Robert J. Sawyer

I was talking with my friend Virginia O'Dine just a couple of days ago about coincidences (after she'd watched Supernatural Investigator, which I host on Vision TV; this week's topic -- people who had dreams that seemed to presage the events of 9/11 -- we both agreed could be chalked up to coincidences).

Well, how's this for a bunch of cool coincidences?

Right now, today, they're filming the pilot for a TV series based on my novel Flash Forward, which is set at CERN, the European particle-physics lab.

Right now, today, I received the very first copy of my new novel Wake, about the future of the World Wide Web, which got its start at CERN.

Right now, today, Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the Web, is back at CERN for the celebration of the 20th anniversary of him drafting the idea for the Web.

And right now, today, he made this observation (as paraphrased by Scientific American Online), which is pretty much the starting point I took in writing Wake:

Berners-Lee pointed out that there are 100 billion Web pages today, roughly the same number of neurons in the human brain. The difference, he added, is that the number of pages grows as the Web ages, whereas the number of nerve cells shrinks as we get on in years.

Cool! :)

More on Sir Tim's CERN homecoming is here.