OMG. So, with one of the Chapters gift cards I got for Christmas, I bought Quark — the complete series — on DVD. This science-fiction sitcom from 1978 was created by Buck Henry and starred Richard Benjamin. I fondly remembered it, but … Wow, is it ever crappy. Obvious, dumb jokes; intrusive laugh track; terrible […]
… they cut the check! I received today the big purchase-price payment from ABC for the TV rights to my novel Flash Forward. Woot! Filming of the series pilot begins in four days, on Saturday, February 21. Carolyn and I have booked our flights to L.A., and will be going down to watch part of […]
I’ve often taught science-fiction writing in week-long courses at the Banff Centre in the ski-resort town of Banff, Alberta. I’m sure my students remember The Banff Book & Art Den — the one bookstore in Banff — as fondly as I do. Quill & Quire is reporting that the store closed its doors for good […]
No, it’s not a scam — it’s the Canadian government’s annual kickback to Canadian writers to compensate them for their lost royalties on copies of their books circulated in libraries. Just about every Western country except the United States has such a scheme. I’ve got so many books, I easily get the maximum payout each […]
Over on Facebook, there’s a meme going around about posting “25 Random Things” about yourself, and tagging 25 other people to do the same. I didn’t tag anyone else, but here’s the list I posted today: 1. I am, by birth, a dual US-Canadian citizen. 2. My childhood imaginary friend wasn’t a person or an […]
An interesting phenomenon has emerged with discussion of ebook readers. You see it over on the iRex discussion forum, and in the hardware-specific topics on Mobileread.com (the Kindle section, the Sony Reader section, and so on), and elsewhere: any criticism of the device (the hardware, the availability of content for it, and so on), is […]
I had dinner last night with my friend Diane Lacey, who is on the Hugo Awards committee for this year’s Worldcon in Montreal, and she asked that I remind people that the deadline for nominations is drawing near — as it also is for the Auroras. You can nominate for the Hugos here. And Canadians […]
An email I received today from a university student, wanting to write her first novel: I have just read your advice on writing. I am struggling to come up with what to write about. I am sort of tired of writing about things relating to me. I feel like my head is a confused sea […]
… I love the Kindle, as I said loudly and clearly right here when it first came out. It’s a great piece of hardware, and Jeff Bezos has done a lot to bring pricing sensibility to the ebook marketplace. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
An interesting shift over the last little while at Locus Online. Its subtitle has always been “The Website of The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field,” but that used to be best read as “The Website of The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field” — that is, the site was updated […]
Harriet Klausner — Amazon.com’s #1 reviewer — now has a website devoted to science fiction and fantasy reviews, and she’s just posted a review of my Calculating God, which says in part: Although most of this profound science fiction novel is passive as the two scientists debate the existence of God, this is a terrific […]
The February 20, 2009, edition of Entertainment Weekly — the #1 best-selling magazine about entertainment in the United States — begins this week’s “The Hollywood Insider: News and Notes” thus: Despite the fact that they are weathering stagnant — or downright dreary — ratings for dense shows like Heroes and Lost, the networks are still […]
… Jonathan Vos Post just posted this assessment of my latest novel, Wake: What’s not to like? Vivid storytelling with interesting characters, during which we are rocketed through metaphysical exploration of what it is to be conscious (human versus ape hybrid versus web intelligence), lightning flashes illuminate the nature of perception through translucent eyelids and […]
… you have to buy from the Amazon.com Kindle store. Over on MobileRead.com, they have a thread entitled “Kindle Myths and Partial Truths,” in which the very first claim is this: Myth: If you buy a Kindle, you are locked into Amazon’s Kindle store. Truth: There are many sources for books that can be read […]
As I’ve already said, I support the ability of the blind and visually impaired to be able to use assistive technologies — including screen-readers — to access text. Hell, anyone who’s read my Wake (recently serialized in Analog), which has a blind girl as the main character, can’t have any doubts about that. My grandfather […]
Twenty-six years ago, on January 4, 1983, I joined the Writer’s Digest Book Club. I bought a lot of books from them over the years — my friend book-collector Jack Brooks once remarked, looking at bookcases in my home, that I had the largest private collection of books about writing he’d ever seen. I let […]
Way back in 1985, I got a copy of the CP/M version of Grammatik for my Osborne 1 computer. Grammatik scanned documents for obvious grammatical errors (which I almost never made), homonym confusion (“weight” instead of “wait”), wordiness, and so on. For a year or two, I ran it on every article I wrote (back […]
I figured I should put my money where my mouth is. The Authors Guild The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Woot! Go me! Well, it’s been almost a year and I have finished reading the last of your books and short stories. I’ve read every single one! I’m writing to tell you how much I have enjoyed them all. Your characters are believable. The science in the stories is fascinating. I love the philosophical and […]
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 […]
In the discussion of whether the ways in which an ebook document may be used (for instance, whether the person who has licensed that document can be restricted from printing it out or having text-to-speech software read it aloud), one commenter on this post of mine wrote, “You actually DON’T have the right to tell […]
… was a great success. I bought a tuxedo, so I wouldn’t have to keep renting one: More on The Book Lover’s Ball. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Today is Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday. He’s always been a profoundly important figure to me (I visited his home, Down House, in 1995). My third novel, Fossil Hunter, was my parable about Darwin, telling the story of his counterpart on an alien world, including a riff on his classic voyage aboard the Beagle. “I’d seriously […]
… and the Authors Guild is objecting to this. It’s a very interesting point. Traditionally, print rights and audiobook rights are separate. Audible.com and others have done audiobooks of my novels, and those deals are with me, not the print publisher (in fact, today I just got a nice check from my agent for part-two […]
“Evolution is not a theory — it’s a fact. It really happened.” Happy 200th birthday, Charles Darwin. You gave us the most profound truth in all of science (and therefore the most profound truth of all). Relativity was interesting, in an abstract way; the Copernican revolution, likewise. But that species originate through natural selection speaks […]
I’m absolutely thrilled to be included on this list over at David Halpert’s SciFiWatch of “Nine Science Fiction Blogs You Should Keep Track Of.” It’s a great group to be part of! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’m thrilled to report that Toronto’s Divani Films and director Srinivas Krishna have just renewed their option on motion-picture rights to my 1995 Nebula Award-winning novel The Terminal Experiment for a fourth year. Woot! The movie is being developed with the participation of Telefilm Canada and Astral Media’s The Harold Greenberg Fund. The Robert J. […]
… but my friend Virginia O’Dine drew this clip from Onion News to my attention. LOL! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
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 […]
I went into S-VOX (parent company for Vision TV) to record the voice-over narration for one of the episodes of Supernatural Investigator today. For most episodes I just appear at the beginning and the end, introducing the topic and doing a wrap-up, but for a couple of them the week’s expert chose not to do […]
