Robert J. Sawyer

Morley Walker, the long-time books editor of The Winnipeg Free Press, has a major, lengthy profile of Robert J. Sawyer on page 1 of today's (Thursday, May 14, 2009) Entertainment section.

(The Free Press, a major Canadian daily newspaper, is the largest-circulation paper in Manitoba.)

You can read it online right here.

An excerpt:

Robert J. Sawyer [is] Canada's most successful science-fiction author. In the last decade, as his own career has exploded, Sawyer has become one of Canada's go-to guys for science explanations and prognostications.

As the author of novels that synthesize and dramatize the latest scientific thinking, he is often called Canada's answer to Michael Crichton, the late American author of such books as Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain.

"I like that analogy, except for one thing," Sawyer says. "Crichton had a pessimistic view of science and technology. I am very pro-science."

Winnipeg novelist David Annandale praises Sawyer for creating engaging characters and setting them in fast-paced narrative that contains accessible scientific speculation.

"He has, I think, one of these enthusiasms for science that is genuinely joyful," says Annandale, who teaches English and film at the University of Manitoba.

"And this translates into a drive to pass on to the reader a similar passion."

The article ends with me saying: "I love my job. In the best atheist sense of the word, I feel blessed."

And then there's the sidebar, which says:

Close Encounters of the Sawyer Kind

Robert J. Sawyer was born April 29, 1960, in Ottawa. Raised in Toronto, he resides in Mississauga with his wife, poet Carolyn Clink.

In the last 20 years, he has sold 20 science-fiction novels to U.S. publishers, and his books have been translated into 14 languages.

He is one of only seven writers in history -- and the only Canadian -- to win all three of the world's top science-fiction awards for best novel of the year: the Hugo (in 2003 for Hominids), the Nebula (in 1996 for The Terminal Experiment), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (in 2006 for Wake).

He has also won a record 10 Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (Auroras), as well as an Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada.

He's also won the top science-fiction awards in China, France, Japan and Spain; in total he has received 41 national and international awards for his writing.

In 2008 was named one of the "30 most influential, innovative, and just plain powerful people in Canadian publishing" by Quill & Quire, the Canadian publishing trade journal.

He is "by any reckoning, among the most successful Canadian authors ever," according to Maclean's.

He has made almost 500 radio and TV appearances, including Canada AM, NPR's Science Friday, and Rivera Live with Geraldo Rivera.

His award-winning website,
sfwriter.com, was the world's first science-fiction author website and has been called "the best author's page on the Internet."

ABC-TV has just purchased 13 episodes of a new sci-fi series called Flash Forward, based on Sawyer's 1999 novel. It stars Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love) and John Cho (Star Trek).

May 2009 "Author of the Month" Robert J. Sawyer at the McNally Robinson store in Toronto; this photo by Carolyn Clink ran in the Winnipeg Free Press on May 14, 2009.