Finland

My Worldcon Schedule

~ Cheryl

As I noted yesterday, the Worldcon draft program is now available. I have four panels as follows:

Thursday 17:00 Publishing Translation
With Liz Gorinsky, Gili Bar-Hillel & Didi Chanoch. I’m moderating.

Friday 11:00 Juried versis Voted Awards
With John-Henri Holmberg, Neil Williamson & Haijun Yao

Saturday 11:00 Gender and “Realistic” History
With Thomas Ã…rnfelt, Gillan Polack, Jo Walton & Scott Lynch. I’m moderating.

Sunday 16:00 The Power of the Reviewer: Promoting and Hiding Diverse Voices
With Greg Hullender, Emma Humphries, Elizabeth Hand & Erin Roberts

Hopefully I will see some of you at one or more of those panels.

Now I need to look through the schedule in detail to see what else I want to attend.

Got (Worldcon) Program?

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The draft programming schedule for this year’s Worldcon in Helsinki is now available here.

I will talk more about my program items tomorrow (I have to rush off to Bristol shortly), but there is one item that I want to draw your attention to:

Wednesday, 16:00-17:30 Live Tea & Jeopardy, featuring Emma Newman, Latimer the Butler, and special guest George R.R. Martin

What on Earth constitutes mild peril where George is concerned? Will anyone in the audience survive? Will I end up going to Mary Robinette’s fashion panel, which sounds fascinating, instead? All will be revealed in due course.

GUFF Deadline Approaches

~ Cheryl

I’ve not had a lot of time to think about things like fan funds of late, but I did get a few hours off last weekend and I used some of that to catch up on episodes of Galactic Suburbia. This reminded me that there is a GUFF race in progress, and that I’m actually a nominator for one of the candidates. Originally I agreed to nominated Alisa Krasnostein and Alex Pierce, but Alisa has made the difficult decision to drop out because of the current insanity regarding international travel. If I had two very young kids I’d have made the same decision. Alex, however, is still running, and you have until April 17th to vote for her. There are other candidates as well, of course, but I’m a loyal nominator and want to support my candidate. Alex is awesome, vote for her.

Full details as to how to vote can be found here. See you in Helsinki, Alex.

New Finnish Weird

~ Cheryl


The latest issue of Finnish Weird is now available online. It includes stories from Magdalena Hai, J.S. Meresmaa and Viivi Hyvönen. (And yes, they are all women.) You can download a free electronic copy here. Free paper copies will be available at various conventions and the like through the year including, of course, Worldcon.

Cat Valente at Finncon, Two Interviews

~ Cheryl

The latest podcast to go up on Salon Futura is the full version of my interview with Cat Valente from Finncon. As you may recall, I broadcast part of it on Women’s Outlook a while back, but the whole thing is about half an hour long and so I had to trim quite a bit. As is the way with mainstream media, I chose to trim all of the interesting writing and publishing business neepery, but you’ll get all that good stuff here.

The interview covers the whole of Cat’s career from her childhood obsession with fairy tales through her student days in Edinburgh, her early success with The Orphan’s Tales, the amazing phenomenon that is the Fairyland books and her later adult novels such as Deathless and Radiance. There is, inevitably, mention of David Bowie (Cat and I had just done the Bowie & Prince panel). There is also a fair amount of giggling by both parties. My excuse was that I was getting to interview a writer whose work I absolutely adore.

By the way, the nice Finncon people videoed a lot of the panels and have been beavering away editing the material. I have no idea whether the Trans panel or the Bowie & Prince panel will ever end up on the Internet, but I think you are safe from the Cat & Cheryl do karaoke “Starman” thing because that would be a copyright violation.

However, the GoH speeches are available, so if the above is not enough Cat for you here is Johan Anglemark interviewing Cat in the main auditorium. I’m sat down the front taking notes. I don’t think they ever pull the camera back far enough to see me, but they can’t avoid showing the anime dance practice taking place outside. Check it out, it is awesome.

Helsinki Site Info

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Yesterday hotel bookings for Worldcon opened, and the inevitable panic on social media ensued. Getting a hotel room for Worldcon isn’t, thank goodness, as bad as trying to get a hotel room in San Diego for ComicCon, but it is complicated by the host city being different each year.

Anyway, I do know Helsinki tolerably well, and I have done site reports before now. I figured it would be useful to remind you of them.

First up here’s some video I took of the convention center and city when we were bidding for 2015. Obviously this is a few years old now (it is from 2013), but not much has changed.

There’s also a photo album, taken on the same trip.

One thing that has changed is that there is now a train from the airport that takes you directly into the city center. My report on that (from this year) is here.

Finns for Hugos

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

MaresiCore
Yeah, I am lamentably late publishing anything for Women in Translation Month. It is, after all, the last day of August. But I didn’t want to talk about these two books until the current year’s Hugo excitement was over, because they are both candidates for next year.

It would be nice to have a Finnish author or two on the ballot in Helsinki, wouldn’t it?

Of course, this being Finland, both books are by women, and both have strongly feminist themes. I wouldn’t expect anything less of my amazing Finnish friends. Both are translations. But there the similarities end. The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo was originally written in Finnish and is science fiction. Maresi by Maria Turtschaninoff was originally written in Swedish and is YA fantasy. Both are great books in their own way.

So if you’d like to know more, check out my reviews. You can find The Core of the Sun here, and Maresi here.

Awards at Finncon

~ Cheryl

Being a national convention, Finncon has a number of award ceremonies as part of the program. Usually I manage to report on this at the time, but this year I managed to be way too busy. Thankfully the ever-reliable Tero Ykspetäjä has done the job for me and all I need to do is to point you to his fine (English language) blog.

First up Atorox Award for Finnish short fiction went to Magdalena Hai. If you don’t remember her name you may remember her fabulous blue hair from her photo in issue #3 of The Finnish Weird. The story that won the Atorox (“Beautiful Ululian”) is different from the one in The Finnish Weird (“Corpsemarsh”) so she’s clearly building up a good portfolio.

By the way, Toni Jerrman tells me that the ebook editions of the first two Finnish Weird magazines have been substantially re-worked, so if you have those and have issues with the formatting please download the new ones.

Next on the awards list we have the Tähtifantasia Award which is for fantasy novels translated from a language other than Finnish. This went to Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. That’s quite an achievement for a graphic novel to win such an award. It beat out books by Haruki Murakami and Patrick Rothfuss among others. Well done Shaun!

Finally we come to the Kosmoskynä Award which is an occasional award given to people or organizations who have significantly advanced the cause of Finnish science fiction. This year it was given to my dear friend, Irma Hirsjärvi. This is so thoroughly deserved that I can only ask why it didn’t happen earlier. Then again, the Kosmoskynä is a really hard award to get. It has only been bestowed 13 times since 1985. Congratulations, Ipa!

Finncon 2016 Masquerade

~ Cheryl

These are the official photos from the Finncon 2016 Masquerade. The first four pictures are from the juniors competition. I’m missing one of the kids as he missed the photoshoot, and some of the names of the adults and their characters. Hopefully someone can help me out.

My thanks again to the Guests of Honour for being wonderful judges, and especially to Jasper Fforde for coming up with silly prizes to give people, and to Cat Valente for her encyclopedic knowledge of video games. Thanks also to all of the sponsors who donated prizes.

[shashin type=”album” id=”66″ size=”medium”]

Tom of Finland Exhibition

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

MyLittleTom
One thing I definitely wanted to see while I was in Finland was the Tom of Finland exhibition at the Taide Halli (Art Hall) in Helsinki. They currently have a huge selection of Tom’s art on display, along with a large number of reference collages that he made from magazines that he scoured for pictures of good-looking young men.

By going there I discovered two things I had not known before about Touko Laaksonen. First up, he was a war hero, having been given a medal for his part in the defense of Helsinki against Russian bombing raids in WWII. Second, he was a classically trained pianist and a very good jazz musician.

The thing that surprised me most, however, was the My Little Tom of Finland pony they had in the gift shop. It is by Mari Kasurinen, who has done pony versions of many other well known people, including Darth Vader, Skeletor and Wonder Woman. You can see the whole collection here. Her My Little Cthulhu is another masterpiece.

I can’t do a post like this without including some of Tom’s art. This is the piece that both Otto and I liked best from the exhibition. Of course to be truly topical the globe needs to be rotated a bit.

TomGlobe
The gift shop, and many stores around Helsinki, also had a selection of Tom-themed gifts. There was coffee, and also a wide range of home furnishings from Finlayson. If you really want Tom of Finland art on your sheets and pillowcases you can do so.

Trans Panel Reading List

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Suzanne may have some additions to this at some point. These are the books that I can remember us mentioning:

  • Lizard Radio — Pat Schmatz
  • Who Killed Sherlock Holmes — Paul Cornell
  • Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper — David Barnett
  • The Rhapsody of Blood series — Roz Kaveney
  • Luna: New Moon — Ian McDonald
  • Every Heart a Doorway — Seannan McGuire
  • Karen Memory — Elizabeth Bear
  • Eon & Eona — Alison Goodman
  • “Coral Bones” in Monstrous Little Voices — Foz Meadows

There was a question about intersex characters in response to which we mentioned the following:

  • Ilario — Mary Gentle — great on intersex, but essentially contrasts “valid” intersex identities with “invalid” trans identities
  • Pantomime and Shadowplay — Laura Lam — shock reveal and use of circus freak symbolism
  • 2312 — Kim Stanley Robinson — most characters are intersex but this is not explored very deeply

I film/TV we mentioned Sense8, which is on Netflix, and Julie Taymor’s version of The Tempest. I completely mangled the cast on that. It has Helen Mirren as Prospera; Russell Brand is in it, but he plays Trinculo.

You can find Suzanne’s books here, and my short story here. I also have an academic paper on the history of trans themes in SF here. Most of the books mentioned in that didn’t get mentioned in the Finncon panel and we were looking mainly at new stuff.

One fairly new story we didn’t mention is “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi” by Pat Cadigan, which you can find in Edge of Infinity (Jonathan Strahan, ed.). Pat is in the process of writing a novel based on that story.

The books I mentioned that I have seen recommended but have not read are:

  • The Fifth Season — NK Jemisin
  • Full Fathom Five — Max Gladstone
  • Wake of Vultures — Lila Bowen

If you have any other recently-published recommendations I would love to hear them as I have an essay to write for this.

Updates:

1. On the plane on the way home I finished reading An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows. I can now add that to the list of recommended books. You don’t find out that one of the supporting characters is trans until the second half of the book, but the way the reveal is done is very well handled. The book is only the first one in a series, but I have a lot of confidence in Foz continuing to gets things right.

2. Vaarna’s comment below has reminded me of two things I should have linked to. First there is Vee’s article in The Gay YA, which is mainly about things to avoid when writing trans characters. Also there’s one by me in Strange Horizons on how to write better trans characters.

3. I also forgot links for my two friends from Bath. Fox Benwell’s author page (still under the old name until the publishers do new editions) is here. You can also find him on Twitter. And the website for Ray Gunn & Starburst, scripted by ‘Olly Rose, is here.

Fairy Tales Panel Reading List

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Here as promised is my reading list from the “Sex ‘n’ Drugs ‘n’ Puss in Boots” panel. Cat and Anne may want to add to it as some point, and feel free to add your own recommendations in comments.

First up, here is the poem by Charles Perrault that I read to open the panel. It is from his popularization of Little Red Riding Hood.

Little girls, this seems to say,
Never stop upon your way,
Never trust a stranger-friend;
No one knows how it will end.
As you’re pretty so be wise;
Wolves may lurk in every guise.
Handsome they may be, and kind,
Gay, and charming — nevermind!
Now, as then, ‘tis simple truth
— Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!

And now, here are some books and stories:

  • Catherynne M Valente — Six Gun Snow White, Deathless, Speak Easy
  • Sarah Pinborough — Poison, Charm, Beauty
  • Robin McKinley — Beauty, Donkeyskin
  • Salla Simukka — As Red As Blood, As White As Snow, As Black As Ebony
  • Angela Carter — The Bloody Chamber, A Company of Wolves
  • Helen Oyeyemi — Mr. Fox
  • Malinda Lo –- Ash
  • Sheri Tepper –- Beauty
  • Genevieve Valentine –- The Girls at the Kingfisher Club
  • Neil Gaiman -– The Sleeper and the Spindle
  • Linda Medley -– Castle Waiting (graphic novel)
  • Joan Vinge –- The Snow Queen
  • Margo Lanagan -– Tender Morsels
  • Greg Frost –- Fitcher’s Brides
  • Kate Forsyth -– Bitter Greens
  • Tanith Lee –- White as Snow
  • Holly Black –- The Darkest Part of the Forest
  • Naomi Novik –- Uprooted
  • Ellen Kushner –- Thomas the Rhymer
  • Patrick Ness –- The Crane Wife
  • Karen Lord –- Redemption in Indigo
  • Anne Sexton — Transformations
  • Christine Heppermann –- Poisoned Apples
  • Bill Willingham — Fables (multi-volume graphic novel series)

Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have produced many anthologies of fairy tale based short stories, including the following:

  • Snow White, Blood Red
  • Black Thorn, White Rose
  • Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears
  • Black Swan, White Raven
  • Silver Birch, Blood Moon
  • Black Heart, Ivory Bones
  • A Wolf at the Door
  • The Green Man
  • My Swan Sister
  • The Faery Reel
  • The Coyote Road
  • Troll’s Eye View
  • The Beastly Bride

We also mentioned the TV series, Once Upon a Time, and Grimm.

Jasper Fforde has also done fairy tale re-tellings in his Nursery Crime series, though they are rather different projects that the subjects of the panel.

My thanks to Cat Valente and Anne Leinonen for being great panelists. Nina, I hope you feel better soon, and that I managed to do justice to your original idea.

Good Hair Day

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Good Hair
Yesterday, after swimming in the lake, I was sat chatting with Raffaella Baccolini when Saija Kyllönen kindly noticed that my wet hair needed brushing out and started doing the job for me. Then she asked me if I would like it braided. It has been an ambition of mine since I was about 5 years old to have hair long enough to put in a big plait that reached down my back. At the rate it grows these days it will never get there, but it is now long enough to work with. Once of the other Finnish ladies who is an expert hair braider did the job for me. I’m afraid I can’t remember her name (I had drunk quite a bit of whisky by then). However, I have photographic evidence (thanks Saija!).

So yeah, one childhood ambition achieved. Yesterday was a good day.

Except for the mosquitoes.

Update: Saija tells me that the genius who did my plait is Ritva Mäkinen.

Almost Perfect Day

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Well that went very well.

Suzanne and I had a really big audience for the trans panel, and a lot of great feedback afterwards.

I did get to some programming. Jasper was his usual highly amusing self. The results of the global audience reaction study of the Hobbit movies were very interesting, but I should refrain from commenting on that until I have the actual data or a proper paper to refer you to.

Then it was time for the Bowie and Prince panel. We played a bit of music as we were waiting for people to file in. That turned into an impromptu audience sing-along for “Starman”. Cat and I recreated the Bowie/Ronson hug. I am so pleased we did that panel.

I got a bit of time to myself after that, quite a bit of which was spent interviewing Cat for the Ujima show and Salon Futura. Then it was time for Closing Ceremonies. Another Finncon successfully completed. Irma and I had dinner with Ian Watson and his Spanish wife, Cristina, who are still waiting for their luggage to arrive.

However, we ere not quite done; there was the small matter of the dead dog party. As is traditional, we headed out into the country to a cabin by a lake. There was sauna. As is also traditional, I provided some excellent malt whisky. (Bowmore Black Rock for anyone who is interested.) The weather was beautiful and the lake water not entirely freezing. Even I managed to swim quite a bit. This being Finland, there was a fair amount of casual nakedness.

The photo below was taken at around 11:30pm, by which time the lake water had cooled off quite a bit. As you can see, the Finns were still keen on swimming, and there was an impromptu water polo game going on using a Death Star beachball. (Cat proudly told me that she’d helped blow up the Death Star). Eeva-Liisa regaled us with stories of her youth as a keen high board diver. Everyone marveled at the weather.

DeadDog

The day wasn’t quite perfect. Kevin wasn’t here, Iceland lost the football, and I am covered in mosquito bites, but days like this remind me why I keep coming back to Finland.

Finland Update

~ Cheryl

Iisalmi Church Outside
My apologies for the lack of blogging over the past few days. That’s partly due to being on the road, partly due to lack of wifi access (I get free roaming in Finland on my phone, but that doesn’t include tethering), and partly due to my being so boggled by the goings on back home that I have no idea what to say. Here, in lieu of anything more intelligent, is a little bit of Finnish history.

Well, sort of history anyway. The basic facts are true, but I have embellished them somewhat. Also I have translated the mythic context from Finnish to Scandinavian. That’s partly because you folks will be far more familiar with Scandinavian folklore, and partly because the Finns don’t have an equivalent of frost giants. Irma tells me that, like the forest, snow is something that Finns are not afraid of. They see both things as something that keeps them safe from invaders rather than a threat.

Iisalmi Church Inside 1
Once upon a time the people of Iisalmi decided that they would like to have a church of their own. They had been Christian for many generations, but there had never been a church in their town, so they decided to build one. They built the church out of wood, but this proved to be a mistake because Thor was angry with them for deserting him. He threw a bolt of lightning at the church and it burned to the ground.

The people of Iisalmi determined not to be cowed by pagan gods. Swiftly they erected a new church. But they did so in such a hurry that the first time a frost giant stomped past that winter it fell down.

Iisalmi Church Inside 2
Still the people of Iisalmi refused to be beaten. They decided to build a church out of stone that no one could burn or knock down. Stone churches are expensive, so they collected a great of money and silver to pay for it. They put all of this wealth in a great wooden chest with seven locks. But Loki saw all of this treasure are determined to have it for himself. He sent thieves to steal it, giving them magic with which to open the seven locks and get away unseen.

With their money stolen, the people of Iisalmi had no choice but to build in wood once more. They were, of course, afraid that their church would be demolished again, so they got together to decide how to proceed. After much discussion the people decided to build a church so beautiful that no one, not even pagan gods, would dare to destroy it. That is what they did, and the church is still standing today.

Iisalmi Church Inside 3
I should note that the church has been renovated several times since it was built, but they have tried to stick to an 18th Century look for it.

I note also that the altarpiece was painted by a woman, Alexandra SÃ¥ltin. Apparently her work was well known and she did paintings for several other churches in the area.

Train to Helsinki

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

One of the things that was different on this trip to Helsinki is that the train from the airport is now in service. As a service to Worldcon members, and a gift to Kevin, here is a brief report.

Helsinki airport has two terminals linked by an underground tunnel. Just like the Heathrow Express, their train leaves from a station located in the tunnel. All trains go to Helsinki, but as the route is a loop you may need to get a train going the right way if you want the convention center stop.

Helsinki has an Oyster-style travel card. Travel from the airport to Helsinki is a 2-Zone journey. Travel between Helsinki central and the convention center is single-zone. You don’t have to touch out, which is why you have to select the journey type. Fares vary a bit dependent on how you buy the ticket, and anyway may be different next year, but they seem reasonable (unless you are paying in GBP which may be worthless by next year).

HTrain3

The trains are comfortable, quiet and roomy. There is plenty of space for luggage. There are power points at the seats if you need them (EU plugs, obviously).

HTrain2

I didn’t time the trip properly, but it was about half an hour. The train does make several stops along the way. It appears to be usable as a commuter service as well as for the airport. Here it is stood in Helsinki station.

HTrain1

The final stop before Helsinki is Pasila, where the convention center is. You can’t miss the place: it is huge and the train stops right next to it. They are currently hosting a Jehovah’s Witness convention.

HTrain4

All-gender toilet. Could do with better signage but otherwise pretty good.

The Finns Have Weirded (Again)

~ Cheryl

One of the places I would love to be this weekend is Ã…con. Sadly I can’t afford to do Finncon, Barcelona and a second trip to Finland. So profuse apologies to Zen Cho, whom I would have loved to hang out with, and best wishes to everyone currently in Mariehamn.

Fortunately, even though I can’t visit the Finns, they have visited me, in the form of a new issue of The Finnish Weird. This excellent little magazine features all that is good in Finnish weird fiction. Issue #3 includes the fabulous Johanna Sinisalo and Anne Leinonen. It also features three authors that I am less familiar with. They are all women, naturally. Magdalena Hai has blue hair for extra bonus weirdness.

The new issue, and the two previous issues, are available for free download as ebooks here. They do normally make paper editions too. Hopefully I can pick one up at Finncon.

Women in Translation – The Numbers

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Over at the Three Percent blog Chad W Post has some data on the gender of writers whose work gets translated. This is for all fiction, not just SF&F, and the publication dates covered are 2008-2014. The numbers are stark. Post says:

I suspected going into this that there would be significantly more male authors published in translation than women, but I figured it would be more like a 60-40 split, not 71-27. That’s brutal.

Breaking the data down, there are 14 countries that manage 50% or better. Mostly this is because the actual numbers are very small. Wales, for example, has 100% women, but only one actual book in translation. Croatia does pretty well with 50% from 8 books. However, the only country in that group with significant numbers of works is Finland with 62% from 28 books.

I note in passing that Croatia and Finland are both countries that have made me very welcome.

Also I should note that Post appears to have assumed that gender is binary. The missing 2% in his figures above are books which are co-authored by people of more than one gender (for example the Engelfors Trilogy). Given how hard it is just to get binary gender data when dealing with other cultures, I’m not going to complain too much about that.

Tolkien and Finland, an Update

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Earlier today I noticed a BBC article about the “new” Tolkien book, The Story of Kullervo, and its connection to Finland. I tweeted about it. That has got quite a few retweets, but on Facebook it drew the attention of my good friend Jonathan Clements who is a) a scholar rather than a journalist and b) married to a Finn (hi Kati!). He pointed me at an article that he wrote yesterday on his blog that corrects a few aspects of the BBC piece and the book’s introduction.

As is usually the case with Jonathan, he combines erudition with humor. He gives some examples of the truly dire prose of which the young Tolkien was guilty, and also takes aim at some of the wilder claims made about Tolkien and Kullervo, in particular that the Finnish work was Shakespeare’s inspiration for Hamlet.

At one point, the introduction also implies that Kullervo somehow forms a literary ancestor to Shakespeare’s Hamlet — which would require Shakespeare climbing into a time machine, buying a copy of the English translation of the Kalevala in 1888, and then jumping back to the 1100s, Terminator-style, to kill Saxo Grammaticus before he could write the Gesta Danorum.

Of course there is a lot to be interested in about the book as well. I look forward to Jonathan being on a panel about it at Worldcon 75. In the meantime, do read his post. It is well worth it.