Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Archive for the 'op-ed' Category

A repeat from one year ago today; more apropos than ever

Sunday, December 18th, 2016

Foresight consultancy Idea Couture publishes a wonderful magazine called MISC. For their Fall 2015 issue, they asked me to contribute a piece on a “looming potential crisis nobody is talking about.” This is what I had to say in MISC; I explore this theme in much greater depth in my upcoming 23rd novel Quantum Night, […]

Authoritarians: an existential threat

Friday, December 18th, 2015

Foresight consultancy Idea Couture publishes a wonderful magazine called MISC. For their Fall 2015 issue, they asked me to contribute a piece on a “looming potential crisis nobody is talking about.” This is what I had to say in MISC; I explore this theme in much greater depth in my upcoming 23rd novel Quantum Night, […]

Bill Joy, 15 years on

Monday, March 16th, 2015

Fifteen years ago this week, Bill Joy‘s famous antitechnology manifesto “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us” appeared in Wired magazine. The Globe and Mail asked me for an op-ed in response, which appeared fifteen years ago today, on March 16, 2000. Here it is. Robert J. Sawyer online:Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

The Purpose of Science Fiction

Sunday, June 26th, 2011

The Purpose of Science Fiction by Robert J. Sawyer First published in Slate 27 January 2011 Forget Star Wars, Lost in Space, and all the other escapist fare you think of when you hear the term “science fiction.” Print science fiction is an important tool for dealing with real-life issues related to new technology — […]

Science: Ten Lost Years

Monday, July 5th, 2010

An op-ed piece by Robert J. Sawyer first published in The Ottawa Citizen, the largest-circulation newspaper in Canada’s capital city (first published under the headline “The Future Disappoints”). Science: Ten Lost Years by Robert J. Sawyer Ten years ago, in 1999, I published a novel called FlashForward; ten years later, it’s a (cough, cough) hit […]

Op-ed piece in today’s Ottawa Citizen: Science decade in review

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Today’s (Wednesday, December 9, 2009) Ottawa Citizen — the largest-circulation newspaper in Canada’s capital city — contains a commissioned op-ed piece by Robert J. Sawyer entitled “The Future Disappoints,” looking back at the progress in science and technology over the last decade. This is the first of a series of decade-in-review op-eds that will be […]