Book Review: Geek Confidential: Echoes From the 21st Century

I confess: I have an action figure of Rick Klaw's grandfather, Irving. It came with my "Bettie Page Photo Studio," um, "playset," and to be honest, I'm not even sure that the stooped shutterbug with the lascivious smile is even supposed to be the great cheesecake auteur. But, you know, sitting there on my bookshelf with a pop-eyed, black-lace Bettie beside him, I like to think so. Cultural effluvia like this comes in many forms, but laugh or cry, it's history of a peculiar sort. Not too far off from what Rick Klaw chronicles in his chatty collection of columns originally posted as part of SciFi.com.

American, and indeed global, culture is awash these days in a tsunami of pop culture bric-a-brac, and Klaw, who focuses on the genre fiction end of things with a few enlightening sidetracks into the more serious realms of censorship, John Ashcroft, and (perhaps less seriously), his comic book script for Joe R. Lansdale's bracingly ridiculous Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland, seems to have his paw on the pulse of not only sci-fi and horror publishing, but also the daily travails of the bookstore gig (he has worked at legendary Austin indie outlets BookPeople, Adventures in Crime and Space, and currently shelves hellbooks at Half Price). This voluminous collection spans the reach of Klaw's offbeat knowledge base, including a brace of interviews, essays (one for Salon.com), and ruminations on his good friend (and honorary Texan) Michael Moorcock, and while it's unlikely to pick up anything more than a punk rock Pulitzer in the way of hifalutin award-thingees, it's mind-candy for fans of Klaw's beloved genre fiction and a veritable treasure trove of insider info on how the increasingly mad world of publishing actually operates. More fun than a barrel of mummies? Well, almost.

The release party for Geek Confidential is Sunday, Sept. 7, 5pm at Opal Divine's.

Geek Confidential: Echoes From the 21st Century

MonkeyBrain Books, 254pp., $18.95 (paper)