Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Archive for the 'Hominids' Category

Double Aurora Award win!

Saturday, September 23rd, 2017

Woohoo! First, I’m thrilled that my Quantum Night just won the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Award (“the Aurora“) for Best Novel of the Year this evening; the award (pictured above) was presented at Hal-Con in Halifax. The nominees were: Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay, Viking Canada Company Town by Madeline […]

Ten Years of Waterloo Region’s “One Book, One Community”

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

My Hugo Award-winning novel Hominids was the “One Book, One Community” reading choice in 2005 for Waterloo Region in Ontario (which consists of Canada’s high-tech centres of Waterloo and Kitchener, plus smaller towns and surrounding Mennonite farming communities). This year is the tenth anniversary of the program, and I was asked to provide a comment […]

Quantum computing in the Neanderthal books and real life

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Great blog post from Canadian computing trade journal ComputerWorld Canada about quantum computing in the novels of Robert J. Sawyer — and now in reality. W00t! Robert J. Sawyer online:Website • Facebook • Twitter • Newsgroup • Email

The Neanderthal Parallax began 10 years ago today

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

It was ten years ago today, on Thursday, February 17, 2000, that I wrote the first words for what became Hominids, the first volume of my “Neanderthal Parallax” trilogy. That day, I wrote the opening below — not one line of which made it into the final book — leading up to establishing the setting […]

Is it a cop-out that the Neanderthals never had religion?

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

A minister wrote to me over the weekend to say it was a “cop-out” that my Neanderthals in Hominids and its sequels never had any religion; oh, he could understand a story about a kind of humanity that had turned away from religion, but not one that never had it; he said a lack of […]

Hominids got legs!

Friday, January 15th, 2010

Tor was going to put my 2002 Hugo Award-winning novel Hominids into trade (large-format) paperback this year, which is the format to which they retire older books that had been in mass-market but aren’t selling as briskly as they once were. But I just got this email from my editor, David G. Hartwell (“mm” is […]

Total Recall RJS nod

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

Woohoo! Just started reading the book Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything by Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell (with a forward by Bill Gates), and what should I find on page 16 but this: But themes of Total Recall have been explored in science fiction for decades. In Hominids, Robert J. Sawyer […]

Fan letter of the day: "theological whiplash"

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

Now here’s a particularly nice and thoughtful fan letter; great way to start the day! I picked up Far-Seer back when it first came out back in ’92. I was intrigued by the cover and the concept. <shame>It sat unread on my shelf until a couple of months ago.</shame> I don’t know why I never […]

Politics in fiction

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

An email I received today concerning my Hugo Award-winning novel Hominids: Mr. Sawyer. I picked this book up at the library because I was intrigued by the premise of the storyline. I’m still intrigued by the concept, however, I found myself rolling my eyes at the insertion of your personal political views in and around […]

Review of Hominids

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

A wonderful review of my Hugo Award-winning Hominids is here at the blog Pick-Locker. The five-star review concludes: This book pushed everything to its limits, questioning morality, immorality, evil and good. It was confusing, irritating, annoying … and yet it was also the most entertaining, and informative book I’ve read in a long time. It […]

Chinese editions of the Neanderthal Parallax

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

I’m delighted to announce the sale of Chinese rights to Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids to Anhui Literature & Arts Publishing House. The sale was made by my agents Ralph M. Vicinanza, Ltd., in conjunction with Andrew Nurnberg Associates, and the editions will appear in simplified Chinese characters. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com

Take that, you filthy Barast!

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

My friend Melody Friedenthal sent me a link to this story about new evidence that a Homo sapiens speared a Homo neanderthalensis. In my novel Hominids and its sequels, I argue that our kind of humanity (referred to as Gliksins by the Neanderthals in those books) were responsible for the demise of the Neanderthals (which […]

Lovely review of my Neanderthal books

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

The business blog Knights on the Road has just posted a very nice review of all three volumes of my Neanderthal Parallax trilogy (Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids). You can read the review, by Reg Nordman, here. Healthy day! Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com

Gliksins ate Neanderthals

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

Fascinating article about, among other things, Homo sapiens dining on Homo neanderthalensis in Britain’s Daily Mail. Of course, I said we were the cause of the Neanderthals demise in my novel Hominids and its sequels. :) Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com

Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my! Trilogies everywhere you look!

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

My friend Melody Friedenthal asked me an intriguing question this morning: At what point in your creative process did you decide that Wake et al., would be a trilogy? And was it the same point for your first trilogy (or 2nd) or was the first one more of the publisher’s choice (as in “this is […]

Neanderthal genome

Friday, February 13th, 2009

In my novels Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids, I argued that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens probably didn’t crossbreed in nature. At the time I was writing those books, it was a very contentious issue in paleoanthropology, with some vociferously arguing that, in fact, Neanderthals hadn’t really gone extinct at all, but that we’d just co-opted them […]

Interview for Fantascienza: Flash Forward, Neanderthals

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

In honor of the release of the Italian edition of my novel Humans, second volume of my Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, Sosio Silvio conducted a by-email interview with me, although many of the questions were actually about the upcoming Flash Forward TV pilot. The Italian version of the interview is online at Fantascienza.com here, and the […]

Bibliographies in novels

Monday, January 26th, 2009

An academic on a listserver I read just asked about bibliographies in SF&F novels. My reply: I sometimes include a bibliography. The one from my novel Hominids (Hugo winner, 2003; Tor Books) is online here. And the one from my novel Mindscan (John W. Campbell Memorial Award winner, 2006; Tor Books) is online here. But […]

Audiobook of Hominids for $4.95

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

Until Tuesday, January 27, 2009, at 11:00 a.m. Eastern time Audible.com has the unabridged audiobook of my Hugo Award-winning Hominids (as well as 70-odd other first volumes in series) on sale for only US$4.95. To get Hominids go here. This version features an exclusive audio introduciton by yours truly. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site