SF and fantasy set in Belgium

[nwhyte]

Some of you will have seen my list of sf and fantasy novels set in Ireland. I have been living in Belgium now for over seven years, and it occurred to me that there must be a similar list possible of sf and fantasy set here.

I have two items to start off with:

Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell (2004): one of the nested stories is set in Zedelghem.

Comments

[coalescent]

Dishonourable mention for The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy? :)

[nwhyte]

Very dishonourable indeed!

[blue_condition]

How about the play "Easter 2016" which was one of the six week run of Play for Today tackling futuristic subjects.

From what I recall, not a great deal of sf content in it, really a 'near future' play made in the early 80s - the premise was an integrated teacher-training college in Belfast (which at the time was probably fairly radical, given that there were even separate RC and CofE teacher training colleges in Liverpool at the time!) coming up to the centenary of the Easter Rising with the principal wanting to allow the Catholic students to commemorate the anniversary and the security guy wanting to screw everything down.

Young versions of Kenneth Branagh and Colm Meaney featured as students.

Don't really remember a great deal more about it - I would've been about 14 when it was on.

[nwhyte]

Interesting - though for my Irish list, not my Belgian list!

[sammywol]

Did the incredibly long Ash by Mary Gentle make it as far North as Belgium or just Burgundy? Will give it some thought. I have a nagging at my mind that I am forgetting one that I really liked.

[nwhyte]

Hmm, will have to check that one. As far as I remember, though, she starts off in the Rhine Valley to the east of Belgium/the Netherlands, and then heads south into Burgundy, and Marseilles, and Carthage of course, without coming as far west as here.

[sammywol]

got it! either Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell takes a gander at the Battle of Waterloo or else I have a vivid imagination that writes fanfic to itself on the sly (although that could happen - it did when I was a kid with Lord of the Rings).

There must be a host of time travel and alternate history stories involving Waterloo. There is also one small reference to it in David Brin's Earth that I always liked where there's an online discussion of the re-enactment of the battle being flooded with far more soldiers wanting to re-enact it than were there for the original and so the costume police are out to turn away the less 'authentic' candidates.

[nwhyte]

D'Oh! You're dead right. Have edited main entry for Strange and Norrell.

Will have to think about Brin.

[pwilkinson]

Part of one of the later chapters in Accelerando takes place in the Atomium - in a "reinstantiated" Brussels on Saturn. Does this count?

[nwhyte]

Defintiely not.

Though it rates more an honourable mention than Douglas Adams!

Fantasy in Belgium

[anonymous]

Hi Nick

Would you accept Kate Elliot's "Crown of Stars" series? I've only just started Book 1, "Kings Dragon" but the characters are already involved in a seige of Gent by the Eika.

Cheers

Michael Ross