Finncon GoH Filks

The lyrics to the filks that were sung at the Finncon evening party are now available on the net. The filks, written for the guests of honor, are: Bye bye to the body and mind (for Justina Robson), Festival of Freshwater Squid (for Jeff VanderMeer, there’s also a Finnish translation), Gubben Rickard (for Rickard Berghorn), and Sarasvatin hiekkaa (for Risto Isomäki).

Finncon Videos from VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer has posted a couple of videos taken at the Finncon Saturday party on YouTube: the Ambergris filk performed by the Filk Freaks, and snippets from the mad scientist laughter competition.

Fandom Awards

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:

• the Kosmoskynä award was given to Liisa Rantalaiho; this life achievement award is given by the Finnish Science Fiction Writers Association in recognition of advancing Finnish science fiction literature.
• first price in the Nova short story competition went to Mari Saario for her story Keveät (“The Light Ones”). Timo Saarto was second, and Tiina Raevaara came third.
• Mari Saario also took the first prize in the Hekuma contest for writing erotic stories with a short story called Sateenkaari 2256 (“Rainbow 2256”). In this competition, M.G. Soikkeli was in the second place, and the third prize went to Jenny Kangasvuo, who also won the Atorox. It seems it’s not lonely at the top after all, but there is room for at least two.
• The Espoo science fiction society ESC announced an award for “the Espoo sf act of the year,” which was given to Vesa Sisättö
• The Jet-Ace Logan Appreciation Society named the plot in the King Kong comic book, issues 7 and 8, as the most ridiculous way to conquer the Earth (which includes giant sea creatures and mechanical animals). Also, the most stupefying way to save the Earth was in the Fifth Element, where Bruce Willis activates Milla Jovovitch by kissing her

Finncon: Saturday Evening

The official Finncon party took place at the restaurant Kaisaniemi which was very nostalgic for me, because the first Finncon I attended had its party there too, in 1989. This time was definitely an improvement—no live band to begin with. The food was pretty good, and the place not too crowded. If it hadn’t been unpleasantly hot inside, it would have made an excellent venue for the party.



There was some programming, but not too much to get in the way. A couple of awards were given by The Espoo science fiction society ESC (the award is the big black gorilla, in the picture above second from the right) and the Jet Ace Logan Appreciation Society (shown below).



A couple of performances followed. Anne Leinonen and Katja Salminen read sample entries from the Hekuma erotic writing contest. There were a couple of small gems in the selection.



The Filk Freaks from Tampere had prepared customized filks for the guests of honor. Especially the first one about Ambergris and the Festival had the audience in stitches.



Eemeli Aro, a relatively recent but admirably energetic addition to the Finnish fandom, performed a mad, but funny “documentary” about science fiction fans.



A great idea (that I hope we won’t see at every con from now on) was the “mad scientist laugh contest”. I think “hysterical” describes the event very well, and some of these mad scientist–wannabes were downright scary!



People ate, drank and were merry, for they knew that tomorrow they would still have another day of Finncon left. It’s a good thing it was a very short distance from the restaurant to our hotel…

Finncon: Saturday

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.

Pasi Jääskeläinen Interviewed on Risingshadow

The Risingshadow forum has an interview with Pasi Jääskeläinen about his new novel Lumikko ja yhdeksän muuta. Pasi also talks about his writing in general, his thoughts on genres, and such. Interesting stuff—although if you’ve been reading his blog, you’ve seen most of it there already.

(A note to the Risingshadow folks: when you put up good articles like this, please mention the writer!)

Johanna Sinisalo Scripts Iron Sky

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…

This is suddenly sounding a lot better than a Star Trek parody full of engineering student humor.