Luke Skywalker Can't Read

“Ryan Britt is one of nerd culture’s most brilliant and most essential commentators…the Virgil you want to guide you through the inferno of geekery.” —Lev Grossman, author of the bestselling The Magicians Trilogy
 
“Ryan Britt is an uncontrolled experiment—a genre omnivore who has spent his time on this earth flying to other galaxies, undersea cities, freaky amusement parks, Middle Earth, Transylvania, Sherlock Holmes’ London, and the Cretaceous. His essays are reliably smart, surprising, provocative, and funny.” —Karen Russell, Pulitzer-Prize-nominated author of Swamplandia!

“One of the most witty, fun, warm, and insightful essay collections out there. If Luke Skywalker had a favorite book, it would be this one.” —Ophira Eisenberg, host of NPR’s Ask Me Another and author of Screw Everyone

“Luke Skywalker Can’t Read is personally revealing, effortlessly funny, carefully researched, and optimistic about the place of sci-fi/fantasy in the greater world of popular entertainment.” —Cecil Baldwin, narrator of Welcome to Night Vale

“Whether he’s exploring paradoxes in Back to the Future, the fundamental illiteracy of the average Stormtrooper, or being tied up and held over a rooftop by a couple of dominatrices, Ryan Britt is an amiable, perceptive, and highly entertaining observer of the sci-fi scene. I gulped down these essays like Dracula downing a pint of blood.” —Teddy Wayne, author of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

“Ryan Britt’s debut collection is a wisecracking, intimate and intelligent voyage through universes both real and imagined. But to a certain kind of reader –- the kind whose teenage weekends were spent at sci-fi conventions and comic book stores— it is also something much more. Luke Skywalker Can’t Read is a glorious geek manifesto, illuminating the essential and often misunderstood essence of geekdom: not the pursuit of esoterica-obsessed loners but a vital and complex community, a far-away galaxy where fellow misfits meet to swap the ray guns, talismanic rings, and radioactive potions for their daily battles back on Planet Earth.” —Stefan Merrill Block, author of The Story of Forgetting and A Storm at the Door
 
“Sci-fi and fantasy fans, meet your new best friend. Ryan Britt has an encyclopedic knowledge of geek culture, from Aurebesh to Zardoz, and this collection of essays feels like you’re hanging out with him at the world’s nerdiest bar. Luke Skywalker Can’t Read is smart, insightful, and totally fun.” —David M. Ewalt, author of Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons