Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Rob and Carolyn’s 2009 Christmas Letter

by Rob - December 24th, 2009.
Filed under: Christmas.


The huge news for 2009 was the debut of FlashForward, the ABC TV series based on Rob’s novel of the same name. The series is produced by ABC Studios in Hollywood, and airs Thursday nights at 8:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. Central) in the US and Canada. FlashForward has sold to over 100 markets worldwide.

Carolyn and Rob have now made three trips to Los Angeles to visit the filming, and Rob spent two weeks in November working with the show’s staff writers.

FlashForward has been renewed through the end of the season, for 24 episodes. Rob is writing one of the episodes himself.

Speaking of TV, Rob also had fun hosting Supernatural Investigator, a 17-part documentary series that aired on Canada’s Vision TV starting at the end of January.

In April, Rob’s 18th novel, Wake, first of his WWW trilogy, was published by Ace Science Fiction in the United States and Penguin in Canada. Penguin Canada sent Rob on a cross-country book tour.

The second volume of the trilogy, Watch, comes out in April 2010, and Rob spent most of this year working on the final book, Wonder.

In December, Penguin Canada released lovely new editions of Rob’s Nebula Award-winning The Terminal Experiment and his Seiun Award-winning Illegal Alien.

In February, we went to Turkey and had a fabulous time. In April, we went to Las Vegas, where Rob was guest of honor at a science-fiction convention.

In June and July, Rob was the first-ever Writer-in-Residence at the Canadian Light Source, Canada’s national synchrotron; we moved to Saskatoon for those two months, and had a great time.

Also in the summer we both spent a week at Launch Pad, an astronomy workshop for writers sponsored by NASA and held at the University of Wyoming. It was very competitive to get into the workshop, and we’re proud that Carolyn made it on her own merits, based on her poetry.

The audiobook of Rob’s Calculating God (from Audible.com) won the Audie Award for best Science Fiction Audiobook of the Year from the U.S. Audio Publishers Association.

And his new TV pilot script Earthfall won the WILDsound scriptwriting competition, beating out 150 other entries. It had a staged reading at the National Film Board of Canada theatre in Toronto in November.

Carolyn continues to be active (along with her brother David) in the Algonquin Square Table poetry-workshop at the University of Toronto. Their workshop leader, Al Moritz, won the Griffin Award this year, Canada’s top prize in poetry.

Carolyn spent two days working on an archeological dig in Saskatoon. She got covered in mud but had an amazing time. She also got to reconnect with some of her cousins in Saskatchewan.

On December 22, Carolyn and Rob celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com

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