Finland

Today’s Radio

~ Cheryl

I made it to the studio today, despite the fact that I feel like I’m dying of jet lag and allergies. The show is now available online.

The first hour opens up with a guest appearance by a local performance poet, Isadora Vibes. I was very impressed by her, and hope to get to see one of her shows soon. In the second half hour we talk about a variety of things to do with travel and conferences. That includes a segment of me talking about my recent trip to Finland. There are brief mentions of Karin Tidbeck, Johanna Sinisalo, Hannu Rajaniemi and, of course, the fabulous Mercedes Urbano-Winquist and her chocolate factory.

I only do the first 15 minutes of the second hour, which is all about kitchen gadgets. Lots more interesting and serious things follow, but I was on my way home, after which I slept for a few hours.

I won’t be doing the show next week, but for the other two Wednesdays in June I have lined up Eugene Byrne and Jo Hall as my studio guests. I also have an interview with Madeline Ashby that I need to edit and do something with.

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?

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Tähtivaeltaja Award

~ Cheryl

Talking of Finland, the results of the 2013 Tähtivaeltaja Award were announced on Monday. This is an award for science fiction published in Finnish. The shortlist was as follows:

  • Pintakuvio (Surface Detail) by Iain M. Banks
  • Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  • Teemestarin kirja by Emmi Itäranta
  • Muistoissa sininen Maa (Blue Remembered Earth) by Alastair Reynolds
  • Kiduttajan varjo (The Shadow of the Torturer) by Gene Wolfe

And the winner is the Gene Wolfe book, Kiduttajan varjo, which was translated by my friend, Johanna Vainikainen-Uusitalo. You may well be thinking that a Gene Wolfe book has something of an unfair advantage, but bear in mind that most, if not all, of the jury will have read the book in the original English. If Johanna hadn’t done a great job translating it then it would not have won. I’m very happy for her.

By the way, you may have noticed that one of the books on the short list was original in Finnish. Emmi Itäranta’s book has already won a couple of mainstream literary awards in Finland (including a €16,000 prize). It will be published in English as Memory of Water next year.

Further details about the Tähtivaeltaja Award are available from the ever-reliable Tero.

Thank You, Finland

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

I’m back home in the frozen wastes of the UK. I’m missing Finland already, and only in part because the weather is so much better there.

The main point of this post is to say Thank You! once again to Finnish fandom for being so friendly and hospitable, and for running such fun conventions. That goes double for Otto and Paula, who once again proved to be fabulous hosts, and this year also to Jukka and Eemeli for taking the time to show me around their proposed Worldcon facilities.

This year, however, I get to give special thanks to everyone. At the end of Ã…con I was presented with a Certificate of Adoption into Finnish Fandom. It is beautifully illustrated by Jukka Halme Petri Hiltunen. I don’t have a picture as yet because it has to go off to Jyväskylä to be signed by Irma Hirsjärvi, my official adoptive mother. (Otto is the adoptive father). I should be able to take it home from Finncon in July, and will post a picture then.

See what I mean. They are lovely people.

So I guess I am now fannishly a Finn. Which probably means that I’ll be expected to be on convention committees. 😉

Ã…con Underway

~ Cheryl

Yesterday was mainly a travel day, and I slept most of the way from Turku to Mariemamn, thereby saving myself from buying duty-free booze on the ferry. We did, however, have a small amount of programming in the evening. Tricia Sullivan and I, with expert help from Markku Soikkeli, did a panel on “Body and Mind” in which we talked a lot about false dualisms, the complexity of biological organisms, the lack of scientific basis for ideas of “uploading” minds to silicon, and the political minefields that result from “nature v personal choice” arguments. Judging from the feedback I have got, it went down very well. Kisu is threatening to have a philosophy panel on Thursday evening every year.

I had a bad case of time zone fail this morning and almost missed the bus to the chocolate tasting. Thankfully I did make it, and Mercedes was wonderful as ever. I refer you to last year’s con report for a more detailed description of what these excursions are like.

We’d hardly got back when I had another panel. This one was about “Classic Conventions”. I now owe several beers to Crystal Huff as I co-opted her onto the panel to talk about ReaderCon and other US events. Thanks also to my colleagues, Carolina Gomez Lagerlöf and Tommy Persson. Hopefully we entertained.

I skipped Tricia’s GoH interview because I very much wanted to get to the Maritime Museum and they close at 16:00. Mariehamn has a glorious maritime history, having once been home to the biggest fleet of windjammers in the world. The Pommern is still here and I had a good look around her. I have so much respect for the crews of such ships, and especially for Wilhelmina Widborn who served as a cook and steward on the Pommern for many years. According to the museum, she rounded Cape Horn eight times, and survived being torpedoed, during her career.

Also in the museum is one of only two genuine Jolly Roger flags in existence. This one was captured from Barbary pirates around 200 years ago and brought home to Mariehamn by the crew. I’ll have a photo of it up eventually.

And now, dinner beckons. There is a fine restaurant called Nordic Blues, which makes sushi with local fish. I went there last year with Cat Valente’s husband, Dmitry. The plan is to go back today.

For further Ã…con reportage, check out Tero’s blog.

Bruce, Reindeer and Me

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Given last year’s traffic nightmare trying to get out of Helsinki, Otto, Paula and I hit the road nice and early this time. As a consequence we arrived in Turku in very good time and spent the afternoon exploring the city. Otto & Paula have some sort of alternate reality game on their tablets that requires them to visit locations around the world and register at “portals” there. It is sort of like geo-caching, except the treasure is all virtual and you are also part of a team game. It is also a very good excuse to visit interesting buildings, public works of art and so on.

We ended up wandering around the riverside area of Turku in search of somewhere to eat. Otto spotted a steakhouse, and that sounded fairly harmless, so in we went.

Inside it looked very posh, and also very quiet. The waiter who greeted us explained something in Finnish which Otto translated as their having just re-opened after a private party. I thought no more of this and got to examining the menu.

It quickly became obvious that we had stumbled into somewhere very expensive. This was Stefan’s Steakhouse, owned by Stefan Richter who was a finalist on American Top Chef. When you are in such a place, the only thing to do is eat well and worry about the bill later. For comparison, it cost around the same as a meal at Bell’s Diner in Bristol, and is in a similar league quality-wise.

First up a comment about the aperitif they offered. The waiter described it as a mixture of white wine, red soda and cranberries. This was precisely correct. Not wine, soda and cranberry juice; wine, soda and cranberries. It was lovely.

For starters I had to try the roast bone marrow. It is something I had never eaten before. Once extracted from the surrounding bone, it is not the most appetizing-looking stuff in the world, but it tastes wonderful and I was glad to have tried it.

My main course was reindeer sirloin. It is one of the nicest pieces of meat I have ever eaten. I’ve eaten reindeer before, of course, but this was spectacular. Otto & Paula were similarly happy with their steaks.

I’m not sure I’d recommend Stefan’s for dessert. I’ve never seen brownies presented more beautifully, but I have had them cooked better. Otto said his cheesecake was delicious, but it was very small. Still, given the overall quality of the food, I’m not at all unhappy we went there.

Afterwards we headed off to the Cosmic Comic Cafe, where Finnish fandom was gathering for the night. I got talking to Hannah who explained that a lot of people were not going to be there, either because of the USA-Finland ice hockey game, or because of the Bruce Springsteen concert…

I did not strangle anyone. I may have made faces that said, “there is a Springsteen concert on tonight and no one told me? WHY!!!!??????”

Actually Bruce played two nights in Turku (with very different sets for the two nights so all of the hard core fans went to both). Tickets sold out within 15 minutes of them being made available, so there’s no way I would have got one unless I’d known well in advance. But still…

“Oh yes,” said Otto, “that’s what the guy in the restaurant was on about. They had just re-opened after a private function for Springsteen and his tour party.”

So there you have it. Entirely by chance, we ate in the same restaurant as Bruce and the E-Street Band, just after he had left. For all I know, I could have sat in the same chair he used. I am going to pretend that it is so. I hope he enjoyed his meal as much as I did.

WorldCon Scouting: Part I

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

So, here I am in Helsinki, and while I am here I intend to make use of my time looking for things that prospective Worldcon attendees might be interested in. After all, there may be some of you who haven’t yet made up your minds to vote for Helsinki in 2015. If there are any specific questions that people have, please ask them in comments below. I’ll be visiting the convention site on Monday when we have got back from Ã…con so I’ll have time to look around, shoot some video, and ask questions. In the meantime, here are some observations from today.

Helsinki airport is small but efficient. There’s not a lot in the way of direct flights, but those of you who are with Star Alliance will probably find it easy to change in Frankfurt, which is Lufthansa’s main hub. You could also change in London, of course, or Paris. Work on the railway linking the airport with the city is now underway and they expect to have it open in time for Worldcon.

The only cloud on the train horizon is that there are apparently suggestions afoot to fully automate the system. Driverless trains have to be built to a higher safety standard than human-operated ones, and there would be software to be written. I’ll keep an eye on developments.

On the way into the city we stopped off at a shopping mall to have dinner and get food for brunch tomorrow. Otto and Paula too me to Chico’s a restaurant chain that promises to bring American dining to Finland. They have got it pretty much spot on. All of the usual things you would expect from a high end burger joint were available. We had fried mozzarella and jalapeño poppers for starters. The chiptole mayo in my burger was definitely spicy, as were the chili fries it came with (in a little metal bucket). The Finns, being hard core about such things, added half a jalapeñno on the side, with the seeds still in it. That was warm. We were too full for the cheesecake, but I’m sure it would have been lovely. The poppers came with the BBQ mayo as a dip, and it was so nice I now want to try their ribs. OK, so it isn’t haute cuisine, but no one from California can complain that they can’t get good home cooking in Finland.

Also it is a change from my going on and on about the reindeer steaks, tar ice cream and cinnamon beer at Harald. You might get that tomorrow when we get to Turku.

I’m staying at Otto & Paula’s splendid flat in Helsinki overnight. I have had sauna, so I am now a happy and relaxed feline. Tomorrow we hit the road. Hopefully we’ll manage to go early enough to avoid the holiday weekend traffic jams.

By the way, the ice hockey world championships are underway in Helsinki. I won’t have a chance to go to any games, but it will be on TV in the convention hotel. There should be good crowds for Sweden v Canada on Friday, and Russia v Finland on Saturday. USA v Finland tomorrow should also be an interesting game. The Russians look like the best team in the tournament thus far, but the surprise package is most definitely Switzerland who have already beaten Sweden, the Czech Republic and Canada.

Small Blue Planet, Episode 1: Finland

~ Cheryl

It is probably dreadful timing for me to be mentioning two podcasts on the same day, but Karen Burnham put the first episode of Small Blue Planet online last night to I need to point you at it. As you hopefully know by now, this show will feature me talking to people from the SF&F communities in various countries around the world. For the first episode my guests are Jukka Halme and Marianna Leikomaa from Finland. They are both good friends, so the chemistry was excellent on the show. I hope you enjoy it.

And yes, we do talk about the Helsinki Worldcon Bid.

On Sunday I’ll be recording Episode 2 with Ken Liu and Stanley Chan (Chen Qiufan) who will be telling me all about science fiction and fantasy in China. If you have things you want me to ask them, let me know.

Huge thanks to Locus for agreeing to host these podcasts. Hopefully this will do wonders for listener figures.

Coming in 2014 from Finland

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Talking of foreign authors, I have some good news from Finland. Tero Ykspetäjä reports that Finnish writer, Emmi Itäranta, has been signed to a two-book deal with HarperVoyager. Like Hannu Rajaniemi, Emmi lives in the UK, so she may be doing the translations herself, or they may still be looking for someone. The first book, Memory of Water (Teemestarin kirja in the original Finnish), will be published in spring 2014. According to to the official HarperVoyager press release:

The book is set in a future Scandinavian Union where clean water is in short supply and most people survive on desalinated rations from the new government. There are serious consequences for water crime: if found guilty, people simply disappear, leaving behind a mysterious blue circle which appears on their doors.

The book has already been a success in Finland. Last week Emmi was one of three writers to be awarded the €16,000 Kalevi Jäntti Literary Prize for young authors.

Thank You, Finland

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

Today has seen a veritable flood of orders at the bookstore. Almost all of them have been from Finland. I don’t know for sure why this has happened, but I rather suspect that someone has suggested that today, of all days in the year, would be a good day to make me happy. I’m very touched, and also delighted to see that many of the purchases have been of copies of Clarkesworld, or books published by Wyrm. Thank you, Finnish friends, you are truly wonderful people.

Attention Nordic Fandom

~ Cheryl

Yes, yes, I know you are all getting drunk at Swecon right now, but for your next SMOFing session, please consider this: Johan Harstad is very funny, and a great writer. He’s also a huge horror movie fan, so he and Toni Jerrman should get on fabulously. Invite him to conventions, please. (I can get you contact info if necessary – he’s with Orbit’s YA sister imprint so shares the same PR folks – hi Rose!)

Liz Hand in Helsinki

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I talked to Liz on the phone last night — she’s in London — and she confirmed that she’s going to be in Helsinki soon for the launch of the Finnish edition of Available Dark. It is a flying visit — she arrives on the 17th and leaves on the 18th — but hopefully some of you can catch her while she’s there.

Forthcoming Worldcons

~ Cheryl ~ 38 Comments

As most of you are probably aware by now, the London Worldcon is now a real thing. Loncon 3 will take place from Thursday 14 to Monday 18 August 2014. They have a very fine list of Guests of Honour, and you can buy a membership here. According to co-chair Steve Cooper, they have well over 1000 members already.

Before that, however, there will be a Worldcon in San Antonio. I have been listening to Kevin’s recordings of the Business Meeting in Chicago and was delighted to hear co-chairs Bill Parker and Laura Domitz state that the con will have a full track of Spanish language programming (just over 30 minutes in on this video). Texas has a large Spanish-speaking population, and I’m very pleased to see them embracing this. I hope that Spanish-speaking fans from all around the world will support this and help make it a success.

There are still plans for another Japanese Worldcon, but they are hampered by the fact that the Yokohama convention lost a bucketload of money. I understand that existing immediate debts are in excess of US$85,000 and the total losses are even higher. Past Worldcons are helping out, and Kevin tells me that Montréal has already donated CA$5000.

The next site selection vote is for 2015, and that is looking very interesting. There are three current contenders: Spokane, Orlando and Helsinki.

The Spokane bid ought to be in pole position, as it is run by people well known to the SMOF community, but they keep shooting themselves in the foot. Bid co-chair Alex von Thorn managed to make a complete idiot of himself on Cat Valente’s blog earlier in the year. He won’t be chairing the con, but one of the proposed con co-chairs is Bobbie DuFault who ran programming in Chicago. That’s the area of the convention that I have seen most complaints about. Pro tip: if you want to run a Worldcon, don’t screw up the scheduling for the WSFS Business Meeting.

Orlando’s bid touts itself as “revolutionary”, and is staffed mainly by people not well known to SMOFdom. That’s usually a recipe for disaster. However, the Orlando people sound very competent, and have lots of con-running experience. Also their ideas seem to have sprung fully-formed from the Cheryl Morgan manifesto for improving Worldcon. You can read their manifesto here. Also take a look at their presentation in Chicago, which starts after about 36 minutes in this video.

I’ve heard two main non-SMOF complaints about Orlando. The first is that it is at a Disney property, and people don’t like The Mouse. There’s not a lot you can say to that, other than that the use of the Disney property is key to keeping the costs down. And talking of costs, there is a story going around the author community that room rates in Orlando will be in excess of $200. This is not true. If you listen to the video you’ll hear the Orlando rep state categorically that room rates will be $139/room, and rooms sleep up to 4 people.

Then there is Helsinki. Goodness only knows what Eemeli thinks he is doing. He did, however, give a very good presentation. I guess he’s thinking that Helsinki will be the second choice for most of the Orlando voters, and if he can come in ahead of Orlando he might just beat Spokane. I can’t see it though. There’s very little time, and I doubt that the Finns can afford to send people to lots of US cons this year. It isn’t even clear whether the bid has the backing of Finnish fandom. What the bid is doing, however, is raising interest, giving the Finns practice, and getting money in the bank. I don’t see Helsinki winning for 2015, but I do expect them to immediately roll over to 2016. If I were on the Kansas City bid I would be very afraid. There’s also the option of rescuing 2017 if the Japanese are unable to solve their financial problems.

Anne Leinonen Interview

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The International Speculative Fiction blog is running an interview that I did with Finnish writer, Anne Leinonen. It talks mainly about the award-nominated YA dystopia series that Anne is writing with her friend Eija Lappalainen, and the problems of trying to sell such books in translation. You can read it here.

Finncon – It’s A Wrap

~ Cheryl

That’s another successful convention completed. Finncon is decidedly smaller without the anime hordes, but still way bigger than anything fan-run in the UK. Everything appeared to run smoothly. Next year, Helsinki. In the meantime, sleep. Proper con report when I get home.

Finncon – Saturday

~ Cheryl

Yesterday was very busy. I ended up eating lunch at 3:00pm while I was updating the Translation Awards website, and didn’t get back to my apartment until after midnight. I’ll write a proper report later, but for now I’d like to mention the masquerade. The entry we picked as the winner had a Mr. Tumnus costume, including proper faun legs. I thought he had probably bought them from WETA, but afterwards I discovered he had made them himself. I am seriously impressed.

Finncon Now In Progress

~ Cheryl

Yesterday we did the press conference, drove to Tampere (via a chocolate factory), and did the sauna thing. Today has been academic conference for me, and Moomin Museum for Liz and Lois. Later there will be fine viking food and cinnamon beer.

Yesterday’s culinary experiment was smoked reindeer cheese. That’s smoked cheese made from reindeer milk, not cheese made from a smoked reindeer. It was part of a dish rather than on its own, so I can’t comment much on flavor, but now I know it exists and can seek it out.

The academic conference was good, though most of the papers were fairly unimaginative. I have come away from it with a great idea for a paper that I probably won’t have time to write.

Also Edward James (who is here researching a book he’s writing about Lois’s work) told me about this interesting conference on gender in literature that is taking place in Bristol in September.

Tomorrow I’m going to be busy at the convention for about 12 hours solid. The only blogging I’m likely to do will be the results of the Translation Awards.

Still Traveling

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

If I was an organized blogger I would have a lot of posts pre-written ready to go live while I was traveling, but I don’t, so you’ll just have to put up with this shambles.

Yesterday I was in that city in south eastern England which we are no longer allowed to name unless we are official sponsors for the big sporting event that we are not allowed to name unless we are sponsoring it. I would like to say that the golden sun left silver edges on the clouds and bronze skins on the inhabitants, but of course it was raining.

Not that I allowed that to cramp my style. I had a long and interesting lunch with Djibril al-Ayad of The Future Fire, followed by a long and interesting dinner with John & Judith Clute. Much bookishness was discussed. For some reason Mr. Clute would not allow me to sneak off with his copies of Empty Space and The Hydrogen Sonata.

I am now in Helsinki, where the weather is much better than in England. Liz and T had already been exhausted by their experiences here and had fled back to their hotel to sleep. I did get to say hello to Lois briefly, but she has headed off to bed too. I probably won’t be awake too much longer, but I do need to eat as Lufthansa unaccountably tried to feed me salad for lunch.

The news from Finnish fandom is that Sari has sold Jukka to Hannah in exchange for a chocolate cheesecake recipe.

Finncon Program

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

The program for Finncon 2012 has been published. You can check it out at their website. Here’s a quick rundown of what I’m doing.

Thursday 19th – The press conference in Helsinki

Friday 20th – The academic conference in Tampere

Saturday 21st

  • 13:00 Panel on this year’s Hugo Award nominees
  • 14:00 Translation Awards Ceremony
  • 16:00 Ebook panel
  • 17:00 Masquerade judging

Sunday 22nd

  • 11:00 Liz Williams and I discuss various systems of magic

There are, of course, many other panels I want to go to, including Liz and Lois’s GoH events, Martha’s presentation on the work of N.K. Jemisin, and the Detectives in SF panel, but how much of them I can make time for is open to question.

There will, of course, be sauna.