Science faction

‘But you’re one of us’, pouted my high school friend in disbelief, while we pretended to pay attention in rounders. ‘How can you not have watched it?’ That’s right: save for one film half-watched late at night as an undergrad, I have never seen Star Trek. I think my teenage peer was so outraged because we were both connected to a movement that also shows up repeatedly in science: nerd culture.

Although the words geek and nerd seem to have disparaging origins, by the time I was in high school they were names more likely worn as a badge of honour, even if being one unavoidably placed you into a particular clique. Some say geeks and nerds are different: the former has monomania over a particular favoured subject, and the latter is a studious individual of broader passions – so long as they’re maths or science. I’m not sure I really understand where the line between them is drawn, especially while it’s obvious that I am a chemistry nerd, but I could happily also identify as a cross-coupling geek.