Guests of Honor
Canadian science fiction author Peter Watts combines his expertise as a marine biologist with an gift of tightly packed storytelling that bursts with mind blowing ideas. Watts’ latest novel, Blindsight, was nominated for the Hugo award, and his shorter prose has been awarded with Hugo (2010, The Island) and the Shirley Jackson award (2012, The Things). Watts’ most famous works include The Rifters series and the Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes collection. Watts has publishd his novels and shorter prose in the Web with the Creative Commons license (http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm).
French-Vietnamese Hugo and Nebula nominee Aliette de Bodard is one of the most prominent new stars of science fiction for the past few years. Her works include the Obsidian and Blood fantasy series located in a fantastic version of the Aztec empire, novella On A Red Station Drifting , and a multitude of short prose published in for example Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Her novel The Shipmaker received the British Science Fiction award.
J. Pekka Mäkelä, a famed author and translator, is the grand old man of Finnish science fiction. Mäkelä’s works have included adventures with time travel (391) as well as Neanderthals returning from space (Nedut). Mäkelä is well known for his translations, which include Philip K. Dick’s novels, Miéville’s The City and the City, as well as his upcoming translation of Watts’ Blindsight. Mäkelä’s latest science fiction novel, Karsta (2009), discusses the aftermath of a galactic conflict.
Finfar
Finfar’s Guest Scholar PhD Stefan Ekman teaches fantasy at the University of Lund in Sweden. So far, Ekman has worked as a scholar, teacher, researcher, and the leader of IAFA’s (International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts) fantasy division.