Way back in 1997, in my Hugo Award-nominated and Seiun Award-winning novel Frameshift, I warned about US health insurance companies using nefarious means to acquire genetic profiles of potential clients. Today, Carolyn and I had 23andMe delete our genetic data; the gene-sequencing company is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and there’s a real likelihood that an […]
My 2016 Aurora Award-winning novel Quantum Night tells of a psychopathic US president using a trumped-up (ha!) excuse to invade Canada. “Uncomfortably close to present-day fears.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review denoting a book of exceptional merit) “Sawyer’s most blatantly Canadian book, an almost forensic examination of the cultural and political differences between Canada and its […]
Forty years ago, at the end of 1984, I put together this roundup of the year’s Canadian achievements in science fiction and fantasy. It was published in The Bakka Bookie Sheet, the newsletter of Toronto’s Bakka: A Science Fiction Bookstore. === John Robert Colombo‘s Canadian Literary Landmarks (Hounslow, December) contains many references to writers of the […]
Google is dangerous since it’s started serving up AI answers instead of actual links to reliable sources as the first thing you see after a search. I put in “major Canadian cities,” and it replied: What are the ten largest cities in Canada? The top ten largest cities in Canada are: Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, […]
Every Canadian of my generation knows the line, “I told him, Julie, don’t go!” It was said by Sylvia Lennick, the mother of my dear friend, the great Canadian filmmaker and special-effects expert Michael Lennick. Michael passed away ten years ago today, on November 7, 2014, at just 61 years of age. He’d been admitted […]
I was very sad to hear of the death of former talkshow host Phil Donahue, who left us today at the age of 88. I was a regular viewer of Donahue in the 1980s and 1990s because he so often tackled big issues. And so, when I was writing my novel The Terminal Experiment — […]
I’ve updated my WordStar for DOS 7.0 archive, based on feedback from the thousands of people who downloaded the initial public release (which was version 1.4, dated July 30, 2024).This new version is 1.5, dated August 12, 2024. The new version has the file size of the PDF manuals reduced (which cuts the archive size […]
As you all know, I continue to use WordStar for DOS 7.0 as my word-processing program. It was last updated in December 1992, and the company that made it has been defunct for decades; the program is abandonware. There was no proper archive of WordStar for DOS 7.0 available online, so I decided to create […]
Seventy-nine years ago, the era of atomic weapons began with the Trinity test. My novel about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project is The Oppenheimer Alternatvie, and, in my humble opinion, it’s the best of my 25 novels: “Incredibly realistic: the characters, locations, the era, and even the science. I felt like I was […]
Ahmed A. Khan sent me a scan of a reader’s letter published in the May 1997 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine about my novel Starplex, which was serialized in four parts in that magazine before being published by Ace; I don’t believe I’d ever seen this letter before: ================= Dear Analog: I […]
Robyn Meta Herrington, active member of both SFWA and SF Canada, passed away twenty years ago today, on Monday morning, May 3, 2004, in Calgary, Alberta, at just 43 years of age after a courageous multi-year battle with cancer. Robyn’s short fiction appeared in such places as On Spec, Talebones, Adventures of Sword and Sorcery, […]
My 25th novel, The Downloaded, is now available for pre-order in both print and ebook editions, and I’ll be touring across Canada starting next month to promote its release. Here are my May 2024 book-launch events: all are free and open to everyone, and books will be for sale (or bring your own copies and get them signed): Calgary Public […]
Delighted that my THE DOWNLOADED is the #1 Science Fiction bestseller on the Audible.com monthly bestsellers list as reported in the March 2024 issue of Locus, the trade journal for the science fiction and fantasy fields, which came out today. Get THE DOWNLOADED here: Canada: https://adbl.co/45WsEqI US: https://adbl.co/49kuCEc UK: https://adbl.co/3tUfJbJ
I’m thrilled to announce new ebook editions of my Hugo Award-winning novel Hominids, its Hugo Award-nominated sequel Humans, and the bestselling final volume Hybrids. Together, they are the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, which won the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Award (“the Aurora”) for best work of the entire decade. The trilogy tells of a parallel […]
In honour of today being the 40th anniversary of the Macintosh computer, here’s an article I wrote in 1985 (the year I turned 25) for the Canadian computing magazine InfoAge (for which, back in the day, I was a regular contributor); of course, I wrote the article with WordStar on an Osborne 1 CP/M computer: […]
Forty years to the day after I wrote it, here’s the first thing I ever wrote in WordStar. This was published in The Bakka Bookie Sheet, the newsletter of Bakka, Toronto’s science-fiction specialty bookstore, and it provides an interesting snapshot of the state of Canadian science-fiction and fantasy publishing four decades ago: 1983 in Review: […]
Forty years ago today, on December 16, 1983, I started using the word-processing program WordStar. Two days earlier, I’d acquired my first computer, an Osborne 1B, which came bundled with the CP/M operating system, SuperCalc spreadsheet, Microsoft BASIC, and WordStar 2.26. And, today, I still use WordStar: WordStar for DOS 7.0 Revision D, the final […]
There doesn’t seem to be an accurate version of the specifications for cyborg Steve Austin’s bionic parts anywhere online, so I have put one together. Below are screen-accurate reproductions of the text. The only change I made from Jack Cole’s faux computer-graphic displays used in the opening credits of The Six Million Dollar Man was […]
Short version: Please subscribe — or re-subscribe — to my newsletter: https://robertjsawyer.substack.com Long version: the downside of being an online pioneer! I sent out my first by-email newsletter 23 years ago (announcing the publication of Calculating God). I’ve never been aggressive about building an email list, but in the almost quarter-century since then, I’d accumulated […]
Sixty years ago today, on November 22, 1963, American president John F. Kennedy was assassinated — an event that had a big impact on J. Robert Oppenheimer, as portrayed in this scene from my novel The Oppenheimer Alternative: From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time — two o’clock […]
My new novel is out now! Got an Audible account? The Downloaded, the twenty-fifth novel by Hugo Award-winning author Robert J. Sawyer, came out today in a six-month exclusive window as an audiobook on Audible—and it’s FREE to anyone who has an Audible account! It’s part of the Audible Plus catalogue and therefore doesn’t require […]
I was asked in Chengdu about diversity in Canada. It’s one of the things I love most about my country; I’ve always said it’s like the bridge of Kirk’s Enterprise writ large: everyone is welcome here and everyone is equal. Although I’m thrilled to be guest of honour at Chengdu Worldcon, the greatest honour of […]
The Canadian publishing trade journal Quill & Quire just reported that Sharon Fitzhenry, the CEO and majority shareholder of Canadian publishing company and book distributor Fitzhenry & Whiteside, passed away on August 26, 2023, at the age of 73. Sharon and I had worked together since 2005, when she acquired the smaller Calgary-based Red Deer […]
Ten years ago today, on September 13, 2013, the biggest and best academic conference about Canadian science fiction ever held began. McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, hosted the three-day conference entitled “Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre — A Conference in Honour of Robert J. Sawyer’s Archival Donation to the University Library Collections.” My archives, which […]
The opening credits for The Six Million Dollar Man were created by the legendary Jack Cole, and they use radio chatter during the crash sequence of the lifting body Steve Austin is operating that was never actually heard in the pilot movie. There’s been lots of debate online about what the dialog actually says, with […]
I no longer write short stories, but I had a nice little career as a short-story writer, with 45 stories published. The stories appeared in a mix of classic genre venues such as Analog, Amazing Stories, and On Spec, original anthologies, and places that don’t normally publish fiction, such as The Toronto Star, The Globe and […]
Today’s mail brought my contributor’s copy of the just-published anthology State of the Ark: Canadian Futurefiction. I’m delighted to see that editor Lesley Choyce used my “Star Light, Star Bright” as the lead story in this follow-up to his landmark 1992 anthology Ark of Ice: Canadian Futurefiction (which I was also published in). Contributors to […]
Yesterday, my great friend John Robert Colombo (pictured on the right with me at the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal) was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. I was one of those who nominated him; this was my nominating letter: It is my privilege and honour to nominate John Robert Colombo […]
We saw Christopher Nolan’s movie Oppenheimer last night as it was meant to be seen: in 70 mm IMAX. It’s a very good film; I recommend it. That said, is it the best cinematic treatment of the subject? No, that’s still the 1989 movie Day One. And is Cillian Murphy going to win the Academy […]
The atomic age began 78 years ago today, on July 16, 1945, with the first-ever atomic bomb explosion, the Trinity Test near Alamogordo, New Mexico. This is how I described that momentous event in my novel The Oppenheimer Alternative: Chapter 15 From The Oppenheimer Alternative by Robert J. Sawyer I am sure that at the […]
