COSPLAY: A HISTORY: The Builders, Fans, and Makers Who Bring Your Favorite Stories to Life, is pretty much the perfect gift for your geek buddy

COSPLAY: A HISTORY: The Builders, Fans, and Makers Who Bring Your Favorite Stories to Life
ANDREW LIPTAK
Saga Press
$24.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A history of the colorful and complex kingdom of cosplay and fandom fashion by Andrew Liptak, journalist, historian, and member of the legendary fan-based Star Wars organization the 501st Legion.

In recent years, cosplay—the practice of dressing up in costume as a character—has exploded, becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon. But what are the circumstances that made its rise possible?

Andrew Liptak—a member of the legendary 501st Legion, an international fan-based organization dedicated to the dark side of Star Wars—delves into the origins and culture of cosplay to answer this question. Cosplay: A History looks at the practice’s ever-growing fandom and conventions, its roots in 15th-century costuming, the relationship between franchises and the cosplayers they inspire, and the technology that brings even the most intricate details in these costumes to life.

Cosplay veterans and newcomers alike will find much to relish in this rich and comprehensive history.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE AUTHOR. THANK YOU.

My Review: Cosplay, literally a portmanteau of "costume" and "play", is very much part of the science fiction, horror, and fantasy subcultures. Any time you see TV reporters at events like ComicCons in San Diego or New York, they're there to see how many salaciously boob-exposing Sailor Moons or Elvira Mistress of the Dark cosplayers they cen get B-roll from. That is, then, what the normies look at and think of as "cosplay."

Whereas the *actual* field of cosplay is immense. It is multi-gendered. It is inclusive, it is vastly and richly endowed with niches and rivalries and personalities that can't find easy outlets in a world of mundanes. (This is where I'd usually put in "muggles" but Rowling's determined to die on a hill I don't want to climb.)

I blame Jules Verne. He held that dinner party (which Author Liptak tells us about) where guests came as his novel's characters! In the stodgy nineteenth century! Only it was not really so stodgy, just not public in its peculiarity the way we ever-increasingly are giving ourselves permission to be. In fact, cosplay has quite a history and Author Liptak quite a nose for what to look for, where to find it, and how to explain it.

A lifetime spent in the 501st Legion, the greatest and most active cosplaying organization in the Star Wars universe, has given him not only the joys of solidarity and fellowship with his fellow ubergeeks, but a keen grasp of what makes cosplay a Thing. It's an appeal that begins with an IP or "intellectual property"...that's a story, to the rest of us...that fires imaginations all over the spectrum of its genre's fandom. (If I need to explain "fandom" to you, you're reading the wrong review. Flip back a page and go from there.)

The 501st is a charitable organization; it's a profit-spinning offshoot of Star Wars's films and books that isn't completely controlled by the Mauschwitz people; it's a found family for its heading-for-20,000 members. Many people, especially those with the kind of passion and focus that makes cosplay appealing, aren't very comfortable in their families of origin. Many times they've left them whether voluntarily or not. Cosplay organizations are alternative affectional groups centered on a shared vision. Often they're of practical support as well, when crises strike. It's been my own experience that these groups (the Browncoats in my case) will do so much to assist their fellows that it is quite overwhelming and heartening.

After all, when a bunch of folks in the salad days spend the time, the energy, the money, and the social capital to make outfits like these, they're already among Nature's aristocrats. The desire to Do It Right, the get the details exactly as they should be drives many cosplayers to research films and TV shows and comic books and manga and games and...well, everything...for the smallest, least-visible detail that a particular character's presentation requires to be *just*so*. Equally there are interpreters whose idea of character's presentation of self could use some, well, tweaking to be just exactly perfect. The two camps have equal access to the starting imagery, and they share the modern world's astonishing array of personalizable, customizable anything. Technology has afforded the cosplayers 3D printing options that were once the province of the studios who created the films they obsess over. Makeup for special effects? Several generations of Fangoria magazine and its ilk readers have made careers of their obsession and remain in the cosplay community.

Naturally, this being Murruhkuh, we need to acknowledge the cosplay community has a lot of racist and sexist people in it; in fact, there is considerable gatekeeping on multiple fronts. Societal, institutional racism is part and parcel of fandom just like it is of every other aspect of our culture. More prevalent still is sexism's idiocy, and that's a fandom issue going back to the Futurians in the 1930s. Author Liptak doesn't dwell on these unpleasant realities but he doesn't ignore their existence and takes the quietly expressed stance I trust anyone reading my words would: "You do realize how stupid this behavior is, right?"

Unless a character requires one, no one in the cosplay world should be required to wear a mask.

"What to get your geek giftee" is a problem now solved. Twentyish bucks, ordered right now, and you're home free. It will, I can damn near guarantee, hit their fandom. It is likely to amuse, guaranteed to entertain, and just possibly inspire some of those you give it to on a new hobby, habit, obsession even. And that, my friends, is because the author did his job: He brought faces, stories, and his own heart to all his readers. Come and enjoy.

Essays, only not boring: LUKE SKYWALKER CAN'T READ is a dessert case of deliciousness

LUKE SKYWALKER CAN'T READ AND OTHER GEEKY TRUTHS
RYAN BRITT
Plume Books
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: “Ryan Britt is . . . the Virgil you want to guide you through the inferno of geekery.” —Lev Grossman, author of the bestselling Magician's trilogy

Pop Culture and sci-fi guru Ryan Britt has never met a monster, alien, wizard, or superhero that didn’t need further analysis.

Essayist Ryan Britt got a sex education from dirty pictures of dinosaurs, made out with Jar-Jar Binks at midnight, and figured out how to kick depression with a Doctor Who Netflix-binge. Alternating between personal anecdote, hilarious insight, and smart analysis, Luke Skywalker Can’t Read contends that Barbarella is good for you, that monster movies are just romantic comedies with commitment issues, that Dracula and Sherlock Holmes are total hipsters, and, most shockingly, shows how virtually everyone in the Star Wars universe is functionally illiterate.

Romp through time and space, from the circus sideshows of 100 years ago to the Comic Cons of today, from darkest corners of the Galaxy to the comfort of your couch. For anyone who pretended their flashlight was a lightsaber, stood in line for a movie at midnight, or dreamed they were abducted by aliens, Luke Skywalker Can't Read is full of answers to questions you haven't thought to ask, and perfect for readers of Chuck Klosterman, Rob Sheffield, and Ernest Cline.

My Review: Well, that was fun. I live in a place where I am both the youngest and toothiest resident, so you can imagine what a pleasure it was to have someone to geek out with, even if his side of the conversation is on dead tree remains and my side (often shouted) scared the Wink Martindale out of the older and less dentally endowed residents.

Points where I agreed with Mr. Britt outnumbered the annoying points where he was so clearly *wrong* that my blood pressure spiked to most unsafe levels. On the sternly delivered advice of a medical professional, I will limit myself to mentioning the merest and mildest of these latter: STOP WITH THE FOOTNOTES ALREADY! WHEN YOU HAVE TO USE THE DOUBLE DAGGER AND THE BOOK IS NOT A LAW BOOK, YOU'VE GONE TOO FAR!!! *ahem* For the typographically challenged, look on p128 in the Doctor Who essay at the third footnote. Seriously now, Mr. Britt, The Mezzanine was published by Nicholson Baker in 1988. That was the last time heavily footnoted light reading was fun.

Oh well, I'm already purple, might as well: Back to the Future?! What the hell?! There are people with such, such, polite words fail me, bland tastes that they're fans of these extremely boring cinematic nap-fests? Assuming you're now nodding, Mr. Britt, brings me to the question, "SO WHAT?? Why waste 15pp on such, such, polite words fail me again, white-bread mouth-breathers' silly addiction?"

*ahem* So, with my ranting, I've proven the market for this book exists and is most broad indeed, if it includes my superannuated self. And as mentioned above, I mostly liked and agreed with his essays, especially "I Know It's Only Science Fiction, but I Like It." The mixed pleasure and pain of an adult idol making time for a personal private conversation...and then whipping out a life-lesson...is unforgettable. That's a lesson that will stick.

Essays on Dracula-as-hipster, a metric fuck-ton of Star Wars chatter, not one single word about Firefly because he straight up admits (in one of those pernicious footnotes) that he doesn't like Firefly, encomia of a weird sort piled on the already overpowering piles of plaudits about Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek and Tolkien and comic-book superheroes...it's dizzying how many oars this one, uncloned man has in the waters of geekdom. (I'm certain he's not cloned because if he was the street cred it would give him would necessitate discussing it.) That he makes a living while wending his way through the thickets of prickly fandoms is amazing to me. I'm thrilled and delighted that it's possible to be an essayist whose topic is the entertainments of the hoi polloi. Way too much derivative, repetitive thinking, writing, and publishing has taken place on ever-smaller slices of Highbrow Kultur, and I cheer and clap for all the intelligent analysis finally being applied and celebrated these past two or so decades.

With any kind of justice, Professor Britt's class on the Skywalker clan and its deeper meanings will outpace the registration numbers of Philosophy 201: The Stoics five-to-one. Now all we need to do is get him that university job so he can publish while the moldy oldies perish.