Nova 2007

The Nova short story competition winners were announced at Finncon a moment ago. This year the first place was a tie between two stories. The top five this year is:

1. Anne Alasirniö: Merestä sinä olet tullut
   Niilo Sevänen: Talven portti
3. Timo Saarto: Varrella virstan
4. Timo Saarto: Poika ja tinasotamies
5. Liisa Nurro: Luostarin ikkuna

Jyväskylä

Arrived in Jyväskylä just in time to miss all of today’s programming. Which had looked interesting, with all the science and writing and stuff, but nobody I talked to had seen any of it, so I can’t confirm there actually was any programming today. Also there were rumors of the organizers having lost Joe Haldeman somewhere in France for over a day, but everything is ok now.

The restaurant Sohwi served good food, but stopped doing so regrettably early. The tabletop hockey tournament Finnconkampen was won (once again) by Pasinen (a new collective term we made up for all the persons called Pasi Something-nen, because there are too many of them in fandom). Next year’s Swecon has a special buy-Tommy-more-beer discount for the duration of this Finncon only. The con proper starts tomorrow with a short Pirkinning.

Off to Finncon

Heading for Jyväskylä. Or was it St. Petersburg? I forget…

(I see there’s some online reporting of the event already.)

Atorox Thoughts

The Atorox award for the best Finnish sf short story of 2006 will be given at Finncon on Saturday. The award is decided by the Finnish fandom (it’s “our Hugo”), and this year there were a couple of changes in the process (for the better). First, artificial limitations on how many voters a sf society can have no more exist (this change is more psychological than real, as individuals were able to vote separately also before, but I think it’s easier to participate as a member of an “official association jury” than a single individual). This is clearly a good thing and revitalizes the award, which I think shows in new groups having the largest jurys: Risingshadow 13 voters, Deathwriters 7, and Spektre also 7. It will be interesting to see if this has an effect on what kinds of stories will be succesful—especially when this year some of the older societies (HSFS, HySFK, and the Tolkien society, I’m looking at you) didn’t manage to send in a single vote between them. Shame on you!

Another new thing this year is the completely revamped vote counting system. Instead of giving points to stories, the voters just rank the best of them in order (using single transferable vote, pretty much as in the Hugo voting). I’m sure this is a good thing because it both simplifies the voting process and makes it pretty hard for an individual voter to game the system. Explaining to the audience how the results were calculated might be a lot more complicated than before, but on the other hand I’m pretty sure that only a very small minority will care about the technical details anyway.

One last thing: my Atorox predictions this year. Or guesses, more like it, because I’m usually pretty lousy in these things. But anyway, here goes: based on my general feeling about the stories, both how “Atorox-winner-y” they feel to me, and the comments I’ve heard from a few other people, I’m picking three stories I think will be in the top five.

The first story is Fyto ja Ygg by Carita Forsgren. A bit unusual view on the “aliens conquer the Earth” theme, and might appeal to people who like the more traditional sf. Another pick is Toisinkainen by Anne Leinonen. Also science fiction, aliens, and other planets. A solidly written story, even if it didn’t appeal to me personally at all. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see this as number one. My third pick is my absolute favorite this year, Elegia nuorelle hirvelle by Hannu Rajaniemi. A splendid mix of post-singularity feel and traditional Finnish elements, this story would make an excellent representative of Finnish sf also abroad. I fear this is a bit too far-out for many readers, and therefore won’t win (even though it deserves to), but I’m hoping that enough voters see its greatness to at least make top five. Well, we’ll see the day after tomorrow.

R.I.P. Leena Peltonen

Sad news from Juhani Hinkkanen: Leena Peltonen, one of Finnish fandom’s most prominent members since pretty much the beginning, died on July 5 in Tampere after a long illness. Leena was there during the early days of the Turku Science Fiction Society, the Tampere Science Fiction Society & its zine Portti, and Aikakone which she edited for a decade. Beside her knowledge and passion about science fiction and fantasy, she was also known for her culinary skills as well as translating, among others, such sf notables as Roger Zelazny, Robert E. Howard, Peter S. Beagle, M. John Harrison, and Colin Greenland into Finnish.

I can’t say I was ever very close with Leena (even before the falling out she had with some parts of fandom, me included, in the early 90s), but she definitely had an impact on my coming to contact with fandom. The first time I remember hearing about other people who were into science fiction was sometime in the late 1980s reading issues of Aikakone in the local library, and a couple of articles on Aikakone also lead to finding out about the world of comics outside what was available in the local general store. Just today, I was cleaning up some of my papers and came across what probably was my first “official” contact with fandom: a response letter about a short story I’d submitted to Aikakone in the late 80s. The story was far from publishable, but Leena’s comments were sharp, insightful and encouraging. That the story never got finished had to do with other things completely—a better critique a fledgling writer couldn’t have hoped for. A big personality is gone and will be missed.

Leena at the roadside picnic in Tampere a couple of years ago

Update: there will be a memorial event at Finncon on Saturday (6 PM to 8 PM, Lyhty at the university campus), and a memorial book will be at the info in the main building for the duration of the convention.

Tähtifantasia Award Nominees

There’s going to be a new sf award in Finland—Tähtifantasia (“Star Fantasy”)—for translated fantasy literature. The award is given by the Helsinki sf society (publisher of Tähtivaeltaja) that also administers the Tähtivaeltaja award for best science fiction book published in Finnish.

The nominees for the first Tähtifantasia award are:

• Valkoiset omenat (White Apples), by Jonathan Carroll (published by Loki-Kirjat)
• Uuskummaa? Modernin fantasian antologia, by Jukka Halme (ed., Kirjava)
• Miekkamyrsky 2 (A Storm of Swords, 2nd half), by George R. R. Martin (Kirjava)
• Unohdettu Ombria (Ombria in Shadow), by Patricia A. McKillip (Otava)
• Pyhimysten ja mielipuolten kaupunki (City of Saints and Madmen), by Jeff VanderMeer (Loki-Kirjat)
  

This is a very impressive collection of nominees for the first award. Although, from looking at them, I think it’s pretty obvious one aim of the new award is to focus on non-traditional fantasy that breaks traditional genre boundaries (and the award committee pretty much says so themselves), and therefore it feels a bit silly to me to add a new award specifically for the fantasy “genre” instead of widening the scope of the Tähtivaeltaja award to cover all fantastic literature. There’s some discussion on this on Babek nabel (from the other side of the fence too).

The award jury consists of critic Toni Jerrman, writer Anne Leinonen, critic Elli Leppä, and journalist Vesa Sisättö. The winner will be announced in August.

Pub. Meet.

Today. Bar Bremer. Six. See you!