Ah, the internet. Thanks to a general leveling of the playing field, genres can split to their illogical extremes, allowing those with a very specific interest to connect with others that inexplicably share the same interest. In a lot of ways, it’s a product of the law of large numbers.
The end results are that what were once pure genres are hyphenated, cross pollinated, reborn, rebranded, and eventually you’re left with a great deal of bizarre and original things. Take for instance hiphop, and it’s largely internet-enabled offshoot nerdcore. Nerdcore takes the basic tenants of hiphop but replaces the subject with things that your average D&D fan identifies with. Bling and booty is replaced with anime rhymes and computer jokes (video). Iced out whips are supplanted by an homage to Star Wars’ Boba Fett and his ship Slave One (video). And that’s just the tip. In typical nerd fashion, the devil is truly in the details.
Of course, the internet allows for an almost infinite division of genres, quite literally defying any genre to reach its atomic, indivisible source. The ride to that source can be very interesting. And for your benefit we have Lit-Nerdcore. The genre is still small, a bit too specific, a bit too young. Bu there is Famous Last Nerds.
Famous Last Nerds straddle the line between comedy troupe and nerdcore, further blending the genres. But, they’ve been breaking into the literary field with their One Minute Hamlet (video, right click to download). Pushing further, we’ve got Wassup Holmes, a nerdcore take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s coke head, violin playin’, private detective extraordinaire.
Well worth a whirl.
Bradley Robb likes TV and books, and has an intense dislike for cinnamon. Once, Bradley stopped a Soviet T-60 with his middle finger. Bradley writes speculative fiction and edits Fiction Matters, and never really got the hang of talking about himself in the third person.