I am pleased as punch to have just won the 2021 Media Award from the Machine Intelligence Foundation for Rights and Ethics (MIFRE) for my WWW trilogy of Wake, Watch, and Wonder. The award trophy is truly gorgeous, consisting of layers of laminated wood under glass — I just love the look of it. machineintelligencefoundation.org/mifreAward.html […]
The 1996 paper “Helen Keller as Cognitive Scientist” was one of my inspirations for writing my WWW trilogy of Wake, Watch, and Wonder, about a formerly blind girl gaining sight via a post-retinal implant — while a nascent consciousness evolving on the World Wide Web learns to see the world through her. The paper’s author […]
To my absolute astonishment and delight, my twenty-first novel, Wonder, has just won the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Award (“the Aurora”) for Best Novel of the Year. This means that each of the three volumes in my WWW trilogy have each now separately won the Aurora Award for Best Novel of The Year (in […]
Just sent corrections for the paperback of Wonder to Ace and Penguin Canada — the very last work I’ll ever do on the WWW trilogy books. It’s the end of an era that began getting on to nine years ago, on Friday, January 10, 2003, when I wrote this in my journal:Wrote 300 words explaining […]
Here’s the full 18-minute interview with me on CBC Radio One’s Spark, with host Nora Young (pictured above). Lots of stuff about Wake, Watch, and Wonder, plus some discussion of Mindscan. God, I love the CBC. Who else let’s you answer questions at such length? Robert J. Sawyer online:Website • Facebook • Twitter • Newsgroup […]
Wonder is #4, Watch is #6, and Wake is #8 on the Edmonton Journal fiction bestsellers’ list, published in the April 17, 2011, edition; Edmonton is the capital of the province of Alberta, and the Journal is the largest-circulation newspaper there. Here’s the he full list. Robert J. Sawyer online:Website • Facebook • Twitter • […]
On Sundays, The Toronto Star — the largest-circulation newspaper in Canada — contains a version of the New York Times Book Review. Last Sunday, March 6, 2011, the entire back cover was devoted to this terrific ad produced by Penguin Group (Canada) for my WWW trilogy of Wake, Watch, and Wonder. I’m absolutely thrilled! You […]
Fourteen years ago today — October 6, 1996 — in Houston, Texas, a girl named Caitlin Doreen Decter was born to parents Barbara and Malcolm Decter. Sadly, mom and dad soon discovered that young Caitlin is blind. But my flashforward — an appropriate thing to have on October 6! — tells me that in just […]
When I was in Dallas on Wednesday, September 15, 2010, to give a major public address for the Center for Values in Medicine, Science and Technology at the University of Dallas at Texas, I was interviewed for an hour on KERA-FM, the local NPR affiliate, for a wonderful program called Think, hosted by Krys Boyd. […]
In honor of a California judge overturning Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages, I present the following scene from WWW:Watch, the second volume in my WWW trilogy (published by Ace in the US, Penguin in Canada, and Gollancz in the UK). Shoshana Glick is a 27-year-old primatology grad student in San Diego. She works with […]
When I was twelve, I was blind for six days. I live in Toronto. Back then we got a lot of snow in winter, and kids had a blast making snowballs. But, as the saying goes, it’s all fun and games until some loses an eye — and I came darn close. A snowball hit […]
Check out this awesome book trailer for my novel Watch — it’s like a mini-movie, with a full cast. Way, way cool! (Also available on YouTube.) Robert J. Sawyer online:Website • Facebook • Twitter • Newsgroup • Email
I’m lovin’ my associating with Audible.com and Brilliance Audio. The former offers a bunch of my novels as audiobooks for download; the latter offers some of the same productions on traditional audio CD and also on MP3 CD. I just got copies of the 12-disc CD version of WWW: Wake and WWW: Watch, and each […]
WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer is a finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award — the principal juried award in the science-fiction field (and not to be confused with the other John W. Campbell Award — the one for best new writer). (Wake is also a current Hugo Award finalist and recently won […]
Toronto area-authors Robert J. Sawyer and Robert Charles Wilson are facing off once again for science-fiction’s top international honour, the Hugo Award for Best Novel of the Year. Sawyer’s Wake (published by Viking Canada / Ace USA / Gollancz UK) and Wilson’s Julian Comstock: A Novel of 22nd Century America (Tor Books) are two of […]
I revealed in this blog post that the character of Kuroda, the information theorist from my WWW trilogy consisting of Wake, Watch, and Wonder, is named for the PROBE Control telemetry specialist Kuroda from the 1972 TV series Search, which had a big influence on me. But I should note that there’s another Kuroda in […]
I received this note from a Canadian academic today: Interestingly enough, WWW: Wake is filed at my local library as a young-adult book, presumably because the protagonist is 15. I’m just curious: do you consider Wake to be a YA novel? And if so (or not) why? Here’s my response: Am I a young-adult author […]
I’m delighted and thrilled to be on the 2010 Aurora Award ballot twice: in the “Best Long Form English” category for Wake, published by Viking (Penguin) Canada, and in the “Best English Other” category for Distant Early Warnings: Canada’s Best Science Fiction, which I edited for Red Deer Press. The full list of nominees is […]
Since we’re in the thick of Hugo, Nebula, and Aurora Award-nominating season, forgive me for this roundup of reviews of my 2009 novel Wake (published in the US by Ace as WWW: Wake). “The thought-provoking first installment of Sawyer’s WWW trilogy explores the origins and emergence of consciousness. The thematic diversity — and profundity — makes […]
SF Signal asked a bunch of experts for recommendations for science fiction books to be taught in schools. To my delight, Jack McDevitt recommended Wake and Prof. Paul Levinson recommended Rollback. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
W00t! Wake by Robert J. Sawyer is #2 on BookBanter‘s list of the best books of 2009. #1 is Drood by Dan Simmons#2 is Wake by Robert J. Sawyer#3 is Under the Dome by Stephen King The full list is is here, and BookBanter’s review of Wake (originally published in the Sacramento Book Review) is […]
Bakka-Phoenix Books, Toronto’s science-fiction specialty bookstore (and the oldest extant SF bookstore in the world), has just released their list of the bestselling books for the entire year of 2009: Hardcover Bestsellers Wake, Robert J. Sawyer Makers, Cory Doctorow Enchantment Emporium, Tanya Huff Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett Give Up the Ghost, Megan Crewe Trade Paperback […]
My novel Wake, which was published in the US by Ace and Canada by Viking and the UK by Gollancz, all in 2009, actually had its first appearance as a serial in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, the world’s bestselling English-language SF magazine. It was serialized in four parts, with installments in the November 2008, […]
Those who’ve read my novel Wake know that an orangutan named Virgil figures in the plot. My Virgil is named for the character played by Paul Williams in Battle for the Planet of the Apes, and, according to the nifty Yahoo! Groups Planet of the Apes group (of which I’m a member), he’ll be named […]
Those of you who have read my novel Wake, about the World Wide Web gaining consciousness, know how prominently Julian Jaynes’s famous book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind figures in the book. In fact, my main character, Caitlin Decter, even posts a review of the book (under her online […]
Books make terrific holiday gifts, but finding perfect books for friends and family can be a time-consuming challenge. If only if the bookstore could come to us. Thats the idea behind this In the Nick of Time! holiday sampler PDF. Inside are excerpts from a dozen new novels and nonfiction books by these bestselling authors, […]
My latest novel, Wake, postulates a competitor for Google named Jagster. As the novel says: In the tradition of silly Web acronyms (“Yahoo!” stands for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”), Jagster is short for “Judiciously Arranged Global Search-Term Evaluative Ranker” — and the battle between Google and Jagster has been dubbed the “Ranker rancor” by […]
My UK publisher, Gollancz (an imprint of Orion), has just released the British edition of Wake, the first volume of my WWW trilogy. It’s in paperback over there (the North American paperbacks come out at the end of March 2010). Woohoo! “Sawyer’s take on theories about the origin of consciousness, generated within the framework of […]
Carolyn, who handles my little eBay book business (through which I sell autographed copies of my books), received this email today: By the way, I’m reading Wake at the moment and absolutely loving it. It’s rare to find a book that works at so many levels: compelling narrative, philosophically and intellectually interesting, fantastic characterisation. I’m […]
Article from UK’s Daily Mail: “Blind man fitted with ‘bionic’ eye sees for first time in 30 years” Very similar to the technology used in my novel Wake. Many thanks to Jeremy Faulkner for drawing this to my attention. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
