Fantasy Evening at British Council

From Risingshadow: an evening of fantasy at the British Council Finland on October 29, featuring fantasy writers Angie Sage, Seita Parkkola, Anne Leinonen, Eija Lappalainen, and Viivi Hyvönen.

Free admission, but the amount of attendees is limited—contact Sari Tuomaala (040 197 3997) if you want to go and for more information.

Turku Book Fair 2010

The Turku International Book Fair started today. This year we have a special sfnal guest: to celebrate the publication of the Finnish edition of Ink, Hal Duncan is visiting Turku. You can meet him, along with many other interesting writers, today at the “Book Fair Evening Mass”, organized by the Like, Sammakko, and Savukeidas publishers, at Club Dynamo (from 7 PM onward).

Hal will also, naturally, be at the Book Fair. Below are some examples of the many interesting program items you can see this weekend:

Saturday

• 10:30 Boris Hurtta interview (Fiore-lava)
• 11:30 Boris Hurtta at the TSFS booth
• 12:10 Comics creators on stage / Ilkka Heilä, Pentti Jarla, and Juba Tuomola
  
• 13:00 Pekka Manninen at the TSFS booth
• 13:30 Turbator show / Boris Hurtta, Juri Nummelin, Petri Laine, Petri Salin, and others (Turku-lava)
  
• 13:50 Hal Duncan interview (Agricola-lava)
• 14:30 Myths in the arts (kokoustila 3)
  
• 15:00 Like & TSFS sf seminar “Spotlight on Hal Duncan” (kokoustila 1–2)
• 15:45 Hal Duncan signing at the Like / Rosebud booth
  
• 16:00 Hal Duncan kaffeeklatch at the TSFS booth
• 16:30 Limits of political humor in literature / Pertti Jarla & others (kokoustila 3)
  

Sunday

• 11:00 Women’s comics morning (Agricola-lava)
  
• 11:00 Jukka Laajarinne interview (Fiore-lava)
• 11:50 Jani Saxell (& others) interview (Fiore-lava)
• 13:10 Pertti Jarla interview (Arktinen Banaani)
  
• 14:00 The roots of Finnish horror literature (kokoustila 1–2)
• 14:50 Astronomy in Turku (Porthan-lava)
• 16:10 Kalevala and pop culture (Porthan-lava)

The full program (in Finnish) can be found on the Book Fair site.

Boris Hurtta Gets Critics Award

The Finnish Critics’ Association has given its “kilon punnus” acknowledgement award to Boris Hurtta, a versatile author of several novels, short stories and fact articles. Hurtta has written many kinds of books from horror and adventure to role playing games, travelogues, and histories. He’s also an author of numerous articles, among others about early Finnish fantasy literature, the monasteries of Meteora, and second-hand book stores in Turku. He’s a known bibliophile and a very well-liked person in the Turku cultural circles.

The Apex Book of World SF Vol II

The Apex book company has announced the TOC of the second volume in the Apex Book of World SF series. Among many familiar names (if you’ve been following the world sf scene lately), such as Fábio Fernandez, Nnedi Okorafor, or Ekaterina Sedia, (and many more that at least I’m not familiar with yet) is one very familiar to us Finns: the collection features Hannu Rajaniemi’s short story Shibuya no Love. That story is kind of special to me—I originally read it in Futurismic (if memory serves), and liked it so much I wanted to share it with people. This lead to me starting my current fanzine, Turu Mafia Zine, that published the aforementioned story in the first issue (with the author’s permission, of course).

The Apex Book of World SF, vol. II will be published in mid-2011. Check it out!

New Sf Line from Jalava

Risingshadow reports that Jalava will start publishing a new line of sf books under the title “Saturnus scifi”. The series will comprise science fiction classics from the 1950s to the 1990s, the first books will be Jumalan moukari (The Hammer of God) by Arthur C. Clarke. I wish them luck and hope they find their audience for the books!

H.P.Lovecraft Historical Society

This summer, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society of Finland was founded “to promote interest in horror literature, honor the memory and works of H.P. Lovecraft, support the literary hobbies of its members, spread information about the world in H.P. Lovecraft’s time and support role-playing activities”. And they’ve got a web page.

Viikinsaari Picnic

The Finnish fandom’s annual relaxcon, the Roadside Picnic at Tampere Viikinsaari, took place yesterday. It was really good to see people again—even though it’s only been a couple of weeks since Finncon, those are always so hectic that you never get to talk to as many people as you’d like to.¹⁾

This year, there weren’t quite as many people present as in the last few years. The closeness to Finncon was probably a factor,²⁾ but also there were a couple of other, overlapping events this year: the Usva writing camp was held over the same weekend, and the Turku sf society had an official meeting also on Saturday.³⁾ Also, summer vacationing probably still going on for some. Still, a good couple of dozen fen travelled to the familiar barbecue & picnic place on the Viikinsaari island to meet each other and have fun. And it was good.

The weather wasn’t nearly as hot as we’ve grown used to this July, but it wasn’t chilly either (don’t listen to the people who complained; it was a perfectly fine Finnish summer day). We roasted all kinds of things over the fire, chatted, took pictures, avoided the scary flesh-eating ducks and the hordes of thirsty wasps (who seemed to especially like to crawl in people’s cider and beer bottles—no doubt to stage an assault into the unsuspecting victim’s mouth from there⁴⁾). No casualties were reported (Ella’s ankle got nibbled on by a duck, but I think that was the worst of it).

Being fen, there naturally was some smoffing going on. Got a good initial response for Båtcon—organizing a minicon on the ferry en route to the Stockholm Eurocon.⁵⁾ A new literary project that Vesa talked about may also have nudged a bit towards becoming reality some day (if so, more on that later).

There was of course talk about Finncon. Some feedback on this year’s convention, as well as throwing ideas in the air about how to create an even better one. Too bad the Finncon 2011 committee members hadn’t showed up, but at least there were several people from the 2012 convention participating.⁶⁾

After sufficient picnicing⁷⁾ we continued in Ravintola Tillikka’s terrace that has good food and a very nice view on the river, overlooking the bridge. And there was also a surprise visit from Ellen & Delia, on their way back from their great Karelia expedition. It was lovely to see them again and hear the stories of their adventures.⁸⁾ The cultural exchange also covered comestibles: turned out, Ellen didn’t much care for the beer she had ordered, and Dr. Pasinen was unhappy with the bee troot someone had included in his pyttipannu dish;⁹⁾ thus, the traditional Finnish “beets for beer” program was invoked.¹⁰⁾

All good things come to an end, and so around 11 o’clock we¹¹⁾ had to leave the merry company and head back to Turku. See you all again soon, I hope!

Vesa L. has also written a report, with a lot of pictures included.

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¹⁾ Finncons are awesome. Relaxing with friends over a barbecue is awesome in a different way.

²⁾ Especially to some Helsinki area people, to whom venturing outside the Kehä 3 highway more than once in a month seems to be quite a hurdle.

³⁾ Dammit, people—these are just the kinds of things the annual co-operation meetings are supposed to prevent!

⁴⁾ And, to be swatted or bitten to death immediately afterwards. But nobody said wasps are very smart.

⁵⁾ If you want to know more, ask Hanna Hakkarainen or me about it.

⁶⁾ Seriously, these kinds of events are ones you really don’t want to miss when organizing a convention, provided you’re interested in how things have been done before or in doing cooperation with other people outside your own group, which isn’t a requirement for running a convention of course.

⁷⁾ In other words, when people started running out of stuff to drink.

⁸⁾ They showed us pictures of them practising their blacksmith skills, and of course the famous hedgehogs participated too.

⁹⁾ Tried to convince him pickled beetroot is delicious; he wasn’t having any of it.

¹⁰⁾ One might perhaps also say, invented.

¹¹⁾ Thanks to Jaana and Ben for the good company during the trip!