The World of Gerard van Oost and Oludara

Archive for 2011

Worldcon 2011 schedule

And so here goes my Worldcon schedule, in all its glory 🙂  Hope to see many of your there!

Wendesday, August 17

14:00 – 15:00, Adventures in Gaming: The Business of Game Design (Panel), A02 (RSCC)
The business and production aspects of gaming, both board and video games.
Maurine “Mo” Starkey (M), Jennifer Brozek, Christopher Kastensmidt, Mur Lafferty ,  Tom Lehmann

16:00 – 17:00, Interview with Aliette de Bodard (Interview),  A09 (RSCC)
Aliette de Bodard, Christopher Kastensmidt (M)
This should be fun.  I’ll be conducting an interview with my good friend Aliette.

Thursday, August 18

13:30 – 14:00, Reading: Christopher Kastensmidt (Reading), A15  (RSCC)
At this one, I’ll be reading from an upcoming The Elephant and Macaw Banner story.  Hear it here first!

14:30 – 16:00, SFWA Dealer’s Table (Hall 2)
I’m volunteering at the SFWA table most of Thursday afternoon.  This is a great chance to stop by for a chat, and to learn more about the SFWA.

Friday, August 19

16:00 – 17:00, F*** Your Knight and the Horse He Rode in on: Fantasy Series not Based on Medieval European Culture (Panel), A10  (RSCC)
An irreverent panel where young writers challenge the predominance of medieval-inspired settings in fantasy.
Christopher Kastensmidt (M), Saladin Ahmed, Aliette de Bodard, Ken Scholes
This was a panel I invented and it’s going to be a blast.  A lot of fun, talented panelists and a tongue-in-cheek subject.  This is my “DON’T MISS” panel of the week.

Saturday, August 20

10:00 – 11:00, Life Lived in the Extremes (Panel), A04 (RSCC)
What is it like to live in “extreme  environments” like Alaska?  in Viet Nam?  in Brazil?  in the desert?  in tornado alley?
Christopher Kastensmidt (M), Beth Meacham, Robert Reed

12:00 – 13:00, Practical Considerations in Game Design (Panel),  A13 (RSCC)
This panel addresses game design issues for the broad spectrum of game types.
Dave Howell (M), Jennifer Brozek, Christopher Kastensmidt, Gregory A. Wilson, Tom Lehmann, Steve Jackson
This is going to be another great panel with an all-star cast of game designers.  And me.

17:00 – 18:00, Autograph session,  (Hall 2)
I will be sitting all alone in a corner of Hall 2, watching fans queue up for autographs of other authors.  Please drop by and say hello!

Sunday August 21

Sun 11:00 – 12:00, Revolutions in SF, Fantasy, and the Real World (Panel), A03 (RSCC)
Revolutions vary from the disparate traditional tropes of the French and American revolutions to non-violent revolution (Gandhi’s India),   The entrenched power may be colonial, class-based, or simply authoritarian.  How well does SF & F represent the ideals and ambiguities of revolution, the need to rebuild, and the cultural stresses that result.
Christopher Kastensmidt (M), Bradford Lyau, Walter Jon Williams, Nick Mamatas

The complete Worldcon schedule can be found in PDF format here.

A searchable database of Worldcon programming can be found here.

Two weeks, three events

I have a long writer’s journey ahead…in three acts.  Starting on August 12th, I will participate in three major literary events during a two-week period.  The events include Fantasticon (Sao Paulo, Brazil), Worldcon (Reno, Nevada), and the Jornada Nacional de Literatura (Passo Fundo, Brazil).

During those two weeks, I’ll travel over 15,000 miles by plane, and another 400 by car.  I’ll appear on seven panels, give eleven lectures, participate in four autograph sessions, give one reading, and have at least one interview.  At the Jornada alone, I’ll speak to over 12.000 people.  At the other events, hundreds more.

And I’m looking forward to every minute of it.  Worldcon and Fantasticon are two events I’ve done before, and I enjoy them both immensely.  They are a chance to catch up with dozens of friends from the industry.  The Jornada invite is a once-in-a-lifetime honor.  It is South America’s largest “Literary Journey”, one of the largest events of its type in the world.  It occurs only once every two years, and there are so few authors invited that they don’t tend to repeat very often.

These are two weeks that could change my life, and give me a chance to change in some small way the lives of many others.  For that I’m enormously greatful.  I hope I can live up to the faith the organizers of these events have put in me.

I’ll be posting the agendas shortly.  Fantasticon and the Jornada I’ll put on the Portuguese site, and Worldcon on the English website.

And I hope to see some of you there!

Fast Forward interview

Here’s a short interview I did with Mike Zipser from Fast Forward right before the Nebulas:

This interview never appeared on the show, it was done during the Fast Forward interviewing workshop.  In it, we discuss “The Fortuitous Meeting”, The Elephant and Macaw Banner series, and how my work with video games has influenced my writing.

Many thanks to Fast Forward for the workshop and for letting me put this online!

Madre de Dios shipwreck, The

In “The Fortuitous Meeting”, Piraju tells Gerard:

“I am called Piraju, but long ago I was known as Miguel.  I was a sailor on the Spanish carrack Madre de Dios, which shipwrecked here in the Bay of All Saints in 1535. Most who survived the wreck were killed by the Indians, but some twenty of us were taken prisoner, to be used in one of their cannibalistic feasts. Just as they prepared to cook us, Caramuru arrived and convinced them to set us free. Most of my shipmates eventually returned to Spain, but Caramuru’s daughters with the Indian princess Paraguacu were the most beautiful women I had ever laid eyes on, so I convinced one of them to marry me and I joined the tribe.”

The carrack Madre de Dios did indeed shipwreck off the coast of Brazil in 1535, on the island of Boipeba.  Over 100 of the 110 sailors made it to shore, but most of them were massacred by Tumpinambá natives.  Seventeen escaped on on a small boat to the nearby Tinharé Island.  There they were captured by other natives and would have been slain if not for the arrival of the famous Caramuru, who convinced the natives to let them go.

Shipwreck by Joseph Vernet

A famous legend arose from this event, that Caramuru went seeking the survivors because his wife Paraguaçu dreamt of a shipwreck.  In her vision, she saw a shipwreck of many men, dead or exhausted, and among them a single woman carrying a child.  Caramuru discovered the shipwreck and found only men, but inside the wreckage he recovered a statue of the Virgin Mary with child, the very own “Madre de Dios” his wife had seen in her vision.

Painting by Manuel Lopes Rodrigues representing Paraguaçu’s vision

Whatever the case, Caramuru rescued the survivors, and while most returned to Spain, four of them remained to live with him and his tribe in Bahia.  The Holy Roman Emporer Charles V wrote a letter to Caramuru thanking him for the aid given to the survivors.