ULTIMATE GEEK FU runs every Wednesday. Have a question that's just bugging the heck out of you about Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Firefly, Fringe, Heroes, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Smallville, The X-Files, X-Men, The Man From Atlantis, or pretty much any other SF-flavored media property? Better yet, do you have an idea for a UGF challenge you'd like to see? Then send it to slushpile@thefridaychallenge.com with the subject line, "Ultimate Geek Fu," and we'll stuff it in the queue.If you want to keep this feature going, the offer still stands. If you're uncertain about whether you want to dip your toes into the fell waters of writing for public consumption in the blogosphere, UGF is probably the easiest way to throw out a post and discover whether you enjoy doing so.
UGF was never intended to be rocket surgery. (That intention belonged to Splattering Guts for Fun & Profit, in its better moments.) True, we did produce some minor epics, such as this one, but far more of the UGF posts were along these lines. For you see, the entire point of UGF was first and foremost always to stimulate reader participation.
Accordingly, the UGF formula is simple. Cooked down to its essence, it is:
1. Pick a widely known pop-culture topic, preferably one regarding which a lot of people are likely to have opinions. (It is not required to be SF-related. That happenstance merely reflects my personal biases and interests.)
2. Express an opinion about it, and present a few short paragraphs of evidence to support your opinion. Contentious opinions work best, but please make them somewhat more sophisticated than, "Does, like, Twilight totally suck, or what?"
3. End with a rhetorical question, to invite discussion.
4. Let the arguments begin!
There you have it. Questions? Opinions? Best of all, ideas for future UGF topics? Comment, s'il vous plait.
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