en/reviews/just-a-geek.txt
2004-07-26
Wil Wheaton's Just A Geek
Wil Wheaton
Just A Geek: Unflinchingly honest tales of the search for life, love, and fulfillment beyond the Starship Enterprise
O'Reilly, 2004
26+269 pp.
When I bought this book, I was both enthusiastic and fearful: entusiastic for finally getting to read Wil Wheaton's book, which had been much hyped, and fearful for disappointment, knowing that the book would be mainly based on Wheaton's blog postings. It turned out, I was right to feel both ways.
I had earlier read Wheaton's originally self-published Dancing Barefoot, which - though completely based on Wheaton's blog - was nice reading, and provided a perspective on the Trek fandom that a Finn can never experience. Based on this experience, I was hoping that this book would be something especially wonderful, given that Barefoot was the stuff that didn't make it into Geek.
I can see three different audiences for this book. The first consists of course of people who either do not know Wheaton or know him mainly from his non-Trek appearances (such as in Stand By Me as Gordie), who are not trekkers, and who have never visited his site. For these people, I expect the book to be a good read, a story of finding oneself in a sort-of twenties crisis. However, I find it hard to review this book from that perspective, since I am nothing like people in this audience.
The second audience is trekkers, people who love or hate his Trek character, Wesley Crusher (it seems it is impossible to find a trekker who is indifferent about that character) but most importantly, who have not read his site in extensive detail. If I had this background, I surely would love this book: the story is everything that I said it is in the previous paragraph, but in addition, it allows the reader to see that Wil Wheaton is not just Wesley, but is much more; maybe Just A Geek, but likely much, much more.
Unfortunately, I belong to the third audience. This audience consists of people who have, for one reason or another, ventured into Wheaton's website, read all the archives (or, gasp, actually been reading it from the start!) and already read through the transition that Wheaton underwent in the last few years. For people like me, this book is a disappointment. I found myself skipping most of the book; the bits between the blog entries were interesting, but I could not bring myself to read the entries themselves; sure, they are a good read, and an integral part of the story, but I remembered them too well from my recent archive-reading exercise. What was left after ignoring the blog entries was surprisingly, and disappointingly little, though it was good.
It is remarkable how much this book reminds me of another ex-trek autobiography that actually is more than just an autobiography: a personal story of an ex Trek actor, involving a personal transition and the realization that Trek actually was a good thing. The similarity to Leonard Nimoy's I Am Not Spock and I Am Spock is striking. The Wesley Dialogues in particular make the resemblance notable.
All in all, I think I can recommend this book to all three audiences. The first two will get a good, real-life story of finding oneself, and the third will get a hardcover version of the familiar Wil. Despite my negative comments above, the book was worth my money.
14:52 - /en/reviews - 0 comments
