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I just got back from Reykjavik, Iceland, where I attended EVE Online Fanfest 2009 thanks to the gracious folk at CCP Games, whose game tie-in books Tor Books is publishing. They wanted their editor, Eric Raab, and I to check out their fanbase and their headquarters, so they flew us out for the weekend. What an experience.

First things first: these guys are amazing. They put out a top-notch product, are incredibly passionate about their work, and to a person are fans of the franchise. I didn’t meet one single CCP employee who didn’t give off the vibe of being part of a big, extended family, where everyone watches out for each other. It was pretty amazing. Also, the level of outreach to their fandom was remarkable. I mean, I suppose that’s part of the nature of running an MMPORG, but still, coming from a culture (publishing) where the fans/readers/customers are barely an afterthought, it was eye-opening.

Additionally, as a casual gamer, I found their plans for expanding the scope of their intellectual property very compelling. I won’t go into detail here, since I’m unclear as to how much is public knowledge and how much isn’t, but suffice to say that their plan of attack for the next 18 months is formidable. Their keynote presentation, which was conducted by Hilmar Veigar Petursson, the CEO of CCP (and one of the chillest fuckers I’ve met), was a pitch perfect combination of new information, showcases for new tech and demo videos, self-deprecating fun, and liberal Kool-Aid dispensing. Additionally, the panels I attended—from the lectures and QA sessions about the in-game economy, featuirng CCP’s in-house PhD in economics, Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson; to the panels featuring prominent members of the alliances that for the core of the player associations in game—were fascinating.

Aside from the EVE-related events, we were, of course, in Iceland, and at a con, so there was much partying. I’ve learned a few key facts about Islanders: they like to drink heavily, and have a penchant for staying out all night—I never made it to my hotel room earlier than 6am. They apparently like to break drinking glasses—it wasn’t unusual for the dude standing next to me to drain his glass and not-quite-nonchalantly fling it against a wall. The streets are literally covered in broken glass by 4am. And they make the best goddamned hot dogs known to man. For reals.

On the food tip, Eric, Shane (one of the marketing people for CCP), and I decided to embark upon a night of morally ambiguous dining: we had whale (both as sashimi and cooked), puffin, and horse all in one night. All were delicious. But nowhere near as amazing as those hot dogs. Hm.

I also discovered Skyr, which is similar but not quite the same as yogurt. It’s a bit more sour, and I absolutely loved it. Mary Robinette Kowal, who lived in Iceland for a year, tells me that it’s available here in NYC at Whole Foods, so I’m going to have to check it out. I hope it’s the regular, untreated kind, and not the more commercial stuff, which is infused with fruits or vanilla, or caramel. That stuff is all right, but the raw stuff is better.

Unfortunately, what with the Fanfest, and the drinking, and the meeting the EVE developers, and the drinking, and the panels, and the drinking, we didn’t really get to leave Reykjavik at all. Eric and I tried to find a way to see the fabled northern lights (or Aurora Borealis), but unfortunately, circumstances conspired against us: according to locals, it’s hard to catch the lights in the light-saturated city; it wasn’t cold enough for the lights to be visible (although this sounds like misinformation; I don’t understand how temperature can affect a magnetic event); or it wasn’t the right time of year. In any case, an excuse to go back.

Another excuse to go back are the geothermal seawater baths, specifically the Blue Lagoon. Our contact person for CCP, Yohei Ishii, took us to this world-famous spot on Sunday, right before we got on the plane back home. Wow, what a relaxing experience, and what a great preamble to the hassle of international flying. I’ve never slept better on a plane in my life.

In all, an amazing trip. More crappy iPhone pictures here. Eric and I will be getting together to hash out the thousand-and-one ideas we both jotted down with regards to working with CCP over the next week, and I’m looking forward to going back to Iceland someday on a personal vacation, to get to know this beautiful country better.

The not-so-super-seekrit project that’s been sucking down so much of everyone’s time over at Tor Books finally goes live today. Tor.com is a new science-fiction and fantasy themed community site, where a whole lot of luminaries from the SF/F fandom community will be contributing content about ‘Science Fiction. Fantasy. The Universe. And Related Subjects.’, as the tagline says.

Tor.com started as a glimmer in the eyes of Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Irene Gallo, and Fritz Foy, over a year ago. With the design direction of regular badass Jamie Stafford-Hill, they’ve been working tirelessly, quietly, and sometimes not-so-quietly on it since. Tor.com will feature original content from some of SF/F’s most talented voices, such as John Scalzi, Charles Stross, and Cory Doctorow; as well as blogging from both genre authors and genre fans (including yours truly). It also features a kickass gallery of SF/F artists, with work from cover artists, game designers, conceptual artists for film and TV, you name it. Additionally, the site is a social network, so you can create a profile and connect with artists, writers, and fellow fans.

As launch date loomed closer, and it came time to recruit bloggers and beta testers, pnh and Irene approached me to see if I would be interested in contributing, to which I replied “Yeah!”. Once they realized that launch date would be the same week as Comic Con San Diego, and that they’d need people there to cover what is probably one of the largest fandom events of the year, Irene popped into my office and asked me if I wanted to go to Comic Con, to which I replied “Fuck yeah!”.

So I’ll be going to and blogging from Comic Con San Diego this week. Don’t hate me too much.

Aside from reportage, I’ll also be posting about other SF/F-related stuff on Tor.com, including a regular column which was originally planned for this site. A while ago, the crew in the art department at Tor realized that there really was no SF/F-specific book cover review blog out there, and we felt there should be. After all, SF/F book design is a very particular thing: we are much more illustration heavy than other genres, we have a particular visual language and ideosyncracies that may be beyond (or beside) the scope of traditional book cover reviews. I shot off an email to my co-workers proposing to start something up, and it became incredibly obvious that the perfect home for a feature like that would be Tor.com. So there you go. Here’s a link to the initial post for that, outlining all the ins-and-outs of how it’s gonna work.

Well, it looks like the Mars Phoenix Lander has landed right on the jackpot: as this image shows, it appears that the Phoenix has dropped right on top of  a patch of ice, uncovered by the craft’s retro-rockets. Either that, or it’s the top of a secret underground alien bunker. Or the outer shell of a Death Star. To paraphrase: “That’s no red planet…” Yeah, that’s it…

In all seriousness: YAY! This brings us one step closer to sussing out whether there is life on the red planet. If you want a nifty play-by-play, there’s no better way than following the MarsPhoenix Mission via Twitter.

As I spent Memorial Day weekend in the print shop, I paid close attention to the progress of NASA’s Mars Phoenix lander via its Twitter page. Although we’ve sent unmanned probes to Mars before (waaaay back during the Viking days, and the Mars Rover mission), Phoenix seems to be igniting a small amount of excitement about space exploration again, which can only be a good great fantastic thing. At this time in history, when the world is mired in various crises stemming from mankind’s lapses in judgement and refusal to work together on a global scale, we need a little bit of the wonder and optimism that space exploration seems to instill in us all. While I would not equate Mars Phoenix’s landing with Neil Armstrong’s first steps on Luna by any means, I do think it’s a step in the right direction. 

With that in mind, I turn your attention to a short manifesto which seems to be grabbing people’s attention this morning. SFC William H. Ruth III, of the 101st Airborne Division, has written a short essay, volunteering for a one-way mission to the red planet. In his words:

“While reading Jim McLane and Nancy Atkinson’s thoughts on Space Colonization, I started to realize that we ‘ALL’ have lost our way. We have become so consumed by petty differences and dislikes of others that we all have forgotten our pre destiny of something better. We above all other living organisms on this planet were given the tools to advance and to expand our thoughts past simple reproduction and survival. What will we ultimately do with that destiny? Will we falter at a hint of death or danger? Or will we do now what so many in ‘ALL’ of the world’s history has done before us.
Here is an ‘Out of the box idea’, let the hero’s of ‘All’ our countries, for once, risk the ultimate sacrifice for something greater than one man’s idea. Maybe once let these men and woman that rise every morning and say ‘today I will stand for something’ and say ‘evil will not prevail, not on my watch’. For once let them volunteer for us all, you never know, mankind, the human race. It might just catch on if we let it.”

I can’t begin to express how much respect, admiration, and genuine awe I have for this man. Ruth is made of the stuff that makes for great military men heroes: the determination and tenacity to get a job done, in the service of something greater than him/herself, but without losing sight of their humanity and their place in the greater scheme of things, as a member of the human species. People like SFC William H. Ruth give me hope for humanity.