Un nouvel article d'Hal Duncan

[jerome]

Hal Duncan a posté un nouvel article ce matin.

Voici le début :
"The Autonomous Archipelago of Åthorland

It was Friday night in the city of Writing when the shit hit the fan. I didn’t make it down to the SF Café myself till Saturday afternoon or so, having been off at a gig that Friday night; so when I finally stumbled in, somewhat worse for wear, to grab my daily brunch of coffee and a cigarette over the Twitter Gazette, the kerfuffle was already in full swing. It’s war! people were saying. War! The neighbouring states of Amazonia and Macmilland have gone to war! Even the poor citizens of Åthorland have been dragged into it, much to their chagrin! Chagrined? They were downright pissed, those Åthorlanders. Since there’s a rather sizeable contingent of them who hang out at the SF Café, it was hard not to notice their impassioned speeches from their counter stool pulpits, the conversations going on in the booths.

For those of you who don’t know, the tiny autonomous archipelago of Åthorland lies off the coast of this fair nation of Art. Just a spattering of craggy islands, it is, each with little more than a stony croft inhabited by a wild-eyed Åthor, with only their herd of kittens for company and inspiration. Each Åthor is a creative anchorite, you see, hoping to scrape a living for themself through their strange cottage industry — which we’ll come to in a minute. Most fail to do so, in truth, subsidising their… well… survival with summer-jobs as barnacle polishers or starfish attendants. A few manage to scrape by without this additional income to bring them up to the breadline. A tiny few — like Good King Stephen, for example, or the renowned Jakie Rowling — make such a success of it that the fame of their wealth spreads around the world; but their coral palaces and caviar-and-cocaine banquets are a far cry from the pitiable poverty of most Åthors, huddling in their stone-built shacks, living off the bacon harvested from their cats, drowning their sorrows in alcohol and (occasionally) the odd hit of of the hard drug they call kudos. Still, they’re a hardy people, the Åthors, and downright thrawn in their commitment to the Åthorlandish craft of kitten hair rug design."