Conventions

WFC Restaurant Review – Indian Summer

~ Cheryl

A heavy rain storm hit Brighton mid-afternoon, and as I had to be on a 5:00pm train I bailed on Pride as soon as it stopped. I’d not actually had any lunch, and as I had time I popped into Indian Summer.

East Street, not far from the Pavilion, is best known for designer clothes and high end beauty products. Lush is probably the most affordable shop in the street. There are, however, restaurants. These include Terre à Terre, which I am told is the best vegetarian restaurant in town; Maison du Vin, a bistro and wine bar; and Indian Summer. In fact they are all next door to each other.

There was a set two-course lunch menu so I opted for that. I started with Paneer Shashlik — skewers loaded with paneer (Indian cheese), pineapple, beetroot and tomatoes. That was delicious. The main course was Laal Maas, a Rajasthani lamb curry served with pulao rice, and in my case a roti on the side. It wasn’t as firey as the menu makes out, but it was beautifully cooked and the roti was wonderful. There was mango lassi too, obviously. I hadn’t been planning to have dessert, and all of the ones on offer were Western. However, the lady at the table next to me had something which looked amazing, so I asked for one too. It turned out to be espresso cheesecake, served in chocolate cups with amaretto crumbs on the side rather than a crumb base. Goddess it was good. I am so going back to that place.

A couple of logistical comments. Many British shops and restaurants don’t take Amex because the charges are higher (and, you know, it is American and therefore EVIL). Both places I ate in Brighton were happy to take my card, and the waiter in Indian Summer explained to me that Amex has a big office in the city, so everyone has to take their cards. Also he reinforced the message I got from last night: if you want a table at a good restaurant in Brighton, especially for a large group and especially at a weekend, book in advance.

I’ll have a photo stream, including all of the dishes I ate this weekend, up later in the week.

WFC Restaurant Review – Smokey’s

~ Cheryl

The most important thing that I have learned today abut eating out in Brighton is that you have to book in advance. Admittedly it is the height of the summer, and things are very busy. Also the Australian cricket team is in town, so there are lots of hungry, and thirsty, Australian fans to cater for. Even so, if you want to eat at a really good restaurant in Brighton at the weekend then you need to book in advance. You can’t just go out of an evening and expect to get a table anywhere popular.

The chap I spoke to at The Little Fish Market said that they are fully booked in advance most weekends. This was a great shame, because the place looked lovely and the menu was interesting.

On the other hand, it meant I had to go in search of somewhere else to eat. Fortunately I had somewhere in mind: Smokey’s. I knew that they were down on the sea front, but I hadn’t quite twigged that they are almost next door to the Metropole. And they are, as the name suggests, an American barbecue restaurant.

There are some downsides. Indoors was fully booked. As it was a nice evening, I was able to sit at one of the outside tables, but the outside furniture is not very comfortable at my size, and would be even worse for the gravitationally challenged. Make sure you get a table inside.

Also the beer selection is poor. I ended up with a bottle of Blue Moon, which is actually quite nice, but is an “American craft beer” brewed by Coors in Canada. They could do so much better.

As for the food, the buffalo wings I had to start were spectacular. When they said spicy, they meant spicy, and the barbecue sauce was great too. The pulled pork main course was OK. It was a very big mound of meat, and it was very tender, but the sauce was nowhere near as tasty as for the wings. I guess it isn’t supposed to be spicy, but even so I’m sure there must be places in Kansas, or even Chicago, that do barbecue better.

What I will say is that this place does barbecue very competently, which is a very unusual thing over this side of the Atlantic. Better still, they do breakfast. If you find yourself fed up of the traditional British heap of oily stuff fried in more oil, and are hankering after some huevos rancheros, blueberry pancakes, or even just that weird stuff that claims to be bacon but has no meat on it, this is the place for you. And, being almost right next to the hotel, it is very convenient.

With all that pulled pork in my stomach, I decided to take a very long walk along the seafront. It was a lovely evening, if a trifle chilly. The mad British had decided that, with temperatures dipping below 20C, it was cold enough to go swimming. I declined to join them.

Brighton can be incredibly beautiful at this time of year: sweeping vistas of elegant Georgian sea front terraces. Sadly come the end of October it will probably become afflicted with gale force winds off the Channel and driving rain, but if we do get a few calm days I can see Kevin and I having breakfast at Smokey’s and then walking it off along the promenade.

Hello Croatia

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

So, it looks like I shall be off traveling again in August. I really enjoyed my time in Zagreb last year, and wanted to go back. I’m pleased to report that I will be doing so. I’m going to Liburnicon.

I hasten to add that this is not a result of my supposed vast wealth. I am able to go because I still have a reasonable collection of United frequent flier points, and though the extreme generosity of the Croatian fans who are providing me with transport and places to stay when I am in their country. I am enormously grateful to them.

Liburnicon is held in Opatija, a seaside town just to the east of Istria. It was apparently a favorite holiday destination of the Austrian Emperor, Franz Joseph I. Guy Gavriel Kay has been there as a guest, and warmly recommended the convention to me when I met him in Toronto in June. Oh, and the convention has a pirate theme this year, complete with a “pirate boat party” to one of the offshore islands. How cool is that?

While I am there, I expect to be announcing the winners of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards. That, of course, is dependent on the jury, and I apologize if I have just dropped them in it, but I was told that this would be feasible.

I shall, of course, take lots of photos while I am there. I’ll also try to blog as much as I can about the event. I want to do my best to repay the generosity of the Croatian fans. I am so very lucky.

World Fantasy Scouting

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Next weekend I’ll be in Brighton for Trans Pride, and while I’m there I should make good use of the opportunity and scout out restaurants in advance of World Fantasy. Here are a few places of interest.

My favorite Brighton restaurant (well, Hove actually) is Coriander. However, I’ve been trying to phone them to make a booking and got no answer. I’ve now seen that Yelp has the restaurant marked as closed. No wildebeest burger, then. I am distraught.

Assuming that’s confirmed when I get there, top of my list to try out is The Little Fish Market, which sounds very interesting. Also, fish. Have I told you that I have cat genes?

American visitors may, of course, be much more interested in MEAT. For them, the best option would appear to be The Coal Shed. It is also a little more pricey.

If you prefer a taste of Olde Englande, I can recommend English’s. I’ve only eaten there once, but while I was having my lunch Judi Dench walked in, which suggests that they can attract people who can choose to eat anywhere.

Finally, because traditional British food means curry these days, I’m going to check out Indian Summer. They’ve won a bunch of awards recently and come highly recommended. That hopefully means that they don’t serve the cookie-cutter dishes common in most curry houses. If I’m really lucky they’ll compare well with the places I ate in Delhi.

Finncon – The Awards

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I missed all of the award ceremonies at Finncon (except the one I gave). However, the reliable Tero has all of the details.

There were three short story awards announced. You probably won’t recognize the winners unless you are Finnish, but given the way things go they could all be internationally famous soon. The winners and runners up are listed here.

Of more interest outside of Finland is the Tähtifantasia Award, which is for fantasy books first published in Finnish. A very competitive field included The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, Going Postal by Terry Pratchett and Snake Agent by Liz Williams, plus a Swedish linked collection, Svenska kulter: Skräckberättelser (Swedish Cults: Horror Stories) by Anders Fager. However, the winner was The Modern World by Steph Swainston. I’m delighted for Steph, and hope this encourages her to keep writing. Further details are available here.

Update: details of the Swedish book fixed with thanks to Johan Jönsson.

Finncon – Some Reaction

~ Cheryl

One of the things I love about Finncon is the way in which the foreign guests all say “I can’t wait to come back”. It will, of course, be impossible to give every writer attending a Worldcon the same level of individual care and attention that is lavished on the Guests of Honor at a Finncon, but nevertheless it gives you a good idea of how well Finnish conventions are run.

In that vein, here is Peter Watts being forthright as usual (warning, contains photo of me). And here is Caitlin Sweet being much more lyrical.

And in case you think that’s just this year, here are a couple of tweets that came in while I was in Helsinki.

https://twitter.com/deliasherman/status/353873709519478784

Finncon – Day 3

~ Cheryl

Yesterday morning began with a fascinating panel on writing and music. It covered a range of topics, including what music is good to write to, how you evoke the sense of listening to music in your books, whether you should include a “playlist” at the back of your novel, and novels which are of interest to people who love music. This is the sort of panel I would love to be on. Then again, I want to see it done with Liz Hand, Ian McDonald, Al Reynolds, Ellen Kushner and Jon Courtenay Grimwood.

Next up was a 2-hour meet-up of international writers, to which our Russian & Chinese friends turned up. I announced the short lists for the Translation Awards, and we got to shower congratulations on Karin Tidbeck. Various plans were hatched for how we could do things to further international cooperation at next year’s Finncon.

Then we did Hall Costume judging. I posted a picture of the winner yesterday.

Back in the hotel, I got the Translation Awards announcement online, and then it was time for the closing ceremonies. There was a dead dog party in the evening, with fabulous food. And then it was time to say goodbye to everyone, with much sadness. Another marvelous Finncon completed, and lots more authors added to the “Finncon is the best convention in the world” club.

Finncon – More Pictures

~ Cheryl

Finncon has its own Tumblr feed, which is full of great pictures of the event. Here are a few.

Tony Stark shows off his armor

Tony Stark

All fans welcome here

All fans

They assure me that this isn’t a mosquito

The Fly

Kisu before the accident

Kisu as Two-Face

Even aliens need refreshment

Alien & coke

Our Hall Costume winner, Kia Selonen as Zelda (photo by Sanna Pudas)

Zelda

Finncon – The Masquerade

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

This year’s Finncon masquerade ran pretty much flawlessly. The only real issue was the lack of entries. We were supposed to have 9, but Kisu dislocated her knee during the day and was in hospital having it checked out when she was supposed to be on stage. The only comment I’d make is that contestants do need to remember to spend more time on stage, and stand still occasionally.

As usual, I was one of the judges. Some of the GoHs declined the honor, and very sensibly, rather than strong-arm them, Hanna (co-chair and masquerade director) chose to offer the job to others. So Hanna and I were joined by Tom Crosshill (Latvia), Nene Ormes (Sweden) and the brilliant Finnish artist, Ninni Aalto. We had plenty of time to sort the prizes, and just enough time to grab dinner at the nearby Italian restaurant, before having to turn up at the evening party for the prize-giving. Everyone else was happy to let me make a fool of myself on stage, so I did. That included a whole bunch of bad tree puns and proposing marriage to Tony Stark. Apparently it went down well, but I won’t bore you with the details, I’ll just show you some pictures. These are all by Sanna Pudas (FantasyFan on Flickr) and used under a Creative Commons license.

Medusa and Daphne

Medusa and Daphne

Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters

The Dwarves

The Dwarves

It was the beautiful singing of the dwarves, plus the fabulous facial hair (several of those dwarves are women) that won the dwarves Best in Show. However, the Ghostbusters were great too, even if they did exterminate one of their children (the kid playing the ghost). If it is any consolation the Ghostbusters were the subject of the best photo of the convention: this one by Mikko Löppönen, which makes magnificent use of the Cable Factory setting of the convention and the aftermath of the thunder storm.

The Ghostbusters have been working

Finncon – The Russians Have Come

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

With the St. Petersburg Eurocon now being a real thing, Russian fans very sensibly turned up at Finncon to promote the event. They also kindly put on a panel to update us on the state of SF in their country. And boy is there a lot to catch up with. Last year there were 777 new novels published in Russia. Add into that anthologies, collections and reprints, and you have a heck of a lot of books. Never mind one person not being able to read everything eligible for the Hugos; no one in Russia can keep up with all of the SF in Russian.

Of course the quality is not always that great. If you are familiar with the Black Library series of books about the Warhammer universe you’ll have some idea of what the Russians mean by a “literary project”. They have lots of these, the most successful being an ongoing series about a group of meddling time travelers.

Oddly, at the same time, their magazine publishing is declining. The only Russian language short fiction print venue left is Mir Fantastika, which is more like SFX with fiction than like Asimov’s. (Apparently there used to be a Boris Strugatsky’s Magazine, but that has gone out of business.) Weirdly there is still a Russian language SF fiction magazine published in Israel, and possibly one in Germany too. And the Russians are starting to do online magazines, which is good news.

Something else that is on the decline is translation of English language works into Russian. That’s down to piracy, which is a shame, but doesn’t surprise me.

There isn’t much Russian short fiction available in English, but that will change. The St. Petersburg committee are planning to follow the excellent example of Zagreb and produce an anthology of modern Russian SF for Eurocon members. I’m very much looking forward to that. In the meantime I’m hoping to have a Small Blue Planet episode devoted to Russia fairly soon, and my new pal Nikolai (who lives in Estonia and appears to speak more languages that I have heard of) is hoping to write an article for someone about modern Russian SF.

I recorded the panel. It may appear as a podcast at some point if the quality is OK.

Finncon Day 2 – E-books, Academics & Thor

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

My other panel at this year’s Finncon was on the subject of ebooks. I got to moderate it (thanks Jukka!), which means that it went pretty much as I hoped. There were no lengthy digressions into technical neepery, and no political rants. We covered a whole lot of interesting issues, and I gave away a bunch of business cards at the end. Hopefully this means a few more sales.

I confess to grabbing lunch rather than going to Peter Watts’ GoH talk, which may have been a mistake as I think he talked about cephalopods. Tentacles are good.

Immediately after lunch there were two fairly serious panels. The first saw a bunch of writers and critics, including Aliette and Stefan, talking about the use of metaphor in SF. Tom Crosshill moderated and kept it all moving smoothly.

This was followed by Merja Polvinen talking about using the techniques of cognitive narratology to analyze The City and The City. Most of you, I suspect, will glaze over at the term “cognitive narratology”, but basically all it means is the study of how the mind processes story. In the case of China’s book, this means looking at the linguistic tricks that he uses to convince the reader of the reality of his twin cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma. This is the sort of thing that all serious writers should take an interest in. You can learn so much.

By this point I was seriously in need of a nap, so I headed back to the hotel. The skies looked a little dark, and shortly after I got to my room Thor put in an appearance. It was very loud, very wet, and thankfully very brief. By the time I had to head back to the con it was dry again.

The last panel of my day was a presentation by some visiting Russian fans, which was very interesting and worth it’s own post. After that I had to judge the masquerade, and again that is worth a post of its own.

Finncon Day 1 – Hugos, Beer & Burgers

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Friday began with more academic papers, which I will write about eventually, but not when I have so few braincells as I have right now. That was mainly a result of the rest of the day. I had to leave around noon to get to the main convention site. I was a bit miffed about this because it meant that I missed the papers on android women and M. John Harrison’s Light, but I was needed on the panel about this year’s Hugo Award nominees.

Actually we talked almost exclusively about the novels and short stories. There was a surprising amount of agreement. The panel (Tommy Persson, Marianna Leikomaa & Jukka Halme) agreed with me that the novel list was very poor, and that the short stories were all very good in their own ways but appealed to very different audiences. We also touched briefly on Novelette to note that “The Girl Thing Who Went Out For Sushi” is brilliant and you should all read it.

After that I inhaled some food and went to see Peter Watts being interviewed. Peter ingratiated himself with the locals immediately by saying that he wanted to stay here having sauna for the rest of his life. He’s Canadian; I’m sure he’ll be able to handle the Finnish winter.

Around 16:00 I finally managed to get into my hotel room. The Holiday Inn here is a very nice, modern hotel with pretty much everything you expect from such things, and free wifi. It is about 5 minutes walk from the con site. Note that his is not the site, or the Holiday Inn, that are the proposed Worldcon venue, but if the other Holiday Inn is as nice as this one you’ll all be very pleased when you get here.

Back at the convention, Aliette was interviewed by Tom Crosshill, and I met the contingent of Russian fans who have come over to make friends here. I have since purchased a membership in the St. Petersburg Eurocon (2015), and I see that Joe Abercrombie is a Guest of Honor. They also have some chap called Jukka Halme, who is getting to be a GoH at half the cons I go to these days. This is what you call targeted marketing: our Russian friends are appealing to British and Finnish fans, which I think is a pretty smart move.

For the evening Tero had promised to take me in search of the fabled Stallhagen Blueberry Ale. This is a seasonal concoction made by the craft brewery from Ã…land (see my Ã…con 5 report when I visited their facilities). The beer will only be available for a few months this summer, so if we wanted to try it we had to do so now. An expedition was assembled, and the beer successfully found. It was quite nice, and did indeed have a blueberry tang to it. For UK beer fans, Martin Easterbrook was with us, and might be persuaded to give a verdict. However, the pub where we found it didn’t have very good food so we moved on.

Tero got us a table at Stones Gastopub. People, if (when) you come to Helsinki for Worldcon, you have to eat here. They were quite busy and it took a long time for our food to arrive, but when it did it was amazing. I’ve been to a few high-end burger joints in my time, but this one is the best so far. Everyone else in the party seemed happy too. Tero finally got to try their moose sausage, and Johan gave his seal of approval to their vegetarian option. The beer was good too. Our waiter (who had the Arrows of Chaos symbol tattooed on each elbow) recommended that I try Aventinus. I’d not had a dark wheat beer before. Now I want to do so regularly.

Back at the hotel, I got waylaid by Irma who had a bottle of Balvenie Doublewood. This was probably not a good idea, but I had some anyway because it is one of my favorite whiskies. But that’s why you didn’t get this blog last night.

Finncon Day -1, The Academic Conference

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been offline for much of the day. The morning and afternoon were spent at Finfar, the academic conference. There were lots of interesting discussions, but I’m not going to write them up now, partly because it is very late, and partly because we have more papers to come tomorrow morning. I’ll do a proper post on it all once the conference is finished.

The evening was spent at the sauna, and then in the pub. The sauna was, of course, wonderful. There was great food too (thanks Hanna and everyone else who helped prepare it). I’m delighted to see that Saku, the Estonian beer that I grew fond of at a previous Helsinki Finncon, is available again.

I spotted a bunch of British fans in the pub, and I’ve been hanging out with Regina, an academic and convention organizer from Shanghai. It is good to see we are attracting a more international audience. I do hope that the Russian fans we have been promised turn up.

Finncon: Day -2, The Viking Feast

~ Cheryl

Here I am in Helsinki, where I am happy to report that it is Summer. Also the Finns are their usual, fabulously hospitable selves.

The convention began with a trip to the fairly newly opened Helsinki branch of Harald, the viking-themed restaurant. All of the guests were there, making for a very large party, so we got a special room. This is not Buca di Beppo, so there is no Pope Room. Instead they have a splendid chieftan’s feasting hall with axes and reindeer skulls on the walls. Less splendidly they have some sort of role-playing scenario which our poor waitress stumbled through and most of us ignored because it did requite improvisation and the prompts were pretty dreadful. They should hire me to write better ones. It did, however, produce one effective moment, of which more later.

This year’s Guests of Honor are Peter Watts, Aliette de Bodard, J. Pekka Mäkelä (a very fine Finnish SF author) and Stefan Ekman (a Swedish academic whom many of you will know from ICFA). Goodness only knows what Stefan made of Harald’s gross cultural appropriation and theme park vikingness, but I suspect that similar crimes against his ancestors are performed back home in Sweden. Peter and his wife, author Caitlin Sweet, seemed well taken by the whole thing. I was delighted that they enjoyed the cinnamon beer and tar ice cream. One should not, of course, expect to impress French guests with one’s culinary skills, and Aliette, being very pregnant, was understandably tired. However, she and her husband appeared to have enjoyed the evening.

Also at the meal were Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg who write YA fantasy in Swedish. Their series has been very successful, and I hope to be able to tell you more about them later in the weekend.

One of the things that went wrong with the role-playing scenario is that roles were handed out at random. Had I known what was available, I could have made a much better job of things. Three of the roles were for slaves, and as chance would have it these went to Peter, Stefan and Jukka (a co-chair of the convention). They all mucked in graciously, but it was a bit silly.

The one thing that did work is that they have a ritual of inducting someone into viking manhood. This, inevitably, requires the consumption of a small amount of that famous viking delicacy, rotting shark. Obviously we could not ask Aliette to do this, so Peter got the short straw and played the part splendidly. I am seriously jealous. I have been wanting to try rotting shark for some time, and the only place I know they serve it is in Iceland. Oh well, some other time.

The rest of the food was fairly typical Harald fare, though being such a big party we had to settle for a set meal. This did include bear salami, and thankfully tar ice cream for dessert. There was also some very nice tar-smoked herring in the starter platter. The pork in the main course was a bit dry, but it was an enjoyable meal and a great way to start the convention.

I only had my phone camera with me, and that takes pretty awful pictures, but lots of other people were snapping away so I hope to be able to point you to pictures later.

I’m now safely ensconced at Jukka & Sari’s place, where I once again have the honor of using the VanderMeer Suite. Tomorrow there is the press conference, after which the guests are being taken on a lunch cruise around Helsinki. I, however, will be in Finfar, the academic conference, being mean to poor, innocent graduate students. As I’m going straight from that to the evening sauna party, don’t expect much bloggage tomorrow.

Finncon Schedule

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The program for this year’s Finncon has been online for a while now so I should get around to listing what I’ll be doing.

I’ll be spending most of Thursday at Finfar, the academic conference that always precedes Finncon.

On Friday at 13:00 I’ll be doing the now traditional panel discussing the current year’s Hugo Award nominees. The traditional Kisu, Jukka and Tommy will be on the panel with me.

On Saturday at 11:00 I’m doing a panel on ebooks (which I see I am also moderating). In the evening I’ll be helping judge the masquerade and present the prizes.

I don’t have any scheduled programming on Sunday, but if all goes well I will have the SF&F Translation Awards short lists to announce. Jukka and I have been discussing when would be a good time to do that.

In addition there will be all of the usual socializing, including a visit to Harald and sauna.

There are also lots of fascinating English language program items that I’m hoping to attend. In addition to the GoHs, Peter Watts and Aliette de Bodard, I’d like to catch up with Karin Tidbeck, Nene Ormes and Tom Crosshill. I’m looking forward to Merja Polvinen’s talk on The City and the City, and I’d love to be able to get to the panel on Russian SF (though there may be a schedule conflict there). I see that Dave McCarty will be at the con, talking about how to run a Worldcon. It is going to be a busy weekend.

Helsinki – Some Photos

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Video editing takes a while, but so that you don’t have to wait too long I have uploaded some still photos. They are mainly taken in and around the convention center and main hotel (which is a Holiday Inn). There are no pictures of the larger programming rooms and exhibit halls because such things are quite dull, and also the exhibit halls were being renovated when I visited, but you’ll see more of them when I upload the video.

If you want to see a map of the facilities, there’s one on the Helsinki in 2015 website. Note that Halls 4 and 5, which are the ones currently reserved for us, are not off to the side, they are above halls 1-3. The convention center is fully accessible, with ramps and elevators where needed.

After the views of the convention center I’ve included some views of Pasila railway station. Pasila is the suburb of Helsinki where the convention center is situated. A key picture is the one of the local area map, which shows you just how close the station is to the proposed facilities. I walked it the long way, going through the station concourse rather than using the other entrance at the far end of the platforms, and it took me 10 minutes.

Why is this important? Well for starters the railway station is a good source for cheap food. There are plenty of places to eat in the convention center, but if you are short of cash you don’t have far to go to find something more economic. Secondly the convention center hotel only has 239 rooms. That should be sufficient to accommodate everyone who needs to be on site, but some foreign visitors will need to use the many hotels located around the central Helsinki railway station. That’s just under 4km away, and trains are very frequent during the day. The city has promised to supply free transit passes to Worldcon attendees, so travel won’t cost you anything. And staying in the city means you’ll have access to all of the tourist stuff, and top restaurants, if you want it.

But wait, what about evening events and a parties? Won’t that be a problem? No. If you consult the timetable and search for trains from Pasila to Helsinki you’ll see that they run through the night. There is a period between 3:00am and 4:00am when nothing much runs, but otherwise there is service. Also Helsinki is really safe.

Finally I have a few photos from central Helsinki. Some of them are from the National Library of Finland, which is a beautiful building. Others are from around the Helsinki railway station.

Questions?

[shashin type=”album” id=”56″ size=”medium”]

Site Inspection

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Yesterday was mainly a travel day. We got up, had a wrap session for the convention, then got on the boat back to Turku. From there we drove back to Helsinki, and then went to sleep. Well, some of us might have slept most of the way in the car, but then I wasn’t driving.

Today, however, Otto and I were up early, because Jukka and Eemeli had arranged for me to get a tour of the proposed Helsinki in 2015 Worldcon facilities. I must say that is a very splendid convention center that they have here. It would be a real shame not to put a Worldcon in it. I have shot lots of video, and a bunch of still photos as well. Now I need to edit it all. Watch this space.

Ã…con Meanders On

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

What’s new since yesterday? Oh yes, there was sushi. There was also a room party. Someone brought a bottle of Jura Prophecy. I can’t imagine who that might have been. It seemed to go down very well. Otto revealed a new skill: expert cake maker. He should do that more often.

After way to much whisky and sparkling pink stuff I had to get up early again this morning for another tour. This time I got the clocks right and managed to inhale a reasonable quantity of breakfast. This is just as well, because the alcohol started early.

We were visiting Smakbyn, a new enterprise set up by top Finnish chef, Mikael Björklund. Although the venue will feature a top quality restaurant, Björklund isn’t in Ã…land just to cook. He wants to start from scratch. He and his wife have purchased a distillery which specializes in apple-based beverages. They plan to start smoking their own meats and fish, making their own cheese and honey, and so on. Ã…land is a fine agricultural location, and therefore an excellent place for such a venture.

Our tasting concentrated on the alcohol. We were served a number of beverages, starting with apple wine and working up through various liqueurs to a Calvados-like spirit. Given that I am from Somerset, I’m pretty hard to please when it comes to apple-based beverages, and several of the drinks didn’t pass muster when compared to equivalent French offerings. However, the apple wine was very nice and did, as advertised, go very well with cheese. I’d like to try it with a proper cheddar rather that the wussy equivalent made here. The star of the show, however, was Appleaud, an apple-based liqueur that tastes exactly like liquid apple pie. I need to get a bottle or two before I go home.

Back at the hotel, we dived straight into the academic session. Merja and Mika were their usual thoughtful and entertaining selves. Merja gave a fascinating paper about the temporal structure of Ted Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life” while Mika continued to expound on semiotics and the multifarious ways in which stories are adapted and evolved through modern media. Sadly he didn’t have time for the whole of his six-part theory of orcish evolution, but we got the general idea. I’m longing to see the theoretical framework he’s been developing for this PhD melded with fan studies to look at the way in which different representations of well-loved characters vie for authenticity.

Tricia’s GoH speech is due up soon, so I’ll head back down for that. It is a gorgeous spring day here today, though, and the temptation to sit down by the water with some cheese, bread and a bottle of white wine is very strong.