Robert J. Sawyer

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

My friend H. Don Wilkat found a higher-resolution version of the mass-marekt paperback cover for Rollback online.

On this one, it’s easy to read the blurb in the lower-left:

“This is what SF is supposed to be about: discovery as carried out by real people. A joy to read: a superb novel.” — Jack McDevitt, author of Odyssey, on Rollback

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Carolyn and I are both proud supporters of the Montreal in 2009 Worldcon bid — a bid to bring the World Science Fiction Convention back to Canada.

And it’s time to vote! All the information is here. Check it out!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Amazon.com has just put up the first glimpse I’ve seen of what the mass-market paperback of Rollback will look like. Looks gorgeous to me — although I’m dying to know what the text in the lower left says! (The stuff under my name says, “Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best novel.”) The paperback comes out February 5, 2008.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

For those of you actually here in the Yukon, I will be doing a reading from Rollback followed by a Q&A at the Dawson Public Library on Tuesday, August 14, 2007, at 7:30 p.m. Free refreshments will be served.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

In April 2007, The Ottawa Citizen — the largest circulation newspaper in Canada’s capital city — published a commissioned op-ed piece by me, which I called “A Bright Idea for Atheists.” In that piece, I took to task some of the people who are currently trying to overcome the problems religions causes in our world: the fight, I said, was noble, but the sneering techniques being used by Richard Dawkins and others were counterproductive, and would change few minds.

(Now, I in fact love Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, and have given it as gifts, and in The Globe and Mail: Canada’s National Newspaper, I named it the most important book of 2006 — but I’m not blind to its flaws, which are mostly not of content but tone.)

My piece in The Citizen was occasioned by the grand opening of the Centre for Inquiry, Ontario, at which I had been a featured speaker, and concluded, “If the Centre can really bring a new voice (one that’s polite and charming) and a Canadian voice (one that’s self-effacing and inclusive) to the Modern Skeptical Movement, then it might actually do some good.”

Well, some atheists reacted negatively to my piece, and several said I was setting an impossible standard because one couldn’t talk to religious people without becoming sneering and arrogant, since, well, atheists are right, right, right, and any idiot should be able to see that.

I had some ideas of my own in the op-ed piece about how to better approach the issue, but I didn’t have a widely available work to hold up as a better choice than The God Delusion to give to believers that might actually change their minds — that might actually lead a few more folk to embrace reason instead of superstition.

But now I’ve found that work: the one-woman stage show Letting Go Of God, by Julia Sweeney, perhaps best known as the androgynous “It’s Pat!” from Saturday Night Live.

Ms. Sweeney’s monologue — which is now available on CD and from Audible.com, — is everything I’d asked for: polite, charming, self-effacing, and inclusive. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny, hugely intelligent, and brilliantly delivered.

Letting Go Of God covers all the bases: the journey from childhood religious indoctrination to freethinking adulthood, the contradictions in the Bible, the silliness of New Age thinking as a substitute for reason, the prejudice against atheists, and, most of all, shows that you can be a good, kind, loving person without God (indeed, it’s hard not to be totally in love with Sweeney by the end). It never sneers, never uses condescension, and never once tells anyone else what to think — it trust that the members of the audience can find their own way.

A tour de force; I recommend it highly and wholeheartedly. Get a copy for yourself, and buy others to give to friends.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Robert J. Sawyer Books is an imprint of Red Deer Press. Long-time publisher Dennis Johnson has moved on to greener pastures, and Richard Dionne will be the new publisher starting September 1, 2007. Red Deer Press was bought two years ago by Toronto’s Fitzhenry & Whiteside, and Richard has been a mainstay there.

My profound thanks to Dennis for taking a chance on me as an editor, and for giving Robert J. Sawyer Books such a great start.

Richard, Sharon Fitzhenry, and Red Deer Managing Editor Kirstin Morrell have all vigorously confirmed their commitment to Robert J. Sawyer Books. Our next title, Matthew Hughes’s The Commons, comes out this fall.

New Publisher Announced for Red Deer Press in Calgary

Calgary, AB. — Sharon Fitzhenry, President and CEO of Fitzhenry and Whiteside Publishing in Markham, Ont. is pleased to announce the appointment of Richard Dionne, Senior Editor at Fitzhenry and Whiteside Publishing, to the position of Publisher of Red Deer Press in Calgary effective September 1st, 2007.

“Richard comes to his new position with extensive experience in publishing and has connections to a great many western Canadian authors and illustrators that will further strengthen our ties and commitment to creating best-selling, award-winning books from the western provinces.” said Ms. Fitzhenry.

Richard has already produced a fine selection of books by western Canadians, including titles by Murphy Shewchuk, Lorna Vanderhaeghe, John Wilson, and Scott Wooding. He was also general editor of Canadian Facts & Dates, a landmark chronology of Canadian history, and lead editor on the groundbreaking Canadian Thesaurus, the first of its kind produced for and by Canadians.

Richard is excited about the opportunity to take Red Deer Press to the next step in its long and lustrous history. “Red Deer Press is a small publisher that has made a significant mark on the national publishing scene.” says Dionne. “I am looking forward to working with the talented Red Deer family to take this publishing house to new heights nationally.”

Richard was born in Montreal and received a graduate degree in History from York University in Toronto. He is looking forward to dividing his time between Calgary and head office in Markham. “Calgary is a terrific city — I am very familiar with it and have always enjoyed my time spent there.”

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

I was asked to recommend some great science fiction for a sidebar to an interview with me — but the magazine never used the sidebar, so I thought I’d post my recommendations here:

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (Tor).

Wells created it all: time travel, space voyages, alien invasions, genetic engineering, antigravity, invisibility — you can’t write SF without riffing on good ole H.G. But he also knew that all those things were mere trappings; SF is really a medium for social commentary — and he rips the British class system a new one here.

Gateway by Frederik Pohl (Del Rey).

The job of good science fiction is to combine the intimately human and the grandly cosmic, and no one has ever done it better than Pohl in this book. Robinette Broadhead recounts his ill-fated encounter with a black hole in sessions with a computerized shrink, in what I think is the finest novel the field has ever produced. (And for all those MFA-in-creative-writing types who think a book has to have a likable protagonist to be moving and engaging, here’s the proof that you’re wrong.)

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (Vintage).

Sometimes when mainstream authors dabble in SF it goes spectacularly wrong, like Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. Other times, it’s a resounding success, such as this brilliant, heart-breaking story of a librarian unstuck in time, a tale that’s both philosophically and scientifically literate.

Gravity Wells by James Alan Gardner (Eos).

SF has always shone at short lengths, and there simply is no better writer of short stories in or out of the field than James Alan Gardner of Kitchener, Ontario. This collection contains fourteen of his wry, knowing, mind-bending tales including the Aurora Award-winning “Muffin Explains Teleology to the World at Large” and the Hugo Award-nominated “Three Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in the Human Blood Stream.”

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Last winter, Berton House, where Carolyn and I are now staying, was renovated as part of the Canadian TV show The Designer Guys. You can read all about that renovation, and see a bit more of Berton House, in this posting from the Mayor of Dawson’s blog.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

And it’s a good interview, too. See for yourself.

(The interviewer is Rachel Moran, who was 17 at the time this intervew was done, and was then a senior at Pittsford Sutherland High School in Pittsford, NY. The interview was done in 2003 for a print publication for students about possible careers called NextStep; I only just stumbled on the fact that it’s also online.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

An email I received today:

I loved your website and was very impressed with your bio and all the awards that you have received. What a wonderful life you must be enjoying. Great!

I have written a mystery novel. The book is already in print, but I need an expert to tell me my next move. The book has been advertised on Amazon.com, but without an agent, I’m having a problem knowing what to do next.

If you could give me some tidbits of how to make this dream a reality, I would love to hear it.

My reply:

I wish I could give you some positive words of advice. If you’d asked me earlier, my advice would have been not to self-publish your book. In terms of interesting a traditional publisher, especially for fiction, that’s the worst possible move you can make: sure, if you’d self-published and been a success, selling (at a minimum) tens of thousands of copies, a commercial publisher might become interested. But you haven’t; your Amazon sales rank is 4,000,000+ — meaning a single copy of your book sells now and again.

Yes, you’ve got seven positive reviews on Amazon.com — but of those, six are by people who have only reviewed your book and no others, and of the five who say where they live, four are local to you. Again, I’m afraid that’s not much help.

Sadly, by self-publishing, you’ve established a track record for your book, and it’s a poor one. I’m trying not to be harsh here, but the sad truth is that you decided to take a shortcut, and, like many shortcuts, it’s ended up getting you lost. Self-publishing is the end of a book’s life, not it’s beginning.

Your only hope for a traditional publisher at this point is to do the standard procedure (well documented in any number of books on the writing game that you could have read prior to choosing the route you took) of submitting (by paper mail) sample chapters and outlines to appropriate publishing houses — and doing so without mentioning your self-published edition. If a publisher likes what you’re offering (and note that the bar is high in commercial publishing, and most people don’t manage to clear it simply because their manuscripts aren’t good enough), then come clean at that point about the self-published edition (which you’ll need to immediately pull from the marketplace).

As for getting an agent at this stage, it’s virtually impossible. Most authors who have an agent to sell their first book (including myself, way back when) landed their agents on the strength of professionally published (bought and paid for) short work in their chosen field. It’s easy to get an agent after you get an offer from a publisher, but without real publishing credential (that is, without having paid your dues as a writer), your chances of landing one beforehand is a virtually zero — and I can guarantee will be zero if you start your query with, “I have self-published my novel and now want to find a commercial publisher for it.”

I’m so sorry I can’t be more encouraging.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Aww, those nice people at Fitzhenry & Whiteside!

Pat O’Neill, the sales manager for Canadian publisher Fitzhenry & Whiteside, has sent a donation of four books by Pierre Berton to Berton House; all were published by Fifth House of Calgary, a Fitzhenry & Whiteside company, and are in the series “Pierre Berton’s History for Young Canadians.” (I edit the science-fiction imprint for Fitzhenry & Whiteside, and when Pat heard I was going up here, she sent these along as a gift to Berton House.) The books are these (and I must say, they’re lovely):

The Great Klondike Gold Rush
Foreword by Ken McGoogan
(Ken is a Berton House alumnus)

Canada Moves West
Foreword by Arthur Slade

Exploring the Frozen North
Foreword by Eric Wilson
(Eric is a Berton House alumnus)

The Battles of the War of 1812
Foreword by Charlotte Grey

I’ve added them to the bookcase in the living room here (I’ve also added a copy of my own Rollback to the shelf of books by writers who have stayed at Berton House).

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

… is here, in this tutorial by George Scithers, the editor of Weird Tales magazine.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

I’m delighted to announce that Snoot Entertainment in Los Angeles has renewed its option on film rights to my Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated novella “Identity Theft,” first published in the anthology Down These Dark Spaceways, edited by Mike Resnick for the Science Fiction Book Club.

And, I’ve got to say, I love dealing with these guys. The check showed up a month in advance of the renewal date, without any prodding. True professionals. “Identity Theft” is in pre-production, under the working title Talk Talk.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

I won’t be there — I’m in the Yukon for the summer — but one of my absolute favourite SF conventions is happening in just one month: Con-Version in Calgary. Author Guest of Honour this year is my great buddy Jack McDevitt. I recommend the con hightly, and encourage you to attend — Calgary is gorgeous in the summer, and this is an excellent convention.

Check out the con’s website.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com

Hey, I used to have hair! Someone is putting up clips from the wonderful Canadian series about science fiction and comics called Prisoners of Gravity on YouTube. I was the most-frequent guest in that program’s history … and one of my earlierst appearances, from 17 years ago, is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

The Auroras are the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards. Any Canadian may nominate, and there is no charge t do so.

Ballots are here.

A good list of eligible works is here.

And my own eligible story, “Biding Time,” is here, as a Word document.

Ballots must be postmarked by Monday, July 23, 2007.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Don’t know where they got it — maybe Donato’s site — but the above version of the Hominids cover art without the text overlay — something I’ve never seen before — accompanies a very nice write up about the Hugo Award-winning first volume of my Neanderthal Parallax trilogy over at Site 101.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Carolyn and I have been here as sole occupants of the Berton House Writers’ Retreat for ten days now, and it’s high time I posted some pictures!

Berton House is a tourist attraction, with four historic signs for people to read outside. Here I am at the viewing platform, with three of the historic signs (yes, when tourists are there looking at the house, I feel a bit like Captain Pike in “The Menagerie” — but, then again, I always feel like I’m in some classic Trek episode, and at least I don’t have a flying parasite clamped to my back …).

Tourists come to read the fourth sign, which is attached to the side of the house, and I can see them clearly through the living-room window — they’re only about a dozen paces away from me as I sit in my chair, but they can’t see in, really, because it’s so much brighter outside. I’m getting used to it, although today someone did come right up to the window! (Of course, I could draw the blind — but I like the view and the fresh air.)

Visitors aren’t allowed to come in the house:

But I’ll let you sneak in … Berton House is bigger than I’d thought it would be: Carolyn and I often lose track of where the other is. Carolyn has set herself up in the very nice office (those are little busts of Shakespeare on the antique desktop):

I’ve set up my own little writing space in the living room:

For those who think we must be freezing this far north (we’re just 165 miles / 266 km south of the Arctic Circle — same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska), remember, it’s the middle of July, and it never gets dark here. The house sits on permafrost, but as you can see the days are balmy — or even hot (the thermometer is showing 90 degrees Fahrenheit and 32 degrees Celsius):

In this lovely weather (although it does rain and thunder a lot!), our flower boxes are doing fine:

But it is awfully far north — it’s cool to see satellite dishes aimed downward:

Dawson City has a population of 2,000 — mixed between the First Nations people and those who have come here from Outside (as it’s called here, with a capital O). We’re 1,050 feet or 320 metres above sea level, at the confluence of two mighty rivers, the Yukon and the Klondike:

The town tries to preserve its historic character, and along Front Street the buildings still have the false fronts that were in style during the Gold Rush days:

There are eight streets in Dawson: Front, Second, Third, etc. — Berton House is on Eighth Street, the farthest from the rivers. We’re right across the street from the Robert Service cabin, where dramatic poetry recitals are held twice every day, and just down the street from the Jack London cabin; it’s called “Writers Road” here, and Berton House is part of what draws the tourists. Tour buses and travelers in RVs stop by frequently, and every morning the charming covered-wagon town tour comes by:

Carolyn and I are enjoying it here. The pace is slow compared to the hustle and bustle of our lives in Toronto, but we’re relaxing (much needed!). I’m reading some very good books that have been submitted to my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint, and Carolyn just finished Janet Evanovich’s first “Stephanie Plum” novel, which she really liked, and she’s enjoying Pierre Berton’s Klondike (there’s a full set of Pierre’s books here, natch). Oh, and in the evening we’ve been watching some TV shows on DVDs we brought along: some Corner Gas, a couple of episodes of Gilmore Girls, and two episodes of Boston Legal.

But mostly, we’re working — me on my novel Wake, and Carolyn on poetry. After all, that’s what this three-month-long writers’ retreat is all about …

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Space Channel has just put up a 23-minute interview with me, which includes a tour of my home. You can see it right here.

Cheers,

Rob

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

So, when I was heading up here, the previous writer said the little stereo at Berton House didn’t have the right jack to plug in an MP3 player. Well, that turned out not to be true, but I’d left my cable back in Toronto because I’d been told I wouldn’t need it.

But a week ago I bought two such cables — one of which I’ll leave behind at Berton House — off of eBay. They arrived today, and now I have my Sony Clie TH55 (which is a fine MP3 player) plugged into the stero.

Unfortunately, I don’t have much music on it (lots of content from Audible.com, though). But I do have my library of music by Barry Gray, the brilliant composer for Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s British science-fiction series, including my personal theme song from Fireball XL5 (click to listen).

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site