Thursday, April 30, 2009

SciFiDimensions podcasts Rob


The terrific online SF magazine SciFi Dimensions has a meaty podcast interview with Robert J. Sawyer right here. Among other things, we talk about my new novel Wake, the forthcoming Flash Forward TV series, and author Nick DiChario, whom I publish under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Digitial Barbarism


Just bought Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto by Mark Halperin and am very much looking forward to reading it. From the publisher:
Renowned novelist Mark Helprin offers a ringing Jeffersonian defense of private property in the age of digital culture, with its degradation of thought and language, and collectivist bias against the rights of individual creators. Mark Helprin anticipated that his 2007 New York Times op-ed piece about the extension of the term of copyright would be received quietly, if not altogether overlooked. Within a week, the article had accumulated 750,000 angry comments. He was shocked by the breathtaking sense of entitlement demonstrated by the commenters, and appalled by the breadth, speed, and illogic of their responses.

Helprin realized how drastically different this generation is from those before it. The Creative Commons movement and the copyright abolitionists, like the rest of their generation, were educated with a modern bias toward collaboration, which has led them to denigrate individual efforts and in turn fueled their sense of entitlement to the fruits of other people's labors. More important, their selfish desire to "stick it" to the greedy corporate interests who control the production and distribution of intellectual property undermines not just the possibility of an independent literary culture but threatens the future of civilization itself.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Jean Chrétien is on my flight!


How cool is that! Former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien is on the same plane as me; we're both flying to Toronto from Ottawa (and I'm finally getting home after 18 days on the road). Tonight: the big launch party for Wake at Dominion on Queen, 500 Queen Street East, Toronto, at 7:00 p.m.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Toronto Hydra founded 25 years ago today


One could argue that twenty-five years ago today, the modern Canadian science-fiction movement was born.

On April 29, 1984, Judith Merril invited all the "good science fiction" heads she could find to the founding meeting of Toronto Hydra, a social networking group for science-fiction professionals. That predates the publication of the first Tesseracts anthology by some months, and the founding of SF Canada and On Spec by five years.

Among those attending that historic first meeting: John Robert Colombo, Phyllis Gotlieb, Terence M. Green, Robert J. Sawyer, and Andrew Weiner.

I was the coordinator of Toronto Hydra for the next eight years, until October 1992. More of the group's history is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Job opening: Rob's Canadian editor

Laura Shin, my wonderful editor at Penguin Canada, has moved on to greener pastures. Penguin is now looking for her replacement: a genre-fiction editor who can, among other things, specifically handle science fiction. Note: the deadline for applications is this Thursday.

Commissioning Editor
Penguin Group (Canada)

Location: Toronto, ON

Deadline for applicants: April 30, 2009

Date posted: April 20, 2009

Job description: Penguin Group (Canada) has an exciting permanent opportunity for a Commissioning Editor. This position will be located at the Penguin, Yonge & Eglinton office.

Job Summary:
Responsible for acquiring and developing new titles for the Canadian publishing program. The editor will be acquiring books in the following areas: crime, thrillers, mysteries, historical fiction, horror, fantasy, science fiction, and women's commercial fiction. He/she will work closely with the Rights and Contracts, Production, Marketing and Publicity, and Sales departments.

Major Responsibilities:
  • reviewing submissions from agents and individual authors;
  • commissioning books from writers already on our list and those not yet on our list;
  • presenting proposals to the editorial board;
  • working with production and marketing personnel to ensure that acquired titles meet profit and sales targets;
  • working with authors to ensure quality and timeliness of manuscripts;
  • seeing projects through the editorial, production, and marketing phases of the publishing process.
  • Should acquire a minimum of 12 books per year;
  • Should manage the publication of approximately 15 titles per year.

Qualifications:
  • Strong academic background (preferably a Master's degree in a humanities subject); university degree or equivalent required.
  • Several years of experience in publishing, specifically working in Editorial.
  • Proven track record of acquiring and editing books in the assigned areas of specialization.

Interested parties are invited to submit a resume and cover letter to:

Paula Hunter, Human Resources Consultant
Pearson Canada
26 Prince Andrew Place
Don Mills, Ontario, M3C 2T8
Fax: (416) 447-0598
paula.hunter@pearsoncanada.com

Applications will be received until April 30, 2009.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Monday, April 27, 2009

Ottawa Citizen on Wake

The Ottawa Citizen -- the largest circulation newspaper in Canada's capital city -- has not one but two articles about Wake today:

Future Looks Bright to Sci-Fi Writer Sawyer

Web and Brain Merge in Profound Vision of Future

Woohoo!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Prisoners of Gravity -- 15 years on


Fifteen years ago today, "Evolution," the final episode of Prisoners of Gravity, the wonderful program about science fiction and comic books produced by TVOntario, aired.

PoG starred Rick Green, and was produced by Gregg Thurlbeck and Mark Askwith, ably assisted by Shirley Brady, and I was fortunate enough to be the most frequent guest in the program's history.

The show ran for five seasons and 139 episodes. A brief history of this landmark series and my involvement with it is here.


Pictured: Rick Green (above) and Robert J. Sawyer (below) on Prisoners of Gravity's "Aritifical Intelligence" episode

The Robert J. Sawyer web site

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Sunday, April 26, 2009

Wake events in Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto this week


Montreal Reading!
Librairie Paragraphe Bookstore
2220 McGill College Avenue
Montreal, Quebec
Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 6:30 p.m.
paragraphbooks.com

Ottawa Book Launch Party!
The Clock Tower Brew Pub
575 Bank Street
Ottawa, Ontario
Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 7:30 p.m. (not 7:00 p.m., as previously announced)
Hosted by Perfect Books
clocktower.ca
perfectbooks.ca/index.html

Toronto Book Launch Party!
Dominion on Queen (pub)
500 Queen Street East
Toronto, Ontario
Thursday, April 30, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Hosted by Bakka Phoenix Books
dominiononqueen.com
bakkaphoenixbooks.com

All events are free and open to the public, and no invitations are required. Come on out!
"Sawyer continues to push the boundaries with his stories of the future made credible. His erudition, eclecticism, and masterly storytelling make this trilogy opener a choice selection." --Library Journal

More about Wake
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Friday, April 24, 2009

According to The Hollywood Reporter ...


I neither confirm nor deny this rumour, but The Hollywood Reporter had an article yesterday that said this:
ABC is so excited about its new project Flash Forward the network has plans to start marketing the show before its even officially ordered a series.

When viewers tune in for the 100th episode of Lost next week [on Wednesday, April 29, 2009], they will be served an extra dose of mystery. Sources said ABC will launch a stealth promo campaign for Flash during the episode ...

The mystery [ad] spots will in fact be for Flash ... Promoting a new show for next season in April -- a program that hasn't even been formerly announced yet -- is extremely unusual.

Based on Robert J. Sawyer's sci-fi novel, Flash starring Joseph Fiennes, chronicles the aftermath of a global event in which everyone in the world blacks out for 2 minutes, 17 seconds and has a mysterious vision of the future.
The full Hollywood Reporter article is here.

Note to Canadian viewers: remember to watch a US feed for Lost (from an American ABC affiliate), not the Canadian broadcast by CTV, or you won't see the Flash Forward promo(s) ... if, in fact, there are any.

Oh, and in the nice coincidence department, Lost's hundredth episode airs on April 29 -- which happens to be my birthday. :)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Audible.com interviews Rob


Right here.

And all my Audible audiobooks are here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Pictures from Vancouver and Calgary

Photos from the book tour stops in Vancouver (at White Dwarf) and Calgary (at Sentry Box:


A packed house at White Dwarf. Photo by kc dyer.


Part of the crowd at Sentry Box. Calgary photos by Kirstin Morrell.


The shirt I'm wearing depicts the famous S. Harris cartoon that figures a couple of times in the plot of Wake, including its first appearance here:
Kuroda had brought his notebook computer with him. Caitlin, curious, ran her hands over it. When closed it was as thin as the latest MacBook Air, but when she opened it she was astonished to feel full-height keycaps rise up from what had been a flat keyboard. She'd read that lots of technology appears in Japan months or even years before becoming available in North America, but this was the first real proof she'd had that that was true. "So, what's on your desktop?" she asked.

"My wallpaper, you mean?"

"Yes." Caitlin had had her mom put a photo of Schrödinger -- the cat, not the physicist -- on as her wallpaper; even though she couldn't see it, it made her happy knowing it was there.

"It's my favorite cartoon, actually. It's by a fellow named Sidney Harris. He specializes in science cartoons -- you see his stuff taped to office doors in university science departments all over the world. Anyway, this one shows two scientists standing in front of a blackboard and on the left there are a whole bunch of equations and formulas, and on the right there's more of the same, but in the middle it just says, `Then a miracle occurs ...' And one of the scientists says to the other, `I think you should be more explicit here in step two.'"
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Edmonton Journal profiles RJS

And a very nice piece it is, too. You can read it here (as reprinted in The Ottawa Citizen).

(The Edmonton Journal is the major daily newspaper in the capital city of the province of Alberta.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Vancouver was great

The event at White Dwarf was packed, and I believe they sold out of Wake hardcovers. And, amazingly, some old friends from public school back in Toronto showed up. Cool!

Bonnie Jean Mah and her infant son Jason were my escorts in Vancouver, and we were joined for dinner beforehand by Rhea Rose (Bonnie was my writing student at Banff in 2000; Rhea was my student in Calgary in 2003).

I'm at the Vancouver airport right now, waiting for my flight to Calgary; I sign tonight at Sentry Box there.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Flash Forward day!


Today is Flash Forward day!

My 1999 novel Flash Forward begins thus:
Chapter 1

Day One: Tuesday, April 21, 2009

A slice through spacetime ...

The control building for CERN's Large Hadron Collider was new: it had been authorized in A.D. 2004 and completed in 2006. The building enclosed a central courtyard, inevitably named "the nucleus." Every office had a window either facing in toward the nucleus or out toward the rest of CERN's sprawling campus. The quadrangle surrounding the nucleus was two stories tall, but the main elevators had four stops: the two above-ground levels; the basement, which housed boiler rooms and storage; and the minus-one-hundred-meter level, which exited onto a staging area for the monorail used to travel along the twenty-seven-kilometer circumference of the collider tunnel. The tunnel itself ran under farmers' fields, the outskirts of the Geneva airport, and the foothills of the Jura mountains ...
In my novel, on this day, the Large Hadron Collider is turned on for the first time, and everyone on Earth blacks out for a period of two minutes; during that time, people foresee their futures.

One thing I couldn't foresee a decade ago when the book came out was that ABC was going to make a TV series pilot based on my novel ... but they have, and it's great.

Another thing I couldn't foresee was that Flash Forward would still be in print (and still selling well) a decade later.

Flash Forward won Canada's Aurora Award as well as Spain's Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción (the world's largest cash prize for science fiction writing), and it got me my first-ever starred review (denoting a book of exceptional merit -- an honor also bestowed on my most recent novel, Wake ) in Publishers Weekly (in the April 19, 1999, edition), which called the novel "A creative, soul-searching exploration of fate, free will, and the nature of the universe," and said, "Sawyer shifts seamlessly among the perspectives of his many characters, anchoring the story in small details. This first-rate, philosophical journey, a terrific example of idea-driven SF, should have wide appeal."

And, well, I guess it has. :)

Happy Flash Forward day! My all our futures turn out to be bright!

You can read more about Flash Forward (including the rest of the opening chapters) here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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"Like Oliver Sacks writing science fiction"

Bookspot Central reviews Wake, saying in part:
A very entertaining read. Sawyer has written a pretty fast paced novel with WWW: Wake. Deceptively so in fact. Although it does not slow the story down he has packed the text with references to developments in information technology, mathematics, physics, linguistics and a number of other fields. He does so without the reader having to understand every detail of the science he describes, the general idea is usually enough, but all this scientific and technical detail does create a second layer into this novel. Parts of the novel read like Oliver Sacks writing science fiction.
You can read the whole review here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Bitten by Books reviews Wake

Bitten By Books reviews Wake today:
WWW: Wake provides a refreshing intersect of science and real life, of consciousness and perception, of imagination and potential. Sawyer puts the science back in science fiction and does it with panache rather than with a sledge hammer.
You can read the whole review here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Monday, April 20, 2009

From their mouth to God's ears


From The Hollywood Reporter:
Pilots building early buzz
ABC's sci-fi drama 'Flash Forward' among the hot projects

By Nellie Andreeva

April 19, 2009, 11:00 PM ET
Although most pilots -- especially on the comedy side -- are yet to be completed, several projects are enjoying early buzz based on screenings, testings, dailies or the strength of their script and cast.

ABC's sci-fi drama "Flash Forward" starring Joseph Fiennes is a lock for a series order.
The article is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Sunday, April 19, 2009

Vancouver on Monday! Calgary on Tuesday!

Wake book tour events:

# White Dwarf Books
3715 West 10th Avenue
Vancouver, British Columbia
Monday, April 20, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
http://www.deadwrite.com/wd.html

# Sentry Box
1835-10th Ave SW
Calgary, Alberta
Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
www.sentrybox.com

"Sawyer continues to push the boundaries with his stories of the future made credible. His erudition, eclecticism, and masterly storytelling make this trilogy opener a choice selection." -- Library Journal

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Wake a "top choice" for young-adult readers

WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer - A Flamingnet Top Choice Award Book
Cool! See here and here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Xanadu Las Vegas is rockin'


Xanadu Las Vegas, the convention I'm Author Guest of Honor at right now, has been great fun so far. Today I gave a talk on writing, attended talks by Chase Masterson (above) and Lawrence Montaigne (below, with me and Carolyn), watched Chase's excellent new movie Yesterday was a Lie, and had a wonderful three-hour Chinese dinner with Chase, James Kerwin (who wrote and directed the movie), Bob Patula (a programmer who wrote the math engine for the Excel spreadsheet), and Bob's wife Melanie -- a wonderful time.

And yesterday, we hung out a lot with Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin, the wonderful team of writing brothers, authors of The Unincorporated Man, just out from Tor.

(Chase played Leeta the Bajoran on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Lawrence was Stonn the Vulcan in the classic Star Trek episode "Amok Time.")


The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Saturday, April 18, 2009

The National Post on Wake


The National Post -- a major Canadian daily newspaper distributed coast-to-coast and headquartered in Calgary -- has a wonderful review by Michel Basilières of my novel Wake today, which says in part:
Sawyer is one of the most successful Canadian writers ever. He has won himself an international readership by reinvigorating the traditions of "hard" science fiction, following the path of such writers as Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein in his bold speculations from pure science.

[In Wake,] he has marshalled a daunting quantity of fact and theory from across scientific disciplines and applied them to a contemporary landscape -- with due regard to cultural and political differences, pop culture, history, economics, adolescent yearnings, personal ambition and human frailty. He paints a complete portrait of a blind teenage girl, and imagines in detail -- from scratch -- the inside of a new being.

Clashes between personalities and ideologies fuel the plot, but they're not what the book is about. It's about how cool science is.

Almost alone among Canadian writers, he tackles the most fundamental questions of who we are and where we might be going -- while illuminating where we are now.
You can read the whole review here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Friday, April 17, 2009

When I was twelve, I was blind for six days.

So begins my essay "Seeing the Web," now available at the Penguin USA website, as part of their promotion for my new novel Wake. Check it out.


The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Blog "Science Fiction and Other Oddysseys" interviews Rob


The blog "Science Fiction and Other Oddysseys" just posted a nice interview with me conducted by Ann Wilkes. You can read it here, and more about my novel Wake, which I discuss in the interview (among other things) here.

Pictured: Robert J. Sawyer and Ann Wilkes at Rob's signing at Borderlands Books in San Francisco on Monday, April 13, 2009.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Important update on Waterloo Wake event

An important update on the Robert J. Sawyer event for Wake at the Waterloo Entertainment Centre in Waterloo, Ontario, on Thursday, May 21, at 7:30. I just learned this myself (I was not involved in the discussions between the bookseller and my publisher):

Waterloo's venerable bookshop Words Worth Books is sponsoring this event, and paying the rental fee on the Waterloo Entertainment Centre.

The bookstore's policy is to let people in for free who have bought the book (either at the start of the event, or in advance at Words Worth), and to charge $10 to those who just want to attend but not buy the book from Words Worth. (As you can see, they do this for most of their out-of-store events.)

I apologize for the inconvenience, and hope people will still come out for what I'm sure will be a great evening.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Library Journal loves Wake

Library Journal has weighed in on my novel Wake:
Sf veteran Sawyer (Hominids) continues to push the boundaries with his stories of the future made credible. His erudition, eclecticism, and masterly storytelling make this trilogy opener a choice selection.
W00t!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Thursday, April 16, 2009

SFFaudio reviews Wake

And a lovely review it is, too. Of course, they're reviewing the unabridged audio book version from Audible.com, but the review says lots of nice things about the novel. Particularly gratifying to me is this:
Is Caitlin’s blindness realistic? This is where my own personal experience comes into play. I’ve been legally blind since birth, although since I have some residual vision the comparison isn’t exact. Even so, it’s evident to me that Robert J. Sawyer has done his homework in this regard. Caitlin’s life is replete with all the trappings associated with blind life: white canes (which I just traded in for my first guide dog), text-to-speech screen-reading software, and braille displays. More importantly, Sawyer understands how the world is conceived and constructed for those of us with either no vision or limited vision.
And the reviewer (Seth Wilson) likes my characters, too:
Wake strikes a good balance between the cerebral and the emotional. [Caitlin] Decter is a complex and ultimately likable character. ... The supporting cast of characters in Caitlin’s life are just as three-dimensional. ... The interactions and conflicts between the characters are subtly portrayed, lending Wake a sense of realism despite the bizarre goings-on behind Caitlin’s eyes.
You can read the whole review here, and get Audible.com's version of the novel here, and learn more about my novel here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Penn & Teller

Just saw Penn & Teller's live show here in Las Vegas. It was awesome -- funny, amazing, thought-provoking. Nice to have a little break before the truly hectic part of the book tour begins!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Next tour stops: Vancouver and Calgary


Next up on the book tour for Wake: stops in Vancouver and Calgary. Come on out and say hello!
  • Bookstore Signing
    White Dwarf Books
    3715 West 10th Avenue
    Vancouver, British Columbia
    Monday, April 20, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
    http://www.deadwrite.com/wd.html

  • Bookstore Signing
    Sentry Box
    1835-10th Ave SW
    Calgary, Alberta
    Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
    www.sentrybox.com

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site


Ottawa book-tour event: time change!

Uh-oh! The time for my event in Ottawa on April 29, 2009, is 7:30 p.m., not 7:00 p.m. as previously announced. Sorry about the confusion!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Autographed copies of Wake at Mysterious Galaxy soon

Mysterious Galaxy, the wonderful science-fiction specialty bookstore in San Diego, California, shipped a carton of 24 copies of my Wake to Borderlands Books in San Francisco, where I was reading on Monday, April 13, and I autographed them all, so you'll soon be able to get signed copies there, too. Yay!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site


SLACking off near San Francisco


I took a little time for sight-seeing in San Francisco, accompanied by my dear friend Kaye Mason, Ph.D., who works at EA. We had private behind-the-scenes tours at the American Academy of Ophthalmology's Museum of Vision, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and the Googleplex -- I love my job!

I've now arrived in Las Vegas (where the weather is cold and rainy -- dang!). Carolyn has joined me here. In two days the convention Xanadu Las Vegas, at which I'm Author Guest of Honor begins, but until then, we're chillaxing. Tonight we go see Penn & Teller, and tomorrow we go see comedian Louie Anderson.

Pictured, left to right: Kelen Tuttle and Daniel Ratner of SLAC; Dr. Kaye Mason; the tunnel over Kelen's shoulder runs for two miles into the distance

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Borderlands signing rocked


My event at Borderlands Books went fabulously: big crowd, lots of books sold, and lots of fun. A special treat was that my cousin Eric Peterson came to the event.

Before my reading, I met a fellow named Sean, who seemed intrigued by my books. He bought a mass-market paperback of Calculating God -- used! But he gave me the 56 cents in royalties I would have earned if he'd bought it new -- two quarters, a nickel, and a penny. :)

It was also great meeting a young man named Don and his father; Don had never read until he'd discovered my books, starting with Starplex. It was very gratifying to meet someone who'd become a reader because of me!

I signed lots of stock of various titles at Borderlands, so you can still get an autographed copy of Wake or my other books if you stop by the store.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Sunday, April 12, 2009

Wake links



Print interviews with Rob about Wake:


Audio interviews with Rob about Wake:



The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Saturday, April 11, 2009

Rob interviewed by Peter Anthony Holder


Peter Anthony Holder hosts Holder Tonight on Montreal radio station CJAD-AM and Toronto radio station CFRB-AM. He had Robert J. Sawyer on this past Thursday, April 9, 2009, to talk about his new novel Wake. You can hear the whole half-hour interview right here (click to play; right click to download the MP3 file).

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Rob in San Francisco on Monday


Robert J. Sawyer will be reading and signing Wake at Borderlands Books in San Francisco this Monday, April 13, 2009, at 7:00 p.m.:

Borderlands Books
866 Valencia Street
San Francisco, California
Monday, April 13, 2009, 7:00 p.m.

Other Wake book-tour events

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site


Friday, April 10, 2009

WWW milestones

Yesterday, Wake started showing up in Canadian bookstores (and I myself saw the nice display of copies at the Indigo on Yonge Street just north of the 407 in Greater Toronto).

And I got to do something that's very special: I got to autograph the first copy of the finished book. I always annotate that copy ("First copy signed by the author"), and the one for Wake went to Kelly Smith, a friend from Willowdale Junior High. (It also got inscribed, "Thanks for the kiss all those years ago" -- but that's another story ...)

See, last night, a few of us who went to Willowdale Junior High or Northview Heights Secondary School got together at the Kelsey's restaurant next to that Indigo for a little reunion (made possible by the magic of Facebook). Kelly (as well as old friends Roberta Torkoff [now Roberta Blank] and Ginter Karosas) went off to the store during dinner to buy copies of Wake, which was very kind of them.

And today, right on the heels of Wake coming out, I finished my final revisions on Watch, the second volume in the WWW trilogy.

And that got done just in time for me to hit the road promoting Wake: in two days, I leave for San Francisco (and am reading and signing at Borderland Books there Monday night at 7:00 p.m.).

Whew!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Thursday, April 9, 2009

Rob the technothriller writer?

To my astonishment and delight, my Wake is the #1 "Technothriller" bestseller on Amazon.com:

(Edited at 12:05 a.m. on Friday 10 April 2009)

1. Wake by Robert J. Sawyer
2. State of the Union by Brad Thor
3. Daemon by Daniel Suarez
4. Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry
5. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
6. Vixen 03 by Clive Cussler
7. State of Fear by Michael Crichton
8. Death Match by Lincoln Child
9. Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy
10. Utopia by Lincoln Child

So -- w00t!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Wake at Bakka-Phoenix


First reported Canadian bookstore sighting of my new novel Wake was today, appropriately enough at Bakka-Phoenix, Toronto's SF specialty store. I used to work there in 1982, and the store is hosting the Toronto launch party for Wake on April 30 at the Dominion on Queen pub at 500 Queen Street East, at 7:00 p.m. (everyone is welcome!).

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Canadian SF writer John Mireau is podcasting his fiction

Check out John's podcast "Serving Worlds" here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site


The Page 69 Test on Wake


Marshal Zeringue's fascinating blog "The Page 69 Test" features Wake today. The idea is you flip to page 69 of a book, and discuss whether it's typical or not, and so on. Lots of fun.

Marshal also talks about Wake here and here.

(I also did "The Page 69 Test" for Rollback back in 2007.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Tor.com interviews RJS


Proving that there a great bunch of people, my previous publisher Tor.com has a wonderful, lengthy interview with me today about Wake, my new novel for Ace. The interview was conducted by the terrific John Klima, who is a Hugo finalist this year for his fanzine Electric Velocipede.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Nina Munteanu on my op-ed

On March 20, 2009, I had an op-ed piece in The Ottawa Citizen about the use of computers by children. Nina Munteanu -- always a fascinating blogger, as well as a very fine SF writer -- responds with some very interesting ruminations here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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When am I supposed to sleep?

Today started at midnight, of course -- and at 12:30 a.m., I was on the air, doing a live half-hour radio interview with Peter Anthony Holder, simultaneously on CJAD-AM in Montreal and CFRB-AM in Toronto.

Just eight hours later, I was back on the air again, this time for a full-hour on The Mike Shinabery Show on Alamagordo KRSY-AM. Now, yes, eight hours is more sleep than I normally need, but I can't come off doing an energetic, lively interview and immediately fall asleep.

I predict a nap this afternoon. :)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site


SF Signal interviews RJS


A good, meaty interview, on the occasion of the publication of Wake, is now up over at SF Signal. John DeNardo conducted the interview.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Wake -- what's the big idea?


Go on over to John Scalzi's "Whatever" blog and find out: I've got a 1,000-word "Big Ideas" essay over there today. Check it out!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Wednesday, April 8, 2009

The Earth says hello



Good morning starshine
The earth says hello
You twinkle above us
We twinkle below

Good morning starshine
You lead us along
My love and me as we sing
Our early morning singing song

Gliddy glub gloopy
Nibby nabby noopy
La la la lo lo
Sabba sibby sabba
Nooby abba nabba
Le le lo lo
Tooby ooby walla
Nooby abba naba
Early morning singing song

Good morning starshine
The earth says hello
You twinkle above us
We twinkle below

Good morning starshine
You lead us along
My love and me as we sing
Our early morning singing song

Gliddy glub gloopy
Nibby nabby noopy
La la la lo lo
Sabba sibby sabba
Nooby abba nabba
Le le lo lo
Tooby ooby walla
Nooby abba naba
Early morning singing song

Singing a song
Humming a song
Singing a song
Loving a song
Laughing a song
Singing a song
Sing the song
Song song song sing
Sing sing sing sing song

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site


Booklist on Wake


W00t! The American Library Association's Booklist has weighed in on Wake:
Sawyer's take on theories about the origin of consciousness, generated within the framework of an engaging story, is fascinating, and his approach to machine consciousness and the Internet is surprisingly fresh.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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The Maine Edge reviews Wake and interviews Rob


The April 8, 2009, edition of The Maine Edge -- the weekly arts and culture newspaper in Bangor, Maine -- has a glowing review of Wake on page 7, and an interview with me on page 8.

You can read them both in the PDF version of the newspaper here.

Or read the interview online here and the review here.

Among other things, the review says:
Wake is about as good as it gets when it comes to science fiction. In Caitlin, Sawyer has created a likable and sympathetic hero. She's smart, sure, but also full of sass, which lends itself to some wildly entertaining reading. Sawyer's combination of writing skill and computing background come together marvelously in this book. The characters are rich and realistic, while the ideas are fresh and fascinating.
The interviewer and the reviewer is Allen Adams.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Tuesday, April 7, 2009

The Authors Guild responds to the National Federation of the Blind

From The Authors Guild, of which I am a member:

Today, the National Federation of the Blind led a protest in front of the Guild's offices in Manhattan. This protest stems from Amazon's announcement in February that it would allow publishers to disable the voice-output feature of its Kindle 2 after we had objected that the feature threatened audio markets, violated authors' copyrights and exceeded the e-rights licenses that authors granted publishers.

The Guild, of course, is strongly supportive of making books accessible to the blind and other print-disabled readers through the Kindle and other devices. For decades (we think going back at least to the 1930s), authors have donated their rights so that Braille and audio versions can be made freely available to those who need them. The key is to make this technology accessible to print-disabled readers without undermining authors' audio markets.

There's an easy technological fix here: those with certified disabilities could have a Kindle operating system that is subtly modified to permit voice output for all books, overriding any limitations put in place by publishers. This could work in conjunction with existing programs such as Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, Bookshare and the National Library Service.

We issued the following statement today in response to the protest:

Authors want everyone to read their books. That's why the Authors Guild, and authors generally, are strong advocates for making all books, including e-books, accessible to everyone. This is not a new position for us. For decades, we've informed new authors that the expected and proper thing to do is to donate rights so that their works can be accessible to the blind and others. In October, we were praised by the National Federation of the Blind for the settlement of our lawsuit against Google, which promises "to revolutionize blind people's access to books," according to the Federation's press release.

E-books do not come bundled with audio rights. So we proposed to the Federation several weeks ago the only lawful and speedy path to make e-books accessible to the print disabled on Amazon's Kindle:

1. The first step is to take advantage of a special exception to the Copyright Act known as the Chafee Amendment, which permits the blind and others with certified physical print disabilities access to special versions, including audio versions, of copyrighted books. Technology makes this step easy: certified users of existing Kindles could activate their devices online to enable access to voice-output versions of all e-books. This process could be ready to go within weeks.

2. Since step one would help only those with sufficient eyesight to navigate the current Kindle, we encourage Amazon or another e-book device manufacturer to make an e-book device with voice output capability that would be truly blind-accessible, with a Braille keyboard and audible menu commands.

3. Finally, we need to amend existing book contracts to allow voice-output access to others, including those with learning disabilities, that don't qualify for special treatment under the Chafee Amendment. There's no getting around the need to amend contracts: for the past 16 years, standard publishing contracts with most major trade publishers do not permit publishers to sell e-books bundled with audio rights. Fortunately, publishing contracts are amendable, and can (once terms have been negotiated) be handled in a systematic fashion.

The Authors Guild will gladly be a forceful advocate for amending contracts to provide access to voice-output technology to everyone. We will not, however, surrender our members' economic rights to Amazon or anyone else. The leap to digital has been brutal for print media generally, and the economics of the transition from print to e-books do not look as promising as many assume. Authors can't afford to start this transition to digital by abandoning rights.

Knowing how difficult the road ahead is for the already fragile economics of authorship, we are particularly troubled at how all this arose, with Amazon attempting to use authors' audio rights to lengthen its lead in the fledgling e-book industry. We could not allow this rights grab to happen. Audio books are a billion dollar market, the rights for which are packaged separately from -- and are far more valuable than -- e-book rights.

That said, our support for access by all disabled readers is steadfast, and we know how to make it happen. The Federation rightly heralded the settlement in Authors Guild v. Google. That class-action settlement represents a quantum leap in accessibility to books for the disabled. It will, if approved, make far more books than ever before, potentially tens of millions of out-of-print books, accessible to not only the blind, but to people with any type of print disability.

Through the Google settlement, we have a solution for out-of-print book accessibility. We're confident we can arrive at a solution for in-print books as well.

Today's protest is unfortunate and unnecessary. We stand by our offer, first made to the Federation's lawyer a month ago and repeated several times since, to negotiate in good faith to reach a solution for making in-print e-books accessible to everyone. We extend that same offer to any group representing the disabled.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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The Paper Chase, Season One!

"I'm arguing for justice, sir ... I'm arguing for people -- for a wholehearted, indivisible commitment to humanity." --James T. Hart
As I said back in December 2008, Shout! Factory is issuing the first season of The Paper Chase on DVD -- and the three-disk set arrived today, via Amazon.ca! All 22 first-season episodes. W00t!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Wake audio book released


Audible.com has the exclusive audio book of Wake, released today to coincide with the release of the American hardcover edition. It's a terrific multi-voice unabridged reading, narrated by Jessica Almasy, Jennifer Van Dyck, A.C. Fellner, Marc Vietor, and yours truly, Robert J. Sawyer, and featuring an exclusive audio introduction by me.

You can get it, and all my Audible.com audio books, here.

(Audible has unabridged audiobooks of Wake, Rollback, Calculating God, Flash Forward, The Terminal Experiment, Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids, plus my short story "Shed Skin.")

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Email woes -- some messages lost

If you wrote to me, and haven't heard back -- I apologize! My Yahoo! Mail account has been eating some of my email; I don't know why. (It hasn't just been misfiling it as spam; it's actually just not showing up in the account at all.)

All email to my sfwriter.com domain gets mirrored to both a Yahoo! Mail Plus account (a premium one that I pay for) and a Gmail account. I've recently discovered, though, that some of it just seems to disappear at the Yahoo! end (including some very important emails).

I like the Yahoo! interface better, and really was only using the Gmail account for backup ... but looking through it I've found dozens of important, legitimate emails that should have shown up at Yahoo! as well (since they were addressed to me at sfwriter.com), but never did. And I'm sure a bunch have fallen through the cracks.

So, apologies if you wrote to me and never heard back! I reply personally to all my fan mail, and all business stuff, too; if you didn't hear from me, it was inadvertent. Please write to me again, and please accept my apologies.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site


"On the Edge" podcasts RJS


Marie Bilodeau of Canadian publisher EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy interviewed me at the World Fantasy Convention in Calgary on Sunday, November 2, 2008 -- and the interview has just gone live. It lasts 14 minutes and talks about my experiences co-editing the anthology Tesseracts 6, my advice for writers marketing manuscripts, what I think is the central theme of Canadian SF (consciousness!), and my new novel Wake. Have a listen!.

On the Edge with Robert J. Sawyer (MP3)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Wake released in the U.S.


Today is the official U.S. publication date for my 18th novel, WWW: Wake. It is now available in bookstores in the U.S., through online booksellers, for Amazon's Kindle, the Sony Reader, and in eReader, Mobipocket, and Microsoft Reader formats from Fictionwise.com.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Moncton newspaper interviews RJS

Leading up to my appearance later this month at The Frye Festival in Moncton, New Brunswick, The Moncton Times & Transcript interviews me today. The article is online here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Monday, April 6, 2009

Ad Astra and FilKONtario the same weekend in 2010

As if this wasn't crazy enough, it's just been confirmed that Toronto will have two of its SF cons on the same weekend next year! Both Ad Astra, the general con, and FilKONtario, the filking con, are April 9 through 11, 2010. Unbelievable!

For the record, it's Ad Astra that changed its date, resulting in the conflict. At FilKONtario, someone opined that the conflict would lead to a reduction in Ad Astra's attendance, rather than FilKONtario's -- and I suspect that's probably right. Still, although I had a blast as special guest at FilKONtario this year, I'll be at Ad Astra next year -- but, really, no one should have to make this choice; it's just nuts.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Dragonmaster

I'm always delighted when one of my writing students has success, and I'm thrilled to announce that the wonderful Karleen Bradford has a new book! Karleen was my student for a week at the Banff Centre in September 2005.

Dragonmaster is the third book in her celebrated "Taun Series" from HarperCollins's young-adult HarperTrophy imprint. Way to go, Karleen! I'm very proud of you!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site


Snappy one-liners

At least I think they're snappy. I was asked by a magazine doing a piece about Wake for a one-liner they could use as a teaser. I gave them five, and told them to take their pick:
Ray Kurzweil says the singularity is near. Actually, it's all around us.

The World Wide Web will soon have as many interconnections as a human brain. What happens then?

Consciousness is an emergent property of complexity. Our minds were the first example, but they won't be the last.

Artificial intelligence doesn't necessarily require a programmer.

Human intelligence didn't require an intelligent designer -- so why should we suppose artificial intelligence will?


The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Sunday, April 5, 2009

SFWA Pressbook on Wake


Check it out.

(Many thanks to J.F. Lewis, who runs the SFWA Pressbook -- see his own news here.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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What is wrong with Canadian fandom?

So, we have six major general-interest regional science-fiction conventions left in Canada: VCON in Vancouver, Con-Version in Calgary, Pure Speculation in Edmonton, KeyCon in Winnipeg, Ad Astra in Toronto, and Con*Cept in Montreal.

And, incredibly, three of them are on the same weekend in 2009! VCON, Pure Speculation, and Con*Cept are all the first weekend in October. Don't you guys talk? I know there's a Canadian con-runners mailing list, for Pete's sake.

VCON and Pure Speculation are definitely close enough physically that there are significant numbers of people who would have attended both -- and there are crazy folk like me who will go to any major Canadian con if scheduling permits regardless of its location.

This just makes zero sense, guys. No wonder con attendance is shrinking coast-to-coast.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Friday, April 3, 2009

No Norwescon for Rob

Sadly, I've had to bow out of Norwescon in Seattle this month. It's a great con, and I'm very sorry to miss it. I'll still be at the other cons and festivals I'm scheduled for this year: FilKONtario, Xanadu Las Vegas, The Frye Festival, Keycon, Readercon, the Montreal Worldcon, Con-Version, VCON, the Surrey International Writers Conference, and Astronomicon.

My schedule -- including book-tour events for Wake -- is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Thursday, April 2, 2009

Supernatural Investigator on hiatus


No, we didn't get canceled, and we haven't been attacked by ghosts. Supernatural Investigator is on a planned hiatus this week and next week. We'll be back as usual on Tuesday, April 14, with an episode about "Chaos Magick."

Here's an episode guide.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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RJS events in San Francisco and Canada


My 18th novel science-fiction novel, Wake, will be released in the United States on April 7, and in Canada on April 14.

In its starred review, denoting a book of exceptional merit, Publishers Weekly says, "The wildly thought-provoking first installment of Sawyer's WWW trilogy explores the origins and emergence of consciousness. The thematic diversity -- and profundity -- makes this one of Sawyer's strongest works to date."

I will be making appearances in San Francisco and across Canada promoting the book. All events are free and open to the public -- please come out and say hello, and please help spread the word!

# Bookstore Reading and Signing
Borderlands Books
866 Valencia Street
San Francisco, California
Monday, April 13, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
borderlands-books.com

# Bookstore Reading and Signing
White Dwarf Books
3715 West 10th Avenue
Vancouver, British Columbia
Monday, April 20, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
deadwrite.com/wd.html

# Bookstore Reading and Signing
Sentry Box
1835-10th Ave SW
Calgary, Alberta
Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
sentrybox.com

# Bookstore Reading and Signing
Audrey's Books
10702 Jasper Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta
Thursday, April 23, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
audreys.ca

# Bookstore Reading and Signing
Librairie Paragraphe Bookstore
2220 McGill College Avenue
Montreal, Quebec
Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 6:30 p.m.
paragraphbooks.com

# Ottawa Book Launch Party!
The Clock Tower Brew Pub
575 Bank Street
Ottawa, Ontario
Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Hosted by Perfect Books
clocktower.ca
perfectbooks.ca/index.html

# Toronto Book Launch Party!
Dominion on Queen (pub)
500 Queen Street East
Toronto, Ontario
Thursday, April 30, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
Hosted by Bakka Phoenix Books
dominiononqueen.com
bakkaphoenixbooks.com

# Bookstore Reading and Signing
McNally Robinson
1120 Grant Avenue
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Saturday, May 16, 2009, 2:00 p.m.
mcnallyrobinson.com/winnipeg-events

# Reading & Signing
Waterloo Entertainment Centre
24 King Street North
Waterloo, Ontario
Thursday, May 21, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
Hosted by Words Worth Books
(Free admission if you buy the book at the beginning of the event from Words Worth, or in advance from their store; otherwise, $10 to help defray facilities rental -- tickets at the door or in advance at the store)
wordsworthbooks.com

# Bookstore Reading and Signing
Chapters
1425 Kingsway Road
Sudbury, Ontario
Monday, May 25, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
chapters.indigo.ca

# Bookstore Reading and Signing
McNally Robinson
3130 8th Street East
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Thursday, June 4, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
mcnallyrobinson.com/saskatoon_events

# Bookstore Reading and Signing
Book & Brier Patch
4065 Albert Street
Regina, Saskatchewan
Saturday, June 20, 2009, 2:00 p.m.
bookbrier.ca

More about WAKE

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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USA Today has first official Flash Forward picture


USA Today yesterday had the first official photo from the ABC series pilot based on my novel Flash Forward (above; click for larger version; photo by ABC's Ron Tom), and in their article they say:
There are still a few big bets [for the fall TV season]:

• ABC is spending $7 million on Flash Forward, an ambitious series based on the sci-fi novel that it hopes is the next Lost. (Everyone blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds and has a vision of the future.)
The coverage at USA Today Online is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Review of the Calculating God reissue


SciFi Dimensions has just posted a lovely review of my Calculating God on the occasion of it being reissued in trade paperback by Tor Books. The review concludes:
"If sci-fi is literature that leaves you thinking as it thoroughly entertains you, then Sawyer's Hugo and Campbell Award finalist Calculating God is a paragon of the genre. Sawyer treats with heady themes that seldom are explored so well and so memorably. Don’t miss it.
You can read the whole review here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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FilKONtario

I'm Special Guest at FilKONtario this weekend in Toronto, Canada's largest filking convetion. Come on out and join the fun!

I'm particularly thrilled because my friends Randy McCharles and Val King are coming all the way from Calgary for the con. W00t!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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