Geek Love is a novel by Katherine Dunn and first published in 1983. It's the story of a traveling circus run by Aloysius "Al" Binewski and his wife, "Crystal" Lil. When Al's circus begins to fail, the couple devises an idea to breed their own freak show, using various drugs and radioactive material to alter the genes of their children. What emerges is Arturo "Arty", a boy with flippers for hands and feet, Elly and Iphy the Siamese Twins, Olympia "Oly" the hunchback albino dwarf and Fortunato "Chick", the normal looking telekinetic baby of the family. The story is told by Oly in the form of a novel written for her daughter Miranda.
Two stories are told. The first deals with the Binewski children's constant viscious struggle against each other, but espeically against Arty as he develops his own cult: Artuism. Artuism involves members having their limbs amputated so that they can end up just like Arty. Each member moves up in stages, based on how much money they contribute to the cult. Arty battles his siblings to maintain control over them. Mundane aspects of their lives, such as ticket sales, can invoke battles.
The second story involves Oly's daughter, Miranda. Miranda has a special defect of her own, a small tail, that she wants to have cut off. She goes to one Ms. Mary Lick, a wealthy woman who pays poor attractive women to get operations to disfigure themselves so that they may live to their potential instead of being sex objects to men. Oly's plan is to stop Lick and protect her daughter.
There has been no movie made of Geek Love as of yet, but it is rumored that director Tim Burton wants to eventually sign on with the project.
Dunn worked on the novel for ten years. Two inspirations came from the Jonestown deaths and from a rose garden in Portland, Oregon (this inspiration was put into the novel; it's the same way Aloysis comes up with the idea of his designed children).
Recently SensurroundStagings in Atlanta produced a well received stage adaptation of Geek Love. This adaptation will be reprised in Atlanta for Summer 2004 and then taken to the New York Fringe Festival.
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