Harry Turtledove Reveals The Future Of His War That Came Early Novels To Dying Fan
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The internet is full of crap. Trillions of bytes’ worth of time-wasting and brain-draining glop, countless man hours spent Photoshopping stupid pictures of cats or posting upskirt photos of cocaine-addled starlets. And that’s not even taking into account the truly dark corners of the net, the sights — and sites — that will kill your soul by inches, just by knowing that they exist. With all the flotsam filling the web, both banal and barbaric, it’s easy to forget sometimes just what an amazing tool the internet can be. Case in point: the story of a young man named Nachu Bhatnagar.
Nachu Bhatnagar is dying. He also, as we’ll come to learn, has some truly amazing friends. Nachu is a huge fan of SF author Harry Turtledove’s alternate-history series The War That Came Early. Unfortunately, that series won’t conclude for several years yet…and that’s time that Nachu very well may not have. Enter his friend, a Reddit user with the handle Kivakid, and a guy who has earned so much good karma that he’ll need an offshore storage facility just to hold it all. Knowing that Nachu was, quite literally, fighting for his life, and that even the smallest of gestures could turn a dismal day into a hopeful one, Kivakid decided to make his friend’s dream come true.
As revealed by Galleycat, Kivakid appealed to his fellow Reddit users for help contacting Turtledove, or an appropriate editor, in hopes of getting an early-reader copy of the next book in the series as a birthday gift for Nachu. His plan worked, and you can see the presentation of the gift to his friend in the video below. Fair warning: you’re probably going to need a box of Kleenex handy.
But wait; to borrow a phrase from Dan Savage, it gets better. As the video mentions, Kivakid also managed to get in touch with Turtledove himself, who offered to talk to Nachu personally over the phone. What the video doesn’t reveal, however, is just what that call would include. According to the Social Times, Turtledove agreed to reveal his future plans for the book series to Nachu. Turtledove agreed to give this fan a guided tour of what was to come in his favorite series of books, books that Nachu might not be around to read for himself.
And now if you’ll excuse me…I’ve got something in my eye.
