Yes, I know Open Office is free, but here’s another excellent choice, also free: SoftMaker Office 2006 for Windows. Included are a Microsoft Word-compatible wordprocessor called TextMaker and a Microsoft Excel-compatible spreadsheet called PlanMaker. And for WordStar users like me, TextMaker optionally supports the WordStar keyboard interface. Just select Extras, Customize, Keyboard Mappings and switch […]
It’s a no-win scenario for authors to talk about the impact the used-book trade has on their livelihood, so I won’t. But The New York Times had an interesting article entitled “Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It” recently. All right, I’ll make one comment. One of the standard arguments you hear is […]
Jack Davenport, who starred in the BBC sitcom Coupling, has been cast to play Lloyd Simcoe in ABC’s pilot based on my novel Flashforward, and, in honour of that, Carolyn and I, and our friends Nick DiChario and Bev Geddes, watched the first two episodes of Coupling this evening. Carolyn and I had seen the […]
Christmas has come and gone, and Carolyn and I had pleasant times visiting both her family (on the 25th) and mine (on the 26th). For those who are curious, among the goodies we got were: DVDs: Casino Royale Cloverfield The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (special edition) Ironman Sex and the City, the movie […]
I had a chance to play extensively today with eReader 1.3 on an iPhone, and I must say I am very, very impressed. The iPhone version is a terrific implementation of the eReader software (much, much nicer, say, than the version of Mobipocket on the iRex iLiad). eReader is my favorite e-reading software, in part […]
My friend Berry Kercheval drew this article entitled “2008: A good year for Neanderthals” from New Scientist to my attention. Cool! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
In the Planet of the Apes movies, the reigns of power in the far future are held by orangutans. And now we know why. Dr. Zaius: Tell me, why are all apes created equal? Taylor: Some apes, it seems, are more equal than others. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Tony Award-winning actor Brian F. O’Byrne has joined the cast of ABC’s Flash Forward, based on my novel. And we have a new date to start filming: Saturday, February 21, 2009 (two days later than originally announced — it’s easier to get one of our locations on a weekend). The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Bill Anders: We are now approaching lunar sunrise and, for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you. “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the […]
Rob and Carolyn’s 2008 Christmas LetterRobert J. Sawyer & Carolyn Clink Rob’s second short-story collection, Identity Theft and Other Stories, was published earlier this year. Said the American Library Association’s Booklist, “At every opportunity, Sawyer forces his readers to think while holding their attention with ingenious premises and superlative craftsmanship.” In its March cover story, […]
Ron Howard’s new film adaptation of Peter Morgan’s stage play Frost/Nixon is absolutely terrific. Frank Langella and Michael Sheen reprise their Broadway roles as Richard M. Nixon and David Frost. It’s an amazing piece of filmmaking, and the performances by the two leads are Oscar calibre. The film is only in limited release right now […]
I had a need to pull together a document covering my professional achievements over the last 10 years. If anyone’s interested, that document is here as a PDF. A few highlights: In March 2008, Canada’s publishing trade journal Quill & Quire names Robert J. Sawyer one of the 30 “most influential, innovative, and just plain powerful […]
Every year since 1947, with the exception of 1950, the mayor of Hiroshima, Japan, has issued a Peace Declaration on the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on that city. This is the text of the 2008 Peace Declaration: [Hibakusha: victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including those who survived […]
This stuff is important, but here’s how it reads on the Weather Network website: A COMPLEX LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM WILL TRACK ACROSS SOUTHERN ONTARIO SUNDAY BRINGING A VARIETY OF ADVERSE WEATHER TO THE REGIONS. SNOWFALL WARNING..SNOW WILL DEVELOP NEAR LAKE ONTARIO OVERNIGHT AND OVER EASTERN ONTARIO SUNDAY MORNING. GENERAL SNOWFALL AMOUNTS NEAR 15 CENTIMETRES ARE […]
My father, John A. Sawyer, is an economist — so, not surprisingly, he reads The Economist every week. And my dad just dropped me an email to say: The Economist, which has a worldwide circulation, publishes a year-end edition in which there is a calendar of 4 or 5 events in each month of 2009. […]
After my misadventure with Lulu’s shipping costs to Canada, I managed to get ahold of a copy of Timeline of the Planet of the Apes via an auction by author Rich Handley on eBay — and I’m glad I did! Rich Handley’s Timeline of the Planet of the Apes is a magnificent labor of love. […]
Received today copies of the Spanish edition of my novel Rollback, pubished by Ediciones B. The Spanish title is Vuelta Atrás. What a terrific cover! The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The study of law is something new and unfamiliar to most of you — unlike any other schooling you have ever known before. You teach yourselves the law, but I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush, and, if you survive, you leave thinking like a lawyer. —Professor Charles […]
From the people who brought you Lost-TV.com, there’s now a site devoted to the Flash Forward TV series — that was fast! Among other things, it’s aggregating news coverage from other places, including my own blog, and I’m sure it’ll grow over time. Check it out at FlashForwardTV.com. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Nurse Christine Chapel in the original Star Trek; Dr. Chapel in the Star Trek movies; Number One in the first pilot “The Cage;” Lwaxana Troi in The Next Generation; the voice of the Enterprise‘s computer, including in the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie; and the voice of Chapel, Lt. M’Ress, and countless guest roles […]
So join now! Also, Hugo nominating will begin next month, and you need to be a member to nominate. (Your membership must be processed online or postmarked before December 31, 2008, to get the current rates.) The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Hee hee! Bundoran Press, the wonderful SF&F publisher in Prince George, British Columbia, has just put the above photo of me on the main page of their website. It was taken November 10, 2007, at Sentry Box, Calgary’s great science-fiction store. The book I’m looking at is the terrific anthology The Best of Neo-Opsis, culling […]
Niteblade News has weighed in with the first review I’ve seen of Wake, volume one of my upcoming WWW trilogy. The very kind review, by Aaron Clifford, calls the book “plausible and touching” (and contains no spoilers). You can read the full review here. Wake will be published in April 2009. (By the way, I […]
Got my quarterly royalties today from Fictionwise.com, which reminds me to remind y’all that a whole mess of my short stories are available in every standard ebook format (eReader, Kindle, Mobi, Abode, Sony, PDF, you name it — all formats for one price, with no DRM) over there. Have a look. (Also available are ebook […]
Or, at least, he was until yesterday morning. Dave, who is a senior editor at Tor Books, comes to Toronto every December to speak at the sales conference for H.B. Fenn and Company, Tor’s Canadian distributor. He stayed over Monday night at our place and we threw a reception in his honour — and also […]
My most popular novel seems to be Calculating God, and ten years ago today is when I came up with the idea for it. On Thursday, December 17, 1998, I was down on the shore of Canandaigua Lake in Upstate New York, borrowing my father’s vacation home there. I had a contract to write a […]
CIO, a publication for Chief Information Officers, interviews Larry Niven, Robert J. Sawyer, Nancy Kress, and Charles Stross in this terrific article by Daniel Dern (which you can read here as a single page). The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’m getting asked a lot of questions about the ABC TV pilot based on my novel Flashforward that’s about to be filmed in Los Angeles. Here’s the response I made today in my Yahoo! Groups newsgroup: I’m not at liberty to discuss things much. In fact, it’s funny reading the online coverage seeing that no […]
I had cause to look at a back issue of the Hugo Award-nominated The New York Review of Science Fiction today. Richard Parent wrote a fascinating 5,000-word essay about my novels Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids for the June 2004 issue entitled “Double Vision: Robert Sawyer’s Utopian Dystopia.” Students studying those books will find much meat […]
Twenty-five 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 below), for the princely sum of Canadian$1,495, in large measure because it came bundled with […]
