CTV is the parent corporation of Space (Canada’s science-fiction specialty channel) and Discovery Channel Canada. The are predicting a $100 million loss from their broadcast TV operations this year. The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Amazon.com released this statement on Friday: Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to […]
Y’all know I submitted Watch, the second volume of my WWW trilogy to my editors (in Toronto, New York, and London) on Monday of this week. And just before midnight tonight (Friday), I finished up the only other outstanding project I had. I can’t tell you much about it, except to say it’s a TV […]
The Rocky Mountain News, a major daily newspaper in Denver, Colorado, one of the few US dailies to routinely and intelligently review science-fiction novels over the years, is gone. Mark Graham, the usual SF reviewer there, had been very kind to me. For instance, on Calculating God, he wrote: “I always look forward to Robert […]
I said very nice things about Patrick Rothfuss’s first novel on the book’s dustjacket: “Hail Patrick Rothfuss! A new giant is striding the land. The Name of the Wind is an astonishing novel that just happens to be the writer’s first. The bestsellers’ lists and the award ballots are beckoning toward Rothfuss, and readers will […]
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 […]
Over at Publishers Weekly, you can read all of this week’s reviews, including the full text (no spoilers) of their review of my upcoming Wake. (There are a lot of reviews on that page; do a search on “Sawyer” to find the Wake review.) I notice — cough, cough — that Wake is the only […]
So this Sunday, I’m appearing at the library in Paris, Ontario, as the concluding event of this year’s One Book, One Brant community-wide reading program; the book they’re doing this year is my Rollback. If you’re in the area, come on out this Sunday, March 1, 2009, for a lively reading, Q&A, and more, at […]
Yeah, yeah, we all know Rob’s into big government :) so feel free to tune this out, but here’s a guy who just got a $6,000 phone bill for using his iPhone in Mexico. And, yeah, sure, we can all smugly argue that this particular guy should have known better — but stories like this […]
In response to my posting about being unable to publish any further non-Canadian authors under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint, Marcos P. Donnelly sent the following: BROCKPORT, NY, REVOKES NAFTA BROCKPORT, February 26 — In a surprise response to complaints by the Canada Council for the Arts concerning the publication of U.S. works by Robert […]
Over on my Facebook page, Kelly John Rose recommended Q10, a nifty little full-screen text processor that’s totally free. Install, press F1 for help. Gives you a clean, empty monitor to write with (suppresses all the usual Windows gewgaws). Download the second version — the one with the spell checker (I missed seeing it the […]
I’m lucky, and I know it; most of my colleagues aren’t. Gary Karbon discussed this last year in the blog Culture Feast: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Sharon Fitzhenry, the publisher of Fitzhenry & Whiteside, parent company of Red Deer Press, which publishes my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint, just called. The Canada Council for the Arts has objected — probably quite rightly, from their point of view — to me publishing Americans under my imprint while the Canada Council helps to […]
They broke up today. Steve Page, the lead singer, has left the band “to pursue a solo career.” The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Today’s New York Times has an op-ed piece by Roy Blount, Jr., president of the Authors Guild, entitled The Kindle Swindle? The Authors Guild has also put up a web page with demos of the Kindle’s text-to-speech (TTS) feature here. Oh, and by the way, not on this topic, but I occassionally do op-eds myself […]
OMG, if you like 1950s and 1960s SF movies and TV shows as much as I do, you have to run and buy The Saucer Fleet by Jack Hagerty and Jon Rogers. It’s a painstaking, loving, profusely illustrated tribute to the great screen flying saucers of SF: the C57-D from Forbidden Planet, the Jupiter 2 […]
I don’t just host this week’s episode of Supernatural Investigator on Vision TV — I also do the voice-over narration throughout the episode. Tonight’s topic: Mayan crystal skulls. It airs at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time / 7:30 p.m. Pacific. Pictured: Robert J. Sawyer and the extinct species known as the newspaper book-review section editor The […]
I delivered the manuscript today for Watch, Volume 2 of my WWW trilogy, to Ginjer Buchanan at Ace in New York and Laura Shin at Viking (Penugin Canada) in Toronto. The book will be published in April 2010. This is my 19th novel — a number that frankly astonishes me. :) I’m going to reward […]
Woot! Woohoo! We just received our first review for my new novel Wake, and it’s a rave! Publishers Weekly has given Wake a “starred review,” their highest distinction: starred reviews denote books of exceptional merit. The review, which appears in the February 23, 2009, edition, says in part: The wildly thought-provoking first installment of Sawyer’s […]
Woot! eReader, my favourite ebook application — recently released for the iPhone — is now in beta for the BlackBerry Storm. Now, if they’d just get a version for an e-ink reader to market … eReader has a fair and livable DRM scheme tied to the user, rather than the user’s hardware (unlike Mobipocket), and is […]
There’s a mini writing retreat going on at Chez Sawyer right now, and it’s all about sequels. Hayden Trenholm is here, visiting from Ottawa, and he’s working on his laptop at my kitchen table, sprinting towards the end of his revisions on Steel Whispers, the terrific sequel to his hard-boiled SF novel Defining Diana from […]
Is the title of my book — and the TV series based on it — one word or two? I was asked that question in the comments section of this post, but since people keep wondering, I’m putting the answer in its own blog post, too: It’s complicated (sigh). I always intended the title to […]
Over at Locus Online, Mark Kelly has updated the indispensable Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards with results through the end of 2008 (and he’s also given it a very attractive facelift). Here’s the entry on me. And nice to see here that I’m in 8th place overall for total award wins in the history […]
Yup, today, Saturday, February 21, 2009, in Los Angeles, the ABC series pilot based on my novel Flash Forward begins shooting with David S. Goyer directing. Woot! Carolyn and I aren’t down there yet — I’ve got a novel to finish that’s due on Monday — but we are going down in 12 days to […]
How cool is this? Just received word that a Ph.D. student in the School of English at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki — the largest university in Greece — is doing her Ph.D. dissertation on the works of Robert J. Sawyer. I have a great fondness for Greece: I love its history, and visited the country […]
The American Heritage English Dictionary says it’s two words: “light bulb.” Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary says it’s two words: “light bulb.” But Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary says it’s one word: “lightbulb.” When a book is being copyedited, the copyeditor must specify which dictionary he or she is conforming to, unless (a) the publisher specifies one, […]
Quill & Quire Online just reported: The Harper Tories have promised to maintain existing funding levels for the country’s magazine industry ($75.5-million annually), but guidelines announced this week for the new Canada Periodical Fund could put Canada’s small-run literary magazines in jeopardy. The new Canadian Heritage-run program merges two other federal funding bodies – the […]
As I mentioned before, my Hugo Award-nominated Rollback is currently the “One Book, One Brant” reading choice for all of Brant county in Ontario. The Paris Star has a nice article about that in the current edition, which you can read here. Pictured: Kelly Dinsmore, Mayor Rod Eddy, and Sharon Briggs reading the hardcover of […]
My friend Melody Friedenthal asked me an intriguing question this morning: At what point in your creative process did you decide that Wake et al., would be a trilogy? And was it the same point for your first trilogy (or 2nd) or was the first one more of the publisher’s choice (as in “this is […]
Snoot Entertainment in L.A. — the company that has my hard-boiled SF novella “Identity Theft” under option — has a 3D CGI SF film called Battle for Terra coming up, and the trailer just hit Moviefone today. Check it out! (Identity Theft will be live action; proudcer Jessica Wu reports that they’re working on concept […]
