Conrep: Archipelacon
Archipelacon
Alandica Culture and Congress Center
Mariehamn, Åland
25-28 June 2015
Guests of Honour: George R. R. Martin,Johanna Sinisalo, Karin Tidbeck, Gary K. Wolfe, Parris McBride
Before I forget it all, and I've already forgotten so much (lots of names. I know I'm leaving people out and I'll add you all in as the names come back to me), let me talk to you all about Archipelacon.
At first, the idea seemed mad. Unlike London or Paris (or Stockholm or Helsinki), one does not simply walk fly into Åland, not even from New York. But it looked like I could make a decent vacation out of it because I have all of this leave time I never take off of work, and then the final call was made when Hanna Hakkarainen said, as I was dithering, "Of *course* you're coming to Archipelacon!" So...tickets booked, reservations made, and off I went.
I had a few days in Stockholm pre-con (which city, by the way, is lovely) and I'll write more about that at some point, but it was very fannish -- dinner and drinks with Edward James and Farah Mendelsohn (who were also going to the con) on Sunday, and pub meets on Monday (to which I was alerted by a surprise Meg Frank, who was supposed to be in Oslo, not Stockholm) and Wednesday pre-con.
But I consider my convention proper to have started on Thursday morning when I got onto the ferry from Stockholm to Mariehamn. There was a largish group of us there in varying states from bleary-eyed to chipper. Hanna was handing out ferry tickets for those of us who'd booked the group travel (such as myself) I said some hellos, helped Jo Playford wrangle George and Parris' luggage, hugged a few people, avoided some people I needed to avoid (long story; ask me sometime over drinks), and got onto the ship, found my cabin (best €40 I spent!) and fell fast asleep for a couple of hours.
After I woke up, feeling more human, I wandered the ferry for the rest of the time to Mariehamn. This involved walking around, finding people who were obviously going to the con (some of whom I knew, some of whom I didn't), having a beer or few with Bellis & Ian, and being generally fannish. Helped Jo out with George and Parris' luggage again, which earned me a lift to my hotel from the ferry! (Not that it's that far a walk, but if I can get a lift, why not?)
I went over the the Alandica Congress Center so that I could get my badge and programme book and see what there was to see. Since I knew maybe 30 - 50 people at the convention going in, I had plenty of opportunities to go to see items on the programme and still hang out and talk to people. The two items I went to on Thursday were the opening ceremonies (very quick, not very ceremonial!) and "Fear and Loathing in Hugo Land" with Farah Mendlesohn, Cheryl Morgan(m), and Jukka Särkijärvi. It was a really interesting discussion about the Hugos and the process rather than the individual works. It also, for me, set off exactly how fannish Archipelacon was. When they asked for questions from the audience closer to the end of the panel, Cheryl called out "Yes, George?" and pointed. There, in the audience, same as any other fan, was George R.R. Martin, patiently raising his hand and waiting to ask a question. That was great to see. Later that evening, I also went to see the music presentation: "Deep Space Overture - In Space, No One Can Hear You Blow a Horn" which was done by a Finnish chamber ensemble called Quinsonitus (page in Finnish) performing with pianist Saana Iljin. It was all SF-related music and really good. And in the evening, there was a party around the pool in the Arkipelag, the official convention hotel. I'm not sure of who all I hung out with that evening, to be honest. There were a lot of people there and I knew very few of them, so I drifted from conversation to conversation and also had a relatively early night so that I could start the con off right.
Friday started for me with breakfast at my hotel (the Savoy - yay for herring on rye bread!) and an easy 5K run around Mariehamn (lovely day for it and it's a great place to go running). After that, it was on to the convention! The first panel I went to was another Hugo discussion, where the panelists (Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf, Jukka Särkijärvi, Marianna Leikomaa, Tommy Persson) discussed specific works that were on the ballot, what they thought of them and why. With all of the back and forth about the Puppies this year, it was good to get some more opinions. The works from the slate didn't far very well (one comment from one of the panelists: "This is the worst book that I've ever read."). That was followed by "My Life In Fandom" with co-chair Johan Anglemark talking with Gary K. Wolfe, Parris McBride, and George R. R. Martin about what fandom has meant to them over their life and some significant fannish events. Great discussion and far too short, but it really reminds me of why fandom is such a great place to be. After that, I mainly spent the afternoon hanging around on the terrace in the sunshine talking to other people (Jonas Wissting, Bellis, Luke Smith, Ian Watson come to mind right away, but I'm not sure who all else). The real joy of fandom for me is meeting up with my tribe (or tribes) and spending social time and the terrace in the sunshine with a couple of cold beers was a great way to do it. What's not to love, I ask you. The other bit of programme was the "Game of Thrones Burlesque" I'm pretty sure this isn't an item you could get away with at most US conventions because we tend to be very hung up about sex here. It was a lot of fun, though, and I'd love to see it done again, perhaps longer. As with Thursday, the party moved to the pool area of the Arkipelag and more hanging out with fandom and friends until 3:30 or so.
Saturday was a day to sleep in, so my first program item was "Music in Science Fiction and Fantasy" with Bellis, Cheryl Morgan, J. Pekka Mäkelä, and Suzanne van Rooyen. Mostly, the panel was supposed to be about how different music inspired writers as they were doing their writing and what they listened to, but italso included a lot of "how has SF inspired music" (answer: lots. There's a LOT of music inspired by SF). I also took in some of Anna-Leena Harinen's presented paper called "That's Not How It Was in the Book" which talked about differences between the books and the show in Game of Thrones (caveat: I've never seen the show and I'm not a fan of the books, but I still found it interesting). I also went to Anna Davour's "The Atomic Nucleus of Good and Evil" which was an interesting look at atomic power through popular fiction, both for good and ill (with a bonus mention of a fair amount of the old US Civil Defense films. You should see them). I was only able to catch half of Jukka Halme's quiz, which was hysterical (and in which it's entirely possible for a team to incorrectly answer the question, "What is the name of your team.") but that's because I had to get to the Green Room to get ready for my panel at 6pm, "Filk of Three Nations" Panelists were Päivi Itäpuro from Finland, Karl-Johann Norén from Sweden, and Yours Truly. That was really very interesting for me because filk in the US is *very* different from filk in the Nordic countries. Because they haven't really had an unbroken tradition the way the US has, filk in Sweden and Finland still has a great deal of the "let's all get together and sing along to songs we all know" feel that filk in the US has mostly lost. That was followed by the group sing where we were joined by Johanna Vainikainen. I was able to understand a few of the songs (all the ones in English, which I mainly knew, because they were classics in the US. I don't think I've heard anyone sing "Time Winds Tavern" in forever. The ones in Swedish and Finnish were lost on me. But not for long; I'm going to learn them!)
Dinner was long and leisurely, the first real group meal I'd had at Archipelacon (Charlotte Laihonen, Petri Laihonen, Päivi and her husband whose name I've totally blanked on, Karl-Johann). After that, I went back over the the Arkipelag for more hanging out by the pool at the party. It was great. So many wonderful people. I'd decided that I wasn't going to get to bed at 3:30 again and in one sense, I succeeded. I got to bed at 4:30 after a dozen good conversations (*waves to Jonas Wissting and Kristina Hård especially*)
Sunday was really very light as far as I was concerned. It was the last official day of the convention and I hadn't slept nearly as much as I might have. I mainly hung out on the terrace in the sunshine, drinking beer with various friends (some old, some new) and in the evening went to "The Revenge of the Daughter of the Bimbo Panel (With Only One Bimbo)" which was basically Saija Aro presenting overview of weird things found on the Internet. It was funny, though. Great for a laugh! And after that was closing ceremonies, which was a nice goodbye to the official part of the convention, a light dinner, and then was the final dead dog party by the pool in the Arkipelag. It was, as with all the other parties, great. I got to hang out with cool people, drifting in and out of conversations. Karl-Johann sang "Mary O'Meara" to me "in the original Norwegian." Umm..Tero Ykspetäjä, Rasmus and Katarina Kaj, Jonas, who else? Oh, yes, Shimo Suntilla, who sold me a book on Jukka H's recommendation (and of whom I'll write when I talk about my adventures in Turku post-con). Eemili Aro came up to me at one point and said, "Dave, have you tried sauna yet? Is there any reason you can't try it right now?" I expect sauna is much more relaxing in the winter when it's cold outside, but it was neat, though, and I'm looking to trying it out again next time I'm in Finland. I know Dirk Weger was also there, plus a few others.
Much of the evening after the sauna was spent sharing whisky and stories with Cheryl Morgan, Irma Hirsjärvi, Marianna Leikomaa and a number of other people from the academic track (whose names I sadly don't have). It was a great way to round off the dead dog but alas, all too soon, I had to head back to my hotel so that I could pack and get ready for a little bit of touristing around Mariehamn before the ferry to Turku and the next part of my trip.
I'm going to count Monday as part of my convention, simply because it was. I got up, finished packing and checked out of my hotel. While walking around Mariehamn, I ran into two of the academic participants whose names I cannot for the life of me recall, but we stopped for coffee and cake and some very "oh my ghod we're all so tired" conversation before I retrieved my bags and walked down to the ferry terminal. I chatted and hugged people as I could, avoided the same ones I needed to avoid on the way in, and boarded the ferry, reluctant to leave. Hanna handed me my ferry ticket and in return, I walked down to a local hotel to grab her a Coke because she was dying of thirst (also running into Luke, Bellis and...umm...someone else, who were having a beer). I went straight to my cabin (again) and napped for the first hour or two out of Mariehamn and then wandered the boat, finding people to hang out with. I spoke with Jukka S. in the duty-free, where he was buying a bottle of "Dragon's Blood" I'd had some the day before when M. Pietikäinen had a bottle and...errr....wished him luck. (It's OK, just not to my taste). I know I spent time on the sundeck with Päivi and her husband, and we were joined by M. for a while as well.
The ferry ride ended as Tero hailed a cab and made sure that I got to my hotel, and I count that as the official end of Archipelacon for me (even though there was more fannishness later on).
So, my overall impression of Archipelacon: one of the best conventions that I've been to in the past decade, hands down, good enough that the post-con blues are tempered by still floating from the con. It was fannish, it was fun, and it had a great mix of people. The program was interesting enough that I went (and I never go to program, really) and not so overloaded that I felt great about hanging out with people and grabbing a beer in the sunshine. I'm seriously thinking about going to Finncon 2016 in Tampere and am really tempted by Åcon (and I hear that there's a possible bid for Swecon next year in Stockholm. I'd love to go this year because Kristina is GoH, but it's too close to Worldcon and I'm on the committee.) It makes me feel better than ever about my support for the Helsinki in 2017 bid for Worldcon because these are a lot of the same people who'll be on the committee. (And I didn't need to use any of my very limited Swedish or even-more-limited-Finnish; English was no problem at all.) If they ever run another Archipelacon, I am so there and you should be too.
I should note that Hanna has already told me "Of *course* you're coming to Finncon!" I'd better start making plans.
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