Post-con depression: the Zagreb Book Festival

Post-con depression is best cured by attending  – or indeed organizing – another event. Shamrokon taught me that! (Liburnicon taught me that maybe three con weekends in a row might not be the brigthest idea in the world even if the third on is at the beautiful Croatian seaside).

So that’s exactly what I did. I took part in the organizing of the first ever Zagreb Book Festival, starting today. On the organization end of things, I am handling the kids’ workshops happening daily until Sunday that range from Museum treasure hunts – today is International Museum Day and ZBF’s venue is the beautiful Museum of Arts and Crafts – to early reading, internet security and literary detective workshops.

I am doing these at the ZBF, but on behalf of RODA, Croatia’s most famous and most successful parenting NGO that has changed and improved the lives of many parents in the country. Alas, its very successful promotion of breastfeeding has led it to be associated  with aggressive promotion of this very important but small part of parenthood in the eye of the public.

This is why it makes me so happy that taking part in ZBF has given RODA a lovely chance to show that it does not feel that parenthood begins and ends with breastfeeding alone.  There are many facets of parenthood RODA is actively working on and ZBF is an awesome opportunity to showcase some of them.

On the attending another event end of things, I will be going to a number of adult programming of the festival that is this year dedicated to crime fiction and Sweden. There are some new Croatian books – Balkan noir and Zagreb noir – in the crime genre and there are very interesting foreign guests.

One of them is – to circle back to kids again – the Swedish children’s author and illustrator Sven Nordqvist whose Pettson and Findus picture books my son is literally crazy about.

Ulf Stark has been recently translated and is also one of the guests, as well as Jens Lapidus, Kristina Ohlsson, Anders Roslund i Stefan Thunberg, Sven Nordqvist, and Ece Temelkuran. And a huge number of Croatian authors, among whom is Darko Macan, Croatia’s foremost writer and editor of SF.

So, post con depression? No time for that – there are festivals to run. And attend.

Like this:

Like Loading...

Post-con depression: the Zagreb Book Festival

SFeraKon 2015: Friday

Photo by Zvonimir Ferina

The first day of SFeraKon, one would think, is when the organizing team is most crazy. Nope. But the day does start for them a lot earlier than it does for all the members who start coming in larger number around 18:00.

One of the SFeraKon tradition is to look for volunteers outside of fandom, among the newbies. This year we’ve had record interest in volunteering at SFeraKon which in practical terms meant that registration was ready and sorted hours ahead of time.

Programming started with the presenetation of TranSFerzala, a stamp collecting activity for fans going to Croatian conventions that offer free membership to all the numerous Croatian SF conventions in 2016. At the same time, the Croatian translation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman was presented, the cosplay got going, as well as the vendor hall.

Photo by Zvonimir Ferina

For the first time in Croatian fandom, we introduced ribbons. For now, most of the squee over them comes from all the people who’ve attended Worldcon but it is catching on. We made a special ribbon for the oldest members of Croatian fandom, the people who created SFera and SFeraKon. We call them the SFeroSaurs, so that’s what their ribbons say. Those who’ve been coming to SFeraKon get to wear s SFeraKon Veteran ribbon. As we are celebrating 150 years of Alice in wonderland, 50 year of Dune and have Sir Terry Pratchett and Leonard Nimoy as Ghosts of Honour we also made ribbons to celebrate them.

I got caught up with some old friends, gave Kate Elliott her grand tour of the convention and helped present the SFera programme – SFerin scenaristicki inkubator. It’s a scriptwriting workshop Irena Krcelic held in 2014 and 2015 in which two scripts have been developed that have won the support of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre.

And I went home waay to early.

Like this:

Like Loading...

SFeraKon 2015: Friday

SFeraKooooooon!

SFeraKon 2015 has just begun. Here is a photo of this year’s organizing team! The photographer did not think it was the best of the bunch he made, but I think it’s great – the laptop in the centre just the right kind of appropriate!

Photo by Miroslav Šilovic

SFeraKooooooon!

Unintended consequences & literary awards

The Hugos, voting systems and supporting memberships are a hot topic in SF fandom these days. I have a lot to say about it, but running a con while working full-time hours as a freelancer will severely limit one’s free time (translation: I have 3 different Hugo-related articles pending that might or might not ever see the light of day). But reading a post by K. Tempest Bradford with a title that is almost exactly the same as one of mine, I decided I had to post this one.

Croatia is a small country – New York City has more people than we do. There may be only four million of us but in that four million there are a lot of active SF fans and writers. We have seven annual cons, three annual anthologies, two magazines, three or more fanzines, more than a 100 genre authors and two genre awards… We are rich. We are also rich in strife, as small towns tend to be and a small town is what we are the equivalent of on a global scale, albeit one taking up some of Earth’s prime real estate.

I administer SFERA, the oldest Croatian national SF award and I have a Sad Puppy type of person, thinking they’ve written the next Tolkien or the Croatian Asimov every other year spouting shit all over me personally and the award I administer for not recognizing their genius. Online, as well as live, gossiping relentlessly behind my back. Such is the nature of awards.

Some years it’s not even a Sad Puppy kind of person, it’s my friends, colleagues and past winners of the award creating a ruckus. Small towns, as you might have read in a Stephen King novel, have their own ways of dealing with such things. Sometimes it’s gruesome and unfair and Carrie-like (see Balkan wars), and other times it’s more of an Oscar Wilde or Saki kind of thing.

So let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, the SFERA Award jury gave the best novel award to a famous Croatian photographer. It was the photographer’s first book ever. It was also the best novel among the nominated works, which also happened to include not only names known and well liked in Croatian genre literature and fandom but also names quite well-known in Croatian mainstream literature.

As I said, the photographer won. The SFERA Award winner in each category is decided by consensus, not voting. Either the entire jury agrees something deserves a SFERA 0r it’s better luck next time for everybody in the category.

A big chunk of Croatian fandom was outraged when the photographer won. His photos may be great, but his novel was certainly not! I chaired the jury and my personal bent toward PR was blamed for this particular win. The jury, with me presiding over it, was accused of putting promotion potential before quality. Worded a bit less politely, of course.

The outrage was such that immediately, in that very year, a new genre award was established. Its independent and secret jury read all the same books the SFERA Award jury did, the jury members worked under an entirely different – better and improved and much more quality oriented – system of rules, awarding the best works in three categories. One of the categories was best novel. The photographer won. Because he had written the best novel in that year.

I could be ironic in a number of ways now. Or point out in how many nuances that situation is different from the shitstorm the Hugos are going through right now. (And it is, in many ways). Thing is, it did look like a pretty big shitstorm to us as it was happening. And now?

Now I get to go to Pyrkon and Swancon and Loncon and any Worldcon and say:

Croatia is a small country – New York City has more people than we do. There may be only four million of us but in that four million there are a lot of active SF fans and writers. We have seven annual cons, three annual anthologies, two magazines, three or more fanzines, more than a 100 genre authors… And TWO genre awards. We are rich.

Like this:

Like Loading...

Unintended consequences & literary awards

Scenaristika i domaci film na SFeraKonu 2015

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!

Like this:

Like Loading...

Scenaristika i domaci film na SFeraKonu 2015

The SFERA Award for 2014

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

The winners are:

Short-short: Jurica Ranj „Korisnicka služba“, Parsek 123, SFera

Short story: Davor Šišovic, „Zavarivaci“, Anthology “Prsten s one strane sna”, Refestikon

Story: Zrinka Pavlic, „Sava ispod Sljemena“, Anthology “Imaš vatre?”, Jesenski i Turk

Novel: Tanja Tolic, „Zovem se nebo“, Ljevak

Children’s novel: Jelena Radan, „Zeda“, Algoritam

Theory: Slaven Škapul, „Imaginarij distopijskog filma!“, Ubiq 15, SFera

Special achievemnet: Astra, a pervasive LARP, Ivana Delac i Vesna Kurilic

The SFERA awards will be handed out on Saturday, May 16th at 20:00 at SFeraKon 2015.

Like this:

Like Loading...

The SFERA Award for 2014

A few short questions for SFeraKon GoH Kate Elliott

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.

Like this:

Like Loading...

A few short questions for SFeraKon GoH Kate Elliott