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Press Release
For Release Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Analog to Serialize Rollback
Stanley Schmidt at Analog Science Fiction and Fact
has bought serialization rights to Robert J. Sawyer's
seventeenth novel, Rollback. Analog
will run the book's full text in four installments, in its
October, November, and December 2006 issues, and its
January-February 2007 double issue. The first installment will
be on sale August 1, 2006.
"I'm thrilled to be back in Analog," says Sawyer,
whose last appearance there with the short story "Shed
Skin" in the January-February 2004 issue won the
Analytical Laboratory Award, voted on by Analog's
readers, for best short story of the year; "Shed Skin" was also a
Hugo Award finalist.
"The single most important thing a book needs is word-of-mouth,"
says Sawyer. "The beauty of serialization is that on the day
Rollback hits the stores in hardcover, 40,000
people will have already read it. You can't beat that kind of
exposure."
That exposure has paid off handsomely for Sawyer's previous
Analog serials.
The Terminal Experiment, which
Analog ran under Sawyer's
preferred title of Hobson's Choice, won the
1995 Nebula Award for Best Novel of the Year,
and was a finalist for the Hugo Award. Sawyer's
Starplex was the only
1996 novel to be a finalist for both the Nebula and
Hugo Awards.
And his
Hominids won the
2003 Hugo Award.
Rollback is Sawyer's fourth novel to be serialized
in Analog a record for serial sales to
Stanley Schmidt, who has been the magazine's editor since 1978.
Analog is the largest-circulation SF magazine in
the world.
"For me, Analog has always been the very definition
of science fiction," says Sawyer. "I started buying it when I
was 12, at a corner store next to my junior high school in
Toronto; the clerk kept ordering it in each month just for me
after that. I fondly remember waiting eagerly for the next
installment in whatever serial the magazine was then running
and it thrills me to think that people are going to be
doing that with Rollback."
Following its serialization, Tor Books will publish
Rollback in hardcover in April 2007 marking
10 years of Sawyer being with Tor; it's his ninth new novel for
them, and the second book on a two-book contract that began with
Mindscan, which has just come out in
paperback after a successful run in hardcover. Sawyer's editor at Tor is
David G. Hartwell.
Here's a sneak peek at the dustjacket blurb for
Rollback:
Dr. Sarah Halifax decoded the first-ever radio transmission
received from aliens. Thirty-eight years later, a second message
is received and Sarah, now 87, may hold the key to
deciphering this one, too ... if she lives long enough.
A wealthy industrialist offers to pay for Sarah to have a
rollback a hugely expensive experimental rejuvenation
procedure. She accepts on condition that Don, her husband of
sixty years, gets a rollback, too. The process works for Don,
making him physically twenty-five again. But in a tragic twist,
the rollback fails for Sarah, leaving her in her eighties.
While Don tries to deal with his newfound youth and the suddenly
huge age gap between him and his wife, Sarah struggles to do
again what she'd done once before: figure out what a signal from
the stars contains. Exploring morals and ethics on both human
and cosmic scales, Rollback is the big new SF novel
by Hugo and Nebula Award-winner Robert J. Sawyer.
"Robert J. Sawyer is just about the best science fiction writer
out there these days."
The Rocky Mountain News
"One of the foremost science fiction writers of our generation."
SF Site
"A writer of boundless confidence and bold scientific
extrapolation." The New York Times
More Good Reading
More about Rollback
Analog cover for Part One of Rollback (PDF)
Analog blurb for Rollback
Rob won the 2006 Campbell!
Rob won the 2003 Hugo!
Rob won the 1995 Nebula!
Rob's 2004 Premio UPC Win
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