Well, given all the discussion between me an Evo Terra about new publishing and distribution paradigms here and here and here this past week, my choice for this week’s Monday Spotlight, highlighting one of the 500+ documents on my website at sfwriter.com, is this piece I wrote in 1998 about “Print on Demand.”
I’m not the only one who likes playing with the concept of parallel universes. Saturday Night Live did it recently, with special guest star Al Gore giving his state-of-the-union address in the alternate quantum reality in which he is president. I was lucky enough to catch this live when it was first broadcast, and it’s […]
Have a look at this web page, and ask yourself what’s missing. The answer? The words “science fiction.” Robert A. Heinlein was never coy about what he wrote, but the web page for his centennial celebration makes no mention of the genre by name, instead calling him an “American author, futurist, philosopher and spaceflight advocate.” […]
Evo Terra answers some of the questions I raised in this posting, but not as a comment to that post; rather, his response is in his comments to an earlier posting by me, in which he says: “6 of the 58 titles [at Podiobooks.com] have (or have had) over 2000 subscribers. 17 are over 1000.” […]
Today’s (Saturday, July 22, 2006) Globe and Mail: Canada’s National Newspaper has a nice piece about me, my John W. Campbell Memorial Award win, and the future of Toronto. It’s in the paper’s Toronto section, and also online here.
You see the above graphic when you visit eReader.com, which, for my money, has the best ebook-reading software on the market, and the most livable digital-rights-management system. But the graphic lies. “New version,” my ass. They haven’t updated the software in well over a year. Come on, guys! There’s work to be done!
Cough, cough … The received-by deadline for Hugo ballots sent by paper mail is July 31 — so if you haven’t mailed yours in, you should do so this weekend. :) The deadline for electronic ballots — which you can cast here — is the same date, but you’ll need your Hugo voting PIN to […]
Read all about it here or here or here. Svante Paabo, one of the participants, was the real-life inspiration for much of Mary Vaughan’s work on Neanderthal DNA in my Hugo Award-winning novel Hominids and its sequels; the work I describe Mary as having done in recovering Neanderthal DNA at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Chapter […]
In response to another posting of mine on this blog, Evo Terra of Podiobooks.com and the Dragon Page responded to my comment that online serialization of a first SF novel would probably get the author fewer than 100 readers; in his posting here he says that’s not true — thousands of readers can be reasonably […]
I happened to stumble across this particular installment of the week’s news from Science Fiction Weekly, dated from April 21, 1997 (scroll down past the long piece on the Nebula winners to see the week’s news). Fascinating to read of the things that we were told were on their way to theatres back then, including: […]
The interview I did on May 13, 2006, for CBC Radio One’s Definitely Not the Opera is now online here. I come on about the 12-minute mark … but the stuff before me is good, too. :) Host is Sook-Yin Lee, above. The topic: geekiness. :)
Got asked today by a new author for advice on promoting a first fantasy novel. Here’s what I had to say: For starters, you should have a look at the promotion stuff on my website, particularly this 37-minute podcast. You should also read this article by me on getting good press, and this one by […]
For those who live in the same city as me — Mississauga, Ontario (pop: 650,000, abutting the west border of Toronto) — there’s an article about me entitled “Science fiction writer picks up award,” with the subtitle “Lone Canadian to win field’s top awards” on the front page of the Lifestyles section of the Mississauga […]
Saskatchewan writer smilin’ Edward Willett (above) does a weekly science column for the CBC and the Regina Leader Post. You can sign up to have the print version emailed to you for free each week right here. Ed has twice been my writing student at the Banff Centre (in 2003 and 2005), and he begins […]
I had a fabulous time teaching at the Odyssey workshop last week. Part of my job was giving daily lectures on various aspects of writing. The first one I did was on point of view, which had also been the topic of one of my old “On Writing” columns for On Spec magazine. I offer […]
… which is something I never enjoy doing. The author wanted me to make up my mind about a submission to Robert J. Sawyer Books, because he/she had interest from a PoD publisher, and a web site had expressed interest in serializing the book. And so I did make up my mind. Here’s what I […]
If you’re reading my blog because you knew me back in the late 1970s when I was a student at Northview Heights Secondary School (previously known as Northview Heights Collegiate Institute) in Willowdale / North York / Toronto, please note that the school is having a reunion Friday, May 4, and Saturday, May 5, 2007, […]
Jeanne Cavelos, Rob Sawyer Jeanne Cavelos runs Odyssey, the famed six-week-long science-fiction and fantasy writing workshop held in New Hampshire each summer. Back in October 2005, she asked me to be “Special Writer-in-Residence” at Odyssey 2006. Odyssey and the three Clarion workshops are the best known long-term SF-writing workshops, and they’re often referred to as […]
I’m back home after nine days on the road, and finally have a chance to properly update my blog. This entry is about the Campbell Conference, held July 5-9, 2006, at the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. On Wednesday, June 7, 2006, […]
From the publishers of Talebones, one of the best magazines in our field: Dear Family, Friends, Peers, Acquaintances: Talebones has been a part of our lives for almost 11 years now. We have enjoyed every minute of putting all 33 issues together for our readers. It has truly been a labor of love. Most of […]
These photos are by Tracy A. Majkol.
For today’s Monday Spotlight, highlighting one of the hundreds of articles on my website at sfwriter.com, I offer up this guide to award-winning Canadian Science Fiction, updated to include this year’s Aurora winners.
Photos of the Campbell Conference by the wonderful Keith Stokes. Another photo is here
Lots of nice press coverage about my John W. Campbell Memorial Award win: North Korea Times Daily India Washington Times United Press International The Vancouver Sun Maclean’s
CBC Online has a nice article about my John W. Campbell Memorial Award win here.
Robert J. Sawyer has just won the world’s top juried award for science fiction: the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel of the Year. The award, which Sawyer won for his latest novel, Mindscan, was presented Friday night, July 7, 2006, at a banquet at the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study […]
The four-part serialization of my next novel, Rollback, starts in the October issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. The September issue has just come out, and it contains this “In Times to Come” blurb for my novel: Robert J. Sawyer, as you’ve probably noticed by now, has a way of taking familiar ideas, looking […]
Somehow I’d missed this review earlier on the wonderful book-review site Bookloons. The review concludes: The development of the court case is fascinating (including both the exploration of individuation and lawyers taking issue with the fact that the androids don’t dream), as well as the very human reactions of all versions of these people, in […]
I was five when The Wild, Wild West debuted on CBS in 1965, and never watched it. My wife, who was a much more worldly seven then, remembers it as one of her favourite shows. The first season (of four, and the only one in black and white) is just out on DVD, and we […]
On Monday, July 3, I helped my friends Barb and Elisabeth move from Calgary to Lethbridge — and detoured slightly to visit Vulcan! Vulcan, Alberta, is a small town that’s made a lot of the fact that it happens to share a name with the most famous planet of 40 Eridani. And even though we […]
