Finland – Page 7 – Co-Geeking

The Neverending Story Has an Anniversary Doodle

September 1, 2016May 20, 2018Eppu

Google tells me with a lovely doodle that it’s the 37th anniversary of the first printing of The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.

Originally published in German on September 01, 1979, Die unendliche Geschichte was translated into Finnish in 1982 (and apparently English in 1983, with the film adaptation in 1984). I can’t quite remember if I ever read it. At the same time, I want to recall a gorgeous tome with both green and red print, so I guess I must at least have been handling the Finnish translation at one point.

(No, I did not imagine the green and red print!)

While the movie version isn’t terribly well-made nor the first I saw in a theater, it is one of the first screen adaptations that made me realize I was a geek even if I didn’t have a word for it at the time. It’s purely for nostalgia that I own and occasionally rewatch it. I’m now wondering whether I should’ve bought the book instead.

Images: Falkor from Neverending Story by Sophie Diao via Google Doodle. Finnish translation of The Neverending Story (Tarina vailla loppua) by Katja Jalkanen at Lumiomena

This post has been edited for style.

ICBIHRTB—pronounced ICK-bert-bee—is short for ‘I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read This Before’. It’s an occasional feature for book classics that have for some reason escaped our notice thus far.

Leena Krohn Is a 2016 World Fantasy Awards Finalist

July 15, 2016July 14, 2016Eppu

Finnish author Leena Krohn’s English-language anthology Collected Fiction (Cheeky Frawg Books, 2015) is a finalist for the World Fantasy Awards in the Collection category.

Collected Fiction appeared on The New Yorker‘s and The A.V. Club‘s best-of lists last year (see previous posts here and here). It was also recommended by the New York Public Library.

The awards will be presented during the World Fantasy Convention, held October 27-30, 2016 in Columbus, Ohio. Congratulations for the nomination!

Found via Locus Online.

Image via Cheeky Frawg Books.

Computer Issues (SATW Style)

June 10, 2016January 29, 2018Eppu

I’ve been having computer issues on and off for a couple of months now, so my part of the posting here will continue to be lighter than normal until they’re resolved.

It’s not all bad, though: whenever my computer has been acting up really bad, I pretty reliably end up returning to one particularly brilliant Scandinavia and the World comic.

The character in the snippet above is Brother Finland. As a fellow Finn, I feel his pain (especially when Brother Sweden – of all people! – walks in and fixes the computer with a touch). And usually I then end up reading more SATW, which is a great stress relief.

Image: Computer Technician, detail of a Scandinavia and the World comic by Humon

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Why Wouldn’t Playing Games Get You a Job?

April 20, 2016April 19, 2016Eppu

This wall ad by the Finnish game house Remedy deserves wider circulation:

“Mom always said that playing games won’t get you a job. From Espoo with love since 1995. Thank you Remedy crew, friends, families, Finnish dev community, fans and gamers around the world. This one is for you.”

Remedy (of the Max Payne and Alan Wake fame) designed this ad to celebrate their April 05, 2016, launch of a new game, Quantum Break, reportedly the most expensive entertainment production ever made in Finland.

The ad’s irony at one’s own expense sounds very Finnish to me. In Finland, it’s a little embarrassing to be successful or rich, and Finns don’t tend to draw attention to their achievements. At the same time, as a Finn, it’s very satisfying to see Finnish game companies grow up into mature businesses with large, world-wide audiences.

It’s also high time for people to recognize that storytelling is an integral part of human nature and that games are just as viable a medium for telling stories as are myths, songs, novels, image-based art, and the like.

Image by Jussi Pullinen via Nyt.

Disclosure: A friend of mine works at Remedy, but this post is in no way compensated or even requested by them.

Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.

Tove Jansson to Be Inducted into Eisner Hall of Fame

March 2, 2016March 2, 2016Eppu

According to Comic-Con International, Tove Jansson, a Finnish visual artist and author, has been selected by the Eisner Award judges to be automatically inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame for 2016. Hooray, Tove!

Jansson (1914-2001) is best known as the creator of the incredibly popular Moomins books and comics. Besides Jansson, there’s a second automatic inductee: Carl Burgos, Golden Age creator of The Human Torch.

In addition, the judges have also chosen 14 nominees from which voters will select four to be inducted in the Hall of Fame. Visit the Comic-Con International: San Diego Eisner Awards page for details. The ceremony takes place July 22, 2016, in San Diego.

Found via File 770.

Image by Eppu Jensen

One Last Best of 2015 List with a Finn

January 5, 2016February 1, 2016Eppu

Hello, hello; Happy New Year! Over the holidays I had the chance to catch up on my blog reading and found yet another piece of delightful news for Finnish SFF: Hannu Rajaniemi’s Collected Fiction made it onto NPR’s Guide to 2015’s Great Reads.

The guide contains some 260 titles contributed by NPR staff and critics. Other science fictional books on the guide include Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older, The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth J. Dickinson, and Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, for example.

Found via Amal El-Mohtar.

Image via Tachyon Publications

Leena Krohn on The New Yorker’s Best of 2015

December 17, 2015February 1, 2016Eppu1 Comment

Leena Krohn’s Collected Fiction, an anthology edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, made it onto The New Yorker‘s best-of list!

Joshua Rothman writes of his selection of Krohn for The Books We Loved in 2015 like this:

“I also found myself hypnotized by Leena Krohn, a Finnish writer whose collected stories and novels, rendered into English by many different translators, have just been published as a single volume, ‘Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction.’ Broadly speaking, Krohn is a speculative writer; one of the novels in the collection, for example, consists of thirty letters written from an insect city. (‘It is summer and one can look at the flowers face to face.’) Krohn writes like a fantastical Lydia Davis, in short chapters the length of prose poems. Her characters often have a noirish toughness; one, explaining her approach to philosophy, says that when she asks an existential question, ‘life answers. It is generally a long and thorough answer.’”

Just a week ago, Krohn’s anthology appeared on The A.V. Club‘s Best of 2015 list (along with The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen). Again, congratulations!

Found via Helsingin Sanomat.

P.S. Try Krohn’s Lucilia Illustris for free, published in December 2015 by Electric Literature.

Image via Cheeky Frawg Books

Stadi Wars – The Empire Attacks Helsinki

December 14, 2015February 1, 2016Eppu

Helsingin Sanomat, the largest Finnish daily, celebrates the impending Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens premier with a special piece. Titled Stadi Wars (stadi being a slang name for Helsinki), it shows what the city would look like if the Empire were to attack Helsinki.

Helsingin Sanomat Stadi Wars Senate Square — What if the Senate Square in Helsinki were attacked by the Empire via Helsingin Sanomat

Apart from photos, video, and 3d-renderings of Imperial transports, Helsingin Sanomat interviewed a member of The Finnish Reserve Officers’ Federation and got his opinion on how the Finnish army would fare against stormtroopers.

Even if you don’t read Finnish, the page is worth a visit for the very cool photos of Imperial walkers and ships set against a modern cityscape.

Images, video and graphics by Boris Stefanov, Uolevi Holmberg, and Petri Salmén via Helsingin Sanomat

In Making Stuff occasional feature, we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.

Two Finnish Authors on The A.V. Club’s Best of 2015

December 10, 2015February 1, 2016Eppu2 Comments

Two Finnish authors made it onto The A.V. Club‘s favorite books of the year. Their Best of 2015 list includes Leena Krohn’s Collected Fiction, a whopper of an anthology (at 800+ pages in hardcover) edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, and The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen.

Keeping company to Krohn and Jääskeläinen on the Best of 2015 list “[a]fter a stellar year for the written word” are renowned authors like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Judd Apatow, and Paula Hawkins. Congrats, both!

For a taste of their writing, try Jääskeläinen’s Where the Trains Turn (orig. Missä junat kääntyvät, 2000), published in November 2014 by Tor.com, or Krohn’s Lucilia Illustris, published in December 2015 by Electric Literature.

Found via Helsingin Sanomat.

Images: The Rabbit Back Literature Society via Pushkin Press. Collected Fiction via Cheeky Frawg Books