Peter Kazmaier

My book, The Halcyon Dislocation was reviewed by Lloyd Rang in the July issue of Faith Today.

One of the nice things he said had to do with the plausibility of the science behind the plot. That was particularly gratifying since it was one of the things I worked hard to achieve. Here is what Rang said:

Reprinted with the gracious permission of FAITH TODAY

Notable Quote:

For his first novel, Kazmaier does well at quickly getting the plot in motion and describing the new world. The science makes good reading, too – perhaps no surprise, since Kazmaier is a working and teaching scientist. He makes dimension and time travel appear plausible and comprehensible. (No mean feat – the writers of the TV show Lost could’ve used his help.)

Lloyd Rang also gave some helpful advice about making the secondary characters more three dimensional which I will take to heart. If you want to peruse the review in its entirety, keep reading.

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Robert J. Sawyer is arguably Canada’s best known Science Fiction author and has achieved significant international  recognition as a Hugo Award winner and through the recent debut of his novel FlashForward on television. Given his stature in the field of Science Fiction, his blog entitled “Are the Days of the Full-Time Novelist Numbered?” is of particular interest to all of us who follow Science Fiction and Fantasy literature. Sawyer begins his blog by alluding to an invited lecture he gave  to the Canadian Book Summit:

I started by recounting how, a few months ago, I’d had fellow science-fiction writers Robert Charles Wilson and James Alan Gardner over for pizza; at that dinner, I’d told Bob and Jim that I feared there was only a decade left in which anyone could make a comfortable living writing science-fiction novels, and urged them to plan their careers and finances accordingly.

If someone with Robert Sawyer’s achievements  makes this observation, then one ought to listen. Are the days of the full-time novelist numbered? What does this mean for novelists who are just starting out (like me)?

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Having watched the burning of police cars, the smashing of  store windows, and the police attempts at crowd control at the demonstrations surrounding the G20 summit in Toronto, I have to ask myself “What is the greatest threat to our liberties and freedom to come out of this protest?”

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C. John Sommerville, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Florida, has written an engaging book entitled Religious Ideas for Secular Universities. As he looked back on fifty years of university life as both a student and a professor, he wondered at how much the mission and role of the university had changed in that time period.

“I thought I was finally able to see our universities the way American society does, as a good way of preparing us for our jobs, but not where we look to answers for our important questions.” [Page 3]

Sommerville amplifies this view on page 7.

“It seems that some time in the 1980’s accountancy became the queen of sciences. Universities are about money in a whole new way. They are now measured in terms of money – the size of their endowments, how much they can charge for tuition, and the return on that investment in the starting salaries of new graduates.”

Sommerville’s views lead to three questions:

1. Are universities becoming corporations?
2. If they are, is this a good or a bad thing?
3. If it is a bad thing, what can be done to reverse this trend? continue reading…

Jo Walton, a Science Fiction and Fantasy writer who lives in Montreal, recently she  wrote an interesting post explaining why she re-reads books that she doesn’t like. She developed this unusual habit in her childhood when she would read books that were beyond her years. Although these books such as Ivanhoe and David Copperfield were not that interesting at first they were on re-reading and so there was a sense of “growing into fiction.”

I have to say this has not been my experience with one notable exception. I love C.S. Lewis’ Science Fiction Trilogy Out of the Silent Planet. However I could not get through the second volume Perelandra (or sometimes called Voyage to Venus). I started it three or four times and always bogged down in the same place and then skipped on to That Hideous Strength. Finally I read it all the way through and now it is indeed my favorite book in the series.

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I do re-read many books, but they are my favorites. Like old friends, even though I know the stories inside out, just to hear them say it again brings out an image, or a thought I had not seen before. By having the rest of the book in my mind because of many re-readings, I can often put together thoughts that could not have occurred to me on the first reading.

Perhaps I should take a cue from Jo Walton and try re-reading books I have abandoned.

Which books do you like well enough to re-read?

Thanks for reading,

Peter

http://peterkazmaier.com

Zimbabwe is a country that has suffered from political turmoil, financial and agricultural devastation, and a huge humanitarian calamity because of AIDS. There are many families in Zimbabwe where a child is the supposed bread winner for his younger siblings. Zanele is an organization that has taken positive steps to help alleviate this monstrous problem. The organization has adopted two villages (Nheme Village (Zaka District, Masvingo Province) and the Makwokwe Village (Gwanda District, Matabeleland Province)) and services the needs of orphans in those villages – a small but tangible step to help with a gigantic problem.

This Saturday at 6:30 pm (March 27, 2010)  Zanele Poverty Relief Effort (ZPRE) is sponsoring a dinner/dance in Concord, Ontario (near Toronto) to raise money for this effort. Here are the details.

ZPRE’s 3rd Annual Dinner Dance will be held at at Le Parc, Concord on March 27, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. Le Parc is located at 20 North Rivermede Rd, Concord (Vaughan) and the tickets are $65.00 per person. Funds raised will support ZPRE’s programs in Zimbabwe.

As part of the fundraising effort at the event  The Halcyon Dislocation will be selling at the regular price with 50% of the proceeds going to Zanele. So if you are able to help out by attending this dinner and dance I’d be grateful. If you could also buy a book that would be even better.

Thanks for reading,

Peter

http://peterkazmaier.com/

The Halcyon Dislocation has been thoughtfully reviewed by  Curious Presbyterian. Here is one of his quotes that summarizes the review.

‘This novel deals with important issues for older teens and undergrads. The Christian message is clear and unambiguous, and the author avoids anything graphic or explicit. Though a bit rough around the edges, with too much “show” and not enough “tell”, it is well enough written to be recommended to those who enjoy science fiction.’

Thanks for reading,

Peter

http://peterkazmaier.com/

Later tonight we’ll find out if Avatar is selected by the Motion Picture Academy for the award of Best Picture. I had a chance to see Avatar in 3D a few weeks ago and I would love to see it again in the IMAX format (although the IMAX versions still seems to be sold out in my area). So what did I think of the movie and should it be selected as Best Picture? continue reading…

I have had some difficulty classifying The Halcyon Dislocation as Science Fiction or as Fantasy. On the one hand the University of Halcyon, consistent with a Science Fiction story, comes from a time and technological culture that’s slightly in advance of our own, yet when the people of the university are dislocated to a new world, they encounter inhabitants which are much more reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings than they are of Star Trek. Consistent with this ambiguity I characterize The Halcyon Dislocation as SciFi/Fantasy on my Facebook page.

I asked a friend of mine who is an avid reader of both genres “What is the difference between Fantasy and Science Fiction?” He answered: “Science Fiction talks about things that could happen. Fantasy does not. That’s why I like Science Fiction better.” So is this really the essential difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy? continue reading…

Chery and Laurens Van Der Mark and their family are missionaries living and working in Haiti for Mission of Hope: Haiti under the auspices of Feed the Children Canada. Seeing the pictures of the destruction of Port au Prince on television have been heart rending, but reading the first hand account of the earthquake and the devastation through the eyes of a front line participant brought this tragedy home to me more than the television accounts ever could. In the hope that you’ll take the time to read the full blog by Cheryl Van Der Mark, I’ve posted a few quotes here.

First the earthquake itself …

“I remember seeing the concrete walls moving violently in a wave like at a wave pool. One to my right, one to my left and then one in front of me moving in a different direction. I also remember the ceiling was moving in a wave above me. The floor beneath my feet did not feel attached to me.”

The Van Der Marks live on a hill outside of the city. This is what Cheryl saw a few minutes after the quake.

“Then I stood up and turned around……From our rural hill not far from Port au Prince, we have a [view] of the whole city. As I looked out towards the city and the ocean, that is when I realized what had just happened. The entire city went up in dust. One huge even dust cloud arose from the entire massive city. It was like a bomb had gone off and it was the smoke rising.”

Then the injured began arriving to their small clinic.

“That may have been enough to deal with except that we realized that we had a team of 53 Canadian’s visiting on a short term mission trip. We went into leader mode. Laurens went to check on a few things and I gathered the team. Grant went to get the ambulance and I gathered the visiting nurses and doc. We jumped into the ambulance and headed down to the clinic. Grant took the team in and I rushed to the front gate of our mission. By the time I got there, the injured started arriving. They came in tap tap (pick up truck taxi) after tap tap. Children, woman and men.

Their arms and legs were crushed, their bones sticking out of their bodies, their heads gashed open. Some crying in pain, some barely alive. 5, 6, 7, people per truck.

After a few minutes I left the gate and security took over letting them all in and I rushed back to the hospital. For the next 33 hours straight we worked on the traumatic cases that lie before us. It looked like war. We did not know the integrity of the clinic yet so we could not go inside. The aftershocks started to come and were frequent but less in intensity. We had to get supplies in side but ran back out every aftershock we got. The injured were lying all over our outside walk way. Grant, our visiting nurses and myself worked on triaging the worst patients. We are not a full service hospital, we are just a clinic…..we started to get reports that the biggest hospital in PAP, General hospital had crashed down, Doctors without Borders had crashed (the only 2 main ER’s in the entire city!). We got further reports that other hospitals were down. We started to realize, that we were all there was for miles and miles and miles.”

The flow of wounded only stopped when the taxis ran out of diesel.

“We went home and slept 6 hours. Then opened the clinic again. We worked another 10 hours, seeing the same things. Finally it stopped. There were no more tap tap’s running as there was no more diesel for their vehicles.”

What does one say as a Christian as one looks at this tragedy?

“Rachel (missionary here) and I were just saying today that if someone had told us that this is what we would have had to do this week prior to this event, we would have “quit”. We would have said no way God! I can’t do all of that. We would have underestimated our abilities based on what we were comfortable with. We have learned that God knows more than we do, that He knows what we can handle and He has more faith in us than we have in ourselves.”

I hope you have the time to read Cheryl’s full blog. If you would like to donate you can do so on her blogsite or through Feed the Children Canada.

Thanks for reading,

Peter