Robert J. Sawyer

Now, that's a review! The June 11, 2009, edition of FFWD (aka Fast Forward Weekly: Calgary's News and Entertainment Alternative) has a wonderful, lengthy review of my Wake by Hugh Graham. Here's the opening, a little piece from the middle, and the close:

I love the fact that Robert J. Sawyer is smarter than me. There is a breadth to his concepts and ideas in his latest novel, Wake, that is exhilarating, if not exhausting. In the hands of a less skilled and less focused author, it would be like tab-surfing Wikipedia. Wake, however, is an engrossing, fascinating and, yes, challenging novel to read.

Wake has more great and intriguing ideas, philosophies and concepts interwoven throughout the plot than should be allowed in a single novel.

Wake is founded on theories that communication, in any form, is not just a way of sharing information, but is the central construct for all education, for true emancipation as well as the vehicle of all empathy and understanding. This is why Sawyer's Wake succeeds; his unabashed optimism and hope for a shared future that is no longer bound and tethered by tyranny, petty opportunism and fear. "Communication," says Sawyer, "is about breaking down barriers." "(Nobel Peace Prize Winner, and former prime minister) Lester Pearson was my hero and we Canadians have a great history of mediating, of reaching across to grant greater understanding."

The whole review is online here (and its publication at this somewhat late date is tied into the fact that I'm appearing in Calgary this Saturday night at at the EDGE Publishing launch party, also covered by FFWD).