Up until the end of the twentieth century, the dystopia was a practically nonexistent genre in Finnish literature. However, since the turn of the century, there has been a marked dystopian turn. In addition to the anxieties associated with the passing of the millennium, emerging global issues such as digital development, environmental problems, and terrorism have contributed to the ongoing popularity of dystopian fiction. 1 At the same time, Finnish literature has been strongly influenced by the trends of international book markets. For example, the unprecedented popularity of dystopian young adult (YA) literature has inspired Finnish authors. In the past ten years, a number of writers have published post-apocalyptic visions of a world gone awry. Contemporary Finnish dystopian fiction reveals the collective fears over the destruction of the Finnish welfare state. This grim and often violent fiction does not portray Finland as a Nordic utopia, but rather as a society in which the social welfare and the general well-being of citizens have collapsed as a result of, among other things, climate change, continuous wars, totalitarian regimes, consumer capitalism, and the repression of minorities. However, in the dystopian fiction aimed at adolescent audiences, optimism for a better future is also important. This hope is created through the possibility of change that only the next generations can bring. Therefore, one of the most important characteristic of the contemporary YA dystopias seems to be the strong active agency given to young characters. 2 The trope of the child savior-in which a child or young person represents the hope of an otherwise doomed humankind-is common in Western YA dystopias. 3 In contemporary YA dystopias, adolescence is almost an "antidote to corrupt adulthood." 4 As Carrie Hintz and Elaine Ostry suggest, there is a long tradition of seeing childhood itself as utopian, a space and time apart from adult life and all its concerns. 5 The emphasis on the innocence and purity of children is originally a Romantic idea, 6 but this notion of utopian childhood is still present in contemporary YA dystopias, where the adolescent protagonist's idealistic and morally superior viewpoint can bring hope to a dark, dystopian future. 7

This chapter analyzes the Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo’s 2013 novel Auringon ydin [The core of the sun] in the contexts of speculative fiction, dystopia, and fairy tale to provide an illustrative example of Sinisalo’s oeuvre. The novel combines various elements, genres, and text-types in a self-reflexive and parodic way, which both gives the novel a peculiar twist and offers an interesting viewpoint on the Finnish weird. The novel’s fabulous thought experiment combines the depiction of human domestication with real documents addressing eugenics and sterilization and the domestication of silver foxes. The chapter also discusses dystopian and fairy-tale elements in the novel and suggests that while Sinisalo draws from multiple sources in her writing, she can be considered a science-fiction writer due to her focus on the thought experiment.

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Venäjällä ja Suomella on ollut tiivis kulttuurisuhde vuosisatojen ajan. Venäläiset kirjailijat ovat kuvanneet Suomea ja suomalaisia, ja suomalaiset kirjailijat – esimerkiksi Katri Lipson, Rosa Liksom, Sirpa Kähkönen ja Olli Heikkonen – ovat kertoneet Murmanskista, Moskovasta, Pietarista ja Siperiasta. Suomalaiset tuntevat hyvin suuret venäläiset kertojat, kuten Gogolin, Tolstoin, Dostojevskin ja Tšehovin. Etenkin Anton Tšehovilla on vakaa paikka suomalaisten sydämissä.

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