There are lyrics to the theme songs of lots of TV shows that normally aren’t heard — most famously, classic Star Trek (for which Gene Roddenberry wrote lyrics to Alexander Courage’s instrumental theme so he could claim half the royalties). Sometimes the lyrics are very good; I’m rather fond of the lyrics to the 1980s […]
On Friday, May 9, 2008, CBC Radio One’s very popular As It Happens aired three and a half minutes from my opening comments at the Walrus Magazine debate between me and Hal Niedzviecki. You can listen here — I come in at the 10 minute, 27 second, mark. Needless to say, I’m taking a much […]
Over in the Fictionwise Yahoo! Groups newsgroup, science-fiction ebook author Darrell Bain has noted that whereas SF titles used to dominate the bestsellers lists at Fictionwise.com (and, indeed, my own work has hit number-one on various lists there in the past), the current top-ten list has only one SF title on it. Darrell asks, “What’s […]
Come one, come all, to Toronto’s Bakka-Phoenix Books, 697 Queen Street West (just west of Bathurst), for the launch party of Identity Theft and Other Stories by Robert J. Sawyer, with an introduction by Robert Charles Wilson. The event is tomorrow, Saturday, May 10, 2008, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., and afterwards Carolyn and I […]
Whew! I’ve at long last cleared my plate of all sorts of things I’d promised to do. Over the last little while, I wrote an introduction to Jack McDevitt’s new short story collection Cryptic, coming from Subterranean Press; I wrote introductions to two classic pulp reprints coming from the Battered Silicon Dispatch Box (the Polaris […]
“HAL, I won’t argue with you anymore! Open the doors!” Oops! Wrong Hal. Today I was debating Canadian writer and cultural critic Hal Niedzviecki. We were the entertainment at a $110-a-plate luncheon at the University Club in Toronto, sponsored by Canada’s The Walrus magazine, a wonderful glossy newsstand magazine that’s a bit like a Canadian […]
Today, I spoke to students in the Creative Book Publishing Program at Toronto’s Humber College, run by former Penguin Canada publisher Cynthia Good. Great students, great questions, and a great time. I’d brought along my brand-new iRex iLiad — and Cynthia has an Amazon Kindle (one of very few in Canada, I’m sure; it’s not […]
From 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow, Wednesday, May 7, 2008, I’ll be live in studio in Toronto for CBC Radio One’s Ontario Today. We’ll be doing a phone-in show about why people like science fiction (and plugging the launch of my new collection Identity Theft and Other Stories, which happens this Saturday afternoon, […]
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) interviews Robert J. Sawyer, Mike Resnick, and Lawrence Watt-Evans about the relationship between science fiction and real-world engineering in this article by John R. Platt in the magazine Today’s Engineer. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
So, I was at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal this past weekend. After my event on Friday night, I ended up going out for dinner with a couple of my local fans there, a man named Peter and a woman named Vanessa (neither of whom I’d ever met before). The panel I’d been […]
I’m pleased to see the mass-market paperback of my Rollback on the bestsellers’ list published in the May 2007 issue of the science-fiction trade journal Locus (covering the data period February 2008), which arrived today. MAY 2008 (data period: February [Locus site]): 1) White Night, Jim Butcher (Roc) 1 – 2) Iron Kissed, Patricia Briggs (Ace) […]
I’m delighted to announce that my agent Ralph Vicinanza has just sold Korean rights to my 1994 novel End of an Era to the charmingly named Woonghin Think Big Company; the deal was done in conjuction with Ralph’s Korean co-agent, Shin Won Literary Agency. This brings to 16 the languages my novels are in: Bulgarian, […]
The postmarked-by deadline for paper-mail ballots for this year’s Aurora Awards — the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards — is this Friday, May 9, 2008. My novel Rollback is one of five finalists in the Best Long Form in English category (and the book is also a current Hugo Award finalist). Any Canadian may […]
I normally don’t approve of contests with entry fees, but it’s just six bucks in this case, and so I’m going to plug this one, anyway: “In Places Between: The Robyn Herrington Memorial Short Fiction Competition.” Robyn was my friend, my writing student, and a fine writer herself, and my latest novel, Rollback, is dedicated […]
