Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Archive for the 'Deaths' Category

Remembering Barbara Delaplace

Saturday, July 23rd, 2022

Today in Gainesville, there’s a celebration of Barbara Haldeman, sister-in-law to Joe Haldeman and the widow of Joe’s late brother, Jack.I can’t be there, but I’m thinking fondly about my friend Barbara today. Those, like me, who used to frequent the CompuServe Science Fiction and Fantasy Forum may remember her as Barbara Delaplace, where she […]

Alan Sawyer plaque in Banff

Wednesday, June 8th, 2016

On killing characters

Sunday, October 27th, 2013

For this article in Canada’s National Post newspaper, Books editor Mark Medley asked me about killing my characters. Here’s what I had to say: My brother Alan died this past summer. I got a call from my sister-in-law telling me he was slipping away, and I grabbed the first plane back to Toronto from Montreal, […]

R.I.P., Alan Sawyer

Monday, June 10th, 2013

My younger brother Alan Bruce Sawyer passed away Saturday night. He was born September 12, 1961, in Toronto, and died in that city June 8, 2013, at the age of 51. Alan was diagnosed with lung cancer last September [2012], and by the time it was diagnosed, it had already metastasized to his brain, abdomen, […]

R.I.P, Paul Quarrington

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Great writer, great person. A real loss. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com

Henry Gibson passes on

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Henry Gibson died this week as well; people today probably knew him best for his recurring role as a virginal judge on Boston Legal, but to people my age or older, he was best known for his poetry on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, which I watched often with my parents in the 1960s. Anyway, it […]

Mary of Peter, Paul and Mary passes on

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

One of the things I inherited from my parents is a love of folk music. I am a huge Pete Seeger fan, and also greatly admired Peter, Paul and Mary. (In fact, this no doubt had an influence on the kind of writer I turned out to be. One school of writing says, if you […]

The Rocky Mountain News folds

Friday, February 27th, 2009

The Rocky Mountain News, a major daily newspaper in Denver, Colorado, one of the few US dailies to routinely and intelligently review science-fiction novels over the years, is gone. Mark Graham, the usual SF reviewer there, had been very kind to me. For instance, on Calculating God, he wrote: “I always look forward to Robert […]

Skeptic Henry Gordon dies

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

Eric McMillan, the Chair of Skeptics Canada, reports: With great sorrow, we report that Henry Gordon has passed away. Henry was a professional magician, journalist, book author, and leading Canadian skeptic. He was a founder and chair of the Ontario Skeptics, a precursor to Skeptics Canada, for which he remained chair emeritus and a respected […]

R.I.P., Señor Armando

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

All the press coverage about the passing today of the very talented Ricardo Montalbán is mentioning his work on Fantasy Island and Star Trek. And, of course, I loved his portrayal of Khan. But you know what his best work was? The role of Señor Armando in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the […]

Patrick McGoohan passes

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

“Where am I?” “In the Village.” “What do you want?” “Information.” “Whose side are you on?” “That would be telling. We want information. Information! Information!” “You won’t get it.” “By hook or by crook, we will.” “Who are you?” “The new Number Two.” “Who is Number One?” “You are Number Six.” “I am not a […]

Forrest J Ackerman passes

Saturday, December 6th, 2008

Monday, April 22, 1996: Carolyn and I arrive in Los Angeles for a few days of vacation leading up to the Nebula Awards ceremony. Went to NBC, but arrived too late to get tickets to The Tonight Show and so we drove around in our rental car, looking for somewhere to eat, and found a […]

George Carlin passes on

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Last week, I posted my comments on the American Film Institute’s list of the top-10 SF films, and suggested some of my own substitutions for that list. That list only went to ten places, but one that’s on my own list of the top 20 SF films is Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Seriously. If […]

Eulogy for Bill Dial

Saturday, June 14th, 2008

Baby, if you’ve ever wondered,Wondered whatever became of me,I’m living on the air in Cincinnati.Cincinnati, WKRP. Got kind of tired of packing and unpacking,Town to town, up and down the dial.Baby, you and me were never meant to be,But maybe think of me once in a while. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Bill Dial, R.I.P.

Friday, June 13th, 2008

In the introduction to my short story “Star Light, Star Bright,” which appears in my first collection, Iterations, I wrote: In 1997, I happened to run into WKRP in Cincinnati star Gordon Jump at a deli in Los Angeles; I introduced myself by saying I wanted to shake the hand of the man who had […]

Eric Layman passes on

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

A fixture of Toronto SF fandom, and a mainstay of the science-fiction club U.S.S. Hudson Bay, Eric Layman passed away recently. A poet and a thinker, Eric could be cantankerous, but he was always courtly toward my mother, who sometimes attended meetings of that same club. He won an Aurora Award in 2004 for his […]

Ed Hoch passes

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

For over thirty years, my family had a vacation home near Rochester, New York, and I got pretty plugged into the literary community down there. And the grand old man of Rochester letters was Edward D. Hoch — a real gentleman, and a very fine writer. Peter Sellers and I published a story by him […]

Robert Fitzhenry passes

Monday, January 7th, 2008

My Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint is published by Red Deer Press, which, in turn, is owned by Fitzhenry and Whiteside, a long-established, mid-sized Canadian publisher, run by Sharon Fitzhenry, daughter of co-founder Robert I. Fitzhenry. Sharon’s dad just passed away. There would be no Robert J. Sawyer Books — and a lot less Canadian publishing in […]

Percy Rodriguez, R.I.P.

Friday, September 14th, 2007

Canadian actor Percy Rodriguez — known to Classic Star Trek fans as Commodore Stone from “Court-Martial” — has passed away. It’s hard to overstate the impact in 1967 of having Captain Kirk’s superior officer be a black man, and the absolute authority and dignity Rodriguez brought to the part was perfect. I’m sorry to see […]

Benjamin Libet leaves us

Friday, August 3rd, 2007

Those of you who’ve read my Mindscan may remember this scene that takes place shortly after Jake has his consciousness copied into an artificial body: I went to see Dr. Porter about the problem with thoughts I intended to keep private being spoken aloud. “Ah, yes,” he said, nodding. “I’ve seen that before. I can […]

Anna Nicole Smith

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

Air Canada managed to get me on a later flight, after my earlier flight from Vancouver was canceled because of an impending snow storm in Toronto, and so I’m now home safe and sound in freezing Mississauga (quite a contrast to the balmy weather in Victoria). I’ve been on the road for five days, but […]

Denny Doherty, R.I.P.

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

I am a huge fan of the Mamas and the Papas, and usually have a CD of theirs in my CD changer. Denny Doherty, the Canadian member of the group, passed away on Friday, here in Mississauga. He was far too young to go; just 66. I was telling a friend just a couple of […]

Howard Miller, R.I.P.

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

Those who bother to read the Acknowledgements in my novels may have notice the name Howard Miller there; it’s in just about every novel of mine starting with The Terminal Experiment (and will be in the Acknowledgments of my upcoming novel Rollback). Howard read and commented on those books prior to publication, as well as […]