Author: Jan@HSFCon

Johan Klein Haneveld (1976) has known for a long time that life without stories is not worth living. He wrote his first book when he was only eight years old. It was about dinosaurs. And fishes. Johan felt that he didn’t get enough writing assignments in primary school, so he started writing stories and poetry at home. In secondary school he even started writing his own series of adventure novels: the adventures of Joost, Cliff and Yoko, in which his protagonists had adventures with dinosaurs, great white sharks and people from the future. After a bit his language teacher even allowed him to read one of his own short story collections for his exam.
After starting his studies of Biomedical Sciences Johan put his writing on the backburner for a bit, until he got overworked and was given the advice to only do what he really wanted from then on. And what he really wanted was to write. Around the same time he rediscovered his passion for science fiction and fantasy. Stories about men and women who have to respond to unusual circumstances really captured his imagination then as much as they do today. Johan loves to explore all possibilities of life and matter through his imagination. In 2001 this led to the publication of his debut novel Neptunus, followed by the novella Het wrak in 2002.
Johan’s fascination with alternate realities has produced twenty books by now. The latest of these are the futuristic horror novel Scherven vol ogen, published by Macc, and the Sword & Sorcery novel Hoeder van de vulkaan, published by Godijn Publishing. His concern with climate change caused him to edit the short story collection Voorbij de storm, collecting stories by 25 Dutch and Flemish authors. Furthermore, 2021 will see the publication of his mini collection De mens een sprinkhaan and his first YA SF novel Het denkende woud. A space opera called De zwarte schim is slated for 2022. His goal is to explore as many subgenres of fantasy and SF as possible in his writing.
Johan’s short stories can be found in a variety of collections and magazines such as Fantastische Vertellingen, SF Terra and The Flying Dutch. Johan is also a judge for Godijn Publishing’s SF/fantasy award, and he is a regular reviewer for Fantastische Vertellingen en he writes essays on fantasy and science fiction for a number of websites.
When not working in his day job as editor for the Dutch veterinary journal, Tijdschrift voor Diergeneeskunde, Johan enjoys spending time with his aquariums (containing sunfish, African dwarf frogs, a reedfish and a common musk turtle) as well as reading books, watching films and reading comics. And he loves coffee! He lives in the pretty town of Delft with his wife Bianca.
johankleinhaneveld.blogspot.nl.

Jorrit de Klerk (1975) has been hooked on stories about science, space travel and extraterrestrial mysteries for as long as he can remember. Watching the very first Star Wars movie on VHS (not having a clue as to what to expect) is still a watershed moment from his childhood, just like watching episodes of the original Cosmos, Battlestar Galactica, Blake’s 7, and Doctor Who. Around the same time he sneaked into the grown-up section of the public library in his home town Harlingen, where he borrowed every single science fiction book he could find, despite the presence of a frankly frighteningly stern librarian – who haunts his nightmares to this day. After finishing all the books in the library, he bought (or was given) everything that was available at the bookshop, until he switched to reading in English in the early 00s.

After finishing secondary school Jorrit decided to study Business Administration, for reasons unclear even to himself – everyone had expected him to go to drama school, film school or the school of journalism. Despite a large number of first chapters, and even a couple of steamy adolescent poems, it was only in 2014 that Jorrit decided to start writing 1,000 words per day again and really get serious about this whole writing business.

This led to numerous publications in a variety of magazines and collections in the fantastic genre, such as Wonderwaan, Ganymedes, Fantastische Vertellingen and Edge.Zero. Jorrit’s story ‘Reset’ came second in both the Fantastels and the Edge.Zero writing competitions. The year 2019 saw the publication of his first SF novella ‘Revolte’, a space opera that kicked off the Zwijgende Aarde (‘Silent Earth’) sequence for publishers Quasis. Right now he is finishing his first collection of SF stories, which will be published at the end of 2021.

These days he works as a self-employed automation specialist, based in Harlingen in the province of Friesland. His main clients are non-profit organisations, specifically in health care.

In 2015 and 2019 Jorrit was involved in organising the short story competition of the Harland Awards, automating the registration of entries and introducing various innovations. Since 2019 Jorrit has been involved with a number of cultural organisations that work on the development of spoken word, film and art, and on attracting creators from a range of sectors to the north of the Netherlands, as well as more focus on cultural activities and the creation of new, beautiful things together.

He is really happy to see HSFCon come to Friesland. He hopes to take part in some panel discussions on science fiction, aiming to put our beloved genre even more in the spotlights. And in between these discussions he hopes to watch a couple of good (or really terrible and blood-soaked) genre movies.

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship
Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To
seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has
gone before!

On 8 September 1966 this announcement was heard for the first time on American television on the show Star Trek.

Decades later many people are still under the Star Trek spell and one new show follows another, allowing fans to keep dreaming of space travel.

I am pleased to introduce Starfleet Sector 31.

It’s not a fan club, not a society, but a true platform that brings Star Trek fans together. It was created to offer a space for those Star Trek fans who want to take that one step further.

We organise a yearly meeting in the Netherlands where we aim to immerse the visitors in the world of Star Trek, by offering a variety of activities that you can join either individually or as a group.

This year we’ll leave the beaten track for the first time. That is to say we will be at HSFCon later this year.

In our control room at HSFCon you can have a look at props and costumes, and you can test your knowledge in a Federation quiz! You may even go home with your own Starfleet combadge…

Live long and prosper.

Erik Betten (Leeuwarden, 1976) writes fiction and non-fiction, but prefers writing something in-between the two. His debut was 2018’s political zombie novel Quarantaine (‘Quarantine’), which earned him the Schaduwprijs prize for best suspense novel by a debutant. Second novel De Prijs (‘The Prize’) followed in 2019: a thriller about government espionage, public outrage and games. He likes to write the kind of stories he also likes to read: speculative fiction that also says a lot about the world that we live in today.

Saskia Appel has been writing as long as she can remember.

Her stories, poems, columns and articles have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies. In 2008, her short story collection Verloren Onschuld (‘Lost Innocence’) was published. Beside all that, she has won prizes in various writing competitions, such as the Unleash Award and the Suspencestory writing competition.

In her day job she works as a freelance coordinator for publishing houses.

Her favourite genres are horror, SF, thrillers and historical stories (especially when combined with one another). She is a voracious consumer of these types of stories in any form: books, graphic novels, TV shows, movies, board games or computer games.

Peter was born 24 October 1946 in the Northern Dutch city of Groningen, where he grew up and lived until 1978. Having lived in the tiny village De Poffert for a number of years with his wife Claire and daughter Danja, he moved to Roden, where his son Dorian was born (who by the way entered the Paul Harland Award competition twice and ended in the top 20. But the future is still bright.)

Peter spent a number of years working as a schoolteacher, and then made the transition to music. His songs De hoge heren van het dorp, Adem mijn adem and Vliegen als een vogel all reached the charts in the 1970s. Peter still plays and writes music and is currently working on a new EP.

A yearning for more serious literary work in the fantastic and history genres resulted in the production and publication of almost 40 novels and children’s books, among which his first fantasy novel, De schrijvenaar van Thyll, which won a Eurocon Award in Budapest.

Peter’s most recent productions are the fantasy novel De helden van Sidian and the science fiction thriller Chesnek bv, both published by the Dutch publisher Zilverspoor. His new novel Zam de fikser will be out soon.

Apart from a writer, Peter is also an enthusiastic maker of stone tools and he calls himself a stonesmith – referring to his level of expertise. Furthermore he spent years building tiny scale model of an entire ruined city in Egyptian style (see the picture at the top of his facebook page), where his spirit has kept returning since he was a child. He considers this city his life’s work.

Since 1980, and the first Hillcon in Rotterdam, Peter has visited all-but-one of the Dutch NSCF conventions, along with his brother Theo, who was just as much as a genre enthusiast as he is. Theo sadly passed away in December 2020.
Occasionally Peter brings his guitar to play his songs and filk a bit, playing around with comical scifi-lyrics.

For more information, visit his homepage at www.peterschaap.nl.

Rochita Loenen-Ruiz is a Filipina writer living in The Netherlands. She is a graduate of the Clarion West Writing Workshop and was the recipient of the Octavia Butler Scholarship Award for 2009. In 2018, she was a recipient of the Milford Bursary for writers of colour.

In 2019, she was a special guest at the XPrize Oceans event in Monaco. She has led a number of workshops on science fiction writing and was the workshop leader for the Other Futures workshop in 2020. The 11 stories that resulted from this workshop are to be found here: https://otherfutures.nl/uploads/documents/eof-online-update.pdf

A list of her publications can be found on her website at rcloenenruiz.com.

to take advantage of our early-bird deal of 10 euros off on each weekend ticket. Until 14 April 11:59 pm CET you can buy a weekend ticket for 60 euros. From 15 April the price will go up to 70 euros.
The price of a day ticket is 38.50 euros and will remain the same after 15 April.
Don’t miss out and book your ticket now on www.hsfcon.nl/tickets/ Gotta be there!