Finnish Fandom: Further Reading

I've been talking about the Finnish fandom a lot this week, and I thought I'd finish with a list of some resources where you can find additional information, should you want to know more about Finland and our sfnal activities.Finncon is of course always worth mentioning when speaking of Finland and sf. If you want to see a fan-run convention in Europe with 10 000 attendees, Finncon 2009 may not be your only choice, but I don't think there will be too many of those in the next few years. Run by a competent and experienced team, this will definitely be a convention worth seeing. You can find links to other past and future Finncons on the finncon.org page.Åcon is another convention I mentioned. If you want to meet Finnish (and Swedish) fandom and get to know them, there's no better occasion than this. Plus, Mariehamn is a lovely place in the late spring (the next con is almost at the end of May, so the weather should be warm and sunny, perfect for sitting out on the hotel terrace chatting with people).Jukka talked about Finnish fantastic fiction the other day. On finnishwriters.com you'll find a couple of the authors presented in that post, plus a couple of others. The authors introduce themselves, and there are samples of their writing in English too. And more reading is available in the Usva International and Kosmoskynä English Special issues I mentioned in my fanzine post. And Hannu Rajaniemi has a few short fiction pieces posted on his site that are definitely worth a read (yes, he does live in Edinburgh, but we're still claiming him as part of the Finnish sf scene).If you want to read more good Finnish sf, I warmly recommend two books Jukka already mentioned: Troll: A Love Story (or Not Before Sundown in the UK) by Johanna Sinisalo and Tainaron: Mail from Another City by Leena Krohn. Krohn has a couple of English translations of her texts available on her web site, including the full text of Tainaron, if you want to take a look before buying the book. And then there is the Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy, edited by Johanna Sinisalo, that I can also recommend.If you want to read even more about the Finnish fandom, you could do worse than take a look at Pasi Karppanen's extensive article about fandom. It lists the sf clubs and zines, and talks about fandom history more thoroughly than I've done here.Many Finns blog, like everybody nowadays. There are some great blogs, but most are in Finnish. Jukka keeps a blog in English with his wife Sari, Eating Muffins in an Agitated Manner, which is always worth a read (even if there's a danger you'll be subjected to posts about ice hockey, figure skating, and Bollywood movies every now and then). And then there's my blog, Partial Recall, where I write about the Finnish fandom---you're welcome to stop by any time!And if you want to see what we look like, there's a photostream on Flickr tagged "findom" (short for "Finnish fandom").# # #This is the end of my guestblogging stint here at Ecstatic Days. A big thank you to Jeff for making me do this having me over and letting me share my thoughts about things I care about with you. And thank you all for listening! Also thanks to Jukka for being here with me, couldn't have done this with a nicer guy. This has been an interesting week, writing about these things and talking with you about them in the comments. I met my goal of producing something every day, which I'm happy about, but now I think I'll go gladly back to occasionally updating my own blog and just reading what interesting things the next blogger comes up with. Thank you and good bye, Turku out!