Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Archive for September, 2007

World’s Biggest Bookstore pushes Hominids

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

Toronto’s World’s Biggest Bookstore is promoting Hominids in the latest issue of their online newsletter, as you can see here: World’s Biggest Bookstore’s Sci-Fi Fan Letter: Sci-Fi Fan Letter Issue 14. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

OSC’s IGMS interviews RJS

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

The sixth issue of Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show — just out — has a lengthy interview with me conducted by Darrell Schweitzer. Each issue costs just $2.50, and always includes a new Enderverse story by Orson Scott Card himself. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Happy Birthday, TNG!

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

Twenty years ago today, September 28, 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered. Every week for the first year, Carolyn and I had her brother David over, along with friends Norm Gall and Andi, and sometimes one or two others, to watch. After the episodes — mostly, to be honest, painfully bad that first year […]

We Love to Fly …

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

… and it shows! After 91 days on the road — the longest road trip I’ve ever taken — Carolyn and are now back home safe and sound in Mississauga. Over the last three months, I made these flight: 1. Toronto to San Francisco (NASA Ames) 2. San Francisco to Vancouver 3. Vancouver to Whitehorse […]

Whitehorse a success

Friday, September 28th, 2007

Carolyn and I have had a great 30 hours in Whitehorse. Last night we had dinner with Barbara Curtis and her family — Barb and I were at public school together. Today, we did a little sightseeing, including The Beringia Interpretive Centre. And I gave my reading (from Rollback, natch) at the Whitehorse Public Library, […]

Farewell to Berton House

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

Our Klondike adventure is over. Carolyn and I finished our three months at the Berton House Writers Retreat in Dawson, Yukon, today. We arrived here on Tuesday, July 3, 2007, for an 87-day stay (minus 14 days for our side trip to China). It’s been a mostly relaxing, mostly productive time, and I’m going to […]

NorthStar: 25 Years Ago Today

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

Has it been a quarter of a century already? Wow … Twenty-five years ago today, my great friend Ted Bleaney and I co-chaired a wonderful day-long science-fiction conference in Toronto called NorthStar: a full track of speakers, with a companion track of short films organized by Tom Nadas. The event was a huge success, with […]

University of Waterloo teaches Rob

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

Not to be outdone by the University of Calgary, I’m informed that the University of Waterloo uses two Robert J. Sawyer novels in the science fiction course taught there by the Philosophy department’s Joseph A. Novak: both Calculating God and Mindscan are required reading. Woohoo! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Klondike Poetry Round Robin

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

Last night (Monday, September 24, 2007), my lovely wife Carolyn Clink ran a poetry round robin at the Dawson Public Library here in the Yukon. It was a wonderful event: about a dozen residents showed up (including Dan Davidson, the editor of the local paper, and Suzanne Saito, the Berton House liaison). Carolyn read the […]

Best Movie Ever

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

Casablanca. Just sayin’ … The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Von Holtzbrink and eBooks

Monday, September 24th, 2007

One really does have to wonder what’s going through the minds of the people at Von Holtzbrink — parent company of Tor, Forge, and St. Martin’s Press — when it comes to ebooks. They have mostly given up doing Tor titles as ebooks (I was promised that my Mindscan would be released as an ebook, […]

Last night at Diamond Tooth Gerties

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

Last night was the final night of the year at Diamond Tooth Gerties, the casino / night club here in Dawson, Yukon; it’s now closed until next summer. Carolyn and I walked on over for the 8:30 floorshow, and Gertie herself came over to our table, sang to me, and planted a big kiss on […]

More Northern Lights!

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

Oh my God! Last night (Saturday, September 22, 2007), the northern lights were even better here in the Klondike than they were the night before — in fact, they were absolutely incredible: arching right across the entire sky, from north to south, visibly rippling and undulating. Unbelievable, and amazingly beautiful. And — yay! — at […]

Jack London review

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

In honour of my last few days living just down the road from Jack London’s cabin in Dawson, Yukon, a pointer to a review I did of Jack’s book Before Adam; the review was published in 2005 in the glossy newsstand magazine Archaeology. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

At last! Northern Lights!

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

Finally! About 4:30 a.m. this morning I got up to pee here at Berton House, and, on my way back to the bedroom, I looked out the kitchen window, and — Oh, my God! Northern lights! A spectacular show of the aurora borealis, rising up from the hills on the far side of the river, […]

Rollback adopted at University of Calgary

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

My latest novel Rollback has been adopted as required reading for the science-fiction course to be taught by Ruby Ramraj at the University of Calgary next term (Winter 2008) — yay! (Prof. Ramraj is also teaching an SF course this term, and she’s using my first novel, Golden Fleece, as a required text.) The Robert […]

T-minus One Week

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

Today begins my final week at the Berton House writers’ retreat in Dawson City, Yukon; one week from today, on Wednesday, September 26, Carolyn and I depart for Whitehorse (the territorial capital); we’ll have a day of sightseeing there, plus me doing a reading at the public library, then on Friday, September 28, we’ll at […]

Robinson Crusoe on Mars — with added RJS!

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

Tomorrow — Tuesday, September 18, 2007 — the Criterion Collection is finally releasing the cult classic SF film Robinson Crusoe on Mars on DVD … and the bonus features include a nifty new documentary about the film produced by the redoubtable Michael Lennick, and the documentary is just chock-full of clips from an interview he […]

"The Galileo Seven" remastered

Monday, September 17th, 2007

To our astonishment, here in Dawson, Yukon, Carolyn and I managed to catch the last half of “The Galileo Seven” remastered — the premiere of the second year of Star Trek Remastered in syndication (our Dawson cable company feeds KTLA from Los Angeles, and they’re showing Star Trek Remastered on Saturday nights at 11:00 p.m. […]

One more song: "Sweet Jaime"

Monday, September 17th, 2007

One more song from The Six Million Dollar Man, a rather sweet and romantic scene in which Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers start to get serious. Lee Majors starts singing about the 2 minute 10 second mark … Sweet Jaime Speaking of canonical name spellings, by the way, the original spelling of Jaime’s first name […]

Toronto SF authors at Word on the Street

Monday, September 17th, 2007

Once again, Toronto’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers have taken a booth at the Word on the Street open-air book fair, being held in Queen’s Park, Toronto, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 30, 2007. The SF&F booth is #183, on the east side of Queen’s Park, facing east, just south of […]

And then there’s the Dusty Springfield theme song …

Monday, September 17th, 2007

… used for the second and third 90-minute Six Million Dollar Man TV movies in the fall of 1973, before the 60-minute series began. Dusty Springfield sings; lyrics by Glen A. Larson. (YouTube video) The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Another Nick DiChario novel!

Sunday, September 16th, 2007

Nick DiChario has sold second novel Valley of Day-Glo to Rob Sawyer at Robert J. Sawyer Books, for February 2008 publication, via Christine Cohen of the Virginia Kidd Agency; Nancy Kress has been commissioned to write an introduction to the novel. Nick’s first novel, A Small and Remarkable Life, was previously published by Robert J. […]

More nifty SF music: "Gotta Get Loose"

Sunday, September 16th, 2007

Yes, Lee Majors himself sings this pretty cool little song called “Gotta Get Loose,” from the first of the episodes from The Six Million Dollar Man that introduced the character of the bionic woman. Couple of things to note about this YouTube clip: the opening shot is the one and only place in the whole […]

A computer named after me!

Sunday, September 16th, 2007

How cool is this! A computer at the Computer Science Computing Facility’s Research Group at the University of Waterloo is named after me! In fact, most of the computers there are named after science-fiction writers — Asimov, Bradbury, LeGuin, Sawyer, Turtledove, Verne. Check it out! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Benson, Arizona

Sunday, September 16th, 2007

Benson, Arizona, blew warm wind through your hair My body flies the galaxy, my heart longs to be there Benson, Arizona, the same stars in the sky But they seemed so much kinder when we watched them, you and I Everyone who remembers the low-budget 1974 John Carpenter SF film Dark Star also remembers it […]

Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award

Friday, September 14th, 2007

Since we’ve started our deliberations for next year’s recipient, it’s probably time that I noted publicly that I’m now one of four jurors for the annual Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award. I’m replacing Gordon Van Gelder, who has stepped down to spend more time with his family; the other current jurors are Martin Harry Greenberg, Barry […]

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 […]

Stephen Kotowych: That’s my boy!

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

I’m a bit behind in announcing this, but Stephen Kotowych, one of the writers who came to see me when I was writer-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library’s The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy in 2003, recently won the $5,000 Grand Prize in the Writers of the Future Contest, for which I’m […]

Chengdu Memories

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

A trip report for China’s SCIENCE FICTION WORLD magazine by Robert J. Sawyer I’m back safe and sound in Canada after two wonderful weeks in China. The highlight for me, of course, was the Chengdu Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival, at which I won the Galaxy Award for Most Popular Foreign Author of the Year. […]