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
Filmski program na SFeraKonu svake je godine bogat i neobican, a vec i svi vrapci na grani znaju koliko smo slabi na domaca SF izdanja sedme umjetnosti.
U petak cemo predstaviti novi SFerin s filmom povezani projekt – SFerin scenaristicki inkubator. SFera je 2013. godine prijavila, a HAVC u 2014. podržao, scenaristicku radionicu koju je vodila iskusna scenaristica Irena Krcelic koja iza sebe ima niz ostvarenih projekata i to, što je SFeri najbitnije, upravo u žanru. (Tko nije cuo za Laboratorij na kraju svemira, sram ga bilo!) Irenino cete ime, inace, pronaci i u jednoj od ranih SFeraKonskih zbirki.
Radionica je bila izuzetno uspješna – dva su projekta s radionice dobila potporu HAVC-a za razvoj scenarija, a jedna je serija osvojila srca svih polaznika. O cemu se tocno radi, saznajte na panelu u petak navecer.
Za one koji bi se pak rado i sami okušali u pisanju scenarija odmah i sad, u nedjelju popodne prekaljeni scenarist i poznati domaci fantasy autor Vanja Spirin vodi kratku scenaristicku radionicu.
Uvijek je super vidjeti kako žanr biva prvi u necemu, pa nas je tako oduševila i prva hrvatska web serija koja je, naravno, žanrovska. Rijec je o fantasy avanturi Land of Arcadia koju ce autori predstaviti na SFeraKonu u subotu u 18:30. Prvu epizodu pogledajte ovdje, kako biste znali kojim pitanjima rešetati autore!
The part they take home Photo by Zvonimir Ferina @SFeraKon 2009
SFERA, established in 1981, is the oldest genre award in the region and the most prestigious one in Croatia. It was founded by the Zagreb based science fiction society SFera, after which it was named. It’s just spelled differently. The idea was to try and popularize science fiction as a genre and to stimulate its production in Croatian.
It worked: since the beginning of the eighties, the SFERA Award grew in categories and in the number of people whose work was eligible. The juries and the chairs of the award have changed numerous times. There have been glorious moments, some fights, a couple of scandals and one outrage that will remain forever noted in the history of Croatian fandom because it created a second genre award – Artefakt. (Take heart, Anglophone fandom, shitstorms can make a fandom richer but that’s a whole different post!).
The part SFera keeps and fondly refers to as “The Ashtray”. Photo by Zvonimir Ferina @SFeraKon 2009
Kate Elliott packing for Croatia! Photo by Jay Silverstein
The American SF and fantasy writer Kate Elliott will be flying in all the way from Hawaii to be the Guest of Honour at SFeraKon 2015. She is busy packing right now but she still found some time to drop us a short note.
1. What made you decide to accept the invitation to SFeraKon?
When Ellen Wright, the publicist at Orbit Books, emailed me with the invitations and asked if I would be interested, I immediately wrote her back: “Am I interested? In my heart I am ALREADY THERE.”
How could I pass up a chance to see Croatia, to meet readers and fellow SFF geeks in a part of Europe I’ve never visited, and of course to help Lumen launch the Croatian edition of Cold Magic?
2. What is the one thing you look forward the most in visiting Croatia?
I’m most looking forward to getting a glimpse firsthand of what is going on in a part of Europe the USA media ignores.
3. What, if anything, were you told to look out for in Zagreb?
The architecture, parks, museums, and Ivan Meštrovi?’s former residence. I’m hoping to do a bike tour of the city first thing to get my bearings. Zagreb seems so lovely.
4. What do you like the most about SF conventions?
Talking to people who have the same enthusiasms I do.
Kate will be at SFeraKon for the entire duration of the con and since SFeraKon does not practice separating GoHs from fans, you can come talk to her! If you are feeling shy, check out the SFeraKon schedule – she will have a Q&A on Friday, a lecture on writing on Saturday and a worldbuilding workshop on Sunday.
Fanovske aukcije u Hrvatskoj više nisu novost pa ce ovo biti kratko i slatko:
Donesite stvari kojima želite pronaci topao fanovski dom – primamo knjige, filmove, kostime, potpisane price, cudnu japansku hranu i sve ostale neobicne stvarcice koje vam padnu napamet. Ako nista drugo da vidimo kako ce se Mirko snaci!
Popunite fomular da znamo što je cije, i kome to treba eventualno vratiti. (Ne pojavite li se na kraju aukcije po stvari mi ih proslijedjujemo aukcijama dalje!) Popunjenog ga, zajedno s stvarima, donesite u subotu, 16. 5. 2015. 15 minuta prije aukcije u hol gdje održati GUFF aukcija. Prema trenutnoj satnici aukcija je u 16:00.
Ponesite sitno jer mi ga nikad nemamo! Sve što kupite pla?ate odmah, dok traje aukcija.
You waved, I saw you!
Da bi stvar bila zabavana, opet ce je voditi Mirko Karas, predsjednik SFere koji ce nam pokazati što je sve naucio kad bio auctioneer na Shamrockonu, irskom Euroconu u Dublinu i koje je sve nove trikove smislio u me?uvremenu kako bi vas odvojio od para.
Jedina je promjena to što ovaj puta novac dijelimo s drugim europskim fondom, onim najstarijim. Ime mu je TAFF – The Transatlantic Fan Fund, a financira razmjenu izmedju Europe i SAD-a.
Naime, ove je godine utrku za odlazak iz Europe na Sasquan, 73. Worldcon koji ce se održati u kolovozu u gradu Spokaneu, u državi Washington, osvojila Austrijanka Nina Horvath koja je u europski fandom zakoracila upravo u Zagrebu, posjetivši Kontakt. Na aukciji ce biti ponudjeno nekoliko stvari koje je donirala Nina.
At first I thought it might be a good idea to present some of the people behind SFera and SFeraKon. Then I realized I already had this idea while I was Down Under and had just never gotten around to realizing it, as such things go in fandom. So here it the first one in what will be a series of short interviews with people who either are or should be famous in fandom.
Mirko Karas is the current president of SFera, which means he manages a large number of women who want. things. done. now. This in turn means that he finds his IT day job managing a number of teams quite relaxing. Some of you may remember his as the Shamrokon Fan Funds Auctioneer, and Croatian fandom loves his stunts as the GUFF auctioneer.
Mirko was born in Zagreb in 1975, but does not remember those first years of his life very well, except that he always liked reading. When not fundraising (i.e. working his full time IT job), he is trying to reconcile his many of hobbies – which include skiing, underwater hockey and hiking, get some time to read good books and finally put all those stories in his head on paper. At the moment, he is one half of the editorial board of Parsek, SFera’s long living fanzine and very busy preparing the junkyard wars style Grunf’s workshop at SFeraKon 2015. Among other things. Like preventing programming for throttling overbearing con participants.
1. How did you discover SF?
Beats me, I was crazy about “Blake’s 7″ and “Terrahawks”. I remember these TV shows from the first years of elementary school, just about the time “The Empire Strikes Back” hit the cinemas. When you are 10 and there are light sabres around, you are hooked for life!
I guess my Dad also had some accidental influence via all the books he left lying around. I think I was around 10 when I left my staple of Karl May and Tarzan books for long enough to read Asimov’s “I, Robot”. I liked it a lot because of the robots, but I had to reread it several times afterwards to get what it was really about. Then The Hobbit came along and I discovered fantasy as well.
Eurocon 2011 Photo by Monika Tresk
2. What’s the best thing about SF fandom?
You can have normal conversations about weird stuff. Most of the time.
3. What was you first convention like?
Uneventful. I was unaware of half of the stuff that was going on because the guys who had dragged me there were obsessed with throwing a LAN party. At my second convention, though, which is incidentally considered to this day to be the worst organizational flop in the history of Croatian fandom, was a blast!
4. And how did you get sucked into organizing them?
I was a slowly boiled frog. First, I started helping out some people I barely knew. Then I wanted to contribute to the program with something cool and SFera said “Sure, please do”. Then I was pissed off by all of it and thought some things could be done better, and SFera said “Sure, please do”…
By the time I realized what was going on, I was president, looking for people to say Please do to…
5. You run – at SFeraKon and at SFera – Grunf’s Little Workshop. Tell us about it.
Grunfs. Photo by Moniq
That was one of those early contributions to the program. I actually stole it from the Engineering competitions organized by Board of European Students of Technology I was a member of. The point is to get a bunch of junk and put it together to create a catapult, a self-propelled vehicle, a parachute for an egg, a functional bridge… Whatever. Then your contraption competes with others of its kind made by the opposing teams. The winning team gets a chocolate and a photo shoot with an airman’s leather helmet and goggles.
When I explained this idea, people liked it. However, when we put it on at the convention, no one actually got what it was really about, so nobody showed up. I think describing it with “You’ll do stuff like MacGyver” did not help. Next year we changed the name, in honour of Grunf, an incompetent but creative inventor and pilot (that’s why the helmet is there!) from the Alan Ford comic (very popular in these parts) and people started applying like crazy! Proof of the power of the marketing!
The funny thing is, now there are kids competing with adults, often beating them. People still like it, but I think we’ll need to implement some changes soon.
Loncon3
6. You are the president of SFera, which, as is often repeated, is run by women. How’s that working out for you?
You mean how do I live with the gender inequality? That’s not an issue. Surviving in a group of control freaks we all are is the real achievement.
7. Who are you favourite authors?
That’s a tough one. I usually get hooked by a novel or series, so whomever I mention, I will continue going on. Let’s say Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. And I’ll read anything form Phil and Kaja Foglio.
8. What’s the best SF book you have read last year?
“The Stories – Five years of original fiction on Tor.com”. It probably does not really count as an answer, since I’m still reading it, and I probably will keep reading it in 2015, between other books.
SFeraKon 2013 Photo by Miroslav Šilovic
9. At Croatian cons you are also well known as the GUFF auctioneer. How did that come about?
You did not let me go away after the first one?
I had some stuff for that first auction and had a good idea how to spin a story on them. So I volunteered to be the auctioneer that time. Nobody expected anything big, I think. People reacted great, actively joined the performance and everyone had fun. Aaaaand… you conscripted me for the future.
In exactly one week I will be half-crazy and half-ecstatic, running around doing a million things at once. I call this the SFeraKon Saturday Insanity. The second day of the biggest Croatian SF con is always hectic for me. Almost all the journalists turn up within the same hour, of course, and the SFERA and SFERICE Award Ceremony script somehow manages to remain unwritten until that day, no matter how many weeks in advance the writing of it starts. And all the fans that are not from Zagreb also arrive on Saturday and are eager to chat and have coffee and catch up. On a happier note, I get to be curt and not mistaken for rude
Running Kontakt, the 2012 Eurocon almost entirely in English we demonstrated we can do it, to ourselves most of all but to all the members too. Since then, we’ve always had some programming in English – at least one item per day and usually more – we just never bothered to push it.
Also, we somehow took it for granted everybody knew you could ask for an item to be in English, and some lecturers will be able to switch at a moment’s notice.Not everybody does, so this is your official notice! Ask, and if at all possible, it will happen.
Since I’ve gotten some queries about programming in English this year, here’s the breakdown for 2015.
Friday, May 15
GoH Q&A with Kate Elliott, 20:30-21:30
Kona?no Sir Terry, Vrijeme je da krenemo zajedno, Milena Benini, 22:00-23:00
(Finally Sir Terry, Time to Leave)*
A lecture on where and how to start reading Sir Terrry Pratchett
Saturday, May 16
Fanzinska scena u Hrvata, Mirko Karas i Irena Hartmann, 15:30-16:00
(Fanzine culture in Croatia)*
Contemporary German Language SF literature, Martin Stricker, 15:30-16:30
Kate Elliot, Guest of Honour Speech, 17:00-18:00
The Terry Pratchett After LIFE, Milena Benini, Petra Buli?, Tatjana Jambrišak, Mihaela Marija Perkovi?, Marko Štengl 18:30-19:30
Once more with feeling 1, musical, 19:20-19:40
50 godina planeta pustinje: Dina i zašto je volimo, Marko Fan?ovi?, Mihaela Marija Perkovi?, Vladimir Šegadin, 21:45 – 22:45
(50 years of the desert planet: Dune and why we love it)*
Kad štenci podivljaju ili tko je strgao Huga, Milena Benini, 22:45-23:45
(When puppies go beserk or who broke the Hugo)*
Sunday, May 17
Worldbuilding Literary Workshop, Kate Elliott 15:30-17:30
Tragom bijelog zeca: Kako su Alisa i Lewis Carroll utjecali na pop kulturu, Milena Benini, Marko Fan?ovi?, Jasna Legovi?, Iva Polak, 15:30-16:30
(Following the white rabbit: How Alisa and Lewis Carroll influenced pop culture)*
The Great April 2015 Tour (Easteron, Eurocon, Pyrkon, Antwerpen convention), 17:00-18:00
Trip reports! Photos! Anecdotes not to be written down!
The timetable is, of course, still subject to change. In addition to this, almost everybody speaks English at the con. All the other info you might need you can find here.
*These lectures/panels are announced as being held in Croatian, but the lecturers are proficient enough in English to be able to switch to it should there be foreigners in the audience.
Gillian Polack, last year’s GUFF delegate to Loncon3 and current Australasian GUFF administrator has put out a call for favourite recipes from SF friends. Having traveled to Finland and Croatia this summer after Loncon3 I have no doubt Gillian tried some of the finest delicacies from both countries. This obviously inspired the cookbook writer in her so she came up with a very cool idea on GUFF fundraising!
Here’s what she says:
I’ve discovered over the years that even fans who claim to be non-cooks often have one recipe, one mouth-wateringly wonderful dish that they make when asked to bring a plate. And fandom needs another cookbook. And I need to raise money for GUFF.
Send me your recipes! Ask your friends to send me their recipes! As many recipes as you like! Spread the word across world fandom!
Since this is an international endeavour, there will be many oven temperatures and spoon sizes. Tell me what country you’re from (and tell me a bit about yourself if you want other fans to know) so that I can make sure that your oven temperatures are translated properly in the tables of measurements. Your recipe will be in the book as you have given it to me using this oven-of-origin system, and fans from the other side of the world will be able to make it using my magnificent translation tables.
Normally, when I put a cookbook together, I translate everything into a standard recipe format. I’ll only change or adapt recipes when the recipe provider asks me to or when there is a significant problem. Having said that, I’m happy to have “I think this is how we make it, but all I’ve got is a page of notes: can you make sense of it for me?” recipes.
One thing I love about SF fandom is its variety and its fascinating people, so I want to hear from as many of you as possible. I’ll correct typos and adjust ambiguities and make the internal formatting within the recipe consistent, but in most cases, that’ll be all I’ll do.
Speaking of fascinating fandom, this cookbook is not just for one branch of fandom. You may be a gamer, a literary fan, a furry fan, a cosplayer, a fanfic writer, an artist or belong to any of the thousand other parts of fandom that make our lives so wonderful. This is where we all come together and enjoy food. (And while I’m thinking of art, if anyone has art they’d like to see in the book, talk to me. Also, if someone has a burning desire to typeset the book, I’d love to hear from you.)
This ebook is not just for English-language fandom (although the book will be in English). If you know people who might be interested but have no English or not quite enough English, do not despair! I read several languages and have friends who read several more. By hook or by crook we’ll get your recipes translated. (My friends won’t know I’m asking them until I’m faced with a language I don’t have, though, so don’t scare them off.)
I prefer recipes in the format:
Title of recipe (giver of recipe, country)
Ingredients
Method
Having said that, if putting something in a correct format is going to stop you sending me the recipe, then just send me the recipe. Send me any number of recipes. Spread the word to fannish cooks all over the globe. I want this to be the biggest cookbook fandom has ever seen!
How do you get me your recipes? Simply fill in the web form here and make sure that the first words say “Fan cookbook.” If your recipe isn’t in English, then please tell me what language it’s in, just to make it easier.
Send me your recipes by 15 July 2015.
Addendum: Several people have asked me about the contact form. The contact form strips some formatting but the paragraph returns survive at my end (even though it looks as if they don’t, at the sender’s). Don’t panic! Just send me your recipes…,
