Category: Geen categorie

Sad but true, covid is still among us. We are aiming to have a convention that is as safe as possible. That means we comply to all the then-valid restrictions imposed by the hotel and by the government. Despite the fact that many restrictions have been lifted recently, some others are still in place. You can read more about the current restrictions on the hotel and government websites.

https://www.hotelsneek.nl/corona-en-veiligheid/

https://www.government.nl/topics/coronavirus-covid-19/tackling-new-coronavirus-in-the-netherlands

Should the restrictions change again before HSFCon, we will change with them. Whatever comes, we will turn the weekend into a fantastic one.

Edwin Mathlener read Astronomy at the University of Utrecht from 1982 until 1986. Apart from working for a publishing house specialising in scientific publications, he has always busied himself with organising activities related to astronomy and aimed at popularising this science. Among other groups, he has been involved with the Dutch national society for meteorology and astronomy, Foundation ‘De Koepel’, Universum Foundation and Sonnenborgh Museum & Observatory. From 2009 he worked full-time for ‘De Koepel’ in Utrecht, but only until 2013 when this organisation sadly had to close down. Edwin was a member of the editorial team at the Zenit periodical for astronomy for 25 years, during which time he served as chief editor twice. For several years he was also the editor of the astronomical yearbook De Sterrengids and he is still involved today with the yearbook Sterren & Planeten. He is a volunteer at Sonnenborgh and gives courses and lectures at public observatories and for clubs. For a day job he’s gone back to working full-time for the publishing house mentioned above.

Unfortunately Sonja Boschman cannot be present. We will invite Sonja Boschman again at a next edition.

Sonja has been writing since she first learned how to hold a pencil and her love for ancient Egypt goes almost as far back. She graduated as an Egyptologist from the University of Leiden in 2015. Stories set in this period therefore come naturally, often with a fantastical twist. But not only does she dabble in the past, she also likes to look at the future. In her stories she combines the genres science fiction and historical fiction/fantasy with her two other great passions: adventure stories and plucky characters.

Read more on her website sonjaboschman.nl

Joachim Heijndermans is a writer and artist from the Netherlands He’s travelled all across the world, boring others with trivia about cartoons, comics and toys. His work in science-fiction, fantasy and horror has been featured in a number of publications, including The Gallery of Curiosities, Ahoy Comics, Mad Scientist Journal, Planet Scumm, Novel Noctule and Curiouser Magazine. His short story, ‘All Through the House’, was adapted as an episode of the Netflix animated anthology ‘Love, Death & Robots’.

Marjo Heijkoop (Johanne Lime) was born on 29 September 1956. On 1 November 2011 she decided to turn her passion for writing into her first priority. In addition, she sometimes draws digital pictures for her blogs or for the covers of her e-books. She keeps a bullet journal, plays video games, reads books and watches and reviews films. Her favourite genre to read and write is science fiction/fantasy.
Website Johanna Lime: https://johannalime.com
More on the books by Johanna Lime: https://boekenvanjohannalime.com

Writing as Johanna Lime
Johanna Lime was born as a concept in Sliedrecht in the Netherlands on 1 November 2011. At the time, she was the combined pseudonym of Marjo Heijkoop and Dinie Boudestein. The name Lime derives from the name of their mutual family on their mothers’ side: Kalkman (kalk is Dutch for lime). Johanna is the name of their common grandmother, as well as the name of Dinie’s sister Joke and Marjo’s middle name. So it’s a name that runs in the family, so to speak. Since their teens Dinie Boudestein and Marjo Heikoop worked together on building an imaginary world named Eibor Risoklany, which formed the basis for the realms of Laskoro and Berinyi in the constellations Taurus and Monoceros, in the books they wrote for publisher Zilverbron. In their next trilogy the universe is expanded even further, to Gemini and beyond. For their numerous short stories, most of which were entered in Dutch short story competitions, Marjo and Dinie kept building new worlds populated by new characters. Only in the collection Verhalen van Eibor Risoklany there is a connection between their short stories and their novels. The novel De twaalfde Saturnusmaan (‘The twelfth moon of Saturn’) is unique in that it is an autobiographical story, even though it contains aliens.
Since Dinie’s death of cancer on 21 December 2018, Marjo has continued her writing career as Johanna Lime on her own.

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.