Geektastic: Stories From the Nerd Herd

Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd
edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci

Geektastic celebrates all things geeky, from Klingons and Jedi Knights to fan fiction, theater geeks, and cosplayers. Whether you’re a former, current, or future geek, or if you just want to get in touch with your inner geek, Geektastic has something for everyone. Get your geek on!

Let me tell you how this book came about. The Editor’s Note, of course, will tell you this in much more eloquent way, but I think you all need to understand just how awesome this book is.

San Diego Comic-Con 2007. Authors Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci are hanging out, doing their geeky authory thing and talking about Klingon panels and cosplay and they both come to the conclusion that there needs to be a story about a Jedi and a Klingon hooking up and the repercussions thereof. Starcrossed lovers? Disaster in the making? Do they need to keep their tryst a secret because of the social standards of their prospective groups?

So they decided to write that story and ask a bunch of their geeky friends to write geeky stories for the anthology they would need to have in order to publish that story.

That story, which happens to be the first one in this anthology, is possibly the best work of short fiction I’ve ever read. Members of opposing hardcore cosplay groups party hard and wake up together? So. Brilliant.

This whole book is brilliant. I enjoyed every story. Reading these is like hanging out with your geeky friends. You recognize all of the characters as soon as you’re introduced to them, even if you’re not that particular brand of geek. It’s a fantastic celebration of all the things geeks love.

Like the blurb says, if you are a geek or were a geek or want to be a geek or know a geek, you should pick this one up. It’s amazing.