Please note: Europa SF loves the idea of the Bulgarians inviting European fans to join and contribute to their event and we gladly spread this news! This is completly our spirit! – But we are not involved in planning. So if you want to get in touch with the organizers or have more questions about it, please do not comment here, write an e-mail to: scifi.bulgaria[at]gmail.com
Please read the interesting news provided by our friends from Bulgaria:
1. This year, our national SF convention, Bulgacon, will take place from Sept 4th to Sept 6th, with most events happening on the 5th (Saturday). You’re warmly invited–along with anyone else who is crazy, erm, curious enough. 🙂 While the events are mostly in Bulgarian, the majority of our fans understand English or other European languages–and some can even speak them! 😀
The place will be a village near the town of Pazardzhik: The price: 30 leva (15 Euro) per day, full board. The hotel sounds fine: it even has a swimming pool. 😉
If you wish to come, drop us a line. We’ll send you more details as soon as we have them–and can even arrange to pick you up from the Sofia airport. (Which is pretty much the universal entrance point to Bulgaria.)
2. Two of our SF-related NGOs, the Human Library Foundation and Terra Fantasia Association of SF Writers and Artists (publishers of FantAstica Almanac, which just won the ESFS Best Magazine Award :), are actively seeking European partners for joint projects under the EU Culture Programme 2014-2020 and other international collaborations. If you are interested—e.g. in having your country’s speculative fiction translated and published in Bulgaria, or participating in the European Fantastival (a pan-European SF festival)—please contact us.
Also, we’re looking for points-of-contact for SF fandom in each European country. Are you, by any chance, one of them? 🙂 If you know anyone, please forward this message to them. Is there any online database with such contacts? If not, we can help make one.
You can read more about the Human Library here: http://choveshkata.net/blog/?page_id=36#English
3. Finally, the Human Library is constantly looking for human-evolving fiction. Since this sounds pretentious (and we aren’t :), a simpler way to put it is: fiction that offers visions of positive futures or more mature human beings–and how we can get there. Understandably, most of it is speculative fiction. 🙂
If you can think of any such texts from your country, please send us their titles and authors’ names, any time. (If the question is too hard–and I know it is :)–think instead about stories where you’d enjoy being friends with the main characters. Nothing like American Psycho, yes? :D) It doesn’t matter what other languages they’ve been translated into: our translators can handle nearly everything (but Finnish ;).
If you’re curious to try some contemporary Bulgarian SF, I’ve uploaded several excerpts translated into English here:
https://www.mediafire.com/?p9nb7drdwyp70r4
Two of the novels are based on our mythology and history, and one is a “collective novel”: written by a large group of young authors. There’s also a gamebook (choose-your-own-adventure) for very young readers; it has a Russian translation, too.
I can also send you short stories; we’ve had about a dozen English translations published in Western magazines and anthologies over the past decade. (That’s my personal “speciality”: translating Bulgarian fiction into English and pitching it to Western publishers.)
Finally finally, if there’s anything we can do for you, just let us know. Sometimes, when I’m going through a low phase of my bipolar, I may not be able to answer right away; but this mailbox is checked by other friends, too, so we’ll come up with something.
On behalf of the Human Library and Terra Fantasia,
Kalin Nenov
P.S. One of our Polish contacts asked for clarification about the responsibilities of a “point-of-contact.” Here’s more details:
We’re looking for people who represent (or are in touch with) one or more of the following:
A. the country’s national fandom (or the larger fandom organizations)
B. associations of SF&F writers, artists, etc.
C. the larger SF&F publications (professional magazines or fanzines)
We’d like to communicate with these people about our initiatives (and of course take part in theirs if we have the resources needed :). Some of our ideas include:
1. A pan-European SF&F festival. I’m attaching the proposal we prepared last year. Meanwhile, some of the details have changed, but the main idea is still valid. (Sorry for all the grammatical mistakes on pages 3 and beyond; I haven’t had time to correct them.)
2. Securing funding from the European Commission or national cultural programmes for compiling an SF&F anthology with at least one short story and one illustration from each European county, translating it into as many languages as possible, and distributing it across Europe.
3. A travelling exhibition of high-quality reproductions by European SF&F artists.
