Geek Wisdom
Page 1
Copyright © 2011 by Quirk Productions, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Number: 2011922702
eISBN: 978-1-59474-530-0
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Illustrations by Mario Zucca
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DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to everyone who’s ever said one of these things out loud during conversation.
(Especially John, Greg, Mike, Lori, Jeannie, Chris, Ben, Paul, Steve, Paul, Nina, Lisa, Jenn, Cameron, Tempest, Vanessa, Julie, and Stu. I have been, and always shall be, et cetera, et cetera.)
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
INTRODUCTION
A NOTE ON SPOILERS
I. MY NAME IS INIGO MONTOYA
(wisdom about the self)
II. FORM FEET AND LEGS
(wisdom about relationships)
III. WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS
(wisdom about humankind)
IV. KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE
(wisdom about conflict)
V. BILLIONS AND BILLIONS
(wisdom about the universe)
VI. IN THE YEAR 2525
(wisdom about the future)
About the Authors
INTRODUCTION
I wish I could remember who asked me the question. Because I know for sure that my answer is what set me on the path that has brought me here, to you, on this page. The question was: “What was your religion when you were growing up?” And my answer was: “Uh, science fiction, pretty much.”
I meant it as a joke. I was poking fun at myself, saying that I’d been such a freaking geek as a kid, watching Star Trek and reading Tolkien and writing computer programs and building TARDIS models, you’d think that stuff was my religion. But as soon as it came out of my mouth, I immediately understood that this was no joke. It was absolutely 100 percent true in a way that I’d never thought of before—and, furthermore, it was a good thing.
What is religion? Never mind all the trappings, all the ceremonial garments and the prayer rules and the fish on Friday. What is religion really for? It’s a framework of ideas—a body of thought shared by a community, written and handed down through literature—that’s intended to guide us toward maturity by helping us ask and answer the big, cosmic questions about existence. Who are we? Where did we come from? Is there anyone else out there in realms of being we can’t see? Here on earth, why can’t we get along with one another better than we do? And how can we possibly find any redemption for the mess we tend to make of things?
The Bible tells stories answering these questions. So does the Quran. So do the Upanishads. So do the sacred books of every other religion. The stories in each tradition vary a lot in the details, but they all make their way around to more or less the same points that, in turn, ultimately boil down to this: Hey, show some respect for the universe, because it’s a whole lot bigger than you.
You know what? Religion isn’t the only place to find those kinds of stories. The modern scientific world tells them, too. In fact, geek culture is built on them.
Look at the Bible. In the beginning, God gave Adam and Eve a couple simple rules, and they didn’t obey them, and we got to see how that affected the rest of their lives and what it implies for us. Then Moses brought down ten divine algorithms from the Mount for everyone to live by—don’t kill, don’t bear false witness, do honor your parents, etc.—and we got to spend the rest of the Bible tagging along as generations upon generations of slaves, peasants, merchants, and kings alternately followed and broke these commandments and tried to learn how to live with the consequences.
And now look at Isaac Asimov, scientist and novelist. He was not, obviously, God. He didn’t create the universe, humanity, and everything in between. But he did imagine that someday humanity would create artificial beings—mechanical intelligences—and would have to give them rules to live by. And thus, after school, while my best friend John was in catechism class reading from the Gospel of Matthew, I could be found at home reading from Asimov’s book I, Robot, watching cybernetic Abrahams and Jobs with “names” like SPD-1 and NS-10 do their damnedest to make it through situations where the rules of life seemed just impossible to cope with.
Does that sound strange? That robots, as envisioned as realistically as possible by a scientifically trained futurist, should suffer from existential angst? In fact, it makes tremendous sense. Because when Asimov sat down to codify his Laws of Robotics—the practical operational rules that would make it possible for these new intelligent beings to live in harmony with one another and their creators—what he came up with was startlingly similar to the moral code outlined by most every religion and philosophy throughout human history. Oh, sure, it looks different—
1. A robot shall not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot shall obey the orders given by a human being, except where this would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot shall protect its own existence, except where this would conflict with the First or Second Law.
—but when you put that in plainer, more casual language, what it amounts to is this:
It’s important to take care of yourself, but it’s more important to spread happiness, but it’s even more important to hold life sacred.
You don’t have to be a robot, or even a sci-fi geek, to understand that’s a pretty straightforward description of being a good person. And, you know, being a good person is hard. So if geek culture can offer fresh, new, alternative paths to all the eternal truths that religion and philosophy have managed to discover over the past few thousand years—paths that welcome those who’ve been turned away from the more traditional routes—then I say, let there be geekery.
The realm of geekdom, of course, is much bigger than just science fiction. Geeks are passionate fans of stuff, and particularly of stuff that lies somewhere along one of two cultural axes: math and myth. The love of math stuff gives us science geeks, computer geeks, chess geeks; the love of myth stuff gives us theater geeks, literary geeks, ancient-Greek geeks. This is why science fiction and roleplaying games make up the enduring popular image of modern-day geekdom, mind you, because those are the places where math and myth intersect: literature built on the infinite possibilities of science, improv sword and sorcery shaped by the numerical output of 20-sided dice.
Hence Geek Wisdom: the first compendium of sacred teachings from the wide-ranging “holy scriptures” of geekdom, that weird mass of pop culture and high art ranging from blockbuster movies to esoteric novels to cult-classic T-shirt slogans. Star Wars. The Princess Bride. Albert Einstein. Stan Lee. From such sources we’ve gathered (and mused thoughtfully upon) the deepest, purest, most profound ideas and sayings to be found. The ones that cut right to the heart of life in the twenty-first century. The ones we quote as if they’d come from the Bible, or from Shakespeare. The ones that, increasingly, have emerged from the underground to form the cellular structure of a true new culture canon.
Our culture canon. And thus does the geek inherit the earth.
A NOTE ON SPOILERS
GEEK WISDOM features quotes from many classic movies, books, and television shows. Some of the points we necessarily address will, technically, be spoilers to anyone who hasn’t experienced these works directly. We have avoided, howev
er, ruining any big surprises or twist endings; the spoilers found within are the kind of thing you’d pick up from general cultural discussion of the stories in question. In other words: A few bits may be spoiled, but don’t worry—none of them are ruined.
I.
MY NAME IS
INIGO MONTOYA
(WISDOM ABOUT THE SELF)
“WITH GREAT POWER COMES
GREAT RESPONSIBILITY.”
—STAN LEE, MARVEL COMICS
SPIDER-MAN’S UNCLE told him this, and that’s why he became Spider-Man. George Washington realized it, too, and that’s why he decided eight years was long enough for anyone to be president of the United States. Tim Allen tried to dodge around it, and that’s why his dishwasher exploded. King David said to hell with it and had his lover’s husband killed, and that’s why he had epic family problems for the rest of his life. Paris Hilton seems oblivious to the very concept, and that’s why animal lovers have long been inclined to worry about her poor, poor dog. And Albert Einstein realized the full, inhuman horror of it—that’s why he wrote to Franklin Roosevelt to explain the possibility of an atomic bomb. Sure, the seed of the truism can be found in Luke 12:48 (“To whom much is given, much is expected”). But although the word of that uppity young Jewish carpenter from Nazareth may be eternal, it took an uppity young Jewish comic-book writer from New York City to put it in terms that ring true to the modern ear.
The original quote, from Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), actually said: “With great power there must also come—great responsibility!” Subsequent references rounded off the portentous edges.
“DESTINY! DESTINY!
NO ESCAPING THAT FOR ME!”
—DR. FREDERICK FRANKENSTEIN, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
THE ODDS ARE EXCELLENT that your grandfather did not dig up corpses, stitch them together, and reanimate them into a murderous, shambling monstrosity. And yet the same inexorable force of genetic history that drove young Frederick to follow in Victor’s footsteps is at work in all our lives. Maybe you realize one day, washing your hands for the fourth time since dinner, that somewhere along the line you picked up the same obsessive germaphobia that always made your mom’s aunt seem so crazy. Maybe you’ve just chosen between three different neighborhoods to live in, and you can’t figure out why you picked the one with the longest commute, until it finally hits your conscious mind that standing outside your new window is a willow tree like the one Dad planted in your backyard when you were nine. Maybe, after a lifetime of gorgeous hair, you’re staring down the barrel of a .22-caliber bald head. Whatever it may look like, there is definitely a monster with your family’s name—and it’s coming for you. It’s up to you whether you’ll chase it with a burning torch or sing it a sweet lullaby of love.
Filmmaker Mel Brooks has called Young Frankenstein (1974) his favorite of all his movies.
“I’M NOT FINISHED.”
—EDWARD, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS
IT’S HARD FOR ANY SENSITIVE adolescent to have a reasoned, distanced approach to Edward Scissorhands. That’s because it’s one of film’s most heartbreaking portrayals of the experience of being a teenage outsider. The horrors of suburban conformity are distilled to their pure essence in the people who surround Edward, all of whom are pretty shells over darker selves. The movie makes several salient points about how this microcosm behaves toward someone who’s physically different; even Edward’s adoptive mother, who loves him dearly, often treats him more as a cause célèbre than as a person. And even after he finds someone to love, he has to leave her to avoid retribution from those who don’t understand him. When Edward whispers, “I’m not finished”—referring to his very self, that is, “My creator didn’t give me all the necessary bits”—it’s as though he’s speaking directly to every uncertain kid who ever longed to be accepted without having to conform. Luckily, growing up “unfinished” can make geeks the very best people to guide and nurture the next generation of outsiders: We know you don’t have to be finished to be awesome.
Goth-geek favorite filmmaker Tim Burton is a master of moody visuals first and a narrative storyteller only second. But he has called Edward Scissorhands (1990) semiautobiographical, which may explain why the plot is among Burton’s strongest.
“THE LIGHT THAT BURNS TWICE AS BRIGHT
BURNS HALF AS LONG … AND YOU HAVE
BURNED SO VERY, VERY BRIGHTLY, ROY.”
—DR. ELDON TYRELL, BLADE RUNNER
DR. TYRELL WASN’T TALKING about rock and roll, but he might as well have been. See, when Neil Young told us it was better to burn out than to fade away, he wasn’t being sincere; his own status as the elder statesmen of grungy rock is proof of that. He was talking about an all-too-common phenomenon, though: Often, our most monumental cultural icons, in music or otherwise, are monumental in part because they were taken from us too soon. Whether through their own recklessness (Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison), by their own hand (Kurt Cobain, Ernest Hemingway), or at the hands of another (John Lennon, Abraham Lincoln), the life lived in the clouds above mere mortals is frequently doomed to the fate of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and in his folly perished. Is it better for a superstar’s legacy if, like Blade Runner’s wild-eyed Roy Batty, they burn out rather than fade away? Or should the next wave of ambitious, creative visionaries buck this trend and stick around for their own third acts? The geek takeover of popular culture just may mean a shift in this unfortunate tradition; unlike rockers and replicants, one thing geeks are not is reckless.
After decades of proudly gleaming Hollywood spaceships and robots, Blade Runner (1982) offered an alternate version of the future, full of grimy streets and corporate advertising. It’s a future that’s looked more like the present every year since.
“BY GRABTHAR’S HAMMER,
BY THE SONS OF WARVAN,
YOU SHALL BE AVENGED.”
—ALEXANDER DANE, GALAXY QUEST
SOMETIMES IT’S HARD to accept one’s inner weirdo. In Galaxy Quest, jaded actor Alexander Dane finds his thespian career ruined by sci-fi typecasting, and thus spends most of the movie trying to distance himself from his TV character’s most famous catchphrase. In the end, though, he learns that some situations call for those very words to be wielded sincerely, in the name of justice. It’s not hard to find oneself in this position. The world is frequently cruel to those earnest souls who take “corny” ideas like truth and justice seriously or aren’t afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves—just look at how often the wondrous power of the Internet is used for callous, drive-by snark when commiseration is really what’s called for. Folks are eager to point and laugh at the latest online meme making the rounds. After we saw a photo of Keanu Reeves looking genuinely sad get Photoshopped into a thousand comedic punch lines, it was only to be expected that the video clip of that random dude getting excited about a double rainbow was going to be mocked a millionfold. Yet expressing oneself passionately is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s a way to clearly communicate the things that, deep down, are most important to us. In fact, someone had better do it, or, by Grabthar’s Hammer, who shall bother avenging you?
Sometimes, parody or pastiche shows a deeper love for the original source material than a hundred official sequels ever could. In forty years, has there really ever been a better Star Trek movie than Galaxy Quest (1999)—or a better Fantastic Four movie than The Incredibles?
“ALL THAT IS GOLD DOES NOT GLITTER /
NOT ALL THOSE WHO WANDER ARE LOST.”
—J. R. R. TOLKIEN, THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
TOLKIEN may have been able to more easily sum up his verse description of Aragorn by saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but that wouldn’t have been very poetic, would it? Like his belief in huge and unexpected good fortune—he coined the term eucatastrophe to describe such sudden turns for the good—Tolkien believed in finding virtue in unexpected places, often wrapped in a cloak the modern world would deems ugly. Gnarled tree creatures, road-weary travelers,
and grumpy old men in grey rags are just a few of the guises taken by the benevolent powers of Middle Earth. There may be a degree of simple wish-fulfillment fantasy hidden in there, the old cliché of the ordinary person who secretly has amazing abilities, but it’s more than that. It’s a lesson in judging people—or, rather, not judging them. It also speaks to appreciating simplicity in one’s life and not underestimating the inner strength of the downtrodden. Despite Tolkien’s staunch Catholicism, there is an almost Taoist spirit to the sentiment. Divinity is not labeled as such; you have to look below the surface.
We finally met Aragorn onscreen forty-seven years after his literary debut in 1954; few could fault Viggo Mortensen’s performance as the exiled heir to humankind’s throne, but some did grumble that, even scruffy, he was more handsome than Aragorn’s epigraph should allow.
“I’M NOT EVEN SUPPOSED
TO BE HERE TODAY!”
—DANTE HICKS, CLERKS
JUST READING that makes you want to slap someone, doesn’t it? And yet, at the same time, you totally get it, don’t you? Most of us are well acquainted with the sting of being abruptly summoned to spend our off-day working; still, it’s not pretty when on-the-job complaints turn into life-sweeping disclaimers. Whiny retail employee Dante Hicks drops this gem approximately eight hundred (thousand) times in this classic slice-of-slacker-life film; specifically, he seems to drop it whenever he’s made an error of judgment, as if uttering the words will both send him home and erase his mistakes. Unfortunately, suffering injustice doesn’t excuse you from responsibility for your own choices, and Dante spends the day forcibly coming to terms with this fact—or, at least, being dressed down about it by Randal. (Please note that we recommend taking stock of your choices and trying to get closure, instead of just arguing about whether contractors on the Death Star were innocent victims or not.) But don’t worry—as long as you’re not using it as a catch-all excuse, if you’re called in to work on your day off, you’re totally still allowed to complain.