Annemarie van Ewyck (1943-2017)

Annemarie van Ewyck, an internationally-known Dutch fan, died January 15 at the age of 73. (She spelled her name van Ewyck when she wrote for File 770, and ConFiction chair Kees van Toorn spelled it that way when he announced her passing on Facebook, but the Dutch Wikipedia article about her spells it van Ewijck, as it appeared on some of the books she translated, and who wants to buck the Wikipedia?)

Van Toorn wrote, “She has been instrumental to Dutch Fandom in the ’60 and ’70 when she was ‘motor’ of the NCSF [Netherlands Contact Center for Science Fiction].” She edited the clubzine Holland SF for 19 years, and from 1970-1982 she was married to NCSF co-founder Leo Kindt.

She worked as a translator of a wide spectrum of fiction and nonfiction. In 1977, she was nominated for the King Kong Award, a prize for translations within horror, science fiction and fantasy. Jack Vance reportedly was her favorite SFF writer to translate.

Van Ewyck was a key member of the Dutch Worldcon bid for 1990. To help pique American fans’ interest in attending ConFiction, she wrote a trio of articles for File 770, two of which are available online at Fanac.org, “Fantastic Literature Below Sea Level” about SFF in the Netherlands and “Netherfandom”, which begins by telling how Forry Ackerman was instrumental in planting the seeds of fandom there.

In later years, writes van Toorn, “She organized many local conventions, was the den mother in many green rooms; started Cozy Cons – just to bring fans together to have a good time, no real programmes but just fun, talk and beers.”

One thought on “Annemarie van Ewyck (1943-2017)

  1. I lived in the Netherlands from late 1987 to late 1989 (my first postdoctoral position, in Leiden) and discovered that Jack Vance was enormously popular among Dutch SF fans. I’m not quite sure why (speaking as an enormous Vance fan myself); I guess just something in the way he translates.

    The Dutch phoneme ‘ij’ is equivalent to ‘y’, which is not ordinarily used in the Dutch alphabet.

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