Robert J. Sawyer

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… on Friday, August 19, 1988, I bought what was then, and still is, the most expensive computer I’ve ever owned (and, at that time, was the most expensive thing I’d ever bought — and, come to think of it, I think it still is, except for cars and real estate). Moore’s Law rocks — it’s amazing to think of how cheap computers are today. The computer I bought that day was:

An AST Premium/386 Model 300 computer: the original system, with no video card or monitor (I migrated those from my older PC/XT clone), two megabytes of RAM, a 71-meg hard drive, a 5.25″ floppy, and a 3.5″ floppy, cost a whopping Cdn$6,725, plus 8% PST for a total of $7,263.

Carolyn took over using that computer in 1994, and kept using it until the system was nine years old, on August 18, 1997. The final configuration, after numerous (expensive!) upgrades included 6 megs of proprietary AST RAM and an ATI VGA Wonder Card.

Yeah, it was way expensive. Still, amortized over 260 business days a year over nine years, the base system cost me $3.10 per business day — which, of course, was worth it.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Yesterday, Thursday, August 16, 2007, was the “Authors on Eighth” celebration here in Dawson City, Yukon. As part of it, Carolyn and I hosted an open house at Berton House. Some bald guy gave a tour. The gentleman leaning against the doorway on the left is Dan Davidson, editor of the Klondike Sun newspaper.

Among those stopping by was local historian (and legend!) Dick North, who does the interpretive shows at the Jack London cabin, just up Eighth Avenue from Berton House.

After the tour, there was a ceremony on the lawn at which prizes were given for the “Authors on Eighth” writing contest, which Rob and Carolyn had judged. Rob gave an impassioned talk about Berton House.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Today, Thursday, August 16, 2007, marks the halfway point in my residency at Berton House, here in Dawson City, Yukon. Carolyn and I have been here 44 days, and we now have 43 left to go (14 of which will be spent on our side trip to China).

We’re having a great time, and I’m getting lots of good work done. The weather is getting cooler, and we’re having a few hours of actual darkness each night.

On Tuesday evening, I did a reading from Rollback at the Dawson Public Library, and presented the library with a hardcover copy of the book, donated by H.B. Fenn and Company, Tor’s Canadian distributor.

Yesterday, we had lunch with old friends Marlys and Jim Schneider, who were visiting from Fairbanks, Alaska (and had come to my reading the night before); Jim used to be one of the sysops of the old CompuServe Science Fiction Forum, back in the day.

Today, it’s “Authors on Eighth,” a public celebration of the three literary landmarks on Eighth Avenue here in Dawson: Robert Service’s home, Jack London’s home, and Pierre Berton’s home. Carolyn and I are hosting an open house this afternoon — so I better go clean up!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

My three favourite things are dinosaurs, science fiction, and beautiful women — so what could be a more perfect way to start the day than getting an email from the beautiful Kirstin Morrell containing a link to an article about dinosaurs in science fiction? Check it out here, on the blog “Prehistoric Pulp.”

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Challenging Destiny is a really well done Canadian science-fiction ezine, available through the good folks at Fictionwise, and the current issue (number 24) contains the story “Like Water in the Desert” by one of my best friends, Hayden Trenholm.

Visit the zine’s website here, and pick up the latest issue online over here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Riffs on Michaelangelo’s painting on the roof of the Sistine Chapel are common, and, as it happens one of my favorite nonfiction authors, Frans de Waal, has just gotten one on the cover of his latest book, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved, published by Princeton University Press.

But I think Tor Books did a much nicer job with its riff on the same thing for the cover of my Hugo-nominated novel Calculating God.

Tor’s art director is the wonderful Irene Gallo, and the cover for my book was executed by Drive Communications.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

I was writing an article about this new-fangled thing called “Windows” for ProFiles: The Magazine for KayPro Users, and it was a bitch to write. Here’s what I said in my work journal for August 10, 1987:

I’m still having problems with Windows article. I have to explain how it integrates and replaces the familiar MS-DOS commands, something Mac users never have to deal with. Trying to explain what pull-down menus, icons, point-and-shoot, bit-mapped displays, tiled windows, overlapping windows, dialog boxes, standard applications (those that weren’t designed with Windows in mind), multi-tasking with an 80386, faking multi-tasking with an 8088, is tricky when:

1) the target audience is used to talking to the computer through a single command line following the A> prompt;

2) one topic seems to require an understanding of another: icons, for instance, seem like magic until you’ve explained what a bit-mapped screen is, pull-down menus don’t make sense until you’ve described what a mouse does, etc. etc.;

3) you don’t have any pictures to explain it all with.

Windows and the Mac are intuitively obvious once you try them as a gestalt; looking at their components piecemeal in an article is a difficult thing to make flow. I’ve got all the material written for the article, I’m just trying to get paragraph A to logically lead to paragraph B, and so on.

The Windows manual itself doesn’t try to explain the ins and outs of the user interface. It just gives a series of exercises that let you try it out in hopes that you will grasp the big picture by the time you’ve finished them. Unfortunately, someone else is writing “A First Session With Windows” for the same issue of the magazine, meaning I can’t take that approach.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Over in the LiveJournal for Bakka-Phoenix Books, Canada’s oldest science-fiction specialty store, the wise and wonderful Chris Szego, manager of same, posted this open letter:

Dear Writer who, because the publishing industry is so tough to break into decides to publish her novel on her own, or believes his interests are best served by self-publication, or is truly, truly convinced her/his work is too original/daring/polka-dotted for ‘regular publishers’,

You’re wrong.

Sincerely,
Bakka-Phoenix Books

PS: We’re not dissing your writing. It’s the distribution that matters.

Exactly, Chris. Exactly!

(And she’s added a very good primer on distribution.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

British Columbia writer Nina Munteanu profile my website at SFWRITER.COM today, as well as having us take a fanciful journey in space together. You can read all about it in Nina’s blog.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

I am a judge for the Writers of the Future contest, and am so very proud this year, because two of the winners are former writing students of mine: Stephen Kotowych came to see me when I was writer-in-residence at the Toronto Public Library’s The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy in 2003 (and is a mainstay of The Fledglings, the writers’ workshop I set up with the best students from that residency), and Tony Pi was in my intensive SF writing course at the University of Toronto in 2001. (Note: judging is done anonymously, without any names or identifying details on the manuscripts.)

Here’s a press release about them: (sadly I won’t be at the awards ceremony this year; I’ll be off in China):

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: John Goodwin
President
Galaxy Press
Phone: (323) 321-2144
E-Mail: jgoodwin@galaxypress.com

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

TONY PI AND STEPHEN KOTOWYCH OF TORONTO TO BE HONORED AS WINNERS OF WORLDWIDE WRITING CONTEST

Celebrities, Best-Selling Authors, Famous Illustrators To Fete Newcomers At the Prestigious Athenaeum Club on the Grounds of Caltech

Pasadena, CA– Twelve winning writers and twelve illustrators from around the globe–including Tony Pi and Stephen Kotowych of Toronto–will be honored during the 23rd Annual L. Ron Hubbard Achievement Awards at the Athenaeum Club on the grounds of California Institute of Technology on Friday, August 24th, 2007 beginning at 8 pm.

The highlight of the ceremony will be the announcement of the year’s two Grand Prize winners who will each receive $5,000. Quarterly winners also receive cash prizes from $1,000 to $500. Their winning stories and illustrations will appear in the annual anthology L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers and Illustrators of the Future, volume 23 (Galaxy Press, 2007).

Participating in the ceremony will be best-selling authors Kevin J. Anderson, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Tim Powers and Sean Williams who will serve as presenters along with celebrities Marisol Nichols (Fox TV’s “24”), two-time Emmy award nominated actress Lee Purcell, and Latin vocalist Carina Rico.

Throughout the Contests’ 24-year history, over 500 writers and illustrators have been recognized as winners. “What’s amazing to me is that a good 60 to 70% of winners go on to successful careers,” says New York Times’ best-selling author Anderson (Dune prequels, Seven Suns series). “You could call it ‘The American Idol’ for writers-long before there ever was such a show.”

The Writers of the Future Contest was initiated by L. Ron Hubbard in 1983 to provide a means for aspiring writers to get a much-needed break-its winners have gone on to publish over 550 novels and 1,400 short stories, selling an impressive 31 million copies of their works combined-enough books to fill the payloads of 6 space shuttles.

Because of the success of the Writers’ Contest, the format was expanded to include a companion Illustrators of the Future Contest in 1988. Many of the illustration winners have gone on to highly successful illustration and design careers.

“The Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contests have proven to be the most effective means for contestants to make their break in the publishing industry, an industry renowned for being closed to the newcomer,” said John Goodwin, Galaxy Press president. “Well over six million fiction and non-fiction manuscripts make the rounds annually to find a publishing home, yet only 2,500 new science fiction and fantasy titles are published each year, and many of these are from already established authors.

“That’s why these Contests were created – because it’s so hard to get published and there are so many talented people who give up on their dreams to see their works in print.”

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Over at Yahoo! Answers, someone asked “What is the difference between science fiction and fantasy?,” and I decided to post my own answer to that common question:

Science fiction deals with things that might possibly happen (or, in the case of the subgenre of science fiction known as alternate history, things that possibly could have happened); fantasy deals with things that never could happen.

There is always a path from our here-and-now to the milieu of a science-fiction story: usually that path simply involves time passing and plausible advances in science and changes in society taking place during that time.

There is never a path from our here-and-now to the milieu of a fantasy story: no matter how much you might want to get to the fantasy world, you can’t, because magic and supernatural powers do not work in our universe — you can’t get there from here.

Succinctly: there’s discontinuity between our reality and fantasy; there’s continuity between our reality and science fiction.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

January Magazine reviews Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer today.

It’s a positive review, with some cavils. One comment struck me as … well, the reviewer writes, “I … believe that had Sarah been the one to undergo successful treatment, while her husbands had failed, it would have changed a great deal of the story.” Well, yeah. Of course. Exactly. I wouldn’t have done my job properly had that not been the case. :) What’s more interesting, though, is that the female reviewer implies that the choice of a male point of view … well, she says she “wished” I’d taken the alternative. Granted, that could have been an equally good book, but inherently, prima facie a better one? I don’t think so.

Still, the review says, “Rollback is a dynamite science fiction novel that examines some major themes. We get the big story — communications with aliens — and a smaller one — life extension. Both are told cleanly, intelligently and woven together well. A wholly satisfying story.”

The full review is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

I’m very proud of my novel Starplex. It was the only 1996 novel to be nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula, it won the Aurora, it was a finalist for the Seiun, and it was a Locus bestseller and a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club.

But it’s been out of print for a while, so it’s not getting much attention these days. Which was why I was so pleased to stumble upon this recent, and very kind review of Starplex by Gabriel McKee, the author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

I’ve often been known to criticize government officials here in Canada, but not today. Today, I’m standing up and cheering. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has announced a $39-million plan to give free voluntary vaccinations to girls in grade 8 in Ontario against the most deadly forms of Human Papillomavirus (HPV), the leading cause of cervical cancer.

In other places, moral zealots have prevented making this life-saving vaccine available to teenagers, because HPV is transmitted sexually, and they think that putting girls at risk of a horrible death by cancer is either a suitable deterrent or a suitable punishment for premarital sex. I’m glad I live in an enlightened place, and today, even though I happen to temporarily be away from home, I’m proud to be an Ontarian. My tax dollars at work — and I’m genuinely thrilled.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

We’re already sliding into autumn here in the far north. Here in Dawson it was 19 degrees Celsius this afternoon, and it’s going down to 2 degrees tonight. In Fahrenheit, that’s a swing from 66 to 37.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

From VCon in Vancouver in October 2005 (I stumbled on this by complete accident; it’s not captioned):

Robert J. Sawyer

And here’s one from the same con of me with Danita Maslan, one of the authors I edit:

Danita Maslan and Robert J. Sawyer

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Just stumbled on the fact that one of my stories is online for free over at the Baen website: “The Right’s Tough” by Robert J. Sawyer.

This was commissioned for the Libertarian anthology Visions of Liberty, a collection devoted to the notion of throwing off the yoke of government. I think the best thing about my story, to be honest, is the title (a pun on The Right Stuff, of course).

And, at the time I wrote the story, I thought the idea of a reputation-based society was a good and clever one (and, well, it still is). I finished this story in 2001, ironically, on US income-tax day — April 15. The book was to have been published in 2002, but then the September 11 attacks occurred — and suddenly having no government didn’t seem quite so palatable an idea.

The anthology was held off until July 2004, and in the interim my friend Cory Doctorow published a very good novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, that explored the same notion. Ah, well. Close only counts in horseshoes!

As for actual influences: Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Remaking History,” one of my favorite talking-heads SF stories.

“The Right’s Tough,” copyright 2004 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Visions of Liberty, edited by Mark Tier and Martin H. Greenberg, DAW Books, New York, July 2004.

Full text here — and more of my short stories on line are here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

CBC Online — the web service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — has just posted a new text interview with Robert J. Sawyer as part of its “Words at Large” section. You can read the whole thing right here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

My great pal Louise Marley has updated her website with some nifty PowerPoint presentations on how to write, as well as “Five Music Lessons for Writers.” Check it out here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

The dramatic reading of my Hugo Award-nominated short story Shed Skin — the basis for my novel Mindscan — is now available on both Audible.com and iTunes, and it’s still available at Fictionwise.com. It’s an excellent reading by actor Stephen Hoye.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

V-Con, this year’s CanVention (Canadian National Science Fiction Convention), has announced a break from CanVention tradition and is having on-site voting for the Aurora Awards (in addition to mail-in voting). Says V-Con Progress Report #2:

Vote at VCON

There is no fee to submit an Aurora nomination, but final voting is restricted to CSF&FA members. The good news? Because this years Canvention is being held in association with VCON 32, all VCON members are automatically CSF&FA members and are eligible to vote for the Auroras. A ballot will be included in your VCON 32 registration package. There will be a ballot box at the registration desk and you will have until 6:00 PM on Saturday, October 20 to make your vote count.

To my knowledge, on-site voting has only been done once before: the last time the awards were held at V-Con, which was in 2001.

For the curious, the winners that year were as follows:

* Best Long-Form Work in English: The Snow Queen, Eileen Kernaghan

* Meilleur livre en francais: Demain, les etoiles, Jean-Louis Trudel

* Best Short-Form Work in English: “Surrendering the Blade”, Marcie Tentchoff (The Doom of Camelot, Green Knight Publishing) [poem]

* Meilleure nouvelle en francais: “La Danse des esprits”, Douglas Smith (Solaris 134) [traducteur: Benot Domis]

* Best Work in English (Other): Science Fiction: The Play, David Widdicombe [play]

* Meilleur ouvrage en francais (Autre): Solaris, Joel Champetier, rd.

* Artistic Achievement / Accomplissement artistique: Jean-Pierre Normand

* Fan Achievement / Accomplissement fanique (Fanzine): Voyageur, Karen Bennett, ed. (USS Hudson Bay / IDIC) (www.idic.ca) [clubzine]

* Fan Achievement / (Organizational/Organisation): R. Graeme Cameron (BCSFA president & V-Con 25 chair)

* Fan Achievement (Other/autre): Donna McMahon, book reviews/ critiques de livres

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Those of you who’ve read my Mindscan may remember this scene that takes place shortly after Jake has his consciousness copied into an artificial body:

I went to see Dr. Porter about the problem with thoughts I intended to keep private being spoken aloud.

“Ah, yes,” he said, nodding. “I’ve seen that before. I can make some adjustments, but it’s a tricky mind-body interface problem.”

“You’ve got to fix it. Unless I explicitly decide to do something, it shouldn’t happen.”

“Ah,” said Porter, his eyebrows working with glee, “but that’s not how humans work — not even biological ones. None of us consciously initiate our actions.”

I shook my head. “I’ve studied philosophy, doc. I’m not prepared to give up on the notion of free will. I refuse to believe that we live in a deterministic universe.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Porter. “That’s not what I meant. Say you walk into a room, see someone you know, and decide to extend your hand in greeting. Of course, your hand doesn’t instantly shoot out; first, stuff has to happen in your brain, right? And that stuff — the electrical change in the brain that precedes voluntary action — is called the readiness potential. Well, in a biological brain the readiness potential begins 550 milliseconds — just over half a second — prior to your hand beginning to move. It really doesn’t matter what the voluntary act is: the readiness potential occurs in the brain 550 milliseconds before the motor act begins. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Ah, but it’s not okay! See, if you ask people to indicate exactly when they decided to do something, they report that the idea occurred to them about 350 milliseconds before the motor act begins. A guy named Benjamin Libet proved that ages ago.”

“But — but that must be a measurement error,” I said. “I mean, you’re talking about milliseconds.”

“No, not really. The difference between 550 milliseconds and 350 milliseconds is a fifth of a second: that’s quite a significant amount of time, and easy enough to measure accurately. This basic test has been replicated over and over again since the 1980s, and the data are rock solid.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. You’re saying –“

“I’m saying that what our intuition tells us the sequence of events should be, and what the sequence actually is, don’t agree. Intuitively, we think the sequence must be: first, you decide to shake hands with your old friend Bob; second, your brain, in response to that decision, begins sending signals to your arm that it wants to shake hands; and third, your arm starts to swing up for the handshake. Right? But what really happens is this: first, your brain starts sending signals to shake hands; second, you consciously decide to shake hands with your old friend; and third, your arm starts to swing up. The brain has started down the road to shaking hands before you have consciously made any decision. Your conscious brain takes ownership of the action, and fools itself into thinking it started the action, but really it’s just a spectator, watching what your body is doing.”

“So you are saying there’s no free will.”

“Not quite. Our conscious minds have the free will to veto the action. See? The action begins 550 milliseconds prior to the first physical movement. Two hundred milliseconds later, the action that’s already been started comes to the attention of your conscious self — and your conscious self has 350 milliseconds to put on the brakes before anything happens. The conscious brain doesn’t initiate so-called voluntary acts, although it can step in and stop them.”

“Really?” I said.

Porter nodded his long face vigorously. “Absolutely. Everybody’s experienced this, if you stop and think about it: you’re lying in bed, quite mellow, and you look over at the clock, and you think to yourself, I really should get up, it’s time to get up, I’ve got to go to work. You may think this a half-dozen times or more, and then, suddenly, you are getting up — the action has begun, without you being consciously aware that you’ve finally, really made the decision to get out of bed. And that’s because you haven’t consciously made that decision; your unconscious has made it for you. It — not the conscious you — has concluded once and for all that it really is time to get out of bed.”

“But I didn’t have this problem when I was biological.”

“No, that’s right. And that was because of the slow speed of chemical reactions. But your new body and your new brain operate at electrical, not chemical, speeds, and the veto mechanism sometimes comes into play too late to do what it’s supposed to do. But, as I said, I can make a few adjustments. Forgive me, but I’m going to have to pull back the skin on your head, and open up your skull …”

That was based in large part on the pioneering research of Benjamin Libet. Sadly, Dr. Libet passed away last week, at the age of 91. I’m sorry to see him go. Wikipedia has a good article about him. R.I.P., Dr. Libet.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

[2008 update: Also see here.]

I am delighted to report that my latest novel Rollback is on the Locus bestsllers’ list for a second consecutive month. Locus is the US trade journal of the science-fiction field.

The August 2007 issue, just out, lists these hardcover bestsellers (for the data period May 2007); the numbers at the end of each line are “months on list” and “position last month.”

1) The Children of Hurin, J.R.R. Tolkien [2,1]
2) 1634: The Baltic War, Eric Flint & David Weber [2,8]
3) No Humans Involved, Kelley Armstrong [1,-]
4) White Night, Jim Butcher [2,2]
5) All Together Dead, Charlaine Harris [1,-]
6) The Last Colony, John Scalzi [2,7]
7) Rollback, Robert J. Sawyer [2,5]
8) The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss [2,4]
9) Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay [4, -]
10) The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon [1,-]

And here’s the listing from last month’s Locus [the July 2007 issue, for data period April 2007):

1) The Children of Hurin, J.R.R. Tolkien [1,-]
2) White Night, Jim Butcher [1,-]
3) Into a Dark Realm, Raymond E. Feist [1,-]
4) The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss [1,-]
5) Rollback, Robert J. Sawyer [1,-]
6) For a Few Demons More, Kim Harrison [2,3]
7) The Last Colony, John Scalzi [1,-]
8) 1634: The Baltic War, Eric Flint & David Weber [1,-]
9) Shadowplay, Tad Williams [2,1]
10) Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill [3,7]

The full list is at Locus Online.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Apropos of this, here’s the letter I just sent — in hardcopy and electronically — to Toronto Mayor David Miller (pictured above):

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Mayor David Miller
Toronto City Hall
100 Queen St. West 2nd Floor
Toronto ON M5H 2N2

Dear Mayor Miller,

I’m shocked and severely disappointed to read of the huge reductions in services that the Toronto Public Library has had to make in response to your government’s funding cuts.

I am cognizant of the fiscal difficulties facing Toronto, but if we lose sight of the big picture — of the things that make Toronto great — the consequences will be severe.

The value of libraries in education cannot be overstated, but that’s true in any city. What makes Toronto so special is its multiculturalism — and it is in our libraries that newcomers to Toronto learn about the city and its traditions of inclusiveness and peacefulness. When you force library branches to curtail their hours, cut back on acquisitions, and freeze hiring, you are doing severe damage to the fabric of what once was, and can again be, the greatest city in the world. I urge you and your council to find another solution — because the current one is untenable.

I speak not just as a library user, but also a past writer-in-residence for TPL, and the current recipient of the Toronto Public Library Celebrates Reading Award. I am a writer today because of Toronto’s libraries — and I’m a better citizen today because of them, too. Do not allow the great institution that is TPL to be whittled away by fiscal shortsightedness. Find the funds; don’t let literacy, multiculturalism, learning, and fun fall by the wayside in David Miller’s Toronto.

Respectfully submitted,

Robert J. Sawyer

CC: Josephine Bryant, TPL Chief Librarian
Kathy Gallagher Ross, Chair, TPL Board

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

The Toronto Public Library — the largest system in North America, and the second-largest in the world — is in trouble.

See:

Quill & Quire’s blog

This report in The Toronto Star

This letter from the Library Board Chair

This report on the fiscal actions taken

Want to protest the budget cuts? You can let Toronto Mayor David Miller know how you feel:

Mayor David Miller
Toronto City Hall
2nd Floor
100 Queen St. West
Toronto ON
Canada M5H 2N2

Phone: 416-397-CITY (2489)
Fax: 416-696-3687
Email: mayor_miller@toronto.ca

I, of course, am protesting on my own behalf (and in my capacity as a past writer-in-residence for TPL and the current recipient of the TPL Celebrates Reading Award), but the more angry voices Mayor Miller hears, the better.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

DAW Author Ed Willett has the best voice in all of science fiction, and here he sings the original Star Trek theme song (betcha didn’t know it had lyrics!). Enjoy!

(If you have trouble with the link on Ed’s blog, you can also get it here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

My poor baby is lost!

There’s a glitch in the database over at Amazon.com. If you search there on either “Mindscan” or “Robert J. Sawyer,” you’ll only find the hardcover of Mindscan — even though the paperback has been out for over a year.

The only way to get to the ordering page for the paperback right now is to select the hardcover, then root around on that page for where it lists the other editions, and choose the paperback there. Or you could just follow this link. I’ve let the good folks at Tor know, so hopefully a fix will be forthcoming soon.

(The problem is only at Amazon.com; everything’s hunky-dory at Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Quill and Quire reports today on changes at Red Deer Press, including the departure of long-time publisher Dennis Johnson; Red Deer press publishes Robert J. Sawyer Books, the imprint I edit.

In the article, posted in the subscription-only area of their website, they quote briefly from an email response I sent to Q&Q editor Derek Weiler. For the record, the full email said:

Kirstin Morrell, the fabulous managing editor for almost two years now at Red Deer, is a huge science-fiction fan, and very knowledgeable about the genre; her role will expand, I’m sure (although I will continue to be the actual acquistions and substantive editor for my line).

Richard Dionne is totally behind my line, and very enthusiastic about it — as is Sharon Fitzhenry herself.

We’ve had our best initial sales ever with our latest release, Phyllis Gotlieb’s Birthstones, and we’ve had a great initial buy — our biggest to date — from Barnes and Noble for our next, Matthew Hughes’s The Commons, so it’s all ahead at warp speed for Robert J. Sawyer Books.

If you want a comment from me for an article: “Dennis Johnson is a visionary and enormously hard-working. He came to me looking to create a science-fiction imprint, and it’s a testimony to his business acumen that he got me to agree to do it for so little money. Calgary is booming right now, and there are so many opportunities out there, I’m not surprised he’s gone on to bigger things … but he’ll be missed, and I wish him well.”

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Carolyn and I have been at Berton House way up north here in Dawson City, Yukon, for 26 days now, and we’re continuing to enjoy it and find it productive. And although we’re here on a writing retreat, we’re still finding time for some fun too.

Last weekend was the famed Dawson City Music Festival, which was terrific. Carolyn volunteered there for two days, and saw a bunch of the acts — a very eclectic mix. The night before she caught the closing performance of a children’s fiddle group called “Fiddleheads” at the Palace Grand Theatre:

At the festival itself, she saw a variety of international performers:

And some good ole rock-n’-roll:

Of course, the regular summer attractions continue; we’ve now seen all three floor shows at Diamond Tooth Gerties:

Plus had a wonderful lunch with Dan Davidson and his wife Betty. Dan is the editor of The Klondike Sun, a member of the board here for Berton House, a frequent contributor to my online newsgroup, and one of the people who has long encouraged me to come up here and write.

Which is what I should get back to doing right now! Fortunately, it’s good to know that Berton House has a backup for me in case my laptop happens to die up here:

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site