T-Shirts

Need some giant monsters in your life? Try Shanalogic's line of weird monstery goodness, including a demon-killing woman, the controversial Octophant, and the incomparable Rhinoblaster.

LikeMindedPeople has a nice series of dinosaur tees that I'm particularly fond of, such as this Bronotsaurus tee and this Stego!

Of course, the amazingness that is Threadless is packed with tees for your every nerdy whim. There's a whole collection of space-themed tees, including the crucial Disaster! model. There's also a dirty-minded robot tee, and a shark eating an airplane.

If you want tees with logos for businesses and companies from your favorite scifi movies, try Wake Up It's Time To Die. For $18, you could have a shirt that shows how much you love Encom or the Tyrell Corporation.

Mediocore has a shirt with a good-will slogan for all during this holiday season: "Be excellent to each other."

ReThink has a beautiful space shuttle tee that is a perfect memorial to our favorite soon-to-be-decommissioned NASA experiment.

Retropolis Transit Authority has a delightful line of retro-futurist shirts, and this year has given us a new one: the Space Pirate Career shirt (pictured above).

Coats & Hoodies

Need a scifi-themed coat to keep out the winter cold? You can get the Tenth Doctor's amazing trenchcoat - or his companion Martha's cute leather jacket via AbbyShot Clothiers. Yes, they are exact replicas of the costumes - approved by the BBC and everything! They may be a little pricey, but they look hot.

If you'd like something a little cheaper but still snuggly, why not try an io9 "space porn" hoodie, from Neighborhoodies? It's the perfect way to show your love for our regular feature that shows you the naked universe, from every angle. There are a few other io9 designs at Neighborhoodies too.

Scarves & Hats

Are you feeling zombified? Then how about a skull-and-bones scarf - these beauties are made by Aardvark for kids, but grownups can wear them too.

If you need to keep your head covered up, try this chainmail head accessory at ThinkGeek. Sound too crunchy? How about these soft, adorable cat demon hats from the anime Inuyasha? And then there are three different adorable Naruto hats to keep your head warm and give you additional ears.

Socks

And every nerd needs socks - that's just a fact of life. And there are two amazing places to get nerd footwear. Nothing beats a pair of Diesel Sweeties pixel socks featuring robots, space invaders, or gamer dice.

And if you need socks with anything from UFOs and the solar system, to ninjas and unicorns, you must peruse the merchandise at Sock It to Me. Crucially, Sock It To Me also sells stripey socks of every persuasion.

Here's another look at the mega-cute hoodie with fangs. Monsterhoodies sells a variety of these toothy, warm tops. This one is called Red Meanie, but there's also the blue Cookie Cruncher, the green Dinosaurus Rex, and the black Neko Gato.

You can pick up a Monsterhoodie here for $49.99.

You'll never be able to resist slipping your books, pens and notebook into this bookbag from Resist Today decorated with the GMO hybrid known as the elephant-squid. What really makes this bag classy, aside from the stylish black silkscreen on canvas, is that the elephant-squid is wearing a lovely conductor's cap. No true elephant-squid would be caught on the sea without one. You can pick one of these up here for $55.

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• Chuck Taylor All Star Sci Fi Shoes High Tops: You might have seen an ad for these running right here on io9, but this was the first time we'd heard about 'em. And well, yours truly had to order a pair of them, in black and white. And no, there was no special io9 discount, consarnit. These shoes are actually available in both black and white and color versions, and have words like "Otherworldly," "Invasion" and "Mars" emblazoned all over in different comic book fonts. Probably the best science fiction shoes we've seen besides these Space Invaders sneakers, or if this guy ever gets his Back to the Future Nikes petition approved.
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• Robot Socks: Unless you're five years old and wearing your Buzz Lightyear socks to school every day, it's hard to come up with something useful in the sock department. Thankfully, you've got Robot Socks to deal with the issue. Available for both men and women, these robots seem to be celebrating the joy of socks, or the sanctity of ankle covering. Maybe they're Amish robots, who knows. We're not really sure if the Owl Socks on that page are robot owls or what.
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• Supergirl S-Shield Thong: If you're a girl (or an adventurous guy) who is looking to pimp out their love for all things Superman, then you can't go wrong with this s-shield thong. See a cute geek who you wouldn't mind letting know you just picked up the latest issue of Action Comics? A peek is all he'll need, and it'll be like kryptonite to him.
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• Pocket Robot Boxer Shorts: For men, we were tempted to recommend these self-cleaning nanofabric briefs that can go for weeks without washing, but instead we were wooed by the power of Cafe Press, which features over 14,000 things you can emblazon on boxers. We're not so sure why we like robots on our clothes so much today, but how cute is this little guy peeking out of your shorts?
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• Han Cholo Ray Gun Belt Buckle: You can use any belt to hold up your pants, but the real scifi power of the belt is in the buckle. Han Cholo makes some of the coolest scifi and street bling out there, and this pewter belt buckle with an old-school ray gun is perfect. You could get it in silver or gold too, although that'll set you back several hundred bucks, making your pants a lot lighter.
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• Lederhosen With Built-In iPod Controls: Perhaps outdated German fashions will take over the world in 2099, making these very scifi in nature, but right now they look like something Nathan Fillion would step out of Serenity in, and they come with handy iPod controls on the pant leg as well. Admittedly, finding science fiction pants has been the hardest part of this post, and we wish we could all just go pantsless, like Zapp Brannigan. So it's either that or shiny silver spandex catsuits.
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• Retropolis T-Shirts: We've talked at great length about science fiction t-shirts in this post, and you can peruse the comments there for even more great suggestions. So how do we pick just one? The answer is simple: we don't. We just have a giant closet full of scifi shirts ready to go at a moment's notice, and the flavor of the day is Retropolis. These awesome t-shirts have a steampunk/BioShock feeling to them, and the designs are retro-cool. Plus check out their entire vintage futurism t-shirts section as well for extra retro-style. The t-shirt really is the most widely used geek badge of honor out there, so make your selection esoteric and fun.
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• Vereen Jacket: This is a perfect jacket to top off your outfit with, because it's straight enough to pass for a leather jacket, but those in the know will realize that you might have adamantium claws up your sleeves and will give you the proper respect, or sneering looks. Bonus: it doubles as a lookalike jacket for Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds. You'll also get a lot less ribbing wearing this than you would if you went for the Neo-look, and yes... we've seen it in the wild.
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• A science fiction hat is just overkill. What are you, crazy?!
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Thanks to Bonnie Burton for said socks, and to Jeff for the Retropolis shirts!

Here is Oswalt on Lucas:

I want to kill George Lucas with a shovel. Okay, let me clarify, I don't want to kill him now because he adopted some kids and he's got that beard to take care of, but I want to go back to 1992 and just beat him to death with a shovel. Star Wars is fucking awesome, but I just want to prevent the prequels, that's all I want to do. Let's imagine I just ran into him in 1992:

"Oh my god! You're George Lucas! I just want to say you're amazing, I love you! Star Wars is awesome. Just.. thank you."

"Well, you say you like Star Wars? You know I'm about to start working on some prequels."

"Wait, you mean, you're gonna do Chapters One through Three? Oh my god! YES! I've been waiting so long for this!"

"So, do you like Darth Vader?"

"Do I like Darth Vader? Oh god I LOVE Darth Vader! With the cape and the mask and the lightsaber? He's a badass!"

"Well, in the first movie you get to see him as a little kid."

"I... what? Wait, you mean he's like Damien in the Omen, right? He's going around killing people with his mind and stuff right?"

"Well, no he's just a little kid and he gets taken away from his mommy and he's very sad."

"Yeah, well...I kind of like the helmet and the cape and the sword, you know?"

"Well don't worry about that because guess who's in the second movie? Boba Fett!"

"Holy shit! Boba Fett?! That's even better than Darth! With the suit of armor and that helmet and the cool ship? He's a badass bounty hunter!"

"Yeah, and in the second movie, you get to see him as a little kid!"

"Wait.. what? So you mean he's got the helmet on and he's shooting people and stuff, right?"

"No, he's just a little kid and his daddy dies and he's very sad."

"Oh. Well, I kind of just like where he's a bounty hunter and he's shooting people and stuff."

"Well, don't worry about any of that because guess what's in the third movie... the Death Star!"

"Oh my fucking god, the Dea... wait a minute. What is it doing?"

"Well, it's just being built and Darth Vader is looking at it."

"I kind of just like it when it's done and it's blowing up planets and stuff. I don't really care how they put the air conditioning and the toilets in, you know?"

"You seem very sad."

"Yes, you're right. I don't give a fuck about any of that stuff. That sounds... horrible! I would never go see that."

"Would you like a dish of ice cream?"

"Why, yes I would l like some ice cream. That would be very nice!"

"Well here's a big sack of rock salt!"

"What? You said I'd be getting ice cream?"

"Well, when you add the cream and sugar and ice and do a little mixing and then presto, you have ice cream!"

"I DON'T GIVE A SHIT WHERE THE STUFF I LOVE COMES FROM! I JUST LOVE THE STUFF I LOVE! Hey, do you love Angelina Jolie? Does she give you a big boner? Well then here's Jon Voight's ballsack! That's right! The sweaty, pink ballsack she swam out of. Now jerk off to that, you lucky so and so!"

Besides starring Adam Baldwin of Firefly and Serenity fame, the show features mostly new faces. Here's a crash course that will wrap your brain around Chuck.

• Chuck Bartowski: Chuck is the titular character of the show, and he works at Buy More, a sort of take on Best Buy, or your electronics store of choice. He's a member of the "Nerd Herd," which is a take on Best Buy's own "Geek Squad," where he provides tech support to customers. However, his life takes a turn for the bizarre (and the episodic) when someone he knew in college (now turned superspy) emails him a file containing all of the government's secrets (in a series of images), before succumbing to a bullet wound. Chuck opens the email, and zip zap zoom, everything gets imprinted on his brain. His computer is later taken out in a firefight when intelligence agents try to get the information back, meaning that his brain is now the only thing holding all the secrets of the U.S.
• Sarah Walker: Sarah is the CIA's top field agent who happens to also be smoking hot. Of course. Are there any ugly top CIA agents out there? Maybe they stick them all in the accounting department, who knows. Sarah is one half of the government vying for the secrets locked in Chuck's brain, and is also the one who inadvertently destroyed his hard drive. She's had to enter into an uneasy alliance with her counterpart at the NSA, John Casey, in an effort to keep a lid on the secrets in Chuck's noggin. She also had to start posing as Chuck's girlfriend in order to thwart any plots or foes he happens to see in his memories, which get triggered when he sees certain subliminal images.
• John Casey: John is your typical shoot first, ask questions never kind of agent. Where Sarah is all about cloak and daggers and superspy tech, John is more apt to pop you in the face and shove a gun down your throat. Since the NSA doesn't want the CIA to get an upper hand on state secrets, he has to camp out near Chuck 24/7 in an effort to counter the same things that Sarah does. So, he gets an undercover job working at the Buy More in order to be near his boy. That's right, a head full of state secrets and intrigue, and Chuck decides to keep things on the downlow from his family and work at his same plain jane job. Go figure.
• Morgan Grimes: Chuck's best friend and geek role model. While Chuck has been billed as a show featuring nerds as the main characters, it's really Morgan who fills the shoes of geeky fanboy. He plays video games and shoots off references to obscure science fiction films, and looks the part as well. While Chuck could be considered boyishly handsome, Morgan looks like a nebbish with his George Lucas beard and tucked in shirts. He's the comic relief, the best friend, and the hero to nerds, all rolled into one.

So, what does it all boil down to? It's your basic "threat of the week" storyline, which is based on the flimsy concept of this one guy having all these secrets buried in his brain, subliminally. He'll see a packet of sugar, then a volcano on TV, and suddenly he'll remember that there is an assassination attempt on the English Prime Minister set to go off in moments, at which point John and Sarah kick it into high gear in an attempt to foil the plan. It's not really clear why John doesn't just shoot Sarah and bring Chuck in so he could be hooked up to every machine known to man as a bizarre Clockwork Orange kind of lab rat, but that would probably make for some not so family-friendly television on Monday evenings.

Why should you care? As a science fiction fan, there are marginal references (at best) to science fiction mainstays like Star Wars and Firefly (yes, Adam Baldwin has a self-referential line or two), but this show doesn't fit well as part of the science fiction triumvirate of shows that Chuck, Heroes, and Journeyman were supposed to make up on Monday nights for NBC. It's a little too much Alias meets The Man With One Red Shoe, and we're wishing it had something more science-based to it. Plus, it sounds similar to the plot of the upcoming National Treasure: Book Of Secrets flick that'll be out this holiday season.

Just tell is that Chuck has a top secret bionic implant, that he's part android, or that the email he received was actually an alien transmission and we're in. But this whole "Oops I saw the secret and now I'm the only one who might remember them" spy routine just isn't for us.