Pasi Jääskeläinen: Haunted House, Nr 1 Rocket Factory Street
(Portti Special English Issue #1)

Pasi Jääskeläinen was the most successful writer of Finnish short story science fiction at the end of the 1990's. He won the Portti short story contest four times, and thrice the Atorox Award that the Finnish fandom presents to each year's best science fiction short story. His best short stories and novelettes are collected in Missä junat kääntyvät (Where the Trains turn), published in the year 2000. Regrettably, Pasi Jääskeläinen has published rather few texts since then. He tells he concentrates on writing a novel.

Haunted House, Nr 1 Rocket Factory Street was Jääskeläinen's first hit in the Portti short story contest and was originally published in the number 4/96 of the magazine Portti. The story tells about four children, friends who live by the Rocket Factory Street. All the grown-ups of the street are working at the rocket factory that's operating at full capacity to finish an important order. While the grown-ups are at work, the kids are allowed to spend their summer days alone. It is Henrietta's turn to perform the Dare. She intends to visit the Haunted House.

Jääskeläinen tells the story of the Haunted House without haste, smoothly and at the same time, volubly. His sentences meander long and winding, yet beautiful and clear. Jääskeläinen does not aim towards the ideal of the compact short story. He is a more unfashionable storyteller who sees the multiple sides of his narrative and draws them all out in his text.

Two different time levels are gracefully mixed together in the story. Jääskeläinen has, indeed, often said that he doesn't experience time as anything linear, and this is directly reflected in the plots of his stories. He often uses flashbacks and deftly mixes different time levels. The idea of the story is a simple, but a bit unusual approach to haunted houses. The style of Jääskeläinen makes it unique. Jääskeläinen has become known for his strange visions, but this short story still represents his more modest narrative ideas.

All of the above mentioned features of this short story are also characteristic of all the rest of Jääskeläinen's successful production. The visions in his stories got even wilder during the next years, in novellas such as Missä junat kääntyvät, Pinnan alla Toiseus piilee, On Murmaa kaatunut and Oi niitä aikoja: elämäni kirjastonhoitajattaren kanssa (Where the Trains turn, Under the Surface Hides Otherness, Hath Mordion fallen, and Those were the Times), which I consider his best stories. Already in this Haunted House his storyteller voice is mature and strong, and the story fascinating.

Jarmo Karonen
(Translated by Liisa Rantalaiho)