VL

Last weekend there was the FinnCon/AnimeCon 2008. The organizers did manage to get the Tampere Hall conference center.
( ”Friday” )
( ”Saturday” )

Sunday
Sunday morning was you can expect after two badly slept nights. This time we got in about 30 minutes early, before the most others.

(I had intended to organize a panel discussion about changes of gender in science fiction and reality. I had invited the participants six months earlier. However, one of them (an FTM) did not manage to reserve the day off from work. And the other one had forgotten the whole thing. So I had to cancel. )

Again, I was mainly behind the Writer’s Association desk. Small group of teen cosplayers spent a small fortune (probably most of their con budget) to buy a stack of badges. In one stage two young Babylon 5 fans came to ask me if the space combat in the series is realistic. And Peruvian-born lady joined the Writers’ Association.

At noon I went to a kaffeeklatsch to meet with lady Mendlesohn and her companion. We had a discussion about fantasy, religion and gender – among other things. Afterwards I took her to our stand so she could get the English special of the Kosmoskynä ‘zine.

I also went to play some Jordan hockey; that is, to hit books of Robert Jordan with hockey sticks (and the like), ostensibly to score some goals against cardboard goalies – one of them having Jordan’s head. However, the main idea is to smash the books apart… I received around 60 points, the winner something around 80. Other players included (small) King Kong…

One bystander, a caretaker of one of the tenements neighboring the park, came to watch; I ended up explaining to him what we were doing – and recommending the Pispala Library House…

I did not buy that much – missing collection of Aqua/Aria manga and Finnish translations of Yotsuba&! and McIntyre’s Dreamsnake. I also collected some donations to the library, including Mike Pohjola’s new novel.

And after everything else there was the dead dog party – where we mainly fried sausages and talked with the guests (and I tried to think what to blog about…) I was also briefly an organic swing mover in a garden swing with lady Mendhleson and some other ladies. Too briefly...

The weekend ended in farewells in the dark.

Tags: fandom, fantasy, finncon, finnish science fiction writers, meetings, science fiction

According to Helsingin Sanomat, US director/writer Colin Slatera has plagiarized the text of Finnish Author Mika Waltari. The text of Slater's supposed novel Lindum Colonia is a plagiate of Waltari's Ihmiskunnan Viholliset (The Enemies of Mankind) who was translated to English in 1966 as The Roman.

Maybe he assumed that Finns would not check. Or did not care since the publisher seems to be a vanity publsher. He is supposed to be an expert of the copyright law - but maybe he teaches that the writers should not care what they do with foreign texts...

I wonder that the G. P. Putnam's Sons, who has rights to Waltari's translations in the USA thinks about the matter...

(Link, unfortunately, is to the Finnish article about the matter...)

What in the name of...

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I spent the last Friday and Saturday in Vammala in their Old Books Fair (literally The Days of Old Literature), selling books for the Pispala Library House. It's an annual event with lectures, presentations and lots of dealer's stands of small publishers, antiquarian bookstores and the like. This year's theme was the late author Mika Waltari, the writer of classics like Sinuhe the Egyptian (translated to English as The Egyptian…).

Every dealer had to hang a sticker from their neck to get access to certain places; the first I got had no strings long enough to reach around my neck…

The catering services had festival prices; a small cardboard cup of coffee cost 2.20 € (about 3.50 U$); A good baquette 5.00 €.

The library had rented 13 big plastic boxes to haul the books in a van (we three guys squeezed ourselves tighly behind the dashboard…). We also used eight smaller ones and three cardboard boxes. Our selection of books was eclectic to say the least, because we were selling the excess of books donated to the Library House. They included the boxes of books from couple of popular mainstream writers - Eeva Joenpelto, Laila Hietamies, Mauri Sariola, Kalle Päätalo - memoirs and biographies, Finnish and foreign literature, plays and local history, to mention just a few. Unfortunately our selection of Mika Waltari was relatively small and most went unsold.

Well, we also had some collectibles like a very rare book Mika Waltari co-authored, priced 90€ (equal to 142 U$ - nobody bought it but that's the official price). We did sell one Waltari book with a lower price because it was damaged (the buyer took a call to a friend to ask if he could buy it for him).

The event was organized within a local school and a large tent outside of it. Our stand was in the tent (actually, that was far better place than inside the building).

At the other side of us was the second booth of the second-hand bookstore Makedonia, which is famous for its expensive (sometimes excessive) prices. It was mainly full of comics, science fiction and fantasy. According to the program booklet, it had been reserved for someone else who apparently had had to cancel so they'd taken over (well, they also paid for the space). An old friend of mine - a RuneQuest player - ran that booth, working for the store's boss who has an annoying tendency to buy collectible books for a cheap from other bookstores and put then back in sale for 2-3 times the price.

At the other side of us was the Finnish Bookstore in Stockholm. One of the dealers kept buying books from other stands to the annoyance of the others…

I saw number of old acquaintances (although some of them did not appear to recognize me any more). They included some of the past active members of the Turku fandom, including a former chairman (now a local politician and municipal public servant) who found just the Waltari he was missing fro our stand; couple of former members of Excalibur, the roleplaying club of the Tampere University of Technology; writer Boris Hurtta, couple of bookstore clerks from a now defunct store; and one former Star Trek fan (now a horticulturist). Lady katjunen also came.

People asked for various kinds of books we did not have:
* Foreign-language books about Finland
* Books about rabbit farming, violin building, Rolling Stones, woodcarving, jujitsu and ikebana (Japanese flower arranging).
* Anything related to railroads, including old timetables.
* Anything written by Winston Churchill (there are only couple of Finnish translations of his works)
* Books by Enid Blyton, Lawrence Durrell, Ralf Emerson and Jean Auel (Finnish publishers use the name Jean Untinen-Auel because of her Finnish descent)
* Old Finnish pulp fiction magazines
* First translation of The Hobbit (translated literally as The Dragon Mountain)
* Anne Frank's Diary
* The Black Book of Doping

Some people wanted to sell books but we were not in a position to buy anything. One blind and mute man with a sign language interpreter wanted some Waltari books but only the first editions (those are valuable collectibles). One man bought all the copies of the books of Kalle Päätalo (prolific author of semi-autobiographical novels) that had the author's signature. One guy who collects mainly personal bookplates was annoyed that we had not put the suitable books aside (because most of the other collectors get them from each other).

But, all in all, I think the fair went relatively well, financially speaking. When we left, the most of the smaller boxes were empty and the sales went over 1000 €.

In Finland, some idiot concocted a text message campaign to truck drivers, telling them to intentionally slow down the traffic before Juhannus (the midsummer festival) as a protest against the rising fuel prices. As if OPEC would care about that... Fortunately none of the transport organizations supported it, even if one group near the Russian border did do a similar thing to protest the hours-long traffic congestions near the border.

So, somebody else began their own text message campaign, telling people to protest against rising beer prices to slow down queues in stores. (I received one of those messages). Well, this was mainly a joke and I do not know if anybody really tried it…

Elie Wiesel - Night

Elie Wiesel is an author and holocaust survivor. This is his personal account of his time in Auschwitch and Buchenwald. I picked this book from a bookcrossing meeting a while ago.

Wiesel and his family lived in the Hungarian town of Sighet, so they avoided the first years of the extermination camps. Maybe they wanted to believe that nothing would happen to them, that the war would be over before they'd be threatened, that the news one survivor brought were mere fabrications. So it wasn't until the spring of 1944 and the takeover of the government of Miklos Horthy before the Nazis came to drag them to the concentration camps.

Wiesel seems to see his time in the camps through his relationship with his father and analyses the relationships of other prisoners through a similar lens; sons fighting their fathers for a piece of bread, fathers refusing to acknowledge their sons. And when Wiesel's father eventually dies, the time stops as well; the rest of the time in the camp is lost. Until the liberation.

In the same time Wiesel, a Hasidic Jewish boy with an interest in Kabbalah, questions his faith and asks how the Lord would let all of this happen. To them, to any people. His faith is shaken and diminished when his world is reduced to a mere survival. To avoidance of being selected for cremation, to finding the meagre nourishment.

I spent the most of the last Saturday behind the bookselling table in a cold courtyard in an old industrial district in Tampere, selling the books the Pispala Library House cannot use. The weather was sunny but with very cold wind.

The Mahdollisuuksien Tori (The Market of Possibilities) was organized alongside the discussions of the Social Forum in Tampere. It was in a in the old Finlayson industrial blocks in a courtyard currently named after the Finnish author Väinö Linna (because he used to work in the factory).

Other attendees included various trinket sellers, The Rauhanpuolustajat (Defenders of Peace, a left-wing pacifist group), couple of small publishers, some ethnic groups and at least one missionary group. And one good stand of Chinese food.

(The bald girl behind the stand of Rauhanpuolustajat looked like she had had serious skull fracture sometime in the past).

Beside us was a tent with a Living Library - people taking a certain role as "books" representing something (no historical characters, unfortunately). There were at least a buddhist, a missionary, a fetishist (the "book" was a transsexual) and a vegetarian. And one of the police that were in the market to keep order apparently volunteered as a "book" for some time.

Music - at least the western one - was loud enough that my pockets resonated. Others included couple of African bands (unfortunately I could not distinguish their drumming from each other). And, unfortunately, I could not see the capoeristas over the heads of the crowd around them.

The sales were at least adequate.

I think I did a "meme" like this couple of years ago but….

The following is a list of Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award winning novels (not including retro-Hugos)
Bold the ones you’ve finished
Italicise the ones you’ve started but not finished
Underline the ones were you’ve seen the film/tv show

* - I have the book but I've yet to read it.
(F) - This book has been translated to Finnish.
(W) - This book is in my wishlist.
( Celecrated science fiction and fantasy )

Another book meme via sir countrycousin_

- bold the ones you've read
- italicize the ones you started but didn't finish
- underline the ones you read for school (none of them)
- Add asterisks (*) to the ones you own
( Books many people apparently haven't read )

Donald E. Westlake - Don't Ask

This time it is Tiny Bulcher who contacts Dortmunder and the others because of his newly-found distant cousin from a newly founded pseudo-slavic country asking for a not-so-new relic.
( Left to the bone – more than one… )

Johanna Sinisalo (ed.) - The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy

This is decidedly literary collection of stories from Classic Finnish writers. The only parts modern fandom are Sinisalo herself and Pasi Jääskeläinen (the guy who wrote that "enforcers" of the Finnish Science Fiction Writers attacked him).

Stories include Waltari's Conan-style adventure (I don't think he ever read any Howard but his The Egyptian was even turned into a stale Hollywood blockbuster with proto-Christian overtones). And there is a dream sequence of a pupil who hopes that a storm would destroy their school…

These stories are not the fantasy of a Tolkienian or sword & sorcery kind. Some of them are snippets of classic Finnish works, including the folk tale part of the Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi, the first novel ever written in the Finnish language.

Mirroring the melancholic nature of lots of Finnish literature, the cover of the book depicts Hugo Simberg's painting "The Garden of Death".

Via lady reapermum

Bold the books you've read:

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-60)
A Rebours by JK Huysmans (1884
Baby and Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (1946) (my parents have it)
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (1991)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (1993)
The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (1971)
Chariots of the Gods: Was God An Astronaut? by Erich Von Däniken (1968) (nonsense)
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)
Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health by L Ron Hubbard (1950)
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley (1954)
Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968)
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973)
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943)
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter (1979)
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973)
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982) (reading a book from writers who still believe in the lies of a confessed French impostor would not be a good idea)
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (1979)
Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly (1990)
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and Russell Munson (1970)
The Magus by John Fowles (1966)
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (1962)
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1958)
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000)
On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson (1971)
The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956)
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923)
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (1914
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám tr by Edward FitzGerald (1859)
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (1937)
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922)
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)
Story of O by Pauline Réage (1954)
The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda (1968) (Mostly made up)
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883-85)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig (1974)

Via lady aberrant1

( If you can call it that when it's the main room… )

Last weekend there was another Tampere Kuplii (Tampere Bubbles) comics festival. Part of it was in the old Finlayson industrial blocks, just like last year, but now there were other events elsewhere as well. Coplayers were everywhere as usual.

Guests of honor included Italian cartoonists Ivo Milazzo and Giancarlo Berardi of Ken Parker fame and couple of Donald Duck artists.

The lectures, the panel discussion and the larger dealer's room were in one of the media museums in the Finlayson area. Some of the dealers sold manga and anime paraphernalia as well. Cosplayers were having their own games and dances in the courtyard outside the museum. Some of the presentations and discussion were in the Pub Höyry.

The small press stands - many of them from self-publishers - were in the Student's Union Building couple of blocks away from Finlayson. The floor was not sticky anymore but there was inadequate lighting. I bought couple of books, including one from the cartoonist Kaisa Leka about the Bhakti-Yoga.

Actually, I missed most of the programming meeting friends and asking around if anybody would like to gift any books to the Pispala Library House. I also collected two bags of donated comic collections from Asema Kustannus and Zum Teufel - both of them had agreed to it beforehand.

I am one of those people who see no mind in gathering together in a noisy confined spaces to raise their noise level even more so I did not actually enjoy the evening all that much (thought the sudden migraine probably had something to do with it as well).

Friend stayed for a night in my place again.

In Sunday the Sarjakuva Finlandia award was awarded to Kiroileva Siili ("Swearing/Cursing hedgehog") of Milla Paloniemi (haven't really read any of that myself). Judge was a Finnish dancer Jorma Uotinen.

M. A. R. Barker - The Man of Gold

Tekumel is an ancient world in the far future where most of the ancient knowledge has been lost (and one scene seems to hint why this kind of thing happens). But the various species - the humans included - have recovered and created very complex societies - with all the foibles of civilization…
( First novel of the Empire of the Petal Throne )

Elmore Leonard - BeCool
( No, I haven't seen the movie )

From lady bunrab

*Fill in each letter of the alphabet with a title of a book that you've read that begins with that letter (e.g. American Psycho for the letter A).
*Articles (a, an, the) don't count in alphabetizing, so skip to the first letter of the next word (i.e. A Thousand Splendid Suns would count for the letter T, The Great Gatsby would count for the letter G, and so on).
*Titles that start with or are entirely composed of numbers will be alphabetized by how they would be spelled when written out (i.e. 1984 would count as an N for Nineteen Eighty-Four).
*The letter X space will be special. The title will only have to include the letter X to count (i.e. Don Quixote). This isn't necessarily as easy as it sounds.

Personal notes:

A - Always Coming Home - Ursula K. LeGuin
B - Bridge of Birds - Barry Hughart
C - Changing Land - Roger Zelazny
D - Dying Inside - Robert Silverberg
E - Expecting Someone Taller - Tom Holt
F - Fine and Private Place - Peter S. Beagle
G - Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
H - Harm's Way - Colin Greenland
I - Idylls of the Queen - Phyllis Ann Karr
J - Jingo - Terry Pratchett
K - Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto
L - Life with Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
M - Memoirs of a Spacewoman - Naomi Mitchison
N - Nortstrilia - Cordwainer Smith
O - Ophiuchi Hotline - John Varley
P - Prostho Plus - Piers Anthony
Q - Queen of Angels - Greg Bear
R - Rocannon's World - Ursula K. LeGuin
S - Synners - Pat Cadigan
T - Tainaron - Leena Krohn
U - Ugudibuu - Lilian Kallio
V - Vagina Monologs - Eve Ensler
W - Wormwood - Terry Dowling
X - Xanadu Talisman - Peter O'Donnell
Y - couln't find any
Z - Zorro - Isabel Allende

Steven Brust - The Phoenix Guards

This is the first of the Dragaeran books I've managed to read - I'm still missing many Vlad Taltos books. But I think I consider myself impressed. And I'm going to tell you why.

Why, we are eager to hear that
I'm glad you think so
Charmed, I'm sure.
Well, do you condescend to listen?
Flames, it's been an hour since I've been asking anything else!
I shall do so promptly.
Argh!
( The tone of the tale definitely influences my writing style now )

Steven Brust - Five Hundred Years After

After over 500 years of his reign Tortaalik has become more interested about the formalities and his daily routines and is only occasionally interested about the affairs of the state - which have become rather complex, including various Houses refusing to send their representatives or even pay their share to the Imperial Treasury. And Teckla, the commoners, are growing restless because of the rising grain prices and Tortaalik's various dictates.
( But where's the dauphin? )

Dietrich Dörner - the Logic of Failure

(Lady bunrab sent this to me via bookcrossing - it turned out to be rather interesting)

Dietrich Dörner is a German cognitive researcher. In this book he tries to find out why things go wrong - and what people do afterwards. Among other things, he describes results of various simulations where the test subjects were to try to administer couple of communities run as computer simulations, including two hypothetical African tribes and a small town with a watch factory. Many of them did not do very well. The reactions to their failure were the usual;'
( Not My Fault Ad Nauseum )