Month: July 2008

The SF/fantasy researcher meeting takes place again in Thursday and Friday. Unfortunately I can only take part in one paper session (or so it now seems), but here is the latest program (in Finnish):

Torstai
11-13 Tutustumiskierros ja käydään läpi 2 paperia (Kokkinen: “Who Gets to Enter the Sacred Center? Mircea Eliade´s Utopia Visualized in Mythic Art” & Ylimartimo: “A Beautiful Girl, Devilish Woman or Cosmic Power: The Fantastic Essence of the Snow Queen Interpreted by Fairy Tale Illustrators”)
13-14 Lounas
14-15 Käydään 2 paperia (Korpua: “Atlantis-myth in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Legendarium”, Pelkonen: “Images of Women in Power in the Dystopic World of Battlestar Galactica (2003)”)
15-16 Pyöreän pöydän jutustelu, pohjana M Polvisen paperi (“Course Outline: Proseminar for Teacher Trainees – ”Harry Potter and the Rest: Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature”)

Perjantai
11-13 Käydään 3 paperia (Kuusniemi: ““The Golden Path”: the Dynamic Dystopia in Frank Herbert’s Dune Chronicles”, Soikkonen: “Nothing Will Change? Dystopia and Social Commentary in C.L. Moore’s ‘Vintage Season'” & Miettinen: “Superheroes and the Question of Utopia”)
13-14 Lounas
14-15 Farah Mendlesohnin luento
15-15:30 Siirtyminen kirjoittajatapaamiseen: Tampereen yliopisto, Linna, Kalevantie 5, ls K103
15.40-17 Farah Mendlesohn & John M. Harrison: In conversation

See also CFP: http://2008.finncon.org/en/tutkijatapaaminen.htm

Just finished reading Ian M. Banks’ new Culture series novel, Matter (yes I know, it is late and I will regret this tomorrow — the damned book was 593 pages). A rather enjoyable read (I am a fan of Banks), but also a bit weird, asymmetric experience. There is a lightly entertaining layer in the book, all that stuff of superhuman cultures making intrigue within a state-of-the art space opera with rayguns, gigantic machines, and gargantuan time-scales. There is also a hard-SF style invention involved in Banks’ decision to set the main narrative into a “Shellworld”, a Dyson-sphere-like megastructure with several layers on top of each other, each effectively a world in itself, with its own planetary conditions, civilizations and even artificial suns. The “layer” is perhaps in the end the guiding metaphor for the entire novel: under the space adventure layer there is a layer of Shakespearean drama (much of narrative takes place in Renaissance era civilization, and the courtly dialogues reflect this in their language), and under this there are some philosophical, existential and even political layers of storytelling.

It is hard to go deeper into analysing the novel without spoiling the plot, but lets just say that I can understand how the final pages of the book can leave readers with mixed feelings. There is something dark and clinical under the gay surface of Culture science fiction, and in this novel raw desperation even comes to mind — the novel reads like sort of tragedy, but it is so large and mixed in its constituting parts that it is perhaps impossible to tie all strings together in an entirely convincing manner. But nuff’ said: the book is of high entertaining and even artistic quality and should be recommended. Just be warned of its length…