Con-Version 25, this year’s edition of Calgary’s annual science-fiction and fantasy convention, is fast approaching. Dates are August 21-23. Here’s the description of the con from the website: Con-Version is a three-day festival devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and everything in between. Whether you love the groundbreaking sword and sorcery of Terry Brooks, the sexy, […]
… conducted by current Aurora Award nominee Edward Willett just went online here. It’s a good, meaty interview about my residency at the Canadian Light Source and my new novel Wake. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
This week’s hardcover bestsellers’ list for McNally Robinson in Saskatoon: 1. Outliers: The Story of SuccessBy Malcolm Gladwell 2. Master Your MetabolismBy Jillian Michaels 3. Twenties GirlBy Sophie Kinsella 4. Unmasked the Final Years of Michael JacksonBy Ian Halperin 5. Best Friends ForeverBy Jennifer Weiner 6. The Devil’s PunchbowlBy Greg Iles 7. WakeBy Robert J. […]
An exhibition at The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy in Toronto: Toronto’s Tomorrows Celebrate the history of our city’s vibrant science fiction community! The current exhibition in the display cases of the Merril collection features examples of science fiction, fantasy and horror set in Toronto. It spotlights Judith Merril’s influential role in […]
Click photo for larger versionArthur Slade, who won the Governor General’s Award for Dust, and Robert J. Sawyer hanging out at the 20th anniversary celebration for the Sage Hill Writing Experience in Lumsden, Saskatchewan, on Saturday, July 25, 2009. Art is currently teaching at Sage Hill, and the organizers are courting Rob to teach there […]
Yesterday, we went to Lumsden, Saskatchewan, for the 20th anniversary of the Sage Hill Writing Experience. Today: a barbecue at the home of bookseller and writer Kent Pollard, followed by dinner with Carolyn’s Saskatoon cousins. Monday: my final weekly writing lecture for the Canadian Light Source staff, plus my final three one-hour one-on-one critiquing/mentoring appointments […]
Click picture for a larger version (Table of Contents) INTRODUCTIONThirty years ago, in 1979, John Robert Colombo published a massive anthology called Other Canadas in which he culled the best of four centuries of Canadian fantastic literature. That book was a watershed: it established definitively that Canada did have a tradition of science fiction and […]
Okay, admittedly it was the worst-kept secret in television (as David S. Goyer quipped today at San Diego Comic-Con), but it can now be officially announced that Dominic Monaghan, late (literally) of Lost, has joined the cast of FlashForward. See here. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
This Tuesday, July 28, at 7:30 p.m., there will be a launch for my new anthology Distant Early Warnings: Canada’s Best Science Fiction at McNally Robinson in Saskatoon; this will also serve as the farewell event for my two months here in Saskatoon as writer-in-residence at the Canadian Light Source. (Note: this event was orginally […]
I’ve been having a great time serving as writer-in-residence at the Canadian Light Source, Canada’s national synchrotron research facility. My final week begins today. Here’s a sign that someone recently put up on my office door at the synchrotron: And yesterday, I was helping archaeologist Elizabeth Robertson with an experiment down on one of the […]
I’ve updated my page about my services as a keynote speaker; I give talks on all sorts of futurism topics. You can see the new page at: FuturismKeynotes.comA couple of upcoming Robert J. Sawyer keynotes: Hansard Association of CanadaRegina, Saskatchewan(on the floor of the Saskatchewan Legislature!) Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of ManitobaWinnipeg, Manitoba […]
A nice three-minute video interview with Robert J. Sawyer conducted by Leila Lemghalef is online right here. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
Always nice to hear from a satisfied customer: Hi, After having picked up The The Terminal Experiment at a used bookstore and relegating it to my “Things To Read” bookshelf for far too long, I finally picked it up and was pleasantly surprised. So it was easy for me to grab Calculating God a few […]
Rich Handley, who created the magnificent Timeline of the Planet of the Apes, is editing two new officially licensed Planet of the Apes novels — w00t! Can’t wait! Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
Yann Martel, the Mann Booker Prize-winning author of Life of Pi, and his wife Ali Kuipers very kindly had Carolyn and I over to dinner shortly after our arrival here in Saskatoon last month. The New York Times is reporting he just sold US rights to his next novel for US$3,000,000. Way to go, Yann! […]
My friend Melody Friedenthal sent me a link to this story about new evidence that a Homo sapiens speared a Homo neanderthalensis. In my novel Hominids and its sequels, I argue that our kind of humanity (referred to as Gliksins by the Neanderthals in those books) were responsible for the demise of the Neanderthals (which […]
The obituary of Phyllis Gotlieb entitled “Canadian sci-fi novelist braved unknown in American market,” by Anthony Furey, is here. Photo: Phyllis Gotlieb and her husband Kelly Gotlieb. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
In honor of the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, I’m uploading for free my short story “The Eagle Has Landed,” first published in the 2005 DAW anthology I, Alien, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg. You can read the full text for free right here. “The Eagle Has Landed” by Robert […]
In Robert J. Sawyer‘s 2003 novel Hybrids, the U.S. president who comes to office in 2009 makes a speech calling for a crewed mission to Mars. The speech appeared broken into a series of excerpts at the beginning of each chapter of Hybrids, but, in honor of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, he’s providing […]
My reminiscences of July 20, 1969, are on Tor.com. Check it out! Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
The July 24, 2009, edition of Entertainment Weekly devotes half a page to the FlashForward TV series. The article, entitled simply “FLASHFORWARD“, begins: Robert J. Sawyer’s 1999 novel of the same name inspired this drama about a global catastrophe … The article includes the picture below of series stars John Cho and Joseph Fiennes. FlashForward was […]
I can’t be the only one who received this from Amazon.com this morning: Dear Amazon.com Customer, As someone who has purchased or rated books by Robert J. Sawyer, you might like to know that Flashforward will be released on August 1, 2009. You can pre-order yours by following the link below. FlashforwardRobert J. SawyerPrice: $59.99Release […]
Montreal-born actor Alessandro Juliani, who played Mr. Gaeta on the new Battlestar Galactica, will be narrating CBC Radio One’s twenty-five part serialization of my Hugo Award-nominated novel Rollback. The serialization will air in fifteen-minute installments weekdays at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time (10:30 a.m. Pacific Time) on CBC Radio One (and Sirius Satellite Radio channel 137) […]
Mike Brotherton is the leader of the Launch Pad astronomy workshop in Laramie, Wyoming; Carolyn and I are attending this year, and Mike has links to more videos from the conference in his blog. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
Phyllis Gotlieb, the mother of Canadian science fiction, as I remember her, with her husband C.C. “Kelly” Gotlieb, the great Canadian computer scientist, at my home on December 18, 2006. Photo by Carolyn Clink. Phyllis passed away on Tuesday, July 14, 2009, at the age of 83. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
W00t! My novel Wake is #2 on the Locus Hardcover Bestsellers’ List. And #1 is a fantasy novel, which makes mine the top-selling SF novel in the stores Locus surveys. Locus is the trade journal of the science-fiction field. Here’s the list, published in the July 2009 issue (for the data period April 2009); the […]
Here’s a press release I wrote for my new novel Wake; this press release was aimed mostly at techie publications. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
Up on YouTube: video of the Wednesday, July 15, 2009, session of the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Carolyn and I are having a blast here. Check it out! Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
The fine folks at Jawbone.tv phoned me a while ago, and we did a long, discursive telephone interview — and they’ve very kindly transcribed it and put it online. You can read the whole thing here. The interviewer was Todd Denis. Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
My friend and inspiration Phyllis Gotlieb, the only Canadian to be in SFWA at its founding, the mother of Canadian science fiction, passed away yesterday at the age of 83 from complications related to a ruptured appendix. Phyllis was proof of concept that you could live in Toronto and still be a science-fiction writer for […]
