell a succession of small or large stories focusing on one or more characters, as each best befits the moral and artistic goals of the show.

I'll leave it to greater minds than mine to determine whether Trek succeeding is good for science fiction as as a whole, but I will say that this Trek succeeding on the big screen could have disastrous consequences for the Trek franchise itself. It could turn Trek into solely a movie phenomenon, and widescreen is often a shallow medium. It seems financially unlikely that Paramount could afford to cast the current movie versions of Kirk, Spock et al as TV stars in a new Trek series, which is a loss. Trek belongs on television. (I'd argue the reverse is true of Star Wars; it functions best as a mainstream widescreen thrillride, and crumbles when stretched to navel-gaze at its own origins with prequels or TV series.)

The new Star Trek cast is fantastic, and the public's newfound demand for their takes on the characters will likely preclude an new Trek on TV. That means the look and feel and faces of the old Star Trek weren't the only casualties of this fun-and-fizzy new Trek reboot--so was Star Trek's heart. And that is a loss indeed.

The Onion: Trekkies bash new Star Trek film as 'fun, watchable'

2009-05-06T08:50:00.006-04:00

I have seen the future of my Star Trek premiere pre-party this weekend, and this is it.

There are days I'm convinced that The Onion is written by half-stoned journalism drop-outs from the future, and there are days I think it's written by my own subconscious. This is both of those days.

But hey, even if you are a Trek-basher who doubts the powers of J.J. Abrams or the premise of an Academy-era prequel--I'm looking at you, Stephen Colbert--just remember, it could always be worse. How worse? This worse.

Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | More Video Clips

(Hat tip to SFSignal, Wil Wheaton and Chris Roberson for collectively pointing this out to me.)

So who is this 'Jay Garmon' jerk...?

2009-05-04T15:31:00.002-04:00

Greetings, potential cyber-stalkers! You've reached this page in all likelihood by following a link from one of the various obscure and irresistible outposts I haunt throughout the intarweebs. (That, or Google's "I'm feeling lucky" button just totally hosed you.) Now that you're here, I suppose you want to know just who is this Jay Garmon jerk I've been hearing about?

The answer is far geekier than you ever could have dreamed.

I, Jay Garmon (or, to hear my parents of the federal government tell it, Jared Matthew Garmon) am a professional geek. Specifically, I am a writer, husband & father, science fiction nerd, self-professed quasi-expert and general Internet addict. Each of these aspects is entertained at different venues around the Web, as listed below.

Writer: This post is hosted on The Written Weird, which is my personal blog where I pontificate on whatever topics interest me with very irregular frequency. You can also find herein copies of my science fiction short stories that I have "trunked," which is a euphemism for "given up on trying to publish." Yes, I have written other sci-fi shorts, but those I'm actually still trying to get into print. If that ever happens, expect the first announcement to appear on The Written Weird along with a copious overuse of exclamation points. As to writing work for which I am actively paid, look no further than my LinkedIn profile, and you'll see I've made my living in whole or in part by stringing together words for CNET, CBS Interactive, Scholastic Library Publishing, and TechTarget, among others. But that's all non-fiction, so it doesn't count.

Husband & Father: Check out my Flickr photo stream, which is almost entirely dedicated to my daughter, wife, family, and friends, in that order, with each respective subject's photo volume descending logarithmically. I also have the requisite Facebook page, but--fair warning--I won't be joining your mafia wars, trivia quizzes, or 25 Things memes. I'm there to stay connected, not beat your high score in Scrabulous.

Science Fiction Nerd: For several years, I was the host of The Geekend, a nerd culture blog at TechRepublic, a Web community for IT professionals run by CBS Interactive. Predating the Geekend is Geek Trivia, a weekly (ahem) geek trivia column that I wrote for over seven years. Both the Geekend and Geek Trivia remain archived online, and have been cited by sources as diverse as writer John Scalzi to the editors of Wikipedia. Most of what I would have written for Geekend ends up on the Written Weird today--most notably in my Nerd Words column--but you can always go back and see where my online writing career truly began.

Self-Professed Quasi-Expert: First and foremost, I have somehow conned my way into being a board member of the Social Media Club of Louisville, a non-profit group that advocates for new technologies and their use for the betterment of communication and society at large. Mostly, we have nerd get-togethers and pontificate about the future of online discourse, commerce, and tech. For reasons defying understanding, the SMC'ville founders assumed I'd be good at that sort of thing, and placed me in a very minor leadership role. Also quite inexplicably, the kind and talented hosts of the TechTalk radio show on WRLR 98.3 FM in Chicago have me on as a regular guest and there I prattle away about movies, science fiction, technology, current events and...eventually...provide a Geek Trivia question each week. If you're game for a listen, you can tune in each Saturday at 11:00 am Eastern via the live video stream (where you won't see me, because I appear by phone) or just download the podcast via iTunes. I usually show up about ten minutes into the show and they hang up on me less than fifteen minutes later, so plan your listening accordingly.

General Internet Addict: Perhaps the most holistic view of my life as the Prince of Dorkness can be divined from my Twitter stream. I've also got a minor (read: mostly neglected) presence on a host of other online communities and services, and the best way to cyber-stalk me everywhere is just to follow my Profilactic profile.

In the unlikely event you would like to retain my services as a consultant, writer, speaker, radio guest, conference/convention panelist, or one-shot dungeon master, you can reach me at jay [dot] garmon [at] gmail [dot] com. Depending on the job, I can be be had for very free or very not. Pitch me, and we'll talk.

Showdown: Star Trek alien or gourmet cheese?

2009-05-04T10:00:00.005-04:00

It's time for another geek showdown, where I list off 20 or so unlikely terms and you guess which of two antithetical but bizarrely similar categories each entry belongs to. This week, just in time for the new Star Trek flick, we give you a matchup of Trek alien races and real-world gourmet cheeses. The descriptions for each are in "invisible" text after each entry, just highlight the area to figure out which is cheese, and which is just a cheesy use of make-up.

Bolian - The blue-skinned dudes with a single ridge running down their faces; played waiters and barbers on NextGen.
Caprino - Italian goat cheese.
Quark- Russian version of ricotta cheese.
Breen - Evil race that team up with Cardassia and the Dominion during DS9's Dominion War seasons. Helmets kinda look like the one Princess Leia wore when she pretended to be a bounty hunder in Return of the Jedi.
Sbrinz - Swiss version of Parmesan cheese.
Gorn - Slow-moving lizard dudes that Captain Kirk beat by building a homemade cannon out of rocks and sticks.
Sakura - Japan's only famous cheese, made using cherry leaves.
Nausicaan - Predator-faced mercenaries famous for stabbing Capt. Picard in the heart when he was just out of Starfleet Academy.
Briori- Alien race from Voyager that famously kidnapped Amelia Earhart.
Benzite- Grey-faced aliens from NextGen that have smoky little humidifiers sticking out from their chests, and made a habit of befriending Wesley Crusher.
Tyrolean Grey - Famously stinky Austrian cheese with sticky grey or black centers.
Brunali - Remember that baby Borg, Icheb, that Seven of Nine saved and adopted and made into Wesley Crusher 2.0 on Voyager? He was Brunali.
Rokpol - Polish blue cheese.
Caitian - Feline species made famous by the hottie Uhura-wannabe M'Ress from the original Trek animated series.
Edo - Remember the planet of half-naked hotties that wanted to execute Wesley Crusher for stepping on a garden? They were Edo.
Kobali- Alien race from Voyager that reproduces by reanimating corpses from other species.
Valdeon - Spanish blue cheese.
Menk - Neanderthal-esque race from the episode of Enterprise where Dr. Phlox sort of invented the Prime Directive--by letting another race die of plague.
Coon - Australian Cheddar.
Tamarian - The race that spoke only in metaphors from NextGen, and gave us the nerd catchphrases "Darmok at Tanagra" and "Shaka, when the walls fell."

Note: Bonus points if you notice the Prime Directive joke hidden in the cheese-versus-aliens pattern.

Showdown: Obscure X-men vs. '80s hair metal bands

2009-04-30T11:19:00.007-04:00

The X-men got big in the early 1980s. So did glam metal rock. That probably expalins why so many X-men codenames sound like the Saturday arena playbill at the New Jersey State Fair. Seriously, if you weren't a comic book fanboy, a line-up of Storm, Havok and Nightcrawler sounds like three acts that could open for Poison or Motley Crue.

Don't believe me? Take a gander down this list of 25 names, each of which is either an obscure X-man or an '80s hair metal band--and in some cases, both. See if you can tell which is with before scrolling down to see the descriptions.

Names:

Descriptions:

Great White - 80s hair band famous for the single "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" and for killing 100 or so people when their pyrotechnics display burned down a nightclub in 2003. Despite the death count, they should not be confused with the Batman villain, who appeared in the same year.
Marrow - X-man grows bone-spurs through her skin that she can rip out and throw like daggers. Is that '90s enough for you?
Petra - Both the name of both the first Christian Rock Band inducted into the Hard Rock cafe, and the name of a retconned rock-manipulating X-man.
Maggott - X-Man who has two giant pet maggots that, when they eat anything, give him super-strength. Seriously. Also the nickname for Slipknot fans, but the less said about that, the better.
White Queen - X-man Emma Frost, a diamond-fleshed telepath who used to be a villain until she started boning Cyclops.
White Lion - Glam metal band known for the hits "Wait" and "When the Children Cry."
King Kobra - Hair metal band famous for recording the title song from the movie Iron Eagle. Not to confused with the DC comics supervillain cult leader Kobra or the Marvel Comics supervillain cult leader, Cobra .
Lifeguard - X-man capable of generating whatever power is needed to solve a problem, thanks to lame writing from Chris Claremont.
Caliban - X-man who can sense other mutants; too bad he's a hideously ugly albino. There is a band called Caliban, but they're a German metalcore group and very much a product of the '90s.
Vixen - All-girl glam metal band known for the single "Edge of a Broken Heart." There is a superhero named Vixen , but she's a DC property and Justice League member.
Red Queen - X-man title shared by many, most notably of Madelyne Pryor, an evil cone of Jean Grey. Also an alternate universe Jean Grey. And an alternate universe Psylocke. There are a lot of Red Queens, okay.
Omerta - X-man of Italian-American descent from Brooklyn who, when he discovers he is super-strong and invulnerable, tries to take over the local mafia. Somehow, this endears him to the X-men, who recruit him.
Hurricane - Both an evil mutant enemy of the X-men as part of the Dark Riders, and a glam metal band known for the 1988 hit "I'm On To You."
The Stepford Cuckoos - X-men group of invulnerable mutant quintuplets who share one hive-mind, bereft of emotion. Yeah, this is pretty obviously a Grant Morrison thing.
Exodus - Both an early '80s thrash-metal band, and Magneto's insane, immortal, psionic second-in-command who, in an alternate universe, was a good-guy X-man. Yeah, another '90s creation.
Nocturne - X-man daughter of Nightcrawler and Scarlet Witch from an alternate reality. Yes, there are lots of parallel universe X-men love-children. Why do you ask? Also the name of many songs and a 90s metal band.
Jetboy - Glam band who got famous by having three singles on The 'Burbs soundtrack, "Bloodstone", "Locked in a Cage" and "Make Some Noise."
Penance - X-man that was really a hollow invulnerable teenage-girl body that housed the minds of three separate teenage-girl X-men. Strangely, not a Grant Morrison invention.
Stryper - Christian glam metal band from the '80s known for mainstream hits "Calling On You", "Free" and "Honestly."
Stringfellow - X-man ally with the ability to temporarily turn your bones to spaghetti. Somehow this is scary.
Nitro - Glam metal band known for lead singer Jim Gillette's ability to shatter wine glasses with his voice. There is a Spider-man villain named Nitro, be he isn't a mutant or an X-man.
Helix - Canadian metal band known for the single "Rock You. There is a supervillain team called Helix , but they're from the DC universe and have never met the X-men.
Giant - Glam metal band and one hit wonders known for the single "I'll See You In My Dreams."
Trixter - '80s hard rock band perhaps best known for the single "Give It to Me Good." Not to be confused with the non-mutant supervillains who fought The Flash.
Tuff - Mid-80s glam metal band known for the popular video to "I Hate Kissing You Goodbye."

If you passed this quiz with zero errors, you're defintely a child of the '80s--one who seriously needs to get out more.

My 25 favorite Geekend columns of all time

2009-04-27T10:25:00.002-04:00

As my previous post indicated, I have recently resigned the longest-running writing gig of my career, authoring Geek Trivia and The Geekend for CBS Interactive. As part of dealing with my separation anxiety--and also to incentivize my former Geekend readers to come check out this blog--I've list my personal Top 25 Geekend columns from my four-year run with the blog. Enjoy.

Giving up that which defines me

2009-04-23T09:43:00.004-04:00

For seven and a half years, I've written a column called Geek Trivia. On Wednesday, April 29, 2009, the last issue of that column I'll likely ever write will be publicized in its e-mail newsletter. I'm taking a full-time job with a competitor of CBS Interactive, the publisher of Geek Trivia and its host blog, The Geekend, for which I also write several times per week. I built The Geekend from the ground up, and I have come to regard my Geek Trivia readers (of which there were about 60,000) as not just fans, but in some measure friends. Saying goodbye to them is more difficult than I imagined it could be.

Google my name--Jay Garmon--and you'll find my work for the Geekend in the top two or three results. Google Geek Trivia, and you'll find my work for that column first and foremost. In some ways, Geek Trivia and The Geekend have defined me, professionally. They've opened doors for me that I never thought possible.

My role as a guest on TechTalk radio, I garnered through Geek Trivia. My connections to the wonderful bloggers at SFSignal, I made through the Geekend. John Scalzi noticed--and reacted to--my work there. (And then recalled the incident enough to sign books to that effect.) Writers and artists like Rich Lovatt, Mike Sterling, Valerie D'Orazio, David Gallaher, Lar DeSouza, Steve Ellis, Rich Ginter, Hannibal Tabu, Andrew Hackard, John Klima, Dwight MacPherson, Rich Barrett, Chris Meeks, John F. Merz and Mary Robinette Kowal follow me on Twitter because of my networking done in part through the Geekend. I've been cited as a source in Wikipedia articles because of Geek Trivia, which is a very strange notion indeed.

Ironically, I've "ended" Geek Trivia before, only to have my fans demand its return. Twice. I cannot begin to tell you how gratifying those responses were. The only compliment that comes close is that TechRepublic won't continue Geek Trivia without me, which is equally sad and humbling all at once.

For over eight years, my career and my online identity have been tied in some measure to TechRepublic in general and Geek Trivia specifically. That's a quarter of my life.

And now I'm giving all that up.

It is a strange new world I enter now, one where I have to reinvent myself online. My wife is actually glad of this, as she's looking forward to my having just one set of deadlines (that of the new day job) and me spending the rest of time either away from the keyboard, or writing what I want to write, not what I'm obligated to write. Hopefully, that means my long-neglected personal blog (this one) will get some attention and, more importantly, my long-forestalled fiction writing career will finally get underway.

It's time to move on to the next chapter, but no matter how promising or exciting my prospects may be, I cannot help but be momentarily saddened by what what I'm leaving behind. It has been good to me, and I'm the better for it. Those of you who knew me as the Trivia Geek, please look for me here. I'm not gone, I'm just different. And I look forward to seeing what is to come.