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 […]
I have a nice sideline as a keynote speaker, talking about futurism at all sorts of conferences and meetings. It all started fifteen years ago today, on May 30, 2000, with my first real keynote, given to National Life of Canada‘s Group Insurance Brokers Conference, held at the Hockley Valley Resort. That talk came about […]
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 […]
On Facebook, someone asked why there don’t seem to be as many female fans of Star Trek: The Motion Picture as there are male ones. My response: Well, think about it. In ST:TMP, the female lead is, quite literally, an object: a replicant probe wearing high heels and an ultra-mini to show off her legs […]
Over on Facebook, I was asked if I keep word counts in mind when writing a novel. The answer is yes — and for several reasons. First, I find daily word-count targets motivate me. When I’m writing first draft, I do 2,000 words a day. If I’m focused (and not wasting time on Facebook!), I […]
Ten years ago today, on 21 May 2005, Pat York — SF-writing colleague and friend — was killed in a car crash at the age of 57. She was a mainstay of SF conventions in this part of the world, a Nebula Award finalist, and twice a Writers of the Future Award finalist. The SFWA […]
If you actually read what Simon Pegg says in this Radio Times article — not just react in a knee-jerk fashion as you might when you think someone’s dissing your favorite things — there’s much truth in it. In 1968, we had two great science-fiction films, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which terrifically captured the sense […]
NOTE: When Words Collide in Calgary has a membership cap — they sell a finite number of admissions — and they’re 78% full already for the August 2015 convention.When Words Collide is my favourite convention, bar none; there’s simply no better networking opportunity for professional fiction writers in Canada. Conference chair Randy McCharles — himself […]
I’m very pleased to have my story “Come All Ye Faithful” reprinted in Wrestling with Gods: Tesseracts Eighteen, edited by Liana Kerzner and Jerome Stueart, just out from EDGE Publications During an online event for the launch of this book, I observed:Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with big questions: where did […]
One of the greatest honours of my career was being one of the nine initial inductees last year into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Each year, a jury will add two more inductees. The jury doesn’t propose the names to be considered, though — other people (like you!) do that. I’ve […]
Over on my Facebook wall, in response to me having noted that Toronto’s Divani Films had renewed its film-rights option on my novel The Terminal Experiment for a ninth year, a reader wrote:I had a discussion recently that a movie studio should have to make a movie within 5 years of buying the rights to […]
Over on
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 […]
