Robert J. Sawyer

The con began bright and early for me, with a 10:00 a.m. panel called, “No, Really, That Makes Sense!” SF writers tried to come up with rational and entertaining explanations for various things that at first glance seem illogical in SF movies, TV shows, and books. Despite valiant moderating by Dr. Isaac Szpindel, it didn’t really come off that well; 10:00 a.m. is too early after a night of partying for a think-on-your-feet panel.

At 1:00 p.m., about a dozen members of my Yahoo! Groups newsgroup met for a get-together, which was great fun.

At 3:00, I signed at the Edge Publications table — I did the introduction for their edition of The Alphanauts by J. Brian Clarke. Then it was off to a presentation by Suzie Plakson and J.G. Hertzler (K’Ehleyer and General Martok from Star Trek), an event that had a surprisingly small audience (Carolyn, Kirstin Morrell, and I sat in the front row). It was absolutely excellent; both of them are great storytellers.

I then had a wonderful editorial meeting … about which more later. :)

Then it was dinner, outside, by the pool, with a fabulous all-you-can-eat buffet. Our dinner party consisted of Carolyn and me, Pyr editor Lou Anders, Hugo nominee Paolo Bacigalupi and his wife Anjula, Hugo nominee Robert Charles Wilson and his wife Sharry, and John W. Campbell Memorial Award winner Jack McDevitt. We had a fabulous three-hour dinner, and I said with confidence, even though this was only the second day of the five-day con, that unless I win a Hugo Saturday night, this dinner will clearly be the highlight of the convention for me. It was amazing, with conversation ranging from serious shoptalk to which actor was the best Superman.

After that, we hit some parties, and had good chats with John Scalzi, Adam-Troy Castro, and others. And now, to bed …

Lunch with Amy Sisson and her husband, NASA scientist Paul Abell. Sat with Mike Moscoe at the Analog/Asimov’s table, hustling subscriptions, then at the Edge Press table, helping to sell J. Brian Clarke’s The Alphanauts, for which I did the introduction. Moderated a very lively and entertaining panel entitled “You Are Responsible For Your Own Career.” Spent some time hanging out in the green room with my Tor editor, David G. Hartwell. Went to a reception for the writers in the evening, and hung out in the SFWA suite for a while with Robert Silverberg, Allen Steele, and Joe and Gay Haldeman, then lots of party-hopping. All in all, L.A. Con IV is off to a great start.

Carolyn and I have been in Los Angeles since Sunday. Yesterday, we fought the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad traffic in L.A. to visit the terrific store of Barry R. Levin, the world’s leading rare-SF dealer, then had a a very productive lunch with my film agents, Vince Gerardis and Eli Kirschner, then headed off to meet a producer interested in optioning one of my properties, then went to the house of my old high-school buddy Asbed Bedrossian for a great evening of pizza and conversation.

Today, it was lunch with Anne McCaffrey and Sean Williams, then off to DisneyLand (where we ran into David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, plus their children, and Karl Schroeder and his wife Janice, and their daughter).

Then it was time for the first round of Worldcon parties, all being put on by cities bidding to host future Worldcons. I spent a lot of really enjoyable time talking with Mike Resnick, as well as with Lou Anders, and with Paul Cornell, who is up for a Hugo this year for the Doctor Who episode “Father’s Day.”

Bed now; the con starts tomorrow …

Carolyn and I spent from Thursday afternoon until this morning (Sunday) in San Diego at the 22nd annual L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers and Illustrators of the Future awards weekend (I’m one of the judges for the writing contest). As always, it was a fabulous event, and we had a great time.

A few pictures:

Todd McCaffrey, David Brin, and Anne McCaffrey at our table at the opening barbecue

Rob and Kevin J. Anderson confer

Rob and Larry Niven walking along the beach outside our hotel

Astronaut Rick Searfoss and Rob

Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (in center) receive Lifetime Achievement Awards

Canadian winner Sarah Totton

Rob presents one of the awards

All the judges and winners on stage

Anne and Todd McCaffrey, and globe of Pern, at Saturday’s massive autographing party

… about the Hugo nomination for “Identity Theft.” You can listen here.

My buddy Mark Leslie is auctioning off the right to be murdered in his online serial, in order to raise funds for literacy. Details are here.

DAW author Edward Willett “in praise of science-fiction writing,” in this article in the Regina Leader-Post.

When the chips are down (kind of a pun in this context …), SF fandom always comes through: there will indeed be an Internet lounge at Worldcon this year.

Details

See here for the full review by John Joseph Adams.

An excerpt:

… kudos to Robert J. Sawyer for making this book available via his imprint at Red Deer Press. Books like this one remind us that the small press is of vital importance to the field, and remind us that it’s up to us, the readers, to support them to ensure that someone will be around to publish the books that fall through the cracks.

A Small and Remarkable Life is at once beautiful, heartbreaking, and profound. It’s a must-read for SF fans and non-genre readers alike. Like Tink Puddah, DiChario’s novel is small (just 208 pages), but it is also just as remarkable.

Left to right: Stewart Brand of the Long Now Foundation, Google co-founder Larry Page, and SF writer Greg Bear at Rob’s brainstorming session

Yes, it’s officially true: my life rocks!

I spent this past weekend (August 11-13, 2006) at the Googleplex, the headquarters of Google, in Mountain View, California. I was a participant at Science Foo Camp, an invitation-only gathering produced by Nature (the international multidisciplinary science journal) and O’Reilly Media, the famed publisher of computer books. (FOO in this context stands for “Friends of O’Reilly.)

A hundred of us were invited to attend. The purpose: “to encourage cross-fertilization of ideas — and to have fun.”

The invitees were (according to the invitation) “a fascinating crowd of world-class biologists, chemists, physicists, earth scientists, clinicians, historians, technologists, and writers.” I was honoured to be one of four science-fiction writers participating (the others were Greg Bear, Cory Doctorow, and Vernor Vinge).

When we arrived, we were shown a big grid with room names and their capacities written across the top, and hour-long timeslots down the left side. We were invited to grab a square and write in a description of a topic we wanted to discuss.

I decided to pick a modest-sized room that putatively held eight people (the smallest held four; the largest, 125), and invited those who wished to join me to come talk about the possibility of the World Wide Web gaining consciousness once it reaches a sufficient level of complexity — which, as I explained, is the theme of a trilogy I’m now working on.

To give you a sense of the caliber of people at Science Foo Camp, among the overflow group that came to my room were Google co-founder Larry Page, Stewart Brand from the Long Now Foundation, futurist Esther Dyson, Sun Microsystems chief researcher John Gage, and my buddy Greg Bear.

The feedback was amazing: high-level, brilliant, and very, very useful. And I was very encouraged by how warmly my ideas were received.

And that was just one session! I also attended great sessions on robots based on insect designs, the future of human evolution (led by Greg Bear), collaborative web tools for health sciences, geobrowsers, the visual representation of data (presented by fellow Torontonian Michael Friendly of York University), Vernor Vinge on semiconductors as a potential single point of failure for civilization, a great talk about Project Orion presented by George Dyson, and a very lively discussion on science and religion.

Google put us all up at a very nice hotel (the Wild Palms in Sunnyvale) and provided shuttle service back and forth. And Google’s legendary food-services people just kept feeding us!

Conversations over the 90-minute breakfast, lunch, and dinner breaks were fascinating. I enjoyed getting to meet nanotech pioneer K. Eric Drexler, Clinton Science Advisor Tom Kalil, Tom Knight from MIT’s artificial intelligence lab, and many others.

Tim O’Reilly (the CEO of O’Reilly) and Timo Hannay from Nature were wonderful hosts, and the event fully succeeded at meeting its stated goal of being “an informal but intense eye-opening weekend.” I loved every minute of it.

My friend Don Wilkat drew this to my attention, from today’s Globe and Mail — one misplaced comma in a contract that ended up costing a company millions of dollars.

I’m off on Tuesday for a trip that will ultimately take me to Califonia for a meeting with my film agent — and one of his favorites of my books is Flashforward.

And so, for this week’s Monday spotlight — a day early! — a few words about writing Flashforward.

Maclean’s: Canada’s Weekly Newsmagazine asked me to recommend a book for this summer. My pick appears on page 83 of the August 14, 2006, double issue, now on sale. Here’s what I had to say:

Summer is the perfect time for people watching — on the beach, at the mall, in the park. Nothing makes that more entertaining than recognizing the basic primate behaviour and mannerism that we exhibit in group situations, in interactions with members of our own gender, and when dealing with those of the opposite sex.

Our Inner Ape by Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal — just out in paperback [from Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin] after a successful run in hardcover — lets you see the hidden chimp, bonobo, gorilla, and orangutan lurking in the background of everything we hairless apes do.

Given all the headlines about evolution vs. intelligent design, it’s fascinating to reflect on exactly what it means to share a common ancestor with the great apes. Witty, charming, and deeply compassionate, de Waal enlightens while he entertains.

Another rave for Nick DiChario‘s A Small and Remarkable Life, published under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint. The review is from SciFi Dimensions. The review concludes, “This is a pearl of a first novel; DiChario rocks.” As editor, I couldn’t agree more.

That provocative question was the springboard for my 1995 novel The Terminal Experiment, which went on to win the Nebula Award: how do we decide whens someone is gone for good, so that it’s appropriate to harvest their organs. Here’s a snippet from that book:

     “Let’s go,” said Mamikonian.

     A nurse moved in and injected something into Enzo’s body. She spoke into a microphone dangled on a thin wire from the ceiling. “Myolock administered at 10:02 a.m.”

     Dr.Mamikonian requested a scalpel and made an incision starting just below the Adam’s apple and continuing down the center of the chest. The scalpel split the skin easily, sliding through the muscle and fat until it banged against the breastbone.

     The EKG shuddered slightly. Peter glanced at one of Hwa’s monitors: blood pressure was rising, too.

     “Sir,” said Peter. “The heart rate is acting up.”

     Mamikonian squinted at Peter’s oscilloscope. “That’s normal,” he said, sounding irritated at being interrupted.

     Mamikonian handed the scalpel, now slick and crimson, back to the nurse. She passed him the sternal saw, and he turned it on. Its buzzing drowned out the blipping from Peter’s EKG. The saw’s rotating blade sliced through the sternum. An acrid smell rose from the body cavity: powdered bone. Once the sternum was cut apart, two technicians moved in with the chest spreader. They cranked it around until the heart, beating once per second, was visible.

     Mamikonian looked up. On the wall was the digital ischemic counter; it would be started the moment he excised the organ, measuring the time during which there would be no blood flowing to the heart. Next to Mamikonian was a plastic bowl filled with saline. The heart would be rinsed in there to get old blood off it. It would then be transferred into an Igloo container filled with ice for the flight to Sudbury.

     Mamikonian requested another scalpel and bent down to cut through the pericardium. And, just as his blade sliced through the membrane surrounding the heart–

     The chest of Enzo Bandello, legally dead organ donor, heaved massively.

     A gasp escaped from around his ventilator breathing tube.

     A moment later, a second gasp was heard.

     “Christ–” said Peter, softly.

     Mamikonian looked irritated. He snapped his gloved fingers at one of the nurses. “More Myolock!”

     She moved in and administered a second shot.

     Mamikonian’s voice was sarcastic. “Let’s see if we can finish this damned thing without the donor walking away, shall we, folks?”

It’s still a gray area today, more than a decade later, as this story entitled “Not brain-dead, but ripe for transplant” from the August 4, 2006, New Scientist makes clear — and, interestingly, the test case they’re talking about involves a vehicular accident in Ontario, just like the one in the opening of The Terminal Experiment.

And a Toronto connection, to boot.
 

Being an author is kinda cool sometimes. :) Today I got recognized not once, not twice, but three times in public — a record to date.

It happened first at BestBuy, where a sales associate in the computer department told me how much he’d enjoyed my books, including Factoring Humanity and Calculating God.

Then it happened at the World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto. The cashier there played it cool. When I handed her the four copies of the October Analog I was buying, which has my name prominently on the cover, she said, without missing a beat, “Don’t they send you contributor’s copies?” (Yes, they do — but I wanted more.) We had a nice little chat after that.

Later, I was out at the monthly First Thursday fannish pub night, which we were holding in a new venue this month. A fellow entered the pub we were in, did a double-take when he saw me, and came over to say he really enjoyed my interviews on TV, and vividly remembered some comments I’d made about cyberpunk.

Nice! :)

Just learned that my Rollback will be the SciFi Essential Book for April 2007. Cool!

Charming, I’d say! :) A bigger version (PDF) is here.

This issue — dated October — is on sale now, and contains the first of four parts of the serialization of Rollback. The cover art is by John Allemand, and the cover design is by Victoria Green.

In another conversation elsewhere, I’ve been reminded of an old interview I did for the Canadian SF magazine Challenging Destiny. This one’s a transcription of a recorded interview, so it’s kinda loose reading, but it’s still interesting. Oh, and just for the record, nowhere does it say that the science in science fiction is actually bulletproof. :)

The interview, conducted in 1998, is still good reading after all these years. You can read it here.

I’m delighted to announce that I will be the Edna Staebler Writer in Residence at the Kitchener (Ontario) Public Library this fall.

I will be doing free appraisals/critiques of manuscripts of all types, and having private one-on-one hour long consultations with the authors of the works submitted. I’ll also be leading a couple of workshops and giving a reading.

I’m only doing a limited number of appraisals during my residency, and it’s first come, first served. Manuscripts will be accepted starting Monday, August 14, 2006, at the Main Library’s Marketing & Communications department on the Lower Level.

All the details are here.

(Kitchener is a city in southern Ontario, adjacent to Waterloo, and about an hour and a half from downtown Toronto.)

This is my third writer-in-residence stint at a library. I was writer in residence at the Richmond Hill (Ontario) Public Library in 2000, and at the Toronto Public Library’s Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, in 2003.

Over at Meme Therapy, they have this Brain Parade going on, exploring this topic:

Science fiction isn’t a predictive tool. Do you agree with that statement? And if so why do we fuss over plausibility in science fiction?

The question is illustrated with the picture above of a Star Trek communicator — but there’s no commentary about the communicator. It’s become the iconic symbol of how SF sometimes gets it right, because some cell phones flip open.

But that’s crap, and grasping at straws to prove we got one right. The lid on the communicator was an antenna; today’s cell phones have internal antennae. Cellphones often reside in purses and pockets; surely the real inspiration for hinged cellphones are the other hinged things that already live in there: a wallet, a woman’s compact, a business-card case.

(If cell phones were really supposed to mimic Star Trek communicators, they’d flip open with the same wrist movement that Captain Kirk always used — but they don’t.)

Science fiction isn’t about prediction; it’s about the here-and-now. That said, plausibility — this could be, as opposed to this might be — does add to science fiction’s moral authority to make comments on the here and now.

Back during the 2000 US presidential elections, everywhere you went, people were talking about how the election was going to turn out. If you were at a party and someone said, “You know, if George W. Bush wins, I think his economic strategy is going to be …,” you might lean in and listen.

And if somebody else said, “Yeah, but if Al Gore wins, his foreign policy might be …,” you might also lend an ear.

But when some raving lunatic in the corner says, “Listen, Ralph Nader’s going to take this race, and when he gets into the Oval Office, he’s going to …,” you tune that guy right out, because what he had to say had no chance at all of becoming reality.

It’s the same with the prediction in science fiction. If you want to talk about gender politics, or race relations, or the abortion issue, or world peace, or anything else of contemporary interest through a science-fictional lens, the infrastructure on which you set your morality play benefits from at least appearing to be plausible. But we don’t say George Orwell was a lousy science-fiction writer because his version of 1984 turned out to be nothing like the way the real year 1984 was; instead, we rightly laud him for getting us thinking about a possible future, and making mid-course corrections to (mostly) end up avoiding that future from becoming a reality.

I’ll be interviewed live today on 1370 Connection on WXXI 1370 AM, the National Public Radio affiliate in Rochester, New York. You can listen live here. I go on at 12:10 p.m. Eastern time (9:10 a.m. on the West Coast).

Steven H. Silver has weighed in very kindly on Nick DiChario’s A Small and Remarkable Life, the latest title from my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint. You can read Steven’s review here.

I’m a huge fan of this free TrueType font, provided by Hewlett Packard as an alternative to the spindly Courier New that comes with Windows. Manuscripts are still routinely done in Courier, and this version is much easier on the eyes.

I finally got my programming schedule for L.A.con IV, the World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles. You can see it here.

I mistakenly said it was yesterday in an earlier post. The deadline is tonight at midnight Pacific time. If you’re a Worldcon member, you can vote here. You’ll need both your membership number and your voting PIN, which should be on any progress report (or envelope that contained same) for the convention. Your voting PIN is the same as your nominating PIN.

For this weeks’ Monday Spotlight, highlighting one of the 500+ documents on my website at sfwriter.com, I offer this tribute to Fred Gambino, one of the finest artists working in SF today.

Lou Anders has done up a very nice blog post about the Campbell Conference that took place last month in Kansas. You can read it here.

Hugo Award ballots must be cast by midnight PACIFIC time today. They can be cast here.

Today’s also the last day for getting my Hugo-nominated novella “Identity Theft” for free from me, or from Fictionwise. If you want it, download it now from here.