Happy New Year!

Merry 2013!

As it’s the first of the month, the monthly newsletter about sfnally interesting events in the Turku area is out.

Also, the pub meetings continue as usual. The first this year is on Thursday, in Teerenpeli at six. Hope to see you there!

Topelius Nominees

Suomen nuorisokirjailijat, the Finnish union of authors writing for children, youngsters and young adults, awards the Topelius prize annually for best Finnish youth novel. If this year's nominees are anything to go by, the "culture was" has truly been won where it counts, in the minds of young readers.

Grafomania reports on the nominees, and four out of the five nominees are described as being fantastic fiction. There is ecological sf, dystopic fiction, paranormal romance, and magical realism. When the one remaining nominee is explicitly mentioned to be realistic fiction, that tells me that different forms of the fantastic are becoming the norm, at least among the youth books.

Kone Foundation Grants

The Kone Foundation gives out annual grants for research, art and culture (a total of 13.6 million € in the latest round). Among the cultural grants recipients there are a couple of sfnally interesting ones.

• Maria Björklund, 10.500 € for an album-length story an accompanying exhibition of her wonderful comic strip Planeetta Z.
• Anna Kristiina Tuura, 7.900 € for a movie script called "Utopia", an ironic comedy about the future of Finland after receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees in 2017.
• Ismo Virtanen, 9.000 € for an interplanetary full-length animation film Robonauts.

Itäranta Takes the World

I mentioned some of this in an earlier post, but it’s worth mentioning again: HarperVoyager has signed Emmi Itäranta for a two-book English rights deal in UK, US, and Australia. The first, her debut novel, Memory of Water (Teemestarin kirja) will be published in the UK next spring.

Teemestarin kirja has also sold to Germany for publication by Reihe Hanser planned in 2014.

This is great news! I’m happy that one more excellent Finnish book is finding its way to a much larger audience.

Update: the book has also been sold to the Czech Republic, to Plus.

Portti Short Story Competition 2012

The Tampere Science Fiction Society has traditionally kept very quiet about the results of their annual short story competition, but from the URS Facebook update we learn about this year’s results. The results are:

1. Janne Juhani Kuusinen: Todistaja (2000 €)
2. (tie) Katri Laukkanen: Kierto (500 €)
   Tero Niemi: Kasvottomien kellojen Ursula (500 €)
3. Shimo Suntila: Milla ja Meri (300 €)

The award for the winner is 2000 euros; the total sum of the awards divided between the winners and honorary mentions is 4200 euros. The award jury was: professor Frans Mäyrä, editor Kanerva Eskola, and Portti editor Raimo Nikkonen. Congratulations to the winners!

Updated with info from FSFWA (story names and price sums); more info there.

Kalevi Jäntti Award to Emmi Itäranta

The Kalevi Jäntti fund gives out awards to promising young writers. This year, three authors have received the award, and one of them is Emmi Itäranta for her debut novel Teemestarin kirja. The novel is a dystopic tale of a future world that is almost out of water. The novel is beautiful and I’m very happy it gets recognition. The prize is worth 16 000 euros.

Update: According to YLE news, Teemestarin kirja will be published in English by HarperCollins in USA, Britain and Australia in 2014.

Iron Sky Team's New Project

This has been covered, in addition to the Finnish papers, in at least Variety & Hollywood Reporter (and of course spread all over Facebook and Twitter), so you’ve probably seen it already, but: the Iron Sky team’s next film (together with several international players) will be Jeremiah Harm, a hard-boiled sf action flick based on a graphic novel by Alan Grant and Keith Giffen. In addition to the international cast and crew, they will once again be collaborating with fans, so check out the team’s blog for further information along the way.