Seventy-eight years ago today, the world’s first controlled nuclear chain reaction was achieved at the University of Chicago. Here’s how I dramatized that event in my 2020 novel The Oppenheimer Alternative: “Jim, you’ll be interested to know that the Italian navigator has just landed in the New World.” It was code, of course: the Italian […]
Six years ago, on June 12, 2014, the University of Winnipeg — the oldest university in the province of Manitoba, Canada — gave me an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree; former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chréitien also received the same degree that day. I was nominated for the honorary doctorate jointly by the Dean of […]
Twenty years ago this week, my life changed in a big way. I did my first-ever stint teaching science-fiction writing. Hayden Trenholm, who lived in Calgary then, had been charged with finding a leader for the first-ever workshop run by a professional writer for Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers’ Association (IFWA), and since I’d won the […]
On July 1, 2016 — Canada Day — I was named a Member of the Order of Canada, the highest civilian honour bestowed by the Canadian government. The citation reads:Robert J. Sawyer, C.M., for his accomplishments as a science-fiction writer and mentor and for his contributions as a futurist.(C.M. is the postnominal used by members […]
The second (and most recent) print edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction by John Clute and Peter Nicholls begins its entry on me thus: SAWYER, ROBERT J(AMES) (1960- ) Canadian writer who began publishing sf with “If I’m Here, Imagine Where They Sent my Luggage” for The Village Voice in 1981 … And indeed I did. […]
So, this kind of made my year. One of the definitive texts in vertebrate paleontology is The Complete Dinosaur, edited by Michael K. Brett-Surman, Thomas Holtz, and James O. Farlow. And the second edition is dedicated in part to Thomas Jericho, the fictional paleontologist who is the main character in my 2000 Hugo Award-nominated novel Calculating God. […]
Happy 20th birthday to my World Wide Web site! I freely admit it shows its age — but it also has grown to over a million words of text and over 800 documents — and it’s been online since June 28, 1995. Give it a visit at sfwriter.com. Robert J. Sawyer online:Website • Facebook • […]
A parable for today. I went to what was then called Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, an unusual institution. Although granting bachelor’s degrees in many programs via the authority of the Ontario government, it was not a traditional university, and most of its instructors were recruited from industry. Very few of the instructors back then held doctorates […]
Fifteen years ago today, the Sawyermobile first started sporting this puppy: a vanity licence plate reading SFWRITER. Carolyn Clink got it for me for my 40th birthday. Ontario had only just started allowing eight characters on a vanity plate, and was charging a premium then if you wanted that many; it cost $500 — but […]
My great friend Michael Lennick, who passed away November 7, 2014, was a special-effects supervisor for the 1988 War of the Worlds television series — a direct sequel to the George Pal film. For the series, this Martian War Machine was built, exactly copying the move version. This original screen-used fiberglass miniature — 45 inches […]
Twenty years ago today, my novel The Terminal Experiment — which went on to win the Nebula Award for Best Novel of the Year, was a finalist for the Hugo Award and Japan’s Seiun Award, and won Canada’s Aurora Award — was published by HarperPrism (following full-text serialization in Analog). The novel is still in […]
UPDATE: Actually, my next novel is coming out even sooner! In part to take advantage of some promotional opportunties that presented themselves, my US and Canadian publishers have moved the publication date up five weeks. The new official publication date for my next novel is TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2016. The official publication date for my […]
Thirty-five years ago today, on January 18, 1980, I made my first professional sale: a science-fiction story about a starship called Starplex, with a crew that included reptilian aliens called Quintaglios, to the Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester, New York, which dramatized the story as part their summer 1980 starshow “Futurescapes.” Read the history of that […]
I’m hoping Google searches will bring some people here: On October 16, 1975, Robert J. Sawyer, Richard Gotlib, and Ted Bleaney founded NASFA, the Northview Association for Science Fiction Addicts, based at Northview Heights Secondary School in Willowdale (later North York; later still, Toronto), Ontario, Canada. We’re having a 40th anniversary reunion party on Saturday, […]
For me, 2014 was a bittersweet year, with the loss of dear friends Colin Edmond, 19, and Michael Lennick, 61, both way too young. It was also the year we moved my parents out of the home I grew up in and closed up the house. Because of the time I took off during and […]
I realized today that I hadn’t noted yet here in my blog one of the biggest honours of my career: On Saturday, October 5, 2014, I was one of the initial inductees into The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, administered by The Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association — the same people […]
Here are some of the tributes that came in to my great friend Michael Lennick, who passed away November 7, 2014. (The picture is of Michael and his wife Shirley Gulliford.) Michael will be missed by all who knew him. I enjoyed the wonderful times we shared working on The All-Night Show. I am very […]
Please join us Saturday, November 29, 2014, from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. at Bakka-Phoenix Books, 84 Harbord Street, Toronto, to celebrate the life and memory of special-effects producer and science documentarian Michael Lennick, who passed away November 7. Everyone is welcome. We’ll be downstairs in the function room. Many thanks to Bakka-Phoenix for making the […]
DETAILS OF MEMORIAL GATHERING My great friend Michael Lennick passed away yesterday. He’d been admitted to hospital a month ago, and was diagnosed with a very aggressive brain tumor. His wife and business partner Shirley Guilliford made the decision to have him taken off life support yesterday afternoon, and he was gone within minutes. Michael […]
Twenty-five years ago today, on 26 September 1989, when I was 29 years old, I finished the manuscript for what would turn out to be my first published novel, Golden Fleece, and sent it off by courier to my then-agent, Richard Curtis. (The first novel I actually wrote was End of an Era, but that […]
Science Fiction Spectacular! Mississauga Central Library in the Noel Ryan Auditorium 301 Burnhamthorpe Rd. West, adjacent to City Hall Mississauga, Ontario Saturday, October 18, 2014, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Free — but space is limited. Please register in advance with the Central Library’s “Readers’ Den” Department: Phone 905-615-3200, extension 3544. In honour of Mississauga […]
On Thursday, June 12, 2014, the University of Winniepg presented me with an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree at its Spring Convocation. I was asked to say a few words to the graduating students in Business, Economics, and Science: I’ve often said the job of a science-fiction writer is not to predict the future. Rather, […]
On June 12, 2014, the University of Winnipeg — the oldest university in the province of Manitoba, Canada — gave bestselling science-fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree; former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien also received the same degree that day. Sawyer was nominated for the honorary doctorate jointly by the […]
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 […]
I’m absolutely thrilled to be the 2014 winner of the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (the Skylark), presented annually since 1966 by the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA). The award is given to a person who “has contributed significantly to science fiction, both through work in the field and by exemplifying […]
Fifty years ago today, United States Surgeon General Luther Terry released the landmark report Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States, demonstrating the causal link between smoking and lung cancer. That’s right, smokers: you’ve had a half-century of warnings; it really is high time you quit. […]
Of course, I’ll always remember 2013 as the year I lost my younger brother Alan Sawyer to lung cancer. But it was also a good year in a lot of ways, including: Marking my 30th anniversary as a full-time self-employed writer Having my 22nd novel Red Planet Blues published in hardcover (bringing to two million […]
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 […]
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 […]
This morning at Can-Con 2013 in Ottawa, this year’s Canadian National Science Fiction Convention, I received a Lifetime Achievement Aurora Award — the first one given to an author in 30 years — from the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association; the award was presented to by Hayden Trenholm. This was my acceptance speech: Thank […]
