Thursday, May 3, 2012

FAN #44B: "A Québécois on the Scheldt" by Randy McDonald

As promised, we here at the Johnny Pez blog present another link to our other monumental project, the Sobel Wiki.  Today's newly-posted article is another vignette from the For All Nails project, "A Québécois on the Scheldt" by Randy McDonald.  The vignette consists of a story by a Montreal journalist, André-Philippe Maeterlinck, about his visit to Austrasia (the FAN version of Belgium) in September 1972.

Since the foundation of Belgium in 1830 post-dated Sobel's point-of-departure by 53 years, and there appeared to be no mention of Belgium in For Want of a Nail, Randy decided to give the FAN version a different name.  Alas, Randy had failed to note that Sobel did in fact mention Belgium by name exactly once, on page 235. By the time someone in the FAN Cabal noticed this and pointed it out, it was too late -- Austrasia was an established part of FAN canon.

2 comments:

DaveMB said...

Nice to see you're back at this.

I've got exams and such for the next couple weeks, but I will be able to help out over the summer.

Johnny Pez said...

Thanks, Dave. Any help you can give will be greatly appreciated.