The cover for the 2nd issue of Adventure Stories

The second issue of Adventure Stories/Seikkailukertomuksia that I edit and publish will feature a novella-length story "Devil Wings Over France" by James Reasoner. I just received the cover illustration for the story - it's by Jukka Murtosaari who's done other great illos for my fanzines and mags. The story is great, too - pitch-perfect World War I aviation adventure with just a pepper of horror. (It was originally published in an anthology called Retro Pulp that came out last year. It was edited by none other than Joe Lansdale.)

(Check out the contents of the first issue of Seikkailukertomuksia here. The first issue's cover here.)

An excerpt of Harry Etelä's short story

I've been editing and typing a collection of Harry Etelä's pulp horror stories from the late thirties and late fourties, as I've mentioned some times before. I've got only one to go (I've been typing these for the last two or three months, a page or two before actual work) and it's one of the feircest stories ever published in Finnish language. It's a story about a village blacksmith who kidnaps young boys and grills them over fire and eats them! This was in 1939, in Finland, where decorum, a sense of decency, was pretty much ruling. Bad taste was something so despicable you can't even begin to describe it. (And bear in mind that Etelä also wrote some of the most revered and loved schlager tunes in Finland, such as Katri Helena's "Puhelinlangat laulaa" (which was first recorded by his big brother, Pentti Viherluoto).)

Here's an excerpt of the story "Kauhujen salakammio/The Secret Chamber of Horrors" that I've been thinking about would be the titular story of the collection. I'll translate the relevant bits after the Finnish part:

Ennen kuin poika käsittikään oli häneen tartuttu kourin, joitten hirmuinen voima oli rusentaa murskaksi hänen jäsenensä, ja hän tunsi sinkoutuvansa kammion toiseen päähän. Pudottuaan lattialle hän jäi makaamaan siihen liikkumattomana ja katseli salavihkaa käsivartensa yli, kuinka seppä hiipi lähemmäksi. Kun hän oli tullut yli keskilattian, poika nousi nopeasti ja juoksi kaartaen ovelle, jonka raskasta salpaa hän yritti kohottaa...
Mutta samassa seppä oli jo hänen kimpussaan paljastettuine puukkoineen.
- Älä rimpuile, tai pistän sinut heti! hän huusi, ja teräs välähti liekkien punertavassa loimossa. - Minun on nähtävästi sidottava sinut, kirottu penikka, kunnes kaikki on valmista.
Nurkassa oli köyttä, eikä kestänyt kauan kun seppä oli sitonut pojan kovakouraisesti.
Taas kuului heikko napsaus jostain.
Tuomela kuunteli tarkasti ja katsoi ympärilleen. Se oli jo neljäs napsaus lyhyessä ajassa. Mikä ne aiheutti? Hän katsoi kattoon ja nurkkiin, mutta unohti sitten koko asian ja meni lisäämään halkoja rovioon.
- Täytyy olla hyvä tuli, tappelukukko, hän sanoi. - On niin hauska nähdä, kun käperryt ja muutut suloisen ruskeaksi. Parhaat paikat syön sinusta tänään, loput vien jääkellariini. Tiedätkö, että kämmenpohjista nautin kaikkein eniten?
Poika kuuli ketjujen ja rautojen kalinaa. Nyt hän ymmärsi renkaitten tarkoituksen.. hänet ripustettaisiin tuleen...

- You gotta have a good fire, young hero, he [the blacksmith] said. - It is so nice to see, when you crumble in and get so sweet and brown. I'll eat the best parts of you today, the rest I will take down to the cellar. You know that I like the palms most?
The boy heard the chains and iron bars rattle. Now he understood the meaning of the rings... he would be hung over the fire...

Good Midsummer's Eve!

I haven't been blogging much lately - you guess the reason: I've been busy. I'll get back to normal schedule at least for the next week, then we'll take a vacation for a month. (We just have to - Kauto's daycare is closed for July.)

Peter von Baghin törttöilyt

(This is about movie politics in Finland.)

Peter von Bagh sanoi Sodankylän filmijuhlilla Ylen kulttuuriuutisten mukaan, että Rovaniemen yliopistolle ei kannata perustaa elokuvatutkimuksen professuuria. Baghin perustelu oli vastaansanomaton: aiemmat esimerkit akateemisesta elokuvatutkimuksesta Turussa ja Helsingissä eivät vakuuta häntä.

Perustelu on mahtava ja on vain sääli, että esimerkiksi Hesari ei kirjoittanut tästä mitään - tämänhän olisi tullut olla valtakunnan uutinen ja Kulttuuriuutisten sijasta se olisi pitänyt olla puoli yhdeksän uutisissa ykkösjuttuna.

Onneksi Baghin ja kumppanien harrastama impressionististen oivallusten heittely on tuottanut loistavia tuloksia jo kohta 40 vuotta ja yhä jatkuu.

Ihan tosissaan: miksi Kulttuuriuutiset uutisoi tämmöisen ankan? Varsinkin kun sanottiin, että Bagh on elokuvahistorian professori taideteollisessa - siitä syntyi mielikuva, että Baghilla on oikeasti jotain sanottavaa tähän asiaan ja että hän pystyy veto-oikeudella kumoamaan suunnitellut hankkeet (joista uutinen ei muuten kertonut mitään, kuka suunnittelee, minkälaisia näkökulmia tutkimuksessa on ja niin edelleen?).

Ja vielä tosissaan: Baghin teoksissa on hyviä oivalluksia, mutta vaikka niistä kuinka nauttisi, en ymmärrä, millä älyllisellä epärehellisyydellä oikein pystyy olemaan sitä mieltä, että hänen koulukuntansa lähestymistapa on ainoa oikea? (Varsinkaan Baghin viimeisimmän "suur"-teoksen, Tähtien kirjan, jälkeen. Elokuvan historiankaan käyttö hakuteoksena on vähän niin ja näin - esimerkiksi kohdat Aleksandr Dovzhenkosta, joita Bagh ei ole kummemmin kirjoittanut uudestaan 90-luvun uuteen laitokseen, ovat vähintäänkin outoja.)

Myönnän auliisti, että oman teokseni, Valkoisen hehkun, saama vastaanotto Baghin leirissä on yksi syy tähän kirjoitukseen.

My winner story up

The story with which I was one of the winners of the short story contest is now up at the Usvazine website. Check it out here. For the foreigners reading this, there's a special international issue in English here. (It seems that there might be some trouble loading the PDF's, but you never know what works for you.)

There are some things about my story that I should've thought about more, but here goes nevertheless.

Edit: now the PDF of the international issue is loadable. Sorry for the mess. Grab the stories, maybe you'll like some of them. Most of the stories are in the speculative fiction class, some are maybe new weird.

Edit: do you think it was classy to point out my pulp fanzines in the afterword to my own story? I'm getting confused about it myself.

Two books coming

Today was good today at work, even thought I didn't get that much actual work done. But we started working again on the 69 book (the one that's about classical erotica and pornography and smut and that I'm writing with two other writer friends of mine), and we also heard today from a publisher that they'll take our book on the cultural history of babies and baby related stuff. I'm doing the baby book with Elina and a writer friend of ours. The 69 book (there will be 69 articles about 69 books or something to that effect) will come out in the Fall '08, the baby book - about that I don't know. The publisher said he'd call next week.

From copulation to babies! Isn't that something?

Where do we get our opium?

A sample from a Finnish schoolbook from 1945 - a questionnaire for students. The highlightened question goes: "Where is opium obtained from?" (Or you can put it like in the subject header.) Other questions are quite, hmm, how should I say, normal and prestigious, like in "What does the word 'realistic' mean?"

The Adjusters

I checked further: The Adjusters series seems to be one of those men's adventure series that filled the paperback racks in the late sixties and early seventies. It was first written by Peter Winston (about whom I know nothing, and Abebooks seems no other books by him). The final entry in the series was written by Jack Laflin. The cover of the last book says: "The Adjusters: an organization unique in the annals of counter-espionage". It also seems that Peter Winston was the hero in the books - so why was Laflin's name used in the last novel (and why the two-year hiatus between the fourth and the five books?)?

Here's the list, from Abebooks:

Assignment to Bahrein, Award 1967
The ABC Affair, Award 1967
Doomsday Vendetta, Award 1968 ("Dispatched to solve a murder in Tangier, A-2 is trapped in an espionage network bent on destroying America's most strategic missile bases.")
The Glass Cipher, Award 1968 ("Agent A-2 on a brutal spy hunt that begins with the biggest sellout in international espionage.")
The Temple at Ilumquh, Award 1970 (written by Jack Laflin)

Jack Laflin?

I once mentioned Jack Laflin in a comment of an older post, but he came up again recently when Lurker at Populaari mentioned him and scanned the cover of his only novel in Finnish translation. Lurker didn't dare to read the book (which was originally called The Spy in White Gloves) and I wrote in a comment that it's a pretty bad novel, even considering that it was a spy paperback from a small publisher and from an author no one knows anything about.

Does anyone reading this know who Jack Laflin is? Any educated guesses? It sounds a bit like house name, but has anyone ever confirmed having written as by Laflin?

For what it's worth, here's the list of Laflin's novels:

The Flaw, Belmont 1964

The Reluctant Spy, Belmont 1966

A Silent Kind of War, Belmont 1965

The Spy in White Gloves, Belmont 1965

The Spy Who Didn't, Belmont 1966

The Spy Who Loved America, Belmont 1964

The Temple at Ilumquh, Award 1970 (seems to be the fifth part of a series called The Adjusters)

The Bees, Ace 1970 ("No one expected a miracle - but that was the only hope for a nation, a world, ravaged by a deadly swarm.")

Throw the Long Bomb, Whitman 1967 (a juvenile football book)

(There's also a Vantage hardback from 1992, called Serpent in Paradise, but I have no way of knowing if it's the same author or not.)

An interesting tidbit is that the cover of the Finnish edition of the Laflin book was drawn by Teuvo Koskinen who later on his career made on to create one of the success stories of Finnish children's literature: Miina and Manu, two cats who live in a fifties-like small town world.

Tapani Bagge's new book out

My friend Tapani Bagge has a new book out. It's a collection of criminous short stories, many of which have been previously published (and one of them also in English, at Thrilling Detective; see here). I'm very proud to be able to say that two of the stories, "Takakontti" and "Vain pikku viilto" came first out in Isku. Kasvot betonissa/Face in the Concrete has these stories (and there's also an afterword):

PIENI KERAVA-SARJA
Kasvot betonissa
Onni yksillä
Maanantai
Kevyt lomakupru

MATKALLA JONNEKIN
Vainajan veli
Ajopuu
John Lee Hooker on kuollut

PIENI HÄMEENLINNA-SARJA
Mahdoton tehtävä
Eka kerta
Vain pikku viilto
Takakontti

MATKALLA MENNEESSÄ
Musta maanantai
Etelän uni

Here's a fresh review by Kimmo Miettinen. In Finnish, understandably. If you want translations of the stories' names, don't hesitate to ask.

Jaws and Freud

Here's my Freudian take on Jaws - it's in English, take a look. I did this for a university course and I intended the thing to be taken lightly.

Tolkien's Túrin

I finished the Finnish translation of Tolkien's "new" book late last night. The Children of Húrin was quite gripping and the fleshing out of the short story that was originally published in Silmarillion was quite successful, minus some clumsy shifts ("Now the story goes back to Túrin"). If you like Tolkien, don't hesitate to grab this.

Reading the book reminded me of the fact that I've last read Silmarillion 20 years ago (appr.), even though I've read The Lord of the Rings six or seven times, and it could be the time to reread it. I should also tackle The Unfinished Tales, which I found boring during my intellectual days. I just don't know whether I'll have the time even during this Summer.

Tsekatkaa alempana

Sattuneesta syystä - enkä jaksanut siirtää sitä ylemmäksi - Jukka Halmeen arvio Viidennestä testamentista on pari postausta alempana.

Women's romance; Sydney J. Bounds

Finnish novelist and short story writer Kirsti Ellilä and another writer, who goes by the name of Tuima, have just started a blog that concentrates on commemmorating many forms of women's entertainment in books. There's already a lengthy memoir of Tuija Lehtinen who's been writing women's romances for at least two decades now. Check the blog here (it's in Finnish).

Veteran SF and western author Sydney J. Bounds's last interview here. Lots of interesting material about writing - Bounds started out in the paperback boom of the early fifties, the so-called "mushroom jungle" era - and publishing and other writers. As for Finnish interest in this, I'm sorry to say that I've never found anything of his translated in Finnish. Bounds died quite recently, say, six months ago. (Don't quote me on this, I'm going strictly by memory.)

Digital Contagions on sale

My friend Jussi Parikka's dissertation about the cultural history of computer viruses (or viri?) is out from Peter Lang and on sale here (and on Amazon, if you prefer that one).

Don't do it!

Quite nice, quite shocking French anti-AIDS posters (what other kind of AIDS posters could there possibly be?) here. (Thanks to Todd for the heads-up!)

Viidennen testamentin arvio

(A new review of The Fifth Testament.)

Tässä Jukka Halmeen arvio Viidennestä testamentista Tähtivaeltajaan - ilmestyessään sitä varmaankin lyhennellään.

Juri Nummelin (toim.): Viides testamentti
Turun seudun kirjoittajien jännitysnovelleja 1939-2007-. M-novellit 1. Turbator

Viides testamentti kuuluu sarjaan kirjoja, joiden lukemiseen ei käytetä liikaa aikaa, koska se on hyvä juuri niin. Se on nopealukuinen teos, jonka yksinkertainen tarkoitus on viihdyttää hetkellisesti, ilman sen suurempia mystisiä tarkoitusperiä. Tässä tehtävässä Viides testamentti onnistuukin hyvin.
Sisällysluettelosta käy ilmi, että kirja on koottu puoliksi vanhemmista arkistojen aarteista, toisen puolen ollessa tuoreempaa, julkaisematonta tavaraa. Kumpikin puoli pitää pulpin lippua kohtalaisen korkealla. Harry Etelän "Mustaa verta" on liki Poe-mainen jännityspala, joka yhdessä Markku Soikkelin kokoelman kokeellisen niminovellin ohella aika lailla ainoana edustaa selkeämmin spekulatiivista fiktiota. Soikkelin kertomuksessa kerronta lähtee omiin sfääreihin jo heti alkulauseestaan: "Sillan kaiteella istuva poika oli puettu pelkkään metaforaan". Kieli kantaa tarinaa loppuun saakka, vaan mikä itse asiassa onkaan loppu?
Tähtivaeltajan lukijoille tuttu Boris Hurtta suoriutuu omasta osuudestaan hyvinkin Wanha Herra -maisesti. "Ikonipuinen arkku" on perus-Hurttaa, remakka seikkailukertomus, jossa maisema vaihtuu ja informaatio vyöryy lukijalle sopivissa annospaloissa.
Viides testamentti on hieman epätasainen, mutta erittäin miellyttävä kokonaisuus jännitystä useammalta vuosikymmeneltä. Siinä missä Pirkko Arhippa tai Kirsti Ellilä luovat tarinaa hieman rauhallisemmilla, mutta erittäin intensiivisillä kertomuksilla, Aake Jermon ja Olavi Tuomolan klassikkotarinat etenevät kuin höyryjuna. Jälkimmäisen "Hantsungin kultainen buddha" on vanhakantaisuudessaan lähes hellyttävän naiivi, jos kohta myös kokoelman hauskin yksittäinen kertomus. Totti Karpelan "Perin inhimillinen tekijä" on hyvä osoitus kirjailijan iskevästä kerronnasta, jossa kaikki pulpin yksittäiset osat ovat kohdallaan. Samoilla linjoilla etenee Sami Myllymäen "Isku vyön alla", jossa perisuomalaisen kesäidyllin puitteet kohtaavat maaseudun vähemmän idyllisen realismin.
Novellien lisäksi kirjasta löytyy Juri Nummelinin mukavasti kirjailema esipuhe, jossa hän pienillä viitteillä ja yksityiskohdilla antaa lukijalle kiehtovan paljon pientä mielen makusteltavaa pidemmäksikin aikaa. Kustantajan loppupuhe käsittelee osittain samaa asiaa, esittäen myös muutaman vastauksen siihen, miksi uuden kirjasarjan nimi on m-novellit. Minusta vastaus on yksinkertaisesti, m niin kuin mukava.
Viides testamentti on anteeksipyytelemättömän häpeilemätön genre-uskollinen pläjäys pulpia, jonka soisi löytävän lukijakuntansa. Kioskipokkarien kulta-aika tuskin koskaan palaa takaisin, mutta pienimuotoisen kioskikirjallisuuden ystäville tämä kirja on mukava kesälomalahja. Pehmeät kannet ja kaikkea!

Jukka Halme

Same old same old

Been busy. Didn't want to blog during the weekend. Spent time with the kids. Been writing a short story. Finally getting around to getting some inspiration for it. Doing some magazine articles one of which requires lots of work. Working on a book. Been watching Twin Peaks reruns from the Finnish TV. (May write about this in a later date.)

Oh man

We went back to the cellar with Kauto and I took a closer look at the Dean Koontz book that I noticed was growing mildew on its back. It was Dragonfly and the copy I have is the first hardback edition. I notice from Abebooks that it's not very common. The cheapest copy goes for 17 dollars and that copy is jacketless and only in acceptable condition. The highest is 295 dollars! And my copy is growing mildew! Do you know those days you want to kill yourself..? Well, my copy is also jacketless and it was maybe only acceptable to begin with, but still... (I paid 50 cents for it, so the actual loss of money isn't great, but still...)

A Finnish review of Plunder of the Sun

Lurker at Populaari noted the quite negative review of Plunder of the Sun that's screening today on Finnish TV. The reviewer, Timo Peltonen, wrote that the plot behind the film is stupid, and he said it was the fault of the book that's basis for the film: David Dodge's hardback novel of the same name, from 1949.

Now, I've read several novels by David Dodge and can tell that they are of pretty high quality, of funny and wise-cracking hardboiled adventure variety. His novel To Catch a Thief (which peculiarly has never been translated in Finnish, despite being filmed by Hitchcock) is also outstanding, a very good adventure novel. And what's more interesting is that Plunder of the Sun came out rather recently as a paperback, by the deservedly famous Hard Case Crime, with a nice cover. At least Timo should've Googled for the book and found out about this pretty good review by Bill Crider - or this, also a very positive one. Here's also a nice site that David Dodge's daughter keeps.

Of course Timo is entitled to his opinion, but it seems there's a lack of cultural knowledge behind the negative review. Another reviewer, Tapani Maskula of the Turun Sanomat, gave the film three stars (out of five) - he knows the classical Hollywood cinema from A to Z and knew how to put the film into context.

PS. Oh my God! Christa Faust's Money Shot already has a cover. Check it out! Awesome!

Peter Cave

I've forgotten to write about Peter Cave, whose one novel I tried to read some months back - he'll be included in my forthcoming book Pulpografia Britannica (if I ever get it done and find a publisher for it - well, if not, I'll put it out myself, with a limited edition). The book, originally called The Crime Commandos and published by Everest as a paperback in 1976, is about a commando force that the British police puts up to really get the criminals published, no matter how.

The book is however slow and boring and it doesn't live up to its expectations about an ultraviolent action novel. I say "sadly", even though I'm very much against the vigilancy the book supports.

Cave isn't a very interesting author either: he started writing some short stories for the Tit-Bits fictionmag in the late sixties and then switched to paperbacks, writing some porn and novelizations, including books on the Avengers and Taggart TV series. He knew Christopher Priest in the sixties and Priest is said to have commented that the quality of Tit-Bits began to decline when Cave started writing for them.

The Finnish translation was published in 1980 by Vaasa in their Manhattan paperback series. The cover is presumably Spanish in origin.

Tarzan in a Finnish mag

Here's another example of a comic strip published in a Finnish fictionmag in the bygone days: the cover of Seikkailukertomuksia/Adventure Stories noting the beginning of the Tarzan strip in the mag. This is from 1957.

I get political

I rarely get political about anything these days, but now I just had to write about these things in the Daddy Blog. Check it out. It's in Finnish.

The list of Finnish translations of Robert Bloch

After trying very hard (well, not very hard) to do some actual work, I compiled a list of Finnish translations of Robert Bloch and dug up the original publishing info. You can see the results here. The notes are in Finnish. Here's another Bloch site, and here.

My fictional hero real?!?

I wrote almost two years back about the private eye heroes of my early literary experiments here. As you can see, I had a hero called Monty Suffern, who was an Australian private eye. Now an anonymous poster found out about this and wrote:

Monty Suffern is a real Australian. He and George Fury were a famous rally car team in the 1960s-70s based at Swinburne University of Technology (then Swinburne College of Technology). Monty's interest moved to aviation and he is now at Baylor University, Texas. See http://www.waco-tx-eaa.org/publish/archive/May07newsletter.pdf

Mysteries of life and fiction! I had no idea!

Misterix

Here's a scan of a page of an Italian comics superhero, Misterix. He says: "There's no fear of radium anymore. / Leave the girl alone!"

Here's some info on Misterix in English - it's not much, but all the other pages Google finds are in Italian which I don't speak very fluently, I must say. This seems a good place to start, though. The comic strip was published in Finland in the fifties in the Seikkailukertomuksia/Adventure Stories magazine that was one of the Ilmarinen publishing house's fictionmags focused on crime and adventure. They had lots of comic strips, this being some of the weirdest.

The cover for Ässä

I'm putting out a new fiction magazine (I must've mentioned this before), Ässä, that focuses on hard-hitting crime stories. The mag is soon out and here's for a taste the cover with an illo by Henri Joela who I've been using quite a lot lately for my small press publications. The story is for "Hundred", a story by J.D. Rhoades.

Crime novels worthy of reconsideration

The Rap Sheet had a wonderful idea: they asked several authors, critics and crime fiction bloggers what crime novel they thought had gone unnoticed or had been forgotten. You can see the results here; look also here: this blog archives all the posts about the subject.

I thought about posting to Rap Sheet's masterminds whether I could have my votes in, but didn't have time (and also suffered a stroke of low self-esteem), but here in Pulpetti I can do whatever I want and don't have to restrict only to one novel. I'll pick some up, mainly from memory and my 2000 book, Pulpografia, that introduces over 300 American pulp and paperback crime authors translated in Finnish. These are by some authors that are rarely, or maybe never, discussed on blogs and other venues highlighted by interest in noir and hardboiled.

W.T. Ballard: Murder Las Vegas Style (Belmont 1967): a misfortunate P.I. gets dragged in a triangle drama of deception and deceit

Jonathan Craig: So Young, So Wicked (Fawcett Gold Medal 1957): a mob hitman is hired to kill a 15-year old nymphette who lures the man into a web of deception

Ben Benson: Broken Shield (Mill 1955): quiet and wise police procedural about a young cop whose partner is killed

Tedd Thomey: Killer in White (Fawcett Gold Medal 1956): comes close to Jim Thompson in its depiction of evil dressed as a doctor

Al Conroy: Devil in Dungarees (Fawcett Crest 1960): ultrahardboiled book about a big caper gone hugely wrong

Stephen Ransome: I'll Die For You (Doubleday 1959): an old pulpster, Frederick C. Davis, being in top of his form in the late fifties' hardback mystery novel under a pseudonym

Floyd Mahannah: The Golden Goose (Duell 1951): almost a deconstruction of a P.I. novel, very unorthodox crime novel about a bad P.I. whose's assigned for his last job; almost as good as this is Mahannah's other novel, The Golden Widow (1956)

Walt Sheldon: Gold Bait (Gold Medal 1973): only crime paperback I know that's been written in the form of letters and diary entries (if there's another one, please let me know!), beside that it's also a fast-paced adventure novel about trying to find a gold treasure

Richard Deming: Hit and Run (Pocket 1960): a sleazy, half-criminal P.I. is hired by a woman to kill her husband; they keep the body in ice in the bedroom - wanna guess where they get their ice for the drinks?

Zekial Marko (John Trinian): Scratch a Thief (Gold Medal 1961): a melancholy take on a prisoner just released from prison

Bruno Fischer: Run For Your Life (Gold Medal 1953): a chase novel about a man who's being framed for a killing, a surprisingly political novel about the McCarthy era

Charles Alverson: Fighting Back (Bobbs-Merrill 1973): a quiet mob novel about a restaurant owner who won't back down in front of Mafia

John Jakes (as William Ard): Give Me This Woman (Monarch 1962): very hardboiled and violent book about a sleazy P.I. who's on the hunt for a psychopath journalist (who's on his honeymoon with a dead woman in the trunk of his car!) and who's being hunted by a knife-wielding psycho killer

I think any of these could merit being reprinted by someone like Hard Case Crime or Stark House Press or any other small press that does noir and hardboiled reprints.

There's also the case of being Finnish and in Finland there's not much market for hardboiled crime fiction (even though Chandler and Hammett have been quite popular here and guys like Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane are being published to critical acclaim and to rather wide readerships). So there are several - dozens and dozens - authors who haven't had their due in Finland: Donald Westlake whose early hardboiled thrillers have been published only in obscure paperbacks and some not at all, Lawrence Block, Robert J. Randisi, etc. (I've been writing about this earlier here and here.)

Going away

We're leaving town pretty soon and head off towards Hämeenlinna where Elina's parents live. I realize I haven't been blogging as much as I would like to have, but these things happen. Maybe later. I still haven't said anything about Ben Benson, but am really going to do that. Maybe something about some pulp magazine stories I've been reading in intervals. And David Thomson's The Whole Equation, which is an essayistic take on the history of Hollywood. If you enjoy my writing (in Finnish), do check out my other blogs: Min Dikt is full of poetry and Jurin Tekstit is ripe with corrected entries from Pulpografia. Check also Julkaisemattomia.

Road to ruin

Kauto demanded earlier today that we go down to the cellar. I don't know where he got the idea (or actually I do, but it's quite a long story - he's two years old, after all), but I did have some stuff to take down there and I agreed. I noticed right away that there was something wrong: a stack of boxes, full of magazines and books, was collapsed. There were some boxes with the Ruudinsavu/Gunsmoke magazines on bottom and I noticed that the boxes felt wet. I opened them and noticed that some of the mags were also damp. They also smelt mildewy. I touched the concrete floor underneath the boxes - it was damp. I don't know why, but as you know, it's no good for books. I'll have to call the maintenance tomorrow.

And they weren't the only boxes that felt and smelt mildewy. Kauto got a bit restless after a while and I took him upstairs and after he'd gone to bed I went back downstairs and tried to save my precious paperbacks. Some of the books were ruined and there were some books I'll have buy again, such as the early seventies translation of W.T. Ballard's Murder Las Vegas Style, which is one of my favourites. I left some books to dry, but some I just had to throw away. I also threw away some 20 or 30 copies of several issues of Ruudinsavu/Gunsmoke.

I'll have to go back in a couple of days to check out the real damage. I noticed that many of my Richard Prathers were also damp, and the hardback copy of K.W. Dwyer's (= Dean Koontz) early thriller (the title escapes me at the moment) was actually ripe with mildew. I couldn't throw it away, I just couldn't.

Now, you ask, why are these books in the cellar, if they are so precious to me? Umm... I really don't know. There's no room for them up in the apartment, which is really no excuse. I guess I just thought that the cellar would be as a good place as any, since it's at least warm. Maybe the books should be in metal boxes or some such.

I tried to put the boxes back so that none would touch the concrete floor (and I threw away the mattresses that had been under the boxes), but we'll see whether the mildew keeps growing and destroying my precious paperbacks.

Ben Benson: later, later. I'm going to a business meeting tomorrow and after that I'll be busy.

New book out

The postman brought today my newest publication: it's the thriller reference work I edited; I've mentioned it here couple times before. The book has been divided in two parts: the American authors and the European authors. I'm not entirely satisfied about the publisher's solution in this, but I just want everyone to be sure that it wasn't my idea.

The thing that really bugs me about this is that I completely forgot - Heaven knows why - that Len Deighton should be in. Also Jack Higgins was left out, but that was due to technical reasons (although I'm the one to blame). There's hope, though, that there will be a sequel as more and more interesting and newer authors are being translated (and some other, less noteworthy veterans and classics were left out from this). Check more here and here.

I tried to blog yesterday about crime writer Ben Benson, but the text vanished and I didn't feel like writing it again. I'll try again one of these days.

A new book in the M series

The same publisher, Pelipeitto, that put out The Fifth Testament I edited, is starting a new line of short story collections and another one is already coming out - it's M.G. Soikkeli's science fiction stories. I had no hand in this, so here's only announcement from the publisher (in Finnish, understandably):

Suomalaisen science fictionin
merkkitapaus Turussa 21.5.07
M.G.Soikkeli ja MARSIN IKÄVÄ

Fil. tri, kirjallisuudentutkija, viime vuonna Turun Yliopiston kotimaisen kirjallisuuden v.a. professorina toiminut, kuluvana vuonna apurahalla omaan kirjoittamiseensa ja kritiikkiin Tampereella keskittyvä Markku Soikkeli on suomalaisessa tieteiskirjallisuudessa eräs tunnetuimmista ja palkituimmista fanzine-novellisteista. Nimellä M. G. Soikkeli alan lehdissä v:sta 1991 alkaen tieteisnovelleja julkaissut kirjailija on mm. voittanut suomalaisen scifin arvostetuimman kisan, Portti-novellikilpailun, jo useita kertoja, ja sijoittunut kaikissa alan kilpailuissa (joihin on osallistunut) aina kärkijoukkoon. Novellien lisäksi Soikkeli on julkaissut runsaasti alan artikkeleita ja kolumneja suomalaisissa scifilehdissä, ja alan kirjallisuuden kritiikkejä muuallakin, mm. Turun Sanomien kulttuurisivuilla. Soikkeli on tehnyt jo mittavan yliopistouran Turun, Helsingin ja Tampereen yliopistoissa, kirjallisuuden tutkijana ja opettajana.
Soikkeli poikkeaa monista suomalaisista alan kirjoittajista. Hän keskittyy aitoon science fictioniin, ja tuo sciencen, tieteen, monitasoisesti novelleihinsa mukaan: sekä kirjallisuudentutkijana, ruotiessaan genren eri suuntausten mahdollisuuksia novelliensa sisällä, että monialaisena yhteiskuntatieteilijänä, tutkiessaan yhteiskuntien kehityslinjoja ja –potentiaaleja novelleissaan, jotka asettavat sekä historian että muiden tieteiden vallitsevat totuudet kyseenalaiseksi. Soikkelin tarinat ovat todellista, aitoa tieteisfiktiota, joskaan hän ei väheksy fantasiankaan elementtejä. Niitäkin hän käsittelee tiedemiehenä ja tutkijana – ja taitavana tarinoitsijana, erinomaisena kielen käyttäjänä.

Soikkeli on vahva tieteiskirjailija, joka luo tarinoissaan paitsi tiede- ja tieteisfiktiota myös huikeita kohtaloita, jännittäviä seikkailuja ja syvällisiä kurkotuksia outoihin tulevaisuuksiin. Soikkeli on Suomessa harvinainen science fiction-kirjailija: hyvin kurinalainen ja lajin traditioita kunnioittava, samalla kuitenkin rönsyäviä ja laaja-alaisia, lajia uudistavia tarinoita luova kokeileva kirjailija, kirjailija joka ei pelkää aiheittensa arkojakaan elementtejä. Politiikkaa, uskoa ja uskontoja, seksuaalisuuden monimuotoisuutta ja muita aiheita tutkiessaan Soikkeli luo tarinoihinsa jännitteitä joita harvoin suomalaisessa scifissä tapaa. Soikkelin novelleissa yhdistyvät science fictionin elementit nautittavasti laaja-alaiseen filosofiseen näkemykseen, ja samaistumispintaa Soikkeli rakentaa joukkojen, ryhmien, kansojen tai ihmiskunnan mittakaavaan, soveltamalla yksilökuvauksessa lähes brechtiläistä etäännyttämisefektimenetelmää.

Soikkelin novellien esikoiskokoelma, turkulaisen turbator-kustantamon m-sarjan järjestyksessä toinen teos: MARSIN IKÄVÄ ja muita kertomuksia, julkistetaan lehdistötilaisuudessa ravintola Puutorin Vessassa Turussa maanantaina 21.5. klo 11.00 alkaen. Tilaisuudessa ovat paikalla kirjailija itse ja kustantaja Harri Kumpulainen, joka scifimaailmassa tunnetaan alalle 40 vuotta novelleja kirjoittaneena Harri Erkkinä. Kirjan uunituoreet lehdistö- ja arvostelukappaleet ovat tilaisuudessa tarjolla. Tervetuloa suomalaisen scifin merkkitapaukseen!

The Turku castle

I forgot to mention that the castle in the cover of The Fifth Testament is the medieval Turku Castle. It's really the place for which everyone knows Turku and it's a cliche, but it works here.

My flash fiction magazine coming out soon

I'll be publishing a small flash fiction magazine, called Ässä/Ace, soon. You can see the contents here (in Finnish, but check it out anyway, you might spot some familiar names in there). There's also an old cover for a Finnish pulpish mag from the late fourties, Ässä. The illustration is by Alexander Lindeberg, who's still active in the age of 90.

Finally the cover of The Fifth Testament

Here's finally the cover of The Fifth Testament, the book of suspense stories by writers of the Turku region that I edited and that was published a month ago. I've mentioned it a couple of times back earlier. The cover is by Jukka Murtosaari, who's an enthusiast of classic pulp and paperback illustrations, which clearly shows. Here is a cover he made for Gryphon Books (in b&w only, sorry) and here and here are some others he's made for my small press publications.

By the way

I got 35 yesterday.

Eurovision song contest

Someone might wonder why I haven't been saying anything about the Eurovision song contest that's being held this week in Helsinki, Finland. Well, the main reason is that I just don't care. Couldn't actually care less. Didn't care a bit when Finland and Lordi won, don't care know even if Finland scores one points at this time. So, no Eurovision comments from yours truly.

I'm more content with other kinds of music (really, all that stuff is quite bad!) and I've been listening to Finnish electronic folk band, Paavoharju, instead. Very beautiful and haunting.

A review of Viides testamentti/The Fifth Testament

I haven't been promoting Viides testamentti/The Fifth Testament, the anthology of crime stories by Turku-based writers that I edited, hard enough and I don't have a scan of the cover even now at hand, but here is - in Finnish, alas - a review that Johanna Matero kindly wrote for the Ruumiin kulttuuri/Body Culture magazine of the Finnish Whodunnit Society. This is the original version - she had to cut chunks away for the publication.

M niin kuin missio
Juri Nummelin (toim.): Viides testamentti. Turun seudun kirjoittajienjännitysnovelleja 1939-2007M-novellit 1. Turbator 2007. 199 s.

Minun sukupolvellani on jaettu kollektiivinen kokemus löytöretkistäviihdelukemistoihin. Kesälomat olivat pitkiä. Kesämökkien kirjahyllyistä jaisovanhempien ullakoilta löytyi aarteita lukutaitoiselle alakoululaiselle.Rikosnovellit ovat eläneet uutta kukoistustaan 2000-luvulla. Kukoistus näkyymm. Gummeruksen Intohimosta rikokseen -sarjassa ja Kouvolan Dekkaripäivienyhteyteen järjestetystä dekkarinovellikilpailusta, joka on niin ikäänpoikinut omat kokoelmansa.

Harri Kumpulainen kutsuu kustantajan ominaisuudessa keksimään m-merkityksiäuudelle m-novellien sarjalle. Tehtävä on helppo: M niin kuin missio.Turbatorin tarkoituksena on säilyttää, pitää yllä ja tuottaa uudelleenviihdelukemistoa sen kaikissa, moninaisissa merkityksissä. Kustantajakorostaa viihdelukemistojen kulttuurihistoriallista merkitystä ja viihteenturhaa aliarvostamista saatesanoissaan.

Viides testamentti alkaa tuotteliaan turkulaisen pulp-asiantuntijan, teoksentoimittaja Juri Nummelinin johdannolla. Nummelinin käsittelyssä kokoelmaalöyhästi yhdistävästä turkulaisuudesta tulee (kulttuuri-)historiallinenpulpin kehto. Pulpin ja dekkarin harrastajien kuuluu hankkia teos hyllyynsäjo pelkästään johdannossa esitellyn trivian vuoksi.

Kokoelman kymmenestä dekkarinovellista puolet on arkistojen aarteita, puolet kokoelmaa varten kirjoitettuja uutuuksia. Arkistojen löydöt, Pirkko Arhippa,Harry Etelä, Totti Karpela, Olavi Tuomola ja Aake Jermo, pitävät kutinsa ennen julkaisemattomia vasten. Harry Etelän "Mustaa verta" näyttäytyy lähes kunnianosoituksena lajin goottiselle Poe-perinteelle. Arhipan 1980-luvuntuotos "Välikäsi" puolestaan on esimerkki käänteistä, joita rikosnovellilla on. Ja Karpelan teksti osoittaa, että joskus ratkaisu on niin absurdi - tainiin ilmeinen - ettei siihen voi reagoida kuin nauramalla.

On äärimmäinen klisee todeta, että rikosnovelli on haasteellinen laji. Silti, miten rakentaa arvoitus ja imu lyhyeen tekstiin? Miten motivoida muutamalla viivalla hahmotellun henkilön toiminta? Uskottavasti. Ja mikä merkitys miljööllä ja ajalla on?Kokoelman kirjoittajien tekstien kohdalla Turku on harvoin toiminnan keskipiste. Poikkeuksen tekevät Harri Erkin, kustantajan, "Tunneli" ja Kirsti Ellilän "Pyhän kosketus". Erkin tekstissä miljöö nousee keskeiseksi, kun taas Ellilän kaikin tavoin ansiokkaassa tekstissä nimetty miljöö ei ole välttämätön.

Rikosnovelleissa miljöö on helpompi tuottaa henkilöitä uskottavammaksi yksinkertaisesti nimeämällä se. "Huuhka" kertoo vähemmän kuin "Raisio","Ispoinen" tai "Bessarabia". Silloinkin, kun ne eivät kerro juuri mitään.

Markku Soikkelin "Viides testamentti" on kokoelman kokeellisin novelli. Sekin on omalla tavallaan kiehtova ja mielenkiintoinen, joskin sitä olisi voinut alkupuolelta hieman helpottaa lukijalle. Soikkelin teksti esittelee spefi-dekkarin scifi-dekkarin uudemmaksi vastineeksi. Lajissa ei genren sisällä sinänsä ole mitään uutta. Spefi vain laajentaa scifin spekulatiiviseksi fiktioksi. Ja dekkariksi. Ehkä.

Rikosromaanit ovat jo pitkään olleet höystettyjä huumorilla ja ironialla. Olavi Tuomolan "Hantsungin kultainen buddha" on kokoelman ainoita lukijaa naurattavia tarinoita. Huumori ei ole välttämätöntä, mutta sen olemassaolo kiinnittää huomiota sen poissaoloon. Lyhyt muoto ei anna tilaa irvailla.

Lukijalle rikosnovellikokoelmien haaste on niiden tyylillinen moninaisuus. Perinteiseen arvoitusdekkariin profiloitunut lukija ei ehkä löydä etsimäänsä kuin yhdestä novellista kokoelmassa, jossa ovat edustettuna kaikki genrenalalajit. Tämä selittänee rikosnovellikokoelman pienehkön ostajakunnan.

Viides testamentti -kokoelmasta puuttuu muutamia ilmeisiä turkulaisia kirjoittajia. Reijo Mäeltä ilmestyi juuri oma novellikokoelma. Samalla eräät perikunnat olivat liian riitaisia päästääkseen edesmenneen kirjailijan tekstiä sopuisasti käsistään.

Viidennen testamentin hinta-laatusuhde ei ole kohdallaan. Pehmeäkantiseksi pulpiksi tarkoitetun, J. Murtosaaren hienon monivärikannen omaavan teoksen hinta on "kioskikirjallisuudeksi" liian kova. Toisin sanoen painosmäärä on liian pieni.

Toivon, että tulevilla sukupolvilla olisi tilaisuus tehdä oman sukupolvenikaltaisia löytöjä kesämökeillä ja ullakoilla. Lehtien lukumäärä on liiansuuri ja lehtien käyttöarvo liian pieni. Niitä ei säilytetä. 2000-luvulla julkaistut dekkarinovellikokoelmat ovat säilyttämisen arvoisia. Menneen, nykyisen ja "tulevan" ajan pieninä katsauksina peleihin, blogeihin ja irkkaamiseen kyllästyneille tulevaisuuden teineille. Niille, joiden verkotovat kaatuneet. Ja niille, jotka ovat vaihtaneet kannettavansa lyijykyniin.
Johanna Matero

Life like a Richard Scarry book

Busy busy busy... Every blog post, every blog checked feels like a waste of time. Will be getting back at some point.

Good news etc.

I just heard that a project that seemed doomed for a while has been resurrected: I'll be writing in collaboration with two writer friends of mine a reference book on erotica and pornographical classics, with a very wide range starting from Sappho and ending up in the late seventies wanky paperbacks and the new millennium literary S&M. The book should come out next year.

I've also made arrangements for the sequel of my book that came out earlier this year, about forgotten Finnish authors. That one was about poets, this one will focus on novelists and short story writers. I tried on get some pulpsters in, but the publisher declined.

It's been hectic around here, as I've been trying to get new issues of Ruudinsavu/Gunsmoke, Pulp and Isku/Punch ready and out. I've also another new fictionmag coming, this time focusing on flash fiction. It's called Ässä (= Ace), and I've got some great stories by new talents, such as David Terrenoire and Christa Faust for this, and also some Finnish stories, but I'm lacking in original homegrown stuff. The genre must be weird to Finnish writers, even though there's been lots of science fiction flash fiction, drabbles, as they are called in SF fandom.

But must get back to work now. I'm doing an article on novelizations and slowly getting back to rewrite the YA novel I wrote with Elina.

Oh man

Didn't really know anyone could be so busy. Don't have time for blogging at the moment. And Kauto forced his way between us in the night, and I'm stiff all over. I slept the last three hours on a mattress on the floor.

On Sampo, one more

I forgot to mention the startling fact that Sampo is still the only feature film made in Finland that is based on Kalevala! I understood that a new film is on the works, but know nothing about it. There's of course The Iron Age, directed by Kalle Holmberg from a script by Paavo Haavikko, but it was a TV mini series.

Russian fantastic cinema

Todd kindly sent me this link in a comment: it's about a minifestival of Russian and Soviet fantastic films. Go see them if you get a chance.

Sampo

I've promised to write something about Sampo, the Soviet-Finnish film of the late fifties, based on Kalevala, but it seems I'm running out of time and should have to get on with my life, so I decided just to direct you to these two links. There's one thing I'd like to know about the American version: do they play Hammond organs in the end, during the final battle with Louhi? I mean, they attack with their kanteles - a traditional Finnish instrument, something between a guitar and a harp - and the soundtrack goes full blazing with muzaky Hammond sounds! No wonder Louhi turns to salt!

The Finnish scriptwriters behind the film (mainly Väinö Kaukonen who was a professor of Fenno-Ugrian languages) wanted to emphasize the folklore aspect of the story, while the Soviets wanted to do a fantasy film, which explains why there's so little resemblance to the actual stories of Kalevala. (There's no one attacking Louhi with kanteles in the epic! Lemminkäinen and Annikki don't get married (which must be the most boring scene in the film). Etc.)

I haven't seen the American version, called The Day the Earth Froze, but the original is always better. It seems that the original version isn't available in DVD, which is a pity.

Finnish electronica

If you're interested at all in either electronic music or Finnish rock scene, check out these post by my friend pHinn:

Regina has fastly become one of my favourite Finnish bands: very nice, beautiful, catchy, haunting, brittle electronic pop (with some acoustic elements). Here's their new video of their single "Paras aika vuodesta/The Best Time of the Year". They should be huge, but apparently the Finnish audience wants their stuff heavy and full of angst.

Minimal dub or whatever by Vladislav Delay here. More traditional electronic dance music by Mesak here. And some other stuff by him here. (Mesak, or Tatu Metsätähti, is actually related to pulp fiction, since his granduncle was Harry Etelä about whom I've been writing about and whose old stories I'm putting together for a collection!)

Reading reports: Pavia, Estleman, Wignall, Cerasini, Manchette

It pays to be sick: I was able to read quite many books during the time I was mainly laying on a sofa. Some reports:

Peter Pavia: Dutch Uncle: as I said earlier, this early Hard Case Crime effort is okay, but sadly nothing more. It drags on quite too long and I'd've omitted some of the scenes with the police.

Marc Cerasini: 24 - Trojan Horse: I haven't been fond of the TV series and haven't watched it regularly (every time I see it, Kiefer Sutherland is driving around in his car and talking to his phone, what action is that?). The tie-in novel by Cerasini - who's done lots of this kind of work - was okay, though, very fast-going and eventful. The characters were stritctly cardboard and there were some deus ex machina type of things in the end which weren't necessary. But, all in all, if you're willing to look away that these guys defend torture, this is quite a good way to spend couple of hours.

Kevin Wignall: Among the Dead (2003): I've understood that Wignall is one of the most revered of the new generation of British noir writers. It's no wonder, since Among the Dead is superb. It's no bang-slam type of noir novel and there's little, if any, violent action in the book - I'm more reminded of Richard Matheson's A Stir of Echoes (1958). Among the Dead seems to be drawing its inspiration from the more quiet noir and has some unnerving horror tones. Maybe there's some Shirley Jackson or Ursula Curtiss in this?

Loren Estleman: Sweet Women Lie (1990): some seem to think of Estleman as an example of bygone days who still insists on writing traditional private eye novels, but I really liked this and Estleman's snappy prose and catchy dialogue. Estleman's hero Amos Walker is a very likable man, even though there's a mean side to him as well.

Jean-Patrick Manchette: 3 to Kill (1975): one of the weirdest crime novels I've read in a long, long time. Very literary, it seems to be drawing its inspirations from the Roman nouveau of the fifties (very precise and detached style with emphasis on descriptions of people's clothes etc.), but also from the American hardboiled and noir crime novels. The story is about a man who finds a body on a highway and takes him to a hospital, only to find out that two killers are at him. He runs away after a violent burst of action at a gas station to find himself somewhere deep in the woods living with an old Stalinist. After the killers find him there, he decides to fight back and get back to his normal life. Manchette doesn't really give much weight to logical behaviour, but that would be beside the point; there are several clues about post-Marxist movements of 1968 and beyond to realize that this is a political novel - but about what, to that I found no answer. The English translation seemed too literary, too British to me.

My friend's doctorate thesis

My friend's doctorate thesis is about the cultural history of computer and media viruses.

Jussi Parikan kulttuurihistorian väitöskirja Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Worms and Viruses tarkastetaan Turun yliopiston Tauno Nurmela -salissa lauantaina 5.5. kello 12. Vastaväittäjänä toimii Reader, PhD Charlie Gere (Lancasterin yliopisto) ja kustoksena professori Hannu Salmi.

Väitöskirja tulee julkiseen jakeluun (Turun yliopiston opiskelijapalvelut) keskiviikkona 25.4. klo 12.00.

Parikan väitöskirja käsittelee tietokonevirusten historiaa. Tietokonevirukset ja muut ”haittaohjelmiksi” leimatut ohjelmatyypit eivät asetu väitöskirjassa ainoastaan osaksi turvallisuushuolien historiaa, vaan paljastavat oleellisia puolia verkostokulttuurin muutoksesta. Nojaten erityisesti yhdysvaltalaiseen aineistoon, Digital Contagions analysoi tietokoneviruksia myös osana 1980-luvulta alkanutta keinoelämätutkimusta, post-fordistisen kapitalismin muutosta sekä muun muassa verkostokulttuurin biopolitiikkaa. Parikan työ sijoittuu teoreettisesti osaksi Gilles Deleuzen ja Félix Guattarin pohjalta hahmoteltua uusmaterialistista kulttuurianalyysia sekä media-arkeologista tutkimusta.

Teos ilmestyy kaupalliseen jakeluun kesäkuussa (Jussi Parikka: Digital Contagions. A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses. New York: Peter Lang, Digital Formations-series).

The Shooting, Valdez Is Coming

Some of the films I've seen lately, short minireviews:

Monte Hellman: The Shooting (1965, in Finnish Hän ampui ensin). Great minimalistic Western film that manages to be nothing like Hollywood Westerns without resorting to any of the New Wavish fooling around with pastiches and narration. Hellman's film seems to hark back to Absurdist drama of Ionesco and Beckett, giving absolutely no explanations to what is going on the screen. And yet this captivates the viewer like only few films can. Sometimes a bit clumsy, but the photography is great.

Edwin Sherin: Valdez Is Coming (1970). Based on an Elmore Leonard novel, this is a punchy Western that is also quite intellectual but in a way that doesn't resemble the New Wave films at all. The ending is intentionally abrupt, which may leave some viewers puzzled about what happened. You can watch this as an action flick, though. I had some hard time to buy into Burt Lancaster being a Mexican, but maybe he was half-blood.

Robert Altman: Nashville (1975). Saw this actually last night. It's been almost 20 years when I walked out of Nashville - I was 15 at the time and didn't have enough patience for this kind of thing. And I still don't like country music. It doesn't much bother me now, but I can imagine being bored out of my wits while 15 and trying to listen to "Haven Hamilton" and "Connie White". Now I was actually entertained by the film and the 160 minutes didn't feel like almost three hours. There are many things I don't like about Altman - for example his mistreat of female characters -, but I'm willing to admit his skills at this kind of thing (which, to be true, wore out pretty soon; I don't much care for Health! or other later Altmans).

Russell Mulcahy: The Lost Battalion (2001). I caught most of this rather recent TV film on the Finnish tube. It was quite effective - the action and killing scenes were very crude and violent and the actual battles in the World War I must've seemed something like this. Mulcahy, a rock video and ad director, used some of his overdone editing techniques and other gimmicks (such as bullet coming at someone's face having a point of view), but not too many times. There was just one problem I have with many anti-war films: the anti-war sentiments seem to be directed only towards bad leaders and bad generals, not the machinery of war itself (mainly the politicians and the manufacturers). It would be interesting to see a film about industrialists who backed up Hitler before the WWII.

About Sampo/The Day the Earth Froze: next time.

My Space growing

I've already posted three films at my My Space account. One of the films was accidentally shot by Ottilia who thought she was just taking a photo and didn't notice that the camera was on video shoot option.

Raporttia suomalaisen elokuvan festivaalilta

A week ago I was at the festival of Finnish cinema. It focuses mainly on older films. Here are some capsule reviews - in Finnish. I'll have to write about Soviet-Finnish Sampo (1959) later on and in English, since there's an American connection: Roger Corman made his The Day The Earth Froze (or something to that effect) on that.

Mikko Niskasen Sissit: sotakohtaukset olivat hyviä, mutta psykologisoivat kohtaukset olivat aika kankeita eikä kuvaus lottien kanssa vehtaamisesta tuntunut jostain syystä kovin uskottavalta. Hopeaa rajan takaa taas oli hiukan liian lepsu - jos se olisi ollut amerikkalainen elokuva, Speden roolihahmo olisi joutunut venäläisten vangiksi ja muut olisivat pelastaneet tämän. Nyt ei missään vaiheessa ollut tunne, että pojat olisivat olleet todellisessa vaarassa. Uusiaaltomaiset kohtaukset vanhensivat muuten ihan sympaattista elokuvaa. Pankkiaiheinen Syksyllä kaikki on toisin taas oli pirun kankea ja liian pitkä, eikä Niskanen ollut löytänyt siihen oikeata tyylilajia.

Asfalttilampaat oli parempi, mutta siinäkin oli omat ongelmansa: missään vaiheessa ei kerrottu kunnolla, mikä Eero Melasniemen näyttelemää päähenkilöä oikein vaivasi. Katsoja ei päässyt kiinni vainoon, joka häneen Naantalin pikkukaupunkimiljöössä kohdistui. Lisäksi elokuva oli homovihamielinen, ja ehkä monien muidenkin Niskasen tavoin myös naisvihamielinen (mistä juhlittu Pojat on yksi räikeimpiä esimerkkejä ollessaan jopa äitivihamielinen). Tuottajana hääränneen Donnerin näyttäytyminen raiskauksia harrastavana gynekologina oli täysin käsittämätön kohtaus. Mutta paljon oli valmis antamaan anteeksi, kun lopussa soi Oksasen ja Chydeniuksen Sinua, sinua rakastan - biisi on tehty elokuvaa varten.

Valentin Vaalan Loviisa - Niskavuoren nuori emäntä sen sijaan oli rikkeetön mestariteos näihin verrattuna, upeasti kuvattu, hienosti näytelty ja mahtavalla draivilla eteenpäin kulkeva tragedia. Sen oli hetkittäin pilata se, että yksi henkilöistä oli nimeltään Roope-setä.

Teuvo Puron Vaihdokas (1927) oli sekavahko mykkäelokuva, mutta kyllähän näin vanhoja elokuvia aina katsoo, kuriositeettinakin. Sen kanssa nähtiin pätkiä kadonneista elokuvista, kuten Puron Sylvistä (1913) ja turkulaisesta äänielokuvasta Sano se suomeksi - jälkimmäisissä pätkissä Rafu Ramstedt teki vaikutuksen hiukan gay-henkisellä esityksellään.

En nähnyt Olavi Kallaksen muutama vuosi sitten löydettyä Miehen vankina -elokuvaa 40-luvulta, mutta juttelin paikalla olleen Tapani Maskulan kanssa ja hän oli sitä mieltä, että turkulaisten Kivimäen veljesten (Huijarien huvittavat huiputtajat) tuottaman elokuvan käsikirjoitti ja ilmeisesti myös ohjasi Harry Etelä eli Aimo Viherluoto, suosikkini kaikkien kotimaisten pulp-senttarien joukossa. Pentti Viherluoto on kuulemma muistellut, että Aimo-veli olisi kirjoittanut elokuvan käsikirjoituksen. On toivoa, että käsikirjoitus löytyisi Viherluotojen kotiarkistoista.

The first film at MySpace

I just posted my first film at MySpace. It's called Shoot Out, but it's no Western. It takes nine seconds.

Kids' book shelves

See below. This is also turned sideways, but you can see what's in there.

More kids' shelves

Sorry, this is upside down and I don't have a program in our laptop to be able to turn it.

The kids' book shelves

Lurker challenged people to a meme about their kids' book shelves. Couldn't resist.

At first, here's the first two floors. As our desktop is at the other side, there are some reference books on the same shelf, with their backs turned away.

Back in business

As you can see from three posts below, I'm on top of my form and will be posting again with some regularity. And I even created a MySpace account!

My Space dot com slash jurinen

I've created a My Space account here. In due time, you'll find very short documentaries of sort of our everyday life. I don't know why I'll be doing this and I'm quite sure the result won't be interesting, but nevertheless.

Ralph Bakshi's Wizards

I saw Ralph Bakshi's animated feature Wizards from 1977 couple of weeks ago, but haven't had time to write about it. It was more interesting than good, and most of the time it was pretty boring.

It wasn't bad - the animation was good throughout and there were some striking scenes in which the animators brought together wholly different styles. My main concern was that there was too much of that interplay with different styles - it seemed that Bakshi never really knew what he was doing. He never quite manages to bring his characters alive and they are too different from each other. You never believe they are characters in a fantasy story, reminiscent of Lord of the Rings or some such. And they are too much in the vein of Terrytoons of Bakshi's early career. The same thing with the gags in the film - they are never good enough, only getting somewhere close. The idea of wizards of the future using Nazi propaganda films may have been a good idea to begin with, but it gets pretty abrasive in the end.

It's been said that this is closer Lord of the Rings than Bakshi's dreadful attempt to animate it in 1979. Well, maybe - nevertheless, Bakshi used some of the footage of Wizards in his LoTR. The latter film suffered from financial troubles and Bakshi's visions never come truly alive, but even in here, his better-liked film, he has to resort to voice-over and stills. (Some of the stills must've gained the attention of the Winis and influenced the outlook of their Elfquest graphic novels.)

One thing I really liked in the film were some of the drawings by one Ian Miller who did similar drawings for A Tolkien Bestiary which David Day edited in 1979. He must've gotten the job via Wizards.

A Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers

One of the books I've been reading is The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers (2001). Now, I'm not big on legal thrillers and I've never read a John Grisham or a Scott Turow. I was quite bored with two or three Perry Masons I've tried. The court-room scenery holds no appeal to me, for whatever reasons. I picked this up at the library mainly because of some interesting authors in the table of contents and because the book was compiled with both new and old stories, an approach that does hold an appeal for me, for whatever reasons. I haven't had - and won't have - a time to read the whole book and I'll have to take this back to the library and get on to other things in life (and book shelves), but I managed to read some dozen of the stories. Here are some brief reviews:


Francis M. Nevins jr: Night of Silken Snow: well written, but the end comes from a bit far
Joe Lansdale & Andrew Vachss: Veil's Visit: quite funny tall-talish story with Hap and Leonard
Michael A. Black: Reasonable Doubts: pretty okay story, but would've hoped for more action; James Reasoner liked Black's one-off crime novel very much, details here
Irwin Shaw: Triumph of Justice: quite good as a story, but I thought Shaw was using some racial stereotypes in here, as late as 1978
John Lutz: Dogs and Fleas: sorry, don't remember much about this, even though I know I read it
Brian Hodge: Speedball: a very good and original story about a hunt for the last days of John Belushi, from a known horror writer
Morris Hershman: Bail Hearing: about this I remember only that it was written as a letter and there was a surprise twist, expertly handed, I'm sure
Henry Slesar: Thicker Than Water: a good court-room story, with a nice twist in the end; some of the forensics was a bit dated, though
James Powell: A Murder Coming: from 1972, a pretty tough one to follow, but actually quite good
C.J. Henderson: The First Thing We Do...: clever ending, but I don't really know if it was satisfactory
Mat Coward: Tomorrow's Villain: otherwise very good, but I didn't believe in the revelation about how and why the crime was committed
Mike Wiecek: The New Lawyer: funny short-short whose end I had to read twice to get a grasp of what really happened; I've published one short-short by Wiecek in Isku, "A Brother's Gift" from Hardluck Stories

Still sick

It seems that I'm being sick all the time. The flu developed into sinutisis (poskiontelon tulehdus, that is). I went to a doctor and had a prescription of antibiotics. The first pill made me sick and I almost vomited - probably the thing you really wanted to read when you came here.

I'm editing the last pages of the drafts for the thriller book. When I get the book out of my hands, I'll lie down for a couple of days and let the antibiotics work their way. I'll maybe read some books during my sofa time. I'm fully aware that I'm way behind my reading and viewing reports, but I'll get to those eventually.

A quicker update

Much better today. Result: didn't get any reading done.

Posted a short essay on my ex libris here. It's in Finnish. And I've forgotten to mention that I've been posting entries from my first book, Pulpografia, here, with some additions and corrections. In Finnish.

A quick update

Sick again, with a flu. My head feels like it's filled with oat meal. Some work had to be done, though: been checking the drafts of the thriller book. The publisher wanted to cut the book in half and put the American authors in one book and the European ones in the other. Now, Lee Child is with the Europeans - is that correct? He lives in the US nowadays, but was born in the UK. What should I do?

Finished last night Max Allan Collins's CSI novelization the name of which escapes me. Pretty boring workman stuff, which was surprising to me, even though the merchandise behind this holds no interest for me. The plot simply wasn't intriguing enough. I haven't read much Collins, but his reputation has been pretty high. Maybe he just lacked real interest in this. I still have another tie-in to go (I'm writing a review), a 24 novel by Marc Cerasini (who I think is a Lovecraft aficionado, am I right?).

Today I started to read one of the first Hard Case novels, Peter Pavia's Dutch Uncle, which seems pretty okay so far, with Leonardish characters and snappy dialogue. Will report back. Watched Monte Hellman's slow motion Spaghetti western, China 9, Liberty 37 (1978), last night and pretty much enjoyed it, but it wasn't nearly as intriguing as Hellman's earlier westerns, The Shooting and Ride the Whirlwind. I'm going to watch The Shooting tonight or tomorrow.

Have to write more about books and films later on, and I'm too lazy now to make any links. Hope everyone had a good Easter!

I won!

I just received an e-mail saying that I was one of the winners in the short story contest of the Usva magazine. The theme of the contest was "everyday weird" and my contribution was a small story of 1,700 words about some strange shit going down on a gym. I talked about it a bit here.

Now I can quit my day job and pronounce myself a writer. Yii-haa! (As if I had a day job.)

Reed Farrel Coleman and others

Realized after writing about Dibdin that I've forgotten to write about books I read during our trip to Cyprus. I ran out of time and didn't get to Matheson's The Shrinking Man, but I'll read it eventually.

Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1957). Didn't like this, even though it's been described as a noirish science fiction novel. The style was too literary and I never felt easy with it. I was also left wondering why the heroes went to the mysterious place on the Moon only in the end of the book. If this had been translated in Finnish, I know I'd've gotten more out of it.

Reed Farrel Coleman: The James Deans (2006). Winner of the paperback Edgar last year and it sure is a winner. A very thoughtful private eye novel, in which almost everything seems to be in the right place. (My only grudge is that it wasn't solved who sent those small limerick notes to Moe Prager, Coleman's private eye hero. Or if it was, it went completely past me.) Nothing pulpish here, more like something by Ross Macdonald or Laura Lippman. (But I know that if I were to recommend this to Finnish readers, they would think it's just some pulp: everything I touch turns into pulp.)

Leigh Brackett: Eric John Stark: The Outlaw of Mars (1964, containing novellas "The Secret of Sinharat" and "People of the Talisman"). I'd be really interested to hear how these compare to Brackett's other space adventures. I thought these were tightly written and fast-paced, without any empty moments. Really close to hardboiled westerns of the fifties and early sixties. It's just that I'd left some 50 pages to read on a plane and I didn't really manage to get on with it, with Kauto jumping around and all that.

Michael Dibdin dead

Just read in today's paper that crime writer Michael Dibdin has died, aged 60. Here's more about him at The Rap Sheet.

I read two or three Dibdin's crime novels about Aurelio Zen, Italian crime detective, in the mid-to-late nineties and liked all of them. Can't point a favourite, though - maybe it should be Cabal (1992, translated in Finnish as Salaseura, 1996), about Vatican's power in the Italian politics. Dibdin's novels are a good example of how one can get past the genre boundaries (meaning hardboiled vs. cozies, or even police procedural vs. psychological) and talk about the society and its effects on people. I was rather dismayed, though, that Dibdin saw it important to babble about Zen's private life and his love affairs and cooking delicious meals. (I'm not one of those who think it's essential to cook in a crime novel. I just can't figure out the connection.) That put aside, Dibdin was easily one of the best crime novelists of the nineties. Maybe I should go back and reread some of his stuff and start out some new ones. (I just know I won't have time for that in, say, 20 years from now. I'll have to check the drafts of the thriller book. Bye now. Check out these covers, though.)

Again: trouble at work

After having felt pretty good about work for a couple of days, I received yesterday and earlier today several drawbacks:

1. We didn't get a grant from a publisher that was interested in a lightweight reference work on erotica classics I proposed with two writer friends of mine. Not knowing if anything will come out of this.

2. Just read a review of the latest issue of Isku from Body Culture, the magazine of Finnish Whodunnit Society. I tried to evade this as long as possible, as I'm very touchy about reviews of my own work, but simply couldn't hold myself longer. The writer was polite and said it was nice of someone to do this kind of a non-profit, small press magazine, but the stories clearly didn't appeal to him. Almost none of them. Mediocre and disposable, he seemed to say. I know that the latest issue of Isku wasn't as strong as some of the earlier ones, but these things happen.

3. A writer friend and I have been trying to scratch together a collection of essays on Outsider, the most prominent Finnish pulp writer from the thirties to the fifties, but today I received two e-mails from proposed contributors that they won't have the time do their essays. They sure have other, more important work, and I can't blame them for anything, but after other drawbacks it just adds to the depression. We already have three of the articles and I don't really know how to tell the authors that they won't be used, if we decide not to waste our time anymore with this project.

A spam classic

I've been posting some spam e-mails I've received. I know that at least my friend Jussi saves them on his hard disk. Here's a very Joycean one I got today.

barryhavecarlinwongsockeyegogoflounderwainscotvineyardabrahamhoffman galtmainhimselfairfareincursionspatefreedmuzzlesacrale'ertrim coalesceaffiliategroupcytosinearchangelclothesmenlilianblewappertaingarlic goofmarseillesfastidiousresumptionpyroxenecurtainpropellermarionmansfieldheadwallcarey sisterpullmanchallengecommutatedieselleapratepayerbeginhurrayyoghurtbiceps peasanthoodofleetversatileineluctablearticulatoryirreparableaerobicreligioushodgepodgequantico claudepigeonberrybarnetspecialcadaveroussystematicappletonresistivebreakoffstuart randomhecubanosesaloonkeeperlimerickhydrothermalptolemytrouncedruggingsubsumed exudationloadcommuniquerectitudeinceptionafflictfifebaptistegraciousyiddishadmit o'dellextractumberderivaterudolfdrearybouquetnonchalantbreathsaudsyllabus gymnospermwheresoeverjuragrillworkfirminequitablepurviewcontortgoldstinedeclarator distributorimpiousfreyamicronesiahydrocarbonsimperreliantbludgeonrequisitedaphnealgenib 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Donald Hamilton dead

Spy writer Donald Hamilton has died - and already in last November! You would think that the death of a writer of Hamilton's caliber would've been noticed by media, but no. He hadn't published anything new for 15 years - if my memory serves me right -, but he was a best-selling author in the sixties and seventies with his Matt Helm books. Hard Case Crime reprinted recently his standalone thriller from the fifties called The Night Walker, which should at least have merited more obits.

I've never been much of a spy thriller fan, but Hamilton's Matt Helms are so fast-paced and tough that I'm willing to forget that, at least when it comes to the very first books in the series, especially the first, Death of a Citizen (1960), and the second, The Removers (1961). The books have had a lasting influence on me: Matt Helm says in one of the books (maybe he says it in all of them) that if you come into a room and catch the enemy by surprise, shoot him. Don't talk, just shoot. I remember this everytime whenever there's a scene in a movie or a book in which someone surprises an enemy and even though they have guns in their hands and they aim to kill the enemy, they start talking and telling about how they are going to kill the guy.

Aside from his spy thrillers, Hamilton wrote top-notch westerns. The best to me was The Man from Santa Clara (1960). His westerns are tough, fast-paced and intelligent.

Here's an overview of his works and here's Wikipedia. Here's a Finnish site, in English. John Fraser on Hamilton at Mystery*File. Has anyone ever seen the sole film Hamilton scripted in 1957? I seem to remember that Matt Helm talks about his short tenure in Hollywood in the beginning of Death of a Citizen. Imdb.com also says that the film version of Death of a Citizen is at works.

By the way, the cover above (presumably by Barye Phillips) was used in Finland to accompany a Shell Scott novel by Richard S. Prather, another paperback legend died recently.