Bear & Scott: “We’re very sorry, thanks to a mechanical problem we missed our connection in Iceland and we’ll be a few hours late.”

Finns: “Yeah, no worries. We remember when an airline lost Joe Haldeman. We coped with that. It will be OK.”

In other news, I think I have now done all of the necessary prep for my panels at Finncon. I have also eaten blueberry & cardamon ice cream, and tried a local coffee stout. The former was spectacular, the latter nice but not up to Wildebeest standard.

Tomorrow I’ll be off to Jyväskylä for the start of the Finfar academic convention. I read the papers on the flight over. There’s the usual mix of quality, as you might expect from students. If you’d like to get a taste of the sort of thing Finnish academics produce you can take a look at Fafnir, the Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research.