Now I'm impressed.
So, I'm reading this (also, check out the shiny new Borders website through that link) when, to my surprise, I came across the following passage:
"I wouldn't call it bitching to expect one girl out there not to ignore me simply because I don't look like another trendy clone. I know the score too. I'm not expecting an Inara to go for me, but shouldn't I be in with a chance of a second look from a Kaylee? There must be Kaylees out there. Kaylee liked brains: she was crazy for Simon, and he was a doctor."
"I don't think it was his brains she was primarily interested in. He was handsome and dashing and sculpted, as opposed to a scrawny drink of water in a ghastly old brown coat."
"Hey, now don't come it. You know why I wear that coat."
"Yep, and thereason you wear it is even more sad and embarrassing than the coat itself. It's a badge of your geekdom."
"I don't care, I feel right in that coat."
"Good. But it's babe-repellent, dude."
I wished I could contest this, but the evidence was all on Keith's side.
Still, I loved that coat and I wasn't going to stop wearing it , babe repellent or not. I could happily admit it: the reason for me wearing the thing, the reason for me tracking it down, was geeky and embarrassing. But was it any more embarrassing than the dozen or so guys you'd find in any given lecture theatre trying to dress like Brandon Flowers or Alex Kapranos or whoever the fuck was cool this fortnight? Well, evidently, yes, but I didn't care. I embraced my geekdom, and Keith was right: I wore my coat proudly as its badge. I wore a brown coat because I was a 'browncoat': I was - Keith nailed that too - a science geek with a chronic SF habit, and my drug of choice was Firefly.
This strikes me as kind of indicative of the whole thing that Firefly fans are talking about. Fox cancels the series because it doesn't get the kind of ratings they're looking for (no shit Sherlock, stick it on at that time and Desperate Housewives would tank). As a result, the fan base of this thing is proven to be pretty huge (as judged by DVD sales etc) and it's now made its way into a book by an 'A list' crime writer.
The question I have though is this - although Wheedon has proven that he can write long-running TV series, would Firefly have been as good as it is, if it had been given a full series, or more than 1 series?