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 […]
A good day for Shoshana and Max, two characters from my 2010 novel Watch. Sho is a primatologist, working with a chimpanzee-bonobo hybrid named Hobo who paints representational art. This scene about marriage equality is from Chapter 30: Shoshana spent the next couple of hours with Hobo; he did seem to be back to his […]
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 […]
Robert J. Sawyer‘s novel Watch, the second volume of his WWW Trilogy, won the Aurora Award today — Canada’s top honour in science fiction and fantasy — for Best Novel of the Year. The award was presented at the 31st annual Canadian National Science Fiction Convention, SFContario 2, in Toronto. The vote ranking: 1st: Watch […]
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 […]
Recently received:This is a heart-felt “thank you” arriving seven months late. It took months of reading and re-reading WWW: Watch to put together words that can express my moment of ecstasy of reading that book, and the warmth that has stayed with me since. Upon absorbing the conversation between Dr. Kuroda and Caitlin pertaining to […]
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. […]
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 […]
All events are free and open to the public. I’ll be reading from Watch, doing a Q&A, and signing books at each one: # Vancouver, British ColumbiaVancouver Public Library Central BranchAlma VanDusen Room on the lower level350 West Georgia StreetIn conjunction with (but not at) White Dwarf BooksWednesday, May 5, 2010, at 7:30 p.m. # […]
As they did for Wake (see here), Penguin Canada is advertising Watch in Toronto subway cars — and I happened to be on the subway today, and managed to get these shots. (Thanks also to my friend Lance Sibley, who also sent me a photo that he took.) This is made out of awesome! Robert […]
Today is the official publication date for WWW: Watch, second volume in my WWW trilogy. The US edition is out in hardcover from Ace Science Fiction, and the Canadian edition is out in hardcover from Viking Canada (Penguin). Sawyer shows his genius in combining cutting-edge scientific theories and technological developments with real human characters. —The […]
Join me for the Toronto book-launch party for Watch, the second book in the WWW trilogy, this Tuesday, Apirl 6, 2010, at 7:00 p.m. at The Dominion on Queen pub, 500 Queen Street East (East, not West), Toronto, with book sales by Bakka-Phoenix Books, and the unveiling of the new Watch book trailer! Admission is […]
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 […]
Today, December 7, 2009, is the 30th anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. TrekMovie.com has a nice appreciative essay. In tribute, I offer this sneak peek at a scene from Watch, the second volume of my WWW trilogy, coming in April 2010 from Ace (US), Penguin (Canada), and Gollancz (UK); in […]
Had a fabulous meeting with Adrienne Kerr, my new editor at Penguin Canada, yesterday, followed by an amazing meeting with the whole marketing team there. We’re definitely going to have a cross-Canada book tour for Watch next spring. Anchor points will include Ad Astra in Toronto (at which I’m guest of honour); Keycon in Winnipeg […]
Click for a larger version.Click again if your browser reduces image to fit your screen.Here’s the first look at the cover for Watch, second volume of my WWW trilogy. This is the American version for Ace Science Fiction; the Canadian version for Penguin Canada will be similar, but will lack the “WWW:” in front of […]
I worked very hard to come up with a plausible scenario for the World Wide Web gaining consciousness for my novel WWW: Wake, and I’m thrilled to have a chance to share some of that background with the members of the Association for Computer Machinery, the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. The last […]
On Wednesday, May 6, 2009, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science-fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer gave an invited 90-minute talk at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience [pictured] at the University of Pennsylvania (“Penn”). Sawyer was the first science-fiction writer ever invited to speak at the Center. Sawyer’s talk delved into the cognitive science, neuroscience, and other […]
Penguin Group (Canada) has created a gorgeous, Flash-content rich web site to promote my WWW trilogy (the novel Wake, and its forthcoming sequels, Watch and Wonder). Check out WakeWatchWonder.com for a nifty book trailer, Wake wallpapers, FAQs, and much more. It’s a work-in-progress — Penguin will be tweaking, expanding, and updating the site continously — […]
Yesterday, Wake started showing up in Canadian bookstores (and I myself saw the nice display of copies at the Indigo on Yonge Street just north of the 407 in Greater Toronto). And I got to do something that’s very special: I got to autograph the first copy of the finished book. I always annotate that […]
I have separate editors in New York and Toronto. Ginjer Buchanan, my New York editor at Ace, accepted Watch on Tuesday, March 17, and today Laura Shin, my editor at Penguin Group (Canada), accepted it, too, saying, “Watch is wonderful!” Yay! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
So, I spent a lovely afternoon here in Orlando, in the shade by the pool, working on revisions to Watch, the second volume of my WWW trilogy. My beta-test readers have been getting back to me, and I must say the response has been extremely positive, but these comments from one particular reader made my […]
Ginjer Buchanan, my editor at Ace Science Fiction in New York, just emailed me to say she thinks Watch, the second volume of my WWW trilogy, is “even better than Wake.” W00t! As Caitlin woud say, “I am made out of awesome!” :D The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Over in my Yahoo! Groups newsgroup, Martin Bennedik wrote: I read Wake on my phone by downloading the ebook version of Analog from Fictionwise. Not only was the novel excellent, but I found this was a good way to get the book early and in a format which allowed me to take it with me […]
