(1) FENCON. FenCon in Dallas, TX announced on March 29 one of their guests of honor this year will be Larry Correia. They got a little pushback (a couple of FB comments, a handful of tweets), so the committee issued this statement on Facebook.
Correia commented on his blog yesterday:
FenCon announced that I am their writer Guest of Honor. Immediately a bunch of Caring Leftists threw a temper tantrum and demanded that I get kicked out because of my evil badthink. But FenCon issued a statement and stuck to their guns. So that was refreshing! I’ve found it’s about 50/50 when SJWs throw a tantrum if the event caves and kicks me out or not.
(2) CENSORSHIP NEWS. Follett comes up with ways for parents to block what kids check out of libraries. Book Riot has details: “Technology for Parent Monitoring of Student Library Use is Being Developed by Follett: This Week’s Book Censorship News”.
… Follett had already began thinking about ways parents can restrict their children’s access to library books, however. The CEO of Content, Britten Follett, told Publishers Weekly that the company had already been contacted by districts in Florida and Texas back in February about tools to comply with “parents’ rights” bills. Since then, many more states have had similar legislation put forward.
Some of the solutions on the table include parents blocking access to certain titles, as well as an automatic email that sends students’ check outs to their parents. The Georgia school district who contacted Follett also asked for an option to restrict books based on category or tag, such as blocking access to any LGBTQ books.
Systems like this are most harmful for the students who need access to books and other library resources the most: queer kids and teens whose parents are unsupportive, students looking for safer sex information, children with abusive parents looking for resources to keep themselves safe, and more. For these students, the library could be the safest place they can go, and this would cut off that lifeline….
(3) PLUGGED IN. At Camestros Felapton, in “A cat reads Neuromancer”, Timothy the Talking Cat demonstrates the kitty litterary insights for which he has become famous.
…Yesterday, I decided to amuse myself by reading a romance novel. I picked from the shelf the first one I could see, a slim hardback novel with a jaunty yellow dust jacket entitled “New romancer”. Not merely a romance novel but (like me) an advent guard one, pushing beyond the limitations of the kind of middle-brow tastes that you or that fool Clamberdown Fossilchute….
(4) SILVER SHAMROCK PUBLISHING CANCELS ITSELF. The promotional message quoted here by Roxie Voorhees from Silver Shamrock Publishing about Gene O’Neill’s The White Plague Chronicles attracted so much social media criticism that the business has shut down.
Several authors whose books had been accepted by the publisher asked for their rights to be reverted. Numerous book bloggers said they would not be reviewing anything more from Silver Shamrock.
Some who know Gene O’Neill, including Brian Keene, Jeff Mariotte, and Vincente Francisco Garcia, tweeted defenses against charges that he is a racist.
Reportedly the publisher asked O’Neill to send people to Twitter to defend the book.
Since then the company’s Twitter account @shamrock_silver has been taken down, and its website Silvershamrockpublishing.com has been turned into a “Private Site.” Before that happened the publisher reportedly said they were closing and reverting all rights.
(5) NOT TASMANIAN BUT SILURIAN. “BBC Unveils Doctor Who: Legacy of the Sea Devils Teaser” and Gizmodo sets the frame:
…Old school Who fans should get a kick out of seeing the Devils, who are making their first appearance in the post-2005 era with this special. The Devils as a sub-race of the Silurians, and first appeared in the 1972 episode of the same name during Jon Pertwee’s time as the Third Doctor. They wouldn’t appear again until Peter Davidson’s Fifth Doctor encountered them 1984, during the four-part opener to season 21, “Warriors of the Deep.” Unlike the Silurians, who’ve had a big redesign since their original debut back in 1970, the Sea Devils have mostly maintained their original appearance for the special….
(6) LORD OF THE ROGUES. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] The Rogues in the House podcast, though normally a sword and sorcery podcast, discusses Lord of the Rings: “There and Rogue Again – A Lord of the Rings Story”.
The Rogues sit down with Lord of Rings expert and former TheOneRing.net writer Cindy Kehler to discuss the allure of Tolkien’s classic series. Which adaptations worked? Which failed? What does the future hold? There are many questions, questions that need answering!
(7) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
1968 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Fifty-four year ago, 2001: A Space Odyssey had its world premier on this date at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C., it would be nearly a month and three weeks, the fifteenth of May to be precise, before the United Kingdom would see this film.
It was directed as you know by Stanley Kubrick from a screenplay by him and Arthur C. Clarke who wrote the novel. It spawned a sequel about which the less said the better. (My opinion, not yours.)
It would win a Hugo at St. Louiscon over what I will term an extraordinarily offbeat field of nominees that year — Yellow Submarine, Charly, Rosemary’s Baby and the penultimate episode of The Prisoner, “Fallout”.
It did amazingly well box office wise, returning one hundred fifty million against just ten million in production costs.
So what did the critics think of it then? Some liked, some threw up their guts. Some thought that audience members that liked it were smoking something to keep themselves high. (That was in several reviews.) Ebert liked it a lot and said that it “succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale.” Others were less kind with Pauline Kael who I admit is not one of my favorite critics saying that it was “a monumentally unimaginative movie.” Humph.
Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a most excellent rating of ninety percent.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born April 2, 1914 — Alec Guinness. Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars trilogy. (What? There were more movies after them? No!) Do you count The Man in the White Suit? Otherwise, that’s it for filmed genre roles. Theatre is another matter altogether. He played Osric first in Hamlet in the early Thirties in what was then the New Theatre, Old Thorney in The Witch of Edmonton at The Old Vic and the title role of Macbeth at Sheffield. (Died 2000.)
- Born April 2, 1921 — Redd Boggs. Los Angeles fanzine writer, editor and publisher. The 1948 Fantasy Annual was his first zine with Blish as a contributor with Discord being nominated for the Best Fanzine Hugo in 1961. He was nominated for the Retro Hugo for Best Fan Writer, and Sky Hook was nominated for Best Fanzine. Boggs was also a member of First Fandom. (Died 1996.)
- Born April 2, 1926 — Robert Holmes. Scriptwriter who came up with some brilliant Doctor Who stories including the Fourth Doctor-era The Talons of Weng-Chiang, one of my all-time favorite tales, which he collected in Doctor Who: The Scripts. He was the script editor on the series from 1974 to 1977and was in ill health during much of that time. He died while working on scripts for the second and final Sixth Doctor story, The Trial of a Time Lord. (Died 1986.)
- Born April 2, 1935 — Sharon Acker, 87. Here for being Odona in “The Mark of Gideon “ a third-season episode of Trek. She had appearances on a number of genre series of the time — The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, The Delphi Bureau, Galactica 1980, The Incredible Hulk, The Powers of Mathew Starr and Knight Rider.
- Born April 2, 1939 — Elliot K. Shorter. He began attending cons in the early Sixties and was a major figure in fandom through the Seventies. Some of the zines he worked on were Engram, and Niekas. As the 1970 TAFF winner he was also made fan guest of honor at Heicon, the 28th Worldcon, in Heidelberg Germany. And he helped Suncon, the 1977 Worldcon. Mike has a detailed and quite insightful obituary here. (Died 2013.)
- Born April 2, 1945 — Linda Hunt, 77. Her first genre film role was Mrs. Holly Oxheart In Popeye. (Anyone here who’s disputing that’s genre? I thought not.) She goes on to be Shadout Mapes in Lynch’s Dune. (Very weird film. Not the novel, that film.) Next up is Dragonfly, a Kevin Costner fronted horror film as Sister Madeline. And in a quirky role, she voices Lady Proxima, the fearsome Grindalid matriarch of the White Worms, in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
- Born April 2, 1948 — Joan D. Vinge, 74. Best known I think for The Snow Queen which won a well-deserved Hugo at Denvention Two, and its sequels. Also her most excellent series about the young telepath named Cat, and her Heaven’s Chronicles, the latter which I’ve not read. Her first new book in almost a decade after a serious car accident was the 2011 novelization of Cowboys & Aliens. And I find it really neat that she wrote the anime and manga reviews for now defunct Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror anthologies.
- Born April 2, 1978 — Scott Lynch, 44. His only Award to date is a BFA for Best Newcomer. Author of the Gentleman Bastard series of novels which is now at three. He’s stated that it’ll eventually be seven books in length. And I see he was writing Queen of the Iron Sands, an online serial novel for awhile. May I note he’s married to Elizabeth Bear, one of my favorite authors? And they have three feline companions? And she rides horses?
(9) YESTERDAY’S FOOLISHNESS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] What better way to celebrate 1st April than a look at fictions intended to deceive. And so BBC Radio 4 gave us “Screenshot, Hoaxes, fakes and pranks” starting off with that infamous War of the Worlds radio play trailer. Also in the mix is a famous British TV hoax in which a housewife was duped into thinking a real alien had landed in a flying saucer in her garden…
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode explore the world of screen hoaxes. Mark is joined by critic Anna Bogutskaya and actor Christian McKay for a deep dive into Orson Welles’ 1973 docudrama F for Fake, and Ellen looks back at TV hoaxes, from Alternative 3 to Ghostwatch. She also asks whether the contemporary era of fake news and deep fakes has put paid to the TV hoax.
(10) COOL FOOLS. Mary Robinette Kowal posted an elaborate hoax Worldcon bid for Iceland on April 1: “Worldon intent to bid: Iceland in 2032”.
Kowal explained the hoax today, apparently concerned that the clues to it being a joke were too subtle.
…Edited to add: This was an April Fool’s prank and I really thought that having a committee member named Rikrolson would be a giveaway. Also, I did not think that the idea of me running another convention was believable.
Two jokes that probably only Icelanders spotted are that the last thirteen first names on the committee were the Icelandic Yulelads….
(11) TELL YOUR FRIENDS, I’M HAT MAN. James Davis Nicoll told readers of his Patreon he is the subject of this fanfic on Reddit: “Orange covid hat man”. The anecdote is probably weird enough to be worth your time no matter who inspired it.
Sorry if this is formatted poorly but I’m in a bind. I’m a student in health sciences and I have a lab in the health expansion building once a week. Tuesday on my way to lab, I started hearing boss music coming from somewhere ahead of me. I made it to the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor only to hear the music blaring from right behind me. I turned around and there he was. Orange covid hat man….
(12) DEPTHS OF WIKIPEDIA. You can get foolishness 365 days a year by clicking @depthsofwikipedia, which was profiled this week in the New York Times: “Want to See the Weirdest of Wikipedia? Look No Further.”
Did you know that there’s a Swiss political party dedicated to opposing the use of PowerPoint? That some people believe Avril Lavigne died in 2003 and was replaced by a look-alike? Or that there’s a stone in a museum in Taiwan that uncannily resembles a slab of meat?
Probably not — unless, that is, you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of people who follow @depthsofwikipedia. The Instagram account shares bizarre and surprising snippets from the vast, crowdsourced online encyclopedia, including amusing images (a chicken literally crossing a road) and minor moments in history (Mitt Romney driving several hours with his dog atop his car). Some posts are wholesome — such as Hatsuyume, the Japanese word for one’s first dream of the year — while others are not safe for work (say, panda pornography).
Annie Rauwerda, 22, started the account in the early days of the pandemic, when others were baking sourdough bread and learning how to knit. “Everyone was starting projects, and this was my project,” she said….
(13) ABSURD QUEST. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Austin McConnell continues his exploration of the “Bargain Bin Cinematic Universe” in this video, where he explores Atlas, a superhero created in the early 1960s for Super comics, a notoriously cheap comics books publisher, McConnell tells the story of Super Comics and Atlas, who is possibly connected with body builder Charles Atlas. But McConnell says he wrote an adaptation of Atlas’s public-domain origin story and wants to make a “so bad it’s good” animated version. If you’re interested, he has a Kickstarter!
(14) WHO OVERDUE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Colin Baker, Peter Davison, Jon Pertwee, and members of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society chat with the BBC on the show’s 30th anniversary in 1993 in this clip that dropped today.
Doctor Who has been on hiatus for several years. With the 30th anniversary of the show approaching, and the BBC helmed by new Director General Alan Yentob, what are the chances of the much-loved science-fiction show making a comeback? Andi Peters chats with some Doctor Who fans who believe that the programme is ripe for regeneration, and whose sentiments are echoed by former Doctors Jon Pertwee, Peter Davison and Colin Baker.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Mike Bentley, Anne Marble, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Maytree.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
10) I was fooled.
8) Include me in the Joan D. Vinge Fan Club!
(4) Oh dear.
I encountered (1) and (4) and assumed they were April fools of some kind. I thought (10) was a prank because Worldcon was misspelt. (3) is genuine, obviously.
(1) Le. Sigh.
Y’know, I find it funny that he and his fans have chosen to interpret “Not fond of that GoH nor his fans, I’m gonna let my membership roll over to next year” to mean “Kick him out.” Reading comprehension seems to not exactly be their strong suit.
¯_(?)_/¯
I WILL note, however, that he and his fans have convinced me. After the way his fans swarmed and harassed various posters (including me), I went from rolling over my existing Friend of the Fen membership to explicitly requesting a refund from the con, ’cause holy crap do I not want to deal with his fans in person after their behavior online. (And I CERTAINLY do not want my Stalwart Bartender And Maître d’ to have to deal with their boorishness at my room party. I got standards at my gigs.)
Another birthday today–Barry Hansen (AKA Dr. Demento) turned 81. He’s still producing a new two-hour show every week at drdemento.com, many of which include SF or filk songs. He was a special guest at Renovation in 2011 (and is a really nice guy).
(2) The pushback was enough that they’ve backed down. Or off.
(1) His reaction is a good example of why a lot of fans don’t want him around.
(7) on the final day of 2018 I wrote a short essay about 2001: A Space Odyssey that was published here. Link below.
https://file770.com/2018-a-space-essay/
I’ll reiterate that the film was based on what I consider the finest science fiction story ever written.
(7) 100 years ago today was also the premier of Houdini’s semi-SFnal film “The Man from Beyond”, in which he awakens from an iceberg after being frozen for 100 years. The first day’s performances were free, because he hadn’t yet gotten a certificate of clearance yet from the NY board of censors, and the theater couldn’t charge admission. Houdini appeared in person at the premier at the Times Square Theater, and vanished an elephant.
(1) Still doesn’t understand how the Free Market works.
I made the mistake of reading the product page of Larry’s most recent book. It features a giant robot military unit of the “Tsarists” that is called “The Wall”.
(10) It is dangerous to do a plausible WorldCon Hoax bid. Bermuda Triangle in 1988 started as a Hoax. Baltimore in 1998 also was less than real at the start.
As to whether it was plausible she would run a 2nd one – Vince Docherty is a double WorldCon chair, so it has happened. Plus she came in on the end of Discon, she hasn’t led a Bid…
@ bibulb
Sorry to hear that.
bill wrote:
Which reminded me of an old tv series, THE SECOND HUNDRED YEARS (1967-68), which starred Monte Markham as an Alaskan prospector who is buried and frozen in a glacial avalanche. Sixty-seven years later the body is discovered and, amazingly, revives once defrosted. The government classifies Luke Carpenter’s revivification, but –to assist in his assimilation into modern society– gives him into custody of his senior-citizen son (played by Arthur O’Connell). Besides the Army officer who tries to keep the mystery secret from the public, Luke also has a grandson, Ken, who’s the same age as when Luke was buried and frozen, and also is a dead ringer for Luke. (Both roles were played by Markham.)
It was very much one of those “fish out of water” premises. I remember it as very charming and amusing, and Markham and O’Connell both brought a lot of vigor and fun to their performances. I was sorry it only lasted one season.
(I wonder if anyone working with Marvel comics or the MCU has ever written Steve Rogers sharing a scene with an old guy named Luke Carpenter, and swapping “The same thing happened to me!” stories. If not, they should. Oh, and checking IMDB, it’s nice to see that Monte Markham is still acting at age 86
and still available to play his old character. Get on it, Marvel-Smiths!)
(1) How can a convention be free of “politicized opinions and discrimination”? Is that a code word?…
And I can see why fans would want to “Nope” out of the convention.
I know that at a convention, there will be authors and other guests whose opinions I disagree with. But how do they treat people? How do their fans act? There are also authors whose opinions I agree with who turned out to have poisonous behavior. I don’t want to be around them, either.
(4) I feel the most sorry for all the writers affected by that. There was no warning. It was a real mess. And a lesson in how not to run things.
One good thing to arise from this is that some reviewers, authors, and small press staff have started to create a source of information for authors so they can more easily learn about publishers who are open to marginalized people.
(8) My first exposure to Linda Hunt was the in the TV series “Space Rangers,” where she played their Commander. (It lasted just six episodes.)
And I’m pretty sure Joan Vinge is the first author who ever wrote back to me! 🙂
I see that Arthur C. Clarke’s The Ghost from the Grand Banks is a Meredith moment from the usual suspects at a buck ninety nine. I’ll confess that I’ve not read it, so could someone who has tell me how it is? The only such Titanic novel I’ve read is Clive Cussler’s Raise the Titanic which got made into a truly crappy film.
@John Lorentz: Thanks. Happy birthday to Dr. Demento!
@ Anne Marble
One good thing to arise from this is that some reviewers, authors, and small press staff have started to create a source of information for authors so they can more easily learn about publishers who are open to marginalized people.
Beg pardon, I have the impression that diversity in SF/F has been a high-profile issue since at least 2013. I’m sure (at least I hope) that it didn’t take this long to connect marginalized authors with industry outlets. And from what I can tell, this was about shutting down a jackass publisher—which is well and good—not necessarily anything else.
Lanodantheon says Still doesn’t understand how the Free Market works.
I made the mistake of reading the product page of Larry’s most recent book. It features a giant robot military unit of the “Tsarists” that is called “The Wall”.
I just checked the Amazon page for this novel, Servants of War, and no surprise it’s got gushing all five star reviews. None of which I swear understand how the military works, but then neither does Larry.
Free market? Isn’t that something that’s supposed to supply lots of adoring fans who will keep buying all my books unceasingly? So why isn’t happening, damn it? That SJWs are doing and they most certainly don’t deserve it! Only I and I and I deserve it.
@ Rob Thornton
There are more publishers open to marginalized authors — but sometimes, it’s hard to keep track of where they are, which ones are open right now, etc. It’s also hard to know how to find other resources, such as editors, artists, sensitivity readers, beta readers, etc.
Some publishers are stepping forth and offering to help. Even publishers who don’t have slots open are offering to help displaced authors find new publishers.
From what I saw, most people did not want the publisher to shut down — that hurts all their authors. They wanted the publisher to realize how the blurb sounded and own up to the issues. Maybe delete the original post, apologize, reword the blurb, and explain it better. Or apologize and cancel or postpone the book. The act of cutting and running doesn’t cut the mustard.
Then again, this publisher deleted controversial tweets last year rather than have a real conversation about content warnings. So maybe the cutting and running should not be a shock.
@ Anne Marble
There are more publishers open to marginalized authors — but sometimes, it’s hard to keep track of where they are, which ones are open right now, etc. It’s also hard to know how to find other resources, such as editors, artists, sensitivity readers, beta readers, etc.
Some publishers are stepping forth and offering to help. Even publishers who don’t have slots open are offering to help displaced authors find new publishers.
Thanks so much for the info. Knowing is half the battle.
(2) I checked with one of the school librarians I know and she emailed back that ‘The good news is the company emailed all their users last week and said they would NOT be developing a parent control module: “At Follett, our mission is to support librarians and get books into the hands of students. We support the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, and we are focused on advancing – not limiting – the role of the librarian and the school library.”’
Poor Larry Correia. After all these years he’s still having trouble learning that actions have consequences.
FenCon should have known that his history of abusive behavior online reflects badly on any convention that invites him. In addition to his multi-year campaign with Theodore Beale to destroy the Hugos, his blog is full of vicious personal insults he directs at people in SFF. Some of his fans take this as a call to action and harass those people.
FenCon wants to portray this as a disagreement about Correia’s opinions, but the truth is that people object to his offensive actions. I like to attend SFF cons when I’m back home in Dallas but this one will be a big “hell no” from me.
(4) I had no idea what there were scorching desert outbacks of Tasmania. Also, the author doesn’t know what ‘infers’ means. Doesn’t add confidence.
(4) The thing I’m most surprised here is that it took, per Voorhees, just 26-ish hours for the publisher to shut down, which seems remarkably fast.
It’s distressing to see limitations on what young people (or for that matter, older people, as well) may check out or review in the library. It amounts to censorship. It leads one to wonder what will be allowable reading in the future, what books may never see a library shelf, and what agenda may work its way in to try to become “the new normal.”
We have reached the “all people are equal…except some” level of censorship, targeting the alphabet soup people, to further marginalize them during an election year.
Jake says The thing I’m most surprised here is that it took, per Voorhees, just 26-ish hours for the publisher to shut down, which seems remarkably fast.
It doesn’t take long in this age to shut down the digital functions of an organisation. I’ve done it in a day or so if need be. (The Devil takes the hindmost…) Any behind the scenes functions of course would take longer but no one would see those happening.
Now reading the April issue of Locus. This month they announced that print subscribers get the digital edition for free. As always, it’s virtually ad free. I think I counted but two ads this time.
Do not know Gene O’Neil from the cliched hole in the ground. so I have no idea if he is, in fact, a racist. But he most definitely is culturally tone-deaf, if he decided that writing a book with ideas cobbled together from Frank Herbert, PD James, and Dan Jenkins in which “The White Race” is threated with extinction was any kind of Good Idea…
@Ginjer Buchanan
Also science-illiterate, if he thinks the differences between ethnic groups are so large that they can be targeted in that way.
Anne Marble on April 3, 2022 at 4:34 am said:
I know that at a convention, there will be authors and other guests whose opinions I disagree with. But how do they treat people? How do their fans act?
Yes, this. There are a number of authors and fans I know, whose politics I disagree with, but I would happily spend time with them, because they are friendly and gracious and interesting people.
@P J Evan: And ignorant, too, of the number of people who are mistaken about their ancestry.
@Andrew (not Werdna)
Half the fun is finding the lurking surprises. (Haven’t found any, yet, on my tree, but I think there’s at least one waiting. This weekend I found a Choctaw ancestor on that of my older nephew-by-marriage. Didn’t expect that. Or the 18th-century Italian immigrants on another line – Jefferson was trying out vineyards and an olive orchard, and brought in some people from the area of Lucca.)
@P J Evans
There are diseases, like sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs, that do tend to target some racial/ethnic groups over others.
@PJ: Absolutely.
@Cat: it’s not the speed of the mechanisms of shutdown that was surprising, it’s that they threw in the towel almost immediately. I didn’t see it until it was all over, but I would have thought they’d have kept it up until at least Monday.
Also re: O’Neil he’s got at least one more collar-tugger out there: https://twitter.com/athie_gnome/status/1510442883274489860
Jake says to me it’s not the speed of the mechanisms of shutdown that was surprising, it’s that they threw in the towel almost immediately. I didn’t see it until it was all over, but I would have thought they’d have kept it up until at least Monday.
Yeah that’s a different matter. It is surprising that they threw in the literal towel that fast. I mean they got a really bad reaction to something they did, but their really rapid reaction to that is startling to say the least. Something else must be going on.
(10) was so dangerously plausible that I almost updated the list of bids at Worldcon.org. Fortunately, I clicked through to what was linked as the website before actually publishing it.
I’ve walked through the conference center (it was open with no events happening that day when I was on my four-day layover in Reykjavík (thanks to IcelandAir’s free-stopover offer) on the return from Dublin 2019), and that hotel was still a hole in the ground. It would be challenging, but not impossible, and it would be very expensive. Before we changed the rules to prevent it, I could see it as a plausible NASFiC location.
Kevin Standlee says that was so dangerously plausible that I almost updated the list of bids at Worldcon.org. Fortunately, I clicked through to what was linked as the website before actually publishing it.
A Reykjavik Worldcon would be way cool, wouldn’t it? I’ve not been there but every friend I’ve had who has been there spoken highly of both the city and more importantly the citizens who live there.
(Amsterdam would be another really cool place for a Worldcon and that is a city that I’ve spent time in. Herring and sliced onion sandwiches are yummy!)
Anyone here who can recommend genre fiction that’s placed in Iceland? I can’t think of any off the top of my brain right now.
@Cat: “The Man Who Came Early”?
Cat,
Eleanor Arnason published a collection of fantasy stories set in Iceland called Hidden Folk in 2014 (a very nice hardcover) and has published 3 more Iceland fantasies since that collection was published. (I have this collection, one of my favorite books of Ms. Arnason) Some of Elizabeth Hand’s second Cass Neary novel Available Dark also takes place in Iceland, I would say that book is genre-adjacent.
@bill – Tay-Sachs and sickle-cell anaemia are both due to recessive alleles that have become much more abundant in the groups that exhibit high rates of them due to genetic drift or a particular selective regime. This isn’t comparable to a disease caused by a disease organism that targets those of a particular genetic heritage. I can’t offhand think of any examples of such a thing.
Not genre as such, but H. Rider Haggard’s Eric Brighteyes is set in Iceland, and perhaps in very specific spots visited by the author. A good read in any event.
On the publisher going down, I saw the video review and while he made some points I’m sure he failed to note that the book was fiction and the premise is actually an old one. The last one I can recall was The White Plague by Frank Herbert. Gosh, it’s like nobody ever reads the classics anymore. It was about a tailored plague that killed all the women on earth. I don’t recall anybody freaking out over it but it was long ago.
Re Icelandic fiction, this one by Sjon is one strange beast, beginning with a man made of clay and spanning the foundation myths of Iceland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoDex_1962:_A_Trilogy
@Curtis: Yes, it was fiction. And so were The Turner Diaries (to which O’Neill’s book description bears more than a passing resemblance). Timothy McVeigh took its white supremacy POV near future depiction as both predictive and prescriptive, and blew up a large building, killing hundreds of people. IMO, at the time people didn’t freak out ENOUGH about McVeigh’s white supremacy views.