M.G. Soikkeli: Local knowledge
(Portti Special English Issue #1)

Markku Soikkeli belongs to the group of writers who made their literary debut in the early 1990's through the Portti short story contest. There were at the time several others writers marching forth – besides Soikkeli, also Pasi Jääskeläinen – who were not satisfied with writing traditional space-ship-sf but set their literary targets higher.

Soikkeli is a writer who doesn't underestimate his readers, who uses literary stylistic devices without prejudice and whose stories are not the most conventional kind of science fiction. He is also a productive jack-of-all-trades on other literary areas and even worked for a while as the speaker of the TV1 literary programme Kirja A&Ö (Book A&Z).

The short story Local Knowledge ended up on the third (divided) place in the Portti short story contest of the year 2000. It represents basic science fiction in the sense of being a tale of humanity's representatives in the stars. That's where the similarities with most representatives of the genre end, however, and the world Soikkeli slams in front of the readers is very far from the space conquerors travelling in their valiant space ships. To pay the price of getting to the stars, humanity has had to adapt to a rather peculiar way of trading and to a way of space travel that only includes one-way tickets.

The scene of the rather minor-key story is a planet called Penumbra, an environment that Soikkeli manages to make exceptionally oppressive. The closest comparison that springs to mind from foreign sf is Hal Clement's planet Mesklin, even if the gravity circumstances are not as terrific in this story. The circumstances that create the oppressiveness of Penumbra are not of the domain of natural sciences, but social.

The actual plot is rather thin in the story. To be exact, there isn't one. The story follows the rather heavy-going everyday life of three humans working on the planet; at the same time, the reader gets a picture of what the conquest of space and trading with a life form completely different from us might be like. The whole story is heavy-going, and a large part of the whole is taken up by various philosophical and scientific discussions. The story contains a flashback level, but even that is included mainly to help describe the world, not so much to construct the plot.

In the end, Local Knowledge stumbles on what so many other short stories by Soikkeli have done earlier. Soikkeli is a virtuoso in creating startling environments and succeeds in presenting them with a few masterstrokes. Verbally, too, the story is guaranteed workmanship, and even here one cannot but admire for instance Soikkeli's ability to create new meanings for familiar expressions.

But as usual, the actual plot again seems to play second fiddle in the whole. The environment is undeniably fascinating, but the reader can't help missing something more. This is all the more unfortunate, for would Soikkeli also learn to master that part of storytelling, we'd have here a star-class producer of sf prose, rich with ideas, on both the domestic and international writer skies.

Pasi Karppanen
(Translated by Liisa Rantalaiho)