Comments on: Just Call Me “Dream-Killer VanderMeer”

By: Bob Lock

Bob Lock — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:02:57 +0000

‘So I’ve finally had to reaffirm that dragons are imaginary’

Ahem! They still exist in Wales, I’ll have you know!
However, to see them you have to be Welsh and it helps if you are intoxicated. Be aware though that pink elephants tend to try and barge their way into your field of view and should be dismissed as figments of the imagination (otherwise they just don’t go away and crap on your carpets…)

Got to go, off for some Loch Ness Monster spotting :)

By: Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:40:57 +0000

LOL! Okay, Rob–that’s terrible. And yet hilarious.
JV

By: Rob Davies

Rob Davies — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:15:14 +0000

“Yes, Virginia, dragons are real. They just hate you.”

By: Matt’s Bookosphere: 6/22/2008 « Enter the Octopus

Matt’s Bookosphere: 6/22/2008 « Enter the Octopus — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:29:25 +0000

[...] Jeff VanderMeer crushes the dreams of aspiring dragon-owners everywhere. (Now, what if I want to own… [...]

By: Edward Willett

Edward Willett — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:56:32 +0000

Years ago, for an article for a collectible-card gaming magazine called InQuest about the “science” of dragons, I wrote an article that was presented as the Foreword to a book entitled “Dragons: Our Fiery Friends” by a fellow named Dr. Vladimir Kapusianyk. Dr. Kapusianyk, I wrote, had been struggling for years to finish his definitive treatise on the science of dragons, inspired by the dragon he himself saw as a small boy in 1911, mislabeled as a rare winged garter snake in a travelling fair. Alas, Dr. Kapusianyk (I wrote) was then 98 years old and in a nursing home in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and hoping to find someone else to carry on his life’s work before it was too late.

I would have thought that was an end to it, but then I started getting the occasional letter from youngsters asking me to pass their names on to Dr. Kapusianyk because they would love to carry on his work. At some point I put at least a portion of the InQuest article online, and I think someone else may have posted the whole thing: in any event, pretty soon Dr. Kapusianyk was popping up in PowerPoint presentations, and various blogs; on a Harry Potter fan site as an authority cited in someone’s recreation of what a course in Dragon Studies might be like at Hogwarts; on various pages devoted to dragons in myth and folklore–and, most interestingly, as an authority cited in a term paper on dragons offered by many of the sites devoted to selling term papers to students too lazy and dishonest to write their own.

I finally fessed up in a radio column on CBC Saskatchewan, reprinted on my blog here. But, like you, I felt a little bad about it…