Well, I've just visited Finncon 2009, which is the largest scifi/fantasy convention in Finland. Finncon is also noted for having several big celebrities as special guests of honor, and this year the biggest names were Alastair Reynolds (the author of Revelation Space and several other hard scifi novels and short stories) and George R. R. Martin (the author of A Song of Ice and Fire and several other works, both scifi and fantasy). Finncon 2009 was held at the national capital of Helsinki, in the old Kaapelitehdas (Cable Factory) building.

I'm not your usual convention-person, and to be honest, I was quite a bit shocked by the huge masses of "anime-types", who have their own convention, the Animecon, held simultaneously with the Finncon. During my visit I spotted thousands of anime-personae, ranging from vampire hunter -types to the Pyramid Head and from superbly bizarre creatures to countless of magical girls (*shiver*).

During my tour I visited most of the separate sections of the convention area, witnessed interesting conversations about the nature of science fiction and literature, and met Alastair Reynolds in person. As I have stated numerous times, Mr. Reynolds's work - hard, cyber-gothic science fiction with undertones of Lovecraftian horror - is one of my biggest inspirations when I've been writing my own stories and drawing my artworks. Reynolds even gave me an autograph to my copy of Revelation Space (wow!).

After all, I didn't stay for too long, though. After buying some new books (one of which contains old Finnish scifi-stories from the 80's) and visiting all the areas I felt I had seen it all and left the convention. As I still had lots of time in my hands, I also visited several other famous landmarks of our Capital - including the former homes of Marshall C. G. E. Mannerheim and our longest-serving, most powerful President, U. K. Kekkonen.