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.

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.