Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Archive for the 'Oppenheimer Alternative' Category

Trying out Facebook advertising

Sunday, January 30th, 2022

Trying out a little Facebook advertising for my latest novel, The Oppenheimer Alternative; we’ll see how it goes. This ad will run for the next week aimed at people 18 years and older in the US who have selected “science fiction magazines” and/or “hard science fiction” as areas of interest. The link goes to the […]

Oppenheimer as Greek tragedy

Friday, June 18th, 2021

In 1977, I took a course in Greek drama, and my favorite of the plays we studied then was Oedipus Rex, which ends with the chorus observing that we should count no one’s life as happy until it has reached its end. In the same course I learned about the concept of hamartia (the main […]

75 years ago today: a declaration for the peaceful uses of atomic energy

Sunday, November 15th, 2020

Oppie and Dylan

Friday, September 4th, 2020

Near the end of my new novel The Oppenheimer Alternative, I have J. Robert Oppenheimer thinking:Gödel … was already out there, as were Feynman and five of the newer crop of physicists, two of whom were women; the times were indeed a-changin’.Oppie and almost all of his male contemporaries would be considered flagrantly sexist by contemporary standards […]

Oppie a #1 LOCUS bestseller!

Tuesday, September 1st, 2020

The September 2020 issue of Locus, the US trade journal of the science fiction and fantasy fields, came out today, and my The Oppenheimer Alternative is #1 on the Trade Paperback bestsellers’ list (for the data period of June 2020). The list surveys US and Canadian specialty bookstores (as well as both McNally Robinson branches […]

Expert interview for 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

Sunday, July 26th, 2020

75th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki BOOK AN EXPERT INTERVIEW! Award-winning author ROBERT J. SAWYER has over 800 radio and TV interviews under his belt The world first learned of the existence of atomic bombs seventy-five years ago next week. Commemorate these important anniversaries with an expert interview subject:Thursday, August 6, […]

Book an expert interview for Trinity Test and the Birth of the Atomic Age

Saturday, July 4th, 2020

75th Anniversary of the Birth of the Atomic Age Book an Expert Interview! Award-winning author ROBERT J. SAWYER has over 800 radio and TV interviews under his belt The atomic age was born 75 years ago in 1945. Commemorate these important anniversaries with an expert interview subject:Thursday, July 16, 2020: 75 years since the first […]

Audiobook of Oppenheimer Alternative now out

Thursday, June 25th, 2020

Production delays due to COVID-19 kept the audiobook of my new novel, The Oppenheimer Alternative, from coming out the same day the printed book and ebook did — but it’s out now, and it’s magnificent. I told the audio publisher they’d need an actor who could do all the different character accents as well as […]

Problem with KOBO edition of Oppie

Sunday, June 7th, 2020

Users of Kobo E Ink reading devices,something has gone wrong at the Kobo servers, and the master file of The Oppenheimer Alternative seems to have been corrupted. I’ve just uploaded a replacement version, and I’ll let you know when it goes live. It was fine on launch day, and I don’t know what happened at […]

Sawyer interview in a dozen major Canadian newspapers today

Saturday, May 30th, 2020

Across Canada today (Saturday, May 30, 2020), the major daily newspapers in 12 cities are running a terrific interview with me by Eric Volmers about The Oppenheimer Alternative. You’ll find the interview in these newspapers coast-to-coast (in Canada, the major weekend edition of a newspaper is the Saturday one, not the Sunday one): Vancouver Sun […]

Pre-pub Oppie ebook special ends soon!

Tuesday, May 19th, 2020

Just two weeks — a scant 14 days! — left to get my latest novel The Oppenheimer Alternative at the pre-publication special ebook price of an atomically small US$4.99 or local equivalent at Amazon, B&N, Apple Books, Kobo, etc., worldwide. After that, the price goes up, up, up like an Orion rocket! Worldwide ebook buying […]

The Beginning or the End

Tuesday, May 19th, 2020

We spent an interesting evening watching the 1947 movie The Beginning Or The End, which was the first-ever dramatic treatment of the Manhattan Project (the subject, in part, of my new novel The Oppenheimer Alternative, coming out two weeks from today). Overall, the film ranges from charmingly earnest to sappily sentimental to just this side […]

A stillborn Sieg Heil

Sunday, May 17th, 2020

Each year, July 16 marks the anniversaries of two of the defining moments in the entire history of Homo sapiens, both of which are still within living memory for some. For this year, 2020, July 16 is the fifty-first anniversary of the day on which human beings first embarked on a voyage to another world, […]

Did the US have to drop the atomic bomb on Japan?

Sunday, May 3rd, 2020

In my new novel, The Oppenheimer Alternative — coming June 2, 2020, and available for pre-order now — the following exchange occurs between J. Robert Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty (with Kitty employing a racial slur that was regrettably all-too-common during the Second World War): “They … they’ve dropped a second bomb,” Oppie said, holding her. […]

Getting good press for your novel

Tuesday, March 17th, 2020

Many years ago, I attended a talk by Cynthia Good, publisher of Penguin Canada. When asked what was the first thing she looks for in a book submission, she said, “A way to get the author on TV.” I’ve now got over 400 TV appearances to my credit, and an equal number of radio interviews […]