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One day when I had zero to do, I chose to play the Google game. Because my latest book, Queen Geeks in Love, was coming out shortly, I chose to search the term’geek.’ What I found bewildered me.

I got more just about 70 million hits from the word’geek.’ That is million. So, I realized that most every term would fetch that many results, or close to it. I started with what I’d assume is the opposite of ‘geek’ : the’gossip girl’, which yielded 3,560,000. ‘Beauty Queen’ yielded 1,750.000.

Glamour came the nearest to geek, with 44,600,000, but as you can plainly see, being glamorous is nothing compared to being geeky, statistically. Even the fashionable’fashionista’ only turned back 5,590,000 results. So what does this mean? Is Google a valid measurement of well-liked culture? I suspect it isn’t very systematic, but it does appear to be in indication of how many sites mention the word, which, BTW, originated as a circus term for an individual who bit the heads off live animals.

Fortunately, that particular side of geekdom appears to have faded out, unless you count Ozzy Osbourne in his previous glory days. If you look to the true measure of what’s out there in the zeitgeist, test your local TV listings.

This autumn, each new show appears to be mystical ( which is in the realm of the geek. ) we’ve Moonlight, a vampire story. The biggies Lost and Heroes sell DVD collections in hordes.

Well, guess who was on the October 2007 cover of Glamour Magazine? That is right. The geeky girl. Naturally, they glammed her up, but still, I could not help but feel that somebody from my team ultimately made it to the giant leagues. Gloria Baume, hot for Hideous Betty and a fashion editor at Teenager Style, said to the NY Times that Betty’s'geek-chic look could drip down.’

In the Times article, she added, ”I’m obsessive about the nerd look right now,” adding that some designers seem to be likewise taken with all things dorky. ”Paul Smith did it in London,” she announced. ”Lacoste did it here in NY. Luella also did the geek look. In her very own sort of funny, twisted way, Betty has her very own sense of style. It’s kooky, but it is fully her.” ( NY Times, October 2006 ).

USA Today even observed that’Knowledge is power and geek is stylish. If you are a cyber expert who is plugged into the pop-culture sector of Sci Fi, fantasy, comic books and cult horror, perhaps even the master of a Net shrine dedicated to such once-arcane matters, you do not just rule. You rock.’ Students are even on the geek bandwagon.

One Danish scholar wrote a dissertation on geek culture and cited it as’the 3rd counterculture’ after hippies and yuppies. ‘The geek culture is changing the norm, transforming main line culture,’ writes Lars Konzack in his proposal, titled’Geek culture, the 3rd counterculture” Not way back no one would have known outside the geek culture what was meant by player personality, experience points, level gain, and hit points.

Now it kind of feels like everyone knows. The geek culture is transforming mainstream cultures and it is just the start of a general cultural change in that direction,’ Lars Konzack, Aalborg School, Denmark. In my stories, Queen Geek Social Club and Queen Geeks in Love, the self-professed geeks of the title are girls who unapologetically are themselves. They like science and science-fiction, but they also like fashion and fellows.

I really like to think about them as the geek I never was in high schoolconfident, cushty, clever. They know who they may be, and though they tussle with self-doubt and stress like all kids, they use their intelligence and the support of their geek sisters to get through it all.