Waterloo Setting a "No-Brainer"

That's the headline for the article about me, my novel Wake, and why it's set in Waterloo, Ontario, that appears in today's edition of The Waterloo Region Record, the major daily newspaper serviing the twin cities of Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario.

And, indeed, it really was a no-brainer: people would accuse me of making up a Canadian city that was home to the world's top physics think tank (Perimeter Institute), a place that Stephen Hawking is coming to visit; that is home to the makers of the one device the President of the United States has said he can't live without (Research in Motion, who make the BlackBerry); that has one of the world's leading facilities for research into quantum computing (the Institute for Quantum Computing); that has a major Google facility, that has a world-class math department (at the University of Waterloo); that has a major public-policy think tank, and is surrounded by Mennonites who reject high technology. I literally could not have made this place up -- but it really exists, in all its myriad wonder, just a hour west of where I live now, and it was my home in the summer of 1980.

You can read the whole article (by Brent Davis) right here.

And don't forget to come see me in Waterloo tomorrow night!

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