NFL punter Chris Kluwe played eight seasons with the Minnesota Vikings and is currently an Oakland Raider. But to him that’s just a job. His real passion is for gaming and science fiction. He owns his own tabletop gaming store, was a member of a top-ranked World of Warcraft guild, and is hard at work on his own sci-fi trilogy. He’s also reached the highest levels of Guitar Hero mastery, and has characters named after him in both X-Com: Enemy Unknown and Shadowrun Returns, all of which may make him the geekiest man in pro sports.

“I don’t know anyone that comes close,” says Chris Kluwe in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I haven’t met anyone that’s into tabletop gaming and pen and paper gaming and just the variety of interests that I have.”

Kluwe has made headlines in recent years for his outspoken support of marriage equality. His attention-grabbing letter to Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. was full of the sort of colorful invective that Kluwe honed over years on the World of Warcraft message boards. Fans of that letter will want to go pick up Kluwe’s new book, Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies, a collection of essays focused around his commitment to rational empathy and social justice. Kluwe credits science fiction with helping him outgrow some of the bullying tendencies that often plague other athletes.

“Generally sci-fi has very utopian ideals in it,” says Kluwe. “Yeah, science fiction definitely helped with that.”

Listen to our complete interview with Chris Kluwe in Episode 92 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). Then stick around after the interview as guest geek Douglas Cohen joins hosts John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley for a panel discussion on sports in science fiction.

Chris Kluwe on the future of football:

“I think that’s where we’re going to end up heading, is when you watch a football game … not only are you watching the action from the traditional camera view … You’ll also be able to click down to individual players. So if Adrian Peterson breaks off a big run, on the replay you can tap on his icon, and all of a sudden you see that run from his perspective … The next step is that every player has a clear plastic facemask, and now you can display information inside the helmet … If you’re a quarterback looking down the field, say your receiver’s open, maybe he blinks green really quick. Or if you’re a linebacker the hole blinks red, you’ve got to go fill it.”

Chris Kluwe on Orson Scott Card and Ender’s Game:

“I don’t understand how you can write such a great book on the meaning of empathy, on understanding and loving another species, and yet at the same time not carry those lessons over to your actual life … I don’t get the cognitive dissonance that that requires in order to have that worldview. I’m not going to go see the new Ender’s Game movie … because I don’t feel that I should be supporting a person who is actively working to harm our society … So whenever I talk to people about Ender’s Game, I say, ‘Yes, it’s my favorite book. I love the message within it. Find a way to read it that doesn’t require you paying Orson Scott Card.'”

John Joseph Adams on real-world quidditch:

“Actually there was a quidditch match in my backyard not too long ago. My stepdaughter Grace is totally into Harry Potter right now — she’s like at the height of Harry Potter fandom — and my sister-in-law lives with us as well, and she’s like the queen of Harry Potter trivia, so she actually ran the quidditch game and told all the kids how to play, for my stepdaughter’s birthday party … It’s got lots of complicated rules. There’s things called ‘bludgers,’ and there’s the ‘snitch’ that they have to try to find — in the books they have to try to catch it, but apparently in the real-world version you hide it somewhere and then the ‘seeker’ has to find it, and the players on the other team have to stop the seeker from finding the snitch. But there’s so many different moving parts that I couldn’t begin to tell you what they all were.”

Douglas Cohen on the movie Angels in the Outfield:

“Basically I guess at critical moments there’s actually an angel that can help out the team, and to summon the angel you’re supposed to flap your arms. It’s really corny and really ridiculous … I saw it with some friends. I don’t know why that was the movie we chose. I was vehemently against it. I was like Dave when he was four at the baseball game, I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to go home. And at the critical moment in the movie, you know, when everything goes quiet and the pitch is in slow motion and everyone’s waiting to see what happens, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up and started flapping my arms, and the whole theater just burst out laughing, because it was just such a ridiculous movie.”