The 2016 Atorox Prize was won by the short story “Kaunis Ululian” (Beautiful Ululian) by Magdalena Hai (from the collection “Kristallimeri”/The Crystal Sea). The second place was won by “Ugrilainen tapaus”/The Ugrilainen Case (Spin 4/14) by Tuukka Tenhunen and the third place by “Didin historiat”/Didin Histories (Ports 4/14) by Oskari Rantala.
The Tähtifantasia Award was won by Shaun Tan’s short story collection, “Etäisten esikaupunkien asioita” (Tales from Outer Suburbia, 2009). Congratulations to the winners!
Finncon is a Finnish science fiction and fantasy convention held since 1986.
It was held for the first time in the city of Tampere in 2008 together with Animecon, in 2012 (without Animecon this time) and in 2016 returned to Tampere!
The number of visitors Finncon has previously attracted is around 4 000 people making it one of Europe’s largest science fiction and fantasy conventions.
The convention location is the University of Tampere which is downtown, near the train station and a short way from several hotels, shops and markets.
The theme of Finncon 2016 are Fairy Tales, but the final program contained of course many other themes as well. The final programming included itemes in at least YA literature, translations, fandom, media and of course plenty of science fiction and fantasy! In addition to the Finnish programme, there was also programming items in English and Swedish.
Finncon has literary Guests of Honor from around the world. The Guests of Honor for Finncon 2016 were author Catherynne M. Valente (US), author Jasper Fforde (UK), author Anne Leinonen (Finland).
The Guest Scholar of the Finncon 2016 Academic Track was the Italian Professor Raffaella Baccolini.
The Fan Guest of Honor was Eeva-Liisa Tenhunen (Finland).
The past Guests of Honor for Finncon have included Elizabeth Bear (2014), Hannu Rajaniemi (2014), Peter Watts (2013), Nalo Hopkinson (2011), Pat Cadigan (2010), Ellen Kushner (2010) and George R.R. Martin (2009). The Guests of Honor of the previous Finncon in Tampere in 2012 were American author Lois McMaster Bujold, British author Liz Williams and Finnish researcher and fan Irma Hirsjärvi.
The Guest Scholar of the Finncon 2016 Academic Track was Raffaella Baccolini who works as a Professor of English Literature at the University of Bologna, Italy.
Professor Baccolini has published several papers on dystopian fiction, which is one of the main themes of the Academic Track this year. Together with Tom Moylan, she has edited two definitive volumes on dystopia and utopia, “Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination” (Routledge 2003) and “Utopia-Method-Vision: The Use Value of Social Dreaming” (Peter Lang 2007).
Rafaella Baccolini obtained her doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1989, and has worked at the University of Bologna since 1990. Her areas of specialisation are contemporary and twentieth-century American and English Literature and gender studies. In particular, she has published on women’s literature; humour; feminist criticism; utopia, dystopia and science fiction; modernism; memory and nostalgia; trauma studies; young adults’ literature and cinema. She is co-editor of the series “Ralahine Utopian Studies” (Peter Lang) and of the online journal mediAzioni and a member of MeTRa (Centro di Studi Interdisciplinari sulla Mediazione e la Traduzione a opera di e per ragazze/i).
Finncon 2016 included an academic track, organised in cooperation with the University of Tampere research project Darkening visions: dystopian fiction in contemporary Finnish literature and the Finnish Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research (FINFAR, http://finfar.org/en ).
The Finncon 2016 Academic Track aimed to bring together a wide range of scholarly perspectives on the speculative and the fantastic, offering to the public a broad, interdisciplinary discussion on the many ways in which genres such as fantasy, science fiction and horror take their readers, users, and consumers to strange speculative worlds, from modern dystopias to classic fairylands.
The general theme of Finncon 2016 was Fairy Tales.
Fairy tales are a part of the shared human cultural heritage, and each culture has fairy tales of its own. Although fairy tales are often seen as children’s culture, fairy tale tropes and motifs may also belong to a galaxy far, far away, as they have become material for popular culture in many forms.
Finncon also wished to emphasise the fiction of dystopia. One of the most noticeable trends in speculative fiction has been the rise of dystopian themes and visions that expand from undesirable, oppressive societies to apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic scenarios of the future of the mankind and life on earth more generally. What is the attraction of these dark imaginations that also penetrate young adult fiction?
The Guest Scholar was Raffaella Baccolini (University of Bologna), who gave a plenary lecture and comment on papers.
Academic program
The academic program track was open to all Finncon attendees.
FANTASTIC VISIONS FROM FAERIE TO DYSTOPIA
FINNCON – ACADEMIC TRACK 2016
July 2‒3, 2016, University of Tampere, Finland
The Academic Track is organized by Dystopia-project and FinFar
Location: University of Tampere, Main building (Päätalo), Kalevantie 4, lecture hall D11.
All sessions, including keynote lecture, were held in D11.
Abstracts for the papers presented in the academic can be found here.
SATURDAY, JULY 2
Main building, D11
10.30 – 12.00 | SESSION I: ECODYSTOPIAS, HUMAN AND THE NON-HUMAN |
10.30 – 11.00 | Juha Raipola: Eco-Dystopia – An Unresolvable Paradox? |
11.00 – 11.30 | Jouni Teittinen: Maps, Ruins and the Geological Sublime: On the Inhuman Scales of Post-Apocalyptic Literature |
11.30 – 12.00 | Maria Laakso: Outlaws of the Nature: Representation of Humans in Richard Adams’ Watership Down and other Animal Dystopias |
12.00 – 13.00 | LUNCH BREAK |
13.00 – 14.30 | KEYNOTE LECTURE: RAFFAELLA BACCOLINI: Dare to Disturb: Reading (Un)Happy Endings in Young Adults’ Dystopia |
14.45 – 16.15 | SESSION II: UTOPIAN AND DYSTOPIAN IMPULSES |
14.45 – 15.15 | Esko Suoranta: Unpredictable Spillage: Virtual Reality as Compromised Utopia in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge |
15.15 – 15.45 | Kaisa Kaukiainen: Young adult dystopias – resistance movements as salvation religions: Examples from popular YA trilogies The Hunger Games, Delirium and Divergent |
15.45 – 16.15 | Sarianna Kankkunen: On The Fringes of a New Future: Borders and Frontiers in Maarit Verronen’s Novel Kirkkaan selkeää |
16.30 – 18.00 | SESSION III: EMOTIONS AND THE READER |
16.30 – 17.00 | Merja Polvinen: Temporal Experiments and Narrative Emotions in Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” |
17.00 – 17.30 | Saija Isomaa: Dissecting “the canary in a cage”:Dystopian fiction as affective communication |
17.30 – 18.00 | Nicholas Wanberg: When the Nazis Conquer the Racists: Reading the Hierarchies of Harry Potter’s Dystopian Finale |
SUNDAY, JULY 3
Main building, D11
10.00 – 11.30 | SESSION IV: FROM FAERIE TO… |
10.00 – 10.30 | Fodor András: The nature of heroism in Catherynne M. Valente’s Fairyland series |
10.30 – 11.00 | Joan Passey: Afraid of the Dark: The Horror within Cornwall’s Subterranean Fairy Tales and Folklores |
11.00 – 11.30 | Hanna Samola: Werewolf Myths and Fairy Tale Motifs in a Dystopian Novel The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo |
11.30 – 12.30 | LUNCH BREAK |
12.30 – 14.00 | THE WORLD HOBBIT PROJECT -PANEL Irma Hirsjärvi, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, Jyrki Korpua, Maria Ruotsalainen, Tanja Välisalo: The Book, the Film, and Audience Responses ‒ First Results of the Finnish Sub-Project of The World Hobbit Project |
14.15 – 15.45 | SESSION V: MONSTERS, HUMAN AND THE NON-HUMAN |
14.15 – 14.45 | Kaisa Kortekallio: Ending the World of Humans. Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach and Timothy Morton’s Dark Ecology |
14.45 – 15.15 | Marjut Puhakka: Living the end times: the decline of the humanity and the rise of the zombies |
15.15 – 15.45 | Sari Piittinen: Gothic Monstrosities in the Post-apocalyptic Digital Game World of Fallout 3 |
16.00 – 17.30 | SESSION VI: CATASTROPHES AND ECODYSTOPIAS |
16.00 – 16.30 | Essi Vatilo: Catastrophe as a Recipe for Social Change in Dan Simmons’ The Fall of Hyperion |
16.30 – 17.00 | Toni Lahtinen: The Ecologization of Myths in Johanna Sinisalo’s Ecodystopias |
17.00 – 17.30 | Mikko Mäntyniemi: Alone at the End of Time – The Role of the Active Subject in the Creation of the Apocalyptic Narratives |
Finncon 2016 is one of the largest events in Europe for anyone interested in science fiction and fantasy. By tradition, it is free of membership fee, and offers you several programme tracks with presentations, panels and lectures on all aspects of science fiction and fantasy. The main language is Finnish, but there are programme tracks also in English and Swedish. For more information, see : http://2016.finncon.org/en/what-is-finncon/ .