Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Archive for the 'Mindscan' Category

CBC Radio One Spark interview

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

Here’s the full 18-minute interview with me on CBC Radio One’s Spark, with host Nora Young (pictured above). Lots of stuff about Wake, Watch, and Wonder, plus some discussion of Mindscan. God, I love the CBC. Who else let’s you answer questions at such length? Robert J. Sawyer online:Website • Facebook • Twitter • Newsgroup […]

Writers make their characters up

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Yesterday, as part of my outreach duties as writer-in-residence at the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, I attended a book club meeting; the clubs members — six very nice women — had all just read my John W. Campbell Memorial Award-winning 2005 science-fiction novel Mindscan. At one point, I got asked the inevitable question: who are […]

Podcast: Sawyer neurosciences talk at Penn

Saturday, May 9th, 2009

On Wednesday, May 6, 2009, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science-fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer gave an invited 90-minute talk at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience [pictured] at the University of Pennsylvania (“Penn”). Sawyer was the first science-fiction writer ever invited to speak at the Center. Sawyer’s talk delved into the cognitive science, neuroscience, and other […]

Philosophical Speculations

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

Randy Jansen, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, has a great blog called “Philosophical Speculations: An Exercise in Wondering,” and he recently did a very kind post about — cough, cough — Robert J. Sawyer, saying, among other things: Many of Sawyer’s books (although I confess I […]

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 […]

Rollback nominated for Campbell Memorial Award

Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

I’m delighted to report that my novel Rollback has just been nominated for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the top juried award in the science-fiction field. The full list of nominees is here. The Campbell jurors are: Nebula-winning physicist Gregory Benford, author of the classic SF novel Timescape Historian Paul A. Carter, author of […]

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 […]

Kliatt on Mindscan

Saturday, January 13th, 2007

With all this talk about my upcoming novel Rollback, I wouldn’t want to forget good old Mindscan, my current book. And, as it happened, I saw a very nice new review of it today, from Kliatt, the principal reference used by schools and libraries for choosing young-adult material. Says the reviewer, Dr. Lesley Farmer: Want […]

Mindscan paperback in my hands

Thursday, December 29th, 2005

Woohoo! A delivery man just dropped off two cartons of the Tor mass-market paperback of my Mindscan. It looks fabulous! It should be showing up in stores shortly (it’s a January 2006 title). I’m pleased that Tor has priced it aggressively. My last mass-market edition, Hybrids, was US$7.99 and Cdn$10.99; Mindscan is the same length […]