OMG! So, I’ve now got copies of the December 2008 Analog in my hot little hands. Of course, my new novel Wake is not on the cover this month, the way it was last month when the serialization began, but I flipped the issue open, to see what interior art they’d come up with.
And I love it! It is so RJS! :) Check it out, if you have a chance … Hats off to artist George Krauter!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
My Hollywood agent just emailed to say that the first of what we’re hoping will be a great many checks related to the sale of my novel Flashforward to ABC arrived at his office today. Woohoo!
More on the Flashforward TV series is here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
And I will! Yee-haw!
Rob will be offering this three-hour master class on on Thursday, October 23:
“The Intimately Human and the Grandly Cosmic” — making your science fiction appeal not just to the mind but to the heart as well. The number-one reason mainstream readers don’t even try science fiction is they think it has nothing to offer them emotionally: they wrongly believe that it’s either too dry and intellectual, or that any character development is sketchy and any character drama is simplistic and juvenile. But the best science fiction is as emotionally complex, as heart-wrenching, as moving, and as uplifting as the best mainstream fiction. Learn how to balance both halves of the term “science fiction” without giving short-shrift to either.
In addition, he will be doing this 75-minute workshop on Sunday, October 25:
“Showing, Not Telling.” Everyone knows you’re supposed to show, not tell — but what does that mean exactly? How do you convey information without coming out and saying it? How can you show emotion without naming it? And when should you tell instead of show?
And he’ll be appearing on panels on “Speculative Fiction” and “Writing Best Sellers,” plus giving a keynote address.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
More details to come, but mark your calendars: Hayden Trenholm, the author of the SF noir novel Defining Diana, and Robert J. Sawyer, author of the SF noir novella “Identity Theft,” will be appearing together in Prince George, British Columbia — home of Canada’s wonderful Bundoran Press — early in November 2008.
On Tuesday, November 4, we’ll be doing public events in town, and on Wednesday, November 5, we’ll be giving talks at the United Nations Bionics Center, which is headquartered in —
What’s that? UNBC is the University of Northern British Columbia? Oh. Well, that’ll be fun, too …
Come and see us — two Aurora winners for the price of … well, actually, the events are free. :) You’ll get to meet the nifty publishers of Bundoran Press, too: Virginia O’Dine and Dominic Maguire.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I was recently listing what I think are the four must-read books for fiction writers, and observed that agent Donald Maass wrote two of them. One is the amazing Writing the Breakout Novel, and the other is the best book on being a commercial-fiction writer ever written: The Career Novelist.
And now, Don has made that book available for free as a PDF download. Grab it here, read it, and follow its advice.
(The other two must-have books for SF writers are both by Orson Scott Card: Characters & Viewpoint, and Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, both from Writer’s Digest Books.)
Many thanks to my friend Virginia O’Dine of Bundoran Press for making this download known to me.
(And you can see both Don and me later this month at this year’s Surrey International Writers Conference.)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
A letter I received today from a library patron (I’m hoping she’ll ask the library to ban my books — nothing is better for sales) … :)
Since I wrote you, I’ve devoured another 10 or so of your novels. I’m on Frameshift, and I’ve been traumatised by Chapter 1 (nazi concentration camp…). You should really preface it with a disclaimer, “dear loyal readers, the following is graphic, but trust me it’s not gratuitous, there is a point…” It’s only because you’ve gained my trust in your other novels that I’m going to read the rest of this one. For that matter, I didn’t much like the rape scene in the beginning of Hominids either. And in Rollback, why did Hubby have to cheat on Sarah?
If you could please reassure me that there is a point to the graphic depiction of events in the concentration camp, I would be extremely grateful.
My reply:
There is nothing gratuitous in any of my books, in the opinion of myself and of my editors — gratuitous material (were I ever to try to include any, which I honestly don’t think I ever have) would not make it through the editorial process.
Hominids won the Hugo Award for best science-fiction novel of the year; Rollback was nominated for that same award, and received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, denoting a book of exceptional merit; Frameshift was also a Hugo finalist and won Japan’s top SF award, the Seiun, in the category of best foreign novel. Those things were because of their content, not despite it, you know. :)
As for a disclaimer, here’s one: “Warning: This is a book. Open at your own risk.”
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Look for me this weekend at Vancouver’s venerable VCON science-fiction convention.
This year, VCON is welcoming a bunch of Guests of Honour Emeriti. In addition to this year’s Author GoHs Kelley Armstrong and Patrick Rothfuss, past Author GoHs in attendance include authors Don DeBrandt, Lynne Fahnestalk, Eileen Kernaghan, Jeanne Robinson, Spider Robinsion, and Robert J. Sawyer, plus gaming GoH emerita Lisa Smedman.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
That’s Elizabeth Hirst, above, one of my students when I was Writer-in-Residence at the Odyssey Workshop in 2006.
She’s sold a story called “Made of the Mist” to AlienSkin. It should be in the next (October-November 2008) issue. Congratulations!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
TITSATAAFL*
I get my business cards from VistaPrint — and I always pay for the cards, rather than take their free ones that have advertising (usually for their own printing services) on the back.
(Even if you’re a fiction writer, you’re still a business person — so present yourself as such; cards with ads for somebody else on the back are just one step above painting a big “L” on your forehead …)
Anyway, the cards are cheap enough as is, but mine always end up paying for themselves, because whenever I go to a restaurant, I drop one in the fishbowl or box that says “You could win a free lunch.” I find my card gets selected somewhere every few months.
Today’s free lunch: Swiss Chalet, my favorite barbecue-chicken chain. Woohoo!
* There Is Too Such A Thing As A Free Lunch
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
An email I received just now, seeking advice:
I have contacted an agenency in New York that likes to see the first five pages of a manuscript first before anything. Would it be acceptable, or fair to them rather, to send the first five pages even though the whole thing is not finished. If they liked it, it would give me a little more encouragment to keep going with it.
My response:
Yes, it would be unfair — and it would be a waste. If they like it RIGHT NOW, and are enthusiastic about seeing it RIGHT NOW, then your best career move is to send the rest as soon as they ask for it. Six weeks, six months, or six years from now that agent may no longer be taking on new clients, whatever market trend the agent might have perceived your work as fitting into may have passed, and so on. You can’t grouse later on, “But you SAID you wanted to see it!” If you don’t have a finished manuscript ready to go to market, you and an agent have no business to do together, and it isn’t fair for you to take time out of his or her day.
Also, your encouragement must be internal to you: you need to want this so badly that you can’t STOP writing; if you think you will be coddled every step of the way by people patting you on the head every time you write a few pages, you are sorely mistaken.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
It was one year ago today that Carolyn and I began the long journey home from the Berton House Writers’ Retreat in Dawson City, Yukon. We’d spent three fabulous months there, at the childhood home of famed Canadian nonfiction writer Pierre Berton. We both miss it.
A note for posterity: any writer seriously thinking about applying for the Berton House retreat, feel free to drop me an email at sawyer@sfwriter.com, and I’ll arrange for us to chat on the phone about the experience.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Visitors to my home frequently remark on the life-size reproductions of fossil hominid skulls I have in my living room and office. For those who are curious, most of them are from Bone Clones. The ones in my living room are:
Australopithecus aethiopicus (aka Paranthropus aethiopicus) (“the Black Skull”) skull only KNM-WT (pictured above)
Australopithecus boisei (aka Paranthropus boisei) skull only OH 5 (Zinjanthropus — Nutcracker Man)
Homo erectus skull and jaws BH-005 — Peking Man
Homo neanderthalensis skull and jaws BH-015 – La Chapelle-aux-Saints — Neanderthal Man
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
This Sunday, September 28, 2008, I’ll be at Toronto’s open-air book festival, Word on the Street, all day long (11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.) at Queens Park, at the Science Fiction Writers booth. Terence M. Green will be there all day, too, as will the lovely Halli Villegas from Tightrope Editions. From 1:30 to 2:30, we’ll be joined by Phllis Gotlieb, and from 4:00 to 6:00, Toronto’s SF convention Ad Astra will be on hand.
Note: we’ve got a new booth location this year, way over by Charles Street (and near the Royal Ontario Museum). Our booth number is 131.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The Hollywood Reporter published an article at 10:00 p.m. Pacific time on Thursday, September 18, 2008, saying we were close to selling my novel Flashforward and a pilot script based on it written by Brannon Braga and David S. Goyer to ABC. Reuters picked up the story, and now it’s everywhere, including SciFi Wire. [See end of the comments section of this blog entry for the original Hollywoode Reporter article that broke the story.]
Actually, the deal has closed, and it had even before the Hollywood Reporter piece went online. It closed at 5:55 p.m. Pacific time that day, after many days of marathon negotiations between ABC and David’s agents at CAA, Brannon’s agents at Endeavor, and my agents at Created By. We’re going ahead. I’ve read David and Brannon’s pilot script, and it is magnificent. Details:
TV rights to Robert J. Sawyer‘s science-fiction novel Flashforward have sold to ABC in a handsome deal negotiated by Vince Gerardis of Created By.
David S. Goyer (Batman Begins) and Brannon Braga (Star Trek Voyager, 24) have scripted the pilot episode, which is now in pre-production. David Goyer will direct the pilot, and Jessika Borsiczky Goyer and Brannon Braga are among the Executive Producers.
Sawyer will serve as consultant on the pilot, and on each episode of any subsequent series; he will also write a first-season episode.
Flashforward tells the story of a mysterious event that causes everyone on Earth to get a brief glimpse of their future lives.
The novel, first published in 1999 by Tor Books, New York, and continuously in print since, won Canada’s Aurora Award for Best Novel of the Year as well as Spain’s Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción, the world’s largest cash prize for SF writing.
An unabridged audio version is available through Audible.com, and translated editions are available in German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.
CNN called the novel “thoroughly entertaining,” and in its starred review, denoting a book of exceptional merit, Publishers Weekly said the book is “a creative, soul-searching exploration of fate, free will, and the nature of the universe,” adding that, “This first-rate, philosophical journey, a terrific example of idea-driven SF, should have wide appeal.”
ABC is the most-watched television network in the United States. Of the potential series, The Hollywood Reporter says, “ABC might finally have launched a strong companion to Lost with Flashforward.”
(Note: because Tor’s art department split the title into two words on the book’s cover, below, the book is sometimes referred to as Flash Forward instead of Flashforward.)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I got asked today whether a UFO novel might do well with a science-fiction publisher, or if flying saucers were a taboo subject. My response:
It’s not that UFOs are taboo per se, it’s just that (perhaps paradoxically) they’re not considered part of science fiction. Rightly or wrongly, most SF readers and editors have decided that whatever UFOs have been reported have nothing to do with extraterrestrial life.
Science fiction has its own peculiar subset of things it allows and doesn’t allow: it allows such magic as faster-than-light travel and time travel, for instance, but rarely has any truck with UFOs. Because of this, you’d probably have better luck with a mainstream publisher than an SF one.
My correspondent replied that this was odd, and said he was going to try his book at a particular SF publisher. My response, which I think articulates a good general principle about finding a home for one’s book, was:
I honestly think your chances are very poor there. There’s a whole subgenre of aliens-are-here novels, but they are not published by science-fiction houses. Find a publisher who is doing that sort of thing; don’t try to convince one that isn’t that they should be. :)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
… they’re driving me nuts on my Palm by insisting that the text for introductions/forewords/prefaces be displayed in small type, despite the user having selected a large typeface.
As I observe below, this might perhaps be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I first raised this issue on July 10, 2008, in the Fictionwise Yahoo! Groups forum (because Fictionwise owns eReader):
Just downloaded the 100% Micropay rebate eReader-format edition of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth.
In general, I’d say that this is an example of what an ebook should be: it’s the Simon & Schuster “Enhanced Classics” edition with endnotes — and all of the endnote calls are hyperlinks, making it easy to jump to them then back to the text.
But — and it’s a big but — the entire introduction is hard-coded to be in small type; that whole section does not obey the font selection the user makes (at least, not on Palm OS devices, although I note it doesn’t have this problem on the Windows version of eReader). On a 320×480 Palm screen, that amounts to (give or take) fifty or so pages in this book that the user is forced to look at in tiny type. (And I’m talking *tiny* — smaller than the type used for dictionary definition displays.)
This has become a common layout convention in lots of eReader-formatted books of late: putting the entire introduction / preface / foreword in tiny type, hardcoded so the user can’t change it. (Another example, from among many: the book Moral Minds by Marc D. Hauser, from HarperCollins; it’s not publisher-specific, but it is format-specific.)
This is almost as bad as lots of Mobipocket books forcing justification on, regardless of what setting the user chooses.
Can you please raise this issue with your suppliers? And, if it is in fact that you guys are providing the templates they use (since you own the eReader format), can you change your template, please? This is driving me nuts!
All best wishes!
No one from Fictionwise/eReader replied. I raised the issue again on July 15, 2008:
Another example of an eReader formatted book that has the entire introduction/preface — in this case, 39 screens’ worth on my Palm — hard coded to display in tiny type on Palm OS devices:
The Emotion Machine by Marvin Minsky (Simon & Schuster).
Ugh! Can we please get this fixed? Thanks!
Again, no reply. I raised it a third time on July 30, 2008:
And yet another book with the entire introduction / preface hardcoded in eReader format (on Palm OS devices, at least) to be in tiny type:
Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes
Ugh!
And, to make matters worse, this book uses a giant embedded graphic at section breaks (a giant picture of what should be a little typographic ornament, a picture of a leaf). This one takes a long time to render, brings up the large-picture warning message, and is present at every section change (but you must look at the graphic, ’cause the book also contains cartoons that are indistinguishable from these until they’re rendered).
Anyway, it would be nice if someone from Fictionwise acknowledged the complaint about eReader formatted books on Palms having the introductions/prefaces/forewords hardcoded to be in small type. This is irritating, unnecessary, and contrary to the general principles of good ebook design. How ’bout it, guys? Anybody looking into this?
Nothing.
Here’s what I posted today (September 17, 2008):
I first raised this issue over two months ago:
Fictionwise Yahoo! Groups posting
Fictionwise hasn’t acknowledged this issue, so I’m going to raise it again. Here’s yet another book in which the eReader-format version when used with the Palm version of eReader software specifically prevents the user from increasing the font size for significant parts of the book (namely, the introduction, which runs 70 screens on my 480×320-pixel Clie):
101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived: How Characters of Fiction, Myth, Legends, Television, and Movies Have Shaped Our Society, Changed Our Behavior, and Set the Course of History by Dan Karlan and Allan Lazar, and published by HarperCollins.
This is happening with books from various publishers, so I presume it’s an issue related to template and/or standards imposed by Fictionwise, the owner of the eReader format.
I begin to wonder if this is in fact a contravention of the Americans with Disabilities Act, in as much as deliberate steps are being taken at the programming/formatting level to interfere with the abilities of vision-impaired people to use a native function of their technology (font-sizing with ebook-reading software) to ameliorate their disabilities.
Certainly, it’s at least somewhat reminiscent of the issues in the recent case National Federation of the Blind v. Target, brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act (and settled in the National Federation of the Blind’s favor):
It would be courteous if someone at Fictionwise at least acknowledged this issue, and offered an explanation for why it is necessary to force small text in introductions, or an assurance that it will stop doing so in future.
I really, really, really prefer eReader software to Mobipocket (and much prefer eReader’s DRM scheme to Mobipocket’s), but this really is bugging me.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’m saying no more and more to things these days. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you — I probably do! — but way too often these days I get asked to do events that pay very little (or nothing) and yet require me to commit to being in Toronto (or somewhere else) on a specific date many months in the future.
For instance, back in January 2008, because it was a friend asking, I agreed to an event at one of Toronto’s universities for October 2008. Said friend’s email had noted, “There’ll be an honorarium of $250, which I know isn’t much — but it’ll just be one evening.”
But now the event has been canceled (a fact that I only learned because I followed up yesterday).
The dang thing is, for most of this past year, while planning other trips I’ve had to work around that date in Toronto. For instance, since agreeing to the above, it turns out that in early October, I have to be in Vancouver just before this agreed-to event, and in Edmonton just after it.
Now, Toronto / Vancouver / Edmonton / Toronto is 9,000 km (and three flights). But Toronto / Vancouver / Toronto / Edmonton / Toronto is 16,000 km and four flights — and I ended up doing the latter itinerary to accommodate this event; the $250 fee I lost when the event evaporated was inconsequential, but I racked up much greater airline bills trying to work around the date in Toronto I’d committed to (and thereby hugely increased my carbon footprint for October).
So, forgive me if I say no to your low-money or free event, no matter how far in advance you ask me. Even if your event is not going to be canceled, for sure, for sure, you’re still asking me to lock in a date, which will certainly be awkward for me, given my extensive travel schedule, and may also mean I have to turn down a lucrative keynote or other opportunity for the same date should one come my way — and that’s a major part of my business.
So, many thanks for thinking of me, best of luck with your event, but — sorry!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
A little while ago, I was interviewed by an Italian journalist named Davide Ludovisi about recent findings related to Neanderthal tools. The interview is published today in the Italian national newspaper L’Unità , and is also online (in Italian) here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Today, Carolyn and I had a few friends over: high-school buddies Ted Bleaney and Gillian Clinton, and our dear friends Marcel Gagné and Sally Tomasevic for a day of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.
We put in episodes of Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and UFO, and watched them on our big-screen TV. It was loads of nostalgic fun, and quite interesting to watch the Andersons’ Supermarionation technique develop from the primitive Supercar to the incredibly lifelike Captain Scarlet.
I chose episodes that were highly regarded at online review sites:
Had we had time, we would also have watched an episode each of Joe 90 and The Secret Service, but our dinner break at Swiss Chalet took precedence. These were the episodes I had queued up, though:
All in all, a great day!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
You know what many of my favourite films have in common? A fervent desire to see the world avoid a nuclear war. WarGames (which I’ve commented on repeatedly this year), the original Planet of the Apes (“You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you — God damn you all to hell!”), and Dr. Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Well, the book I’m reading right now deals in great depth with the last of those three films. The book is called Dr. Strangelove and the Hideous Epoch: Deterrence in the Nuclear Age by John Renake, published by a little outfit called Regina Books in California. You can order it here (although a better page about the book is here).
This book — a large trade paperback, 440 pages, copiously footnoted, extensively indexed — is a fascinating discussion of the film, the source book (Peter George’s Red Alert), and, as the title says, the notion of deterence. Not only am I enjoying every page, it’s making me think.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The season premiere of Saturday Night Live just started here in the Eastern time zone, and, yay, Tina Fey is on as Sarah Palin (totally nailing her manerisms and speech patterns), and William Shatner appears during the opening monologue.
Yay!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The 25th-anniversary DVD of WarGames is well worth picking up. It’s only about $12, and it’s a beautiful new transfer of the film — much, much nicer than the previous DVD edition. Also, the new making-of documentary is really quite good, and, to my delight, spends a lot of time interviewing the writers (often given short shrift in such things).
As I’ve mentioned before, it’s one of my favourite films, and it holds up to repeated viewings.
It’s fascinating to think about John Lennon in the Stephen Falken role, as the writers originally hoped, but the actor who actually did play Falken, Tony Award-winner John Wood, totally owns the part, and the rest of the cast is spectacular, too. And, now that I’ve been to NORAD, the film is even more special for me (although the complete lack of Canadians or Canadian flags in the WarGames NORAD scenes is unrealistic, of course — it is a joint Canada-US venture).
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The late Sir Arthur C. Clarke has always been my favourite science-fiction writer, and Frederik Pohl’s Gateway has been, for decades, my pick for the finest science-fiction novel ever written. So when their collaborative novel The Last Theorem was published a few weeks ago, I immediately grabbed it.
And now I’ve finished it. What I liked most about it is how pleasant it is, how civil (almost!) everyone in the book is, and how it manages to hold the reader’s interest without a lot of conflict.
In that sense, it’s a very mature novel: I’ve always held that the standard creative-writing class advice that fiction is about conflict was a childish approach; arbitrarily pitting two entities with opposing interests against each other is the simplest, most formulaic way to manufacture a story.
(As those who’ve read my work know, a lot of my novels really don’t have villains, or, if a villain does exist, he or she is a minor character; there’s no villain in Rollback, for instance, or in my upcoming Wake.)
Clarke and Pohl have taken this to a very advanced degree in The Last Theorem — oh, there’s a little conflict, yes, but it’s mostly good-natured — and the result is uplifting and charming; this is a feel-good SF novel. Enjoy!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
As of today, I’m wearing bifocals. :)
I tried once before (in February 2007), getting a pair of progressive (no-line) bifocals, but I couldn’t stand them.
My normal workstation is two 19″ LCD monitors side-by-side; with my regular glasses, the entire sweep of workspace left-to-right is in focus through my lenses, but with those progressive bifocals I had to move my head (not just swivel my eyes) from side to side to read text on both monitors.
I hated that, and took the bifocals back for a refund (I usually buy my glasses from LensCrafters, and they do indeed cheerfully honour their no-questions-asked money-back guarantee).
I should have checked Wikipedia beforehand, because I was not a good candidate for progressives. In its entry on Progressive lens, Wikipedia says:
Because of the relatively narrow vertical band of prescriptively accurate optics characteristic of progressive lenses, wearers may have some difficulty becoming used to the co-ordination of horizontal head movement necessary to retain focus when reading across a computer screen or a paper page. This is particularly true when the reading add power is strong (+2.00 or above). The experience has been described as “moving your head back and forth as if you are watching a tennis match”.
And that’s exactly what it felt like!
Well, in March of this year (2008), Carolyn and I had a wonderful dinner with my opthalmologist, Gerald I. Goldlist and his wife Leza; Gerry served as a consultant on Wake (which, as those who are reading the current serialization of the book in Analog know, has a lot to do with eyesight). Before dinner, he gave me a new prescription, but I’ve just been too darned busy (and on the road too much) to get if filled.
But I finally did, and today I picked up the glasses. And, so far, they seem excellent. It’s wonderful to be able to read a book or menu (Carolyn and I went out to Canyon Creek, one of our favourite restaurants, after picking up the glasses), and to be able to look up at my monitor, then down at my keyboard (I never can find the damn ampersand without looking for it), with everything in focus.
Pictured above and below: the frames I chose, Brooks Brothers BB415T Titanium. I expect these to now become as much of a fashion trend as Sarah Palin’s sexy-librarian glasses are … ;)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’m delighted to report that my short-story collection Identity Theft and Other Stories is on the bestsellers’ list published by Locus, the American trade-journal of the science-fiction and fantasy fields, for a second consecutive month.
Last month, it was #3; this month, it’s #5 (tied with Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union).
I’m particularly pleased because both last month and this month, my Identity Theft and Other Stories was the only single-author short-story collection on any of the Locus fiction lists (hardcover, mass-market paperback, trade paperback, media-related, and gaming-related).
Here’s this month’s Locus Trade Paperback Bestsellers List (numbers following listings are months on list and position last month; an asterisk (*) means a tie with the preceding book on the list):
SEPTEMBER 2008 (data period: June [List on Locus site]):
1) Spook Country, William Gibson (Berkley) 1 –
2) World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks (Three Rivers Press) 7 2
3) Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (Del Rey) 1 –
4) Steampunk, Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer, eds. (Tachyon Publications) 1 –
5) Identity Theft and Other Stories, Robert J. Sawyer (Fitzhenry & Whiteside) 2 3
*) The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Michael Chabon (HarperPerennial) 2 4
(Oh, and Mark Kelly at Locus Online has got it right, as above, in the electronic version of this list; the print version incorrectly lists the publisher of Identity Theft and Other Stories as “Robert J. Sawyer Books.” That’s not right; yes, Fitzhenry & Whiteside does publish my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint, but that’s exclusively for books I’ve edited by other people; any books by me done by Fitzhenry & Whiteside are under Fitz’s Red Deer Press imprint.)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
As we did last year, Robert J. Sawyer Books and the rest of Red Deer Press will be exhibiting in the dealers’ room at this year’s World Fantasy Convention in Calgary, and there will be an RJS Books room party one night. We’ll be selling all our books, including our latest book, The Savage Humanists edited by Fiona Kelleghan (which is now out).
Got a letter today from James Morrow, one of the authors who has a story in The Savage Humanists. Said Jim: “The anthology has arrived, and it looks beautiful. Cover, fonts, paper quality — all splendid.”
I couldn’t agree more. Book designer Karen Petherick Thomas of Intuitive Design International Ltd. and our in-house production manager Amy Hingston did fabulous jobs, and Friesens, our redoubtable printer, did their usual terrific work.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Today, I’m flashing back to my 1999 Aurora Award-winning science-fiction novel Flashforward.
Flashforward tells of the first experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Today the first beam was sent around the 27-kilometer-long tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider. There are news reports of it everywhere; here’s one from the BBC, and another from the Associated Press.
Congratulations, CERN!
Flashforward is available in paperback from Tor, as an unabridged Audio book from Audible.com and iTunes, and in a Kindle edition.
More information about the book, including the opening chapters and links to online retailers, is here.
Note: thanks to Tor’s splitting the title into two words on the front cover (but not the back cover, spine or elsewhere), sometimes the book is listed online as Flash Forward, not Flashforward.
Besides winning the Aurora Award, Flashforward also won the Premio UPC (the world’s largest cash-prize for SF writing), received a starred review (denoting a book of exceptional merit) from Publishers Weekly, and has been continuously in print for nine years now.
Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer. Tor Books, New York, ISBN 0-812-58034-6 (and numerous translated editions worldwide).
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Oh, my, yes, indeed. :)
A very, very good day.
Details later, when I can talk about it.
But …
Happy feet!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
According to the Sacrmento News & Review, that’d be me.
Their full review of Hominids is here. The reviewer is Kel Munger.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
My very conscientious Italian translator, Dario Rivarossa, today asked me what the following phrases mean in Rollback:
“One of my favorite authors once said, `Virtual reality is nothing but air guitar writ large.'”
I’m having a bit of fun there, because the character is quoting me, from my 1995 novel The Terminal Experiment. But as to what the phrase means:
“Air guitar” is what teenage boys who are pretending to be rock musicians do: they make motions with their hands like they’re playing a guitar — but, of course, there’s no real guitar. So, it’s called “air guitar.”
In the movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill and Ted play air guitar (pretend to play real guitars) whenever their band is mentioned (see photo above).
So, “virtual reality is nothing but air guitar writ large” means “even the best computer simulation is as far removed from the real experience it is simulating as waving your hands in the air is removed from playing a real guitar.”
It was a pleasure to be able to read for hours without getting eye fatigue, and without having to put on his cheaters.
“Cheaters” is a slang term for “reading glasses” — nonprescription eyeglasses used to magnify printed text. But my use of this bit of slang is ironic, on two counts. First, the character in question has just committed adultery (which is “cheating” in English slang).
Second, it refers back to the earlier question the aliens asked, “Should systems be set up to thwart cheaters at all costs?,” which lays out the moral question of whether in fact the character should be punished for his transgression.
If there’s no comparably ironic term in Italian for “reading glasses,” we’ll have to just forgo this little touch in that edition. :)
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