Acclaimed fantasy author and Big Cheese at the excellent SF Crowsnest site Stephen Hunt tells us that the Nest’s readers were invited to suggest a name for the upcoming Obama administration’s years in office. It looks like most of the SF readers decided the feeling of hope and renewal had historic links to the Kennedy era administration, which was dubbed ‘Camelot’, because their top five suggestions all had echoes of that 60s optimism mixed with Arthurian myth:
1. The Avalon years
2. New Camelot
3. Camelot II
4. Second Camelot
5. Obamalot
(IDW’s comics biography of Obama written by Jeff Mariotte, illustrated by Ted Morgan, cover art by J Scott Campbell, (c) IDW)
As you can see ‘Avalon’ carried the day (Obama also won an online mock election earlier on the ‘Nest and of course won so spectacularly in the real world). As Stephen put it “fans have made a very apt choice in the name they’ve selected for the new Obama administration. Avalon, the land from the tales of King Arthur where magic and hope is reborn.” Having seen more than a few politicians who promised a lot only to let us down dreadfully (mentioning no names and not hinting at major recent UK politicians at all, honest) I am a little more cynical myself, but hey, it would be nice to think its all the start of something better and in days of doom and gloom I’m not going to rain on folks trying to enjoy some hope where they can find it. In related news I see via ICV2 that the Obama biographical comic from IDW also outsold McCain’s issue.
Thu, Nov 6, 2008
General, News