Eating Muffins in an Agitated Manner

Cleaning the cobwebs

Posted by jukkahoo

Sorry about the mess. Well, perhaps not mess, but the dust and cobwebs and them tumbleweeds. We haven't had time to clean up.

I say "time". I mean "energy". Finncon 2009 was somewhat exhausting experience, which took the wind right out of my wings. It didn't help that I managed to crop up some extra activities beside, I co-edited two books; Ulkomaisia fantasiakirjailijoita 2 ( "Foreign Fantasy Authors" with Vesa Sisättö and Toni Jerrman) and Historiallisen romaanin taitajia 1 ("Masters of Historical Novel" with Juri Nummelin and Sari); did some serious overtime at work; and tried to keep sane at the same time with various other things, that I'm not going to mention here.

After this (wot? six weeks?) time I should be ready to say something about the con itself, but as I think about the long weekend, I can only remember a flurry of motion and some scattered panicky moments, when something or the other was at miss. Not the Guests of Honours, who were just superb! Or the mega-brilliant Staff, who managed to keep the con ship afloat amidst the Sea of Overwhelming Obstacles. Youse gyus rokkkk!

So, no real con-report, I'm afraid, as I didn't really see all that much. "But you saw the thing from within, sir?", says the wild-eyed person with a fluttering set of hands.

Well, yeah... so I did. So, I might have something to ponder about. And I do. I'll try to put to paper... erm, type to screen... write something about that, OK? Together with some thoughts about the Finncon and the future of Finncon in particular. 

Since we are heading toward something new - and old at the same time. 2010 will be a whole different ballgame and mindset. 2011 is trying to do something, which to my mind, is very difficult and probably not worth it. I think we've seen what Finncon/Animecon is and it is a mess of of a thing, that needs to rest in its laurels and be no more.

But what is Finncon? What kind of a convention should and could it be? It seems to me, that if we want to keep the original idea of "spreading the gospel" of SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY to the mundane masses and, of course, the occasional fans and interested parties, we need to think this through. Is it a literary convention, with emphasis on books, writers and science on the side. Or is it a more general kind of an event, where you can sample little bit of everything? Should it be exclusive or inclusive? Or something in between?

If you ask me (well, since this is our blog, you don't really have a say on this, so here goes) the answer is there in the middle of everything. I believe Finncon should be a literary-oriented sf/f con, with interesting program items from various and sundry fringe mediums (like comics, games, TV/films, horror, slipstream, science, tomfoolery etc). The emphasis should be on booksies and authors of those books, but it shouldn't be all sercon and dry. There should be games and interactive programming, stuff for beginners as well as advanced weir... members of fandom.

I've heard people say, that they'd like to see more media-oriented programming and GoH's. Well, duly noted. Not impossible, nor totally out of the question, but unlikely.

Finncon is a literary-oriented con. Has been. Will be. Despite being arranged together with Animecon, the Finncon-part has always been pretty heavily veered toward literary side of things. And as I see it, the core of the people who have been organising the event in the past, are literary-minded fen.

Shurely we enjoy media. I know I do. But not as much as I like them books. If someone would arrange a mediacon in Finland, I could see me going there. I might even pay for it. A bit. Especially if the Guest(s) would be interesting.

OK, they'd had to be interesting. That's my caveat.

They wouldn't be cheap. Compared to them, George R. R. Martin was cheapo. Heck, Harlan Ellison would've been cheaper, and he was expensive as hell (which, by the way, was the reason he has never been to a Finncon)!

OK. Rant-like part of this entry over. As is this entry. But I have only skimmed the surface here. I'll be back. In a day or two. More thoughts on Finncon, 2009 edition of it and the future of. Feel free to comment.

Åcon3

Posted by jukkahoo

Refreshments were needed to quench the thirst.

And so it went. Everything happened like in them olden films: things rushed upon you at lightning speed and the whole thing ended in a sudden halt. *sigh*

"Punch-Out-and-Play"! Hah! That would devalue this important piece of Star Wars memorabilia.

How was it? Can you explain a rose? A sense of elation for a well argued point, followed with a witty remark and a sip of good ale? Yes, perhaps that does it. A laughter, too.

 


Iron Sky? Sounds interesting! What is it?

It was cold and damp, for the first time and this was the latest one ever (it all happens during the Ascension weekend). The number of us was more than last year, can't remember the first one. 70+, and yes, I never got the actual number of warm bodies from the organisers. Shurely someone did knew?

 

Ah! It's a re-release!

The weather withstanding, everything was more or less the same: the Fen, the Guest of Honour (the wonderful Steph Swainston), Adlon (though we were less than thrilled about the closing of the bar at 9PM), Mariehamn (only short visit to the center this time, but I did see Alandica and the Thai restaurant), Saturday Dinner (which we keep calling banquet), Tax Free booze and Room Parties. And the program, mustn't forget the program.

OK. Everybody behave now. Or else...!

Some of you may remeber that I did the programming before, but since we Elders were kicked out of the committee, other people were in charge of the programming. Which I think was fine, if not really geared toward me. I missed the mix of fluff and seriousness, which I like to call "idea-entertainment". There was serious items, like stuff about copyrights, worldbuilding and innovations in SF. All good, solid ideas. There was some seriously fluffy stuff like "Do Not Disturb" -sign workshop, Never Mind the Buzzaldrins and SF-Babbel -quizzes. I especially liked the workshop, since the rooms weren't equipped with said items and last year them cleaners did came and woke us up rather early...

Oh my, I hope I am not disturbing you gentlemen?

I can't say too much about the quizzes, since I hosted the first and participated the second, but to my mind, they went well. Although I must register a complaint to the Accountess, I agree I might have lost to JohanA, but certainly not by four points!

Single bedroom for half the convention.

I think we could do with a little bit more programming in the future and serious items might be better served, if the participants would make some preparations beforehand. After three years of unpreparedness, we ought to aim higher next year. Personally, I blame the first year, where I participated to almost every single program item, which more or less meant, that there was alt least One person, who knew where the program at hand was going. I may have set a bad example. My bad.

Who did you say was the Guest of Honour of Eurocon 2011?

I didn't visit Stallhagen Brewery, but if we're doing Tjudö Winery next year, count me in already! I heard only good things about the brewery and I think that such trips are the way of the future conventions. While the cameraderie and pub and programming is good, such little extras will add a dash of evenbetterness to the whole thing. 

Ms. Swainston! One question, please!

I missed some regulars, was delighted to see quite a few new faces, but in the future, we ought to diversify. We need more Swedes, more Norwegians, Danes, Brits, Russins, Balts, Germans, Dutch, French, all the rest of the world. The aim may be too lofty (yeah, I know, it is that), but wouldn't it just be even More Fun? A Finnish relaxacon with a dozen or so Swedes is nice, don't get me wrong, but I believe the original idea was a bit more international. How do we achieve this? Beats me, but I'm hoping.

Wait a minute! There was a Green Man?

I hope to write more later. There may be a few things I might've forgotten to mention here...

I'm on Dreamwidth

Posted by Sari

I have an LJ account which I use solely for commenting purposes, never felt the need to split my net presence to different blogs. And yet, I went and got myself a Dreamwidth account which I plan to upgrade to paid account. Here is why:
1) Dreamwidth's busines model is ad-free; their only clients are the users. As I have stated earlier one of my pet peeves about web 2.0 is the unsolvable dilemma of trying to please two different clienteles: users and advertisers, so I really, really want to see if Denise and Mark have managed to create a viable business.
2) The software is LJ fork, but they have done quite a lot of neat things with the site I like better than LJ. The most important is that friending has been separated into reading list and give access to features. It gets rid of the unnecessary baggage the term "friend" has on LJ and is just a much better way to manage access to content.
3)I give you Infotropism on Ada Lovelace day. I just think this is cool and important and worth supporting.
4) Totally shallow reason: I got my proper name as my username: I am Sari over there. That is somewhat neat.

I don't quite now how I will use the account, propably I will post less structured more journally type entries there and use muffins for reviews, and more structured arguments. It will be interesting to see weather LJ-type platform is really more communal than more traditional blogging platforms like typepad.

Oh, and I have one invite left if anyone wants it, first comment, first served.

Books from Finland and Leena Krohn

Posted by Sari

Books from Finland is now a webzine, which I think is actually pretty smart move. I think they might reach more readers this way than with the old rather stuffy-looking paper version. The site itself is reasonably clean and I give special props for using tags.

Appropriately, there are few essays about Internet in the zine. I think Jyrki Lehtola is a bit late in discovering  that there are flamewars on teh interwebs, I really don't think social networking tools bring anything new to the equation. Others do better, though. I especially liked this article about internet, reading, google books and - OMG - singularity by Leena Krohn.

What makes YA literature YA?

Posted by Sari

There has been a lot of disucssion in fandom about this years different awards nominees and the large amount of books categorised as YA among them. Some think it is good thing, some think it is a bad thing, some think it is an irrelevant thing. As I do read quite a lot of genre YA and get paid for it, I want to ask something else. Why are some of these books categorized as YA? What makes The Knife of Never Letting Go an YA novel? it can't be just a young focaliser, because then What Maisie Knew would be YA. It can't be a didactic approach/style because most YA novel's don't have that. It can't be the that the narrative is about young person growing up and learning, because then all bildungsromans would be YA. Or has the world changed so that if Dickens would publish Great Expectations now, his publisher and bookstores would market it as YA? Because for the life of me, I can't see how such a harrowing, linguistically ambitious and political novel as The Knife of Never Letting Go which makes you feel sick inside is especially aimed at YA reader? Or Earthsea books, what on earth is there in Tombs of Atuan or Tehanu that makes it an YA novel? It is not that teenagers should not read these books, I just don't see what makes it a novel especially suited/written/marketed for them instead of adults.

Frank Cottrell Boyce says it here much better than me.

Hockey

Posted by Sari

Look, I think Rinne was great. Good, solid saves and he is surprisingly fast for such a large man. And trusting a good goalie to take the shots and not blocking his line of sight is a strategy. But when Norway gets 30 shots on goal I do think our defense needs to look in the mirror.

Also, new TV. The colors, man...

C. Superbus Lipotus

Posted by Sari

Martti has had some very interesting times lately. First great upheaval was the Bone. We bought him a nice reindeer bone from the pet store as a treat. Martti was very suspicious of it and it took him three days to actually go near enough to touch it tentatively, and one more to actually grab it and start eating. Go figure. We have also started training some basic obedience stuff, though Martti seems to think that if I give him goodies inside, it means I am going to trim his nails. Which has meant giving him random treats with clicker just to remind him what it is all about.

We also met another Lancashire Heeler on one of our walks, first time this has happened. Another first was a nice lady with Västgötaspets who was the first ever person to be more taken with Martti than Viivi. A woman of discerning taste, obviously. As you see, camera is still something a bit suspect, but he does stay put and does not get too stressed about being photographed :-)

My kind of marketing

Posted by Sari

Remember the scene from Fisher King where people just began to waltz in the Grand Central Station? I loved that scene. Apparently others loved it too. Behind the links are adverts for T-mobile and a Dutch TV-show which both use similar delicious idea. But as we live in the era of social media, things easily get out of hands.

Tähtifantasia 2009

Posted by jukkahoo

Helsingin science fiction -seura jakaa vuosittain Tähtifantasia-palkinnon parhaalle suomeksi käännetylle fantasiakirjalle. Vuonna 2008 ilmestyneistä kirjoista asiantuntijaraati on valinnut viisi kaunokirjallisesti korkeatasoista teosta ehdolle tämänvuotisen palkinnon saajaksi.

Ellen Kushner: Thomas Riiminiekka (Vaskikirjat) – ”Raikas legendan uudelleentulkinta, herkkä balladi rakkaudesta, uskollisuudesta ja totuudesta.”

Gregory Maguire: Noita (Sammakko) – ”Maailman ongelmia lastentarinan pohjalta käsittelevä aikuisten romaani, joka koskettaa ja tarjoaa pohdittavaa.”

Patricia A. McKillip: Basiliskin laulu (Karisto) – ”Kielellisesti erittäin aistivoimainen tarina kostosta ja anteeksiannosta.”

José Saramago: Oikukas kuolema (Tammi) – ”Satiirisen huumorin sävyttämä kertomus elämästä, kuolemasta ja ihmisen perusluonteesta.”

Robert Silverberg: Kuningas Gilgameš (Vaskikirjat) – ”Historiallinen romaani sankarista, joka etsii kuolemattomuutta ja löytää rauhan.”

Tähtifantasia-palkinnon asiantuntijaraatiin kuuluvat kriitikko Jukka Halme, kriitikko Aleksi Kuutio, kirjailija ja kustannustoimittaja Anne Leinonen sekä fantasiaharrastaja, Risingshadow.netin edustaja Osmo Määttä. Palkinnon voittaja julkistetaan Helsingin Finncon 2009 -tapahtumassa kesällä.

Tähtifantasia-palkinnon aiemmat voittajat ovat Jeff VanderMeerin Pyhimysten ja mielipuolten kaupunki (Loki-kirjat, 2006) sekä Ngugi Wa Thiong'on Variksen velho (WSOY, 2007).

Quis custodiet yadda yadda yadda

Posted by jukkahoo

So, it's that time of the year: no more ice hockey (until the World Championships begin), sf-co/op-meeting happened and there's still time before Åcon begins the summer. Looking forward to that last one. A lot.

And the unfilmable was filmed and its apparently good. Some say very good, some say good enough. Having not seen it yet (was working while the rest of the humanity went and saw it), so no review here (and let's not give any spoilers in the comment section, OK people!).

I was planning on writing something about the co-operation meeting earlier, but somehow I never managed to. It was good fun, but somehow the co-operation part felt a bit, what's the word I'm looking...? Un-co-operative?  There were few announcements of simultaneous sf-related activities, which somehow felt arkward, since this was supposedly one of the most important things this whole co-operation meeting was founded for.

There was also a bit of a blase feeling at times, with different clubs and cons and magazines telling their respective future plans, and quite a few people were just minding their own business, not really that keen on following the whole enchilada. I admit, I was well unprepared for my part with the Finncon/Animecon 2009. Sorry about that. I had great news and more to say, but I managed a mere "Ask me, if you want to know something". Sad.

However, despite these little misgivings, I was well pleased with many things. I applaud SPEKTRE for the tiresome work they've done for this event for so many years now. Kudos! I loved Horst-rap! I enjoyed the auction and felt really pumped up after that. Thank you all for the generosity, the buyers as well as the donors. Much appreciated! Special note to Tero Norkola and BTJ, as well as Jeffster. You gave to a good cause, man! I mean, men.

A real treat was the morning smof, which I hope to be a regular feature from now on. Kudos to Tero for inventing it. Must find a better place next time, though this one was well OK.

So, good meeting in all, but hopefully next time will be even better! And with sauna, too! We need to cut down the size of the general meeting of Finncon Corp., even if it means that people would have to be at the locale earlier. Smoffing is FUN!

So, what about "Quis custodiet" and that jazz? Well, I just wanted to spread the love and these couple of links:

Saturday Morning Watchmen

Ombudsmen

The "Watchmen" Lie: Hollywood Sends More Depravity Your Kids' Way Costumed as "Superhero" Flick