Peter Kazmaier

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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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/

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

I’m reading a thought-provoking book by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary entitled The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul. In Chapter 4, as part of a thoroughly referenced review of neuroscientist’s theories about Religious, Spiritual, amd Mystical Experiences (RSMEs) the authors discuss the interesting case of Michael Persinger’s “God Helmet.” (continue reading…)

For the first time since I started this blog, I decided I need a new layout and color scheme. This recently published WordPress theme EOS caught my eye. It’s quite new and currently has some bugs (e.g. long titles run out of the title field).

Let me know whether you like it better than the old K2 theme which I have used for quite a while.

Thanks for reading,

~Peter

Why do so many people read Science Fiction? Why do so many more watch movies with Science Fiction themes. This was discussed on a TV Special called Listen Up TV on Global Television yesterday. You can also see it online .

One of the key conclusions was that Science Fiction encourages a sense of wonder and even of hope.

At the end of the special, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Lorna Dueck about The Halcyon Dislocation and my motivation for writing it.

Thanks for reading,

~Peter

Links to other Science Fiction Blogs cited in this episode:

• Gabriel McGee – SF Gospel Blog
• John C. Wright – John C. Wright’s  Live Journal
• Robert Sawyer – Robert Sawyer’s SF Blog

It was about a year ago when a friend of mine asked what I thought of Peter Joseph’s movie, Zeitgeist . Zeitgeist is a movie that has been viewed by more than 50 M viewers and has propagated by viral marketing (i.e. one viewer after another emails the link to their friends because of its startling and controversial message). The movie itself is divided into three sections. The first part claims that Jesus and his life is a “recent” version of an astro-theological myth that has been replayed many, many times in the past. The second part claims that the 9/11 catastrophe was orchestrated by the United States, and the final portion makes claims about an international banking conspiracy.

Now let me say at the outset that I watched part 2 only once and never watched part 3, so I have no comments to make on these. So what are my thoughts on part 1?

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One of my passions is to develop Erasable Paper, a paper that can be rewritten again and again. and reduce the amount of paper we discard. Recently a Youtube video of me demonstrating Erasable Paper was uploaded. If you are interested, you might check it out.

Thanks for reading,

~Peter

I recently received a request from Essence Publishing to participate in their newsletter. They asked the following questions:

1) What challenges did you encounter in the writing process?
2) What has the reaction been like to your book(s)?
3) Do you have plans for future books?
4) What has been the most exciting part of your publishing experience?
5) What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?
6) Do you have any advice for first-time authors?

If you would like to see how I answered them, please read on. (continue reading…)

In the midst of our Canadian orgy of consumerism mingled with strident voices working to overwhelm and remove all vestiges of the religious and Christian significance of Christmas, it is difficult to filter all of that blare out and recovery the historical and spiritual meaning of this Christian event.

For me this process of filtering and recovery was helped by a wonderful article written by freelance journalist Patricia Paddey. (continue reading…)