Danish Fan in Helsinki Tomorrow

Olav, a friend and fellow fan from Copenhagen (and chair of Eurocon 2007), will be staying in Helsinki for a couple of days. I've got his phone number in case someone there would like to meet him on Wednesday evening for some beers or such.

NoFF Delegate Announced

The Finnish NoFF delegate for 2008 has been announced: Tampere fan Marianna Leikomaa was chosen to attend a Nordic convention of her choice during the year.

Marianna is a member of Smial Morel and has been actively involved with the TamFan fantasy con and Kuvastaja book award, and is also the Supreme Queen of Everything of this year’s Finncon in Tampere. You may also have read her critiques in Portti and Kosmoskynä, or seen her filking in many fannish events.

Congratulations to Marianna! Contributions for NoFF can be made to account 800027-36932210 (recipient is NoFF administrator Ben Roimola; put “NoFF” in the info field). More about NoFF.

Tähtivaeltaja Award Nominees

The nominees for the 2007 Tähtivaeltaja award have been announced. They are:

• Haiteksti (The Raw Shark Texts) by Steven Hall (WSOY)
• Olen legenda (I Am Legend) by Richard Matheson (Vaskikirjat)
• Nedut (original novel) by J. Pekka Mäkelä (Like)
• Marsin ikävä ja muita kertomuksia (short story collection) by M. G. Soikkeli (Turbator)
• Musiikkia miesäänille ja lentäville lautasille (short story collection) by Howard Waldrop (Kirjava)

The award is given annually to the best science fiction book published in Finnish (either translation or original work) by the Helsinki Science Fiction Society since 1986. The jury consists of journalist Hannu Blommila, critic Toni Jerrman, critic Elli Leppä, and journalist Vesa Sisättö. The winner will be announced later in the spring.

Henki ja Elämä in Tampere

The Henki ja Elämä (“Life and spirit”) book festival takes place in Tampere this weekend. There will be a couple of sfnally interesting program items during the event:

• Risto Isomäki talks about his new book Litium 6 (Sat 10:30, Viinibaari)
• Esko Valtaoja tells how he became a writer (10:30, Tähtien Sali)
  
• Johanna Sinisalo discusses the new Moomin graphic novel Muumimamman vaarallinen nuoruus (“The dangerous youth of Moominmamma”) she has written (Sat 13:30, Viinibaari)
• Esko Valtaoja talks about his new book Ihmeitä – kävelyretkiä kaikkeuteen (“Miracles: a walking tour of everything”) (Sat 13:30, Tähtien Sali)
  
• Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen talks about his new short story collection Taivaalta pudonnut eläintarha (“The zoo that fell from the sky”) with his editor Kanerva Eskola (Sat 14:00, Viinibaari)
• Sari Peltoniemi discusses her latest YA book Suomu (“Scale”) (Sun 12:30, Lasten maailma)
  

Finnish Sf in Year’s Best

The forthcoming Year’s Best SF 13 anthology (edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer) will have a Finnish short story in it, Johanna Sinisalo’s Baby Doll (first published in Finnish in 2002). Baby Doll was also published in French in the 2005 Utopiae anthology. Go Johanna!

(via Babek nabel)

Finnish Writers on the Net

Finnishwriters.com is a new site that showcases Finnish authors and their texts. The site was started by Juha-Pekka Koskinen, Anne Leinonen, and Sari Peltoniemi (who are the only featured authors at the moment, but more is to come).

On the site there are introductions of the authors in English, Swedish, and German, and also some sample texts (extracts from novels and short stories—mostly in English, less so in the other languages). Unfortunately they’ve chosen the less-screen-or-other-reading-device-friendly pdf format for the texts.

I think the site is a good idea, and suggest you go have a look. All the currently featured authors have written fantastic fiction, although the site isn’t limited to any specific genre or type of literature.

Atorox Nominees Wanted

TSFS is asking for nominations for the best Finnish sf short story of 2007. Every member of the Finnish fandom can send in their candidates (in addition to the preliminary jury), and the ones that get the most votes will end up on the final nominees list.

(There seems to be a slight change in the rules this year: there is no pre-set minimum amount of votes a story needs to get on the nominees list; instead the rules just say, “20 to 30 short stories will form the candidate list”. I guess this is to avoid a situation like last year where the amount of required votes needed to be adjusted on the fly to have at least some nominees.)

If you have trouble remembering which short stories are eligible, there’s a thread on the FSFWA forum where people have been listing stories published in 2007. (Update: or you could of course just go to the Atorox page where there is a list of stories too.)