John Ajvide Lindqvist in Helsinki

The Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist is coming to Finland for the publication of the Finnish translation of his novel Ystävät hämärän jälkeen (Låt den rätte komma in / Let the Right One in). You can meet him in the Suomalainen kirjakauppa in Tapiola, Espoo, on Thursday August 21 at 16:30, and in the Akateeminen kirjakauppa in Helsinki, on Friday August 22 at 16:00.

Going to Parcon

Flights and accommodation for Parcon have been booked. Really looking forward to seeing what a Czech convention looks like, traveling to Plzeň (home of many a good beer I’m told), and of course meeting the VanderMeers and Hal Duncan again.

There are three of us traveling to the con from Finland. If anybody else reading this is going too, drop me a note—it would be great to meet you there!

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Picnic

The Helsinki University sf club organizes their traditional holistic picnic next Saturday (August 16) starting at 2 PM. Everybody is welcome to attend.

The picnic starts at the railway station (outgoing local trains). You’ll need some money, the Helsinki local transportation time table, and some salted peanuts. The target of the picnic will be decided randomly using the Helsinki area map of the phone book, and will be determined using Random Destiny.

August Mafia

It was a very nice pub meeting today. A lot of discussion about the future of Turku fandom and events (not a lot of the people who are supposed to be the future of the Turku fandom and events present though—one might almost deduce that the future of Turku fandom doesn’t particularly care for the “old folks’ meetings”). Also, it turned out there are lots of Mythbusters fans in local fandom.

Today’s mafia zine has a lengthy report of the Finncon–Animecon event held in Tampere a couple of weeks ago (some reporting available also on this blog). Plus stuff on books and comics and some news too. I couldn’t stay for too long (babysitting duties), but the merriment went on when I left.

Pub Meeting on Thursday

Yes, it’s the first Thursday again. So, come to Bar Bremer at six on Thursday to talk about Finncon (there will be a new issue of the Mafia Zine that contains my Finncon report), or of other things of sfnal interest. Welcome!

Finncon: Sunday

Back from Finncon. (Although I’m sure the dead dog party is still going strong as I type this.)

Sunday started (for me, anyway) with an excellent discussion about the definitions of the fantastic. Smart and interesting commentary that flowed very well. This I would have listened to for a longer period.

In addition to the panel, I saw Charles Vess and Petri Hiltunen show and tell about their works and interests (interesting), part of the definitive war panel (a bit formulaic, as the definitive panels tend to be nowadays) plus the fandom quiz by Jukkahoo (funny and arbitrarily judged, as always, although the competition might be just a little unfair when the questions are about events some participated in, while some others hadn’t even been born yet).

The closing ceremony started with awards for some competition, for people who mainly weren’t present. And then they had some anime awards. I’ve probably said this before, but I don’t think awards belong to the closing ceremony, but should be a separate item instead. But anyway, final words were said, the K-9 (who evolved from a cow in a year) was passed on to the next year’s chairs, the committee, guests, and other participants got their (well deserved) thank yous, and then it was time to go home.

So, the first Finncon in Tampere is over. We’ve had the event in a whole new city, by a whole new crew (or many new people anyway). That is great, I think, and I hope we’ll see another Finncon in Tampere someday. The con newszine mentioned 5 000 visitors on Saturday, so the total amount of attendees should be somewhat higher than that (but probably not by very much).

The venue worked reasonably well (if only—as I said yesterday—because the weather was nice and a lot of the anime people spent their convention outside). I heard there were a few technical glitches and some crowded moments, but I managed to avoid those. As long as you didn’t go to the “anime end” of the building, there was enough space to move around. The sf societies’ tables and vendor space were better than in the previous two years—you could actually approach them and see people—but there still was a problem of them being in a crowded hallway.

But even if the crowding issue wasn’t as bad as it has been the previous couple of years, the appearance of the event was still badly disproportionate and the place still felt too much like you were at an anime event that contained these little spaces of science fiction inside it (the programming rooms), and it wasn’t easy to connect with friends among that many people.

The programming ran nicely on time and the programming spaces seemed to be tended to well, but personally I thought the content of the programming was somewhat light and general—much of it felt a bit introductory. (Of course I’m judging largely by the items’ descriptions on the program book, so I might be wrong here.)

But all in all, I had a good time. Talked to old friends, made new ones (hi Val & Mike!), and was entertained by the programming. A big thank you to all the organizers, you did a huge job, and the Tampere Hall is still standing. (I hope all of you are too.)

photos

Finncon: Saturday Evening

The yesterday party was a typical Finncon party—in good and bad. The bar, Telakka, was too small and way too hot to be comfortable. Fortunately there was a terrace outside, but it was crowded, so you had to choose between sitting and breathing. The lines for the bar were quite long.


Of course, the place being crowded also meant lots of people to talk to.


The masquerade worked—or didn’t, depending on your expectations—as usual. The trend nowadays is unfortunately to have the masquerade at the bar,
which usually means there’s no stage and too many people to really see
the contestants. I think Cheryl is getting used to the Finnish way of doing masquerades, but the other judges probably were in for a bit of a surprise if they expected anything like the Worldcon masquerade. Instead of doing serious costuming, the Finns tend to just whip up costumes and concentrate more on having fun. (Of course there occasionally are some really fine costumes too.)

Maybe this had something to do with the judges deciding to go for a bit more unorthodox way of creative awarding: instead of traditional scoring, there were awards for the most unexpected costume (the Inquisition), the most obvious brown-nosing (the Petri Hiltunen characters), and so on.