SFeraKon, the oldest and most prestigious science fiction convention in the region, will be held at Faculty of Electrical Engineering and computing for the 39th time this year, May 12 to 14.
One of the most famous guests will be Dalibor Talajić, who has been doing artwork for Marvel since 2009. Talajić has recently come into the centre of global attention because he drew a comic called Madaya Mom about the war in Syria, originated from the SMS messages that an unknown mother of five from the besieged Syrian city Madaya exchanged with an ABC News journalist.
SFeraKon is a traditional spring convention organized by SFera, a Science Fiction Society from Zagreb, founded in 1976. The first organized science fiction fan gatherings were called ZF fairs, and they took place at the Student Centre Gallery. They soon turned into major events held throughout Yugoslavia, called YUcon. After two YUcons were held at the Student Centre, the convention and SFera moved to Peščenica, where the first SFeraKon was held on February 4, 1983. The guest of honour was British writer James Gunn. The first Eurocon in Zagreb was held together with SFeraKon, in 1986, and it was called Ballcon, wordplay on ‘Balkan’, which resulted in an internal joke as to who would bring a better ball to the convention.
SFeraKon keeps growing and the number of visitors keeps increasing. The last year’s convention was visited by more than a thousand of science fiction and related genres fans.
Another guest will be Justyna Anna Barys, a graduate trainee at European Space Agency. She is part of the MELiSSA (The Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative) project, which is geared towards developing a closed life support system for future crewed space missions. At 26, she was included in the Forbes “30 under 30” list, in the category of industry, as one of the most talented young scientists in the world.
The convention will also give a number of organizations that deal with science fiction a chance to present their work, and visitors will be able to enjoy numerous gamerooms, tournaments, RPG game demos, as well as a book fair, jewellery workshops, etc.
