Posted by jukkahoo
Time flies like a banana and it's already Friday the 13th. *happy birfday mr. president*
I had a chance to meet this year's guests at the Helsinki press conference, where the press was eagerly waiting for Joe Haldeman, in order to interview him. But where was Joe? Nobody knew. Bangor, Paris, St. Petersburg, all good choices, but the fact remained, that he was not in Helsinki. Hopefully he'll turn up.
Which he of course will. Aeroplanes, funny things.
We're leaving tomorrow at noonish. I should be in Jyväskylä by 4PM, as there is this panel I'm supposedly going to be talking about publishing. I will also be around for several other items, so if you start getting an excess of me this weekend, blame the organisers of this year's Finncon. THEY wanted me for all of these program items. Leikki leikkinä, ihan mahtava coni tästä tulee joka tapauksessa!
Yeah, you heard it right. Publishing. Be there and hear everything I know about the subject matter :)
Finncon is always very much anticipated in our family. I'm giddy and Sari..., well, not so. This year should be no exeption, but the news from last week really took some wind out of the fun. Losing Leena is a huge loss for the whole of Finnsih fandom and the whole field of SF/F in Finland.
Leena was the bedrock, the SF-Mother, who knew pretty much everything there was to know about important things. She faded to the background, but was still a formidable person to talk to, those far too seldom and apart times we managed to either make a visit to Tampere or Leena (and Juhani) to Helsinki.
She was one of the very first BNF's I remember from the early days when I started reading the fanzines. All those well-thought-out articles about various interesting authors. All those strong, authorative opinions about them. *sigh*
Leena was also The editor, who (almost single-handedly) stood on the barricades, defending fantasy as a genre from all those more SF-attuned editors. A very strong reason, why I decided to make similar standing with my articles and pieces about different writers and subgenres.
R.I.P. Leena. You will be remembered.
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