N. K. Jemisin

Eric San Juan

Genevieve Valentine

Zaki Hasan

A treasury of quotes from movies, comic books, video games and other sources features mini-essay commentary by a team of socially inept intellectuals who reveal the modern wisdom of geek-favored pop culture.

The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture

Geek Wisdom

ABOUT THE BOOK What happens after the end of the world? When all of society has collapsed, and any sense of safety is fleeting or illusory, is it possible to survive while still remaining fundamentally human – both literally and figuratively? It’s questions like these that have propelled AMC’s The Walking Dead in the ratings upon its record-shattering debut in fall of 2010. Since then, the series has been as irresistible and tasty for viewers as said viewers would be to the man-eating creatures in the show. Adapted from a comic book created by Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead is a visually and emotionally visceral depiction of man’s downfall in the aftermath of a horrifying zombie apocalypse. Starring Andrew Lincoln in the lead role of Georgia sheriff Rick Grimes, the show is currently in the midst of its second season, and continues to enthrall audiences with its somber meditations on violence, religion, humanity, and inhumanity - all woven in with gut-wrenching (and gut-munching) bouts of zombie violence proving the very definition of “bloody good TV.” MEET THE AUTHOR Born and raised in Chicago before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area, award-winning writer Zaki Hasan is a professor of communication and media studies, and has been a media scholar and critic for more than fifteen years. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK After steadily building buzz upon its 2003 debut, the notion of transitioning The Walking Dead to the screen swiftly gained traction, especially with the recent release of 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake, and Shaun of the Dead. George Romero’s return to zombie territory with Land of the Dead (2005) also proved the vitality of the genre. When pondering the possibility of his property becoming a movie or TV show, Kirkman said in a 2010 interview, “I wasn’t dying for it to happen. It was just, if it happened, that’s great.” Finally, in late 2009, a live action television series based on The Walking Dead was announced as being in development by filmmaker Frank Darabont (no stranger to adaptations himself, having previously brought three Stephen King novels to the screen, including 1993’s The Shawshank Redemption) and producer Gale Anne Hurd (whose collaborations with famed director James Cameron on The Terminator and Aliens remain some of the most beloved and masterful mergers of sci-fi and horror of all time). A longtime admirer of the genre, Darabont professed to interviewer Alan Sepinwall that he’d always had the “love of zombies” gene. An avowed fan of the comic series, he had been circling the property since as early as 2005. After several fruitless years of trying to sell various studios and production companies on the idea of a serialized, open-ended zombie epic – a fairly revolutionary idea at the time, Darabont joined forces with Hurd, who saw the same promise in the premise that he did... Buy a copy to keep reading!

The Walking Dead: Behind the Series

ABOUT THE BOOK Given the very long shadow it has cast on culture and pop culture since its initial publication in 1870, it’s difficult to overstate just how indelible and long-lasting the impact of author Jules Verne’s seminal seafaring epic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea has been, both upon the literary world and the world at large. With its meditations on evergreen themes such as man, nature, and the inherent conflicts therein, and its depiction of new technologies decades before their eventual invention, Twenty Thousand Leagues remains an unquestionable classic of modern literature and has also transcended the page to leave a mark on a variety of other media. My first encounter with Verne’s story happened at the ripe old age of seven, when I had opportunity to watch Richard Fleischer’s 1954 film adaptation for producer Walt Disney, starring legendary screen star Kirk Douglas as the stolidly heroic Ned Land and featuring a haunting, unforgettable turn by James Mason as charismatic anti-hero Captain Nemo. The film’s grand scale and memorable set pieces, including the elegant depiction of Nemo’s mighty Nautilus submarine designed by Harper Goff, was all it took for me to hungrily seek out and dive headfirst into the original text. This in turn allowed me to discover firsthand the magnificent undersea world Jules Verne imagined for us during a time when the very notion of travelling under the sea was as much of a fantasy as the idea of travelling in space. MEET THE AUTHOR Born and raised in Chicago before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area, award-winning writer Zaki Hasan is a professor of communication and media studies, and has been a media scholar and critic for more than fifteen years. He is co-author of Quirk Books' Geek Wisdom: The Sacred Teachings of Nerd Culture, and his work has been featured in Q-News, Illume, and The Huffington Post. He is also contributing editor at Altmuslimah.com. Since 2004, his blog ZakisCorner.com has been a one-stop forum for musings on news, media, politics, and pop culture, nominated for "Best Blog" by the Brass Crescent Awards in 2010 and 2011, and included in the Top 35 Political Blogs of 2010 by BestBloggers.org. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Though Verne was a lifelong devotee of all things nautical and oceanic, the true genesis of what eventually became Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea was first planted in the author’s mind via an offhand comment in an 1865 communiqué from French author George Sand. Waxing rhapsodic about the author’s then-latest opus, 1864’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, Madame Sand playfully prodded Verne to, in his next work, “take us to the depths of the sea...in diving vessels that your science and imagination will manage to improve.” Diving into this challenge with gusto, Verne began development on what eventually became Twenty Thousand Leagues that same year. From the beginning, he was uncertain of precisely how large a distance his submarine would travel, with working titles ranging from Twenty-Five Thousand Leagues Under the Waters to A Thousand Leagues Under the Oceans to the more-familiar Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Waters before arriving at the book’s final designation (at one point he even considered titling it simply Voyage Under the Waters). Buy a copy to keep reading!

Zaki Hasan

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