Sunday, December 23, 2007

Sf on the Radio

The science fiction radio play Pieni suuri koodinmurtaja (Little Big Code Breaker) produced by the Espoo sf club ESC will be broadcast by Radio Helsinki on Christmas Eve at 6 PM. It can be listened to over the air (in the Helsinki region), or over the internet (link is on the station’s site).

I wish you all happy holidays and a great new year 2008!

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Susi Vaasjoki Wins Portti Competition

The results for the Portti short story competition 2007 (the biggest annual sf short story competition in Finland) are in. The winner is Susi Vaasjoki for Taruntekijä. Mari Saario was second for her short story Kenkänaula. The third place was a tie between Heikki Nevala for Vaiettu and Tiina Raevaara for Gliesen lapset. The full list along with honorable mentions is available on Netticolosseum.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

December Mafia Report

There was definite holiday cheer on the bus to the pub meeting today. It was full of young people carrying loads of booze and a real-honest ghetto blaster with them, so the bus trip was one big party. (I was later told that they probably were chemistry students from the Uni, back from a cruise.) What better way to start an evening? Even if they would have deserved some kind of a cruel (and hopefully unusual) punishment for their criminally poor taste in music. But I digress…

Despite the non-traditional date, a dozen or so people found their way to the mafia today. This was the second time we gathered at “the new place,” and I think it is definitely more comfortable and versatile for our purposes (and the others seemed to agree), so you’ll probably find us there from now on.

The day’s smoffing concerned mainly the Christmas party (that seems to have progressed on its own while we were at the pub)—it’s next Saturday. There was also speculation about a possible Finncon in Turku in 2011—a thought that doesn’t sound as completely impossible now as I would have said only a month ago. We’ll see. Ben and Pasi discussed their sekrit project, very sekritly, but it’s a sekrit, so no more about that for now.

Before the topics went into politics and religion (as they not uncommonly do), we discussed some sf stuff also. Really, we did! Although more about tv than books, but anyway. Torchwood began on Finnish tv yesterday. Based on the comments of those who had seen it, it didn’t gather any new fans (at least not yet), but on the other hand wasn’t as reviled as in the British discussions I saw when the series originally debuted. The ‘comment of the day’ honorable mention goes to Ben (wondering about the new Bionic Woman), “Why on Earth would anybody be interested in watching a new version of a crappy 80s sf show… oh, wait: Galactica… I’ll shut up now.”

Here’s a photo of today’s gathering (with most of the people present):

Lots of people sitting at tables, beers and zines on the tables

Let’s have a competition: I’ll buy a beer at the next mafia for the first person who correctly identifies all the zines on the table. (Those who were present are naturally not eligible to participate.) Any takers?

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

New Sf tv Channel in Finland

The Swedish television company TV4 will be launching a new channel called “TV4 Science Fiction” in the Nordic countries (including Finland) in Februari. In Finland, the channel will be carried by MTV3 as part of their pay channel package.

TV4 says the content will be sf movies, documentaries and tv series (Star Trek: Deep Space 9 and Voyager, plus Andromeda were mentioned).

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

First Thursday on Wednesday

Since the first Thursday of December is Independence day, the Turku pub meeting will be held a day earlier, on Wednesday the 5th. So, head to Pub Bremer tomorrow at six to talk some sf and have a couple of beers with other fen!

Finlandia Award Nominees 2018

The Finlandia Award nominees for this year have been announced, and there are a couple of familiar sfnal names in the mix. Magdalena Hai’s K...