Thursday, November 04, 2004

Turku Mafia Renascent

Well, it’s been three times now, with a steady core group and a few new faces each time, so I dare say the Turku pub meetings are a tradition again.

Tonight, there were a couple of Danish fanzines to be read (souvenirs from Snorfcon) in addition to the beer, food and conversation. I gave out the “mini-zine” I’d made just for this occasion—a nicely formatted printout of a short story, actually. If you missed it, the short story was Shibuya no Love by Hannu Rajaniemi, and it can be read at the Futurismic web site. Go take a look, it is excellent. Too bad it isn’t eligible for Atorox (it’s in English and published by a foreign webzine), because it is one of the better short stories I’ve read in a while.

PS If you happen to be in the Turku area, don’t forget the sf jumble on Sunday (at noon)!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hauska kuulla että Turussa alkaa olla kuukausittaista toimintaa mafia-muodossa. Ehkäpä joskus täältäkin päin ilmaantuu iskujoukko, etenkin jos se ei satu samaan päivään kuni täällä.

Ei oikeasti asiaa, mitä nyt "HAA!" -asenteella kiinnostuin fanzineista ja koska olen juovuksissa (muuten niin juovuksissa että listaisin tätä Babek Nabeliin, jonne jo meinasin näin jo tehdä...), ajattelin vielä lisätä tähän Kivelän Markon Top-5 fantasiakirjailijat, nyt(ilman järjestystä):

David Gemmell
Barry Hughart
China Miéville
Ursula K. Le Guin
Guy Gavriel Kay
bubbling under:

Mary Gentle
Sean Russell
Robert Holdstock

Unknown said...

Welcome to visit the Turku fandom someday!

About Marko’s Top 5 fantasy author list: Gemmel—oh yes. Miéville—definitely. LeGuin—but of course. Barry Hughart is completely unknown to me. Any suggestions about his books?

My own list might at the moment include Chaz Brenchley. And a couple of days ago, the mailman brought the joint order we made with a few people in Tutka, a box full of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. If that is half as good as the hype, it might end up on the list, too.

Anonymous said...

One of these days I'm going to regret opening the internets after mafia, it usually spwns these comments, be it some quiet corner of someone's blog or on a mailing list.

Marko was a tad tipsy when we (that's I and Jan H.?) "interrogated" him and managed to obtain this piece of memorable quintet.

Anyway, I'd recommend anything by Mr. Hughart, because all of his fantasy books are excellent. There are only three of them: Bridge of Birds, Story of Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen; all telling of a "China, that never was".

Alas, Mr. Hughart originally planned to write more books of the exploits of Master Li and Ten Ox, but due to some inexplicable management by his publisher, he just called it a day and retired from writing. As Barry Hughart, since it apparently was a nom-de-plum.

"Zulu" Blommila sums this up far more eloquently than I ever could, so check out the Tähtivaeltaja 4/2003.

Anonymous said...

And this blasted anonymous blogger commenter is of course jukkahoo. Pardon my evident lack of proper manners.

/jukkahoo

Anonymous said...

Jac writes:

I wonder why all this is written in English. Do you really expect to attract international attention to the Turku SF fandom scene?

Unknown said...

Already have. :-)

Some events are of course only interesting locally, others might interest a bit wider audience. I think it’s better to be consistent and have the whole blog in one language than going back and forth between English and Finnish—or having two blogs.

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