Forty years ago this month, when I was 22, my great friend Ted Bleaney and I put on NorthStar, the first-ever conference on Canadian science fiction. I’ll be in South Dakota on September 25, which is the actual 40th anniversary of this event, so I’m posting about it today. Our Guest of Honour was Donald […]
One of the greats of Canadian science fiction has left us. Calgary’s own J. Brian Clarke, born May 23, 1928, who used to often appear in Analog, passed away on December 17, 2021, at the age of 93; his son James just wrote me with the news. Brian was the inaugural winner of the A.E. Van Vogt […]
Carolyn Clink and I were honoured to serve on the jury selecting this year’s inductees into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, along with fellow jurors Clint Budd, Marcie Tentchoff, and Chris Sturges. It’s a delight to announce that this year’s inductees are Stan Hyde, the late Monica Hughes, and Jean-Louis Trudel. […]
Thirty years ago today, on April 29, 1984, the first meeting of Hydra North, Canada’s first association of science-fiction professionals, was held at Toronto’s Free Times Café. Founded by Judith Merril, and administered from that first meeting for the next eight years by me, the organization provided wonderful networking and fostered many friendships. Carolyn and […]
There’s no doubt the best-ever academic conference on Canadian science fiction was Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre, held in September 2013 in honour of the donation of my archives to McMaster University. But the second-best Canadian academic science-fiction conference began ten years ago today, on Feburary 6, 2004, at what was then Mount Royal College […]
NOTE: For information on using WordStar with modern computers under Windows, see my instructions here. Thirty years ago today, on Friday, December 16, 1983, I started learning the word-processing program WordStar. I’d bought my first computer, an Osborne 1 CP/M luggable (24 pounds, the most portable computer in the world back then — see picture […]
Twenty-five years ago this month, the April 1988 issue of the late, lamented magazine Books in Canada published this interview by me (Robert J. Sawyer) with Toronto science-fiction writer Terence M. Green, then a high-school English teacher and now a lecturer in creative writing at Western University in London, Ontario. Green writes wonderful novels, two […]
Twenty years ago, the March 1993 issue of Books in Canada — at the time, an influential book-review magazine, although long defunct now — devoted a special issue to science fiction. It was a watershed moment in Canadian SF&F — some of the first serious consideration the field got by the mainstream press here. For […]
In honour of the donation of Robert J. Sawyer‘s papers and archives to McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, that institution is hosting an academic conference entitled “Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre” Friday, September 13, through Sunday, September 15, 2013. The call for papers (CFP) is here. Special guests at the conference are Hugo Award-winning author […]
Thirty years ago, the November 1982 issue of Leisure Ways (the members’ magazine for the Canadian Automobile Association) published “Three For the Future” — three short-short science-fiction stories by Terence M. Green, Robert J. Sawyer, and Andrew Weiner, collected and introduced by John Robert Colombo. Last night, at John’s house, we all got together for a 30th […]
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 […]
I stumbled today across this by-email interview I did in March 2007 for an American librarian preparing an article about Canadian science fiction, and I thought I’d share it here. (1) Do you believe that there is a significant difference between Canadian and American SF? If so, how would you describe that difference? I like […]
My directory of award-winning Canadian science fiction and fantasy has been updated through June 2011. Have a look. Robert J. Sawyer online:Website • Facebook • Twitter • Newsgroup • Email
Used to be, back in the day, if you wanted to buy science fiction and fantasy by Canadian authors, you turned to Tor Books: they had tons of Canadian authors on their lists: Charles de Lint, Candas Jane Dorsey, Ed Greenwood, Phyllis Gotlieb, Terence M. Green, Matthew Hughes, Karl Schroeder, Robert J. Sawyer, Robert Charles […]
My great friend and inspiration Phyllis Gotlieb passed away earlier this year, and today Mauril Bélanger, a Member of Canada’s Federal Parliament, rose in the House of Commons to speak to that loss: Hon. Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa—Vanier, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, this past summer, Canada lost one of its pioneers in science fiction writing, Phyllis Gotlieb, […]
I’ve long been associated with On Spec, English-Canada’s leading SF magazine. My short story “Just Like Old Times” first appeared there in 1993 (and went on to win both the Aurora Award and the Crime Writers of Canada’s juried Arthur Ellis Award for best short story of the year, as well as being reprinted in […]
The Aurora Award-winning webiste MADE IN CANADA — Don Bassie‘s elaborate and detailed repository of information about Canadian science fiction and fantasy — is no more. It had been hosted on Yahoo’s Geocities service, and, in a spectacular act of online genocide, Yahoo wiped out all free Geocities sites on 26 October 2009. Don’s site […]
McNally Robinson’s Chadwick Ginther interviews Aurora Award-winning Canadian SF writer Hayden Trenholm, whose SF-crime novel Steel Whispers is just out from Bundoran Press, here. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
In the Literary Review of Canada. Check it out. Pictured: Robert J. Sawyer and Robert Charles Wilson with their Hugo trophies. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
YouTube has video of the panel on this topic from the 2009 World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal. Panelists (left to right): Hayden Trenholm, John Park, Robert J. Sawyer. Direct YouTube link (bigger picture, HQ available) Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
Anticipation, the Montreal World Science Fiction Convention, had John Robert Colombo as keynote speaker for its academic track. I introduced him, and he gave an amazing speech. My introductory remarks: It is my staggering privilege and honour to introduced to you John Robert Colombo, the keynote speaker here at the Montreal World Science Fiction Convention’s […]
Minister Faust — one of Canada’s leading SF writers (author of Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad from Del Rey), and a renowned Edmonton radio personality — interviews Robert J. Sawyer about Rob’s new novel Wake. You can listen to the 14-minute interview, which was first heard on Edmonton’s CJSR Radio on April 24, […]
One could argue that twenty-five years ago today, the modern Canadian science-fiction movement was born. On April 29, 1984, Judith Merril invited all the “good science fiction” heads she could find to the founding meeting of Toronto Hydra, a social networking group for science-fiction professionals. That predates the publication of the first Tesseracts anthology by […]
By coincidence, today’s mail contained both the December 2005 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction and the January 2006 issue of Locus. Both have a decidedly Canadian focus this time out. The NYRSF features reviews of Peter Watts’s two most recent novels, “Three Snapshots of Canadian SF” by Ursula Pflug (discussing the […]
Editor Mark Leslie Lefebvre has posted the table of contents for North of Infinity II, the second in the series of Canadian SF anthologies published by Mosaic Press. My story “Forever,” originally published in Mike Resnick’s Return of the Dinosaurs, is included, as are, to my delight, stories by my writing students Karen Danylak and […]
