Dinocon 2026 is already a few weeks in the past, so I am a bit late in writing about it. The reason is simple; other things got in the way, such as writing an important review, travelling, etc, etc.
So, how was it? It was truly massive, with a much larger audience than before; I heard that the number of visitors was twice that of last year’s event!. For me, the experience was completely different from last year’s DinoCon and from earlier TetZooCons, because I was a vendor this time. I had been a panel member, art exhibitor or just a guest in previous events, but being a vendor turned out to be a new experience. As a vendor, I could hardly leave our stall to listen to a talk, because there were always people (customers!) walking around in the vendors’ hall. I think I listened to only about 10 minutes of talks in all, so I cannot report on the talks at all. Then again, as a vendor you talk to many people, both customers and other vendors, which was also interesting and great fun, just in another way!
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| My wife at our half of the stall; the other half belonged to CM Kosemen (not present in the image). Copyright Gert van Dijk |
My wife and I shared a stall with CM Kosemen (Snaiad, All Tomorrows) to increase our percentage of dinosaur-related goods to the required level. I only had Furaha-related merchandise, but Mehmet sold speculative biology material as well as dinosaur art. He had brought 20 copied of ‘All Tomorrows’ that were all sold on the first day. I had brought 40 copies of the Furaha book, and those were all sold by early afternoon of the second day, so I probably could have sold 50 copies in all. Other vendors told me that those numbers represent very good sales. I hope the organisers take good notice of this, so speculative biology can become a fully accepted part of the conferences again, just as it was in TetZooCon days.
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| From left to right: me (Gert van Dijk), Dougal Dixon and CM Kosemen. Borrowed from CM Kosemen. |
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| Bookmarks from the 'Syndicate'. Copyright Gert van Dijk |
Dougal Dixon showed up too, so the three of represented speculative biology. We had even made bookmarks to celebrate the ‘Syndicate of Planetary Biology Societies’, in the form of a set of three bookmarks with one bookmark for each of the planets Greenworld, Snaiad and Furaha.
An important part of selling a book is having good reviews, so I showed a printout with phrases from reviews of ‘Wildlife on the Planet Furaha’. I thought I might as well show those excerpts here, so they follow below, with their links.
What’s next? Well, more ‘serious’ posts, of course. I also finally bought a 3D printer. I made many rough 3d sculpts over the years to help me work out lighting and perspective of various animals. I thought that I could edit them and liven them up in Blender, and then print them. The first attempts look better than expected...
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Reviews of 'Wildlife on the planet Furaha'
Dougal Dixon
This is a must-read book, which I heartily recommend.
Darren Naish Wildlife on the Planet Furaha is a real tour-de-force that does its subject very, very proud. I adore this book and recommend it extremely highly.
https://tetzoo.com/blog/2026/3/30/gert-van-dijk-wildlife-on-the-planet-furaha
Biblaridion Furaha is a fantastic example of how scientific rigour can be used to make a fictional world more cohesive and immersive, and a great addition to the pantheon of SpecBio classics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0lqBgO2xs4
Adrian Tchaikovsky For those who, like me, love speculative and alien evolution, there's a remarkable new book out, "Wildlife on the Planet Furaha" by Gert van Dijk. I met Gert at TetZooCon a few years back and some of the Furaha art was on display there. It's an incredible book, both for the images and the science on display.
https://bsky.app/profile/aptshadow.bsky.social/post/3m74jyqxxts2y
Davide Gioia This level of rigour and research sets Furaha apart from the majority of similar projects, making it among the most, if not the most, believable in this regard, a gold standard of hard SpecEvo if you will.
https://weirdanatomy.blogspot.com/2026/03/book-review-or-possibly-most-plausible.html
Matt Wedel The book embodies so much creativity and imagination, intellectual rigour and artistic virtuosity ... that to ask for more seems greedy in the extreme. If you’re coming to DinoCon this weekend, you can buy a copy from Gert in the vendor hall, at least until he sells out, which I think is quite likely. Go do the right thing.
https://svpow.com/2026/07/23/wildlife-on-the-planet-furaha-by-gert-van-dijk/
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