Legendary Days – a novel, and the Aspects of Geek Culture in Fiction Candidate: Bernardo Bueno Submitted for the degree: Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing August 2013 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 2 ABSTRACT This Creative and Critical Writing PhD thesis explores the dialogue between fiction and geek culture. It seeks to understand the definitions and uses of the terms ‘geek’, ‘nerd’ and ‘otaku’ over time. I look for points of commonality and how they have been used in texts since the seventeenth century. After this initial exploration, I move to a close reading of three novels that are representative of geek culture. These texts comment on geek culture though they do not belong to genres traditionally associated with it, such as fantasy or science fiction. Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao makes extensive use of footnotes, intertextuality and hypertextuality. Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs explores the influence of technology, tries to define geeks and nerds, plays with form and language, and touches on the subject of posthumanity. Meanwhile, Nakano Hitori’s Train Man, which began life as a collective online message board thread, challenges common tenants of fiction, especially that of authorship and form. The novels, in the order in which they are discussed, move from the traditional to the innovative. They pose questions about the way in which geek culture interacts with fiction, how this influence plays out in terms of theme, characterisation, format, and the reading experience. Finally, these novels also interrogate ways geek culture might help us understand the future of fiction writing. Both thesis and novel were designed with the idea of ‘play’ in mind, with particular reference to games, flexibility and contestation. The creative element of this thesis, Legendary Days, is a geeky novel about saving memories. The protagonist, after loosing his father, writes down his own memories in a narrative that plays with geek culture and related themes. It follows the same character in three different times and contexts, while also allowing for several intertextual intromissions throughout the text. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 6 WARNING ........................................................................................................................................ 6 TUTORIAL ....................................................................................................................................... 6 CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE ................................................................................................... 7 PLAYING THE THESIS ...................................................................................................................... 9 DIFFICULTY LEVEL ......................................................................................................................... 9 LEVEL DESIGN .............................................................................................................................. 10 LORE ............................................................................................................................................. 11 FINAL BOSS ................................................................................................................................... 12 CHAPTER 1: GEEKING OUT ON ETYMOLOGY: GEEKS, NERDS AND OTAKU........... 14 GRAPH GEEK ................................................................................................................................ 17 A QUEST FOR DEFINITIONS ........................................................................................................... 21 CHAPTER 2: FOOTNOTES ON EVERYTHING: SUPER NERDS AND INTERTEXTUALITY .................................................................................................................... 27 SUPER NERDS AND SECRET GEEKS ................................................................................................ 27 ON FOOTNOTES AND BEYOND ....................................................................................................... 32 INTERTEXTUALITY AS HYPERTEXT AND HYPERTEXT AS INTERTEXTUALITY ................................ 37 POST-APOCALYPTIC....................................................................................................................... 39 CHAPTER 3: MICROSERFS, TECHNOLOGY AND THE POSTHUMAN GEEK .............. 42 README.TXT ................................................................................................................................. 43 ONE-POINT-OH .............................................................................................................................. 44 DREAM MACHINES ........................................................................................................................ 51 SAVE AND CLOSE .......................................................................................................................... 55 CHAPTER 4: TRAIN MAN, THE OTAKU CHORUS AND THE LIMITS OF GEEK METAFICTION .............................................................................................................................. 59 RECONNAISSANCE MISSION ......................................................................................................... 59 BOMBING MISSION ....................................................................................................................... 61 ENGINEERING MISSION ................................................................................................................. 70 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... 76 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................... 81 LEGENDARY DAYS – A NOVEL ................................................................................................ 90 4 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Google Ngrams Viewer 1600-2008 ................................................................... 17 Figure 2: Google Ngrams Viewer 1900-2008 ................................................................... 19 Figure 3: Google Ngrams Viewer 1980-2008 ................................................................... 20 Figure 4: Google Trends 2004-2013 .................................................................................. 20 Figure 5: Microserfs Word Cloud ..................................................................................... 50 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank several people and organisations that have given me encouragement, support, advice and guidance over the course of the last three years: Daniela, Lorenzo and Alice (love, support, faith), Andrew Cowan and Clare Connors (instrumental, precise, patient supervision), Luiz Antonio de Assis Brasil (advice and support), Jean McNeil (writing guidance), Stephen Benson (reading suggestions), Amanda Dillon (beyond the call of duty), Storytech Study Group (for testing the limits of fiction and technology, especially Tilly Lunken and Laura Cooper), Pedro H. Reis (Facebook talks, reading suggestions), Roger Ashton Griffiths (always a nice conversation, plus suggestions), D.W Wilson (Mass Effect), the Dialogues group (thank you for listening), Nick Caistor (writing guidance), Giles Foden and the Breakfast Club (first readers), Herb L. Fondevilla, Samie Carvalho, Sandra Annet, Eriko Koizumi (Tokyo guides), the University of East Anglia, Sir Philip Reckitt Educational Trust, The Sasakawa Foundation (Japan visit support). My doctoral studies were fully funded by the CAPES Foundation, Brazil. Please accept my sincere thanks. 6 INTRODUCTION Warning This game autosaves at certain points. Do not turn off the power or remove the memory card when you see the icon. Tutorial This thesis investigates aspects of geek culture in fiction, and is accompanied by a novel written with many of those aspects in mind. Both elements are joined to represent my final work as a student of the Creative and Critical Writing PhD programme in the Literature, Drama and Creative Writing School at the University of East Anglia (UEA). Through the discussion of three different novels plus an informative chapter that analyses key terms, my objective is to explore a new set of critical tools and creative possibilities within the culture, the concept and the literature of ‘the geek’. Geek culture is a frequent topic in the media, and an everyday occurrence online.1 Do you believe geek and nerd are interchangeable terms? Do you play Mario games on your 3DS? Do you scorn otaku, geeks who dress up as anime characters at conventions? Do you know several programming languages? Can you speak Syndarin? Do you wear a towel around your neck on 25 May? There are many types of geeks, and no standard, authoritative definition that unites them all. There are, however, certain points of which we can be sure. First, geek culture is a very real cultural and social manifestation. There