Earlier this week, Twin Cities Star Tribune reporter Allie Shah filed a story about the oldest science-fiction bookshop in America, Uncle Hugo’s of Minneapolis…still in business after 33 years, when Don Blyly (right) founded the store as a way to cope with the tedium of law school. (In 1980, he also bought the local mystery shop, Uncle Edgar’s: “It’s not cut and dried,” he observes, “but I’d say probably 60 percent of the Uncle Hugo’s customers are male and probably 60 percent of the Uncle Edgar’s customers are female.”)
But, just like that Star Trek episode where everybody has an evil counterpart, the good news for Uncle Hugo’s was mirrored by an unfortunate development at Minneapolis’s other major SF bookstore, DreamHaven Books. Local fantasy author Neil Gaiman broke the news on his blog after shop owner Greg Ketter emailed Gaiman about a break-in at the store. “They got a bit of cash but wreaked terrible havoc on the store and my office. Damages will be costly but insurance should cover a lot of it,” Ketter reports. “But after the lull in current business, this really will hurt. I don’t like charity but if you could encourage people to maybe buy an extra book off us soon, it may help. Three bookstores have closed in the Twin Cities in the past two months and I don’t want to make it four.”
NOTE: Months later, Blyly’s ex emailed to inform us that he didn’t buy Uncle Edgar’s, he founded it; “I should know,” she says, because she met him there.