SFerKon 2015 will be held May 15-17, 2015, at FER (that’s the acronym for the Croatian name of the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing that has served as the venue for the largest Croatian con for 15 years now!) and the Guest of Honour will be the American writer Kate Elliott.
SFeraKon 2015 will be paying its respects to two unforgettable men of SF – Sir Terry Pratchett and Leonard Nimoy will be its Ghosts of Honour.
It will also pay tribute to 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland by hosting a very special, interactive tea party with lots and lots and lots of tea! Of course, there will be talk (and perhaps a round of SFeraKon Survivor or two) of Dune and the five decades long love affair readers have had with Frank Herbert’s masterpiece. And that, of course, is just a tiny part that makes up SFeraKon.
For all the foreigners who did not come to Kontakt, a word or three:
There is always at least one item per day in English at SFeraKon and this year there will be more!
Everyone speaks English here. And I do mean it when I say that! The “at least one item per day” I just mentioned are the GoH gigs. Which are never translated. Because there is no need. Don’t take my word for it. Go ask Louis McMaster Bujold. Or any one of a number of very awesome writers and fans who have visited SFeraKon.
And since everyone speaks English, some speak it well enough to be able to offer their panels and lectures in English at a moment’s notice, should someone who does not speak Croatian happen to find themselves in the audience. If whoever will be doing the program book gets enough sleep in the week before the con, they will remember to put a HR/EN mark next to those items.
A three-day (full) membership for SFeraKon is €12 or £9 or $13.
An Anthology of Croatian SF is included in the membership. In Croatian, of course, but if there ever was a reason to learn a foreign language, there’s one right there! 🙂
No, there is no supporting membership. For now. But we are forever open to new ideas!
Zagreb in May is quite lovely – come see it! You can experience the unique way we tell time at least once a day, both IRL and on Twitter, visit the Nikola Tesla Kabinet at the Technical Museum, see the famous Zagreb mummy and bicycle around the Solar System. The surrounding towns are more than charming, we have excellent beer, very cheap hostels (that can be even cheaper if you are a SFeraKon member!), and delicious food! What more do you need?
A safe space? Well, SFeraKon is definitely a safe space, just not for harassers. I will be honest – this is the Balkans, we do things a bit crudely at times. So, we do have a (unwritten, unofficial) policy. It’s very simple: do not harass or you will be thrown out on your ass before you can say WTF!
Women are not an exception (nor a wonder, a rarity or an intruder!) in Croatian SF fandom. They are mostly the ones in charge and have been for quite some time. The men happily do all the heavy lifting and have zero qualms about the lifted being alive and kicked out of the con.
