Speaking (as we just were) of my early days as a writer, here’s a piece I wrote in 1997. It appeared in the Ottawa Science Fiction Society Statement (for which I did a column called “Random Musings, more installments of which are here). I started out as a nonfiction writer, and a lot of people […]
Those who’ve been to my home often remark on the lovely painting above my fireplace. It is, in fact, the original of the cover for the September 1988 Amazing Stories by Bob Eggleton, illustrating my novelette “Golden Fleece.” The same painting was later used on the Science Fiction Book Club version of the novel expanded […]
However, at least for the moment, I’m beating him! :) Yes, I have no doubt that one week from today, Michael Chabon’s wonderful The Yiddish Policeman’s Union is going to beat my Rollback for this year’s Hugo Award for Best Novel of the Year. But, to my absolute astonishment and delight, I see that my […]
I’ve given my website and this blog makeovers. They’re small changes, but they’re all I’ve got time to implement right now. Still, I think they look better than they did before, and now they both use the same colour scheme, for a more integrated feel. (The astronomical background images are pieces out of the Horsehead […]
As I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite all-time movies is 1983’s WarGames (just re-issued in a 25th-anniversary DVD, pictured above). In honor of the 25th anniversary, Wired has this terrific article about how the movie came to be and its impact on geek culture. Check it out. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
… her! Yup, at the Denver Worldcon, you can come to the panel on “The Evolution of Science Fiction” with Ben Bova, John E. Stith, L.E. Modesitt, Robert J. Sawyer — and the brilliant and lovely Shoshana Glick. (That’s Sho pictured above, during her January 2008 visit to Toronto, during which she stayed with Carolyn […]
Enik was the coolest character on The Land of the Lost, the NBC Saturday morning half-hour live-action SF show from the 1970s that had David Gerrold as story editor. And I scored one of the above at Comic-Con: one of 480 Enik banks. Enik was an Altrursian, the ancestors of the Sleestaks (it was quite […]
San Diego Comic-Con International 2008 was extremely generous with Carolyn and me: since I was Special Guest this year, we had all our expenses covered — roundtrip airfare for both of us from Toronto, five nights in the Omni right across the street from the convention center (where our suite number was 1701 — the […]
Okay, I’m no expert on music, but, like millions of people, I found Canadian singer Feist’s nifty “1 2 3 4” (above), which was used on an iPod commercial, quite appealing (in that it-keeps-running-through-your-head sort of way). And I thought for sure the song with the lyric “I crinkle my nose” that’s on the radio […]
The final day at San Diego Comic-Con comes to a close. We had a wonderful time. This morning, I hooked up with Anthony Pascale, who runs TrekMovie.Com (for whom I reviewed the Star Trek Classic remastered episode “The Immunity Syndrome” last year). He and I went to the event related to the sitcom It’s Always […]
Today started with this panel, masterfully moderated by MaryElizabeth Hart from San Diego science-fiction bookstore Mysterious Galaxy: 10:00-11:00 “Looking at Our World: Eye on the Future”: Speculative-fiction authors discuss shaping the future through their fiction and shaping their fiction to the future. Panelists [pictured, left to right]: Comic-Con 2008 Guest of Honor Robert J. Sawyer […]
Today was my “Spotlight on Robert J. Sawyer” event. I was pleasantly surprised by the size of the audience, and very gratified by the quality of the questions in the Q&A. After my talk, I had some nice chats with people, including a woman who is now a Hollywood scriptwriter who had read Far-Seer when […]
We had a wonderful first full day at San Diego Comic-Con, at which I’m special guest. (Noel Neill) We started Thursday by attending a session with Noel Neill, now 87, who played Lois Lane in the classic 1950s TV series The Adventures of Superman. Sadly, 15 minutes of her hour were eaten up by a […]
Carolyn and I flew from Toronto to San Diego, by way of Chicago, today for San Diego Comic-Con International, at which I’m a Special Guest this year. We were picked up at the airport, and whisked to our lovely hotel suite. Once we got checked in, we took a cab over to the San Diego […]
Man, I love this job! On Monday, following Readercon 19 in Burlington, Massachusetts, I stopped by MIT, and had a wonderful three-hour tour-and-lunch with AI pioneer Marvin Minsky (above: Robert J. Sawyer, Marvin Minsky) and his students Bo and Dustin. We visited the AI Lab and the Media Lab — and I met the robot […]
My friend Melody Friedenthal today asked me, “Which idea in the Neanderthal Parallax books did you start with?” For me, book ideas start out quite vague, and only after much research do they become concrete. But, culled from my writing journals, here are notes about the creation of the basic ideas for the Neanderthal Parallax […]
I’m at Readercon 19 in Burlington, Massachusetts, where, on Friday, July 18, 2008, the winner of this year’s Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, honoring a deceased SF writer who has slipped from public consciousness but deserved to have renewed attention brought to his work, was presented to Stanley G. Weinbaum, author of, among others, the seminal […]
Summer’s here, and the Rob-man is on the road! Thursday, July 17, to Sunday, July 20, 2008: Readercon, Burlington, Massachusetts Wednesday, July 23, to Sunday, July 27, 2008: Special Guest at San Diego Comic Con Wednesday, August 6, to Sunday, August 10, 2008: Denvention 3, the World Science Fiction Convention, in Denver Thursday, August 14, […]
My very favorite ebook-reading software, eReader (formerly, Palm Reader), is now available for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Steve Pendergrast of eReader.com and Fictionwise.com gives a terrific tour in this YouTube video, as well as a great explanation of the eReader DRM system, which I think is the fairest and easiset to use one […]
… are a hoot! See here. (Thanks to my buddy Fergus Heywood of the CBC for the link!) The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Our great friends Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens are in town, and Carolyn and I just came back from a fabulous three-and-a-half-hour dinner with them. Lots of shop talk, lots of pleasant conversation, and lots and lots of good food. (Here’s a profile I wrote of them when we all guests of honor at MileHiCon in […]
I’m a member of a number of online groups devoted to various aspects of electronic publishing, but I probably post the most over in the Yahoo! Groups Fictionwise group, which is over here. Today, this popped up in my email box: Rob, I’m not writing to tell you how much I love or hate any […]
I’m lucky enough to be a Special Guest at the San Diego Comic-Con later this month (woohoo!). Here’s my schedule of events there: Spotlight on Robert J. SawyerFriday, JULY 254:00-5:00pm ROOM 4Robert J. Sawyer is one of only seven writers in history to win all three of science-fiction’s top awards for best novel of the […]
Used to be, when all computers used fixed-width fonts, that ASCII art was cool: little pictures, often used in the signature blocks at the end of emails, made out of typewriter-style characters. These days, with proportional fonts, they don’t work well. But here’s one of my favorites, a Klingon cruiser seen bow on: //-n-\\ _____—=======—_____ […]
Well, although nominated, I did not place in the 2008 John W. Campbell Memorial Awards (and neither did the other Canadian nominees, Nalo Hopkinson and Robert Charles Wilson). The winners, announced last night in Kansas, were: 1st: In War Times, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Tor2nd: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Michael Chabon, HarperCollins3rd: The Execution Channel, Ken […]
With all this talk about giving away science fiction online, I’d be remiss if I didn’t draw attention to my own offerings in this area — after all, I was one of the first professional SF writers to give away work on the World Wide Web. Short stories by me have been available to download […]
Here’s my programming schedule for Readercon 19, being held near Boston from Thursday evening, July 17, through Sunday afternoon, July 20, 2008: 15. FRIDAY 11:00 ME Science Fiction as a Mirror for Reality. Robert J. Sawyer with discussion by Paolo Bacigalupi, Michael A. Burstein, Lancer Kind, Hildy Silverman, et al. Talk / Discussion (60 min.). […]
For those who enjoyed my post a couple of days ago about Tor’s free ebook program, I’ve just added another 1,300 words by me to the end of the comments section of that blog entry. Also, note that Jeffrey A. Carver, another participant in the Tor program, has now stopped by to comment there, in […]
Simon Owens at Bloggasm sent me this note this morning: I remember seeing one or two posts of yours about Tor’s experiment releasing free ebooks [actually I’ve never posted about that, but I have posted about free ebooks in general]. I got a chance recently to talk to several Tor authors [he quotes three, out […]
I noted earlier that my latest novel, Rollback, is in its third consecutive month on the Locus paperback bestsellers’ list, and, for the second month in a row, it’s the highest-ranked SF title. (Locus is the US trade journal of the science-fiction field.) Three months is a long run on the Locus list, but I […]
