Finland

It Is Wednesday, This Must Be Helsinki

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

So here I am in Finland. I have met up with M. John Harrison in a bar. Various Finnish notables including Jukka Halme and Toni Jerrman were also present. Beer was consumed, at least until the live band started, and which point people decided to go elsewhere, despite the guitarist doing some very respectable covers. If we’d sat there long enough he would probably have played all of my favorite Clapton songs.

Our Finnish friends had reserved us a special table which was known to be a favorite of Communist revolutionaries. It is probable that Lenin and Stalin have both sat where Mike and I were sitting this evening.

Jukka asked me if I knew any embarrassing questions he could ask Farah when he interviews her on Saturday. I contemplated various ways in which I might end up dead.

Tomorrow: press conference and then on to Tampere.

Another Victim

~ Cheryl

I see from Ellen Kushner’s LiveJournal that there is to be a Finnish translation of the very wonderful (and World Fantasy Award winning) Thomas the Rhymer. You are in for a treat, Finnish friends. And now I can start conspiring to get Ellen and Delia to Finncon…

Finnish Fund-Raisers Strike Again

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

How the Finns do it, I do not know, but Tero has some excellent news about cultural grants received by four of Finland’s science fiction magazines. I’m not even going to think about what Emerald City could have done with €16,000, or even €500. Yes, it won a Hugo, but if I had applied for a grant like that in the UK I would have been lucky to get away with being laughed at.

Finncon Preliminary Program

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Finncon has a preliminary program online. Thus far I only have one program item. It looks like Farah is doing all the hard work on the talking about books front, which is entirely sensible as she’s much better at it than I am. However, my one item is quite interesting. I’ve been asked to give a talk about masquerades and how they are run in other countries. For this I am going to need photos and video. I have a lot of the former. The latter is a bit limited. If anyone has access to video of Worldcon masquerades that I might be able to edit snatches from, please let me know.

On Nordic Mysteries

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

This one, I think, will amuse a few of my Finnish friends. Via Mike Glyer I discover an article in the LA Times all about Nordic mystery writers.

Part of their appeal is their reverse exoticism: The unrelenting bleakness, the zero tolerance for chuckles and the ferocity of the crimes — the Swedes really go in big for decapitations, scalpings, tattooed torsos floating to the surface, disembowelments — make the books much darker and spookier than glib mafiosi capers from Bologna and Bensonhurst. And the Swedes do not write conventional whodunits; they are obsessed with understanding why people become ax murderers in the first place. Mostly, it’s because something happened to them as children, often involving axes.

Oh dear. That’s going to get me into trouble in Tampere in July.

Danger, Finnish Drivers

~ Cheryl

The Formula 1 season kicks off in Albert Park over the weekend. Kevin and I are both very busy, and will probably end up watching the race on video at some point, but we can at least look forward to the action. We are helped in this by The Guardian who produced a helpful little guidebook to the new season free with their Monday paper. Parts of it are quite funny, especially the history of last season told as if it were a Facebook feed. “Ron Dennis has joined the group “Cooperating with Inquiries”; Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso are no longer friends.”

One of the articles, however, is about why Finns make such good racing drivers. Mostly they get this right. Young Finns learn to drive at crazy speeds when they are barely out of nappies. It seems they don’t have many police on Finnish country roads, or at least no one much minds if kids use them as race tracks. The article also pinpoints other aspects of the Finnish character. It notes, for example, that a Finn always wins the annual Christmas Eve round the world aerial sleigh race, largely because he’s the only person who has figured out how to build a suitable vehicle. The Finns are also the only people to have won the Eurovision Song Contest while dressed as Oakland Raiders fans. Apparently Finland is home to an annual wife-carrying world championships, but the Finns are no good at that and it is always won by someone from Estonia. However, the article mentions the Finnish passion for ice hockey only in passing, and completely ignores their talent at running science fiction conventions. My guess is that the Finnish talent for raising sponsorship must have Bernie Ecclestone terrified.

Finnish Magic

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The ability of my Finnish friends to raise sponsorship money for their conventions continues to astound me. Today Tero reports that this year’s Finncon has received a grant of €5,000 (about $7,500 at today’s ludicrously favorable rates) from government cultural funds. Maybe the Finns just like SF, but I have a sneaking suspicion we could do this in other countries too if only we knew how.