I’ll be interviewed about the future of privacy this Saturday, November 17, at 1:00 p.m. on CBC Radio One’s Definitely Not the Opera, hosted by Sook-Yin Lee (who’s dropping by my home tomorrow to record the interview, and — I kid you not — look through my trash).
Above: Sook-Yin, as she recently appeared in Toronto Life magazine
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Check out ZTreeWin — a modern implementation of the legendary XTree DOS file manager, but for Windows. So much more powerful, and so much less awkward, than Windows Explorer. One of my all time favorite apps.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Tomorrow — Tuesday, November 13, 2007 — Tor Books releases Futures from NATURE, edited by Henry Gee, an anthology of 100 short-short science-fiction stories first published in Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science.
The anthology contains my story “The Abdication of Pope Mary III” (which first appeared in Nature‘s 6-12 July 2000 issue).
In its starred review of the anthology, denoting a work of exceptional merit, Publishers Weekly singles out only four of the 100 stories (in alphabetical order by author’s last name, the sequence in which they appear in the book):
A sampling of the treasures illustrates their remarkable range: Gregory Benford’s poignant “A Life with a Semisent” explores the human need for love; Paul McCauley’s “Meat” tackles the nasty human trick of twisting technology to immoral purposes; Robert Sawyer faces religion with the gobsmacking “Abdication of Pope Mary III”; and Ian Watson lets fly with his hilarious “Nadia’s Nectar,” one of the best bathroom tales around.
Now, if I could only find some way to also make an appearance in Science, the other big scientific journal, my life would be complete … :)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’ve been in Brandon, Manitoba (not to be confused with Benson, Arizon) the last couple of days.
Yesterday, I gave the keynote address to the Manitoba Public Libraries annual meeting — a spirited hour and fifteen minutes, with Q&A, about the future of libraries. I was quite provactive, and the librarians really seemed to enjoy it.
Both Fitzhenry & Whiteside and H.B. Fenn donated books: every table got a Robert J. Sawyer Books title, and Fenn donated a prize package of every book of mine they had in print. Plus the wholesale division of McNally Robinson was on hand, offering a show special 30% discount on copies of books by me, and books edited by me — sweet!
And in the evening, I gave the kick-off reading at WordsAlive, the first-even Brandon book festival. The reading space was great, with wonderful accoustics, and the local TV station was on hand, recording my reading (from Rollback, natch). All in all, a terrific trip!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
You decide!
Scott Edelman’s photo of artist Alan M. Clark and author Robert J. Sawyer from the 2007 World Fantasy Convention.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
There’s a new podcast of me teaching at Odyssey, the wonderful SF&F workshop run by Jeanne Cavelos. Podcast #9 there is the new one, on whether your SF element in your story is extraneous; the previous one, Podcast #4, is still there: me talking about point-of-view. Check ’em out!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Canadians dominate the current bestsellers list at Bakka-Phoenix, Toronto’s SF speciality store, including my essay collection back on the hardcover list at #4! See here.
Stumbled on the fact today that The Canadian Encyclopedia now has an article on Robert J. Sawyer.
That’s kinda cool, ’cause years ago, I wrote the entry on science fiction for The Canadian Encyclopedia; it’s nice now to be worthy of my own entry. :)
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Here’s a photograph from the Robert J. Sawyer Books table at the 2007 World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Left to right: Stephanie Stewart, the US Marketing Manager for Fitzhenry & Whiteside, the company that publishes my imprint; Robert J. Sawyer, editor; and Matthew Hughes, author of our latest release, The Commons.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Hot on the heels of finding myself quoted in the bestselling The 4-Hour Workweek, I find that I’m also quoted and referred to four times in the new nonfiction book The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul, by Mario Beauregard, Ph.D., and Denyse O’Leary, a new hardcover from HarperOne. Cool!
More on the book is here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’ll be interviewed for a full hour on Canadian television this coming Saturday, November 10. I’ll be on CTS (yes, that’s Crossroads Television System, a Christian broadcaster) on the program “Uncommon Ground.” The theme is the role of women in my novels, and the host is:
Dr. Rachael Turkienicz, a leading Jewish voice in bringing Torah concepts to modern issues, is the producer/host of a new 13-part series on women and spirituality, Uncommon Ground. As a daughter of the Torah, Rachael brings her academic credentials, a doctorate in Talmud and Midrash from Brandeis University, to the varied themes of the one-hour programs.
The program was recorded 12 days ago (sadly, when I had a sore throat), and Rachael’s questions are very provocative.
The program airs on at 10:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 10, 2007, across Canada. On Rogers Cable (Greater Toronto), it’s on Channel 9.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’m on my way home from the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, New York, chaired by my great friend Joe Berlant. Carolyn and I had a fabulous time. Everybody was thrilled with the poetry slam Carolyn ran Thursday night, and I think I acquitted myself adequately on my two panels (which is actually a lot for a World Fantasy Convention; usually, panelists only get one programming event).
For the first time ever, Robert J. Sawyer Books — the science-fiction imprint I edit for Canadian publisher Fitzhenry & Whiteside — had a table in an convention dealers’ room. Our table was staffed throughout the conference by the vivacious Stephanie Stewart, the US marketing director for Fitz and Whits. The convention was packed — 1,150 people — and I had a great time chatting with all sorts of great people, including Doctor Who scriptwriter Paul Cornell, Pyr Books editor Lou Anders, my new Ace editor Ginjer Buchanan and her husband John Douglas, and many writer buddies including Nick DiChario, Rick Wilber, Karina Sumner-Smith, Mark Rich, Nancy Kress; and oodles more.
The highlight for me, though, was the book-launch party we held Saturday night for Matthew Hughes’s novel The Commons, the latest book under my RJS Books imprint. As it happened, Carolyn and I were given a giant suite (at no extra charge!), so we had the party in our room, instead of Stephanie’s. We were competing with the Tor party, which was packed wall-to-wall — but ours was always pleasantly busy without ever being uncomfortably crowded. Among the notables who spent considerable time at our party were Asimov’s editor Sheila Williams; Asimov’s book reviewer (and my former Ace editor) Peter Heck; SFWA Executive Director Jane Jewell; Japanese artist Hikaru Tanaka; and a posse of Writers of the Future winners past and present.
Friday dinner was with Ian Randal Strock of SF Scope, a terrific news site; Saturday lunch was with Aurora finalist John Mierau and my writing student Mark Ladouceur.
Nick DiChario and Bev Geddes stumbled on a fabulous restaurant named Sperry’s near the convention center that for some reason wasn’t listed in the otherwise-comprehensive convention restaurant guide — and so wasn’t packed. We had a group of 10 for dinner Friday night, and 13 on Saturday night — and had great service, and it was quiet enough that everyone could hear each other.
I’ll get home tonight (there’s a two-hour back-up at the Canadian border station, so we’re taking a break for dinner and to visit a Barnes and Noble). But I won’t be home for long. Wednesday, I leave for Brandon, Manitoba; I’m giving a keynote at the Manitoba Public Libraries conference there, and appearing at the new Brandon writers’ festival. Other trips coming up in the next month: Calgary, Edmonton, Los Angeles, Victoria, and Kansas. Whew!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Since 1995, Carolyn and I have been putting out an occasional newsletter that goes to booksellers, publishing professionals, and media with news about me and my books. A PDF of the latest issue (#24) is now available right here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Note to self: glass trophies are hard to photograph. :)
Robert J. Sawyer with the Galaxy Award, China’s top science-fiction award; Rob won in the category of “Most Popular Foreign Author.”
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’m delighted to announce that I will be giving the keynote address at the dedication ceremony for the The David J. Williams III Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Collection at Kansas State University, in Manhattan, Kansas, at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, December 4, 2007. More info on the collection is here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I am the solo opening-night reader for the inaugural year of Words Alive, the Brandon Book Festival, in Brandon, Manitoba. Come see me on Thursday, November 8, at 7:30 p.m.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I was one of the authors participating in the International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront, in Toronto, this past week. I’m afraid my time was marred by the Cold From Hell, but I still enjoyed myself immensely. Tuesday night, I did a reading along with Spider Robinson, Jasper Fforde, and poet Jay MillAr; many people said it was the best reading they’d ever seen me do — which was very gratifying, since I was indeed under the weather.
Last night, the final Festival dinner was held, and I sat opposite Eric Wright, one of Canada’s finest mystery writers, and next to poet Chris Dewdney at Le Select Bistro; absolutely wonderful.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Michael Walsh and Clint Budd, who organized the ceremony, did an amazing job, with a wonderful banquet (something done too infrequently for the Auroras) followed by a witty Aurora keynote address by Matthew Hughes — the first time the Auroras have included a keynote speaker. As it happened, I was master of ceremonies for this year’s Aurora Awards — my seventh time having the honour to fulfill that particular role.
Although many people praised my performance as MC, to be honest I thought I managed about a 7 out of 10. I was tired: the ceremony was held Sunday afternoon, and not only did I have con fatigue by that point, but I’d been on the road for 16 days leading up to the ceremony. Still, people laughed in all the right places, and I was pleased.
The biggest bit of drama came when the Best Short-Form Work in English award was announced. The wonderful artist Martin Springett came up to the podium to present the award, and after announcing the nominees, he opened the envelope and read out the supposed winner: John Mierau.
As MC, I was standing off to the side and could clearly see the card Martin had taken out of the envelope; he’d read it correctly. I was applauding John’s win when Michael Walsh stepped out from behind the table that held the Aurora trophies, and said, “There’s been a mistake.”
VCon 32, this year’s Canadian National Science Fiction Convention (“CanVention”), had allowed on-site voting for the Auroras (in addition to the traditional mail-in voting), and so voting had closed just 18 hours before the awards banquet began.
Michael had been involved in counting the ballots Saturday night, and had handed a master copy of the ballot to his wife, Susan Walsh, on which he’d checked off the winners in each category. Susan then wrote out the cards naming the winners to go in the envelopes — a job done late at night, when everyone was tired. Near as I can figure it out, Susan looked at the sheet, saw that the winner was from the anthology Slipstreams, and so wrote down the name of one of the authors who had been in that book, the aforementioned John Mierau.
But Michael had actually marked the other story from Slipstreams, a little number called “Biding Time,” by one Robert J. Sawyer. After suitable apologies for the error — stretching the suspense in the process — he announced that I, in fact, had won the award.
Thank God John was not in attendance (I remember being at a Worldcon when Richard and Nikki Lynch were announced as winners of the best-fanzine Hugo only to have Richard (I think) recognize that an error had been made when he looked at the name on the trophy). John’s a very fine writer, and I’m sure he will be taking home an Aurora down the road.
It was an odd sensation. I hadn’t expected to win (my money was on James Alan Gardner’s charming “All the Cool Monsters at Once”), and I’d prepared a schtick as MC, which I delivered anyway, in case my writing student Hayden Trenholm had beaten me, doing my best James Earl Jones as Hayden and intoning, “Then I was the learner; now I am the master”). I went in the space of about a minute from “well, I didn’t expect to win anyway,” to “good for John!” to “oh, crap, something’s gone wrong with the ceremony I’m MCing,” to “say what?“
Now, as it happened, prior to this win, I had nine Aurora Awards to my credit: four for best English novel, four for best English short story, and one for best English “Other.” But that didn’t make me the all-time Aurora champ; rather, it made me tied with Francophone writer Elisabeth Vonarburg; we each had nine a piece. But when I won for “Biding Time,” I pulled ahead, becoming the undisputed record holder …
… a title that lasted for about three minutes, because the next Aurora to be presented was “Best Long Form Work in French” — and who should win that but mon cher amie Elisabeth. So, we’re tied again. :)
As usual, the wonderful Frank Johnston made the Aurora trophies, but I have to say that this year’s were particularly lovely; the maple wood bases were are just gorgeous.
To my delight and astonishment, somehow over Saturday night, all ten Aurora trophies had their plaques engraved with the winner’s names (and, yes, the English short-form one does have my name on it). I’d flown to Vancouver with only carry-on luggage, but had to check my bag when I left on Monday, since the Aurora has sharp metal parts that wouldn’t be allowed in the aircraft cabin.
“Biding Time” is a sequel to my Hugo- and Nebula-Award nominated novella “Identity Theft.” It also is, incidentally, the last short story I plan to write, at least for the foreseeable future. Although I enjoy short fiction, I really feel a need to concentrate on my novels now.
“Biding Time” first appeared in the DAW anthology Slipstreams edited by John Helfers and Martin H. Greenberg; it’s also been reprinted in The Penguin Book of Crime Fiction edited by Peter Robinson, and will be the closing story in my second short-story collection, “Identity Theft and Other Stories,” coming from Red Deer Press in February 2008. I’m delighted to be going out with a winner.
Historical note: The core plot of “Biding Time,” which is a hard-boiled detective story set on Mars, was originally part of my 16th novel Mindscan; the motivation used for the murder was the same one I’d originally written for Tyler Bessarian suing his mother Karen in that novel; I removed it at the request of my editor, David G. Hartwell, who found it too unsettling. But, as one reviewer said of “Biding Time,” the story really does posit a genuinely new science-fictional motive for murder, and I’m delighted that I found a way to use it, and that, like Karen in Mindscan, it has now been ensured a small degree of immortality.
The full text of “Biding Time” has been up on my web site during the nominating and voting periods for the Auroras, and I’ll leave it up a little while longer for those who are curious: it’s here.
(Oh, and for those who might now be saying Rob Sawyer always wins the Aurora, I’ll gently point out that I hold the record — yes, beating even Elisabeth! — for the most Aurora losses. I’ve been nominated 35 times for the Aurora to date, meaning I’ve got 10 wins and 25 losses, or a 1 in 3.5 success ratio; that’s only slightly better than what random chance would dictate: there are usually five nominees in each Aurora category, so a purely random choice would have had me winning 1 in 5 times, for a total of seven, instead of ten, awards. I’m hardly a slam-dunk winner when it comes to the Auroras, and I truly am thrilled and grateful for each one.)
My Aurora Award wins:
Best Long-Form Work in English: Golden Fleece [1990], The Terminal Experiment [1995], Starplex [1996], and Flashforward [1999]).
Best Short-Form Work in English: “Just Like Old Times” [1993], “Peking Man” [1996], “Stream of Consciousness” [1999], “Ineluctable” [2002]), and “Biding Time” [2006].
Best Work in English (Other): Relativity, a collection of essays and stories, [2004]
Pictured above: Robert J. Sawyer with the one that almost got away …
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
See photos of the ceremony in Vancouver (of which I was master of ceremonies) in Jean-Louis Trudel’s blog; also see the official list — now up! — here.
Read Rob’s report on the ceremony here.
Best Long-Form Work in English
* Children of Chaos, Dave Duncan (Tor Books)
Best Long-Form Work in French
* Reine de Mémoire 4. La Princesse de Vengeance,, by Élisabeth Vonarburg (Alire)
Best Short-Form Work in English
* “Biding Time,” Robert J. Sawyer (Slipstreams edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers, DAW [and also in The Penguin Book of Crime Stories, edited by Peter Robinson])
Best Short-Form Work in French
* “Le regard du trilobite,” Mario Tessier (Solaris 159)
Best Work in English (Other)
* Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine, Karl Johanson, editor
Best Work in French (Other)
* Aux origines des petits hommes verts
Jean-Louis Trudel (Solaris 160)
Artistic Achievement
* Martin Springett [www.martinspringett.com]
Fan Achievement (Publication)
* Brins d’Éternité,, réd. Guillaume Voisine
(www.alegracia.com/brins/faq/faq.php)
Fan Achievement (Organizational)
* Cathy Palmer-Lister (Con*Cept)
Fan Achievement (Other)
* Fractale-Framboise,
Éric Gauthier, Christian Sauvé, Laurine Spehner
(blogue/blog)
Read Rob’s report on the ceremony here.
Next Year’s CanVention: KeyCon 25 in Winnipeg, a four-day con over the Victoria Day weekend
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’ll get the full list up as soon as I can confirm it, but the three English pro categories for the Auroras went to:
Long-Form: Dave Duncan
Short-Form: Robert J. Sawyer
Other: Neo-Opsis
Yay!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
They only used a portion of the interview we did; here’s the whole thing:
I’m both a science-fiction writer and a futurist — which are related but distinct disciplines. A futurist’s goal is usually to predict the future, but a science-fiction writer’s goal is often to prevent the future, by depicting a plausible but undesirable scenario with enough credibility that society decides to make a course-correction to avoid that vision becoming reality.
No one would say that George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four was a failure as science fiction just because the real 1984 turned out to be so different from the predictions he’d made in 1948, when he was writing that book. Rather, he was wonderfully successful because in direct response to his thought experiment about where society might be headed we prevented, or at least staved off for a time, the kind of technological totalitarianism he foresaw.
I’m a huge advocate that science-fiction writers make the best futurists: A futurist on his or her own is good at extrapolating statistical trends and telling you what the population size might be in a given year, or how big the economy will be. But real science fiction — not Star Wars escapism, but thoughtful works that reasonably extrapolate not just technological but also social trends — does more than just project cold data forward. A science-fiction writer’s job is to go further, placing all that in societal context: what will the changes coming down the pike actually mean to lives of ordinary people at work, at home, at play.
I like to think, regardless of which hat I’m wearing, that I’ve got a good track record of successful predictions. Most science-fiction writers totally missed the World Wide Web, but I predicted it in 1982, and even had the name almost right, calling it the TerraComp Web, “Terra” being Latin for “Earth.”
And in 1998, in my Hugo Award-nominated novel Factoring Humanity, I wrote about the democratization of media, and the consequent loss of truly high-quality work: “A thousand channels to choose from, from all over the world, plus all the desktop-TV crap being produced out of people’s homes coming in over the net.” (The term “desktop TV,” of course, was by analogy to the then-current revolution in “desktop publishing.”)
Still, to date, the prediction I’ve gotten the most recognition for is suggesting in 1995, in my Nebula Award-winning The Terminal Experiment, that the Pope right now would be named Benedict XVI. That wasn’t a wild guess, but rather what seemed reasonable extrapolation, given the fact that Popes usually take names to honor a predecessor they see as a role model.
But you asked a couple of specific questions. I’ll note gently that your questions are loaded, in that they ask for two examples of failures, and none of successes. Your first question — “What’s one thing you were sure would happen, but didn’t?” — seeks a sin of commission, a prediction that turned out to be wrong. And your second question — “What’s something that happened and totally surprised you?” — seeks a sin of omission.
But, anyway, for me the answer to both is the essentially the same: like so many science-fiction writers and futurists, I predicted a rational twenty-first century, a new millennium in which old superstitions and fundamentalist religion would have faded into the background — and so I was shocked by the rise to the heights of power of the Religious Right in the United States (even though I did predict fraud using electronic voting machines in my first novel, 1990’s Golden Fleece …).
It’s a mistake many futurists have made. We assume the rest of humanity is like us: forward-thinking, rational, and enamored of science. I mentioned Nineteen Eighty-Four before; the other famous work of prediction named after a year is Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and that had orbiting hotels and chatty artificial intelligences and suspended animation and cities on the moon by the turn of the century — none of which we got.
But it wasn’t that the things Clarke predicted where impossible; it’s just that he assumed when writing that screenplay in 1966, that the world’s enthusiasm for space, which he so keenly felt, couldn’t possibly peter out. Hundreds of science fiction writers predicted the first man to walk on the moon would do so in the 1960s; not a single one predicted the last person would do so just three years later. When we fail in our prediction, as science-fiction writers and futurists, it’s because, down deep, even if our visions are occasionally apocalyptic, we’re really optimists: we love the future, and we want it to hurry up and get here.
BIO:
As a science-fiction writer, Robert J. Sawyer is one of only seven writers in history to win all three of the world’s top awards for best science-fiction novel of the year: the Hugo (which he won for Hominids), the Nebula (which he won for The Terminal Experiment) and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which he won for Mindscan). He’s also the only writer ever to win the top SF awards in the United States, Canada, China, France, Japan, and Spain. His latest novel, Rollback (published by Tor), looks at the bioethics of life prolongation.
As a futurist, Sawyer has done consulting for CA (Computer Associates), Kodak, Motorola, NASA, and Canada’s Federal Department of Justice. He’s given dozens of futurism keynotes, including to the Federation of State Medical Boards, the Association of Biomedical Communications Directors, and the Canadian Public Relations Society, and he is a frequent futurism commentator for Discovery Channel Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His physical home is in Toronto; online, he’s at http://sfwriter.com.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Sorry to be so scarce of late, but I’ve been too busy having a ball. From October 9-14, 2007, I was a participant at WordFest: The Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival in Alberta, and I’m now at the follow-up writers-only Summit Salon in Banff, one of my favourite places in the world. WordFest is one of Canada’s top literary festivals, with writers from all over the world giving readings and panel discussions.
Above: that’s me and Academy Award-nominated actress Meg Tilly, star of Agnes of God, who is now a major author (she was reading from her young-adult novel Porcupine, published by Tundra, the YA imprint of Canada’s McClelland & Stewart). Meg and I and three others had a fabulous evening out at the James Joyce pub, just two doors down from Calgary’s wonderful McNally Robinson bookstore.
Below: the science-fiction and fantasy contingent for this year’s WordFest: William Gibson (who read from Spook Country), Charles de Lint (who read from Little (Grrl) Lost), and Robert J. Sawyer (who read from Rollback).
Festival season continues in Canada: next week I’m at the International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront in Toronto.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
It’s hit #1 on the New York Times bestsellers’ list, and #1 on the Wall Street Journal bestsellers’ list, and, as I write this, its Amazon.com sales rank is #49 out of all books available there.
And I’m pleased as punch to note that this quote appears prominently on page 86 of the book:
Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace. — ROBERT J. SAWYER, Calculating God
Go me!
(I’m also listed in the book’s index.)
More on Calculating God
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’ve been crazy busy. Sunday was Word on the Street, Toronto’s open-air book fair; I was there selling books from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (including doing a reading).
Monday, I did four hours of talks at Upper Canada College (above), one of Toronto’s ritziest private boys’ schools.
Tuesday, it was off to the University of Waterloo, where I gave a talk to physics undergrads, toured the Institute for Quantum Computing (along with Carolyn and fellow writer Pat Forde), and gave an evening keynote in honour of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the department of Physics and Astronomy.
Wednesday was another reading in downtown Toronto.
And today, among other things, was a photo shoot: the Mississauga Public Library has licensed the American Library Association’s “Get Caught Reading” poster program, and I’m to be a poster boy for their version.
In the wee spaces between all this, I judged the third quarter of this year’s Writers of the Future contest, drafted a guest editorial for a magazine, attended a meeting at the offices of a big pharma company I’m giving a keynote for later in the month, and did a conference call with a Hollywood producer whose got one of my novels under option.
And tomorrow — one week to the day after returning from 91 days on the road — I get on a plane for the four-hour flight to Calgary.
And you know what? I’m looking forward to that flight: four uninterrupted hours, with no ringing phones or incoming email or meetings to attend, during which I can just work on Wake, my current novel. And I’ve scored an emergency-exit row seat with lots of leg (and laptop!) room, so — yay!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
I’m off to Calgary for WordFest: the Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival, and so is my buddy Charles de Lint (above), as well as Tom Wayman, and we’re all reading together at the Vertigo Theatre Centre — Playhouse on Saturday, October 13, at 10:30 a.m. Tickets are $14. All the details are here, and you can buy tickets here.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Toronto’s World’s Biggest Bookstore is promoting Hominids in the latest issue of their online newsletter, as you can see here: World’s Biggest Bookstore’s Sci-Fi Fan Letter: Sci-Fi Fan Letter Issue 14.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
The sixth issue of Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show — just out — has a lengthy interview with me conducted by Darrell Schweitzer. Each issue costs just $2.50, and always includes a new Enderverse story by Orson Scott Card himself.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Twenty years ago today, September 28, 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered.
Every week for the first year, Carolyn and I had her brother David over, along with friends Norm Gall and Andi, and sometimes one or two others, to watch. After the episodes — mostly, to be honest, painfully bad that first year — we headed off for pizza at the branch of Mothers’ Pizza Parlour at Steeles and Dufferin just north of Toronto.
The Mother’s chain is defunct, that was two homes ago for us, and there’ve been three more Star Trek series since. Where has the time gone?
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
… and it shows!
After 91 days on the road — the longest road trip I’ve ever taken — Carolyn and are now back home safe and sound in Mississauga. Over the last three months, I made these flight:
1. Toronto to San Francisco (NASA Ames)
2. San Francisco to Vancouver
3. Vancouver to Whitehorse
4. Whitehorse to Dawson (Berton House)
5. Dawson to Whitehorse
6. Whitehorse to Vancouver
7. Vancouver to Beijing
8. Beijing to Chengdu (SF Festival)
9. Chengdu to Beijing (Beijing visit)
10. Beijing to Vancouver
11. Vancouver to Whitehorse
12. Whitehorse to Dawson (Berton House)
13. Dawson to Whitehorse
14. Whitehorse to Vancouver
15. Vancouver to Toronto (Toronto)
And, boy, are my arms tired!
Thank you, thank you! I’m here all week! But that’s all: my next trip, to Calgary for WordFest, begins in seven days. Gak!
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Carolyn and I have had a great 30 hours in Whitehorse. Last night we had dinner with Barbara Curtis and her family — Barb and I were at public school together.
Today, we did a little sightseeing, including The Beringia Interpretive Centre. And I gave my reading (from Rollback, natch) at the Whitehorse Public Library, to a crowd of 31, which was quite good for that venue.
Well, gotta hit the hay, even though it’s only 9:40 p.m. here. Gotta be up at 5:00 a.m. for our flight to Vancouver (and from there we fly on to Toronto).
— Rob, signing off from the Yukon
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
