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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).

In Which I Talk A Lot About Nerdy Things And Everybody Listens

I've had a busy few weeks of pontificating on geeky pop culture things -- I mean, professionally, as opposed to the normal all-of-my-free-time that I spend doing precisely that -- and so I've got a few new articles / essays / thinkpieces / posts / whatever-you-wanna-call-'ems up on Tor.com:

So check 'em out, leave your comments, and then eagerly await the next installment of "Thom Talks Nerdy."

Where Does Nick Fury Get All Those Wonderful Toys?

I recently read through the original Stan Lee - Jack Kirby (and later, all Jim Steranko all the time) run of Strange Tales: Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, which first introduced the cigar-chompin' one-eyed Nick-Fury-as-Super-Spy to the Marvel Universe. I'll be honest, I don't always love older comics because their hokey nature and heavy exposition, but these were some pretty awesome spy stories. And even better they were filled with some of the most unabashedly ridiculous spy gadgets imaginable. Everything was so over-the-top and psychedelic, and with absolute no regret or embarrassment about it. And so I shared a list of my Top 10 SHIELD toys over on Tor Dot Com, mostly hoping that Joss Whedon's now SHIELD TV series will feature every single one of them.

"Nick Fury And The Top Ten Toys of S.H.I.E.L.D." on Tor Dot Com

Guest Blog: Chess Motifs

I've been doing some guestblogging for Quirk Books, publishers of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and that soon-to-be hit Broetry (what you mean, you haven't bought a copy yet?!), and my first post is up today. It's a countdown of one of my favorite character types in pop culture/literature: the Chessmaster, that brilliant strategist who plays 50 moves ahead of the rest of the cast in the story, and always seems to have some grander scheme in mind that we as readers/viewers/audience can hardly even begin to comprehend. And they always know how to manipulate and play the other characters into going along with their plans, whether they realize it or not. We're talking Nick Fury, Ben Linus, Dumbledore, the Cigarette Smoking Man — you know the type. Check out the full list at the link below. Agree? Disagree? Let me know on the Quirk comments!

"Life Is A Game Of Chess: Top Ten Chessmasters in Pop Culture & Literature" at Quirk Books