I’m off to take famed Hollywood script consultant Robert McKee‘s “Story” seminar this weekend: three 9:00-to-9:00 days, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It’s actually my second time taking it; my buddy Herb Kauderer is taking it with me this time (Carolyn did it last time with me, back in the fall of 2003). McKee is the […]
Fascinating discussion of the guest appearance by the classic cylon design in flashbacks for the new Battlestar Galactica can be found here at Darth Mojo. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Somebody over at The Quotations Page is a fan of my novel Calculating God, I see. That site lists seven quotes from the book, including one I had cause to repeat to a friend recently: “Honor does not have to be defended” — you’ve either got it, or you don’t, and if you do no […]
Until Tuesday, May 27, 2008, at 11 AM EDT, the unabridged recording of the Hugo Award-winning novel Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer is half-price at Audible.com. Click here for the special price. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Interesting discussion going on in the Fictionwise Yahoo! Groups newsgroup; I began it based on having a frustrating shopping experience at Fictionwise.com yesterday. My posts: I’ve just gone through 1,100 Secure Mobipocket titles filed under “Science Fiction” on the Fictionwise ebook store — and hundreds of Star Trek titles were scattered in amongst the regular […]
Note: These are not the official Canvention / Aurora Award minutes; they’re just my notes and comments on what went down at the business meeting in Winnipeg yesterday. It only took eleven years, but some reforms for the Aurora Awards very similar to ones I first proposed right here were passed. For one, assuming next […]
My congratulations to Nalo Hopkinson, whose The New Moon’s Arms took the English Long-Form Aurora Award this year; it was an honour to be on a ballot with such a fine book, and I’m thrilled to see Nalo win her first Aurora. Way to go, Nalo! I was also honoured to be the presenter of […]
I love the Gorn from classic Star Trek. He probably has the highest ratio of toys-made-of-him to actual-screen-time of any character in television history :) and I own most of them. The best likeness to date is the Art Asylum version — but Mego has a new one coming this fall (that’s a prototype for […]
The official review from Canada’s McNally Robinson bookstore chain is here. As it happens, I’m signing at their Winnipeg Grant Park store this Saturday, May 17, 2008, at 2:00 p.m. More about Identity Theft and Other Stories is here. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The Astak Mentor line of electronic-ink ebook readers was formally announced yesterday, although they’re not yet shipping. Also rumored: support for the eReader (formerly Palm Reader) format, now owned by Fictionwise, my favorite ebook-reading platform (and with the best/fairest/least-awkward DRM scheme around). Some more info is here. Interesting times in the ebook market. Looking at […]
Stan’s the man! I received the latest progress report from Denvention, this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, today here in Canada, and it contains the Hugo voting ballot. So it’s a good time to remind people of all the reasons, back at the nomination stage, that I suggested it’s high time Stanley Schmidt got a […]
A very kind review is here. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Not one, not two, but three science-fiction authors will be appearing at McNally Robinson Grant Park in Winnipeg this Saturday afternoon, May 17, at 2:00 p.m. Come here Robert J. Sawyer, Nick DiChario, and Hayden Trenholm read and talk about the state of SF. I’ll be reading from Identity Theft and Other Stories, Nick will […]
Death toll currently at almost 10,000. The quake’s epicenter was just 100 km north of Chengdu, where the International Science Fiction Festival I attended was held last year. I’m hoping for the best for all my wonderful friends there. News is everywhere on the net, including here. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Herb Kauderer and Al Katerinsky, who live in Western New York, have a show on Think Twice Radio called Orthopedic Horseshoes. They interviewed me for half an hour — without any prep, I must say: I was simply asked cold, “What makes you cranky?” And off we went, discussing (as the web site says), “gas […]
Next weekend — Friday, May 16, to Monday, May 19, 2008 — I will be at Keycon in Winnipeg. Not only is it this year’s CanVention — the Canadian national SF convention, at which the Aurora Awards will be presented — but it’s also the 25th anniversary of Keycon (and, in those 25 years, I’m […]
There are lyrics to the theme songs of lots of TV shows that normally aren’t heard — most famously, classic Star Trek (for which Gene Roddenberry wrote lyrics to Alexander Courage’s instrumental theme so he could claim half the royalties). Sometimes the lyrics are very good; I’m rather fond of the lyrics to the 1980s […]
On Friday, May 9, 2008, CBC Radio One’s very popular As It Happens aired three and a half minutes from my opening comments at the Walrus Magazine debate between me and Hal Niedzviecki. You can listen here — I come in at the 10 minute, 27 second, mark. Needless to say, I’m taking a much […]
Over in the Fictionwise Yahoo! Groups newsgroup, science-fiction ebook author Darrell Bain has noted that whereas SF titles used to dominate the bestsellers lists at Fictionwise.com (and, indeed, my own work has hit number-one on various lists there in the past), the current top-ten list has only one SF title on it. Darrell asks, “What’s […]
Come one, come all, to Toronto’s Bakka-Phoenix Books, 697 Queen Street West (just west of Bathurst), for the launch party of Identity Theft and Other Stories by Robert J. Sawyer, with an introduction by Robert Charles Wilson. The event is tomorrow, Saturday, May 10, 2008, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., and afterwards Carolyn and I […]
Whew! I’ve at long last cleared my plate of all sorts of things I’d promised to do. Over the last little while, I wrote an introduction to Jack McDevitt’s new short story collection Cryptic, coming from Subterranean Press; I wrote introductions to two classic pulp reprints coming from the Battered Silicon Dispatch Box (the Polaris […]
“HAL, I won’t argue with you anymore! Open the doors!” Oops! Wrong Hal. Today I was debating Canadian writer and cultural critic Hal Niedzviecki. We were the entertainment at a $110-a-plate luncheon at the University Club in Toronto, sponsored by Canada’s The Walrus magazine, a wonderful glossy newsstand magazine that’s a bit like a Canadian […]
Today, I spoke to students in the Creative Book Publishing Program at Toronto’s Humber College, run by former Penguin Canada publisher Cynthia Good. Great students, great questions, and a great time. I’d brought along my brand-new iRex iLiad — and Cynthia has an Amazon Kindle (one of very few in Canada, I’m sure; it’s not […]
From 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow, Wednesday, May 7, 2008, I’ll be live in studio in Toronto for CBC Radio One’s Ontario Today. We’ll be doing a phone-in show about why people like science fiction (and plugging the launch of my new collection Identity Theft and Other Stories, which happens this Saturday afternoon, […]
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) interviews Robert J. Sawyer, Mike Resnick, and Lawrence Watt-Evans about the relationship between science fiction and real-world engineering in this article by John R. Platt in the magazine Today’s Engineer. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’m pleased to see the mass-market paperback of my Rollback on the bestsellers’ list published in the May 2007 issue of the science-fiction trade journal Locus (covering the data period February 2008), which arrived today. MAY 2008 (data period: February [Locus site]): 1) White Night, Jim Butcher (Roc) 1 – 2) Iron Kissed, Patricia Briggs (Ace) […]
I’m delighted to announce that my agent Ralph Vicinanza has just sold Korean rights to my 1994 novel End of an Era to the charmingly named Woonghin Think Big Company; the deal was done in conjuction with Ralph’s Korean co-agent, Shin Won Literary Agency. This brings to 16 the languages my novels are in: Bulgarian, […]
The postmarked-by deadline for paper-mail ballots for this year’s Aurora Awards — the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards — is this Friday, May 9, 2008. My novel Rollback is one of five finalists in the Best Long Form in English category (and the book is also a current Hugo Award finalist). Any Canadian may […]
I normally don’t approve of contests with entry fees, but it’s just six bucks in this case, and so I’m going to plug this one, anyway: “In Places Between: The Robyn Herrington Memorial Short Fiction Competition.” Robyn was my friend, my writing student, and a fine writer herself, and my latest novel, Rollback, is dedicated […]
Booked my outbound flight today for the Gartner IT Security Summit in Washington, DC, June 2-4, 2008, at which I’ll be chairing a panel discussion by science-fiction writers Arlan Andrews, Greg Bear, Robert J. Sawyer, and Bruce Sterling. More info is here. Speaking of flights, tomorrow morning I’m off to Montreal for the Blue Metropolis […]
