Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

As many of you will know, I’m quite keen on promoting translation of literature from one language to another. In order to make that happen, we need talented people to do the translating. It is well known that translators are pretty badly paid, but that’s nothing compared to how poorly translators of the Harry Potter books have been treated by Warner Brothers. Gilli Bar-Hillel explains.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Well initially I thought I was just worn out from all of the travelling, and possibly suffering from a bit of hay fever. However, I have reluctantly been forced to admit that I am actually sick. Normal service will be resumed eventually, but for now I may be a little slow.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

One of the things that makes me very happy about my bookstore is that it contains a book by Ursula K. Le Guin. Normally, of course, Le Guin gets published by the big multi-national companies who put DRM on their books and don’t want anything to do with little stores like mine. When it comes to non-fiction, however, even the greatest authors don’t always get big deals. Cheek by Jowl, “a collection of talks and essays on how and why fantasy matters”, is published by Aqueduct Press, and so we have it in store. And it is just been short-listed for a Mythopoeic Award. Find out more about the book here.

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Today I seem to have been able to do little except sleep. This suggests to me that I had a great time in Finland. Hopefully I’ll be able to remember some of it and write about it. But not now. Zzzzzzz.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

I have managed to listen to the latest Coode Street, in which Gary & Jonathan return to the question of gender balance in SF. A few quick points are in order.

Firstly, I was very happy with the way Jonathan & Gary pulled themselves back from saying something silly the previous week. Podcasts are hard, because you can’t edit what you say, or clarify if a listener doesn’t understand, but they do a good job of watching each other.

I suspect that Gary is right in saying that women do not write the sort of emotionless SF that was popular decades ago. Male writers don’t write it much these days either. That wasn’t my point.

Also I spotted N.K. Jemisin on Twitter complaining that you shouldn’t say a work is “not fantasy” just because it has consistent world-building. That’s quite right, but also isn’t addressing my point. I’m not interested in fan debates over whether SF or fantasy is “better” or “more intellectual” or whatever. All I’m interested in is whether the gender of the author influences whether a work is regarded as science fiction or fantasy, because if it does that has implications for the whole “women don’t write SF” discussion.

And finally, you can’t disprove a point like that by pointing to examples of women who are accepted as SF writers. Of course there are many of them. Some of them write very hard SF. But I’m interested in the ones in the middle, the ones where there is some doubt as to how their work should be classified.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

My apologies about the lack of bloggage over the past few days. I have been kept very busy: with Åcon, with the Translation Awards, and with clients wanting me to do work. I’ll be back home tomorrow and can start catching up then.

In the meantime, a few quick notes. The convention was excellent (as I have come to expect from the Finns). I have eaten very well, and seen lots of beautiful places. The weather has been great (and not as screamingly hot as Zagreb). All is well except with my waistline, and lack of sleep.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

We have nominees for 2012. You can find them here.

Like Gary, I am delighted with the diversity we’ve got. There is some great fiction available in translation.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Yes, I know I have been neglecting you. It’s not my fault that I am having too much fun, honest. The Finns kidnapped me and dragged me here, you know.

Anyway, last night we hired the local cinema and gave ourselves a showing of Iron Sky. I’ll try to write something more formal about it later, but for now suffice it to say that it both demonstrates that film making is much more complicated than it might look, and that Timo and his crew are far better than they have any right to be given the resources at their disposal.

This morning’s program item was a trip to the local chocolatier. Unlike at the Jersey SMOFcons, Åcon’s source of fine chocolate is a substantial drive away. In fact it is technically on a different island, albeit one connected to the one on which Mariehamn sits by a road bridge. We hired a bus. The chocolatiery (if there is such a word, because “chocolate factory” sounds way too industrial) is located in the old post office established by the Russians when they conquered Finland in the early 19th Century. Åland was a vital link on the post route from Sweden to St.Petersburg.

None of that, of course, has anything to do with chocolate. The present day owners of the building, Peter and Mercedes, have less dangerous and more delicious, if perhaps less necessary work to perform. Mercedes is from Venezuela, and is one of those amazing people who can talk about cocao in the same way that expert vintners talk about grapes. We had a tasting of different types of chocolate. Then we sampled some of her pralines. I died and went to heaven.

Unfortunately the Finns want me to do some program items later in the weekend, so they resurrected me and brought me back to the hotel.

Cat has done a fine Guest of Honor interview. We crashed the hotel’s wifi network, presumably through overuse.

Now it is getting on towards evening. I have persuaded Otto & Paula to take me in search of Baltic sushi. There will be herring, and perch, and eel, and hopefully other interesting fishy delights.

Talking of fish, Aloysius the squid is enjoying his visit to the Far North. He says that the Baltic is a nice little pond, but not deep enough to have food in it. Somehow I don’t think the sushi bar will have sperm whale on the menu.

Also I have been conspiring with Kisu and Karo about the Finncon program. And if all goes well the Translation Awards short lists will be announced tomorrow evening.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Hello again. I am safely arrived in Mariehamn. Åcon 5 is due to start in a few hours. But I owe you a couple of days of blog posts, so let’s go back a day.

Otto, Paula and I drove to Turku yesterday afternoon. It is a holiday weekend in Finland, and the entire population of Helsinki appeared to be trying to leave the city. Thankfully Paula had some ideas about alternate routes. It only took us an hour to escape. Another car that left before us arrived after us.

We found Cat and Dmitri in Harald (where else). They had already been persuaded to try the tar ice cream. I got them onto cinnamon beer as well. I’m pleased to report that a branch of Harald will be opening in Helsinki soon, so all of the major Finncon venues are now covered.

I had perch in nettles for dinner. Perch have lots of little bones, but are otherwise lovely.

After dinner some of us repaired to the Cosmic Comics Cafe, a thoroughly geeky establishment funded by local comics creators. It has good beer too. But we couldn’t stay long as we needed to be up early to catch the ferry. I almost wrote “at the crack of dawn” then, but that would have been about 3:00am in Turku at this time of year.

There are two ferry services between Turku and Stockholm: Viking and Silja. We traveled on Silja, because Hanna works for them so arranging block bookings is nice and easy. Our ship was the MS Galaxy, which is a large ro-ro vessel. As with any such thing, it is a floating mechanism for relieving the resident humans of their money. There’s a casino, several bars, several restaurants, duty free shopping and so on. But it was very comfortable, and you didn’t need to spend money if you didn’t want to. Also, the lunch buffet was very good value – €12 for all you can eat.

Of course the usual ferry rules applied. There were plenty of young Swedes on board who had no intention of getting off in Turku. They were just there to drink themselves insensible for the best part of a day. Doubtless many of the young Finns who boarded with us were doing the same thing in the other direction.

Åland is a lengthy archipelago of small, granite islands that stretches out from Turku. It was foggy for much of the trip, but when we could see we were never out of sight of at least one island. It looked like a great place for a sailing holiday, or indeed for a pirate hideout. Aside from the more northerly vegetation, and the separation into islands, I found it very like Cornwall. Cat and Dmitri, of course, found it very like Maine.

I am now safely in the con hotel and listening to Test Match Special. Opening ceremonies are in 2.5 hours, and the main event of this evening is a trip to the local cinema for a special showing of Iron Sky. But first, a nap and a shower.

Oh, and the convention program is online here.

Originally published at Cheryl's Mewsings. Please leave any comments there.

Hello from Helsinki. I am here. The weather is good. Cat is apparently in Copenhagen changing planes. All is well. Today Otto, Paula and I will be on the road to Turku. There’s some sort of pub meet tonight, but we’ll want to be early to bed as the ferry leaves at stupid-o-clock tomorrow.

On the plane over I read Ishtar, a collection of stories by Kaaron Warren, Deb Biancotti and Cat Sparks. It’s wonderful. Review to follow.