You all helped make the con a roaring success as far as I’m concerned. Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes and Ålanders — the Nordic nations rock. I’ll be trying to find the time to blog a con report, but I just wanted to say it direct as well… the con was absolutely fucking brilliant and it was a total pleasure to hang out with everyone. I’ll be back to Scandinavia somewhere and somewhen in the future, you can be sure, if I have to swim it!

All the best,
H/Al

Note: when blogging about the con, please tag your posts with ‘åcon’, so they will be easier to find. The same goes for photos too.

• Nya Åland
• Partial Recall
• Babek nabel
• Anne/Mila Updated Thu
• Jukkahoo
• Marko K
• Ahrvid
• Juha A
• Aleksi K
• see also “Åcon in blogs” in the link bar for recent blog posts mentioning Åcon

Photos:

• all photos on Flickr tagged ‘åcon’
• Tero (more to be added soon)
• Juha
• Jussi, set 2, set 3
• Jonas
• Anders W
  
• Anders R
• Olav
• Tommy
• Sarianna

We welcome feedback (positive and negative) from everybody who attended — you can leave a comment on this post, or e-mail it to the committee if you don’t want all the world to see it. There’ll be a separate post for linking to the con reports, photos, and blog posts a bit later.

Hal Duncan (on the right) at Turku railway station, with Sari, Jukka, and Mekku.

There will be discussion about the book and its merits, structure, and influence on the field at the convention, so this might be a good time to go back and refresh your memories of it!

The novel is basically a retelling of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. A group of seven pilgrims have been selected by the Church of the Shrike to travel to the world Hyperion and undertake a pilgrimage to the infamous Time Tombs to meet the Shrike. The Shrike is an almost-mythological being which appears unannounced at seemingly random times and locations, usually to kill people for no apparent reason with its blade-encrusted body. Its appearances have been more frequent of late, as have its murderous attacks, thile strange entropic activityoccurring around the site of the Time Tombs hs concinced many people that they are about to open. The pilgrims decide that sharing their previous experiences on Hyperion might provide clues to the reason for their selection for the journey as well as how they might survive their meeting with the Shrike.

Simmons’s writing is rich and fulfilling, his worlds colourful and wondrous, his characters quirky but satisfying. The novel combines high science fiction adventure with true sense of wonder and fascinating, well-developed characters, the quintessential combination of New Wave–Old Wave with echoes of Cordwainer Smith and Jack Vance on one hand, and Kim Stanley Robinson and Ursula K. Le Guin on the other.

Hyperion has won both the Hugo and the Locus awards in 1990, and the Finnish translation has won the Tähtivaeltaja award for the best Finnish-language science fiction book in 1997.

The same goes with the ferry bookings – if there are cabins left, you can inquire about the special Åcon rate. No promises here, though.

Readers content to be carried along by the tide will be rewarded with a rip-roaring supernatural adventure

If you’d like to help and are resident somewhere else in the world, please get in touch with us to join the Åcon agency.

We’ve negotiated special rates with Silja Line, available only through us. For example, a return tip from Turku or Stockholm is only 10 €/person. Book now and tell your friends!

Room prices and booking info are listed on our hotel info page.

Thanks to Merja Polvinen for contributing the text!

We’re aiming to arrange a con hotel for both the accommodation and the programming items; more info on that will follow later. Our target is 100 attending members.