Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Archive for the 'Wake' Category

On Rochester, NY, NPR station on Friday

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

I’ll be interviewed about my novels Wake and FlashForward on 1370 Connection with Bob Smith, the noon (Eastern time) show on AM 1370, the NPR station in Rochester, New York, this Friday, November 6, 2009. You’ll be able to listen live here, and I’ll be on for most of the hour between noon and 1:00 […]

Five years of working on the WWW books

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Holy cow! It was five years ago today — Friday, November 5, 2004 — that I wrote the first words of what went on to become my WWW trilogy. Back then, it was only going to be a single book (to be called Webmind). I began writing that first book at a Write-Off writing retreat […]

Toronto subway posters advertising Wake

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

They’re finally up! Penguin Canada’s subway poster advertisements for my novel Wake are now up on some subway cars on the Yonge-University-Spadina (main north-south) route in Toronto. Toronto’s subways are operated by the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). I’m in Calgary right now, but sightings of the ads this week have been made by longtime SF […]

Don Sakers of Analog reviews Wake

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Analog Science Fiction and Fact, the world’s top-selling English-language SF magazine, recently changed book reviewers. Of course, all of us long-time Analog readers have been curious to see what sort of approach the new reviewer, Don Sakers, was going to take, and so I turned with interest to “The Reference Library” section of the October […]

RJS Winnipeg bestsellers

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Fall-out, no doubt, from the wonderful launch party for the FlashForward TV series at McNally Robinson Polo Park in Winnipeg, and from my appearance promoting Wake at Thin Air: Winnipeg International Writers Festival: This week, Wake is the #5 bestselling hardcover fiction title at McNally Robinson’s Winnipeg stores, and FlashForward is the #3 bestselling mass-market […]

Mass-market paperback cover for US edition of WWW: Wake

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

The Ace Science Fiction mass-market edition of Wake will be in stores in April 2010; here’s what the cover of their edition will look like. The cover design is by Rita Frangie. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com

Concordia University’s The Link interview about Wake

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

A nice interview, by Christopher Olson, mostly about my novel Wake. You can read it online here. And The Link has a brief review of the anthology Distant Early Warnings I edited here. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com

Wake ads in Toronto subway cars

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

For the next four weeks, Penguin Canada will be advertising my new novel Wake in subway cars in Toronto. The ads will appear randomly in cars on the Yonge-University-Spadina line. (Wake is called WWW: Wake in the United States.) I’m going to be traveling for all of October, and won’t get a chance to go […]

AMCtv.com interviews RJS

Monday, September 21st, 2009

AMCtv.com — the website of AMC (originally, “American Movie Classics”), a US cable channel — recently phoned me up and interviewed me about my novels FlashForward and Wake, and the TV adaptation of the former. You can read the interview, by Clayton Neuman, right here. (And, I must say, there is lots of other good […]

The end of an era

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Received today, via FedEx, the actual production manuscript for my novel Wake, returned from Ace Science Fiction, my New York publisher. This manuscript is the one that was marked up (in various colors of pen and pencil) by the copyeditor and the book designer and me (and Carolyn, too). I now have 18 such master […]

Holy cow! Wake on Locus bestsellers list for third month!

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

My new novel Wake is on the Locus bestsellers’ list for a third consecutive month. It debuted at #2 (and was the highest-ranked SF, as opposed to fantasy, title) in the April 2009 data period, and was #5 in May (and the second-highest-ranked SF title), and now is tied for #10 in June (as reported […]

An interview with … Caitlin Decter!

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Check it out! Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com

Wake on the Locus bestsellers list for a second month!

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

W00t! Woohoo! My Wake, first of my WWW trilogy, is on the Locus hardcover bestsellers list for a second consecutive month. It was #2 last month (and the highest-ranked SF, rather than fantasy book); this month it holds on at #5 (and is the second-highest-ranked SF book). This is my 28th appearance on the Locus […]

The voice of Caitlin

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Carolyn and I just finished listening to Audible.com’s unabridged production of my novel Wake. We were blown away! Audible used four narrators: Jessica Almasy (as Caitlin Decter), Jennifer Van Dyck (as Shoshana Glick), A.C. Fellner (as Sinanthropus), and Marc Vietor (as Phantom) (plus myself, reading the entries attributed to The Online Encyclopedia of Computing; I […]

Saskatchewan Writers Guild interview

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

… conducted by current Aurora Award nominee Edward Willett just went online here. It’s a good, meaty interview about my residency at the Canadian Light Source and my new novel Wake. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com

Wake back on the Saskatoon bestsellers’ list

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

This week’s hardcover bestsellers’ list for McNally Robinson in Saskatoon: 1. Outliers: The Story of SuccessBy Malcolm Gladwell 2. Master Your MetabolismBy Jillian Michaels 3. Twenties GirlBy Sophie Kinsella 4. Unmasked the Final Years of Michael JacksonBy Ian Halperin 5. Best Friends ForeverBy Jennifer Weiner 6. The Devil’s PunchbowlBy Greg Iles 7. WakeBy Robert J. […]

Wake #2 Locus Bestseller

Friday, July 17th, 2009

W00t! My novel Wake is #2 on the Locus Hardcover Bestsellers’ List. And #1 is a fantasy novel, which makes mine the top-selling SF novel in the stores Locus surveys. Locus is the trade journal of the science-fiction field. Here’s the list, published in the July 2009 issue (for the data period April 2009); the […]

Wake press release

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Here’s a press release I wrote for my new novel Wake; this press release was aimed mostly at techie publications. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com

The Adolescence of P-1

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

In the summer of 1980, Carolyn and I moved to Waterloo, Ontario, for four months, to share an apartment with our great friends Lynn Conway and Fraser Gunn. (Their previous roommates, students at the University of Waterloo, had moved out at the end of the academic year.) That summer, I did a few things that […]

Edward Willett on the science of Wake

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

You gotta love Edward Willett. Here it is, in the thick of Aurora Award voting, where his absolutely first-rate Marseguro is competing against Hayden Trenholm’s wonderful Defining Diana and my own Identity Theft and Other Stories, and what does Ed do? Why, he writes a glowing review of Hayden’s book, and then follows that up […]

Freedom Scientific podcast features RJS and Wake

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Freedom Scientific makes JAWS, the screen-reading software that Caitlin Decter uses in my novel Wake. JAWS is the world’s most popular screen-reading program for the blind. A quite lengthy and detailed interview between Robert J. Sawyer and Jonathan Mosen, Freedom Scientific’s Vice-President of Blindness Hardware Product Management, begins a couple of minutes into the podcast […]

The Dragon Page reviews Wake

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Saying, among other nice things: “I shouldn’t be shocked that Sawyer has done has homework and is able to predict things that could happen in the near future. He’s had a long, distinguished career of doing just that and his new novels are always those I look forward to reading next. WWW: Wake is no […]

Wake "a counterargument to Neuromancer"

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Over at The Grumpy Owl, Ryan Oakley has a detailed review of my novel Wake. It’s a flattering review, yes, but more than that, Oakley gets the book: Wake often feels like a counterargument, both in style and content, to Neuromancer. One hopes that the next two volumes will step out of Gibson’s long, dark […]

Regina Leader-Post profiles RJS

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Photo of Robert J. Sawyerby Troy Fleece, Regina Leader Post. Click photo for larger version.Today’s (Saturday, June 27, 2009) Regina Leader-Post — the major daily newspaper in the capital city of the province of Saskatchewan — has a wonderful profile of me by Samantha Maciag. The article covers my writer-in-residence position at the Canadian Light […]

The case of the missing Amazon reviews

Saturday, June 27th, 2009

The case of the missing Amazon reviews … Well, okay, it’s not much of a mystery. :) But if you’ve only seen the (very nice) reviews of my Wake on Amazon.com, you’re missing the ones that have been posted on Amazon.ca (the Canadian counterpart). Often, Amazon consolidates reviews across its divisions — but in this case […]

Geek!

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Geek Monthly, that is. And the June 2009 edition of this glossy American newsstand magazine features a wonderful two-page spread on Robert J. Sawyer and his new novel Wake. The text isn’t available online (hence the greeked Geek you’re seeing here), so get thee to a newsstandary! But it sure is a cool-looking layout: The […]

RJS on WordStar cited in paper about accessibility for the blind

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Stumbled on this quite by accident, and found it an interesting coincidence, given that my current novel, Wake, deals with a blind teenager trying to deal with computers: a January 2006 technical paper entitled “A Personal Information Management Approach for People With Low Vision or Blindness” by Silas S. Brown and Peter Robinson of University […]

Wake is Halfax’s top beach-reading pick

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

No, not Don Halifax — the main character in my novel Rollback — but the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, the major daily newspaper in the capital city of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, which starts its list entitled “Beach Reading: Fiction Picks for Summer,” compiled by David Pitt, with my Wake, published in Canada under Penguin’s […]

Touring for Wake comes to an end

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

And that’s a wrap! Today I did my final scheduled touring event to promote my new novel Wake. The touring started on Monday, April 13, 2009, at Borderlands Books in San Francisco. That was followed April 17-19, 2009, at Xanadu Las Vegas, the wonderful science-fiction convention I was author guest of honor at. Then there […]

Authors@Google: Robert J. Sawyer

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Now available on YouTube: my full 1 hour and 12 minute talk given at Google Waterloo on Wednesday, May 27, 2009. Wake up, Watch it, and Wonder about it … ;) (If you prefer an audio podcast, you can get that here.) Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com