Sinisalo Visits Minnesota

Author Johanna Sinisalo is currently visiting the Gustavus Adoplhus College in Minnesota, as this year’s Out of Scandinavia Artist in Residence. Her week includes visiting classes and engaging with students and faculty. She will present a free public lecture titled “Finding Fresh Perspectives—The Breakthrough of Non-realistic Genres in Finnish Contemporary Fiction” tomorrow (May 8). So if you happen to be nearby, go visit!

New Management at ESFS

The European Science Fiction Society has gone through a generational shift at the Kiev Eurocon last weekend. It’s not always easy to find people to run organisations like this, and the same familiar faces have manned the posts of the organisation for quite a few years. So it’s probably a very good thing to get some fresh blood in the organisation, and this time there’s also a representative of Finland among the names.

The new board of ESFS is:

• Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf (Sweden), chair
• Saija Kyllönen (Finland), vice chair
• Vanja Kranjcevic (Croatia), treasurer
• Gareth Kavanaugh (Ireland), secretary
• Bridget Wilkinson (UK), award administrator

The new board has promised to streamline the workings of the organisation, especially the General Meetings of ESFS (hooray!), and to develop the website (a very good thing, since the current one seems to be down altogether). I wish the new board success in their endeavours!

Finnish Sf 210 Years Old

Today marks the 210th anniversary of the first Finnish science fiction story, En dröm (“A Dream”) by Gabriel Israel Hartman, published in Åbo Tidning April 6, 1803. The story is set almost a hundred years in the future (in the year 1899 that is), and in it, scientists in the Paris National Institute discover microscopic universes when studying drops of blood with a cool new contraption, the microscope.

Enhörningen has published both the story and a short article about Hartman on its website (in Swedish, natch).

Turku Pub Meeting Tomorrow

Tomorrow is once again the first Thursday of the month, and that means a pub meeting in Teerenpeli. Hope to see you there at six!

(Also, I’m thinking of checking out the burgers at Rokbar before the meeting. Feel free to join me there—Aurakatu 14—around five.)

Åcon Hotel Booking Deadline Extended

The deadline for booking a room at Adlon for Åcon 6 was yesterday, but since quite a few of the attendees missed that, the hotel has agreed to extend the booking deadline by a week. So go ahead and book your hotel room now if you haven't done so yet!

(And of course, if you haven't already signed up and paid your membership fee, you should also do that ASAP.)

Finncon Gets Cultural Grant

I'm happy to report that the Finnish Cultural Foundation has given this year's Finncon a grant of 10.000 € to help in organising Finncon 2013. Yay!

More Sinisalo in English

The world English rights of Johanna Sinisalo’s excellent novel Enkelten verta (The Blood of Angels) have been sold to Peter Owen, her UK publisher. The novel will also come out in French this year, from Actes Sud.

The novel, set in the very near future Finland, deals with the mystery of the global disappearance of bees, intertwined with the stories of three generations of men in a family and their relationship.