I had cause to look at a back issue of the Hugo Award-nominated The New York Review of Science Fiction today. Richard Parent wrote a fascinating 5,000-word essay about my novels Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids for the June 2004 issue entitled “Double Vision: Robert Sawyer’s Utopian Dystopia.” Students studying those books will find much meat […]
Twenty-five years ago today, on Friday, December 16, 1983, I started learning the word-processing program WordStar. I’d bought my first computer, an Osborne 1 CP/M luggable (24 pounds, the most portable computer in the world back then — see picture below), for the princely sum of Canadian$1,495, in large measure because it came bundled with […]
Woot! I’ve just been invited to be a presenter again next year at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference in Surrey (Vancouver), British Columbia. This will be my third year at SiWC. It’s a fabulous conference. Dates are October 23-25, 2009. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
During my lecture on “Showing, Not Telling” at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference back in October, I was asked when it was okay in fiction to have one character lecture another, and I said: “When the other character is desperate to know what the first one knows.” The example I gave is a speech by […]
TVOntario — a major Canadian public broadcaster — has uploaded some two- and three-minute-long monologues by Robert J. Sawyer and Nalo Hopkinson: Robert J. Sawyer on the age of abundance Robert J. Sawyer on uploaded consciousness Nalo Hopkinson on not being white Nalo Hopkinson on robots, utopia, and slaves The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Hugo and World Fantasy Award finalist Nick DiChario — author of A Small and Remarkable Life and Valley of Day-Glo, both published by Robert J. Sawyer Books — discusses Kurt Vonnegut in the November-December 2008 issue of Philosophy Now, a magazine I quite enjoy. The article is online here. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
So, y’all know how much I love Planet of the Apes. And this guy has just self-published a book outlining his take on the timeline of the movies and TV shows as a trade paperback through Lulu.com, and I figured, okay, what the heck, I’d buy a copy; price is $29.95, plus shipping. When I […]
An email I received today said in part: I’ve read several pages at your Web site. As a well-wisher and a Web programmer, I urge you to consider improving the colour and general design of the site. My kind are cheaper than a dime a dozen but if I can be of assistance, do let […]
I was on CBC Radio One’s science program Quirks & Quarks today. Missed it? So did I! But the MP3 podcast is already available right here. The bit with me — on whether the end of our world might come at the hands of aliens — starts at 22 minutes 50 seconds and goes for […]
When I commissioned Fiona Kelleghan to edit a critical anthology for Robert J. Sawyer Books, of course my hope was that the book would be adopted for univesity science-fiction courses. And, to our delight, that’s beginning to happen. Fiona’s anthology The Savage Humanists is required reading at Philadelphia’s Drexel University in the course “Science Fiction” […]
I saw an academic ask about science fiction murder mysteries today, and sent that person a list of my own works in that area: Golden Fleece, Warner 1990 (reissued by Tor 1999) — winner of Canada’s Aurora Award for best novel; named best SF novel of 1990 in Orson Scott Card’s year-end summation in The […]
It’s been a busy week! In and around work on my novel Watch, the sequel to Wake, I have: Helped Anne Ptasznik, who was my girlfriend in grade 12, celebrate her mumblety-mumbletieth birthday [that’s Annie and me at our high-school reunion last year] Finished going over the typesetting for Wake Attended a long, very pleasant, […]
Con-Version, held each year in Calgary, is one of my favourite science-fiction conventions. The brilliant and beautiful Kirstin Morrell — chair of Con-Version last year, former managing editor of Robert J. Sawyer Books and Red Deer Press, and now Communications Officer for Alberta’s Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (iCORE) — has just been named Head […]
In a couple of minutes (in my time zone) National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) will draw to a close. I did not formally participate, and, if I had, I would not have won (“winning” being defined in NaNoWriMo as succeeding at writing 50,000 words of a novel in the 30 days from November 1 […]
As a certain footnote in history would say, “You betcha!” The 6th anniversary of the Dead Poets Society Night will be held Tuesday, December 16, 2008, at the Art Bar [Clinton’s], in Toronto, at 8:00 p.m. There will be 3 sets of 5 readers each. Readers are: Steven Michael BerzenskyAllan BriesmasterDavid ChiltonCarolyn ClinkRobert ColmanJames DewarDayle […]
The November 24, 2008, edition of the Brigham Young student newspaper contains an article entitled Stephenie Meyer: Too Cool for This School?, which says in part: Meyer graduated from BYU in 1995 with a bachelor’s in English. Because of this inside angle, The Daily Universe requested an interview with the 34-year-old author last week. However, […]
Woohoo! Stephen Hawking will be spending several months each year at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. Here’s one of many news stories on the topic, and here’s PI’s press release. As those who have been reading my novel Wake in Analog know, Caitlin’s father, Dr. Malcom Decter, works at the Perimeter […]
When I bought Matthew Hughes’s novel The Commons for my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint, the search for cover art was simple. The Commons is a novel that was published in installments in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and one of those installments, in the March 2007 issue, had one of the best-executed […]
This just popped up in my email, from a blind woman I know who is writing an SF book: “How are stars named?” My response: There are 88 constellations; taken in total, they cover the entire sky. The constellation names are mostly from Roman or Greek mythology. The 24 brightest stars in each constellation are […]
Well, okay, no, I don’t. :) But Michael A. Burstein does, in his wonderful new collection I Remember the Future: The Award-Nominated Stories of Michael A. Burstein, just out from Apex Book Company. On Amazon, I gave it five stars, saying: ***** Grand, classic-style SF with big ideas and a big heart Michael A. Burstein […]
I was asked to put together a list of major authors who had each written multiple books of science fiction and/or fantasy (especially if published as such) living in or near Toronto (which I rather arbitrarily chose to mean London, Ontario, to the west; Orillia, Ontario, to the north; and Kingston, Ontario to the east). […]
I’m a dual US/Canadian citizen. There was a day, a couple of weeks ago, upon which I said, “I have never been more proud to be an American — and I’ve never been more ashamed.” I was proud that my fellow Americans had elected Barack Obama as president; I was ashamed that California had ratified […]
Of course, my books from big publishers like Tor earn royalties beyond their advances, but when dealing with small presses, royalties are rarely seen; the advance, such as it is, is usually all that ever materializes. So it was to my astonishment and delight that I just received a nice cheque from ISFiC Press, publishers […]
And why shouldn’t they? It’s a terrific book — and I should know; it was published under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint. :) In the December 2008 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Peter Heck writes: Hughes has taken what in other hands might have been just a cute idea and turned it into something […]
My writing students rock! Tony Pi was my student for an intensive SF writing workshop at the University of Toronto in the summer of 2001. He’s a terrific guy, and a terrific writer — and, man, is he ever on a roll, as you can see here, with stories in Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine […]
I have the Best. Fans. Ever. Matthew Lachmuth, of Calgary, Alberta, made the T. rex skeleton pictured above as a present for me. He did it as a project in his welding class at SAIT Polytechnic. The skeleton is 39 inches long, 21 inches high, and 4.5 inches wide at the widest point, and it […]
Woot! I’m way behind on my blogging, but I wanted to mention that on September 21, 2008, George Clayton Johnson left a message on my answering machine. Yes, that George Clayton Johnson: co-author of Logan’s Run, author of “The Man Trap” for the original Star Trek, contributor to the original Twilight Zone. We’d met at […]
I give a lot of keynote addresses. Today’s was special, though: it was for the annual meeting of the Science Teachers Association of Ontario. My talk was on “Using Science Fiction in the Science Classroom,” and it was very well received. Also, I just received a nice bit of feedback on the previous keynote I […]
Steph the Video Guy from Prince George, British Columbia, grabbed me for five minutes at the World Fantasy Convention in Calgary earlier this month, and produced this “Steph’s Author Ambush” video — with cameos by Peter Hartwell (my editor’s son) and Guy Gavriel Kay. Check it out! (Direct YouTube link.) Among the people I mention […]
I got asked the above question today in email, and here’s my reply: The smallest number of characters with which you can effectively tell the story. If you have multiple minor characters who can be consolidated into one, do so. Classic example: the original Star Trek pilot. The character of Number One lacked emotions; the […]
