One of the little joys of attending a convention is that I always learn something brand new to me. This year at FOGCon, on the Archive panel, I learned about Portolan maps. First drawn in the 13th century, portolan maps existed primarily to guide pilots safely from one harbor to another. Thus, they rarely mapped the interior of a landmass.
The idea of maps designed to guide explorers to a safe harbor caught the imagination of Mary Ann Mohanraj, who was one the Guests of Honor. She had already founded the Speculative Fiction Foundation. Having discovered portolan maps, she imagined a Portolan Project, designed to help emerging writers in the speculative fiction field navigate.
In the project’s own words:
“We’re also interviewing emerging writers from across the planet, developing a better understanding of the international speculative fiction landscape, and the challenges and opportunities for writers in both independent and traditional publishing. We have academics helping us build a searchable database of speculative literature, to make it much easier to find stories that are relevant to you and your own work. ”
This looks like a cool project. Mohanraj is a professor, a writer and an editor, and most recently published a beautiful Sri Lankan cookbook. Here is a link to the Speculative Fiction Foundation, and the Portolan Project.