Canada is the only country in the world to have an astronaut as commander-in-chief of its armed forces. Unfortunately, said astronaut — Her Excellency the Right Honourable Julie Payette, the 29th Governor General of Canada — has come under a lot of fire the past couple of weeks, with columnists calling upon her to resign […]
Fifteen years ago this week, Bill Joy‘s famous antitechnology manifesto “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us” appeared in Wired magazine. The Globe and Mail asked me for an op-ed in response, which appeared fifteen years ago today, on March 16, 2000. Here it is. Robert J. Sawyer online:Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email
During the 1980s, I made my living as a freelance nonfiction writer, including writing 200 feature articles. Most of those are of little interest decades on: my specialties were the computer revolution, the broadcasting industry, business, and personal finance, and articles from the 1980s on those topics are pretty much irrelevant today. But one of […]
Thirty years ago today, on June 30, 1984, when I was 24, the following article by me appeared in The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper. As a young freelance writer just beginning my career, selling to The Star was a huge accomplishment (although this was actually my second piece for them). The article came about […]
After my keynote address at Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre, the academic conference held in my honour in September 2013 at McMaster University, I was asked by an audience member about where my interest in, and sympathetic treatment of, religion — which is clearly evident in many of my works, including Calculating God and Hominids […]
The Purpose of Science Fiction by Robert J. Sawyer First published in Slate 27 January 2011 Forget Star Wars, Lost in Space, and all the other escapist fare you think of when you hear the term “science fiction.” Print science fiction is an important tool for dealing with real-life issues related to new technology — […]
See my article “The Purpose of Science Fiction” in Slate. Robert J. Sawyer online:Website • Facebook • Twitter • Newsgroup • Email
An op-ed piece by Robert J. Sawyer first published in The Ottawa Citizen, the largest-circulation newspaper in Canada’s capital city (first published under the headline “The Future Disappoints”). Science: Ten Lost Years by Robert J. Sawyer Ten years ago, in 1999, I published a novel called FlashForward; ten years later, it’s a (cough, cough) hit […]
Today’s (Wednesday, December 9, 2009) Ottawa Citizen — the largest-circulation newspaper in Canada’s capital city — contains a commissioned op-ed piece by Robert J. Sawyer entitled “The Future Disappoints,” looking back at the progress in science and technology over the last decade. This is the first of a series of decade-in-review op-eds that will be […]
On Monday, May 25, 2009, Robert J. Sawyer gave the closing keynote address at the annual meeting of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association (Canada’s professional organization of science journalists), which this year was held in Sudbury, Ontario. Rob’s 52-minute talk to the CSWA (including Q&A session) is now available right here. (Matthew Dalzell of the […]
My op-ed piece “All Screens Are Not Created Equal” — about computer use, multitasking, and attention deficit — is now on my website here. It was first published in The Ottawa Citizen, the largest circulation newspaper in Canada’s capital city, on March 20, 2009. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
On March 20, 2009, I had an op-ed piece in The Ottawa Citizen about the use of computers by children. Nina Munteanu — always a fascinating blogger, as well as a very fine SF writer — responds with some very interesting ruminations here. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The Friday, March 20, 2009, edition of the Ottawa Citizen — the largest circulation newspaper in Canada’s capital city — has an op-ed piece by me entitled “All Screens Are Not Created Equal” about multitasking, computer use, and attention deficit disorder. At some point it will go behind the subscribers-only wall, but right now it’s […]
I have an op-ed piece on Michael Crichton’s tendency to bend the truth in his fiction in today’s Ottawa Citizen, the largest circulation newspaper in Canada’s capital city. You can read it online here. (An op-ed piece is an article that appears opposite the Editorial — that is, on the facing page; it’s an opinion […]
