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Wil Wheaton shares everything online, including his fears, failures, triumphs and joy. We get a chance to peek behind the curtain and read about the daily issues that an actor, father, writer, and husband face, we begin to realize that the famous deal with the same issues we do. He’s a real person, and he’s a geek (the rare celebrity that actually runs his own site). I watched as he published his first book, Dancing Barefoot. He screwed up orders, went to book signings, and still managed to sell 3,000 copies out of his house. It was no surprise that a major publisher, O’Reilly, signed Wil — only a small percentage of the 750,000 books published each year sell more than a handful of copies. He’s a catch for any publisher since he writes books that sell. What surprised me was that O’Reilly, known for publishing programming books, would publish the geek autobiography of a thirty year-old. Wils has built up some impressive geek credentials. Waiting for acting jobs bored him to death, so he learned HTML and PHP, and he runs Unix on his home machines. He’s hosted the ultimate geek show, TechTV, and even posted to Slashdot. He was an early blogger, and his site gets thousands of visitors per day. Dancing Barefoot is a short book with large type, but well worth the hour or two you’ll spend reading Wil’s stories. There are five stories he reworked from his Web site and put into print. I have to admit that I passed over the book when it first came out, figuring it was a trekkie book (and since I had been reading his blog I knew the stories). Sure, he talks about Trek conventions, co-stars (the infamous William Shatner, too), and the “cult of Trek,” but you’ll also see someone who faces the death of a loved one, gets far too many rejections, and grows up and takes responsibility for his life and cares for his family. Just A Geek takes us further into his life (with much smaller type and more than 200 pages now). Wil’s an actor (Stand by Me, Next Generation and a slew of independent films), voice talent (he’s Aqualad on Teen Titans), a geek (he was a developer for Newtek and actually knows what binary code is), a writer (his blog and these books), and most of all, a family man. Here’s a small bit from Just A Geek, where Wil talks about succumbing to the lure of cash for doing an infomercial, something that could end his acting career but would enable him to provide for his family: “Accepting that I was THAT GUY was more liberating than painful, and it took the shame away from doing that infomercial. My career wasn’t really over, it had just changed. I didn’t worry about what critics said. I was worried about feeding my family. I didn’t worry about landing an acting job. I looked forward to writing. Like all the other things I’d agonized over, the process of making the decision took more time and energy - and was more painful and scary - than the result.” All of the stories in both books are available on his blog, so you can see if his style of writing appeals to you before buying the books. He rightly claims that he has re-written and edited them, and they are now presented in a format you can read at the beach without worrying about the batteries in your notebook computer. I highly recommend both of Wil’s books, but if you have to start with one I suggest Just a Geek. It’s rare that someone is willing to share the journey that led them through the defining part of their life, revealing the mistakes and successes along the way, and sharing the good with the bad. It’s a personal look into a public life. |
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I’m a geek but not a trekkie. I was into plenty of
geeky-type stuff growing up, including Star Wars and even Dungeons
& Dragons, but I never caught the Star Trek bug. So how did
I wind up reviewing two books by a Star Trek (Next Generation)
actor? I discovered