Nine Seminars, Five Mini Seminars, Ten Signed Books and Four Days: The Göteborg Book Fair 2010, Pt 2

So, time for part two of my report from this year's Book Fair.

Saturday opened with my third and final Africa-themed seminar: "Maktens språk och språkets makt" (Eng. trans. The Language of Power and the Power of Language) featuring a discussion between Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Professor Raoul J. Granqvist of Umeå University. The conversation focused on the importance of not depriving humans of their native languages through colonial or neo-colonial school systems. Ngũgĩ also spoke both of oriture (i.e. orality's equivalent of literacy's literature), stressing the connectivity between 0ral and textual language, and what he called cyborality/cyboriture. The latter of which, to my understanding, refers to the oral language impulses that the internet currently feeds directly back into written language; in essence generating texts that end up functioning much more like spoken language than written, in that it often tends towards a greater immediacy.

They also discussed the vicious circle of African publishing, that is, that there are few authors writing in African languages (Chinua Achebe's books for instance are not available in his native tongue, Igbo), which in turn leads to there being few publishers who publish books in African languages; which in turn... I guess, you get the picture. In this context, the importance of translation – of transferring important texts between smaller languages so as to not be overly dependent on bigger languages (i.e. the languages of the colonisers) – is of the essence.

The rest of the Saturday (four mini seminars and one more regular seminar) was coloured by the fantastic. This started with the mini seminar "Kick-ass chick-litt-fantasy" (I somehow think translation is somewhat superfluous here), in which Karin Waller ("Cap'n" of Science Fiction Bokhandeln's store in Malmö) and Nene Ormes (author and "crew") introduced the aforementioned fantasy subgenre which comes out of a combination of elements from chic lit (e.g. Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary), urban fantasy (e.g. Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and Jim Butcher's Dresden Case Files series) and paranormal romance (e.g. Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga). This heroine based genre includes romance but never allows this to be its sole plot purpose or drive. Rather than stumbling over the mouthful of joint nomenclatures, Waller and Ormes offered the hopefully more catchy and snappy "fantzy". We will have to wait and see if the name catches on, but if you are a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the seminar suggested that this might be your kind of genre (with titles such as Jaqueline Carey's Santa Olivia and Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series).

This seminar was followed by two short solo flights by Johan Theorin and John Ajvide Lindqvist respectively: "Mord på Öland" (Eng. trans. Murder on Öland) and "Med absolut gehör för skräck" (Eng. trans. With Perfect Pitch for Horror). Both authors were a lot of fun to listen to. I had attended seminars with Ajvide Lindqvist before, but Theorin was new to me, and he really made me interested in reading his books about Öland.

After this brief interlude, it was time to see more of Ormes, this time in a mini seminar entitled "Fantasy på svenska" (Eng. trans. Fantasy in Swedish). Here Ormes was interviewed by her publisher Anna Henriksson from Styxx Fantasy. The full seminar is available on YouTube (albeit in Swedish) and is highly recommended viewing.





Finally, Saturday's seminars ended with "Det magiska norden" (Eng. trans. The Magical North), in which four Nordic authors discussed elements of the fantastic in their fiction together with moderator Janina Orlov. The authors in question were Lene Kaaberbøl (Denmark), Jo Nesbø (Norway), Andri Snær Magnason (Iceland) and John Ajvide Lindqvist (Sweden). Finland should have been represented by Maria Turtschaninoff, who for some reason or another was not able to attend the Fair (although, I did pick up her book Underfors about a secret fantastic city underneath Helsinki). The discussion was interesting even though some of the question were a bit hit and miss. That being said, the questions that really hit home went down very well indeed, and really made it a worthwhile seminar to have attended.

The evening ended with a lovely dinner with some friends from Bookcrossing, all gathering in these glorified days of bookishness.

On Sunday, I only visited two seminars: the added seminar with Jan Lööf and "Livet, universum och allting" (Eng. trans. Life, the Universe and Everything). After having had the pleasure of listening to Jan Lööf in discussion with his sometimes-partner-in-crime Carl Johan deGeer last year, I jumped at the occasion for something of a repeat performance. Granted that his discussion with Kartago's Rolf Classon did not quite match that of the preceding year, but it was nevertheless an amusing and insightful seminar, and I have certainly no regrets for having spent my time on it.

The second one featured a panel debate between science fiction writer Peter F. Hamilton, publisher, journalist and writer Johan Ehrenberg, astroparticle physicist and blogger Anna Davour, and Glenn Petersen from Science Fiction Bokhandeln's Göteborg store. The panel was moderated by Math Claesson from Science Fiction Bokhandeln's Stockholm store. The discussion touched on questions of technology (and its theoretical limits), human norms and what it is that constantly drives us to wonder what is out there among the stars. All in all, a very good seminar with a lot of highlights, and earlier in the morning, I had also had the chance to buy Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained (the first two novels in Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga) and get them signed by the author.

The afternoon was spent mingling about a bit on the floor, meeting up with friends (both old and new) and also getting my copy of Karin Tidbeck's debut collection of short fiction, Vem är Arvid Pekon? (Eng. trans. Who Is Arvid Pekon?), signed. This book is not only very good and an extremely charming read, I would also dare to say that it is a book that is necessary on the Swedish literary scene. Writing in a tradition of short fiction that sports such names as Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison, Tidbeck tells us stories which are unabashedly fantastic in nature, yet which adhere to no strict mainstream conventions of fantasy or science fiction (in particular as such definitions are understood on the Swedish literary market). I strongly doubt that this beautiful little book will match Nene Ormes' urban fantasy debut in terms of sales and audience (sadly), but it is a truism that short story collections sell worse as if by an unfortunate default setting, and the very fact which makes Tidbeck's contribution so necessary (even more so, perhaps, than Ormes' book, which I rate very highly) will most likely be part of the obstacles it (and she) will have to overcome. The fact that the book is out there, however, speaks well for the future of the fantastic in Swedish literature.


So, nine seminars, five mini seminars, ten signed books (and a few more bought) and four days of mingling, browsing, and having an awful lot of fun. I would not trade that away for the world.

A Brief History of Fantasy in Sweden and the Future of Swedish Fantasy

Fantasy, science fiction and horror have an interesting history in Sweden. They have clearly interested reading audiences throughout the years, and certain subgenres (mostly of the mainstream variety) of the genres have found their way over here in translation. But for the most part, there has been little to no home-grown writers within these fields making their mark within both the genres and the Swedish language (which is somewhat odd considering the huge mark left by Astrid Lindgren, not to mention a great tradition of folk tales and the like). Also, due to a certain amount of what could probably be described as understandable cowardice on the part of publishers, the genres seem to have been present mostly in their more generic or typical representations; we have had the Eddings, the Jordans, etc, yet little of (for instance) giant Michael Moorcock (despite some brave paperbacks from the role-playing game company Äventyrsspel back in the day). These two factors may, of course, be somewhat related.

Now, there have been those who have made it their business to improve conditions. The aforementioned Äventyrsspel and other role-playing game companies have made attempts at this, but writers like Andreas Roman and Niklas Krog (who should be mentioned in this context) have seemingly always existed in a paperback ghetto, away from regular publishing (and consequently, perhaps, have not had such a strong impact). Even the coming of Järnringen (who while still doubling within the field of role-playing games at least made an effort to publish hard cover books) in 2002 seemed to have little impact on the literary scene in Sweden.

Needless to say, expectations were high late in 2004 when it was announced that some of the people behind the successful book store Science Fiction Bokhandeln (which at the time had one store in Stockholm and one in Göteborg, and have since opened a third store in Malmö, thus covering Sweden's three largest cities) were starting a publishing house in the following year. The result was Förlaget Onsdag, which did publish a bunch of titles (none of which I have read admittedly, although an anthology sits on my shelves) before seemingly just fading away. Many (if not all) of these books showed a very poor understanding of the book as an artefact, sporting less than stellar covers and being littered with poor page layouts, etc, which really had me put down more than one of their books extremely fast (if I even picked it up in the first place).

Around the same time, however, the horror genre took a great leap forward as John Ajvide Lindqvist published his debut novel Låt den rätte komma in (Eng. Let the Right One In), which showed once and for all that it was A) possible to write horror in Swedish, and B) do it extremely well. While admittedly horror has always been the somewhat privileged of the three genres referred to here, I cannot help to think that that gigantic leap did open some eyes as to the possibilities of what else could be achieved in the realms of the fantastic.

The publisher Ersatz, with its focus on German, Eastern European and Russian literature (and a great sense of a book's value as an artefact), opened more doors in 2006 when they began publishing Russian author Nick Perumov's epic fantasy tale The Keeper of the Swords – a series of originally eight books in Russian, planned to be released as twelve books in Swedish (of which seven books have been published thus far). While I have not read Perumov (who incidentally is highly under-represented in English – I could only find Godsdoom: The Book of Hagen in English at Amazon (UK)), I have heard very good things about his epic saga, and also had the pleasure of listening to the man himself at last year's Göteborg Book Fair. Ersatz also decided to publish Dmitry Glukhovsky's (alt. spelling: Dmitrij Gluchovskij) Metro 2033 (also available in English) in 2009, and has as of this year started a fantasy imprint, Coltso, to which they have moved their publishing of both Glukhovsky and Perumov (also including the upcoming publication of the latter's somewhat controversial trilogy Ring of Darkness, which is a free and unauthorised follow up to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings), as well as having added Russian authors Max Frei (a pseudonym for Svetlana Yuryevna Martynchik) and Sergei Lukyanenko (alt. spelling Sergej Lukjanenko), as well as Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski to their roster. Needless to say, this enriches the Swedish fantasy scene (in particular by breaking the seeming stranglehold of Anglo-American influence on the genre in the market place), but it is also obvious that Coltso follows the basic parameters of its mother company and (as such) does not seem a likely candidate to bring forth any home-grown Swedish fantasy, science fiction or horror (the publication of Peter Bergting's The Portent notwithstanding).

Still, Ersatz was not the only Swedish publisher to start a fantasy imprint this year. Kabusa Böcker (another publisher with a great sense of a book's value as an artefact) had the same idea and thus gave birth to Styxx Fantasy, which started out with two titles in May: Danish author Lise Bidstrup's Spiralportens Vogter (Sw. title Spiralportens väktare; Eng. trans. Watcher of the Spiral Gate) and, perhaps most importantly, Swedish author Nene Ormes debut novel Udda verklighet (Eng. trans. Odd Reality, or perhaps, Udda's Reality, depending on how one decides to interpret the title). Ormes' book (which I have reviewed in Swedish) belongs to the genre of urban fantasy, set in Malmö and involves the entrance of the main character, the young woman Udda, into a fantastic reality which is somehow both in our own reality and just beside it (a world full of gifted people – shape-shifters and others). It is a strong book on oh so many levels; not the least of which is the fact that is a debut (more or less, at the very least) of an entire subgenre on the Swedish literary scene. And as such, it has also been a smash hit, staying in the number one spot on Science Fiction Bokhandeln's best-selling list for three months in a row (and quite possibly still counting). If this is the future of true Swedish fantasy, I foresee a very bright future indeed. And I truly hope this fine piece of work gets translated into English as well.

As for Styxx Fantasy, their next outing will be a long overdue Swedish translation of Richard Matheson's classic vampire novel I Am Legend (to be released in October this year with the Swedish title Legend). It might be worth noting that an older translation of this novel was published back in 1975, but that it was reputedly far from a satisfactory translation... to put it mildly.

For anyone interested, it is also worth noting that Kabusa Böcker and its imprint Styxx Fantasy will be present at the Göteborg Book Fair 23–26 September at exhibition stand B06:39 (early copies of Legend will be available to a special Book Fair price, according to their websites). Ormes will be there to sign her book on Saturday 14:00–14:30 and Sunday 12:00–12:30 (with additional opportunities at Science Fiction Bokhandeln's exhibition stand, A02:42, Saturday 15:00–15:30).

For those Book Fair visitors who happen to have a seminar card, I would also like to mention that Ormes will be participating in two mini seminars on the Saturday. The first one, "Kick-ass chick-litt fantasy" (I don't think a translation is necessary), between 11:00–11:20, is organised by Science Fiction Bokhandeln, and here she and Karin Waller (manager of the Malmö store) will be talking about kick-ass chic lit fantasy (as if there was any doubt about that). The second one, between 13:00–13:20, is organised by Styxx Fantasy and will feature a discussion between Ormes and her publisher, Anna Henriksson, on the topic of writing fantasy in Swedish. Both of these seminars will take place in room J2 at the Book Fair.

Maybe I will bump into some of you there. Who knows, eh?