The Running Man :)

Everybody’s been telling me about The Hunger Games lately. Sure, I’ll get around to reading and watching it… But today I would really love to re-watch the dystopia action I loved as a kid:  The Running Man.

Or perhaps Robocop.

The Running Man :)

Feminist rage: an excercise in positive thinking

I am angry person: I grit my teeth, I get upset over everything. I am female.

Sometimes I turn it into action, sometimes I feel very, very helpless. I admit it, it also turns into me eating chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate. (Considering my girth, that is not good).

Currently, the thing driving me up the wall are the stories the parenthood, birth and breastfeeding oriented NGO that I am occasionally part of (in order to quell the rage), RODA is publishing on Facebook.The terrible, terrible stories of abuse, verbal and physical, women are subjected to when giving birth in a hospital in Croatia. The tag is #prekinimosutnju (#endthesilence).

End the silence, because hospital staff rarely get reported. Because women almost never talk about it. Because in Croatia they tell you that the most important thing is that your child is alive (if not entirely healthy in all cases, but that’s another story) even if you cannot piss or shit like a normal person ever again or if there were complications that resulted in your uterus being extracted? And women believe them.

It’s true, in a manner of speaking. After a birth at a Croatian hospital one is unlikely to want to ever repeat the experience even if they get to keep their uterus. Birthing mothers here get to be called vile names, threatened, abused, restrained, given medication without being told, vaginally examined, left alone for hours on. To think I was angry as hell when one of the doctors used my first name without introducing himself first or asking permission to use it, asking me how I was. I am spoiled. I have no horror birthing story. Mine went better than I ever thought it would and in the most notorious of Zagreb hospitals.

But reading thru the experiences of all these women has left me shaken, teary and sooo enraged. Not one of the hospital staff is ever held accountable. Outdated and unnecessary procedures on women giving birth in Croatian hospitals are routinely performed. When challenged about it, most will say “because this it the way we do it”. This particular answer was given to me as a reason for a mandatory shaving before childbirth that is one of those routine procedures. (I wish all of them were so benign).

Having had a child I have often wondered in the last five years why not have another. And why I did not decide to have one sooner. These stories have reminded me how much I feared to give birth in Croatia. Not because I fear giving birth  but because I am in no condition to have a home birth, even if it were not illegal in Croatia. Nor do I have the financial means to go do it someplace civilized. Where the way we’ve always done it is not the alfa and omega of obstetrics practice and women are treated like human beings.

RODA has always proved me wrong when ti comes to the ability of Croatians to change. RODA’s relentless work actually changed a lot of things in Croatian hospitals that allowed for my own experience not to be one of the horror stories. (Well, that and a bit of luck.) I hope they can do it again. So the positive exercise is not mine. It is theirs.

Feminist rage: an excercise in positive thinking

The FFANZ race is on!

The FFANZ administrators, Dan Rabarts (NZ) and Edwina Harvey (AUS) are very pleased to announce that we have a nominee for the 2015 FFANZ trip from Australia to New Zealand. Voting is now open for David McDonald, Australian fan and writer, to attend Reconnaissance, in Rotorua, Easter 2015.

This is David’s platform:

David McDonald is a Melbourne based writer who edits a magazine for an international welfare organisation. When not on a computer or reading a book, he divides his time between helping run a local cricket club and working on his novel. In 2013 he won the Ditmar Award for Best New Talent, and in 2014 won the William J. Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism or Review and was shortlisted for the WSFA Small Press Award. His short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as The Lone Ranger Chronicles from Moonstone Books and Epilogue from Fablecroft Publishing. David is a member of the Australian Horror Writers Association, The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, and of the Melbourne based writers group, SuperNOVA.

You can find out more about him at dan.rabarts.com. His nominators are Norman Cates in New Zealand and Cat Sparks in Australia.

If you are wondering how to vote, details can be found here!

 

The FFANZ race is on!

Time to read?

How do you make time for reading? I used to read so much and nothing – not even giving birth and tending to a baby – stopped me from reading volumes. (Although breastfeeding did stop me remembering most of what I read in the first two years or so post-partum.)

I have a habit – as many avid readers do – of reading more than one book at a time. (I had better not look at the number of books under currently reading at Goodreads I might get discouraged by the number since I am sure I am reading at least two more I have not gotten around to putting up there.) This used to be my advantage but lately I have been frustrated by the habit.

Switching worlds has become something I am suddenly aware of. I forget my audio book and do not have the same title in my Kindle and I get annoyed. Maybe it’s my preference for short stories that’s doing me in, it does require more world switching than reading a novel series. I have not been working more lately. Less, I think. And yet I feel I am lagging behind on my reading.

All of this would probably not matter to me so much, but it is a really lovely true autumn day in Zagreb today. I know most books get sold and read during the summer, but for me autumn days were made for reading. Tea, a good book and an overcast day. My favourite time to read. I think I might go book-hop for a while now.

(photo credit: Lance Catedral via photopin cc)

Time to read?

Free Croatian SF Fiction: Parsek 125 is online!

Parsek

In case you somehow managed to miss out on the Worldcon & Eurocon 2014 issue of Parsek, the Croatian SF fanzine, you can download it here (.pdf)!

Parsek is the fanzine of the Zagreb based science fiction society SFera and one of the oldest fanzines in the region. It’s been coming out in various forms and under various editors for more than 30 years now. In 2o11 it was voted the best European fanzine at the Eurocon in Stockholm.

What I love about it is not only that it publishes new genre authors in Croatia but that it is the venue in which some of our youngest writers get to be published for the first time. Parsek has a special SFeraKon edition in which all the SFERICA winning stories are published. Alas, not in English. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any Parseks in English.

Petra Bulic and I took an issue to Denvention in 2008 and the late Boris Švel, who was editor-in-chiefa and the person who stubbornly insisted  the paper form did not wither away into oblivion, made sure that (almost) every Eurocon since and some Worldons had a special, English edition. (You can find them – marked “in English” here).

Free Croatian SF Fiction: Parsek 125 is online!

New Zealand

You say New Zealand, most people think The Lord of the Rings. I think a special shade of green, horizontal rain, icy wind, breathtaking views, very scary weta, bilingual sings, kids in short sleeves and short pants when I – who am always so hot and under-dressed at home doctors have been sending me to check up on my thyroid all my life – was wearing 3 to 4 layers of clothes and still not feeling warm, haka and Once Were Warriors. And NZin2020, of course. I knew about the possible Worldcon bid when I was going for my GUFF trip. And am sooo glad they decided to go for it! It is comforting, this possibility that I will go back some day. Especially since I managed to get enough money together to go to Loncon3 and Shamrokon this year despite the fact that it often seemed like there was no way we were going to pull it off, financially. So, saving for the New Zealand Worldcon has commenced.

I spent five days in the southernmost city in the world, Wellington, during my 2013 GUFF trip. In late autumn. Without any idea of how interesting the weather can be. In retrospect, it was waaay too little time to spend there. But, coming so close – Canberra – I simply could not NOT go.

A Croatian fandom couple with kids had recently moved to New Zealand and when my NZ host had to go away for the weekend, I stayed with them. Other than showing me around, I learned a lot about parenting. Again. The year I got accidentally pregnant I was terrified. It was happening at the same time as SFeraKon, of course. Running around the hall, trying to put whatever was the fire of the hour, I met Jurica and Diana, who was carrying her infant boy in a sling. To a con. With a huge smile on her face. It was a revelation! A year later I was doing exactly the same thing. I figured if Diana could do it with a second child, I could handle just the one. Later on, during GUFF which was also the first time I spent away from my kid, I learned both how to be a more patient parent from her and how to take motherhood in stride.

The public talk I gave at Booksa a month ago today made me realize how much of New Zealand I have left unseen. A few older ladies showed up to my talk and were a bit disappointed that I had not had more to say about New Zealand. They have been on my mind lately – I am quite sorry not to be able to take for coffee to hear about their New Zealand. I suspect there is a number of New Zealand aficionados, people of a certain age, living in Zagreb, that I have not discovered yet.

In New Zealand I saw a newly hatched kiwi – I was quite lucky, it was the last hatchling of the season and an unsually late one, at that. A friend drove me around the wine country. He was very patient with me – I do not drink – but I enjoyed the scenery and the cake. The mountains were stunning. So much green. (And such cold win. And don’t even get me started on the rain!)

I did not take a LoTR tour, but I did see the movie theater Peter Jackson restored in Wellington. I took an enormous amount of bad photos that I have misplaced since. I have trouble breathing when I think about being unable to find them. I am writing this post to prevent panic. I also went on a tour of WETA digital, where photos were not allowed, so that is why there are none to go with this post.

 

 

New Zealand

Bosnian genre author Adnadin Jašarevic wins Little Prince regional award

Every writer in the former Yugoslavia used to be eligible for the SFERA Award. So there are, among the early winners, some Slovenian and Serbian genre writers. Today, SFERA is a national award (and no longer the only one!). I think almost all the other literary awards in ex-Yu have been either ceased or transmuted into national ones.

This would probably not be relevant in any way if Croats, Serbians, Bosnians and Montenegrans were unable to read each other’s work without translation. But they are. So, basically for most writers of these now separate sovereign countries the market became that much smaller about a quarter of a century ago.

All is, however, not lost. New awards have been established, regional ones. Baby steps, of course, so one of the first regional awards was in children’s literature, established ten years ago, in the third largest city of Bosnia and Hercegovina, Tuzla. Its name is Little Prince, it was founded by the Tuzlan publishing house „Bosanska rijec“ iz Tuzle and is given out annually at the 11^th children’s festival Vezeni most.

This year the coveted bronze statue of the famous character imagined by de Saint-Exupery and the 1 500 euro award have gone to my good friend, Adnadin Jašarevic for his first excursion into children’s lit for the fantasty book Tamo iza (“Behind there”). I am immensley proud and pleased, not only because he is my friend, but also because the best book, for kids, across the region was one that belongs to my favourite genre.

Adnadin Jašarevic is the man who wrote the first epic fantasy novel in Bosnia and Hercegovina. I know him as the organizer of the Fantastic Literature Festivals in his hometown of Zenica. These have been the only thing akin to an SF convention held in B&H. Regardless, this Bosnian author is not a stranger to SF cons – he has been a member of almost all Croatian cons at one time or another in the past decade. And he has donated a signed genre story for GUFF! When not writing, Adnadin earns his living as a journalist and director of the Musem of Zenica. He has edited all the short story collections that accompanied the Fantastic Literature Festivals in Zenica and some that were published as part of the Fantastic Literature Festival in Montenegro. He has won other mainstream awards for his writing, but I should not be surprised if this one makes him the happiest.

Bosnian genre author Adnadin Jašarevic wins Little Prince regional award