EDITORS’ NOTE

It didn’t matter which one of us had married a rival Dungeon Master (that would be Holly) or lived for six weeks in the line for Star Wars (that would be Cecil), the moment that we met one another, we knew instantly that we were of the same tribe.

And so, while hanging out at Comic-Con in 2007, or as Cecil likes to call it, “the nerd prom,” waiting in line for what we were promised was “the best burrito in San Diego,” we spoke giddily of the amazing costumes we’d seen, books we’d read, comics we picked up.

Cecil told Holly about breakfast, where while eating eggs, she noticed that the table next to her was filled with a bunch of Jedi in full Jedi outfits. We remarked how we had noticed a lot of Jedi. And we had noticed a lot of Klingons. Personally, we’d been looking for Slave Leias, because we’d been told there would be a bunch, but actually there weren’t that many. There were just a lot of Jedi and Klingons.

Holly mentioned that she had noticed that there was a panel on how to live your day-to-day life as a Klingon. We kind of wanted to go to that. We thought it sounded kind of cool. We wondered what kind of domestic clues we could get from learning to live Klingon.

So there we were, in line for this burrito. The line was really long. We stood there swapping Comic-Con stories while we waited, because probably we’d been waiting for a table for about an hour already. And we both kind of said at the same time, “What would happen if you were a Jedi and you woke up with a Klingon in your bed?” “Would it be like Romeo and Juliet?” “Could you even tell your friends?”

We decided then and there that we needed to write that story. The story of a Jedi and a Klingon and true love. We thought we could write it and sell it and it would be awesome.

Only then we realized that no one would publish that story.

Later, while Cecil was walking the floor looking for Gama-go T-shirts, standing between Wonder Woman and Phoenix and getting a crush on Scott Pilgrim, Holly called and left this message:

“Cecil! No one will publish our story! That is why we need to create an anthology that is geektastic so that we can have a home for our story.”

“Oh! And we have the geekiest friends!” Cecil said.

“Yes! An anthology about the geek and the geek observed,” Holly said.

And thus an idea was born.

We hope that you enjoy the stories within.

They sing to our geek heart.

AMHERST, June 4, 2008

a cognizant original v5 release october 10 2010