Rikon 2013 will be held in the Croatian coastal city of Rijeka, October 11-12, at the University campus, in the Faculty of Humanities building, a very cool venue, since the building is new, spacey and has all the necessary equipment. Since this is the 16th Rikon to date, the organizers, whose ages average is 23, have decided to go for an appropriate theme – YA literature.
On Friday, Vesna Kurilic, a librarian, passionate LARPer and SFERA award-winning author, who is also one of the organizer, will hold a lecture on the young adult genre fiction written and translated into Croatian. I would love to hear what she has to say, but am afraid I will not make it to Rijeka on time. Although it is only a 2 hour drive, the lecture has a time slot at 19, and this does not look like it is going to happen. Croatians will carpool to get to Rijeka – and so am I – but this also means traveling after working hours.
I do know, however, that I will be there at 20:30, as I’m taking part in a panel he Fantastic Literature of Our Youth” with awesome author and the best Croatian SF theoretician, Milena Benini and journalist and SF critic Davor Šišovic. We will be trying to trace genre reading and the venues of development of genre through three different generations of Croatian reader. The panel will be moderated by Ivana Delac.
On Saturday, Rikon will award the Artefakt Award, for the best novel, novella and short story in the genre. The ceremony is traditionally held on Saturday at 20:00 and these will be the third year it is being awarded.
There are two other topics that seem popular this year, women and LARP. The Women in SF panel which I am also on, of course, will probably be different than English speaking fans would expect; and yes, I am planning to elaborate and I am very interested in the Women Arhetypes in Genre Fiction lecture. LARP has a number of panels and lectureas as well as a workshop and two presentations of four different systems. In addition to a game or two I am sure someone is running, only I am too ignorant to pick them out among all the other numerous games being played at Rikon. Ivan Žalac is the only person I am sure is blogging about the Croatian larposhere in English, and he does it here.
The scientific lectures are plentiful as always, and rather more in-depth then the panels I have had the chance to experience at Worldcons and in Australia. They are mostly held by University professors, teachers and scientists. There is a number of there lectures, and a whole host of geeky quizzes that I always have the time to take at Rikon, and this is a part of why I love it so much there. I get to organize nothing and have loads of fun.
There is no programming in English but as about half the organizers are current of former English language students, there will be no problems should anyone not speaking Croatian turn up.
