Carolyn and I are back safe and sound from Denver, where I was one of the Guests of Honor at the science-fiction convention MileHiCon 38. We had a truly fabulous, very pleasant, and very relaxing time. A large part of the joy in attending this con was our fellow guests of honor. Garfield and Judith […]
I wrote this commissioned essay, entitled “The Old Pemmican Factory,” exactly one year ago, sending it to Locus, the trade journal of the SF field, on November 1, 2005, for their January 2006 special report on Canadian SF. Locus edited the piece down, to my sadness, removing all the references to H.B. Fenn and Company, […]
Today, MileHiCon 38 begins in Denver, Colorado. The author guests of honor are yours truly, plus my great friends Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens. I wrote this tribute to Gar and Judy for the convention program book: Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens If you call their house — which used to belong to Liam Neeson — you […]
Yesterday’s Doctor Who episode (as shown here in Canada on the CBC) actually made me cry at the end, it was so moving. The episode was “School Reunion,” and featured the return of Sarah Jane Smith and K-9. Sarah Jane had been the final companion for the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and the first companion […]
I had great times in Regina, Montreal, and Surrey. In Regina, I gave a keynote at a conference on the future of nursing sponsored by the Saskatchewan Registered Nurses Association I read at three libraries in Montreal in a very well organized mini-tour sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts, and spent this past […]
The wonderful Italian publisher Delosbooks has just released my novella “Identity Theft,” which was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Aurora Awards and won Spain’s 6,000-euro Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción, in a translated edition, with this beautiful cover.
A new audio interview with me is available online over at The Sci Phi Show podcast from Australia; Sci Phi celebrates both science fiction and philosophy. You can access the interview directly as an MP3 file right here. The interviewer is Jason Rennie.
For those in Ontario, Canada, this is the week to cast your vote for the Evergreen Award, for library patrons’ favourite book — and my Hominids is one of the nominees this year. Details on the program are here. Please visit your local library branch, and cast a ballot. Thanks! Rob(quickly chaning planes en route […]
I’m in Calgary, Alberta, for a couple of days, for the Fall 2006 Write-Off retreat organized by Imaginative Fiction Writers Association. It goes through Sunday evening, but I have to leave Sunday morning, ’cause I’m off to Regina, Saskatchewan, where I’m giving a keynote at a conference on nursing in 2020, sponsored by the Saskatchewan […]
VCon in Vancouver was lots of fun. Not a particularly large convention, but very well run with lots of really first-rate programming. It was a joy to see FRIENDS AND colleagues including Bonnie Jean Mah, Walter from White Dwarf Books, Alma Alexander and Deck Deckert, Ed Willett (launching his first novel from DAW), Rhea Rose […]
Wednesday was another day of dealing with the aftermath of the accident. I had a long-standing commitment to speak to the Toronto Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada — and I had absolutely zero chance to prepare my talk in advance. So I just got up and winged it — an hour and […]
James Alan Gardner is a great science-fiction writer, and one of my best friends. And tonight, he was there for me when I needed him. The repercussions of the car accident involving one of my family members that I mentioned yesterday are continuing, and I spent most of today back at the hospital. In total, […]
So, a member of my family was in a car accident today — no one was hurt, but the car is a right-off. And Google — through Gmail — thoughtfully provided all these ads along side an email I just received from someone I told about the accident: temporary car insuranceQuotes, Rates & Coverage Online! […]
If you’ve got a Palm OS device with a WiFi Internet connection, you might like Quickipedia; I just registered it — a US$14.95 client for reading Wikipedia articles on your handheld. Cool!
This may be a record for photos of my in Locus, the SF trade journal — six in one issue! I’m clearly visible in the front row of the audience for the Hugo Awards in Los Angeles in August on page 7, there’s a nice photo of me (in a tux, no less!) on page […]
I’m actually a very big fan of ebooks. I love having lots of stuff to read with me when I travel; I love being able to read in the dark; I love being able to make the text large enough to read without my glasses; I love having a couple of big dictionaries available as […]
In honor of the discussion below, of ebook-reading devices, this week’s Monday Spotlight is actually a page linked off my site: the Robert J. Sawyer page at Fictionwise.com, the leading ebook vendor. It lists 28 of my short stories, two of my novels, and one audio book available in a variety of formats. Enjoy!
One of the great joys of reading ebooks — which I do all the time — is reading in the dark, when your partner is sleeping. But the much-touted e-ink in the Sony ebook is passively illuminated: it depends on ambient light falling on it to be visible. It’s great if you’re reading outdoors, less […]
Well, I got to see one of the sexed-up Star Trek: The Original Series episodes, with new CGI effects. It was “The Naked Time,” certainly one of the best episodes. There were a number of nice touches — Scotty’s phaser cutting through the engineering bulkhead now has a visible beam; the PSI 2000 research station […]
As I had a small hand in the revival of Robotech, and receive a “thanks to” credit in Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, I was delighted to see that the film has won an award.
I’m thrilled to announce that I will be Guest of Honor at Loscon 32 in Los Angeles, November 23-25, 2007 (next year); Loscon is the annual convention of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. The theme of the con next year will be paleontology and archeology in science fiction — I can’t wait! This is […]
Hi, Folks. Next week, I’m off to VCon 31, the Vancouver Science Fiction Convention, in British Columbia, being held October 6-8. Here’s my programming schedule: Saturday 3:00 PM Rob Sawyer interviews Fan Guest of Honour Randy McCharlesExecutive Boardroom 1 hour Saturday 5:00 PM Panel: How Possible Is Time Travel? Boardroom A 1 hour Sunday 11:00 […]
I’ve just finished my first appointment with a patron at the Kitchener Public Library, in Ontario, where I’m the 10th annual Edna Staebler Writer in Residence until the end of November. The appointment went well, and the patron seemed very pleased. But since we both arrived early, I’ve got some free time before my next […]
For decades, The Chicago Manual of Style has been the arbiter of how text is presented on the published page. Finally, there’s an online version (by subscription — US$25 a year if you sign up before the end of the month, US$30 a year after that) and a CD-ROM version, which, I’ll note, is much […]
My new novel Rollback is currently being serialized in Analog. By coincidence, today I ran across this transcript of an online chat I participated in back in 2003 about serialized novels, conducted by Gardner Dozois; also participating are my buddies Allen Steele and Rajnar Vajra. It still makes good reading.
Exploring strange new worlds happens as often at a writer’s keyboard as it does at an astronomer’s eyepiece. Join us for a discussion of astronomy in science fiction. Author Robert J. Sawyer discusses how astronomy and science fiction influence each other Wednesday, October 4, 2006, at 7:30 p.m. (Free). Ontario Science Centre, 770 Don Mills […]
From Sunday, September 17, until Saturday, September 23, 2006, I was teaching science fiction and fantasy writing at the Banff Centre, in Banff, Alberta, as one of four streams in the “Writing with Style” program there. As always, I had a truly fabulous time — Banff is gorgeous (a ski-resort town inside a national park […]
Star Trek is 40 years old this month! In honor of that, this week’s Monday Spotlight — highlighting one of the 500+ documents on my website at sfwriter.com — is my aborted Star Trek novel Armada, begun in 1984 (when Star Trek was just 18 years old … and I was just 24!). The sample […]
That’s the title of a poem by my brother-in-law, David Livingstone Clink, in the October-November 2006 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, on sale now.
So far this month, I’ve been asked to: * judge a contest — results needed the following week * write a newspaper piece about the 40th anniversary of STAR TREK — deadline two days later * write up answers to questions posed by a foreign publisher for an interview to coincide with the release of […]
