Robert J. Sawyer

The long-running New York science-fiction radio program Hour of the Wolf recorded an interview with Robert J. Sawyer at Readercon in July 2009, and it aired on Saturday, September 12. You can listen to an MP3 of the broadcast right here.

I come on at 27 minutes and 20 seconds mark and run all the way to the 1 hour 43 minutes and 30 seconds mark. The host is Jim Freund.

Topics: why I gave up writing short fiction, my mission statement as a writer, the FlashForward TV series, why there are not many scientists on TV, my new novel Wake (including me doing a reading from the book), and more.

(The terrific theme music is from the 1972 movie Silent Running, always one of my favourites.)

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An email I received today about Final Draft, a popular scriptwriting program. The version I use, 6, is about to have tech support discontinued, which I don’t mind. But I do mind this:

Because authorizing version 6 is very much a technical matter, this service will also be discontinued on December 23rd. You will still be able to run the program in full mode on an unauthorized computer as long as the CD is in the drive when the program is launched. Once the program is open the CD can be removed. You will still have every program command and feature available to you, the same as the day you bought it. The only difference will be if your computer is not authorized, you will need to take this one extra step in order to open the application.

The CD, of course, is copy-protected, so once it dies, you’re hosed (and, of course, one can’t use Final Draft 6 on most netbooks now, since they lack CD drives). Thanks heaps, guys.

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My wonderful agent Ralph Vicinanza just sold Portuguese rights to FlashForward, bringing to 18 the number of languages my work has or will be appearing in: Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, English, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish. w00t! (And le w00t! and el w00té! and …)

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Those darned timezones! Thin Air: Winnipeg International Writers Festival, in conjunction with CTV, is hosting a public viewing of the pilot episode of FlashForward, the TV series based on my novel, as it airs on Thursday, September 24, 2009. The event will be held at McNally Robinson Polo Park in Winnipeg, with me doing commentary before the show, during the commercial breaks, and afterwards.

But the start time for this event is 6:30 (not an hour later as previously announced), because FlashForward airs at 7:00 p.m. Central Time — including Winnipeg. D’oh!

Details are here.

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At Astronomy Picture of the Day, over here. Cool!

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Great review of Distant Early Warnings: Canada’s Best Science Fiction, edited by Robert J. Sawyer, is here at The Crotchety Old Fan.

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… and, really, that means that each year there are two Hugos given for books, one for fiction and one for nonfiction (for instance, the year my novel Hominids won the Hugo, Better to Have Loved, the wonderful biography of Judith Merril, by Judy and her daughter Emily Pohl-Weary, also won a Hugo in the Related Book category).

To promote discussion of the nonfiction books about science fiction and related topics that are eligible for this award — and are worthy of notice in their own right — Dr. Farah Mendlesohn, herself the author of one of the very best nonfiction books of recent years, Rhetorics of Fantasy, has started a LiveJournal community to chat about such things. Check it out!

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A response to the person who decided to nitpick about one sentence in a 12-minute radio interview I did a week ago:

An interview is a pop quiz — you have to answer live on air immediately, often about things you haven’t thought about for years. We who are brave enough to go on the air don’t have the luxury of waiting days to compose a response and then emailing it at our leisure. :) Still, thank you for your comment.

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My great friend playwright Linda C. Carson sent me this link to an article by John Olson in The Village Voice. Given that I get asked almost every day to read someone else’s manuscript, all I can say is that Olson has nailed it exactly: it’s a terrible imposition and a no-win situation.

[Update: and listen to Harlan Ellison read a poem inspired by this here.]

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My new novel Wake is on the Locus bestsellers’ list for a third consecutive month. It debuted at #2 (and was the highest-ranked SF, as opposed to fantasy, title) in the April 2009 data period, and was #5 in May (and the second-highest-ranked SF title), and now is tied for #10 in June (as reported in the September 2009 issue).

The only book with a longer run on the hardcover list currently is Stephenie Meyer’s The Host.

The full list is here.

My previous three-consecutive-month runs were for Rollback in paperback (data periods February, March, and April 2008) and for Hominids in hardcover (before it had won the Hugo; data periods May, June, and July 2002).

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… is now available here. (The Book Club is doing my FlashForward this month.)

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I missed the announcement last month, because I was traveling, but there’s now an official Hugo Awards logo (shown above), which an be used on winning books (such as — cough, cough — my own Hominids).

The rocket is the one standard part of the Hugo trophy design; everything else varies from year to year. That’s me on the left holding my award from 2003, and Robert Charles Wilson holding his from 2006:

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Ray Barrett spoke one of the most famous lines in all of science fiction, at least for British and Canadian SF fans of my generation, in the opening credits of each episode of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Stingray: “Anything can happen in the next half-hour.”

Rest in peace, Commander Shore.

SF Scope has an obituary.

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SF Scope has a roundup of RJS news here.

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Reviews of the Aurora Award-winning novel FlashForward by Robert J. Sawyer, basis for the ABC TV series of the same name:

“A thoroughly entertaining novel. The characters and story keep you turning the pages to see how this future turns out.” — CNN

“A creative, soul-searching exploration of fate, free will, and the nature of the universe. This first-rate, philosophical journey should have wide appeal.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review, denoting a book of exceptional merit)

“The idea behind this book is unbelievably cool. Sawyer fully examines the double-edged sword of foreknowledge. Readers will enjoy Flashforward‘s stunningly neat wrap-up.” — SciFi.com

“A novel full of very human pain and confusion on several levels, from the emotional ones of grief and love to the intellectual ones of theoretical physics and philosophy.” — Analog

“An utterly fascinating premise, and hard questions about free will and determinism. Sawyer imagines both the poignant and the darkly humorous sides to knowing one’s own future.” — Winnipeg Free Press

“Great storytelling, with well-developed characters that you care about.” — The Boston Globe

“Sawyer’s strength lies in combining human-sized problems with cutting-edge science; he does a masterful job of blending them here.” — The Davis Enterprise (Davis, California)

“Needless to say, I like Flashforward. Sawyer manipulates an intricate plot brilliantly.” — Denver Rocky Mountain News

“Sawyer’s book is both intellectually and dramatically satisfying.” — The Orlando Sentinel

“Sawyer brings a fresh and startling approach to a tale that explores the repercussions of knowing the future.” — Library Journal

“An intricate examination of fate and free will. Sawyer’s ingenious conundrum and his deft handling of his characters’ differing viewpoints make Flashforward a provoking read.” — Maclean’s: Canada’s Weekly Newsmagazine

“An excellent SF novel, a perfect blend of cosmic speculation and human drama, and Sawyer’s best book yet. Flashforward‘s plot lets Sawyer muse on true love, free will, quantum reality, and the nature of consciousness while telling a funny, wrenching tale of fallible humans in a mystifying universe.” — Starlog

More about the novel FlashForward

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Interview by Rob Salem in today’s edition of Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper; the online version is here. Says David, very kindly:

We had an amazing time figuring out how to adapt it. I felt like I’d won the lottery of television writers.

Awww. :)

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Woohoo! In cooperation with ABC, Tor Books in the United States has produced terrific floor-display stands (sometimes called “dumps”) for the new mass-market edition of my novel FlashForward, which is the basis of the TV series premiering two weeks from today.

Here are a couple of shots of the stand in a Barnes and Noble in Syracuse, New York, as taken by my friend Dennis Pettit.

(Real RJS trivia buffs will recognize “Pettit” as the name of Afsan’s apprentice in my 1994 novel Foreigner; that Pettit is named in honor of Dennis.)

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Wordnik is a cool new free online dictionary site. Look up words here, and read the FAQ here for what makes it special.

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The CBC — the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — is podcasting Robert J. Sawyer‘s Hugo-nominated Rollback in 25 fifteen-minute installments read by Battlestar Galactica’s Alessandro Juliani: Rollback Podcasts

And the CBC Book Club is featuring Sawyer’s Aurora Award-winning novel FlashForward this month: CBC Book Club

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The list keeps growing:

AXN (Spain, Portugal), Digiturk (Turkey), Fox International Channels (Greece, Cyprus), Nelonen (Finland), RUV (Iceland), SBS (Netherlands), TF1 (France), TV2 (Norway), Cuatro (Spain), RTE (Ireland), Five (UK).

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A wonderful review of my Hugo Award-winning Hominids is here at the blog Pick-Locker.

The five-star review concludes:

This book pushed everything to its limits, questioning morality, immorality, evil and good. It was confusing, irritating, annoying … and yet it was also the most entertaining, and informative book I’ve read in a long time. It turned me around, upside-down, and made me love it. It’s the kind of book I treasure the most because it reveals more about my world than in any classroom and ask questions on ideas I thought to be hard-grained truths. No doubt, my grandmother would burn it. Wonderful.

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In the interview I did recently with the CBC’s Shelagh Rogers, Shelagh and I talked about the difference between Margaret Atwood’s SF and my own. I think we’re getting better over time, and Margaret thinks we’re getting worse. I elaborate on this a lot in Wonder, the third WWW book, which I’m working on right now. In fact, I was re-reading this bit from that book this evening, in which Caitlin’s mom, the game theorist Dr. Barbara Decter, compares the older founding documents of the United States with the newer ones of the UN:

“When the Founding Fathers said, `We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ they still hadn’t expanded that community of moral consideration to include blacks, for instance; Thomas Jefferson held slaves.

“But when the United Nations proclaimed its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, first, they explicitly removed any ambiguity about who was a person, saying, `Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion,’ and so on. And they went on to forbid what the Founding Fathers had seen nothing wrong with: `No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.’

“That’s not mere economics, Caitlin; that’s moral progress, and, despite occasional backsliding, there’s no doubt that our morality hasn’t just changed over time, it’s measurably increased. We treat more people with dignity and as equals than ever before in human history; the progress has been measurable even on time scales as small as decades.”

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CBC Radio One’s The Next Chapter, hosted by Shelagh Rogers, interviewed Robert J. Sawyer on Saturday, September 5, about his novel FlashForward, which is the CBC’s Book Club pick this month. You can download the interview here (48-minute MP3 file; Rob comes on at the 20 minute 50 seconds mark, and goes to the 32 minute 30 second mark).

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That’s title of the first of several short videos produced by the CBC in honour of the selection of my novel FlashForward as the CBC Book Club pick for September 2009. You can watch the video — and get some glimpses of my home — here.

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… including, of course, FlashForward, based on my novel of the same name. The article is here.

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My latest email newsletter, sent out today:

Hello, Robert J. Sawyer reader!

Here’s the latest news from Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science-fiction writer Rob Sawyer:

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FLASHFORWARD TV SERIES PREMIERE

The TV series FLASHFORWARD, based on my novel of the same name, premieres in the United States (on ABC) and Canada (on CTV’s A channels) on Thursday, September 24, 2009, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific (7:00 p.m. Central).

More info

UK viewers: watch for it on Five this fall.

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FLASHFORWARD NOVEL REISSUED

My Aurora Award-winning novel FLASHFORWARD has been continuously in print since it was first published in 1999. But Tor Books, New York, just reissued it in both mass-market (regular) and trade (large-format) paperback with new covers to tie in to the ABC TV series of the same name (and the Science Fiction Book Club will be offering it in hardcover shortly).

UK and Australian readers: look for a new edition of FLASHFORWARD from Orion/Gollancz, coming soon.

The new Tor trade paperback:
978-076532413-9

The new Tor mass-market paperback:
978-076536383-1

More about the novel (including the new cover!) and links to online retailers:

More info

FLASHFORWARD is also available for the Kindle and from Audible.com.

“A creative, soul-searching exploration of fate, free will, and the nature of the universe. This first-rate, philosophical journey, a terrific example of idea-driven SF, should have wide appeal.” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review, denoting a book of exceptional merit)

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CBC BOOK CLUB PICKS FLASHFORWARD

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Book Club pick for September 2009 is FLASHFORWARD by Robert J. Sawyer. You can join in the fun online from anywhere in the world:

More info

A book-club discussion guide for FLASHFORWARD is here:

More info

“Great storytelling. Sawyer’s FLASHFORWARD has well-developed characters that you care about.” — BOSTON GLOBE

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ROLLBACK ON CBC SIRIUS RADIO / PODCASTS

CBC Sirius Satellite Radio’s BETWEEN THE COVERS is broadcasting — and podcasting! — Rob’s Hugo Award-nominated novel ROLLBACK in twenty-five 15-minute installments weekdays from Monday, September 7, to Friday, October 9. Narrator is ALESSANDRO JULIANI, who played Felix Gaeta on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

* Sirius Satellite Radio: channel 137 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time

* Podcasts will be here:
Podcasts

RSS: RSS

More about ROLLBACK:
More info

“Beyond the SF trappings, ROLLBACK is a story about love and commitment, about humanity at its most basic — a novel to be savoured by science-fiction and mainstream readers alike.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL

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CALCULATING GOD WINS AUDIE

Audible.com’s unabridged reading of my Hugo Award-nominated novel CALCULATING GOD recently won the Audie Award — the highest honor in the audiobook industry — for best SF/F audiobook of the year:

More info

“Guaranteed to expand the minds of believers and non-believers alike.” — TORONTO STAR

And check out Audible’s brilliant production of my WWW:WAKE — it knocked my socks off!

RJS on Audible.com

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MISSISSAUGA LITERARY FESTIVAL

ROBERT J. SAWYER, KENNETH OPPEL, LINWOOD BARCLAY, and others, at the Living Arts Centre, Sunday, September 13:

More info

Rob’s event is in the Rogers Theatre at 2:15 p.m.

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WATCH THE FLASHFORWARD PREMIERE WITH ROB

If you’ll be in Winnipeg on Thursday, September 24, come watch the first episode as it airs with me at McNally Robinson Pollo Park in a special public viewing sponsored jointly by CTV and Thin Air: Winnipeg International Writers Festival. The evening will begin with a talk by me at 7:30 p.m., followed by a Q&A and book signing after the show is over at 9:00.

More info

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AND SPEAKING OF WINNIPEG …

Hugo winners ROBERT J. SAWYER and ROBERT CHARLES WILSON and Hugo finalist NICK DiCHARIO headline Thin Air: Winnipeg International Writers Festival on Friday, September 25:

More info

And on Wednesday, September 23, at 4:30 p.m., Rob will be giving a “Big Ideas” talk on “Science Fiction as a Mirror for Reality” as part of Thin Air:

More info

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WORD ON THE STREET

Hugo Award-winner ROBERT J. SAWYER and World Fantasy Award nominee TERENCE M. GREEN will be at Word on the Street, Toronto’s open-air book festival, in booth WB17 all day long.

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RAVE REVIEWS FOR WWW:WAKE

WAKE, the first volume in my WWW trilogy, continues to garner rave reviews:

WAKE reviews

WATCH, the second volume, will be published in April 2010.

More about WAKE:

More about WAKE

“Sawyer continues to push the boundaries with his stories of the future made credible. His erudition, eclecticism, and masterly storytelling make WAKE a choice selection.” — LIBRARY JOURNAL

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RJS on the Web:

Website
Blog
Twitter: RobertJSawyer
Facebook
Newsgroup

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Whether you want to get the new mass-market or trade paperback edition of my novel FlashForward — basis for the ABC TV series that premieres in 20 days — from Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Borders or McNally Robinson or Chapters or Books-A-Million or a nearby independent, you can easily order copies online through the links at the bottom of this page.

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I’m delighted to announce that my 1995 Nebula Award-winning novel The Terminal Experiment and my 1997 Seiun Award-winning novel Illegal Alien are both coming back into print.

Ginjer Buchanan at Ace Science Fiction just bought U.S. rights to them both, and Adrienne Kerr at Penguin Canada separately just bought Canadian rights. Ace will do them in mass-market, and Penguin Canada will do them in premium mass-market (an inch taller than regular mass-market, the format favored these days for bestsellers). Penguin Canada will have their editions out in time for Christmas.

“Robert J. Sawyer won the Nebula Award with this novel, and I would have voted for it. There is so much of interest in this book — artificial intelligence, a good murder mystery, a nicely realized near-future, and, as I’ve come to expect from Sawyer’s novels, thought-provoking philosophy. This is science fiction at its most thought provoking.” — SF Site on The Terminal Experiment

“Innovative, imaginative, and pioneering — not just excellent sf but also excellent popular literature … a fast-paced, exciting book that shows the imaginative heights to which science fiction writers can climb when they combine sf with something else.” — The Washington Post on Illegal Alien

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The editors of Tesseracts 14 will be John Robert Colombo and Brett Savory (Carolyn and I edited Tesseracts 6).

Details are here.

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I was asked to comment on “the death of science fiction” today; here’s what I had to say:

Science fiction isn’t dead; it’s in the witness-protection program, and thriving under a new identity. The term “science fiction” is downplayed by Hollywood and American publishing, so that movies like The Time Travelers Wife, TV shows like my own FlashForward and even Battlestar Galactica, and writers like Michael Crichton and J.D. Robb are all hits but not presented as being science fiction. Even the SciFi Channel is now going under the alias Syfy! Sometimes it makes sorry I got sfwriter.com for my web address …

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