The winner of the 2025 Tähtivaeltaja (“Star Rover”) Award was announced on April 24. Sponsored by the Helsinki Science Fiction Society, the award goes to the best science fiction book published in Finland in the previous year. The winner is:
- Siiri Enoranta: Keuhkopuiden uni (Gummerus)
The winner was selected by a jury composed of journalist Hannu Blommila, editor Toni Jerrman, critic Elli Leppä, and critic Kaisa Ranta.
The judges say:
Siiri Enoranta’s eleventh novel, The Dream of the Lung Trees , is a unique, multi-layered masterpiece. The book combines an imaginative narrative framework, social criticism, and the coming-of-age story of an exceptional individual. The immersive, lavishly constructed world conceals both fragility and brutality in its depths, between which Enoranta’s sharp, beautiful use of language alternates masterfully.
The society of human-like but winged creatures of the species Homo arboris is built on a symbiotic relationship. Each member has a close, vital connection to their own lung tree, to whose shelter the creatures must retreat at night and on whose sap and pollen they depend.
However, a cultural upheaval is underway, and the book’s protagonist, the young Countess Aikaterine da Rosetta Caesonius, Katica, acts as the book’s driving catalyst. The dashing, self-centered girl finds herself in conflict with the powers that be in her community and becomes a symbol of broader social change. The conflict between the ultra-conservative individuals who cling to their trees and the reformists who seek to get rid of the trees by force is one of the main threads of the plot.
There is an edge and a roughness to both the characters and the relationships between them. Power and sexuality are intertwined, especially in the romance between Katica and the art patron Seraphina Varinius Valerius, and they are reflected elsewhere in the unique cast of characters. The work’s coherent and inventive overall aesthetic could be described as rococo-punk. Along with Sanna-Reeta Meilahti’s charming cover art, the settings are overflowing with hoop skirts, powdered wigs and fashionable winged harnesses.
The contrast between the crumbling milieu and the dramatic plot twists and the strange, science-based biology of the lung trees is delicious. In Homo arborescens’ complex relationship with nature, the juxtaposition of civilization and earthiness interestingly mirrors the corresponding pain points in our world.
