Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

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Full list of Prix Aurora Award winners 2007

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

See photos of the ceremony in Vancouver (of which I was master of ceremonies) in Jean-Louis Trudel’s blog; also see the official list — now up! — here. Read Rob’s report on the ceremony here. Best Long-Form Work in English * Children of Chaos, Dave Duncan (Tor Books) Best Long-Form Work in French * Reine […]

Aurora Awards — English pro

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

I’ll get the full list up as soon as I can confirm it, but the three English pro categories for the Auroras went to: Long-Form: Dave DuncanShort-Form: Robert J. SawyerOther: Neo-Opsis Yay! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

WordFest: Hangin’ with Meg

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

Sorry to be so scarce of late, but I’ve been too busy having a ball. From October 9-14, 2007, I was a participant at WordFest: The Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival in Alberta, and I’m now at the follow-up writers-only Summit Salon in Banff, one of my favourite places in the world. WordFest is one of […]

RJS Quoted in #1 Bestseller

Friday, October 5th, 2007

One of the hottest nonfiction books around for the last several months has been The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss. It’s hit #1 on the New York Times bestsellers’ list, and #1 on the Wall Street Journal bestsellers’ list, and, as I write this, its Amazon.com […]

What a week!

Friday, October 5th, 2007

I’ve been crazy busy. Sunday was Word on the Street, Toronto’s open-air book fair; I was there selling books from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (including doing a reading). Monday, I did four hours of talks at Upper Canada College (above), one of Toronto’s ritziest private boys’ schools. Tuesday, it was off to the University […]

Sawyer, deLint at WordFest in Calgary

Friday, October 5th, 2007

I’m off to Calgary for WordFest: the Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival, and so is my buddy Charles de Lint (above), as well as Tom Wayman, and we’re all reading together at the Vertigo Theatre Centre — Playhouse on Saturday, October 13, at 10:30 a.m. Tickets are $14. All the details are here, and you can […]

World’s Biggest Bookstore pushes Hominids

Sunday, September 30th, 2007

Toronto’s World’s Biggest Bookstore is promoting Hominids in the latest issue of their online newsletter, as you can see here: World’s Biggest Bookstore’s Sci-Fi Fan Letter: Sci-Fi Fan Letter Issue 14. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

OSC’s IGMS interviews RJS

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

The sixth issue of Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show — just out — has a lengthy interview with me conducted by Darrell Schweitzer. Each issue costs just $2.50, and always includes a new Enderverse story by Orson Scott Card himself. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Happy Birthday, TNG!

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

Twenty years ago today, September 28, 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered. Every week for the first year, Carolyn and I had her brother David over, along with friends Norm Gall and Andi, and sometimes one or two others, to watch. After the episodes — mostly, to be honest, painfully bad that first year […]

Whitehorse a success

Friday, September 28th, 2007

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, […]

NorthStar: 25 Years Ago Today

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

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 […]

University of Waterloo teaches Rob

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

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

Best Movie Ever

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

Casablanca. Just sayin’ … The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Von Holtzbrink and eBooks

Monday, September 24th, 2007

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 at Diamond Tooth Gerties

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

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 […]

More Northern Lights!

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

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 […]

Jack London review

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

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

Rollback adopted at University of Calgary

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

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 […]

T-minus One Week

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

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 […]

Robinson Crusoe on Mars — with added RJS!

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

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 […]

"The Galileo Seven" remastered

Monday, September 17th, 2007

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: "Sweet Jaime"

Monday, September 17th, 2007

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 […]

Toronto SF authors at Word on the Street

Monday, September 17th, 2007

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 […]

And then there’s the Dusty Springfield theme song …

Monday, September 17th, 2007

… 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

Another Nick DiChario novel!

Sunday, September 16th, 2007

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. […]

More nifty SF music: "Gotta Get Loose"

Sunday, September 16th, 2007

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 […]

A computer named after me!

Sunday, September 16th, 2007

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

Sunday, September 16th, 2007

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 […]

Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award

Friday, September 14th, 2007

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 […]

Stephen Kotowych: That’s my boy!

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

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 […]