My voyage on the Sea of Mendota found me shipwrecked Saturday in a strange land.

Inside a fortress-like building, people in elaborate costumes acted out animated films. Some wielded fake weapons. Others maneuvered joysticks near video screens. Still others danced on plastic platforms festooned with arrows.

Many discussed a literary genre some say I helped create three centuries ago: science fiction.

These people, not tiny or giant like those I'd encountered before, called themselves geeks.

At their gathering, Geek.Kon.08, at UW-Madison, they said they were fans of many things, from anime (Japanese animation) and role playing to computer games and a craze called Dance Dance Revolution.

"A geek is anybody who geeks out," Jonathan Bolte, 40, of Madison, told me. "It can be anything people are fascinated about. We tend to be on the fringes."

Eli Morris-Heft, 21, of Chicago, wore a shirt with the words, "Geek Orthodox." He described himself as a syntactician -- a specialist in syntax, or sentence structure.

"I geek out over language," he said.

Erin Burke, 27, of Madison, an organizer of the event, said there is one main requirement to be a geek. "You need to have a lot of imagination, maybe an overactive imagination," she said.

The geeks told me some non-geeks consider them anti-social, a label they find absurd.

"We're very social; we like to share our passions with other people," Burke said. "We're into the details and underlying intricacies of things."

Erin Thomas, 22, of Janesville, certainly took her role seriously as "Death the Kid" from the anime film "Soul Eater." Dressed in a mostly black costume, she wore two skull-shaped rings and hoisted two fake pistols.

Thomas said her character is obsessed with symmetry. When I pointed to the white stripes in her dark hair on just one side of her head, she dramatically fell to the ground.

"If I'm not symmetrical, I'm worthless and I don't deserve to live!" she cried.

Other "Soul Eater" characters, some holding scythes, told me they were trying to eat the souls of 99 corrupt humans.

"We're the good guys," said Lisa Streitmatter, 22, of Chicago.

Nearby, Alan Sponem pulled his Dalek, an extraterrestrial mutant from the television series "Doctor Who." Sponem, of Madison, made the steel robot out of a washing machine, a microwave and other household items (inside was his 9-year-old son Sean).

In a room not far away, people talked about Matrix Tag and other LARPs (live action role playing games). Elsewhere, I saw groups playing card games and board games and enjoying comic books. One panel took on the topic of "costuming on a budget," while another debated whether geeks were born or bred.

Some people even discussed writing -- a form called "fanfiction."

"We welcome many interests," Morris-Heft said. "We cross over to many other geekdoms."

I had to leave. The geek was me.

-- Gulliver, the fictional narrator of Jonathan Swift's 18th century masterpiece, "Gulliver's Travels," may bear a resemblance to State Journal reporter David Wahlberg, who can be reached at 252-6125 or dwahlberg@madison.com.

GEEK GLOSSARY

Geek.Kon.08, which is free, continues from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. today at the UW Humanities Building, 455 N. Park St.
For noobs (newbies, people who are new to geekdom), here is a guide to 10 geek terms or abbreviations:

• Anime: Japanese animation
• Avatar: Icon that represents a computer user
• Cosplay: Costume play; performance art in costumes
• Elvish: A language from Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy
• Furry: Person dressed as an animal with human qualities
• LAN: Local area network; group of computers connected for a game
• LARP: Live action role playing; physically acting out scenarios as characters
• Manga: Japanese comics
• MMOG: Massively multiplayer online game; video game played by thousands simultaneously
• RPG: Role playing game; acting out scenarios, often as a table-top game