Cheryl's Mewsings

Got Aliette?

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:51:30 GMT

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

Those of you who are entitled to the Hugo Voter Packet should by now have got a copy of Aliette de Bodard’s fine novella, On A Red Station, Drifting. However, if you can’t get it that way, you might just want to buy a copy. Fortunately you can find it in a certain ebook store, for just £2.

Like this:

Like Loading...

Got Aliette?

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:51:29 GMT

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

Like this:

Like Loading...

Got Aliette?

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:51:29 GMT

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

Like this:

Like Loading...

Tomorrow On Ujima

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:29:48 GMT

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

I’ll be on the Women’s Outlook show on Ujima tomorrow. We have a busy show for you.

My main guest will be Jack Wolf, author of the fascinating Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones. It is a debut fantasy novel, but you probably won’t find it on the SF&F shelves because it sold to a mainstream publisher and has already been sold on for translation in France and Spain. The image is of the French cover, featuring the faerie queen, Viviane, in all her glory. The book also features a lot of interesting material about the history of medicine, and is written entirely in 17th Century dialect, which works brilliantly. I’ll be writing a review after I have had a chance to talk to Jack.

Also on the show with me will be representatives of the Bristol Academy soccer team who are playing the FA Cup Final against Arsenal at the weekend. The BBC has just launched a new show specifically about women’s soccer, and last night’s show featured a preview of the match. It is available on iPlayer. It’s great to see the game getting so much attention. Hopefully I can add usefully to the buzz.

I’ll also be talking about the Union Cup. And if we have time Paulette might chat tome about my trip to Finland.

Here Come The Aggressive Homosexuals

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:12:45 GMT

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

This week the UK media is full of stories about how aggressive gays will be sneaking into your bedroom at night to wreck your marriage, corrupt your kids, turn your wife into a feminist, force you to marry your dog, and otherwise promote their evil agenda, at the behest of the masters in Brussels. Will no one think of the rich, white, cis, straight Englishmen? Surely they are the most put upon minority in the country.

On the bright side, Norman Tebbit has clearly been watching too much Doctor Who.

All of this, however, pales into insignificance to what will be going on in Bristol over the next few days. If you want to see aggressive homosexuals, we have hundreds of them. The city will be playing host to the 2013 Union Cup, the European Gay Rugby championships.

Let me say that again. European. Gay. Rugby. Championships.

So yes, this weekend around 500 gay rugby players and their fans will descend upon Bristol from all over Europe. There’s a grand opening ceremony on Thursday evening, and two full days of competition on Friday and Saturday. The official broadcast partners of the event are Shout Out, and guess who is helping cover the event for them?

OK, I know they are all gay. But that just means I get to spend the weekend with a bunch of super-fit guys without Kevin having to worry. It’s perfect. I will, of course, be cheering for our local heroes, the Bristol Bisons, though I may also find time to encourage the Cardiff Lions. My parents always wanted me to play rugby for Wales, and I am a serious disappointment to them in that regard, but this weekend I get to make my debut as a rugby commentator. I’m pretty happy about that.

Sorry, what was that, boys? Yes, of course there is a calendar.

I Get Podcast

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:50:41 GMT

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

I am so behind on podcast listening. There are episodes of Coode Street, Galactic Suburbia, The Writer & The Critic, Shout Out and For Books Sake that I need to listen to. I have, however, managed to catch the latest Outer Alliance podcast. Yes, that’s ego-driven. I’m on it.

In episode #31 the fabulous Julia Rios talks to a number of Outer Alliance members on a variety of subjects. I get to pontificate about awards, recycle an old joke about the difference between Raiders and 49ers fans, and enthuse about Caitlín R. Kiernan, Gail Simone, Stephanie Saulter and other great people. The other guests have really good contributions as well, and the variety of reactions to QUILTBAG as a term is fascinating. You can listen here.

By the way, the recording was made a couple of week ago, so neither Julia nor I was able to react to the Aurealis Awards being just as much of a vagfest as the Ditmars.

Thanks as always to Julia for having me as a guest.

And Nebulas

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:05:33 GMT

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

I don’t have to give you a run-down here, because the good folks from Locus were on hand to do so. Here’s the list.

I am, of course, disappointed that The Drowning Girl didn’t win, but it is an interesting collection of winners. Also the Nebulas go 50:50 to men and women, and one of the winners is French, so we are doing quite well for diversity. (The Bradbury and Norton are Not Nebulas, of course.)

The best bit of news, however, is another win for Clarkesworld. That’s two this weekend. Thoraiya Dyer’s “The Wisdom of Ants” in the Aurealis Awards, and Aliette de Bodard’s “Immersion” in the Nebulas. Yay!

Aurealis Awards Winners

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:09:19 GMT

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

Australia’s juried awards were announced at a ceremony in Sydney today. Based on their Twitter feed, here are the winners.

Children’s Fiction (mainly words): Brotherband: The Hunters by John Flanagan (Random House Australia)
Children’s Fiction (mainly pictures): Little Elephants by Graeme Base (author and illustrator) (Viking Penguin)
YA Short Story: “The Wisdom of the Ants” by Thoraiya Dyer (Clarkesworld)
YA Novel: tie: Dead, Actually by Kaz Delaney (Allen & Unwin) and Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)
Graphic novel: Blue by Pat Grant (author and illustrator) (Top Shelf Comix)
Collection: That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote by K. J. Bishop (self-published)
Anthology: The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 6 edited by Jonathan Strahan (Night Shade Books)
Horror Short Story: “Sky” by Kaaron Warren (Through Splintered Walls, Twelfth Planet Press)
Horror Novel: Perfections by Kirstyn McDermott (Xoum)
Fantasy Short Story: “Bajazzle” by Margo Lanagan (Cracklescape, Twelfth Planet Press)
Fantasy Novel: Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin)
Science Fiction Short Story: “Significant Dust” by Margo Lanagan (Cracklescape, Twelfth Planet Press)
Science Fiction Novel: The Rook by Daniel O’Malley (Harper Collins)
Peter McNamara Convenors’ Award for Excellence: Kate Eltham
Kris Hembury Encouragement Award: Laura Goodin

Congratulations in particular to Margo Lanagan who picked up four awards on the night. I note that, as with the Ditmars the vast majority of winners are women. Goodness only knows what Alisa’s puppy will say on the next episode of Galactic Suburbia.

I am, of course, delighted to see another award win for Clarkesworld. If you’d like to help Neil and the crew with the expenses, you can buy that issue from my bookstore. And, of course, we have several of the award winners on sale. Here they are.

ISF #4 Is Live

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:14:13 GMT

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

Issue #4 of International Speculative Fiction is now available. Includes stories by Zoran Živković, Ken Liu and S.P. Somtow. There is also an interview with Zoran. Sean Wright reviews Filipina writer, Eliza Victoria, which is very useful as Small Blue Planet will be off to the Philippines next month. There’s lot of other good content too. And it is all free. To download a copy on your preferred format, go here.

Equality Begins At Home

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:23:44 GMT

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

Today is the International Day Against Homophobia (and whatever additional QUILTBAG phobias you see fit to add). I feel that I should be writing something about it. However, over the past week I have seen rather too much of:

Feminists hating on trans women, single mothers, sex workers, etc.
Gays and lesbians frantically disassociating themselves from trans people
Trans people explaining to other trans people that they are Doing Trans Wrong

It seems pretty pointless to try to get the wider world to stop discriminating against us when we can’t stop discriminating against each other.

Helsinki – Some Photos

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:38:27 GMT

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

Video editing takes a while, but so that you don’t have to wait too long I have uploaded some still photos. They are mainly taken in and around the convention center and main hotel (which is a Holiday Inn). There are no pictures of the larger programming rooms and exhibit halls because such things are quite dull, and also the exhibit halls were being renovated when I visited, but you’ll see more of them when I upload the video.

If you want to see a map of the facilities, there’s one on the Helsinki in 2015 website. Note that Halls 4 and 5, which are the ones currently reserved for us, are not off to the side, they are above halls 1-3. The convention center is fully accessible, with ramps and elevators where needed.

After the views of the convention center I’ve included some views of Pasila railway station. Pasila is the suburb of Helsinki where the convention center is situated. A key picture is the one of the local area map, which shows you just how close the station is to the proposed facilities. I walked it the long way, going through the station concourse rather than using the other entrance at the far end of the platforms, and it took me 10 minutes.

Why is this important? Well for starters the railway station is a good source for cheap food. There are plenty of places to eat in the convention center, but if you are short of cash you don’t have far to go to find something more economic. Secondly the convention center hotel only has 239 rooms. That should be sufficient to accommodate everyone who needs to be on site, but some foreign visitors will need to use the many hotels located around the central Helsinki railway station. That’s just under 4km away, and trains are very frequent during the day. The city has promised to supply free transit passes to Worldcon attendees, so travel won’t cost you anything. And staying in the city means you’ll have access to all of the tourist stuff, and top restaurants, if you want it.

But wait, what about evening events and a parties? Won’t that be a problem? No. If you consult the timetable and search for trains from Pasila to Helsinki you’ll see that they run through the night. There is a period between 3:00am and 4:00am when nothing much runs, but otherwise there is service. Also Helsinki is really safe.

Finally I have a few photos from central Helsinki. Some of them are from the National Library of Finland, which is a beautiful building. Others are from around the Helsinki railway station.

Questions?


HelsinkiDec 31, 2000Photos: 41

Readmill, Anyone?

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:44:10 GMT

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

One of the big advantages that Amazon has over other ebook stores is the simple purchase process. When you buy a book, it is automatically sent to your Kindle account, and is available on every device where you have a Kindle app. If you are online the book will even synchronize to the last-read position when you switch between devices. It is all very convenient.

Of course Amazon has put a lot of money into providing a good shopping experience. There’s no way I can replicate that with my own store. But other people are trying to help small business like me compete. Enter Readmill. It is a German company, and their product is a cloud-based reading system that is trying to do for epub what Kindle does for its proprietary format. Currently their reader is only available for iOS devices (iPad and iPhone), but according to this report they are working on an Android app as well. Crucially they have a simple system for sending books direct to your library when you buy them. I have added it to my store.

The Readmill reader for the iPad is really nice. Someone has put a lot of effort into making sure that the books it renders look great. Personally I can’t wait for an Android app because I own a Mark I iPad which is rather too heavy for carrying around everywhere. I do most of my reading on my Google Nexus, and I prefer to use the Kindle app to read on that because the Android reading apps are so bad. Hopefully Readmill will come through with an Android app soon.

There are things that Readmill can’t do. In particular it can’t read books that are locked to a specific reading platform with DRM. But all of the books I sell are DRM-free so you won’t have that problem. As of now I haven’t found a way to download a book from the Readmill library. Of course if you buy a book from me you’ll be able to download a copy when you buy it, as well as sending a copy to Readmill, but an option to back up your Readmill library to local storage would be a good thing to have.

Has anyone out there got any experience of using Readmill? I have had a quick look around the Internet, but any bad things people are saying about Readmill are being drowned out by bad things people are saying about treadmills. Any feedback would be gratefully received.

Book Review – Up Against It

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:44:04 GMT

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

One of the good things about doing a lot of traveling is that I have got a lot of reading done. Now I need to write reviews. First up we have Up Against It, a very fine solar system novel by M.J. Locke, whom you will doubtless guess from the use of initials is a woman. I’m bemused as to why this book hasn’t been talked abut whenever people have discussed the current fashion for solar system novels. You might want to give it a try. Check out my review and see what you think.

Tähtivaeltaja Award

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:58:48 GMT

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

Talking of Finland, the results of the 2013 Tähtivaeltaja Award were announced on Monday. This is an award for science fiction published in Finnish. The shortlist was as follows:

Pintakuvio (Surface Detail) by Iain M. Banks
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Teemestarin kirja by Emmi Itäranta
Muistoissa sininen Maa (Blue Remembered Earth) by Alastair Reynolds
Kiduttajan varjo (The Shadow of the Torturer) by Gene Wolfe

And the winner is the Gene Wolfe book, Kiduttajan varjo, which was translated by my friend, Johanna Vainikainen-Uusitalo. You may well be thinking that a Gene Wolfe book has something of an unfair advantage, but bear in mind that most, if not all, of the jury will have read the book in the original English. If Johanna hadn’t done a great job translating it then it would not have won. I’m very happy for her.

By the way, you may have noticed that one of the books on the short list was original in Finnish. Emmi Itäranta’s book has already won a couple of mainstream literary awards in Finland (including a €16,000 prize). It will be published in English as Memory of Water next year.

Further details about the Tähtivaeltaja Award are available from the ever-reliable Tero.

Thank You, Finland

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:45:40 GMT

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

I’m back home in the frozen wastes of the UK. I’m missing Finland already, and only in part because the weather is so much better there.

The main point of this post is to say Thank You! once again to Finnish fandom for being so friendly and hospitable, and for running such fun conventions. That goes double for Otto and Paula, who once again proved to be fabulous hosts, and this year also to Jukka and Eemeli for taking the time to show me around their proposed Worldcon facilities.

This year, however, I get to give special thanks to everyone. At the end of Åcon I was presented with a Certificate of Adoption into Finnish Fandom. It is beautifully illustrated by ~~Jukka Halme~~ Petri Hiltunen. I don’t have a picture as yet because it has to go off to Jyväskylä to be signed by Irma Hirsjärvi, my official adoptive mother. (Otto is the adoptive father). I should be able to take it home from Finncon in July, and will post a picture then.

See what I mean. They are lovely people.

So I guess I am now fannishly a Finn. Which probably means that I’ll be expected to be on convention committees.

Travel Day

Tue, 14 May 2013 07:25:11 GMT

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

I’ll be off to Helsinki airport shortly. If all goes well I’ll be changing planes in Frankfurt, and arriving back at Heathrow in plenty of time to grab some food and get a train home. Tomorrow I get to start catching up on all of the things I haven’t been doing while I have been away.

By the way, it is another beautiful spring day in Helsinki today. We were watching the weather forecast on Finnish TV last night. It looks like Jadis is still well in control of the UK. If I’m going to need a boat to get home I might have to beg somewhere to stay in London overnight. I’ll look into hiring a sled and some reindeer here before I leave.

Site Inspection

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:58:52 GMT

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

Yesterday was mainly a travel day. We got up, had a wrap session for the convention, then got on the boat back to Turku. From there we drove back to Helsinki, and then went to sleep. Well, some of us might have slept most of the way in the car, but then I wasn’t driving.

Today, however, Otto and I were up early, because Jukka and Eemeli had arranged for me to get a tour of the proposed Helsinki in 2015 Worldcon facilities. I must say that is a very splendid convention center that they have here. It would be a real shame not to put a Worldcon in it. I have shot lots of video, and a bunch of still photos as well. Now I need to edit it all. Watch this space.

Åcon Meanders On

Sat, 11 May 2013 12:53:32 GMT

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

What’s new since yesterday? Oh yes, there was sushi. There was also a room party. Someone brought a bottle of Jura Prophecy. I can’t imagine who that might have been. It seemed to go down very well. Otto revealed a new skill: expert cake maker. He should do that more often.

After way to much whisky and sparkling pink stuff I had to get up early again this morning for another tour. This time I got the clocks right and managed to inhale a reasonable quantity of breakfast. This is just as well, because the alcohol started early.

We were visiting Smakbyn, a new enterprise set up by top Finnish chef, Mikael Björklund. Although the venue will feature a top quality restaurant, Björklund isn’t in Åland just to cook. He wants to start from scratch. He and his wife have purchased a distillery which specializes in apple-based beverages. They plan to start smoking their own meats and fish, making their own cheese and honey, and so on. Åland is a fine agricultural location, and therefore an excellent place for such a venture.

Our tasting concentrated on the alcohol. We were served a number of beverages, starting with apple wine and working up through various liqueurs to a Calvados-like spirit. Given that I am from Somerset, I’m pretty hard to please when it comes to apple-based beverages, and several of the drinks didn’t pass muster when compared to equivalent French offerings. However, the apple wine was very nice and did, as advertised, go very well with cheese. I’d like to try it with a proper cheddar rather that the wussy equivalent made here. The star of the show, however, was Appleaud, an apple-based liqueur that tastes exactly like liquid apple pie. I need to get a bottle or two before I go home.

Back at the hotel, we dived straight into the academic session. Merja and Mika were their usual thoughtful and entertaining selves. Merja gave a fascinating paper about the temporal structure of Ted Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life” while Mika continued to expound on semiotics and the multifarious ways in which stories are adapted and evolved through modern media. Sadly he didn’t have time for the whole of his six-part theory of orcish evolution, but we got the general idea. I’m longing to see the theoretical framework he’s been developing for this PhD melded with fan studies to look at the way in which different representations of well-loved characters vie for authenticity.

Tricia’s GoH speech is due up soon, so I’ll head back down for that. It is a gorgeous spring day here today, though, and the temptation to sit down by the water with some cheese, bread and a bottle of white wine is very strong.

Åcon Underway

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:20:28 GMT

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

Yesterday was mainly a travel day, and I slept most of the way from Turku to Mariemamn, thereby saving myself from buying duty-free booze on the ferry. We did, however, have a small amount of programming in the evening. Tricia Sullivan and I, with expert help from Markku Soikkeli, did a panel on “Body and Mind” in which we talked a lot about false dualisms, the complexity of biological organisms, the lack of scientific basis for ideas of “uploading” minds to silicon, and the political minefields that result from “nature v personal choice” arguments. Judging from the feedback I have got, it went down very well. Kisu is threatening to have a philosophy panel on Thursday evening every year.

I had a bad case of time zone fail this morning and almost missed the bus to the chocolate tasting. Thankfully I did make it, and Mercedes was wonderful as ever. I refer you to last year’s con report for a more detailed description of what these excursions are like.

We’d hardly got back when I had another panel. This one was about “Classic Conventions”. I now owe several beers to Crystal Huff as I co-opted her onto the panel to talk about ReaderCon and other US events. Thanks also to my colleagues, Carolina Gomez Lagerlöf and Tommy Persson. Hopefully we entertained.

I skipped Tricia’s GoH interview because I very much wanted to get to the Maritime Museum and they close at 16:00. Mariehamn has a glorious maritime history, having once been home to the biggest fleet of windjammers in the world. The Pommern is still here and I had a good look around her. I have so much respect for the crews of such ships, and especially for Wilhelmina Widborn who served as a cook and steward on the Pommern for many years. According to the museum, she rounded Cape Horn eight times, and survived being torpedoed, during her career.

Also in the museum is one of only two genuine Jolly Roger flags in existence. This one was captured from Barbary pirates around 200 years ago and brought home to Mariehamn by the crew. I’ll have a photo of it up eventually.

And now, dinner beckons. There is a fine restaurant called Nordic Blues, which makes sushi with local fish. I went there last year with Cat Valente’s husband, Dmitry. The plan is to go back today.

For further Åcon reportage, check out Tero’s blog.

Me Elsewhere – Feminist SF at For Books’ Sake

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:56:00 GMT

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

I have a new article up at the For Books’ Sake blog. They originally asked me to list 10 top women SF writers. I rather stretched that, and even so all of the comments I’ve got are about (very fine) writers who I chose to leave out. I’m sure that you folks can think of even more. Why not pop over there and add some more suggestions.

Bruce, Reindeer and Me

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:12:56 GMT

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

Given last year’s traffic nightmare trying to get out of Helsinki, Otto, Paula and I hit the road nice and early this time. As a consequence we arrived in Turku in very good time and spent the afternoon exploring the city. Otto & Paula have some sort of alternate reality game on their tablets that requires them to visit locations around the world and register at “portals” there. It is sort of like geo-caching, except the treasure is all virtual and you are also part of a team game. It is also a very good excuse to visit interesting buildings, public works of art and so on.

We ended up wandering around the riverside area of Turku in search of somewhere to eat. Otto spotted a steakhouse, and that sounded fairly harmless, so in we went.

Inside it looked very posh, and also very quiet. The waiter who greeted us explained something in Finnish which Otto translated as their having just re-opened after a private party. I thought no more of this and got to examining the menu.

It quickly became obvious that we had stumbled into somewhere very expensive. This was Stefan’s Steakhouse, owned by Stefan Richter who was a finalist on American Top Chef. When you are in such a place, the only thing to do is eat well and worry about the bill later. For comparison, it cost around the same as a meal at Bell’s Diner in Bristol, and is in a similar league quality-wise.

First up a comment about the aperitif they offered. The waiter described it as a mixture of white wine, red soda and cranberries. This was precisely correct. Not wine, soda and cranberry juice; wine, soda and cranberries. It was lovely.

For starters I had to try the roast bone marrow. It is something I had never eaten before. Once extracted from the surrounding bone, it is not the most appetizing-looking stuff in the world, but it tastes wonderful and I was glad to have tried it.

My main course was reindeer sirloin. It is one of the nicest pieces of meat I have ever eaten. I’ve eaten reindeer before, of course, but this was spectacular. Otto & Paula were similarly happy with their steaks.

I’m not sure I’d recommend Stefan’s for dessert. I’ve never seen brownies presented more beautifully, but I have had them cooked better. Otto said his cheesecake was delicious, but it was very small. Still, given the overall quality of the food, I’m not at all unhappy we went there.

Afterwards we headed off to the Cosmic Comic Cafe, where Finnish fandom was gathering for the night. I got talking to Hannah who explained that a lot of people were not going to be there, either because of the USA-Finland ice hockey game, or because of the Bruce Springsteen concert…

I did not strangle anyone. I may have made faces that said, “there is a Springsteen concert on tonight and no one told me? WHY!!!!??????”

Actually Bruce played two nights in Turku (with very different sets for the two nights so all of the hard core fans went to both). Tickets sold out within 15 minutes of them being made available, so there’s no way I would have got one unless I’d known well in advance. But still…

“Oh yes,” said Otto, “that’s what the guy in the restaurant was on about. They had just re-opened after a private function for Springsteen and his tour party.”

So there you have it. Entirely by chance, we ate in the same restaurant as Bruce and the E-Street Band, just after he had left. For all I know, I could have sat in the same chair he used. I am going to pretend that it is so. I hope he enjoyed his meal as much as I did.

WorldCon Scouting: Part I

Tue, 07 May 2013 21:26:04 GMT

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

So, here I am in Helsinki, and while I am here I intend to make use of my time looking for things that prospective Worldcon attendees might be interested in. After all, there may be some of you who haven’t yet made up your minds to vote for Helsinki in 2015. If there are any specific questions that people have, please ask them in comments below. I’ll be visiting the convention site on Monday when we have got back from Åcon so I’ll have time to look around, shoot some video, and ask questions. In the meantime, here are some observations from today.

Helsinki airport is small but efficient. There’s not a lot in the way of direct flights, but those of you who are with Star Alliance will probably find it easy to change in Frankfurt, which is Lufthansa’s main hub. You could also change in London, of course, or Paris. Work on the railway linking the airport with the city is now underway and they expect to have it open in time for Worldcon.

The only cloud on the train horizon is that there are apparently suggestions afoot to fully automate the system. Driverless trains have to be built to a higher safety standard than human-operated ones, and there would be software to be written. I’ll keep an eye on developments.

On the way into the city we stopped off at a shopping mall to have dinner and get food for brunch tomorrow. Otto and Paula too me to Chico’s a restaurant chain that promises to bring American dining to Finland. They have got it pretty much spot on. All of the usual things you would expect from a high end burger joint were available. We had fried mozzarella and jalapeño poppers for starters. The chiptole mayo in my burger was definitely spicy, as were the chili fries it came with (in a little metal bucket). The Finns, being hard core about such things, added half a jalapeñno on the side, with the seeds still in it. That was warm. We were too full for the cheesecake, but I’m sure it would have been lovely. The poppers came with the BBQ mayo as a dip, and it was so nice I now want to try their ribs. OK, so it isn’t haute cuisine, but no one from California can complain that they can’t get good home cooking in Finland.

Also it is a change from my going on and on about the reindeer steaks, tar ice cream and cinnamon beer at Harald. You might get that tomorrow when we get to Turku.

I’m staying at Otto & Paula’s splendid flat in Helsinki overnight. I have had sauna, so I am now a happy and relaxed feline. Tomorrow we hit the road. Hopefully we’ll manage to go early enough to avoid the holiday weekend traffic jams.

By the way, the ice hockey world championships are underway in Helsinki. I won’t have a chance to go to any games, but it will be on TV in the convention hotel. There should be good crowds for Sweden v Canada on Friday, and Russia v Finland on Saturday. USA v Finland tomorrow should also be an interesting game. The Russians look like the best team in the tournament thus far, but the surprise package is most definitely Switzerland who have already beaten Sweden, the Czech Republic and Canada.

On The Road

Mon, 06 May 2013 08:42:54 GMT

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

Like this:

Today: London
Tuesday: Helsinki
Wednesday: Turku
Thursday: Mariehamn

Bloggage may be limited.

Fallen Host – Live in the Bookstore

Sat, 04 May 2013 15:07:33 GMT

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

I wouldn’t normally release a book on a Saturday, but time is getting short. This one should have been out on either Thursday or Friday, but circumstances have conspired against me and as I’m leaving for Finland on Monday I need to get it out now.

Fallen Host is, of course, the second in Lyda Morehouse’s AngeLINK series. Satan is running a used bookstore in New York. The Vatican’s crack tech crime investigator is a woman. And the Four Horsemen are, well, that might be a spoiler. Not that such things should really matter in a book that has been out for more than a decade, but publishers are supposed to tease prospective readers so here I am doing it.

Needless to say, I love this book (and all of the others in the series). I’m not in the least bit surprised to learn that Lyda would go around exclaiming “I love Satan!” while writing it. He is a splendid character. Hopefully some of you who are new to Lyda’s work will come to love it too.

As for me, I have two more novels to convert. So once I have this one in all of the major bookstores I’ll need to get on with the next one. There will be a new Juliet McKenna coming soon as well.

Bookslam in Bristol

Fri, 03 May 2013 16:06:26 GMT

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

On a much happier note, I had a great time at Bookslam Bristol last night. Nikesh Shukla turned out to be a great host, but his best performance of the evening was when he read from one of his own books. It was a very funny tale of two young Asian boys in London writing their first rap song. It works because Shukla knows his own culture very well, and can pinpoint nuances that others would miss, plus of course it is his own culture he’s making fun of. I very much want to get him doing that routine on Ujima.

Patrick Ness was his usual fabulous self, and I’ve already reviewed The Crane Wife so you know what I think of that. I’ll concentrate, therefore, on the other guest, Matt Haig. He has a fairly lengthy career, but his new book, The Humans, is his first adult SF novel. Matt is very funny, and the subject matter is perfect for wry observation.

The narrator of the book is an alien who has begun to inhabit the body of Professor Andrew Martin, a Cambridge mathematician. Our hero struggles to understand the hapless, primitive humans, and gets himself into dreadful trouble as a result. The book clearly owes a lot to Douglas Adams, but for talking to people last night I understand that Haig isn’t playing entirely for laughs. By the end of the book we will hopefully have gained some insight into the human condition.

Anyway, Patrick likes The Humans, and so does Jeanette Winterson. That should be plenty of recommendation for you.

Thanks as ever to he awesome Birdcage, which is the perfect venue for a book event. I was impressed that Bookslam managed to get plenty of people in well in advance of the advertised 8:30pm start time (thereby doing good business for the cafe). For future events, however, I’d prefer to run from 8:00pm to 9:30pm than 8:30pm to 10:00pm, as it gives those of us from out of town a much better choice of trains home. Please, Nikesh?