Iron Sky Awarded at Utopiales

No mention on the official web site yet, but according to a tweet from Energia, Iron Sky was awarded the Audience Award and a Special Jury Mention at the Utopiales science fiction festival in France. Congrats!

Turku Newsletter

The “Turku newsletter” is a new project that sends an e-mail on the 1st of every month. The newsletter covers sfnally interesting things that happen in the Turku area during the month.

The e-mail is distributed via the Turku sf society mailing list. This is a low-volume list that everybody interested is invited to join (no membership required). The newsletters are also archived, so you can read them via the web if you prefer.

The archive plus a link for joining the mailing list can be found on the list info page. The first newsletter came out yesterday, and covers events in November.

Pub Meeting on Thursday

November starts this Thursday, and that means that the monthly pub meeting is upon us once more. See you at Teerenpeli on Thursday at six!

URS has published a new anthology, Me emme valehtele ja muita Puolueen hyväksymiä novelleja (“We do not lie, and other stories endorsed by the Party“). These will be for sale at the pub meeting, so come take a look!

New Sf Con in Vantaa Next April

Spefi-Vantaa is a new one-day minicon that will be held at the Tikkurila library April 13 next year. There will be a guest of honor (a good one, but not officially published so I can’t reveal who she is yet) and other programming, in the same vein as the Tamfan and Turconen minicons. More info on the website, or from Ella Peltonen.

Finndom in Swecon

Kontrast, this year’s Swedish national convention, starts on Friday. There are a couple of Finnish program items scheduled this year.

This year, for the first time ever (as far as I know) there’s a Finnish language program item. Suomikummaa (Saturday 2 PM) is a discussion about new and interesting Finnish sf books, in Finnish (apparently there are quite a few Finnish speakers in Swedish fandom and Uppsala who might be interested in finding out about good books to read in Finnish).

On Saturday there’s also a program item about the recent elephant in the Finnish fandom: the Helsinki Worldcon bid presentation (6 PM). The Helsinki bid doesn’t have a table at the convention, and Eemeli, the bid chair, is not attending, so if you have questions about the bid, come here and ask Jukka everything you want to know about the bid.

On Sunday at 11 I’ll be chairing a panel discussion about what’s currently happening in the Finnish fandom. This item is in English, so if you’re interested in our doings here in Finland, welcome!

There are many interesting program items at Kontrast, and quite a few Finns participating in other items as well. Hope to see you at Swecon!

Locacon in Jyväskylä

Lokacon is a minicon that will be held in Jyväskylä on October 20, at the Writers House. The themes are the end of the world and steampunk, and the guests are YA authors Katri Alatalo and Magdalena Hai, and comics scholar Katja Kontturi. On the preceding Friday, there will be a literature and science fiction event at the Multia library. Both events are free to attend.

Turconen

The Turconen minicon started on Friday. There was a pre-convention reception at Turun Sarjakuvakauppa organized by the local sf society and the Turku comics society. I’m told it was one of the most popular events ever held at the store. The official pre-con pub night at Cosmic Comic Café was also a success, with hardly a chair left at the pub. The night went quite well: meeting friends over a few beers, accompanied by the cosmic soundtrack played by Dj Tekri.

Yesterday was the official convention day. The arrangements started quite early in the morning, and we were well set up by 10:30 when the doors were opened to the public.

Our great host at the library, Gunnar Högnäs gave a presentation on the e-books lending situation at the library, with lots of information about the hoops they have to jump through with publishers, and also some good links to resources for lending books.

Next up was our Guest of Honor, author J. Pekka Mäkelä, who gave an impressive performance, reading some texts accompanied with a guitar and some sound effects. Afterwards he was interviewed by Shimo Suntila.

The other program items for the day included a round-table discussion about pulp literature that was accompanied by delightful audience participation (mostly by Boris Hurtta, a pulp author, among other things, himself). There was also a discussion about favorite characters in science fiction that was plagued by a couple of unfortunate cases of cancellations due to illness, but luckily replacements could be volunteered, and the discussion was quite entertaining. The last item, a new books discussion, also went smoothly and produced a good list of sf books to check out. All in all, I think the programming was quite succesful, and the audience seemed to enjoy it.

Our goal was to have 30 persons attend the event, with an optimistic goal of 50 persons. The most people we counted in the programming room at one time was 54 (which filled out the room quite nicely), and since there were people coming and going the whole day, I’d say at least 70 persons visited the event, so we were very happy about the turnout.

After the convention, there was an opportunity to visit the comics store across the street. Mäkelä visited a local book store to sign some books, and we went to have dinner afterwards. In the evening, the con ended with another pub night, this time at Teerenpeli. The upstairs lounge was just big enough for the crowd that showed up, and many fun conversations were had. I noticed at least a few new faces at the event—I hope some of them liked what they saw and will stick around!

I would say the first Turconen was an unqualified success. Thank yous all around to everyone who made the convention possible!

more photos | Shimo’s con report | J. Pekka Mäkelä’s report