Charles Vess in Turku

Charles Vess, who is one of the GoHs at Finncon this weekend, and his wife Karen Shaffer are coming to Turku on Monday and would like to meet some local fen. If you’d be interested in meeting them, drop me a note either by e-mail or SMS (040 576 6450).

Monthly Pub Thursday Reminder

Tomorrow is again the first Thursday of the month, so there will be the traditional Turku sf pub meeting. Bar Bremer, at six.

Swedish NOFF Delegate Selected

The Swedish fandom has selected their NOFF delegate for the year. The winner is Jonas Wissting, who will be traveling to the Tampere Finncon in July.

Jonas comes from Linköping where he’s been active in fandom since the beginning of the 2000s. He was involved in organizing this year’s Swecon as well as a couple of earlier Linköping conventions, and is also a member of the Åcon 3 committee. He’s coming to Finncon “because it’s nice to go to a convention with Finnish fans,” so say hello to him in Tampere!

Finncon Accommodation Available

Hotels in Tampere during Finncon are pretty hard to get any more, but if you need accommodation, Tampere fen have promised to offer accommodation to a few travellers. Contact Ari Seppi (@uta.fi) for more information.

The Lord of the Rings Symphony Comes to Finland

The Tampere Filharmonia will play Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings Symphony in Tampere-talo (the same place that hosts this year’s Finncon) next spring. There will be two concerts, on May 1 and 2. The concert is accompanied with illustrations by Alan Lee and John Howe.

Tickets went on sale on Monday and are available from Lippupiste and Tampere-talo.

Tähtivaeltaja Award 2008

The Tähtivaeltaja Award for the best science fiction book published in Finnish in 2007 has been announced. The winner is Olen legenda (I Am Legend) by Richard Matheson, published by Vaskikirjat.

The jury commended the novel’s timeless quality, dark atmosphere, and scientific approach that effectively separates the book from the vampire fantasies. The award jury were: critic Hannu Blommila, editor Toni Jerrman, critic Elli Leppä, and journalist Vesa Sisättö.

Rajaniemi Represented

SFScope reports that Hannu Rajaniemi is now represented by the John Jarrold Literery Agency. Congratulations, Hannu!

Hannu is a Finnish author, nowadays living in Edinburgh, whose texts have appeared in Futurismic, a few anthologies (including two Year’s Best SF anthos) and in several zines (including Usva International 2006, available online as a PDF) and who has been described as the next big name of sf by Charles Stross. I’m a big fan of his writing and hope this move means we’ll be seeing more of his texts, and hopefully longer ones too, in the not too distant future.