Jarci, kažu, ujutro mrze sebe, a popodne cijeli svijet. Zmajevi, pak, rigaju vatru. I Jarčica i Zmajica, ponekad se, eto, naljutim. Krene logično, pravo jarčevski, a ubrzo odleti, poput zmaja, bez obzira na eventualnu gravitaciju argumenata koji letenje ni u teoriji ne dopuštaju. I zato sam ovdje: da mogu rantati preko svake mjere kad me pamet napusti, a vatra ispuni.
You have been warned.
rantalica na gmail.com
SFerKon 2015 will be held May 15-17, 2015, at FER (that’s the acronym for the Croatian name of the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing that has served as the venue for the largest Croatian con for 15 years now!) and the Guest of Honour will be the American writer Kate Elliott.
SFeraKon 2015 will be paying its respects to two unforgettable men of SF – Sir Terry Pratchett and Leonard Nimoy will be its Ghosts of Honour.
It will also pay tribute to 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland by hosting a very special, interactive tea party with lots and lots and lots of tea! Of course, there will be talk (and perhaps a round of SFeraKon Survivor or two) of Dune and the five decades long love affair readers have had with Frank Herbert’s masterpiece. And that, of course, is just a tiny part that makes up SFeraKon.
For all the foreigners who did not come to Kontakt, a word or three:
There is always at least one item per day in English at SFeraKon and this year there will be more!
Everyone speaks English here. And I do mean it when I say that! The “at least one item per day” I just mentioned are the GoH gigs. Which are never translated. Because there is no need. Don’t take my word for it. Go ask Louis McMaster Bujold. Or any of one of a number of very awesome writers and fans who have visited SFeraKon.
And since everyone speaks English, some speak it well enough to be able to offer their panels and lectures in English at a moment’s notice, should someone who does not speak Croatian happen to find themselves in the audience. If whoever will be doing the program book gets enough sleep in the week before the con, they will remember to put a HR/EN mark next to those items.
A three-day (full) membership for SFeraKon is €12 or £9 or $13.
An Anthology of Croatian SF is included in the membership. In Croatian, of course, but if there ever was a reason to learn a foreign language, there’s one right there!
No, there is no supporting membership. For now. But we are forever open to new ideas!
Zagreb in May is quite lovely – come see it! You can experience the unique way we tell time at least once a day, both IRL and on Twitter, visit the Nikola Tesla Kabinet at the Technical Museum, see the famous Zagreb mummy and bicycle around the Solar System. The surrounding towns are more than charming, we have excellent beer, very cheap hostels (that can be even cheaper if you are a SFeraKon member!), and delicious food! What more do you need?
A safe space? Well, SFeraKon is definitely a safe space, just not for harassers. I will be honest – this is the Balkans, we do things a bit crudely at times. So, we do have a (unwritten, unofficial) policy. It’s very simple: do not harass or you will be thrown out on your ass before you can say WTF!
Women are not an exception (nor a wonder, a rarity or an intruder!) in Croatian SF fandom. They are mostly the ones in charge and have been for quite some time. The men happily do all the heavy lifting and have zero qualms about the lifted being alive and kicked out of the con.
At Swancon in 2013, Monday came and I had not had enough. At Eastercon this year, Monday came and I needed more rest. Possibly because the Helsinki party was so great! I discovered a new kind of chips that alas are not sold outside of Finland. Another reason to bemoan the fact that I will have to skip Archipelacon which I have been so looking forward to!
What Monday did bring me was a great GUFF meeting, one that I had been missing in the last year and one that we were not able to make happen at Loncon and Shamrokon, for various reasons. Mostly, great programming on my end and the fact that a Croatian fan had a hand at organizing Loncon 3 volunteers’ which in reality meant that I had things to do even when I did not know I had things to do. (Am kidding: Petra did an awesome job and even managed to find me volunteering jobs that were ok to do with a kid in tow!)
Sitting down to talk about GUFF at Dyprosium was a new experience for me. All the people I have met IRL at various cons and that I have emailed for ages were suddenly there and agreements could be made without time delays and work and life interfering. Oh, joy! (Gillian, the only thing missing was you!). Thus, I missed almost all the panels I meant to go to, but had an awesome time brainstorming fan funds and just chatting to people afterwards. I should have taken more photos but this is where Irena saved me by graciously allowing me to use hers. After lunch, Irena left to see some London, leaving a sad Irish man behind and I found a quiet corner to do some work in.
I did manage to get to the panel on Fairies which dipped into the surreal every 10 minutes or so while the conversation went from how they got used in the panelists work to talking about them as if they were real (and uninvited!) beings. I alternated between being amused, very, very afraid and quite interested in all the turns the diversity in fandom conversation might go should the fae suddenly decide to come out at a con.
In the afternoon I took a walk around the hotel – the first time I went outside in three days, because convention! – and discovered that there was sun outside! The closing ceremony… I never know what to think – we don’t have those in Croatia. While I do enjoy them, I always find myself wondering why I do not feel prompted to organize one at home.
At Shamrokon, I was devastated not to be able to go to the Dead Dog Party. So I was going to go to this one, even it meant spending the night at Terminal 5! (Luckily, I was saved from that by James Shields and Fionna O’Sullivan: THANK YOU!) So, in the evening I talked to (almost) all the people that I did not get to talk to during the con, saw the worst apology in the world, collected all the issues of Clickety Click to take back to Croatia and hung out with Fluff – whom I had no seen one on one since Swancon perhaps and whom I very much hope to see again in Barcelona.
I also met the European Chocolate con lady Gillian told me about this summer! And I even had some Croatian chocolate on me to offer! A person handing out chocolates at cons is such an awesome idea (and it is how I met Gillian Polack who was last year’s GUFF delegate at Loncon3). The Dead Dog Party conversations are always deep, silly, full of laughter and insane details and topics – mine at Dysprosium were no different and I loved them.
All I have to do now is figure out how to afford going back next year.
Hearing about someone’s creative process has always seemed a bit voyeuristic to me. This does happen a lot at SF cons and is a very enjoyable part of panels. I started off my Sunday morning with just such a panel, on film this time. Scriptwriter Mark Stay and VFX Supervisor PaddyEason presented how their very own independent British movie was made. The Our Robot Overlordspanel was informative and fun and made me want to rush to a cinema right away because I have no idea whether a film like that would ever make in into cinemas in Croatia. And I have a five-year-old who just might love it if it did.
After that I went to listen about Holmes, but failed to be intrigued through no fault of the panel itself. It was just not a good fit for me jonesing to see a kids’ movie with robots. Totally the wrong kind of mood. although I love the character I did not like the panel. I went looking for people whom I could persuade the vote for Nina in the TAFF race. I believe I managed a few and am very glad I did as it turned out alter the race was quite lose.
I spent a lot of time chatting to Jukka Halme, because I like him very much and because I will not be there when he is quite deservedly guest of honour at this year’s Russian Eurocon in St. Petersburg. (I will be at Pyrkon!). And because I think he would make an excellent GUFF candidate.
Beeblebears. <3
I planned to go listen to Seanan McGuire’s GoH speech but was a bit late, talking to friends old and new as well as actively ruining Anglophone fandom by telling tales of non-Anglophone fandoms where women run things. Because what else would I have done? Browsed the Dealer’s Rooms a bit, I found that the very social me really does not feel comfortable having to go into the smallish rooms. But I did get a lot of good advice in number 8 (I think it was) on how to get cheap flights to Spokane. To which I will probably not be able to go anyway, but I loved the advice and am sure to use it in the future.
Photo by Irena Hartmann
The V is for Vampire panel was a bit strange. Or maybe I’ve just had enough of the topic. I did notice one thing though – there was no panel touching on anything even remotely connected with vampires (zombies and other panels) where sparkling was not mentioned at least once. Or several times. As I listened to the panel talk, I was reminded of why it was so terrifying to be on the same panel as Charlie Stross – he opens his mouth, and then something so clever comes out that it is difficult for anyone following him to sound even as remotely smart. This panel gave it a good go. It was a shame none of them had seen the Carmillaweb series. The novella was mentioned, as it always. I find the web series is not just a whole lot of fun to watch but also a nice take on some of the drawbacks and criticisms people always mention when talking about Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella. (Still not hearing that name in my head the way the Irish say it, sorry!)
BSFA Awards Winners Photo by Irena Hartmann
Watching things happen from outside of the Anglophone fandom can be daunting. Coming from a small country stopped being a problem for me when people at Worldcons started pointing out to me that Croatian fandom is quite lively and by no means as small as I had thought it. Still, standards need to be achieved. So it was that I was so very happy to see the head of the BSFA Awards Jury stand up in the middle of a winning speach for the non-fiction award – won by her partner – do proclaim that she had left the room for the counting of the ballots in that category. Made me feel so very less alone: it will be a story I tell members of the SFERA Award Jury, who also sometimes find themselves having to go out for coffee.
I was in awe at how quickly Dysprosium managed to fit in an emergency program item to discuss to bloc voting that got certain people nominated for this year’s Hugos and ramifications thereof. It was an interesting discussion and I learned one thing for sure – no matter what shitstorms develop online and offline, SF fandom consists of mostly very polite and nice people. There was a LOT less cursing than would have been involved at a Croatian con in similar circumstances. I was very impressed. Granted, no Sad Puppies were present. That was the panel I ran to as soon as the most important part of the Eastercon Sunday for me finished: The Fan Funds Auction!
Photo by Irena Hartmann
And it was great! With the possible exception of one Rikon Auction, it was the best one I ever attended. Auctions are all about collecting money for the Fan Funds that fund trips for fans, across whichever ocean you’d like. This one was held for TAFF and GUFF. You bring fannish things and people pay outrageous amounts of money for them. In Australia though, where I had experienced my first Fan Funds Auction at Swancon 2013, it’s more about the fun than it is about fannish stuff. I took a risk and brought some non-fannish things, like the Zogettera soap and candies orange peel and Croatian wine. It sold. And all the other things sold incredibly well. And it was the best two hours I spent at Eastercon – all thanks to John Robertson.
Photo by Irena Hartmann
I came to the room at the appointed time, with a lot of stuff. Jim Mowatt, who had organized it all with the Eastercon committee, gotten the room and gotten the word out, told me to be there at 18:30. There was no one there but this blonde guy, dressed all in black, whom I did not know and had never seen before. He said he was also told to be there at 18:30. People started popping to leave thing for the auction and I started panicking – 15 minutes till it was time, no Jim, no Kylie, no James – just a whole bunch of stuff, the European Fund Administrator who ran on a dare and the blond Australian dude. Soon there was too much to stuff – as there always seems to be in the end – to lay it out properly and Jim arrived and there was a crowd and we could start. So John did. And a lot of laughter later, the Funds were six hundred pounds richer and we had to leave the room. John, a comedian by trade, was AMAZING! There is no retelling it. I did tape some of it and hopefully I will manage to get my head out of my work this week to send it to Jim Mowatt.
One of the biggest disappointments of my Chicon 7 trip was the fact that the con hotel did not have a pool. I am addicted to swimming and after a long day of sitting there is nothing better than a long swim. I loved that I was able to stay at the con hotel in Chicago and not lose any time getting to and from another one. I hated it that the room I was given had a view of the pool in the Radisson Blu accross the street that the internet claimed was the biggest (or perhaps the best?) pool near me.
The Park Inn at Heathrow has a pool. It’s not much but it was not crowded and it made my mornings at Dysprosium wonderful. Even though the Read Me, which I read solely because we @SFeraKon bitch so much over the fact that no one ever reads these things, was wrong and listed breakfast times wrong. (Dysprosium – the con that tells you to ignore your Read Me! how could I not love it?) Apparently, a lot of people at Eastercon do read them, because the breakfast queue was long – it appears everybody politely waited for 9 to go down and eat.The Writer’s workshop I went to was not what I would have called a workshop but it was immensely useful to me. Certain editing tips my be just OK for English speakers but when half your mind works in descriptive (read: adverb and adjective loving) Croatian, they can be GREAT!
At European cons there is no getting away from ESFS (European Science Fiction Society) so I chatted about that more than a few times with more than a few people. Even got mistaken for the current treasurer by the past one! I will leave it to her to discuss the mistake with the Irish gentleman who made it. (Makes me a tiny bit sorry I will not be there to see that discussion in St. Petersburg!)
Photo by Irena Hartmann
Charlie Stross interviewed Jim Butcher and it was fun to listen to. I am not a huge fan of The Dresden Files, but hearing things about the creative process, about writing teachers, lessons learned and dealing with internet trolls is always fun, especially when people do it in a humorous way. (I almost put “witty” here but the American accent got in the way.)
What in the world possessed programming to put anything related to Terry Pratchett in a small room I will never know. Due to the fact that I stopped to vote for the BSFA Awards and take part in their raffle (which I am sooo stealing for some future SFeraKon!) I did not manage to get to it on time and then it was full. No Equal Rites panel for me! (After Loncon I should have known better!)
Had a lovely time chatting Finnish fandom, birthing options, Helsinki in 2017, SF drama queens and trolls and naming customs with Leikomaa Karo and Bridget Wilkinson at the Helsinki in 2017 table. (And they need to win the Worldcon bid, so if you haven’t gotten a supporting membership for Sasquan, get on it!). I also got to meet in person some of the people I have been emailing – that is always awesome.
I was not the only Croatian at Eastercin this year! Irena Hartmann, the young Croatian writer who won the ESFS Encouragement Award in Dublin last summer and helps run Rikon just happened to be in London over Easter and choose the con over sightseeing. Going from a fandom where you know most people and most people know you at almost every con in the country to a fandom where no one knows you at all can be a bit disconcerting. Irena took it well, and now she knows a lot more people, including James Bacon. I just realized I forgot to tease her that she spent a good portion of an evening talking to a Hugo nominee!
Eastercon Fan GoH Caroline Mullan I knew nothing about but after hearing her talk I wish we could afford to bring fan GoHs at SFeraKon more often. At the end of her talk a song was performed that made me think I might like go see a filking item some time.
Seanan McGuire, Mike Carey, Sam Stone Photo by Irena Hartmann
In a bout of missing my husband I went to the Zombie panel. Zombies – the main idea of having to deal with an enormous number of deadly things coming out of the dark – terrify me. (Yeah, Starship Troopers also had some scary moments for me!). I don’t watch the TV series and the only book I read about them was the first one in the Mira Grant series. (and I loved that one!) The panel would have been great – awesome panelists! – but again the moderator was also an author who wrote zombies and that got in the way of it being interesting for me. Why can’t there be moderators who are just moderators? I seem to remember that is how this used to work?
I do like to hear how zombies ended up in somebody’s novel. But answering all questions with examples from one own’s books got tired real fast. As did a discussion of what European vs. American vs. non-European culture is or is not sparked by an unfortunately phrased question from the audience. Really do not appreciate it when everyone forgets – and this tends to happen at UK and American cons – that Europe is so much more than the UK. Really, mentioning Ireland, Spain, France and Italy as an afterthought, does not make it any more inclusive than just thinking of Britain in that context. They are not all Europe is, nor are they all that European fandom is. At all.
Photo by Irena Hartmann
I have been told – and I have no memory by whom, it was by several people and more than once – about a game that is played at cons that is all about con-running . So I found The Great Game panel, convinced Irena that it was a useful use of her time and thus two Croatians and one Brit (I think! and sorry if I am wrong!) ended up organizing an imaginary Eastercon program in just 2 months. I had so much fun and I am soooo stealing that one, too!
The Hugo nominations deserve a post all of their own. I spent the rest of the evening thinking and talking about them.
I love to fly. The best thing about flying is the acceleration. If I could get paid to go through that sensation or the one astronauts’ experience at the beginning of a shuttle launch, I’d probably die of joy. But, then again, I find turbulence an excellent aid in falling asleep, often to the horror of my traveling companions. I really like to fly and I always want the flight to last as long as possible. (Yes, my flight to Australia was awesome!)
Today, however, a two-hour flight seemed to take forever! I couldn’t get an earlier flight and I felt I was missing half the convention. Once I got off the plain, I found the bus stop quickly enough but not the bus itself. It seems to be turning into a theme this year – me getting to conventions a bit later than I’d like.
So, Eastercon? It feels very different from all the other cons I’ve been to. I can’t say it feels cold, because it’s not. A bit distant? Maybe. It will take me a while to pinpoint the reason – maybe it’s just the space which feels very decentralized and narrow? I am a spoiled Croatian, used to large, open spaces that house stands of all varieties to entice me into buying things while I’m trying to get to a program item. Here, one has to go into a room to even see the stands. Perfect for me when low on funds – the chance of impulsive book buying cut down to zero!
I managed to attend exactly one talk and one panel, catch up with the Irish and the Finns and find two other Croatians at the con – one, a young con-runner from Rikon, my favorite Croatian con after SFeraKon and one working at the hotel.
The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Human Spaceflight by SpaceKate was witty and fun, and I learned a lot I did not know about shuttles, shuttle launches and even more about shuttle delays. It was all about space and explorations and, of course, space toilets. I see a pattern emerging – it always comes back to bodily functions in space! Story Musgrave shared a space toilet story at Chicon 7 and SpaceKate shared a story of a not entirely functioning toilet on one of the first space flights. I have to remember to ask the Croatians attending this year’s Eurocon in St. Petersburg where the Russian Guest of Honour is the kozmonaut Pavel Vinogradov if he had anything to say on the topic.
The one item I most wanted to see on Friday was the Ultimate Urban Fantasy panel. I figured this time I might get lucky, as the last time it I went to one with that title I came away surprised. It was Denvention in 2008 and I had gone in expecting to hear fans discuss Tim Powers and discover other fantasy books in urban settings. Instead I was introduced to the works of Laurell K. Hamilton and Kim Harrison. (Blessing or curse, have not decided yet!
With Charlie Stross and CE Murphy and Jim Butcher and Mike Carey on this panel, I figured it would turn out to be quite interesting. I honestly never thought of The Laundry as urban fantasy. Yes, it would have fit my understanding of the term prior to Denvention but not the one I now figured was prevalent – first person, female main character, mystery plot, romantic subplot, etc.
It was entertaining to hear how The Dresden Files came about and how all the panelists saw urban fantasy in relation to their own work. Unfortunately, the panel veered too much into the writing. For a while it seemed as if no answer may come unaccompanied by examples from the author’s own books!
I get that this is both good marketing and something fans do want to hear but it’s the kind of thing I would expect to hear at a GoH interview session. On this particular panel, I would have much preferred to find out what they all thought of the subgenre itself, in more depth. At the end of the panel, I discovered (yet another reason) is why enjoy Charlie Stross taking part in panels. He closed with a thought about urban fantasy that I would have been delighted to hear much more on from the other panelists:
We’re living in a really complex century and I’ve noticed there’s not that much extrapolative near future science fiction published (…). We live in a world which is functionally profused (?) by magic. We all carry around these magic mirrors that give us access to the sum total of human knowledge in our pockets although we mostly use them to take selfies and watch cat videos. The devices around us all run on magic smoke… without the magic smoke, they stop working. We have rituals that make the gadgets do things. And there are these strange shadowy entities that have influence on our lives. We call them corporations but we might as well call them artificial intelligences or gods. We are surrounded by these strange influence(r)s and it seems to me that in some ways urban fantasy is a more useful vehicle than extrapolative science fiction for exploring how we live in the world. *
The We Live in the Golden Age of Television panel proved waaay too British for me; too many mentions of details from shows I had never seen as they aired ages ago on British TV. It was definitely aimed at the right audience as a lively discussion developed almost immediately.
I exchanged listening about TV for conversations about fandom and cons with a range of awesome people and learned how the word for “friend” in Irish pronounced sounds like one in Croatian you do not say in polite society, that Norwegian libraries, just like Australian ones, do not have subscriptions, that there is no convention in Norway this year and that there are at least 12 gaming cons in Ireland during a “slow” year. Don’t think I missed half a con after all.
Yesterday, at 20:30 CET came the result of the 2015 TAFF Race – and the winner is Nina Horvath. Doing a great campaign, she deserved to win. And her victory serves a higher purpose. It is good for Nina, good for Austrian fandom and good for European fandom. The runner-up (me) needs to remain hungry for the sake of TAFF.
As a trial-run, without British contenders, this race was NOT a failure. Nina Horvath proved, that non-Brits can gather the sufficient amount of votes. But the many different language fandoms in Europe still need to familiarize themselves with the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund.
Voting must be made easier and more fans need to understand that they are eligible for voting. Also, we (European fandom) have more to learn from and to offer American fandom, which receive our candidates so graciously. Who ever gets to go, receives a mind blowing trip.
The eastbound American fans on the other hand, have so far “only” seen London and other parts of the UK. Perhaps they would in future also like to visit Sweden, Finland, Germany, Spain, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia or other countries once these options more openly come on the table.
Nina deserved to win and from my point of view, it was a win-win scenario. I need to stay on the (TAFF) case for a while longer. I will take Curt Phillips as a role model and race again if health and the global situation allows it. TAFF and the slightly less flexible European sf-fandom does not change with a single campaign..There is still work to be done. We also need to welcome eastbound travelers more openly.
I can think of no better way to announce that Austrian fan and writer, Nina Horvath, whom I nominated, has won this year’s TAFF race than in these fine words by Wolf von Witting, the continental European fan who ran against her. I met Wolf at my first Eurocon, in Italy in 2009 and have had the pleasure of chatting with him, whether online or ILR ever since.
Wolf is a wonderful man and I know he will run for TAFF again, not only because I will hound him to, but also because the American fandom deserves the chance to meet this unique European fan. Until then, they can enjoy their time with Nina and take a look at Wolf’s fanzine!
At this point, Wolf is also probably a bit taken aback at the outpouring of emotion from everybody who was torn between voting for him and voting for Nina. I suspect if there had been a fifth opting on the ballot – I vote for both! – there would have been a lot of votes cast that way! We should enjoy it – it is not often that anyone, anywhere gets to choose between two good people and two excellent choices. Only in fandom! <3
The oldest of them all – the TransAntlantic Fan Fund – is what we all dream of: being able to get to an American Worldcon without actually winning the lottery. Sending well-known SF fans between Europe and the US mostly consists of the Americans and the British exchanging people. While I love the British, there is certainly more to Europe than its northern isle, however mighty! This year the TAFF race has moved to the continent – both candidates are continental Europeans! And one of them is a young Austrian genre writer and fan who also happens to be female – Nina Horvath.
Nina has many qualities that would make her a great European delegate and I will let you read all about them in the interview below. If you’ve been waiting for me to play the gender/age card, as in “Vote for her because she is young and female!” here it is, although it might not be what you expected.
Vote for Nina Horvath if you would like to see a TAFF delegate representative of the entire European SF fandom at Sasquan! And by entire, I mean the one that includes the non-Anglophone European fandoms which are run by women! (Finland and Croatia come to mind as the most famous examples but are by no means the only ones!)
Actually, I am a person who worries a lot about this and that and who seeks most answers in life in books and on the internet. I very often think everything through so much, so that everything seems complicated. Going to cons made me break this circle, I usually decide late what to do and I am open for suggestions from others. If I win, I am hoping American fans will show me how great and varied their fandom is, because all we get here is a distant sense of the Worldcon and that can be everything! Probably anyone can also recommend me a local con I can reach with a few hours going by train or bus the next weekend or the weekend before. Local cons may be small, but I love them, especially as you get to know a little charming part of fandom. I try to have a “come what may”-attitude, as it brings more joy to my life The TAFF in my point of view stands for supporting open-minded people, who are ready for a whole new experience!
How did you discover SF?
At kindergarten age! My only brother is almost five years older than me he loved watching the original Star Trek series. I simply joined him. It was a bit scary at time but I was fascinated. Later, I have got into the books as well, as I never liked the typical books suggested for girls between 10-14 years of age with horses, boarding schools and such. I never got why anyone wanted to read a story about a girl who goes to a boarding school, if you could have an adventure in space instead
And how did you end up in fandom?
As Austria does not have much of an organized fandom, it’s really difficult to say. At school I met boys (about two third of pupils at my school where in fact male) who were interested the TV-shows like Star Trek, X-Files and Babylon 5, if nothing else. Getting into fandom was a slow process. Getting on discussion boards, writing book reviews for an online-zine, publishing my own stories. I really do not know when fans started to consider me as a part of fandom, but it must have happened as there is no doubt that I am a part of fandom now…
What’s the best thing about SF fandom?
I love to talk to people who are into SF, especially books and zines, editors, fanzine makers, authors and cover artists. So, the conversation is the best part for me.
What was your first convention like?
My first convention … Well, Austria doesn’t have a national SF con. There are events called conventions, but they tend to stay small and do not really provide what even I would expect from a con nowadays… You know, like at least one hundred of attendants, not having to ring a doorbell to be let inside, not just having a single evening for that, not changing the location every two hours and such…
So, I guess my first con, if we can call it that, was Aninite in Vienna. Today it is a big convention with a lot of visitors and panels, but then it was some fans watching fan-snubbed animes together for a whole night.
My first real con was BuchmesseCon. I had been nominated for an award on speculative fiction for an SF story of mine that got published in an anthology. The awarding ceremony took place at BuchmesseCon so I that is how I ended up going. I thought this would be an event where I would be totally lost, but I could probably say hello to my publisher at his stand. I arrived and had been recognized by others, just from photos on the internet. In fact, I had already been part of the fandom as an author, without even knowing it.
What was your first Eurocon like?
Perfect! Attending Kontakt, the 2012 Eurocon in Zagreb was a really good decision for me! My fellow fans never seemed to talk about Eurocon and I had read something about it a year earlier on a discussion board. Bu then Dave Lally visited our local club to promote Eurocon and suddenly there was a group of people interested in going. Only two ended up attending and I was one of them! I loved that Zagreb had a bit of everything: regional fandom, european fandom and mainstream, an academic program and party – and almost everything between that: gaming, panels, workshops, book stands. I would call this a perfect mix. This was a whole new experience for me and I got to know a lot of fans from different countries. With some of them, I have been in contact ever since.
You have visited many cons in Europe since your first Eurocon. Tell us about it.
I love attending cons and every one is a good experience. Being Austrian means my mother tongue is German, so lack of local cons has not stopped me from attending German conventions where people know me from my writing as well.
Istrocon
After Zagreb, where I met so many new friends, I had been cordially invited by so many fans to attend their events, but the Slovaks had the best reason why I should go there: Bratislava is just one hour from Vienna! I love their big con Istrocon a lot and I have been returning to ever since my first visit. I totally fell in love with their spring event, SlavCon which is a bit smaller. Fans are so friendly and you get perfect food and really good beer – yes, it sounds trivial, but when I am enjoying an event, I also do not want to get food that is not good which can happen.
Fénixcon, a small Czech con, was great – the first time I attended they even invited me to their pre-meeting that had been for organizers and gophers only. I could write a whole novel even just about the Eurocon in the Ukraine. It was chaotic and exotic and ever so completely different from anything I had ever experienced before. And then Dublin last summer.
6. You write for Europa SF – who did that come about?
I read about the concept on the German discussion board sf-netzwerk.de. I immediately loved the idea, visited Europa SF and contacted the editors. I have been quite insecure to write myself as English is not my mother tongue, but I was encouraged to write for the page nevertheless. You see, fans from non-English-speaking countries writing for Europa SF are very often the only source for these news for fans abroad. It is important to share. I experienced that fans like to read and share and do not mind so much if everything is neat and perfect – in fact we are all just fans and it is the information that counts.
How did you hear about fan funds?
At the Zagreb Eurocon, there was a young woman. Someone told me: “She is Australian.” And it was something like: “An Australian? How did she come to Croatia?” – and then I learned all about Kylie Ding and the fan funds. You see, I really doubted it. Among the fans I have known before, fanfunds have never been a topic. Even now I have been mostly dealing with fellow fans who have never heard about fanfunds before. I guess the percentage of fans who have heard of this certainly depends on the country there are from. I guess with fanfunds opening to continental Europe – both GUFF and TAFF seem to be following this trend – the situation will change in future and we will get a lot of new people into this.
Why did you decide to run for TAFF?
Well, I have been amazed by the idea of fan funds in general and then I met a few more GUFF winners personally. There was not race for GUFF this year, but there was one for TAFF, the mother of fan funds and the timing was good for me! I was immediately burning for it, especially as I have been to the USA before, but with university, so I saw many gorgeous things like some amazing national parks and always wanted to return one day – but to see how the fandom there works. It must be amazing and huge, imagining a con there is even a bit scary as I am used to cons with a few hundred attendants. But it is more fascinating that scary, so I really want to take the challenge!
One of the biggest disappointments of my Chicon 7 trip was the fact that the con hotel did not have a pool. I am addicted to swimming and after a long day of sitting there is nothing better than a long swim. I loved that I was able to stay at the con hotel in Chicago and not lose any time getting to and from another one. I hated it that the room I was given had a view of the pool in the Radisson Blu accross the street that the internet claimed was the biggest (or perhaps the best?) pool near me.
love to fly. The best thing about flying is the acceleration. If I could get paid to go through that sensation or the one astronauts’ experience at the beginning of a shuttle launch, I’d probably die of joy. But, then again, I find turbulence an excellent aid in falling asleep, often to the horror of my traveling companions. I really like to fly and I always want the flight to last as long as possible. (Yes, my flight to Australia was awesome!)
Perfect! Attending Kontakt, the 2012 Eurocon in Zagreb was a really good decision for me! My fellow fans never seemed to talk about Eurocon and I had read something about it a year earlier on a discussion board. Bu then Dave Lally visited our local club to promote Eurocon and suddenly there was a group of people interested in going. Only two ended up attending and I was one of them! I loved that Zagreb had a bit of everything: regional fandom, european fandom and mainstream, an academic program and party – and almost everything between that: gaming, panels, workshops, book stands. I would call this a perfect mix. This was a whole new experience for me and I got to know a lot of fans from different countries. With some of them, I have been in contact ever since.