Eurocon 2013

Kiev, Ukraine, April 11 – 13, 2013

I met Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf at the Arlanda airport, and together we managed to get to the Nivki Metro station in Kiev. There our problems started. We asked a girl about the names of the roads and were not quite sure that we had understood each other, and after about a kilometre we asked a lady for the way to Hotel Nivki. She led us in a direction that felt more and more wrong, and suddenly we were at a hotel, but not the one we looked for, and we were almost back where we started. However, after going back quite a long way and on the right way again, we found the road were the hotel should be according to the address. By looking at the numbers of the houses and from help of some kids we finally found the hotel, situated in a muddy area with large apartment houses in disrepair. At last we got our rooms and had a very Ukrainian dinner with dumplings called varenyky.

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Carolina testing honey.

The next day we were sight-seeing, mainly on foot after a journey in the very efficient and cheap (2 SEK per trip) underground train. We saw lots of churches with golden domes, and went down in the caves of the Lavra monastery which were still used as a shrine, where people kissed the glass coffins. We walked to the Independence Square that we remembered from tv during the “Orange revolution”, where we were harassed by people dressed as Disney characters who tried to convince us to be photographed together with them. Not for free.  In contrast, taking photos of the last statue of Lenin was free. As was trying to understand the words on advertisements when you don’t know the Cyrillic alphabet. It was impossible not to try to read, and when you managed the feeling of revelation was excellent. When I understood that there were actually two Cyrillic alphabets I gave up.

Lenin.

The convention took place in a huge convention hall on Thursday and Saturday. The venue was shared with stalls of a market selling everything from candy to various home-made looking articles and one day a large dentistry and the other a large biomedical exhibition. Fortunately the programme items mainly took place in rooms well separated from the main hall. Parts of the programme were open to the public. On the Friday we were instead in a library building at the Polytechnic University, and this venue was much better. Lots of changes in the programme with no information about it made it problematic to get the most out of the convention. It was also a great surprise to find that there was no programme at all on the Sunday.

The opening ceremony – which actually started before the announced time – contained some entertaining singing and dancing Ukrainian kids, but also to our surprise a singing of the national anthem, which also concluded the convention.

Ilona Volonskaya

Fantasy and national mythos: the returning of old gods was a lecture by Ilona Volynskaya from Ukraine, given to an audience of about a dozen. She used to talk about fantasy for young adults, and was convinced that these read fantasy of their own free will. They read more fantasy than sf.  There is, however, a “negative critic paradigm”, that fantasy is childish, a “rudimental tail” of ancient oral tradition, and replaces the real world. They also described the positive paradigm, often given by writers, that fantasy tells about the real world but in a symbolic way and appeals to lofty matters of hope, belief, love and honour. Another vindication of fantasy they gave is that fantasy by being a reteller of old ethnic mythology both may preserve the national identity and spread it as e g the Celtic myths. In fantasy for young children today they perceive ecological paganism; mankind as a fifth element in a world that is living and spirited. Finally they concluded that fantasy is popular because it is associated with the future and develops ideas necessary for the survival and progress of humanity. This sounds a bit bombastic.

Christopher Priest and Olexandr Vasilkivskyi.

The Panel: Science Fiction in Great Britain: current state and new trends” should have had Cheryl Morgan as single panelist (sic), but she did not turn up (possibly she had not been asked to participate since this was the case with others in the written programme). The Guest of Honour Christopher Priest was kind enough to replace her.  He talked mainly about his notorious journal note about the Clarke Award 2012, where he criticized the choices on the short-list, and the commotion this resulted in. About awards in general he said that “you don’t think about awards when writing”, and that “people like giving awards”. He also wonders who could talk about the list? You are either on or off the list, and in both cases there are a number of reasons why you cannot criticize it. He commented that there were no women on the list, and that there is an embarrassing lack of women on both committees and lists. He thought this issue had been settled in the 70’s or 80’s, but no. There is also a domination of USA, similar to that in films, where the Oscars are in the category “best film” and “best foreign film”.

To the question why British sf has been so influential in USA and other countries Priest answered that H G Wells was reprinted in the American magazines from 1926, when Wells had himself moved away from sf. The pulp authors imitated Wells and used his tropes. Orwell, Huxley and Stapledon also wrote sf but were outside the community. In the 1960’s the UK economy improved and it was possible to publish magazines, leading to a movement to overthrow the US hegemony. This the Americans have never forgiven.

Anastasiia Rohoza and Serihy Krykun.

Serihy Krykun from Kiev gave an interesting lecture called Visions of Terror, starting with ancient art and going all the way to the artists of the sf magazines. Unfortunately his Cyrillic letters for the names of the artist made it difficult to follow sometimes. He showed many pictures done by Hieronymus Bosch, as e g the triptych Garden of Earthly Delights (on which Ian Watson based the brilliant The Gardens of Delight). Albrecht Dürer, Rubens, Caravaggio and Rembrandt all could be shown to have made art describing terror, and Goya in his series “Capricious” and “Horrors of war” was of course a master. William Blake depicted the apocalypse, and Gustave Doré is most known for his illustrations of the Bible.  Felicien Rops drew horror in the form of women, and Sidney Simes illustrated the works of Lord Dunsany and William Hope Hodgson. Alfred Kubin was an expressionist and Lee Brown Coye illustrated works by H P Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. The pulp illustrators Virgil Finlay was extremely productive and Hannes Bok gay and uncomfortable. Francis Bacon was also gay, and surrealist, and the Swiss surrealist H R Giger is known for his bio- and erotomechanics.  The magazine illustrators Phillipe Druillet and Frank Frazetta were rapidly mentioned before Serihy had completely run out of time.

I then listened to Anastasiia Rohoza talking about Mandrake – legends and lore. The plant mandragora belongs to the Nightshade family, that also has belladonna and potatoes. These plants have poisonous berries. In medicine mandrake has been used as an anaesthetic for surgery, already by Hippocrates. Rachel and Lea in the Bible found a field of mandrake that was supposed to help fertility, and it is still used for that purpose in Israel. The use in magic is due to the shape of the roots, which can resemble the human body. It has also been shaped by pots to increase this similarity. There is a story on the Internet that a guy consumed a small piece of mandrake, leading to nausea, immobility and sleep, followed by hallucinations, shining strings crossing his view. Mandrake may be found on Sicily and Corsica, but is rare. It is said to be frequent under gallows, and that it shines in the night. According to Theophrastus it should be harvested in twilight, and a magical sword should be used to draw three circles around the plant, that should then be slowly dug up. A black dog is useful for finding it, and you should block your ears with wax so that you do not become dumb from the shrieking sound when it is dug up. In a story by Clark Ashton Smith, “The mandrakes”, a witch and warlock couple used mandrake as a love potion. The witch disappeared and a woman-like mandrake was found in the garden. In another story, by Hans Evers, a mandrake raped a girl. In that story the German (and Swedish) name was used, alruna.

Mikhaylo Nazarenko

Another interesting talk was Chimerical prose: magic realism, made in Ukraine. Unfortunately the room and time were changed so I missed the first part of what Mikhaylo Nazarenko had to say.  However, I heard about a book about a Cossack, Cossack Marmay, which had been filmed. In the 1970’s there was a lot of chimerical prose in Ukrainian culture.  He mentioned a book about werewolves by someone called Drozd, and a novel about vampires by someone called Galina Parotjak, but when I tried to Google these I got nothing. The latter name should be Halyna Pahutyak according to a comment from Oleh Silin. Apparently very little has been translated to English. The publisher that might do it was said to be Garoslav. But I didn’t find that either. However, in a comment from Michael Burianyk I have received a correction: The publisher is Glagoslav, and can be found on the net.

In the presentation of Shamrocon, the next Eurocon that takes place in Dublin a week after the Worldcon in London, I saw that a new GoH was Andrzej Sapkowski. Of course I was also happy to see our own Ylva Spångberg among the GoHs, and that Sten Thaning from the Eurocon 2011 committee was in that committee too.

Christopher Priest.

Christopher Priest’s GoH speech – announced as an autograph session – started with his observation that there is a lot of terrible sf around, and that we should celebrate the best. He mentioned his background, that the British culture defines him, whereas he did not get any interest in culture from his parents. His father worked for an engineering company and could not understand why his son had so many books.

In the beginning of the 60’s there was a yearning for better things. He wanted to explore the world of imagination, since he had had an unexciting childhood and had to daydream. As a teenager he read US sf and was stimulated by the ideas there. It took boldness to read sf at that time; you had to get used to hear about ray-guns etc. He wanted to consider what would happen to real people in the space ships, and when they arrived.

He had problems to read Asimov’s stories which he considered to be long and complicated and have unbelievable characters. Instead, he liked Ballard’s work, which he found weird, ambiguous, surrealistic and written in an obsessive, beautiful style. In part this is a matter of taste. In Asimov’s work he saw a dead end, commercial, with lots of power in a military future, whereas Ballard’s stories seemed full of encouragement and reminding of Salvador Dali. He read a lot of sf in his teens but not any longer.

His first three novels were sf, especially Inverted World, which was somewhat Ballardian, but also slipstream which he considers to use an unusual way of thinking. Other slipstream works he mentioned were Anna Kavan’s Ice and the films Memento and Being John Malkovich.

He has also used alternate history or counterfactual literature, which is familiar to sf readers. In The Separation peace is negotiated with Germany early in WW 2, and this might have decreased the horrors of the holocaust. It is also slipstream according to Priest.

Most fiction is invented and irrational. There has to be collaboration between the writer and the reader. Realism should only seem to be realistic, not be realistic. But why set the story in the future? By using the fantastic the readers are invited to think, their mind will be involved.

The earliest sf in English is Frankenstein. Mary Shelley developed a novel in gothic form, which was concerned with responsibility. This is an issue not only for scientists today. Sf often describes larger consequences, and if imagination is suppressed we may suffer a lack of freedom.

On a question about the future of books, Priest showed optimism. Today there are other information sources, but books are private, not mass-media. Important people read books.

At the General Meeting of the ESFS there was a spoof bid for the 2015 Eurocon, Mårtenique, proposed by Mårten Svantesson and James Shields, getting zero votes. Instead, the 2015 Eurocon will take place in St Petersburg in the last half of April. A new board for ESFS was elected: Chair: Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf, Sweden. Vice chair: Saija Kyllönen, Finland. Secretary: Gareth Kavanaugh, Ireland. Treasurer: Vanja Kranjcevic, Croatia. New position as Awards Administrator: Bridget Wilkinson. Thus, there are new persons on all positions, except on the newly invented as Awards Administrator. I think it might have been quite difficult to manage this organisation since fandoms in European countries have different culture and history, in addition to the problematic language barriers. The old committee has done a great job in keeping European fandom together.

Arno Behrend, Mathias Kunkel and Eckhard Marwitz.

I listened to a presentation of Science Fiction in Germany by Mathias Kunkel and Eckhard D. Marwitz, who also published a fanzine during the convention, ConFact. There are conventions in Germany in Leipzig, Munich and Dortmund, and the latter city is bidding for Eurocon 2017, Dortcon, presented by Arno Behrend. The big German Club is SFCD, Science Fiction Club Deutschland, and there is also a fantasy fandom organised in FOLOW, Fellowship Of the Land Of Wonders. There appears to be little sf written in Germany. Walter Ernsting wrote a lot of Perry Rhodan stories, mainly under the pen name Clark Darlton, Andreas Eschbach has written some sf books e g The Nobel Prize, but there are no longer sf labels on his books. Frank Schätzing has written thrillers and sf, and in his latest, Limit, there is a space elevator. Previously big sellers paid for the stories that the editors wanted, but this is no longer the case. I think this is a general problem when too much power is given to economic forces, e g the company owners.

Attila Nemeth talked about Science Fiction in Hungary, and the publishing climate there appeared much better than in Germany. There is a lot of Hungarian sf written after 2000, but unfortunately very little is being translated. The sf magazine Atjaro has taken over after Galaktika that folded in 1995. Galaktika restarted in 2004 and won the ESFS award in 2005. (Thanks to Jonathan Cowie of Concatenation for this amendment. ).

Peter de Weerdt and Frank Roger.

Science Fiction in Belgium was presented by Peter de Weerdt and Frank Roger, who started by telling that they came from the half of Belgium that is speaking Dutch and that they thus had more in common with people in the Netherlands. The Dutch-speaking fandom has organised BeNeLuxCons, and is now planning a Eurocon in 2016 in Antwerpen. The most well-known fantasy author in the Dutch language was said to be Jean Marie de Kremer, a k a John Flanders (1887-1964). There is a Dutch fantasy magazine, Elf Fantasy, and a web portal for Dutch fandom, http://www.ncsf.nl.

Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf and Dave Lally at the Closing Ceremony.

The Pan-European Party in the remote Prolisok Hotel was really a very pleasant end to a convention that was perhaps more an interesting than a rewarding experience. I talked to several people from many countries, and the international feeling is the really great thing about Eurocons. The international character continued on the “free” Sunday, when I, Carolina, Frank Rogers, Peter de Weerdt, Pascal Ducommun (Switzerland) and Christopher Priest went sight-seeing in the city, to be accompanied by Bridget Wilkinson and Georges Bormand (France) at the impressive Sophia Cathedral. We then had a late, very Ukrainian, lunch in a restaurant where the interior decoration seemed to celebrate the culture during the Soviet era in a nostalgic way. Some of us finally took part in a “ghost walk”, guided by Anastasiia Rohoza, who showed us some gargoyles and the site of a Ukrainian prehistoric shrine that we had missed on our Sunday trip.

Kontakt / Eurocon 2012 / SFeraKon

Zagreb, Croatia, April 26-29, 2012

Together with Carolina I arrived in Zagreb already on Monday April 23. At the airport we met Frank Beckers from Belgium and were most kindly transported to the hotel in a car by one of the local fans, who also showed us how to get into the center of the city from the hotel.

Carolina buying honey.

We used the days before the convention to have a look at the town and surroundings, and we managed to taste some local specialities. Zagreb is a beautiful city with an atmosphere reminding of Vienna although only a few words were comprehensible. However, English was fairly well understood. There were lots of outdoor cafés in the streets, where you could get something to drink but nothing to eat, not even a cake to the coffee.

We went to a market in a tent on the central square, where Carolina bought honey.

The Castle in Varazdin

On Tuesday 27 we took a bus to the former capital Varazdin, passing by trees in flower, small grape vineyards and even a stork in its nest on a pole. In this beautiful city we had a look at the castle which also had a small museum inside, and the cemetery that was dominated by clipped thuja trees.  We also managed to look around in an art museum by contacting the curator.  The  paintings were more interesting than good, but there was one Rubens.

Carolina having tea with strukli.

In a café we had tea with a cottage cheese strudel, called Strukli. Due to misunderstanding of the bus time-table we had to spend more than an hour in a café at the bus station, since we were not well prepared for the heavy rain. In the café we had to listen to a debate between a mother and a smoking man, and we were as bored as her daughter. Fortunately we had our books.

Carolina and Frank Beckers in Samobor

The next day Carolina, Frank Beckers and I went to the small village Samobor and did all that it was famous for: We climbed to the castle ruin from the 13th century, we had a look in the museum, we had tea with the delicious custard-filled cake kremsnite which was about as difficult to eat as a Napoleon cake, and finally Carolina bought a pot of local mustard.

The castle ruin in Samobor.

Carolina and Frank Beckers in the castle ruin of Samobor.

 

 

Back in Zagreb we went to the Museum of Broken Relationships. Zagreb has many museums but this was possibly the strangest. The exhibition consisted not so much of various small articles as of the stories connected to them, relating the end of marriages and friendships. Many were quite banal but some were gripping. On another day we visited the Contemporary Art Museum after a long walk out of the city. The works there were heavily influenced by the Balkan wars. At the Archeological Museum I found an ancient marble triskelion,

Marble triskelion, 16th-14th century BC

and at the Mimara Museum the most impressing were a bronze statue from the first century AD found in the waters outside Croatia, and a small painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

Carolina and Bridget Wilkinson at the market.

The convention felt very international. I stayed in the hotel International that also served as venue for the first 1.5 days. Thus I had breakfast together with fans from various countries and made plans for excursions. For example, the group that visited the Contemporary Art Museum consisted of me and Carolina from Sweden, Frank Beckers, Frank Roger and Peter de Weerdt from Belgium and Bridget Wilkinson from UK. At one breakfast I talked with Bridget Wilkinson about sf  poetry. She recommended Edwin Muir’s The Horses.

Workshop for children.

Although I am not quite sure I guess the number of participants was about 1000. There was a gamer’s room and a large dealer’s room where most books naturally were in Croatian. There were tables where it was possible to become a member of the Eurocons 2013 (Kiev) and 2014 (Dublin) as well as presupporter of the Worldcon in London 2014. In the art exhibition I was impressed by some photomontages with elf-like creatures on spiderwebs or branches, done by Zdenko Basic. In a Reader’s Corner various authors read from their work, and a small bar served beer and sandwiches if you were willing to make a donation (they were not allowed to sell…). I talked for a while with Pierre Gevart at a table for French sf. He recommended Xavier Mauméjean’s Rosée de feu and Roland Wagner’s Reves de gloire, if I wanted to try some French sf. He also had the magazine Galaxie for sale, but it contains mainly English texts translated to French.

For me, the programme started on Thursday afternoon with an interview of the GoH Darko Macan, conducted by the chairperson of the congress, Petra Bulic. Macan had always dreamt of being a cartoonist but has found that he is a better writer than artist. He wrote the short story “Koda” directly into a book that he was editing. He has also written a YA book about three girls, and he has done a lot of reviewing. However, reviewing killed hos enjoyment of reading: You are not looking for fun; you are looking for mistakes. Due to his many activities Petra Bulic named Darko Macan an “SF renaissance man”; a label that stuck with him for the rest of the convention.

GoH Tim Powers, Cheryl Morgan and Charles Stross.

It was also interesting to hear that the Ministry of Culture in Croatia and the City of Zagreb granted scholarships and funding for anthologies by Croatian sf authors which are published for the SFeraKons.

The interview of Charles Stross was amusing as usual, and he covered a lot of different subjects during the hour. He mentioned that he wrote fewer and fewer short stories, but in order to get a Hugo he now wrote one per month. We were told that the founder of PayPal wanted to use his money for mining of asteroids. Stross himself had been invited to a conference regarding what we should investigate in order to make a starship in the next hundred years. Saturn’s Children was his tribute to Heinlein, and in order to understand it you should have read Friday. It is very hard to make anything new in sf now, and according to the author Nick Mamatas the life span of an art form is about 70 – 80 years.

Stross’ Laundry stories are Lovecraftian spy stories, and they have been converted into role-playing games. Laundry Files #4, The Apocalypse Codex, is a tribute to Peter O’Donnell, creator of Modesty Blaise. The ideas for the Merchant Princes series came from H. Beam Piper and Robert Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber.

He admits to making mistakes in Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise; he got the stuff wrong regarding FTL and time travel. In “Palimpsest” the time police does not make these mistakes.

Regarding Christopher Priest’s famous comments on the shortlist for the Clarke Award he says that Priest wants sf to be respectable in terms of the literature in the 1970s. Stross writes fiction for the 2000s.

Glasshouse is his slowest selling novel, and thus there will probably not be a sequel since the agent does not want it. It could be about the grandchildren 200 years later. I am not sure whether a sequel actually is needed to this his most entertaining and thought-provoking novel.

Stross was pessimistic regarding space colonization. We have a complicated echosystem, i e some ten thousand microorganism species in the gut. Our technological infrastructure is much bigger than we usually think. Still, one possibility could be to fill Valle Marineris on Mars with oxygen and nitrogen and roof it over. This would give us a colony the size of  Germany.

After the opening ceremony we were served a glass of very good red wine and could have a look at the contestants of the Masquerade. We then went to a brewery to drink and eat. I and Carolina sat at a table with three Slovenian authors, Martin Vavpotic, Bojan Ekselenski and Andrej Ivanusa. At least a steampunk novel, Clockworks Warrior by Vavpotic, is available in English in electronic form. These authors told that they were starting a fandom in Slovenia, shaped after the successful fandom in Croatia. We were also joined at the table by the GUFF winner, Kylie Ding from Perth who had first visited the Eastercon Olympus.

Tim Powers writes fantasy in a real history setting, and he tries to minimise the effort needed for the necessary suspension of disbelief. He mentioned this in his interview. It is still escapism. He lets his subconscious handle any messages and recurrent themes. His stories may also be defined as secret history. To make a story he tries to find interesting events or enigmatic puzzles, and connects them. He was a friend of Philip K. Dick and had him living in his house when Dick’s house had blown up in the early 70s. Of Dick he said that he was rationally funny and generous. He invented a poet, William Ashbless, who was at the same time invented by James Blaylock, and this led to a collaboration with poetry “written” by this author. The novels he himself recommends are Declare, The Anubis Gates and Last Call. He does not like doing sequels. However, sometimes characters appear who have already been mentioned in an earlier novel.

Finally, he talked about German translations. When he saw them, they contained a few pages that he had not written, and which were set in another typeface. At the most exciting moment one of the characters asked if there was time for some soup? Another one answered “what kind of soup?”, and when they had had their delicious soup of a certain brand the story conrinued. Apparently this is a story he has told before but it is a good one. Interestingly, the powers went in the middle of Powers’ talk. It went almost completely dark.

Dmitry Glukhovski

It was interesting to listen to the interview of Dmitry Glukhovski even if I sometimes was surprised and disagreed. The dystopia Metro 2033 was based on the presence of the biggest nuclear shelter of the world, the Moscow metro. The time is 20 years after the war, when the world has shrunk to the metro. He used the subway two hours daily for six years going to and from his school, and he got tips of the presence of an underground city. He published the story on line and had visitors influence the story, chapter by chapter. Civilisation is fragile and can disappear in one generation. In the Soviet Union, nationalsocialists were renamed fascists since socialism cannot by definition be bad.

He considers himself to be part of a disappointed generation, bored of ideology. In the novel many subscribe to ideologies which they do not believe in. The mutants, or blacks, or in US “the dark ones”, symbolise immigrants. There is no love-line in Metro 2033, but there is friendship. There is also a lot of aggressivity, and like Richard Morgan he considers this to be impossible to throw away. We always fight and there is conflict in every movie. I am not sure I agree with this pessimistic view; conflict does not have to result in violence as can be seen from many novels, even sf novels. And even if inborn aggressivity has been necessary for the evolution of mankind, I believe that culture may provide sufficient barriers to reduce violence significantly. He stated that peace is unnatural. In Sweden we have had peace for 200 years and it definitely does not feel unnatural.

Metro 2034 is not a sequel but more of an antipode. There are different characters, and it is a different genre. He will not make a third novel in this series. Other authors are writing in different languages in the same universe. There are 24 novels describing the situation in Russia, Italy, Scotland, Cuba and other countries.

Surprisingly, he has disdain for contemporary Russian sf authors. They write action without ideas. In contrast, he appreciated the Strugatski brothers. Finally he says that sf is a fairy tale adapted to scientific facts.

Several hours on Friday were spent listening to motivations for nominations for ESFS awards, and the voting on Saturday also took up too much time. This is a pity since there were quite many interesting programme items that I missed. I was the last presenter of nominations, and naturally my computer suddenly refused to work when it was connected to the projector. I had to restart and I just had to apologize.

Winners of the SFERICA awards.

Of most interest in the ESFS voting was what country would host Eurocon 2014. Ireland won over the bid from Romania, and the Eurocon 2014 will take place in Dublin a week after the Worldcon in London. The Eurocon 2014 was named Shamrokon. The awards are listed on the web for the con. Ian McDonald, who was nominated from both Sweden and UK, got the award for Best Author. The other Swedish nominations did not result in any awards.

The award ceremony started with the SFERICA (little SFERA) awards for best children’s work on a given sf theme. All elementary and high schools in Croatia are invited, and about 1500 entries are received every year. From them about 40 are chosen for awards. This seems to be a very efficient way of recruiting new fans, not only among the children but also among their parents who were present at the ceremony. To organize this must be a real challenge, and I am very impressed!

The lecture entitled “Supernatural Beings and Phenomena in the Legends of Istria” sounded interesting, and the lecturer Evelina Rudan from the University of Zagreb was obviously an expert of the field. Unfortunately she spent most of her lecture describing the methods she had used to collect the legends. However, she briefly explained a few of the phenomena: There appears to be descriptions of fairies (“vila”), werewolves (“vukodlak”) and an impossibility to have sexual relationships in marriage caused by magical methods (“kljuka”). She also mentioned a hero (“krsnik”) who protects the community and predicts the future.

The sf scholar, author and fan Milena Benini gave a talk called “100 years of Andre Norton”, that was a delight to listen to. In Andre Norton’s texts there is no explicit sex and relatively little explicit violence, making them perfectly enjoyable for all. Her first published novel, The Prince Commands, is set in a small ficticious European country. During the war she wrote an alternate history spy trilogy, and after the war she worked as a children’s librarian. She used the pen name Andre North for her space operas. Star Man’s Son is an early (1952) YA dystopian space opera, and Sargasso Space (1955) seems quaint today but contains the essence of space opera. In 1963 she got tired of space and started her Witch World series, amounting to more than 75 novels and several collections of short stories. These were partly written together with fans, and she had a lot of communication with fans. She liked fan fiction and edited it making it consistent with her world.

In Witch World magic works, but only by women, and you have to be a virgin. Male magic is weak and despised. The society is a matriarchy. This is Earthsea in reverse, since in Earthsea male magic works but female is weak. Both authors discuss the male/female relation. Andre Norton describes a functional family, and she also introduced different races, consisting of people and not automatically inferior.

Andre Norton was not critically acclaimed but has a long list of awards, mainly for life-time achievements. She lived for 93 years. Two authors who were tutored by her are Mercedes Lackey and Louis McMaster Bujold.

In the lecture “Making the Reader Believe It!” Tim Powers talked about his methods for writing. He writes interesting episodes on cards and puts them on the floor and changes the order until he is satisfied. He makes a calendar with events for each day. He suggest that you throw away the first three pages and the last three pages of your draft, and all pages that the reader would skip. Dialogue should read as if you were eavesdropping, and it should not be too helpful. He does not believe in writer’s groups.

One of the more curious programme items was a lecture and demonstration called “Wireless Energy Transmission with Tesla Magnifiers” by Davor Jandrijevic. Nikola Tesla was born in what is now Croatia and there is a statue of him in Zagreb, but he made most of his work in USA. In the lecture we were presented with several schedules and diagrams providing the theoretical background for some demonstrations. From one antenna to another power was demonstrated to flow as shown by the lightening of a fluorescent lamp. People from the audience were invited to hold fluorescent lamps which also started to glow. To me this just shows that there was an electric field, as can also be shown with an ordinary electromagnetic field detector. The practical use for transfer of significant amounts of energy still has to be demonstrated.

Dmitry Glukhovsky, John Berlyne, Cheryl Morgan, Bella Pagan, Charles Stross, Neven Anticevic, and Luka Sucic (moderator).

In the panel on E-publishing Charles Stross claimed that ebooks are taking over the market in US much faster than anyone has realised. Cheap paperbacks will soon disappear. Bella Pagan said that this was not the case in other countries. The panel indicated some advantages like the possibility to carry many books or read erotica on the tube, but how can you show off when you have no bookshelves – a screen with shifting covers? Different readers have different codes, ePub readers use XHTML which allows Javascript whereas the Kindle used by Amazon uses old HTML without this possibility. Amazon was also accused of discounting paperbacks in order to discredit e-book publishers.

To me the prices of new e-books are ridiculously high, comparable to hardcover books, and this is not because I don’t understand that the paper and binding are a small part of the total cost. But a hardcover book can be read by many persons for at least a century or two, whereas the e-book may not be borrowed or resold and has a likely life-span of a decade.

Vlatko Juric-Kokic and Milena Benini

The panel “Steampunk in Literature” started with the moderator Milena Benini naming Tim Powers “the father of steampunk”, and he described how it all started. The Victorian era has been thoroughly studied and described in several volumes, and he, together with Jeter and Blaylock, realised that this could be a gold-mine for the setting of stories. Immediately Charles Stross, named anti-steampunk, critised this since you tend to ignore the late-Victorian holocausts and colonial atrocities performed by the British empire. He was worried by any positive descriptions of empire-builders, and felt that steampunk is escapistic literature, to which Tim Powers answered that yes, it is, but so are for example Westerns, they are not accurate either. The zeppelins are actually post-Victorian, but Ivana Delac is not interested in the science part, she writes fantasy. According to Vlatko Juric-Kokic the Victorian era was the las time when artist could produce beautiful things, then they were mass-produced. But Stross objected that they were mainly cast-iron everyday things, and we now look at the Victorian objects through “Bauhaus” – the charm comes from the distance.

Bella Pagan and John Berlyne

The talk entitled “How the Publishing Industry Works” started with John Berlyne talking for a very long time about what a literary agent does, unfortunately without saying anything more than that they have guide-lines on the website and that they send the manuscript to several editors which surprised me. This was absolutely forbidden when I sent scientific papers to journals. Bella Pagan who is an editor talked about what they do after the deal with the agent. First they edit which might involve rewriting the whole book, then copyediting with checking grammar, sense and style in every sentence, then finally proofreading. The author is involved and checks all stages. About a year before publishing a cover is chosen and the author is asked for a blurb.

I then went to a panel on graphic novels in the south-east Europe, but this was obviously intended for fans who knew all about these novels. It would have been much better if a computer with Power-Point had been used to show examples and titles.

Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf, Dave Lally and Petra Bulic.

We could see from the programme book that there was a lecture about Stieg Larsson. Both the lecture and the abstract were in Croatian however, but the abstract contained the words “SF fan”.

Finally the chairman of ESFS, Dave Lally, led a discussion with the chairpersons of the present and the last Eurocons, Petra Bulic and Carolina, about “How to Run Eurocons”. Since the present convention was very enjoyable and in all ways successful there was not much discussion. Obviously the SFeraKon committee is used to running big conventions!

A more direct impression of the convention and some interviews, a few actually in English, can be found here.

Tricon 2010 / Eurocon 2010

Tricon 2010, Cieszyn, Poland, August 26-29, 2010 

 

The combined Eurocon and national cons for Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia took place in Cieszyn in the south of Poland and actually also in the Czech part of that city, Cesky Tesin (unfortunately the website I am using does not like the Polish and Czech characters). To reach this place I flew to Krakow via Prague, and by bus from Krakow to Cieszyn. I had hoped to have a nice bus trip through the landscape that I have never seen, but the little bus was crowded and far from comfortable. Still, I got a view of some landmarks in Krakow and also of the countryside with many mountains. Poland was an inexpensive country and the hotels, Liburnia and Gambit, were perfect for me. The convention in the local university branch was in walking distance. I was there early to put up some posters for Eurocon 2011 in Stockholm, and when I registered I got so many books that I had to go back to the hotel and put them there before the start of the programme at 13.00. The programme had 13 parallels in the university building and 5 in a school in Cesky Tesin! However, the latter ones were mainly on gaming, and only one or two of the slots in the university was in English. Still I admire the organization of such a huge convention, with about 1500 members! The written programme book looked like a WorldCon one, and was absolutely perfect, with three parallel languages. 

Igor Kniaź

The first programme item I listened to was a talk by Igor Kniaz, 19th Century Inventions Are Back. He told us that he was from Warsaw and an sf fan since 1999. In a thought-provoking manner he demonstrated that many if not most of the everyday inventions that are used today stem from the 19th century, and also male clothes and ways we live. Thus, the inventions of hoovers and refrigerators made it possible for women to start working in the industry, and the care of women that had been an important task for men earlier was no longer relevant in the 19th century. Other gadgets in the home that were invented then are the safety pin, the sewing machine and the washing machine. Even computers were invented then as implicated in The Difference Engine, even if they were not produced. I just wondered which household inventions in the 20th century that were really new. 

Radosław Kot and Paweł Ostrowski

Radoslaw Kot and Pawel Ostrowski next talked about Space Opera – Humanity’s Unfulfilled Hope. I found this less interesting, mainly because they did not stick to their own definition of Space Opera, “Adventure stories set in space”. These are a continuation of sea adventure stories, the first of which was The Odyssey. Instead of talking of modern Space Opera, although they mentioned Alastair Reynolds, they concentrated on military sf which to me is quite another genre (and without interest). Thus they talked about mistakes in films like Battlestar Galactica and about David Weber’s books about Honor Harrington. 

A bus took us to the Polish-Czech border and from there on a bridge a group walked rapidly on down a street. When we arrived at the central station in Cesky Tesin I registered some doubts in the leading group, but finally they found the open square where we were supposed to meet. There were several groups fans dressed as in Star Wars or as medieval warriors, and the leading figure was a dragon with a spine of umbrellas. The parade went ahead in the direction of the station again, but had to go back and after one more mistake it was on its way towards the Friendship Bridge where the actual opening of the convention took place, with talks by among others the mayor and the chairman of ESFS, Dave Lally. The parade then continued to the corresponding square in the Polish part of the city, Rynek, where we could listen to nice medieval music. 

 

Dave Lally giving a speech at the opening ceremony

Eckhard D. Marwitz

 Even in the evening of this first day of the convention, Thursday, there was programming and I listened to Eckhard Marwitz from Germany talking about German SF authors translated into other languages. He gave us a list that did not appear to be complete, but he asked us to send him information to make it more complete. It was interesting and amusing to hear him talk about Walter Ernsting, who did not manage to sell his own books to a publisher but only his translations. However, he succeeded when he gave himself out as being the translator when in fact he was the author! He was active in SF Club Deutschland and wrote short stories in the fanzine Andromeda. According to Marwitz he was also the first maker of the Perry Rhodan series. 

Piotr Cholewa, Roberto Quaglia, Dave Lally, Bridget Wilkinson

Petra Bulić

Friday started with the General Meeting of the ESFS (European SF Society). Petra Bulic presented a bid for Eurocon 2012 in Zagreb, Croatia, April 27-29 with some introduction already on the Thursday April 26 (petra.bulic at gmail.com). In addition to a bid from London there was also one by Peter Redfarn, OrientExpressCon, in a train from London to Zagreb. Philip Pullman was suggested as GoH. A prebid for 2013 was announced by Borys Sydiuk for a convention in Ukraine, and Dave Lally announced that he will go to a meeting with the organisation International Union of Associations. The votings took place on Saturday morning, when the sitting steering board was reelected. 

Gerhard Kraus mentioned that in his country, Luxembourg, there will be an exhibition about Hugo Gernsback celebrating his 100th birthday. This will take place in a national literary centre, from October 2010 to February 2011. 

Piotr Cholewa interviewing Bridget Wilkinson

The Guest of Honour Bridget Wilkinson was interviewed by Piotr Cholewa. She told us that she had been suggested as foreign liaison for the Worldcon 1987. Her parents had travelled quite a lot, and she likes to go places. She also knows many languages. An interesting observation she had made is the fannish border through Europe, starting to the east of Finland, down through the Baltic and the border between Denmark and Germany, to the east of the Netherlands and then out to the west. In England she had meetings in her own house, whereas in Poland there had to be an organisation with special localities. Possibly this is due to differences in legislation, but I think there may also be differences in traditions. 

Anna Studiarek, Steven Erikson, Anna Kontek

In Steven Erikson: Meeting with the Guest, Anna Kontek asked questions in Polish which together with the answers were translated by Anna Studniarek. He thinks the characters are more important than the story, and he is interested in making a comment on this world but in a way so that you do not recognize it. Fantasy can otherwise be escapism. His universe is open-ended, and anything is possible, but he does not want to put in elves and trolls or the medieval kings and warlords. His world was created by role-playing when he studied archaeology, and he was inspired by Roger Zelazny. He collaborated in this with another archaeology student, Ian Cameron Esslemont. They were irritated over the bad realism in role-playing games, e g the location of cities. He majored in archaeology and has a minor in the history of classes. He thinks that there should be a sense of continuity since cultures interact and change. 

Asked for a favourite character he says that as an author you cannot have that, you have to have compassion and understanding for all. He admires Robin Hobb for her technique, and mentions Alan Garner and Don DeLillo as models. On George R R Martin he says that both kill off their heroes, and Martin had told him not to write so fast! He tends to read sf rather than fantasy, and he says that he might write a stand-alone sf novel. 

Wojciech Orlińsky

On Saturday afternoon I listened to a lecture on Lem and Communism by Wojciech Orlinsky, the question being, was he a communist or an anticommunist? Apparently Lem hid an anticommunist manuscript inside a crime story, but he evaded the question by saying that he was not dignified enough to consider himself an anticommunist. His stories from 1949-1955 have not been translated, and include some stories that can be considered anticommunist, e g “The Magellan Nebula”. Another socialist drama from 1951, “Paradise”, is apparently a parody, enthusiastically supporting communism. He hated his final novel, Fiasko, that was written 1987 under the new rule. It is an answer to his early pulp fiction. 

Together with the other Swedish fans I walked to the big Sport Hall for the Award Ceremony. We took places at the very front, but this did not stop the organizers from asking for me and Sten in the loudspeaker. It was announced that Eurocon 2012 will be held in Croatia, and awards were presented. To our surprise and pride we had to get up and accept two prizes for Swedes, in the category Spirit of Dedication. The Swedish author Lars Jakobson received the prize in the subcategory “An artist, author of one or more works”, and the film Metropia or rather its authors Fredrik Edin, Martin Hultman, Stig Larsson and Tarik Saleh in the subcategory “An author of a performance (film, play, ballet, etc.)”. The “symbolic object” was this year a stone obelisk, which Sten had some problems taking through customs. 

Aleksandra Cholewa, Sten Thaning, Bridget Wilkinson, Petra Bulić, Dave Lally

Fandom is a way of life was chaired by Aleksandra Cholewa, and discussed the organisation of fandom in some European countries. Petra Bulic started by telling us that in Croatia there are clubs for Star Trek, fantasy and sf in general. Cons are held in three cities, and one con is an sf writers con with just 50 participants. There is no national society, and the three largest clubs organize the cons.

Sten Thaning told about the organisation in Sweden, where there are a few clubs and cons are mainly held in the university cities. Bridget Wilkinson said that in UK the Eastercon is the big con, and there is also NewCon. The situation in Ireland was described by Dave Lally. The big con, Octacon, is held in October, and there is also a literary con. He listed some Irish webzines: Slovobooks, Lostcarpark and Albedo One. And he admitted to being a vexillologist and to being fascinated by borders, so after the con he would search out the spot where Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia meet. 

Dave Lally was also in charge of the feedback session, Eurocon – what worked, what still needs improvement. Since we will host the Eurocon 2011 I had some interest in this. There was a desire for more links on the web site, and there was some confusion since much information was only given in Polish. The location in two parts of the city was not appreciated, since it took too much time to change place even if there were buses. The toilet signs were confusing – it is not self-evident that a circle means female and a triangle male. There was a wish for a thematic list in the congress booklet, and it would have been good to have a room just for chatting. There was a lack of social space. There were also some complaints on the general behaviour: Mobile phones should be switched off, especially if you sit in a panel. And too many came too late to, or in the middle of, some programme items, which can be quite disturbing. Other tips were to have guided walking tours before and after the con.

Sten Thaning, Dessy Petkova and Mårten Svantesson at the Eurocon 2011 desk

Since we had a fan table promoting Eurocon 2011 in Stockholm, I missed quite a few of the apparently interesting programme items, e g two on Philip K. Dick, and I did not see the GoH Orson Scott Card at all. Still it was a very nice con and I am sincerely grateful to the organizers. 

Since I stayed a day in Cieszyn I could do some walking myself, and had a look on this interesting and beautiful city. The sight-seeing I had planned for Krakow, however, was spoiled by heavy rain. I managed to take a look on the old city, and to save myself from the weather I looked in a huge galleria. Since the shops were the same as in Stockholm I went out in the rain again.