by Dr Mark Blacklock
Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, published late last year, described one of its characters, Eric Jeffrey Outfield, as an ‘übergeek.’ Pynchon’s pen portrait is an interesting case study. As the descriptor indicates (and as will probably be little surprise for regular Pynchon readers) Eric is cartoonishly geeky, bursting at the seams with hip geek signifiers:
looking, except for the bare upper lip and a newly acquired soul patch, just like his ID photo. He is wearing cargo pants in a camo print whose color scheme is intended for some combat zone very remote, if not off-planet, and a T-shirt announcing, in Helvetica, <p> REAL GEEKS USE COMMAND PROMPTS </p>, accessorized with a Batbelt clanking like a charm bracelet with remotes for TV, stereo and air conditioner, plus laser pointer, pager, bottle opener, wire stripper, voltmeter, magnifier, all so tiny that one legitimately wonders how functional they can be.
Facial hair? Check. (Note that it’s ‘newly acquired’: nice touch, that; Eric is keeping up.) Ironic computer culture t-shirt? Check. Gadgets? Check, check and check. SF and Comix references? Check and check. Eric is indeed an übergeek, and what’s even more impressive is that he’s an amalgamated 2001 übergeek. I’m not so sure today’s übergeek would be wearing camo trousers of any description. He’s period appropriate.
The challenge we’ve set ourselves at the Geekpound.com is, in part, to work out what 2014's übergeek might look like. To this end we’re assembling a scrapbook of our research in collaboration with the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction Literature that might amount to a sketch of today’s Erics and Ericas. Ours is an unusual partnership in that literary scholars rarely have the opportunity to break bread with the bodies and enterprises that produce and reward the texts that we study: working with the Clarke we’re able to pool resources and to undertake a hybrid type of research that aims to be both popular and scholarly. We’re a cyborg project, perhaps: the flesh of the Clarke Award mobilised by the servos and circuits of the CCL.
The ISX Enterprise [Image reproduced with permission from Mark Rademaker]
This form seems appropriate for dealing with the capacious category of the geek. There are interesting tensions between ascertaining how the geek might function simultaneously as a market – a type of consumer – and a sub-cultural group that doesn’t want to be marketed to. These tensions mirror those in SF culture, where formerly amateur organisations, such as the Clarke, have professionalized as this culture, and the number of its participants, have grown significantly over the past two decades.
Taking SF and fantasy culture as an example, we’ve witnessed the phenomenal success of these genres so that they have come to dominate Hollywood, in both its cinematic and more contemporary computer game productions. Since Star Wars, this is where the big entertainment money has been. A quick glance at the table of highest grossing movies of all-time demonstrates this amply. Thirty-three of the top fifty are SF or fantasy texts (I’m claiming comic book adaptations for my slice of the pie); of the remaining seventeen, children’s animations dominate.
We’re reflecting the expansion of geek culture by looking at literature, TV, film, games and the broader networks of fan culture that include the social engagements of conferences and conventions, collecting and role-play. The genre boom has allowed smaller enterprises – small genre presses, or DVD import labels, for example – to thrive in the cracks, catering to previously marginalised geek audiences. We’re interviewing SF authors, dotcom veterans, scholars of mathematics, role-playing-gamers and fans. Themes are emerging: shifting attitudes towards race and gender; authenticity; the playfulness of the geek; obsession that might overlap with behaviours that could be located on the autistic spectrum; tensions between the core and the fringes, and whether it is possible for the contemporary geek to be located in one or the other.
Nuclear geek [Image by Dennis Larson under a CC BY-NC-SA license]
The geek continues to move. Just as some sort of consensus seems achievable over what constitutes a geek, previously self-identifying geeks jump ship (leap out of the unscientifically noisy X-wing fighter and into, perhaps, the IXS Enterprise [see above] rendered by Mark Rademaker in collaboration with NASA’s Dr. Harold White). We’re not proposing to provide a definitive answer but will hopefully be able to sketch the broad church of the geek, its hyper-dimensional spires, pews occupied by cosplayers in Game of Thrones outfits, nave stacked with collections of DC obscurities and altarpiece by LucasArts. Please check out our tumblr and get in touch if you think you too might be geek.
Mark Blacklock is a doctor of the fourth dimension, speaks third-class Japanese and was once a human cannonball. He has been a freelance journalist for fifteen years, contributing to national newspapers and, more importantly for our purposes here, to titles such as The Fortean Times and Bizarre Magazine. Mark's debut novel, I'M JACK, about the Yorkshire Ripper hoaxer, will be published by Granta in 2015. Mark is leading the Geek Pound project (run in partnership with Birkbeck's CCL and the Arthur C. Clarke Award) and tweets as @drblacklock.
Featured image by Photo Dean under a CC BY-NC-ND license.
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