M.G. Soikkeli has won the Portti short story competition. This is the third win for Markku. The results were announced in Tampere on Thursday; this was the 21st time the competition was held.
I was impressed with how knowledgeable Finnish fantasy fans were and how seriously they took books and the authors they enjoyed. I have rarely if ever been confronted by readers who knew so much about what they loved.Along with the column there are also three interviews conducted in Finland. So, go read Jeff’s words and listen to Jukka Halme, Toni Jerrman and Niko Aula (of Loki books) talk about sf.
The program book of the con is nice. And the excellent bar spent a lot of the evening playing Iron Maiden. The spirit of fandom was released during the opening ceremonies. After a recount there are fifteen Finns here.
Arrived in Sweden very early in the morning.Shopped at Comics Heaven and Sf Bokhandeln, and ate a very nice pub lunch.
Imagicon is well organized for a Swedish convention. Everything was in place, program items start on time, and there even are a con newsletter and helpful signs outside pointing the way to the con site.
GoH sightings. Joe Haldeman stopped being conforming after he realized people weren't going to throw hand grenades at him for being different any more. Geoff Ryman wanted to talk about sex because he thought it would be more interesting than talking about writing.
The current panelists are talking very quietly, so I'm sitting in the back, blogging instead.
Åcon’s guest of honor will be Hal Duncan, a British author whose debut novel Vellum has gotten quite a bit of attention in the sf circles. His second novel (and the other half of “The Book of All Hours”), Ink, will be published in February. Mr. Duncan should prove a very interesting guest to meet, I think.
The Turku Book Fair will be arranged for the 14th time this weekend, from Friday September 29 to Sunday October 1. The Finnish fandom has a stand, “Science fiction ja fantasia Suomessa,” at the Book Fair (booth A83), so if you happen to be at the Fair, come say hello and listen to contemporary Finnish authors talk about their books!
The Tamfan 2006 fantasy convention will be held this Saturday (September 30) in Tampere. This year’s theme is fandom, and the guests of honor are distinguished Finnish fandom members Irma Hirsjärvi and Ben Roimola.
There were many awards given out during Finncon. I’ve already blogged about the Atorox award (won by Jenny Kangasvuo), as well as the Tähtivaeltaja award that went to Risto Isomäki. Other awards at the con were:
Saturday was just packed. I went to the con site before the doors were opened to help set up the fandom table, and the site was already hot. This didn’t bode well.
The opening ceremonies. The usual stuff. Organizers talking, usually introducing the guests and thanking a lot of people. Wishing everybody a good convention, if they’re feeling especially generous. They had all that, with the Finncon head honcho Jukka Halme and the Animecon representative Kyuu Eturautti doing the talking. In addition, there were some very funny translations appearing on the screen behind them.
…and yes, the guests got introduced to the audience.
The two panels I had agreed to do were back-to-back right after the ceremonies. First, we talked about fanzines with Anne Leinonen moderating and Pasi Karppanen and Ben Roimola also participating. I thought we did pretty well, and got some discussion going (Ben of course was an easy target with stupid ideas like there being too many fanzines already). I produced and gave out a fanzine called FCZ, made specially for the occasion, that had some background on fanzines, short articles on zine writing by Anne and Jukka Laajarinne, plus a brief look at Finnish fanzines and an even more brief mention of a couple of foreign zines.
The other panel was about foreign cons, how they differ from Finnish ones, and why everyone should go to them, with Cheryl Morgan (moderating), Johan Anglemark and Fionna O’Sullivan. That went quite ok also, I thought, even if most of the panel was Cheryl talking about her extensive knowledge about different conventions around the world (which I think was the best way to do the item anyway). In the end, I’m still not sure we really got anybody interested in going to a con abroad. Unfortunately.
After the panels, I felt for a break, so I headed to the bar, and sat there for a while with Harri (another fan from Turku), talking with many people from several countries. A few beers were just the thing before getting on with the convention. The hallways were much too crowded, so the order of the day was either watching the program items or sitting in the bar (not that I’m complaining about that—not much, anyway).
While GoH Jeff VanderMeer was reading there was also in another room what I was told was easily one of the best panels of the day, Kulttuurit kohtaavat (“The clash of cultures”). But VanderMeer reading excerpts of his texts and answering questions from the audience was extremely entertaining, so I don’t regret going to see that instead.
By the way, there was also an auction with a twist held earlier in the same room: you could bid either to own the item, or to have it destroyed. You can see some of the results on the floor all around Jeff…
I don’t think I’ve been to this many program items at a Finncon in years. But there just were so many promising-sounding items, with interesting people on them. One such panel was “Is Ansible More Than Just an Anagram for Lesbian?” It was supposed to be about the best science fiction concepts and ideas, and trying to imagine more of them for the future. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly stay on topic, but concentrated on science fiction inventions slowly becoming reality instead. Not a bad discussion on that, though. Hannu Rajaniemi got more than his share of questions, being the resident scientist of the panel.
After a quick revisit at the bar (I don’t think I missed anything really important this time, and had a great conversation with Jeff VanderMeer and his wife Ann there, which beat any official programming they had available) there was one of those items I’d especially waited for: the “SF/F Deadly Sins” panel with GoHs Justina Robson and Jeff VanderMeer, plus Cheryl Morgan and Stepan Chapman.
The panel didn’t disappoint, it was lively and all participants witty and funny. No grand truths were revealed, but the panelists themselves said they’d decided to play if for laughs, and they got them. On several occasions.
After seeing so many panels, I started noticing some program-fatigue. Or maybe it was just that the next item I peeked at, “the master class with the late celebrities,” just wasn’t very funny. Mike Pohjola doing his Jay Leno/Cryptkeeper bit on the stage was ok, but I left after a little while listening to him talking to Kummisetä (funny as he usually may be) “channeling Tolkien”. If doing a talk show is difficult, doing a mock–talk show that actually is funny is probably much harder, and this one just didn’t work very well, I’m afraid.
There were program items still going on, but the day had been hot and humid (especially so inside the Paasitorni building), so it was time to skip the rest of them and head back to the hotel for a shower before the evening party. Of the items I missed, I heard some very good things about the Slash/Fanfic panel, moderated by Emma London. Might have been worth watching, even though I have very little interest in fanfic, and even less for slash fanfic. More on the evening later.
The makers of Star Wreck announced on Sunday that their next project, Iron Sky, will be scripted by none other than Johanna Sinisalo. According to sources there’s something to do with space battles. And unexpected findings in space…Jenny Kangasvuo took home a double victory in this year’s Atorox awards. Her short story Kaikessa lihassa on tahto (“All Flesh Has a Will”) was voted the best Finnish short story published last year, and Aalto nahan alla (“A wave under the skin”) took the second place. The 24th Atorox awards were given out on Sunday at Finncon 2006 in Helsinki.
