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Jeff and Ann VanderMeer have conducted a wonderful survey of the Finnish genre scene, with an emphasis, naturally, on weird fiction.

Lovely to see my good friends Tero and Jukka in there, coordinating the Finnish advance with aplomb. I’m much looking forward to meeting them again soon.

Here, then, is a brace of links compiled by the ever-intrepid Team VanderMeer, including Ann V’s fascinating account of “The Watcher and the Weird” in www.weirdtalesmagazine.com.

Weird Tales Blog:
The Watcher and the Weird (by Ann)

Amazon features:
Finnish SF/Fantasy: Johanna Sinisalo, Hannu Rajaniemi, and Moomins
Finnish SF/Fantasy: An Established Community, A Surge of Talent

SF Signal Interviews with:
Johanna Sinisalo, author of Birdbrain
Magazine editor Toni Jerrman

Ecstatic Days Interviews with:
Partial Recall Blogger Tero Ykspetäjä
Writer Viivi Hyvönen
Writer Anne Leinonen
Writer Saara Henriksson
Sari Peltoniemi

Ecstatic Days Finnish Features:
Travels in Finland
T-Day: Travels (continued)
Unexpected Development: Tallahassee Tentacles
Back from Finland: More Photos
More on the Tallahassee Tentacles
Ann VanderMeer Reads from Michael Cisco—in Finland!
Ann VanderMeer: A Photo Trip Through Finland (and Amsterdam)

Avanti!

Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

It is perhaps not often said about VanderMeer how effective he is at creating an atmosphere of menace in his fiction – that, in spite of the potent sense of humour and skilful deployment of whimsy that permeates his work, he can tend towards the stimulus of darkness with as much aplomb as the weirdness for which he is sometimes more renowned.*

It is the most immediately striking feature of Finch how easily the aura of Noir, with all its powerful tropes and stylistic nuances, lends itself to the Ambergris coterie (and vice versa). The result is to produce a work of fiction that not only rivals its predecessors but adds to them with fresh approaches which solidify further the importance and uniqueness of Ambergris in the canon as a whole. These integrated stories cannot now be regarded as anything less than classics of modern fantasy which have broken new ground while retaining, always, their priceless value as hugely entertaining works.

There is an extent to which, in Finch, the world of Ambergris has been turned on its head and, at last, we are afforded an intimate contact with the gray caps who, for all their repulsive alien qualities, are expressive of something greater, more fundamental, to the world than their human counterparts. It is a fascinating juxtaposition of indigenous species, where the division is less sectarian than one of existential separateness which cannot be bridged by anything other than mutual disgust.

The former anarchy of Ambergris has given way to the seedy brutality of gray cap control and an administration of order which belies an internal condition of disorder and violence. As such, it is perhaps the most startling feature of Finch that, while our sympathies are drawn to the human underdogs, we are also aware of the legitimacy of gray cap primacy; and, for this reason, the macro-political complexities of Ambergris are taken to extremes we have only seen or glimpsed in the documentary accounts and histories used to great effect in the former stories. Finch approaches the same themes through the more direct and visceral narrative route of Noir, which provides a perfect vehicle for conveying the phantasmagoric subtleties of human/gray cap interaction.

At the same time, there is a measure of conflict and quandary in Finch that carries a powerful sense of realism throughout its fantastical range of scenes and props. This contributes to what is possibly the novel’s greatest strength–the broadness of its appeal–which is more than enough to satisfy a full range of generic tastes, not least of which is a very powerful psychological drama.

As a writer, VanderMeer is a virtuoso who goes to extreme lengths to perfect his fiction and, in doing so, produces works that stand out in their field as examples of excellence that rarely, if at all, lessen in intensity from one story to another. Finch is the culmination of such efforts towards an immaculate blending of its techniques, the result of which is a novel which is eerie, exciting, hard-hitting and, on more than one occasion, delightfully vile.

*See, for example, the extremely chilling “Predecessor”, a personal favourite of mine, which also features in Jeff VanderMeer’s short story collection, The Third Bear.

In honor of that achievement, EV is offering a sales special for the next 50 customers.

Offer includes unmissable items:

EV #15/16

The Sense of Falling by Ezra Pines

An Alternate History of the 21st Century by William Shunn

Psychological Methods to Sell Must Be Destroyed: Stories by Robert Freeman Wexler

Life’s Simple Pleasures by John Klima

Make it yours.

Back issues of EV are also available.

Novelettes:
Corey Brown – Child of Scorn
Claude Lalumière – Destroyer of Worlds
Darren Speegle – Strains of the Lost Oktober

Short Stories:
Olivia V. Ambrogio – Trades
Jayme Lynn Blaschke – A Plague of Banjos
Terry Bramlett – Sallie’s Price
Sheila Crosby – Unreal Estate
Aliette De Bodard – The Dragon’s Tears
Catherine Dybiec Holm – Detours
Robert J. Howe – Season of the Long Now
Alex Dally MacFarlane – Two Coins
Michael Neal Morris – Partita for continuo
Michelle Muenzler – She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
Timothy Mulcahy – The Tree Reader
Patrick O’Leary – The Oldest Man on Earth
Erin Pringle – The Floating Order
Alistair Rennie – A Doom of My Own
Patricia Russo – Sitting Round the Stewpot
William Shunn – Timesink
Leslie Claire Walker – The Devil Wears Combat Boots
Jonathan Wood – Notes on the Dissection of an Imaginary Beetle

Poetry:
Catherine Edmunds – Installation
David C. Kopaska-Merkel – Cher Amazon
Shira Lipkin – Wool and Silk and Wood
Rachel V. Olivier – Homemade Rosewater
Rachel V. Olivier – The Story
Terrie Lee Relf – on realizing death is a man
J.C. Runolfson – Now You See her
Rena Sherwood – The Electric Viola Player Wore Black
Rachel Swirsky – Remembering the World

Nonfiction:
Penelope O’Shea – Sampling the Aspic
Lucius Shepard – Blindfold Taste Test

Romanian version

English version

FEATURES:
- The weird animation of Bill Plympton
- Viktor Koen’s biomechanical visions
- Exclusive excerpt: The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia

INTERNATIONAL FICTION SPOTLIGHT:
- “First Photograph” by Zoran Zivkovic
- “The Gong” by Sara Genge
- “The Dream of the Blue Man” by Nir Yaniv
- “The Wordeaters” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
- “Out of Sacred Water” by Juraj Cervenak
- “Time and the Orpheus” by Chiles Samaniego
- “BleakWarrior Meets the Sons of Brawl” by Alistair Rennie

POETRY:
- “The Monster With the Shape of Me” by Brian J. Hatcher

NONFICTION:
- The Library: Elizabeth Genco talks with author Lauren Groff about writing The Monsters of Templeton
- The Bazaar: Jessica Joslin’s crazy steampunk critters
- Weirdism: Robert Isenberg on the cinema’s latest obsession with apocalyptic futures
- Lost in Lovecraft: Kenneth Hite dives literarily into the Pacific Ocean and pulls up H.P. Lovecraft
- Harvey Pelican & Co.: special offers from the esoterica king

ARTWORK:
- Cover art: “Skelephron” by Viktor Koen
- Illustrations by Steven Archer, Hellstern, Ira Marcks and more