Carolyn and I have had a great 30 hours in Whitehorse. Last night we had dinner with Barbara Curtis and her family — Barb and I were at public school together. Today, we did a little sightseeing, including The Beringia Interpretive Centre. And I gave my reading (from Rollback, natch) at the Whitehorse Public Library, […]
Has it been a quarter of a century already? Wow … Twenty-five years ago today, my great friend Ted Bleaney and I co-chaired a wonderful day-long science-fiction conference in Toronto called NorthStar: a full track of speakers, with a companion track of short films organized by Tom Nadas. The event was a huge success, with […]
Not to be outdone by the University of Calgary, I’m informed that the University of Waterloo uses two Robert J. Sawyer novels in the science fiction course taught there by the Philosophy department’s Joseph A. Novak: both Calculating God and Mindscan are required reading. Woohoo! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Casablanca. Just sayin’ … The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
One really does have to wonder what’s going through the minds of the people at Von Holtzbrink — parent company of Tor, Forge, and St. Martin’s Press — when it comes to ebooks. They have mostly given up doing Tor titles as ebooks (I was promised that my Mindscan would be released as an ebook, […]
Last night was the final night of the year at Diamond Tooth Gerties, the casino / night club here in Dawson, Yukon; it’s now closed until next summer. Carolyn and I walked on over for the 8:30 floorshow, and Gertie herself came over to our table, sang to me, and planted a big kiss on […]
Oh my God! Last night (Saturday, September 22, 2007), the northern lights were even better here in the Klondike than they were the night before — in fact, they were absolutely incredible: arching right across the entire sky, from north to south, visibly rippling and undulating. Unbelievable, and amazingly beautiful. And — yay! — at […]
In honour of my last few days living just down the road from Jack London’s cabin in Dawson, Yukon, a pointer to a review I did of Jack’s book Before Adam; the review was published in 2005 in the glossy newsstand magazine Archaeology. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
My latest novel Rollback has been adopted as required reading for the science-fiction course to be taught by Ruby Ramraj at the University of Calgary next term (Winter 2008) — yay! (Prof. Ramraj is also teaching an SF course this term, and she’s using my first novel, Golden Fleece, as a required text.) The Robert […]
Today begins my final week at the Berton House writers’ retreat in Dawson City, Yukon; one week from today, on Wednesday, September 26, Carolyn and I depart for Whitehorse (the territorial capital); we’ll have a day of sightseeing there, plus me doing a reading at the public library, then on Friday, September 28, we’ll at […]
Tomorrow — Tuesday, September 18, 2007 — the Criterion Collection is finally releasing the cult classic SF film Robinson Crusoe on Mars on DVD … and the bonus features include a nifty new documentary about the film produced by the redoubtable Michael Lennick, and the documentary is just chock-full of clips from an interview he […]
To our astonishment, here in Dawson, Yukon, Carolyn and I managed to catch the last half of “The Galileo Seven” remastered — the premiere of the second year of Star Trek Remastered in syndication (our Dawson cable company feeds KTLA from Los Angeles, and they’re showing Star Trek Remastered on Saturday nights at 11:00 p.m. […]
One more song from The Six Million Dollar Man, a rather sweet and romantic scene in which Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers start to get serious. Lee Majors starts singing about the 2 minute 10 second mark … Sweet Jaime Speaking of canonical name spellings, by the way, the original spelling of Jaime’s first name […]
Once again, Toronto’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers have taken a booth at the Word on the Street open-air book fair, being held in Queen’s Park, Toronto, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 30, 2007. The SF&F booth is #183, on the east side of Queen’s Park, facing east, just south of […]
… used for the second and third 90-minute Six Million Dollar Man TV movies in the fall of 1973, before the 60-minute series began. Dusty Springfield sings; lyrics by Glen A. Larson. (YouTube video) The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Nick DiChario has sold second novel Valley of Day-Glo to Rob Sawyer at Robert J. Sawyer Books, for February 2008 publication, via Christine Cohen of the Virginia Kidd Agency; Nancy Kress has been commissioned to write an introduction to the novel. Nick’s first novel, A Small and Remarkable Life, was previously published by Robert J. […]
Yes, Lee Majors himself sings this pretty cool little song called “Gotta Get Loose,” from the first of the episodes from The Six Million Dollar Man that introduced the character of the bionic woman. Couple of things to note about this YouTube clip: the opening shot is the one and only place in the whole […]
How cool is this! A computer at the Computer Science Computing Facility’s Research Group at the University of Waterloo is named after me! In fact, most of the computers there are named after science-fiction writers — Asimov, Bradbury, LeGuin, Sawyer, Turtledove, Verne. Check it out! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Benson, Arizona, blew warm wind through your hair My body flies the galaxy, my heart longs to be there Benson, Arizona, the same stars in the sky But they seemed so much kinder when we watched them, you and I Everyone who remembers the low-budget 1974 John Carpenter SF film Dark Star also remembers it […]
Since we’ve started our deliberations for next year’s recipient, it’s probably time that I noted publicly that I’m now one of four jurors for the annual Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award. I’m replacing Gordon Van Gelder, who has stepped down to spend more time with his family; the other current jurors are Martin Harry Greenberg, Barry […]
I’m a bit behind in announcing this, but Stephen Kotowych, one of the writers who came to see me when I was writer-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library’s The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy in 2003, recently won the $5,000 Grand Prize in the Writers of the Future Contest, for which I’m […]
A trip report for China’s SCIENCE FICTION WORLD magazine by Robert J. Sawyer I’m back safe and sound in Canada after two wonderful weeks in China. The highlight for me, of course, was the Chengdu Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival, at which I won the Galaxy Award for Most Popular Foreign Author of the Year. […]
I’m very pleased to announce the sale of a German edition of my novel Flashforward to Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, an imprint of Random House GMBH, and for a nice pile of euros, too, I might add. ;) The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Vasquez Rocks in southern California is where the classic Star Trek episodes “Arena” and “Friday’s Child” were filmed. And the good folks at HeroComm.com — a site devoted to the actual original communicator props from the series — decided to take one of the original communicators to Vasquez Rocks for a reunion, recreating the famous […]
Over at Yahoo! Questions, someone asked, “What do YOU think science fiction is? Do you think it could be a prediction of the future?” I posted this answer: My own definition is this: Science fiction is the mainstream literature of a plausible alternative reality. That is to say, it is stories told as if to […]
For those looking for my Aurora Award-nominated short story “Biding Time,” it’s online during the voting period here as a Word document, in the DAW science-fiction anthology Slipstreams edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers, and also, I’m pleased as punch to announce, in the wonderful new anthology The Penguin Book of Crime Stories, […]
The actual fill-it-in-and-mail-it ballot for the Aurora Awards is now available online as a PDF here. If you’re an attending member of VCon in Vancouver, voting is free; otherwise, it’s Cdn$6.00 to vote — the fees go entirely to pay for the Aurora Awards trophies (which are gorgeous and are designed and built by the […]
This query, with attached manuscript, showed up in my email box today, and, yes, it was in all-caps: DEAR SIR/MADAM I AM A MEMBER OF WINNING WRITERS , USA. I PICKED YOUR CONTACT DETAILS FROM ONE OF THE WIINING WRITERS WEBSITES RECENTLY.. What did our hapless wannabe do wrong? 1. “Dear Sir/Madam” — No. Address […]
Cathy Palmer-Lister, the chair of Con*Cept, the Montreal regional SF convention, agreed several days ago to having on-site voting for the Auroras this year at Con*Cept (in addition to the on-site voting at VCon in Vancouver, the actual venue for the Aurora ceremony this year). The world should note that having on-site voting at Con*Cept […]
So, now there’s a rumor that a fan saw me in Kyoto around the time of the Worldcon in Yokohama. I was NOT — absolutely not — in Japan at any time this year. Jeepers, if I was in Japan, you think I’d pass up the chance to go to Worldcon? Besides the fact that […]
