After reading the [GEEK OUT!] anthology, front to back, I was struck by the vast scope of the 25 storytellers, essayists, poets, visual artists, and contributors not easily categorized. I estimate that less than half of the works deal with Queerness but are by GLBTQ writers/artists. Works that focus on Queerness do so in a multitude of ways. Truthfully, it was not until I read the Bios at the end of the book that the life experiences of the 25 made the contributions more understandable. I advise any reader to read the Bio of the author before tackling the material.

Many of the works are set in a dystopian future with fantasy and sci fi elements, often with very complex time and space leaps that the reader has to accept. As a reader I found the clues I needed to follow the storylines. The internet is well represented throughout, used to tell a story in back and forth emails and in more futuristic ways. Electronic information is constantly clashing with real life. Characters take inspiration from their web friends or make plans to meet then do or don’t.

As you can tell, I am trying very hard not to single out works of specific merit, but rather treating the anthology as a whole.

When it comes to the 2 essays in the book it was jarring to run into the real world problems they tackled, in this journey through pop storytelling. One was on discrimination among Drag Queens and the other on problems faced by GLBTQ students at small colleges.

I give up being objective and non-judgemental. I have my own opinions and prejudices of course, about the essays and subject matter in some of the stories. For example I don’t like children fixated on the romance of ballet mainly because teachers put toe shoes on children too young to understand they are ruining their feet in later years. This underlying judgement on my part ruined my appreciation of the story Pirate Girls, a story about scholarship students treatment in a performing arts high school. Particularly about including a standoffish ballet student in the scholarship group.

There is The Temptation Machine, a queer take on Total Recall. And in “O terra, addio” New York City is at war with itself while the protagonist goes to Aida at Kennedy Center, meeting a prostitute in his reserved upper balcony. Prostitution in the upper balconies, it seems, is the only way to keep the opera financially sound. As the war grows closer, going south from Washington Heights, the opera is moved to Carnegie Hall and a barricade built at 72nd St.

There are a number of stories that are just plain fun, a faux movie review of the faux movie We The Animals, the complications that ensue in To Free A Genie, and the final work in the book, the rules for a pick a card game called Out Of The Closet.

I particularly like the minimalist poetry of Marie Vibbert, and the work of Robert Breveridge, M. Shaw, and Catherine Krause.

I would be remiss in not noting the outstanding visual 2-D art work by M. C. Stylos, Stephen Mead, and Fred Simon among others.

I was surprised at the lack of overt eroticism and sexuality I expected in this kind of anthology. It is PG13, not MA, mature audiences.

Overall GEEK OUT! is a great read.

More reviews to come

More reviews to come

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