Print interviews with Rob about Wake:
Audio interviews with Rob about Wake:
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Peter Anthony Holder hosts Holder Tonight on Montreal radio station CJAD-AM and Toronto radio station CFRB-AM. He had Robert J. Sawyer on this past Thursday, April 9, 2009, to talk about his new novel Wake. You can hear the whole half-hour interview right here (click to play; right click to download the MP3 file).
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Robert J. Sawyer will be reading and signing Wake at Borderlands Books in San Francisco this Monday, April 13, 2009, at 7:00 p.m.:
Borderlands Books
866 Valencia Street
San Francisco, California
Monday, April 13, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Yesterday, Wake started showing up in Canadian bookstores (and I myself saw the nice display of copies at the Indigo on Yonge Street just north of the 407 in Greater Toronto).
And I got to do something that’s very special: I got to autograph the first copy of the finished book. I always annotate that copy (“First copy signed by the author”), and the one for Wake went to Kelly Smith, a friend from Willowdale Junior High. (It also got inscribed, “Thanks for the kiss all those years ago” — but that’s another story …)
See, last night, a few of us who went to Willowdale Junior High or Northview Heights Secondary School got together at the Kelsey’s restaurant next to that Indigo for a little reunion (made possible by the magic of Facebook). Kelly (as well as old friends Roberta Torkoff [now Roberta Blank] and Ginter Karosas) went off to the store during dinner to buy copies of Wake, which was very kind of them.
And today, right on the heels of Wake coming out, I finished my final revisions on Watch, the second volume in the WWW trilogy.
And that got done just in time for me to hit the road promoting Wake: in two days, I leave for San Francisco (and am reading and signing at Borderland Books there Monday night at 7:00 p.m.).
Whew!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
To my astonishment and delight, my Wake is the #1 “Technothriller” bestseller on Amazon.com:
(Posted at 12:05 a.m. on Friday 10 April 2009)
1. Wake by Robert J. Sawyer
2. State of the Union by Brad Thor
3. Daemon by Daniel Suarez
4. Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry
5. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
6. Vixen 03 by Clive Cussler
7. State of Fear by Michael Crichton
8. Death Match by Lincoln Child
9. Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy
10. Utopia by Lincoln Child
So — w00t!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Check out John’s podcast “Serving Worlds” here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Marshal also talks about Wake here and here.
(I also did “The Page 69 Test” for Rollback back in 2007.)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Proving that there a great bunch of people, my previous publisher Tor.com has a wonderful, lengthy interview with me today about Wake, my new novel for Ace. The interview was conducted by the terrific John Klima, who is a Hugo finalist this year for his fanzine Electric Velocipede.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
On March 20, 2009, I had an op-ed piece in The Ottawa Citizen about the use of computers by children. Nina Munteanu — always a fascinating blogger, as well as a very fine SF writer — responds with some very interesting ruminations here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Today started at midnight, of course — and at 12:30 a.m., I was on the air, doing a live half-hour radio interview with Peter Anthony Holder, simultaneously on CJAD-AM in Montreal and CFRB-AM in Toronto.
Just eight hours later, I was back on the air again, this time for a full-hour on The Mike Shinabery Show on Alamagordo KRSY-AM. Now, yes, eight hours is more sleep than I normally need, but I can’t come off doing an energetic, lively interview and immediately fall asleep.
I predict a nap this afternoon. :)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Good morning starshine
The earth says hello
You twinkle above us
We twinkle below
Good morning starshine
You lead us along
My love and me as we sing
Our early morning singing song
Gliddy glub gloopy
Nibby nabby noopy
La la la lo lo
Sabba sibby sabba
Nooby abba nabba
Le le lo lo
Tooby ooby walla
Nooby abba naba
Early morning singing song
Good morning starshine
The earth says hello
You twinkle above us
We twinkle below
Good morning starshine
You lead us along
My love and me as we sing
Our early morning singing song
Gliddy glub gloopy
Nibby nabby noopy
La la la lo lo
Sabba sibby sabba
Nooby abba nabba
Le le lo lo
Tooby ooby walla
Nooby abba naba
Early morning singing song
Singing a song
Humming a song
Singing a song
Loving a song
Laughing a song
Singing a song
Sing the song
Song song song sing
Sing sing sing sing song
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
W00t! The American Library Association’s Booklist has weighed in on Wake:
Sawyer’s take on theories about the origin of consciousness, generated within the framework of an engaging story, is fascinating, and his approach to machine consciousness and the Internet is surprisingly fresh.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
You can read them both in the PDF version of the newspaper here.
Or read the interview online here and the review here.
Among other things, the review says:
Wake is about as good as it gets when it comes to science fiction. In Caitlin, Sawyer has created a likable and sympathetic hero. She’s smart, sure, but also full of sass, which lends itself to some wildly entertaining reading. Sawyer’s combination of writing skill and computing background come together marvelously in this book. The characters are rich and realistic, while the ideas are fresh and fascinating.
The interviewer and the reviewer is Allen Adams.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
From The Authors Guild, of which I am a member:
Today, the National Federation of the Blind led a protest in front of the Guild’s offices in Manhattan. This protest stems from Amazon’s announcement in February that it would allow publishers to disable the voice-output feature of its Kindle 2 after we had objected that the feature threatened audio markets, violated authors’ copyrights and exceeded the e-rights licenses that authors granted publishers.
The Guild, of course, is strongly supportive of making books accessible to the blind and other print-disabled readers through the Kindle and other devices. For decades (we think going back at least to the 1930s), authors have donated their rights so that Braille and audio versions can be made freely available to those who need them. The key is to make this technology accessible to print-disabled readers without undermining authors’ audio markets.
There’s an easy technological fix here: those with certified disabilities could have a Kindle operating system that is subtly modified to permit voice output for all books, overriding any limitations put in place by publishers. This could work in conjunction with existing programs such as Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, Bookshare and the National Library Service.
We issued the following statement today in response to the protest:
Authors want everyone to read their books. That’s why the Authors Guild, and authors generally, are strong advocates for making all books, including e-books, accessible to everyone. This is not a new position for us. For decades, we’ve informed new authors that the expected and proper thing to do is to donate rights so that their works can be accessible to the blind and others. In October, we were praised by the National Federation of the Blind for the settlement of our lawsuit against Google, which promises “to revolutionize blind people’s access to books,” according to the Federation’s press release.
E-books do not come bundled with audio rights. So we proposed to the Federation several weeks ago the only lawful and speedy path to make e-books accessible to the print disabled on Amazon’s Kindle:
1. The first step is to take advantage of a special exception to the Copyright Act known as the Chafee Amendment, which permits the blind and others with certified physical print disabilities access to special versions, including audio versions, of copyrighted books. Technology makes this step easy: certified users of existing Kindles could activate their devices online to enable access to voice-output versions of all e-books. This process could be ready to go within weeks.
2. Since step one would help only those with sufficient eyesight to navigate the current Kindle, we encourage Amazon or another e-book device manufacturer to make an e-book device with voice output capability that would be truly blind-accessible, with a Braille keyboard and audible menu commands.
3. Finally, we need to amend existing book contracts to allow voice-output access to others, including those with learning disabilities, that don’t qualify for special treatment under the Chafee Amendment. There’s no getting around the need to amend contracts: for the past 16 years, standard publishing contracts with most major trade publishers do not permit publishers to sell e-books bundled with audio rights. Fortunately, publishing contracts are amendable, and can (once terms have been negotiated) be handled in a systematic fashion.
The Authors Guild will gladly be a forceful advocate for amending contracts to provide access to voice-output technology to everyone. We will not, however, surrender our members’ economic rights to Amazon or anyone else. The leap to digital has been brutal for print media generally, and the economics of the transition from print to e-books do not look as promising as many assume. Authors can’t afford to start this transition to digital by abandoning rights.
Knowing how difficult the road ahead is for the already fragile economics of authorship, we are particularly troubled at how all this arose, with Amazon attempting to use authors’ audio rights to lengthen its lead in the fledgling e-book industry. We could not allow this rights grab to happen. Audio books are a billion dollar market, the rights for which are packaged separately from — and are far more valuable than — e-book rights.
That said, our support for access by all disabled readers is steadfast, and we know how to make it happen. The Federation rightly heralded the settlement in Authors Guild v. Google. That class-action settlement represents a quantum leap in accessibility to books for the disabled. It will, if approved, make far more books than ever before, potentially tens of millions of out-of-print books, accessible to not only the blind, but to people with any type of print disability.
Through the Google settlement, we have a solution for out-of-print book accessibility. We’re confident we can arrive at a solution for in-print books as well.
Today’s protest is unfortunate and unnecessary. We stand by our offer, first made to the Federation’s lawyer a month ago and repeated several times since, to negotiate in good faith to reach a solution for making in-print e-books accessible to everyone. We extend that same offer to any group representing the disabled.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
“I’m arguing for justice, sir … I’m arguing for people — for a wholehearted, indivisible commitment to humanity.” —James T. Hart
As I said back in December 2008, Shout! Factory is issuing the first season of The Paper Chase on DVD — and the three-disk set arrived today, via Amazon.ca! All 22 first-season episodes. W00t!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Audible.com has the exclusive audio book of Wake, released today to coincide with the release of the American hardcover edition. It’s a terrific multi-voice unabridged reading, narrated by Jessica Almasy, Jennifer Van Dyck, A.C. Fellner, Marc Vietor, and yours truly, Robert J. Sawyer, and featuring an exclusive audio introduction by me.
You can get it, and all my Audible.com audio books, here.
(Audible has unabridged audiobooks of Wake, Rollback, Calculating God, Flash Forward, The Terminal Experiment, Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids, plus my short story “Shed Skin.”)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
If you wrote to me, and haven’t heard back — I apologize! My Yahoo! Mail account has been eating some of my email; I don’t know why. (It hasn’t just been misfiling it as spam; it’s actually just not showing up in the account at all.)
All email to my sfwriter.com domain gets mirrored to both a Yahoo! Mail Plus account (a premium one that I pay for) and a Gmail account. I’ve recently discovered, though, that some of it just seems to disappear at the Yahoo! end (including some very important emails).
I like the Yahoo! interface better, and really was only using the Gmail account for backup … but looking through it I’ve found dozens of important, legitimate emails that should have shown up at Yahoo! as well (since they were addressed to me at sfwriter.com), but never did. And I’m sure a bunch have fallen through the cracks.
So, apologies if you wrote to me and never heard back! I reply personally to all my fan mail, and all business stuff, too; if you didn’t hear from me, it was inadvertent. Please write to me again, and please accept my apologies.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
On the Edge with Robert J. Sawyer (MP3)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Leading up to my appearance later this month at The Frye Festival in Moncton, New Brunswick, The Moncton Times & Transcript interviews me today. The article is online here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
As if this wasn’t crazy enough, it’s just been confirmed that Toronto will have two of its SF cons on the same weekend next year! Both Ad Astra, the general con, and FilKONtario, the filking con, are April 9 through 11, 2010. Unbelievable!
For the record, it’s Ad Astra that changed its date, resulting in the conflict. At FilKONtario, someone opined that the conflict would lead to a reduction in Ad Astra’s attendance, rather than FilKONtario’s — and I suspect that’s probably right. Still, although I had a blast as special guest at FilKONtario this year, I’ll be at Ad Astra next year — but, really, no one should have to make this choice; it’s just nuts.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’m always delighted when one of my writing students has success, and I’m thrilled to announce that the wonderful Karleen Bradford has a new book! Karleen was my student for a week at the Banff Centre in September 2005.
Dragonmaster is the third book in her celebrated “Taun Series” from HarperCollins’s young-adult HarperTrophy imprint. Way to go, Karleen! I’m very proud of you!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
At least I think they’re snappy. I was asked by a magazine doing a piece about Wake for a one-liner they could use as a teaser. I gave them five, and told them to take their pick:
Ray Kurzweil says the singularity is near. Actually, it’s all around us.
The World Wide Web will soon have as many interconnections as a human brain. What happens then?
Consciousness is an emergent property of complexity. Our minds were the first example, but they won’t be the last.
Artificial intelligence doesn’t necessarily require a programmer.
Human intelligence didn’t require an intelligent designer — so why should we suppose artificial intelligence will?
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
(Many thanks to J.F. Lewis, who runs the SFWA Pressbook — see his own news here.)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
So, we have six major general-interest regional science-fiction conventions left in Canada: VCON in Vancouver, Con-Version in Calgary, Pure Speculation in Edmonton, KeyCon in Winnipeg, Ad Astra in Toronto, and Con*Cept in Montreal.
And, incredibly, three of them are on the same weekend in 2009! VCON, Pure Speculation, and Con*Cept are all the first weekend in October. Don’t you guys talk? I know there’s a Canadian con-runners mailing list, for Pete’s sake.
VCON and Pure Speculation are definitely close enough physically that there are significant numbers of people who would have attended both — and there are crazy folk like me who will go to any major Canadian con if scheduling permits regardless of its location.
This just makes zero sense, guys. No wonder con attendance is shrinking coast-to-coast.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Sadly, I’ve had to bow out of Norwescon in Seattle this month. It’s a great con, and I’m very sorry to miss it. I’ll still be at the other cons and festivals I’m scheduled for this year: FilKONtario, Xanadu Las Vegas, The Frye Festival, Keycon, Readercon, the Montreal Worldcon, Con-Version, VCON, the Surrey International Writers Conference, and Astronomicon.
My schedule — including book-tour events for Wake — is here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Here’s an episode guide.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
