Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Talking Turkey (2 of 4)

by Rob - February 8th, 2009

As a lead-up to my trip to Istanbul, I did four quick-and-dirty by-email interviews for Turkish newspapers, wire services, and magazines. The deadlines on these were so tight that I just had to bang out my answers without having a chance to compose my thoughts or edit my responses — so don’t expect me to defend to the death anything I say in them. :)

Here’s the second of those four interviews, this one done for a national news agency in Turkey.

1) According to your point of view, what will be the most important revolution that will change our world in the next decade? What role will science play in this revolution?

The biggest revolution in technology may still come from radical nanotechnology: turning any pile of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen atoms into just about anything we might desire; by the end of this century, that may well be the key to eliminating hunger and material want.

2) The global economic crisis firstly and mostly affected the automotive industry. Besides the financial solutions, would you please tell us other solutions that will help the automotive industry?

Well, first we must consider whether the automobile industry is worth saving. In North America, when I was a kid most families had one car, and some had none. By the 1980s, the middle-class average was two cars — one for each parent. Now, in the 2000s, an affluent family will have three or more: one for each parent, and one for the teenagers (the legal driving age in most North American jurisdictions is 16).

It’s funny that in a world that laments the loss of personal contact — a world that says we’re doing everything online and eschewing the face-to-face — that we feel we need so many cars. Cars cause pollution, traffic congestion, and so on (not to mention traffic fatalities, which in North America are a leading cause of death of young men).

We also don’t tolerate planned obsolescence anymore: cars are expensive, and they should last many years in any climate (such as surviving the harsh winters of my Canada) and decades in milder climates. The notion that making cars would be a growth industry forever was ill-founded, and now that the shaky foundations of that industry have crumbled, it’s a once-in-a-century opportunity to redefine our notions of personal transportation. Instead of a saving an industry predicated on the assumption that every person over 16 should own something that weighs thousands of pounds, costs tens of thousands of dollars, and sits idle most of the time, we should invest governments’ monies in better public transportation.

3) Digital products have become an important part of our lives: Cameras, PDA’s, Navigators. We observe artificial intelligence and house robots in Hollywood movies more often. How do you think our consumption habits will change in the near future?

Convergence is the key: the iPhone is pretty close to being the perfect mode. It’s a phone, an Internet appliance, an e-book reader, a music player, a GPS, a personal digital assistant (calendar, contact manager, etc.), and so on. People don’t want multiple devices; they want one small, flexible device that does everything.

I love Star Trek, but the most unrealistic thing was that the crew of the Enterprise went down to the planets carrying three pieces of equipment: a phaser, a communicator, and a tricorder. Long before the 23rd century, we’ll each be carrying one, and it will do everything.

4) Diseases (AIDS, cancer), terrorism, wars, and most importantly global warming, all have pernicious affects on our lives, and are still unsolved. Do you think that human beings will overcome these issues in the future?

I think we have to, pure and simple. This is the century in which the human race will either go extinct or establish its stability for not just centuries but millennia to come. The diseases will be cured: AIDS, cancer, and others are tractable scientific problems. We lament the slow progress, but, on the other hand, we’ve only known the structure of DNA for fifty years now, and we’ve only had a map of the human genome for ten. And, also we finally have computers complex enough to deal with things like protein folding and so forth. In other words, we finally have the tools, after 40,000 years of civilization, to do real medicine; we just got them, but the progress will be rapid — I’ll be astonished if, by the 100th anniversary of Crick and Watson’s discovery of the structure of DNA that any diseases continue to be a serious threat to humanity.

Global warming: well, I’m answering this question on Tuesday, January 20, the day in which the world’s biggest global-warming denier, George W. Bush, is replaced by an intellectual, a university professor; the tide will hopefully start to turn immediately. Yes, the US is only one part of it (we have to turf out our own irresponsible government in Canada, too — and it will almost certainly fall in the next few months to a non-confidence motion), but it’s like anything: the old guard has vested interests; you can’t change them, so you have to replace them. We’re very close to the tipping point on climate change; we have to act now, and I do think we are going to do precisely that.

Terrorism is the wildcard. Nothing we’ve done has been effective at dealing with it; the ridiculous measures taken at airports, for instance, are mere theater — they don’t actually make us substantially safer. Terrorism must end before the terrorists get nuclear weapons and biological weapons. The cure, in my view, is straightforward, but hard to implement. Much terrorism is caused by the disparity between the rich and the poor, between the haves and the have-nots; when you are flagrant in your consumption, when you don’t care if your neighbor is starving, you invite resentment. It is in everyone’s interest to eliminate poverty domestically and abroad; give each person a high quality of life and things worth living for. In other words, instead of spending the rest of eternity trying to thwart terrorist plots, foster conditions now that ultimately will become self-sustaining in which those plots will never be fomented in the first place.

5) In these global-economic-crisis days, should companies resign from their social responsibilities?

The answer is no. If I may be so bold, it was the abandoning of social responsibilities — the unwritten social contract — that led to the current crisis. Instead of asking, “What impact will this have on other people?” companies pursued profit at all cost. To say now that it’s too expensive to be responsible citizens is misleading; if the corporations and banks had been responsible citizens in the first place we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.

Google is, in many ways, a model for a modern company: it has a corporate slogan that is simple: “Don’t be evil.” The company doesn’t always live up to that, but that it even tries to is significant: that a gigantic corporation run by some of the richest people in the world has taken to heart what, for instance, medicine has known for thousands of years, is wonderful. The Hippocratic oath Western doctors swear says “Do no harm” — it’s very similar. Now is precisely the wrong time to be abandoning principles and ethics; we’re regrowing industries, and corrupt seeds cannot bring forth good fruit.

6) In business life, this global economic crisis is considered the end of the old world and the starting of a new era. In your point of view, what kind of new era is awaiting the business world?

The global economic crisis has underscored several things: transparency is important, regulation is important, and accountability is important. As we rebuild, again, we have an opportunity to restructure the economic system; we can demand accountability, and we can institute controls. What’s astonishing is how little has been learned from past economic collapses: regulation works, transparency works, accountability works; the principles are simple — we just have to make sure they don’t fall by the wayside.

7) Our Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, mentioned about transforming economic crises into opportunities. Do you also think that developing countries like Turkey will create opportunities in this global economic crisis?

Absolutely! I spent some time in China in 2007, and the one thing that struck me was how happy most of the people I saw were. And the answer to why was simple: the current year was better for them than the year before, and that previous year had been better than the one that had preceded it. Over very short time frames, they were seeing their prosperity increase, they were seeing their lives shift from drudgery to meaningful work.

Ask a Westerner if his or her life is better today than it was five years ago or ten years ago and the answer might very well be no; in developing countries the arrow is pointing upward. Note, though, that the opportunities for developing countries exist in good times and in bad; things would be looking up even without the economic crisis. And note, too, that developing countries have something the First World did not: the ability to learn from the mistakes of others who have gone through the same things in the past.

Don’t try to become Western Europe, or Canada, or the United States; try instead to avoid the mistakes we made — and they differ from country to country — and craft a wise solution. The American century is over; this one is still up for grabs.

8) According to the latest unemployment numbers; millions of educated youth struggle with unemployment. However, upcoming generations always lead the future with their dreams. Do you have any recommendations to the unlucky generation of this crisis period?

I graduated from university during an economic downturn myself, in 1982. My degree happens to be in broadcasting, and the year I graduated the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had, for the first time in its history, major layoffs: my classmates and I were competing with people who had ten, twenty, or even thirty years’ experience for any job at all. What happened? We created our own jobs; I went off and became a writer — and that’s why I’m coming to Istanbul in February, that’s why you’re asking me questions now. Education is never wasted; the particular subject doesn’t matter — what university does is train you to think. So, think! You are young, and you have time.

It’s not going to be easy — I went several years making very little money myself — but it actually can be liberating. In Japan, they have the concept of the salaryman — a person who gets plugged into a boring, uninteresting office-worker life; he makes a modest living, but will never rise far. Well, those safe, easy solutions — just plug me into that slot — are gone; a more interesting, more stimulating life may be possible. Now, more than ever, if I may quote the slogan of the seminar I’m speaking at, it’s time to escape the labyrinth.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Seattle Worldcon bid withdrawn

by Rob - February 8th, 2009

Seattle has withdrawn its bid for the 2011 World Science Fiction Convention, leaving Reno the winner by default. Details are here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Rob reads Chapter 1 of Wake

by Rob - February 7th, 2009


Now available: Robert J. Sawyer reading Chapter 1 of his forthcoming novel Wake as a 14-minute MP3 file: you can listen to it right here.

More about Wake is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

SF Authors in Second Life

by Rob - February 7th, 2009


Stephen Euin Cobb has an article entitled Five Famous Authors do Public Appearances in Second Life over at Baen’s Universe, including quotes from yours truly. And is it just me, or does Catherine Asaro look really hot in Second Life? (Okay, she’s pretty damn hot in real life, too!)

Photo: Robert J. Sawyer in Second Life (screen capture by Stephen Euin Cobb)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Obama’s America includes atheists

by Rob - February 7th, 2009


In his inaugural address, Barack Obama said of America, “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers.”

In my 2003 novel, Hybrids, I had the next president of the United States (the one coming to office in 2009) refer to nonbelievers, too:

So, yes, indeed, now is the time to take longer strides. But it’s not just time for a great new American enterprise. Rather, it’s time, if I may echo another speech, for black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics — and Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists, and men and women of all faiths, and men and women of none — for individuals from every one of our 191 united nations, for members of every race and religion that make up our unique, varied brand of humanity — to go forward together, in peace and harmony, with mutual respect and friendship … [Chapter 25]

For me, it was key that the first post-Bush president acknowledge the large numbers of atheists and nonbelievers, and I’m delighted to see Obama do just that.

The only appearance by my president in Hybrids is through a series of excerpts from his first major speech, which appear in chunks at the beginnings of each chapter; I didn’t explicitly say he was black, but I certainly implied it:

Four decades ago, my predecessor in the Oval Office, John F. Kennedy, said, `Now is the time to take longer strides — time for a great new American enterprise.’ I was just a kid in a Montgomery ghetto then, but I remember vividly how those words made my spine tingle … [Chapter 5]

I’m very proud of the speech I wrote for the fictitious president (the full text of which is here), but am even prouder, as an often-conflicted American-Canadian dual citizen, that my real president had the courage to acknowledge us nonbelievers in his inaugural address.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Supernatural Investigator on SETI

by Rob - February 7th, 2009

Now that I’m back from Turkey, I’ve had a chance to watch this week’s (3 February 2009) episode of Supernatural Investigator, which I host for Canada’s Vision TV. This was episode 2 of 17, and it was entitled “Life From Other Worlds,” with Mac Tonnies as our investigator of the week.

Man, it felt like a family reunion. There was my buddy Seth Shostak from the SETI Institute (Seth and I have appeared together before on Discovery Channel Canada’s Daily Planet, I’ve been a guest on Seth’s SETI radio show (talking about my novel Rollback), and Seth invited me to the NASA/Ames conference “The Future of Intelligence in the Cosmos in 2007).

And there was my friend Chris Corbally, one of the Vatican astonomers; back in 2003, I was in the hot seat on another Vision TV series, Valerie Pringle’s Test of Faith; the topic was “Could Organized Religion Survive the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life,” and Chris was one of the questioners — a great guy, who, as it happens, did his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto.

All in all, I thought it was a terrific episode, and I’m very proud to be part of this series.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Randy McCharles the Writer

by Rob - February 7th, 2009


Forget all that talk about Randy McCharles the great convention organizer. I’m totally thrilled to announce that Randy McCharles the great writer has just sold reprint rights to his novella “Ringing the Changes in Okotoks, Alberta” from Tesseracts 12 to David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer for the 2009 edition of their anthology Year’s Best Fantasy.

(So: don’t forget this story when you nominate for the Auroras and the Hugos!)

Randy is my writing student (and my friend!), having taken more writing workshops with me than anyone else. I’m very, very proud of him!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

In England, I’d be a crisp …

by Rob - February 7th, 2009

Nice fan note today, which made me smile (actually sent to Carolyn, who handles the business of selling my books online):

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve received my books and I’m absolutely delighted with my purchase. From one book lover to another, the care in packing is very much appreciated (all of my rarer editions in the library are all in the same type of form-fitting plastic bags), and I was extremely happy with Rob’s personalizations: they were exactly what I was looking for. Please pass along my sincere thanks to the future Grand Master!

I’ve been thinking about Rob’s work for the last little while, as I seem to be going through a small Sawyer Renaissance, reading Golden Fleece, Factoring Humanity, Calculating God and being halfway through Frameshift in the last week or so. I’ve come to the conclusion that my favorite Sawyer book is whichever one I’ve last finished, because, and I mean this in only the admiring way, Rob’s writing is addictive — He’s the Lay’s Potato Chip of Science Fiction: Betcha can’t read just one!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Federations table of contents

by Rob - February 7th, 2009

Holy cow! How often do you get to be betwen the covers with Lois McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card, Anne McCaffrey, and Robert Silverberg? Woot!

John Joseph Adams has announced the line-up for his upcoming anthology Federations, and it’s terrific (see below). I’m particularly pleased to note that the lead story is Orson Scott Card’s “Mazer in Prison,” which I’m a big fan of, and that my great friend James Alan Gardner is in the book, too, with a new story.

Here’s the full list:

  • “Mazer in Prison” by Orson Scott Card (reprint)
  • “Carthago Delenda Est” by Genevieve Valentine
  • “Life-Suspension” by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
  • “Terra-Exulta” by S. L. Gilbow
  • “Aftermaths” by Lois McMaster Bujold (reprint)
  • “Someone is Stealing the Great Throne Rooms of the Galaxy” by Harry Turtledove (reprint)
  • “Prisons” by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason (reprint)
  • “Different Day” by K. Tempest Bradford
  • “Twilight of the Gods” by John C. Wright
  • “Warship” by George R. R. Martin and George Guthridge (reprint)
  • “Swanwatch” by Yoon Ha Lee
  • “Spirey and the Queen” by Alastair Reynolds (reprint)
  • “Pardon Our Conquest” by Alan Dean Foster
  • “Symbiont” by Robert Silverberg (reprint)
  • “The Ship Who Returned” by Anne McCaffrey (reprint)
  • “My She” by Mary Rosenblum
  • “The Shoulders of Giants” by Robert J. Sawyer (reprint)
  • “The Culture Archivist” by Jeremiah Tolbert
  • “The Other Side of Jordan” by Allen Steele
  • “Like They Always Been Free” by Georgina Li
  • “Eskhara” by Trent Hergenrader
  • “The One with the Interstellar Group Consciousnesses” by James Alan Gardner
  • “Golubash, or Wine-War-Blood-Elegy” by Catherynne M. Valente

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Flash Forward: T-minus 2 weeks!

by Rob - February 7th, 2009


OMG, it’s almost here! The ABC TV series pilot based on my novel Flash Forward starts filming in Los Angeles two weeks from today (Saturday, February 21, 2009). Director David S. Goyer is working his tail off getting ready for the shoot.

Carolyn and I won’t be there on the first day — I’ve got a deadline to meet for Watch, my next novel, the following week — but we will be heading down for part of the shoot. Woot!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Talking Turkey (1 of 4)

by Rob - February 7th, 2009

As a lead-up to my trip to Istanbul, I did four quick-and-dirty by-email interviews for Turkish newspapers, wire services, and magazines. The deadlines on these were so tight that I just had to bang out my answers without having a chance to compose my thoughts or edit my responses — so don’t expect me to defend to the death anything I say in them. :)

The first one, below, was for the monthly Turkish magazine Digital Age, described as “a digital business and culture magazine.” Here’s what I had to say:

1. Is technology really a time-saver for us or just making our lives more complicated and busy?

Absolutely it’s a time saver. Remember when you had to retype a whole page of text because you’d made an error? That’s a trivial example, but it’s also true. The reason we are busier now is that we can do more things: computers have given each of us the ability to become publishers, filmmakers, and so on, and we choose to do those things.

A book that’s very popular in North America right now is Outliers, by my fellow Canadian Malcolm Gladwell. It points out that the thing people innately value most is the opportunity to do meaningful work: important work, work that makes a difference, work that they can take pride in. Far fewer of us work in boring, assembly-line, repetitive manual-labor jobs now than did 50 years ago. We have technology to thank for that. Yes, we’re busier — but we’re happier, too.

2. Technology brings less human relationships, I mean humankind is just becoming more selfish (individual) by technology. What will human relationships be in the near future, if technology keeps on improving?

I totally disagree with your first sentence. In fact, technology brings us closer together. In North America, where I’m from, the phone company used to have a slogan for long-distance calling: “Reach out and touch someone.” That is, technology made it possible to be in touch with people who didn’t happen to live near you.

The most popular technologies are all about communication — about interacting with other human beings: cell phones, email, text messages, social networking, online communities, Second Life, and so on.

As for what changes we’ll see in the future, it’ll be more human contact, not less: all that’s holding us back now is bandwidth limitations. Soon, we’ll be able to see each other in high resolution anywhere in the world; eventually, we’ll see each other in three dimensions worldwide.

Technology brings us together no matter where we live: you don’t have to be isolated if you live alone, you don’t have to feel cut off from the rest of the world. It’s called the World Wide Web for a reason: it covers the entire planet, and it ties us all together in wonderful ways.

3. Does technology has a philosophy? How do you define the philosophy of technology?

The scientific name for Humanity is Homo sapiens, which means “Man of wisdom.” Historically, we’ve done a poor job of demonstrating that we deserve the name. I’d rather we were called Homo faber, which means “Man who makes things.” Technology allows us to permanently change things, and to do things that will have effects after we ourselves are gone. No other animal can do that, and we can only do it because of our tools. So, the philosophy of technology is this: technology empowers, technology amplifies our abilities, technology gives us the ability to improve the human condition, and technology allows us to create things that will outlast our own lives.

4. What’s your all time favorite future prediction (either yours or someone else’s)?

Well, in my field of science-fiction writing, there was a popular movement, starting in the early 1980s, called “cyberpunk.” It suggested that the future would be controlled by the tiny underground of streetwise youths who really understood computers.

I love that prediction because it was hopelessly wrong: it was lousy extrapolation. It assumed that since only an elite worked with computers in 1980, that it would always be that way. The death of cyberpunk surely came when Time magazine named “You” — you, me, average people — its person of the year in 2006 in honor of the way all of us, from toddlers to the most elderly, had embraced the use of computing technology to give themselves and each other joy.

5. What will humankind be in the next 50 years?

We will live longer, possibly much longer — with projected lifespans of centuries instead of decades.

We will be more healthy: we are starting to recognize just how much human disease is infectious and caused by bacteria and viruses (the breakthrough that ulcers are caused by bacteria rather than stress was just the beginning; new evidence suggests that Alzheimer’s may be caused by viruses — and so may many cancers); we will cure those diseases.

Some may choose to make modifications to themselves (so they can breathe underwater, for instance).

And, most of all, we will be at peace — because the alternatives are either peace or annihilation, and I believe humanity is wise enough to choose the former. We’re not Homo sapiens yet — but we better become him in the next fifty years!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Creator of Worlds, Chaser of Ghosts

by Rob - February 7th, 2009


The Brantford Expositor has a cool article headlined “Creator of Worlds and Chaser of Ghosts” by Brian Gorman about the incongruity of a hard-SF writer like me hosting a TV series like Supernatural Investigator. You can read it online here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Turkeys can’t fly, but I can fly to Turkey

by Rob - January 30th, 2009

Go figure.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

The conference I’m speaking at in Istanbul

by Rob - January 29th, 2009

For those who are curious, there’s now an English-language version of the brochure for the conference I’m attending next week in Istanbul, Turkey. You can download the PDF here.

(The brochure also gives some background on previous conferences in this series.)

My keynote address at this conference for business leaders is entitled “The Science-Fiction Mindset in Business,” and will include discussions of understanding the accelerating rate of change and how to reasonably extrapolate what to expect in the next few decades.

The conference website is here, and more information about me as a keynote speaker is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Supernatural Investigator publicity photo

by Rob - January 28th, 2009


T-minus 2 hours and 26 minutes …

Vision TV has released the above publicity photo (click for a larger version). Photo: “Robert J. Sawyer hosts Supernatural Investigator.”

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

It begins

by Rob - January 27th, 2009


We just lost one of the big-four US science fiction and fantasy magazines: Realms of Fantasy, edited by Shawna McCarthy, is closing down. SF Scope (which more and more these days is first with breaking news) has the scoop.

Meanwhile, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction recently switched from 11 issues a year to bimonthly — but at least it has survived (and because the issues are fatter, only lost 10% of its total annual content). Analog and Asimov’s resized, too, and that resulted in 10% reduction of content in each of their issues, as well.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Have I taught you nothing?

by Rob - January 27th, 2009

The opening of an email I just received:

Dear Editor:

I am seeking the publication of my young adult novel, TITLE, complete at 168,000 words.

My reply:

You’ll never get anywhere like this. My guidelines say no YA, and nothing over 100,000 words — I didn’t read anything beyond that in your letter. I wish you luck, but, believe me, all editors just chuck emails that begin “Dear Editor” (our names aren’t that hard to find), especially when they show a complete disregard for the guidelines of or an unfamiliarity with the publisher being approached.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Tuesday is RJS Night on Vision TV!

by Rob - January 27th, 2009


This Tuesday, January 26 — tomorrow, as I write this — I’ll be featured not once but twice on Canada’s Vision TV.

At 10:00 p.m. Eastern time / 7:00 p.m. Pacific, the half-hour documentary Dude, Where’s My Flying Car?, heavily featuring Rob, airs as the debut episode of the series I Prophesy.

And, immediately following, at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time / 7:30 p.m. Pacific, the first episode of Supernatural Investigator, the series I’m hosting, airs.

There are repeats twice on Wednesday: see the schedule here.

The trailer for Supernatural Investigator is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Amazon and ebooks

by Rob - January 26th, 2009

My friend Virginia O’Dine just drew this to my attenion:

Amazon.com has notified its publisher and author clients that it plans to cease offering e-books in the Microsoft Reader and Adobe e-book formats.

They’re only going to be selling Kindle ebooks (for the hardware device they make) and Mobipocket — and Amazon.com owns Mobipocket.

Man, I’d love to see that lawsuit: Microsoft suing Amazon over monopolistic business practices!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Quill & Quire notes Supernatural Investigator

by Rob - January 26th, 2009

Supernatural Investigator, the TV series I’m hosting for Canada’s Vision TV, debuts tomorrow night, Tuesday, January 27, 2009, at 10:30 p.m Eastern time / 7:30 p.m. Pacific time.

Quill & Quire, Canada’s publishing trade journal, notes that fact today — and the final paragraph of their coverage is a hoot.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Bibliographies in novels

by Rob - January 26th, 2009


An academic on a listserver I read just asked about bibliographies in SF&F novels. My reply:

I sometimes include a bibliography. The one from my novel Hominids (Hugo winner, 2003; Tor Books) is online here.

And the one from my novel Mindscan (John W. Campbell Memorial Award winner, 2006; Tor Books) is online here.

But it’s hardly a new practice. For instance, the horror novel The Night Stalker by Jeff Rice, basis for the Kolchak movies and TV series, first published in 1973, has an extensive bibliography (mostly about vampirism) including, cutely, a couple of made-up citations attributed to one of the characters.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Charter of the United Nations

by Rob - January 26th, 2009

PREAMBLE

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED

  • to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
  • to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
  • to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
  • to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

AND FOR THESE ENDS

  • to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and
  • to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
  • to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
  • to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,

HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS

Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations.

Charter of the United Nations

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Hail, Caesar!

by Rob - January 25th, 2009

Hey, didja know that Gordon Jump — Arthur “Big Guy” Carlson himself from WKRP in Cincinnati — was in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes? He plays the auctioneer who sells Roddy McDowall’s Caesar to Governor Breck, saying:

Lot eight: one male chimpanzee in early prime and perfect physical condition. Under observation, appeared so familiar, obedient, docile and intelligent with humans that conditioning was not considered necessary, but can be provided on request. What am I bid for this superb specimen?

Well, Governor Breck’s got nothing on me! I just won an auction on eBay for this 12-inch fan-made resin statue of Caesar:


A statue, you say? That’s right — because the very last shot of the very last film in the series, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, of a statue of Caesar.

That original life-size statue lived for many years in Roddy McDowall’s garden, but he donated it to the Motion Picture & Television Fund, where it now stands serenely in the Roddy McDowall Memorial Rose Garden:


Unlike with Governor Breck, I don’t think my winning Caesar in an auction is ultimately going to cause my downfall … well, at least not until Carolyn finds out! ;)


(click plaque for larger image)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Skeptic Henry Gordon dies

by Rob - January 25th, 2009

Eric McMillan, the Chair of Skeptics Canada, reports:

With great sorrow, we report that Henry Gordon has passed away.

Henry was a professional magician, journalist, book author, and leading Canadian skeptic. He was a founder and chair of the Ontario Skeptics, a precursor to Skeptics Canada, for which he remained chair emeritus and a respected member. He was also a fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), now CSI. He was well-known internationally for his exposures of Uri Geller, Shirley Maclaine and other paranormal practitioners in his books, articles and television appearances.

I was quite an admirer of Henry, and even named an institute after him in my first novel, 1990’s Golden Fleece. In a scene written March 14, 1989, I wrote [from the point of view of a scheming artificial intelligence]:

I made a mini-backup of myself so that I could undertake the interactive dialogue necessary for testing. I let the backup play inquisitor, while I, on the lowest and most simplistic level, tried to access the Aaron Rossman memories I had recorded. It was a tricky process, involving as much learning about Aaron’s particular style of recording information as it did fine-tuning my ability to access specific facts.

The discovery by Barnhard and his group at the Henry Gordon Institute in 2011 that each human seemed to use a unique encoding algorithm put an end to the claims of psychics, mind readers, and other charlatans. Oh, it could be demonstrated that humans did indeed give off electromagnetic signals that corresponded to their thoughts. And, indeed, if one had sufficiently acute sensing devices and the ability to screen the weak signal from the background EM noise, then, yes, one could detect that energy. But the fact that every individual used a different encoding algorithm and key, and, indeed, that many individuals used multiple algorithms depending on the kinds of thoughts they were thinking — the alpha and beta waves of the EEG being the crudest indication of that — meant that even if you could pick up the thought signals, which seemed impossible without direct physical contact with the person’s head, you couldn’t decipher the thoughts without massive number crunching.

Number crunching, of course, is something I have a knack for.

Given who Henry was, it would be wrong to say he’s passed on or to wish that he might rest in peace. Henry is gone, pure and simple — and the world is poorer for it.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

K.A. Bedford wins Aurealis

by Rob - January 25th, 2009


I mentioned K.A. Bedford’s Time Machines Reapired While-U-Wait in this post.

The book has just won Australia’s Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year — congratulations, Adrian! And congratulations to Brian Hades of Calgary’s EDGE, which published the book. Woot! This is truly a case of nice guys finishing first!

The full list of Aurealis winners is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Oldest Author Website

by Rob - January 24th, 2009

Hey, New York Times!

My friend Stephen Kotowych points out that this article in the Sunday, January 25, 2009, New York Times [but online since yesterday] says, “Back in 1996, [Brad] Meltzer built what was arguably the first author Web site for his first novel …”

Poppycock, says I! My website has been online since Wednesday, June 28, 1995. I’ve never claimed it was the first author website, but it’s often referred to as the first science-fiction author website (and Reuters called it that many years ago in an article).

So, how hard would it have been for the crack journalists at the New York Times to find out if any author websites predated 1996? Well, how ’bout a quick Google search on “author website 1995” (without the quotation marks). Oh, look, lo and behold, right there on the first page of results is my website, and this snippet of text: “Author of 17 SF novels. Sample chapters from each book, full-text short stories, … This web site online since 28 June 1995 — it’s older than Amazon.com!”

“Arguably” should not be used as a substitute for “I’m too lazy to check.” Perhaps the New York Times style guide should be updated to include that fine distinction. :)

The original URL of the main page of my multi-page website on June 28, 1995, was:

http://www.greyware.com/authors/sawyer/index.htm

Its current home, of course, is at sfwriter.com.

(I’ll make it even easier for the next person researching this topic by including all the keywords that might be useful so this message can be easily found via search engines: first author website; first author web site; first author homepage; first author home page; oldest author website; oldest author website; oldest author homepage; oldest author home page; author website 1995; author web site 1995; author homepage 1995; author home page 1995.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

eBay feedback: 400, 100% positive

by Rob - January 24th, 2009


I’m pleased to see that my eBay feedback score just passed 400, with 100% positive ratings, and that my detailed ratings (Item as described; Communication; Shipping time; and Shipping and handling charges) are all five stars. Carolyn deserves most of the credit, as she runs our eBay store, selling signed copies of my books.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Our best look yet at the Enterprise from the upcoming movie

by Rob - January 24th, 2009


… is in the above image of Playmates’ toy version coming in May (click the picture for a larger version). More info at TrekMovie.com, including close-ups of the toy phaser, communicator, and tricorder, also coming in May.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Rob interviewed — in the travel section!

by Rob - January 24th, 2009


Papers, please! Today’s National Post — a Canadian daily newspaper — has a brief interview with me (formatted horribly in the online edition, I must say) in the travel section. You can read it online (at least for a while) here.

In theory, the hardcopy edition also has a passport-style photo of me — but at -18 degrees Celsius right now, I’m not going out to the National Post box on my street corner to find out!

(At least online, the freelancer who did the interview didn’t get credit, so let me tip my hat to the writer here: the piece is by Jesse Kinos-Goodin.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Yeah, I like Feist. Wanna make something out of it?

by Rob - January 24th, 2009


As I said here, I like that iPod commercial with Feist’s song “1 2 3 4.” And if you like that commercial, too, you’ll love this spoof of it from Mad TV. (The original ad is here.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site