Huge SF Festival and EuroConference in June

The 7th Atjaro (Gateway) Festival will be held in Budapest 9-11 June, 2006. This early summer festival pertains to literature, movies, television series and gaming. Movies and Hungarian fan films that haven’t been shown anywhere before will be presented to the visitors.

The Special Guest stars are actress MIRA FURLAN from Lost and Babylon 5 and actor ADRIAN PAUL from Highlander and Tracker. The organizers also invited one of the supporting actors from the Star Wars saga GERALD HOME and GARRICK HAGON who has played in Tim Burton’s Batman and in Mission Impossible.

The Atjaro (Gateway) Festival has invited some of the best authors from the European science fiction and fantasy scene. British writer and screenwriter IAN WATSON, Spanish writer and literary translator LUISA MARÍA GARCIA VELASCO, Italian author ROBERTO QUAGLIA and British author HARRY HARRISON, Grand Master of European Science Fiction, as well as editors from European literary and movie magazines.

Attendees will have the chance see the 90-minute Star Wars fan film The Dark Side: Part 2, and numerous movies that have not yet been shown in Hungarian theaters. The first prize winner of the Brussels Science Fiction Festival (BIFFF), the Hungarian short film, The 639th Doll by András György Dési and Gábor Móray will be shown.

The convention has officially received the EuroConference title at the European Science Fiction Society’s (ESFS) annual meeting in Kiev. There will be a special program section in English for SF professional persons (publishers, authors and editors) about European and Central-European SF literature and fandom.

The convention expects to entertain numerous fans and visitors from the neighboring countries as well, so a part of these programs will be enjoyable in English (by dubbing and subtitling) too.

The official website of the convention: http://fesztival.sfportal.hu

Nominations for Hungarian SF Award finished

On 20th April the nomination period ended for the Péter Zsoldos Award, which is the national award for the best novel and short story published in Hungary. The readers can nominate any science-fiction novel and short story published in printed form in Hungarian and more then five hundred copies from April 2005. The works are considered by a jury during the next couple of months and the winners will be awarded in August at the HungaroCon.

The Association representatives said they’re satisfied with the current nomination list, there’s a lot of short stories nominated comparing to the numbers of previous year. But the number of novels running for the award is still low, which means there’s not too many science-fiction novels published from Hungarian authors.

The Péter Zsoldos Award was founded by Avana Association in 1998. In 2005 the award was given to Sándor Szélesi (Before Darkness; novel) and István Nemere (Just One of Everything; short story).

Eurocon 2008: Moscow and Budapest was in tie

In Kiev Hungary made a bid to earn the EuroCon title for the national convention (Atjaro Festival) in 2008. At the 28th EuroCon, during the ESFS business meetings Moscow and Budapest received the same ammount of votes (14-14) from country delegates, and finally the orange ballots of non-delegates pushed the title to Moscow.

The members of delegates are deciding every year the place of the two year later EuroCon. The result was a surprise for the Hungarian delegation as well, which means for us the western countries gave a big support to the idea. Hungary will bid next year in Copenhagen again.

Róbert Odegnál won ESFS Award in Kiev

The Hungarian artist, Róbert Odegnál won the Best European Artist Award at the 28th EuroCon in Kiev. Odegnál is painting covers for SF books and designing comics for years. His latest comic book, The Caller and the covers of the Mysterious Universe books was introduced for the committee in Kiev, and the works convinced the delegates to vote for him in the Best Artist category. The society also awarded the young Hungarian author Tamás Szalai-Kocsis with European Encouragement Award.

Róbert Odegnál’s website: http://www.odegnalrobert.hu/