Recognize her? That’s Gillian Deacon, former co-host of @discovery.ca, the nightly science program on Discovery Channel Canada. I used to be a regular columnist for them in the 1997-98 season, doing a segment called 2020 Vision, and on January 2, 2000, Gill and I co-hosted a two-hour prime-time documentary for Discovery Channel Canada called Inventing […]
To my astonishment (and delight!) I stumbled on the fact this evening that Wikipedia has an entry on “Quintaglio,” the species of intelligent dinosaurs that feature in my novels Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner. There’s also an entry on the “Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy”, and one on the main character of the trilogy, “Afsan”. Cool! The […]
I now have a MySpace page. Check it out! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Phyllis Gotlieb, Jay Lake, and I have stories in the anthology Fall and Rise edited by Ahmed A. Khan. My contribution, “The Shoulders of Giants,” is a reprint — but also, I think, one of my very best stories. The anthology’s theme is instriguing: There have been anthologies of post-apocalyptic fiction ,but none such as […]
Stumbled across a wonderful little article about me on a web site called LabLit.com: The Culture of Science in Fiction & Fact. The (pseudonymous) author is a scientist in Philadelphia, according to the bionote. The article concludes: If this doesn’t sound like your father’s science fiction, it isn’t. Sawyer’s novels are thought-provoking, literate, erudite and […]
Last week I noticed for the first time that Nebula Awards Showcase 2007, edited by Mike Resnick, is now out. Although I didn’t win the Nebula last year, I was nominated for it — and this anthology includes my nominated novella “Identity Theft.” It also includes a non-fiction piece by me on the state of […]
I’m pleased to report that The Easton Press has renewed its license on my 1995 Nebula Award-winning novel The Terminal Experiment; they’ve been producing a beautiful leather-bound edition with a great introduction by James Gunn (this year’s SFWA Grand Master), and now they get to continue to do so (they license five-year periods). (This means […]
An innovative program, offered by the Kitchener Public Library, where I was writer-in-residence last year: Book Club in a Bag. A set of ten copies of the same book, plus a book-club discussion guide, all circulating from the library as a single item, nicely packaged in a canvas bag. My Hominids is one of the […]
Twenty years ago, back in 1987, I used to write for Playback, a Canadian trade publication about the broadcasting and production industries — although I’m sure no one at Playback today has any idea about that. But today, the tables were turned and Playback wrote about me. In its coverage of the ICE 07 conference, […]
On Thursday, March 15, I was in Calgary, to give a talk to the local branch of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. My escort from the RASC, Anna Maria Bortolotto, took me to the Calgary store in the McNally Robinson bookstore chain. This was 48 days — almost seven weeks — in advance of […]
The website for this year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Japan has a nifty photo of a Hugo bookshelf — novels that have won the Hugo Award, including my own Hominids. It’s a cool photo, which you can see full-size here (click on the photo if your browser reduces it). (No, it’s not a complete […]
… well, almost! Carolyn tells me a couple of copies of Rollback, my 17th novel, have shown up at our place in Toronto (I’m in the Air Canada lounge at the Calgary Airport right now, heading home after giving my talk to the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Calgary Centre). She says they look gorgeous! […]
For those who are interested in how this business works, an email I sent this week. Canada is full of small-time producers who are always making offers like the one referred to in my letter; in this case, the producer wanted an option on the film rights to one of my novels for Cdn$2,000 for […]
My own personal theme song has always been Barry Gray’s end-title music for the 1963 British TV series Fireball XL5, produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. It’s one of the songs I’ll sing at the drop of a hat at parties. And finally it is getting the recognition it deserves: the latest edition of the […]
With the World Horror Convention set to start in Toronto two weeks from tomorrow, this interview between Canadian horror writer Mark Leslie and UK reviewer “Critical Mick” seems apropos — and if it happens to also contain some nice comments about me, well, who am I to complain? :) The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Quill & Quire, Canada’s publishing trade journal, has just weighed in with its review of Rollback. The review is by Robert J. Wiersema. The full text is online here (at least for the moment; it might disappear to where you need a paid Quill Online account to read it at some point). Note: there’s a […]
Rollback is featured today at NEW BOOKS, a blog by Marshal Zeringue that spotlights new titles in all genres. And, unlike just about everybody else, he’s actually got the correct version of the Rollback cover (note the typeface for the book’s title). The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Yup, I’m off to Cow Town! And I’m giving a free public lecture at the Telus World of Science (formerly the Calgary Science Centre) this coming Thursday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m., in the Discovery Dome. My talk is on “Astronomy and Science Fiction,” and is presented by the Calgary Centre of the Royal Astronomical […]
After the talk at McMaster, I scooted back to Toronto and gave another talk: I was the final speaker on a program of 20 (!) speakers at the grand opening of the Centre for Inquiry Ontario. I was quite honoured to be given the final slot, and I think I shook things up a bit. […]
This morning, I was the last of four speakers, each giving an hour-long talk, at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Collectively, we were the program for the conference “Do You CO2?,” about global warming and climate change, sponsored by the McMaster Science for Peace / Pugwash Society. The other speakers were a McMaster grad student, […]
I thought about not even posting about this, since nothing at all concrete has actually happened, but, then again, a day like this is so rare in a writer’s career, I decided I’d like to at least mark it. I spent a good hunk of today dealing with not one, not two, but three different […]
Today’s mail brought a contract for Romanian rights to my 1995 Nebula-Award-winning novel The Terminal Experiment. The Romanian edition will be published by Nemira. Yay! Also in today’s mail: the March 2007 edition of The New York Review of Science Fiction, which has, on page 3, a nice photo showing Karl Schroeder, Marcel Gagne, Lorna […]
The grand opening of the Centre for Inquiry Ontario (“A new Canadian voice for reason, science and secularism”) is tomorrow night, Saturday, March 10, 2007, in Toronto, and I’m one of the speakers there. Also speaking are John Robert Colombo, James Alcock, Robert Buckman, and others. The event starts at 5:00 p.m.; I’ll be speaking […]
Those who have seen me at parties know that I will sing the theme song to the original Star Trek at the drop of a hat (yes, it has lyrics!). My buddy SF writer Edward Willett has drawn this YouTube interview with Alexander Courage, who wrote the music (but not the lyrics — those are […]
Today’s mail brought some copies of the dustjacket for Rollback, my novel that comes out in 26 days. Of course, I’d seen a JPG of the cover before, but that doesn’t prepare one for the impact of the actual finished product. I must say it’s gorgeous. The cover has a lovely matte (as opposed to […]
My brother and I are both amused by the following, which Google displayed today when he searched on “Sawyer” and “ICE 2007”: Robert J. SawyerI’ll be keynote speaker at the ICE 2007 conference being held in Toronto on … got this gig just because my broski, Alan Sawyer, is one of the organizers. …www.sfwriter.com/2007/01/rob-on-ice.html – […]
How many high-school reunions can boast that they’ll have not one but two Hugo Award-winners present? Well, this one can — and it’s now just two months away. Mike Glicksohn, who won the best-fanzine Hugo in 1973, and Robert J. Sawyer, who won the best-novel Hugo in 2003, are both attending the 50th-anniversary reunion for […]
Score! I’ve been wanting one of these hero-prop replica Probe scanners from the 1972 TV series Search for a long while, but kept getting outbid on eBay. But I landed one tonight — the very last one the maker says he’s going to produce. Woohoo! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Today was spent doing interviews: a full hour by phone with a radio station in Alamogordo, New Mexico, followed by five hours (!) face-to-face with a magazine journalist in my home — more about that one soon. :) And tomorrow, I’m off to the headquarters of Space: The Imagination Station to record an interview about […]
The nominating ballot for the 2007 Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“the Auroras”) is now available here. I have nothing particular of my own worth considering this year, but certainly Robert Charles Wilson‘s remarkable novella Julian: A Christmas Story from PS Publishing and Karina Sumner-Smith‘s Nebula-nominated “An End to All Things” from the DAW […]
