Robert J. Sawyer

Thirty years ago today, on April 29, 1984, the first meeting of Hydra North, Canada’s first association of science-fiction professionals, was held at Toronto’s Free Times Café. Founded by Judith Merril, and administered from that first meeting for the next eight years by me, the organization provided wonderful networking and fostered many friendships.

Carolyn and I are hosting a 30th-anniversary reunion party on Saturday, May 31, 2014. I’ve tried to track down as many past members as possible, but if you’re reading this and haven’t yet heard about the reunion from me, send me an email (rob@sfwriter.com) and I’ll give you the details.

A history of Hydra North (later Toronto Hydra; later still Ontario Hydra).

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

The US and Canadian paperback editions of Red Planet Blues are now out (the British paperback comes out next week on Thursday, April 10).

“A cause for celebration; a tour de force.” —Analog

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

I’m absolutely thrilled to be the 2014 winner of the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (the Skylark), presented annually since 1966 by the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA).

The award is given to a person who “has contributed significantly to science fiction, both through work in the field and by exemplifying the personal qualities which made the late ‘Doc’ Smith well-loved by those who knew him.” The gorgeous trophy includes a very powerful magnifying glass, in honor of Doc Smith’s famed Lensman series of novels.

The award was presented Saturday, February 15, 2014, at Boskone 51 in Boston.

Past winners include authors Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Anne McCaffrey, George R.R. Martin, Terry Pratchett, and my Tor editor David G. Hartwell and my Ace editor Ginjer Buchanan.

Complete List of Winners:

• 2014 Robert J. Sawyer
  
• 2013 Ginjer Buchanan
  
• 2012 Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
  
• 2011 Lois McMaster Bujold
  
• 2010 Omar Rayyan
  
• 2009 Terry Pratchett
  
• 2008 Charles Stross
  
• 2007 Beth Meacham
  
• 2006 David G. Hartwell
  
• 2005 Tamora Pierce
  
• 2004 George R.R. Martin
  
• 2003 Patrick Nielsen Hayden & Teresa Nielsen Hayden
  
• 2002 Dave Langford
  
• 2001 Ellen Asher
  
• 2000 Bruce Coville
  
• 1999 Bob Eggleton
  
• 1998 James White
  
• 1997 Hal Clement
  
• 1996 Joe Haldeman & Gay Haldeman
  
• 1995 Mike Resnick
  
• 1994 Esther M. Friesner
  
• 1993 Tom Doherty
  
• 1992 Orson Scott Card
  
• 1991 David A. Cherry
  
• 1990 Jane Yolen
  
• 1989 Gene Wolfe
  
• 1988 C.J. Cherryh
  
• 1987 Vincent Di Fate
  
• 1986 Wilson (Bob) Tucker
  
• 1985 Jack Williamson
  
• 1984 Robert Silverberg
  
• 1983 Andre Norton
  
• 1982 Poul Anderson
  
• 1981 Frank Kelly Freas
  
• 1980 Jack L. Chalker
  
• 1979 David Gerrold
  
• 1978 Spider Robinson
  
• 1977 Jack Gaughan
  
• 1976 Anne McCaffrey
  
• 1975 Gordon R. Dickson
  
• 1974 Ben Bova
  
• 1973 Larry Niven
  
• 1972 Lester del Rey
  
• 1970 Judy-Lynn del Rey
  
• 1969 Hal Clement
  
• 1968 John W. Campbell
  
• 1967 Isaac Asimov
  
• 1966 Frederik Pohl

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

For the next 17 days, until February 28, for the first time ever, my first short-story collection Iterations and Other Stories is available as an ebook, along with five other great books by the likes of Kevin J. Anderson and Kristine Kathryn Rusch — all six books for just $2.99 from BookBale.com.

Iterations features an overall introduction by James Alan Gardner and notes on each story by me. For all titles, the bundle includes both ePub (Kobo, Nook, Sony, iBooks) and Mobi (Kindle) formats.

Here’s the table of contents for Iterations (which contains 22 short stories):

• “Introduction” copyright 2002 by James Alan Gardner.

• “The Hand You’re Dealt” copyright 1997 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Free Space, edited by Brad Linaweaver and Edward E. Kramer, Tor Books, New York, July 1997.
  • Finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story of the Year
  • Winner of the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award for Best Short Story of the Year

• “Peking Man” copyright 1996 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published as the lead story in Dark Destiny III: Children of Dracula, edited by Edward E. Kramer, White Wolf, Atlanta, October 1996.
  • Winner of the Aurora Award for Best Short Story of the Year

• “Iterations” copyright 2000 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published as the lead story in TransVersions: An Anthology of New Fantastic Literature, Paper Orchid Press, November 2000.

• “Gator” copyright 1997 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published as the lead story in Urban Nightmares, edited by Josepha Sherman and Keith R. A. DeCandido, Baen Books, New York, November 1997.
  • Honorable Mention, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror

• “The Blue Planet” copyright 1999 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published as “Mars Reacts!” in The Globe and Mail: Canada’s National Newspaper, Saturday, December 11, 1999.
  • Included in David G. Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF 5

• “Wiping Out” copyright 2000 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Guardsmen of Tomorrow, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff, DAW Books, New York, November 2000.

• “Uphill Climb” copyright 1987 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Amazing Stories, March 1987.

• “Last But Not Least” copyright 2000 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Be Afraid!: Tales of Horror, edited by Edo van Belkom, Tundra Books, Toronto, September 2000.
  • Selected for reading on CBC Radio’s “Between the Covers”

• “If I’m Here, Imagine Where They Sent My Luggage” copyright 1981 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in The Village Voice: The Weekly Newspaper of New York, 14-20 January 1981; reprinted by Story Cards, Washington, D.C., in 1987.
  • Prize Winner, The Village Voice‘s “Sci-Fi Scenes” Contest

• “Where the Heart Is” copyright 1992 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Ark of Ice: Canadian Futurefiction, edited by Lesley Choyce, Pottersfield Press, Nova Scotia, 1992.

• “Lost in the Mail” copyright 1995 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in TransVersions 3, October 1995.
  • Finalist for the Aurora Award for Best Short Story of the Year

• “Just Like Old Times” copyright 1993 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in On Spec: The Canadian Magazine of Speculative Writing, Summer 1993; commissioned for and also published as the lead story in Dinosaur Fantastic, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg, DAW Books, New York, July 1993.
  • Winner of the Aurora Award for Best Short Story of the Year
    
  • Winner of the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story of the Year
    
  • Finalist for Japan’s Seiun Award for Best Foreign Short Story of the Year

• “The Contest” copyright 1980 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in White Wall Review 1980, Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto; reprinted in 100 Great Fantasy Short Short Stories, edited by Isaac Asimov, Terry Carr, and Martin Harry Greenberg, Doubleday, New York, 1984.

• “Stream of Consciousness” copyright 1999 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in No Limits: Developing Scientific Literacy Using Science Fiction and Packing Fraction and Other Tales of Science and Imagination, both edited by Julie E. Czerneda, Trifolium Books, Toronto, 1999.
  • Winner of the Aurora Award for Best Short Story of the Year

• “Forever” copyright 1997 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Return of the Dinosaurs, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg, DAW Books, New York, May 1997.
  • Honorable Mention, Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction

• “The Abdication of Pope Mary III” copyright 2000 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, July 6, 2000.
  • Called “gobsmacking” by Publishers Weekly

• “Star Light, Star Bright” copyright 2000 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Far Frontiers, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff, DAW Books, New York, September 2000.
  • “Robert J. Sawyer, quiety intelligent as ever” says Booklist of this story

• “Above It All” copyright 1996 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Dante’s Disciples, edited by Peter Crowther and Edward E. Kramer, White Wolf, Atlanta, February 1996.
  • Winner of the CompuServe SF&F Forum’s HOMer Award for Best Short Story of the Year

• “Ours to Discover” copyright 1982 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in LeisureWays, November 1982.

• “You See But You Do Not Observe” copyright 1995 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg, DAW Books, New York, February 1995. Authorized by Dame Jean Conan Doyle.
  • Winner of France’s Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire for Best Foreign Short Story of 1996
    
  • Winner of the CompuServe SF&F Forum’s HOMer Award for Best Short Story of the Year

• “Fallen Angel” copyright 2000 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Strange Attraction, edited by Edward E. Kramer, ShadowLands Press, Centreville, Virginia, June 2000.
  • Finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Short Story of the Year

• “The Shoulders of Giants” copyright 2000 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published as the lead story in Star Colonies edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers, DAW Books, New York, June 2000.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

Apropos of yesterday’s discussion of mentioning race in fiction, I have a complete set of the first season scripts of the original Star Trek, and decided to have a look to see if the major speaking parts played by black guest performers in the filmed episodes were specified in the scripts as to be played by black actors.

These episodes were produced in the United States in 1966 and 1967, so a note on terminology. According to Wikipedia:

Negro superseded colored as the most polite word for African Americans at a time when black was considered more offensive. This word was accepted as normal, including by people classified as Negroes, until the late 1960s, after the later African-American Civil Rights Movement. One well-known example is the identification by Martin Luther King, Jr. of his own race as “Negro” in his famous speech of 1963, “I Have a Dream”.

Below are the four relevant episodes from the first season, in the order in which they were produced (my thanks to Trek Core for the wonderful screen captures; click them for larger versions):

Of course, the role identified in the script for “The Man Trap” as “Uhura’s Crewman” had to be played by a black actor (who could manage a line in Swahili!); the actor chosen was Vince Howard. The script says (speaking of the creature’s previous guise as crewman Green):

“GREEN – Green changing to Negro crewman”

And a quarter-page later, of Uhura:

“HER POV – At the closed Botany Section doorways is a tall, magnetically handsome man. He is dressed in ship’s uniform. He is Negro.”

What’s a tad surprising is that those words — “He is Negro” — constitute the act-ending cliffhanger, and are immediately followed by “FADE OUT. / END OF ACT TWO”. Since all acts but the last end with jeopardy, the script is allowing the viewer to connect the dots here: Uhura’s been targeted and is in trouble because of the appearance of the salt-vampire creature in the guise of a “handsome Negro.”

In “The Galileo Seven,” Boma (played by Don Marshall in the part that won him his subsequent starring role on Land of the Giants) is described in the script as “BOMA, a strong Negro.”

For “Court Martial” (the very next episode produced after “The Galileo Seven”), in which Kirk’s superior is played by the wonderful black Canadian actor Percy Rodriguez, the script clearly says “STONE – A NEGRO, whose bearing marks him as a man accustomed to command”.

(In the initial Captain’s log as scripted, Kirk calls him “portmaster” and “Senior Captain,” not “Commodore,” the term actually used on air; the ending credit for Rodriguez retains the term “Portmaster Stone” never heard on air. Oh, and the odd title for his office chart, “Star Ship Status” (rather than “Starship Status”) is verbatim from the script.)

As I wrote on my blog when Rodriguez passed away in 2007, “It’s hard to overstate the impact in 1967 of having Captain Kirk’s superior officer be a black man, and the absolute authority and dignity Rodriguez brought to the part was perfect.”

The most problematic is the role of Charlene Masters in “The Alternative Factor.” In that episode a black woman stands in for Scotty in engineering — and she’s clearly a scientist, not an engineer (blue uniform not red).

Much has been written about the fact that the part was originally to be larger and to be a love interest for Lazarus, and it has been repeatedly suggested (and also repeatedly denied) that the part was trimmed so much (leaving the end product with a guest star doing lines Jimmy Doohan could have done in his sleep) because Joe D’Agosta, the casting director, had cast a black woman (Janet MacLachien) in the love-interest role and the studio or network got antsy about a romance between a black (human) woman and a white (alien) man.

In any event, the script simply introduces her as “LIEUTENANT CHARLENE MASTERS, an attractive chemoscientist” (why she’s called “chemoscientist” rather than “chemist” is the least of this script’s problems); nothing in the script specifies her ethnicity. She’s also been demoted by the time the episode goes to air; she’s wearing an ensign’s uniform, with no sleeve braid, not a lieutenant’s, as specified in the script.

Aside: I don’t have the second-season scripts, so can’t comment on how the part of Nobel Prize-winning cyberneticist Richard Daystrom was described in “The Ultimate Computer” (brilliantly portrayed by William Marshall).

But it’s interesting to note that the character of Leah Brahms in Star Trek: The Next Generation was originally written as Navid Daystrom, and was to be the granddaughter or great-granddaughter of Richard Daystrom: a black woman as the love interest for the (blind) black man, Geordi La Forge.

But the script didn’t say she was black, and the NextGen casting people didn’t recognize the import of the name Daystrom, and so cast a white woman (Susan Gibney), giving Geordi an interracial romance — but doing an African-American actress out of what turned out to be a recurring role.

(On the other hand, if her last name is Brahms, I suppose that means she could be the great-to-the-nth granddaughter of Flint!)

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

I’ve written before about whether authors should feel nervous about specifying the race or skin colour of characters. My position is simple: you either do it for all characters or none; neither position is racist. What’s racist is only specifying it when deviates from some assumed norm — for instance, when books tell you if a character is black, but leave unstated that other characters are white, because, y’know, normal folk are white, so you only have to mention it when someone isn’t normal.

A fascinating example is the description of the character of Vince in Dexter. In the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter (an excellent book) by Jeff Lindsay, Vince Masuoka (as his last name is spelled in the book) is introduced as “half Japanese” — what the other half is is left unsaid, because, of course, it apparently goes without saying:

Sitting on an overturned plastic milk carton on the far end of the Dumpster, poking through a handful of waste matter, was Vince Masuoka. He was half Japanese and liked to joke that he got the short half. He called it a joke, anyway.

In the pilot script for the TV series based on the book, though, scriptwriter James Manos, Jr., introduced Vince in a way I find more acceptable (slightly altering the spelling of his last name):

VINCE MASUKA (30’s), slight, half Japanese, half white, sporting a slicked-back “Don Ho” haircut, meticulously brushing for fingerprints around the exterior of a large green dumpster …

(C.S. Lee, pictured, the actor who plays Vince so memorably in the TV series, is actually Korean — born in Cheongju, South Korea, in 1971.)

Ah, well, even Starfleet Command is guilty of lapses in this area, as you can see in this screen capture from the Star Trek episode “The Menagerie,” in which Spock is referred to not once but twice as “Half-Vulcan” — the other half, of course, it goes without saying, is human. ;)

(There’s more from Robert J. Sawyer on this topic in the “Comments” section, below the following picture.)

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

There’s no doubt the best-ever academic conference on Canadian science fiction was Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre, held in September 2013 in honour of the donation of my archives to McMaster University.

But the second-best Canadian academic science-fiction conference began ten years ago today, on Feburary 6, 2004, at what was then Mount Royal College in Calgary, Alberta (and is now Mount Royal University).

Called Science Fiction and Social Change, chaired by Randy Schroeder and featuring authors Robert J. Sawyer, Candas Jane Dorsey, and Timothy Anderson, it was an amazing gathering, with events over three days.

The wonderful Kirstin Morrell reported in depth on the conference for The Guantlet, the University of Calgary’s newspaper. Here’s what she had to say back in 2004 (reprinted with her kind permission):

It was a culture of worship, where fiction writers were gods. As a writer, how could I argue?

Mount Royal College hosted the “Symposium on SF and Social Change” Feb. 6-7, mixing scholars, writers and enthusiastic readers.

Many journalists posed the question of whether or not speculative fiction can change the world. This is a disservice to the real questions posed by some of Canada’s greatest thinkers on the subject. The hows and whys were the real meat of this gathering.

Thursday

The unofficial first night of the symposium was a free reading, hosted by the Calgary Public Library from three Canadian literary greats: Robert J. Sawyer, Candas J. Dorsey and Timothy J. Anderson.

I recognized few faces in the lobby, a sad testament to the fragmentation of Calgary’s science fiction and fantasy community.

Only some of those I spoke to even realized Calgary has had an annual SF/F convention for the past 20 years.

I got into the theatre just in time to catch the symposium’s organizer, Dr. Randy Schroeder, introduce the guests and start the reading.

Sawyer was the first to pose the question that would drive this weekend: is science fiction meaningful or merely escapist? He didn’t answer with a sentence, but rather a story.

He wrote “Immortality” for an anthology launched at last year’s 61st World Science Fiction Convention. “Immortality” did not preach the message of equality, instead it showed the pain past injustice still causes.

Anderson, ever the flawless performer, poked fun at a future version of the Nigerian chain mail message in his story, while Dorsey read a tale of an old religion living underground in a new religion’s society.

Sadly, I could not understand why the local SF/F writers’ group was conspicuously absent from the reading, except that their monthly meeting coincided with this event. Sometimes one can look too far inward, to the exclusion of a world of possibility.

Friday

Friday was devoted to the reading of academic papers analyzing speculative fiction. Neophytic acolytes threw around terms of the secret language of English literature scholars, to the sad exclusion of ordinary people in the crowd. “Semiotics,” “agency,” even “icon” all used in ways I could not understand. I needed a glossary.

Many in the audience complained that, unlike their home fields of study in the sciences, people simply read from their papers and no one really presented.

However, the occasional brilliant thought did erupt from certain papers.

University of Northern British Columbia’s Jacqueline Plante postulated the nature of desire is not the presence of wanting, but an absence deeply felt.

By the end of the first day, I felt extremely discouraged in my field of study. Is this what English majors do? Is this how we contribute?

If anything, Friday had the opposite of the intended effect. Certainly these people all take science fiction very seriously. I was now having a harder time with that belief.

English literature, as a field of study, was always so full of passion and meaning for me. As we studied the poetry of Larkin or the prose of Lawrence, we were dissecting the horrors and common, everyday desires of our shared existence. At its root is the belief we can build on the knowledge discovered and recorded in the past, formulate new knowledges and pass them on in our writings.

In the final session, Dorsey and Anderson battled with the question of whether predictions effect change, or if they are merely predictive. In their vast insight, they turned the discussion to ask a far more important question. If SF can effect change, is this necessarily a good thing?

In any case, the participants had to dine. So at the end of the day, many adjourned downtown to a restaurant to continue arguments and intellectual navel gazing in a more social fashion.

Saturday

Saturday’s schedule dove directly into the reading of several papers, and I did not regret sleeping in. Lunch was where those like Sawyer, Ph.D. student Kaye Mason and others debated everything from the subjective nature of time to the future of the publishing industry.

Every seat was full for the final session, a plenary featuring Sawyer, Dorsey and Anderson struggling to answer the questions posed over the weekend. Their combined insights included warnings: every writer is a product of his or her age, current SF is bound to the realities of modern economics, and maybe the process of writing happens on too long a timeline to capture the pace of change.

The planned events were now over. That evening saw the die-hards follow the troika of writers to a Chinese restaurant where they packed the back room to overflowing.

I managed to interview Dorsey and Dr. Schroeder together. Between them, thoughts on the nature of speculative fiction and the creative process flowed and combined to divine insights I could not begin to understand. These writers live and think on a plane most of us in the audience can only observe from a distance.

After eating, the truly keen went with Sawyer to soak up more caffeine in a downtown coffeehouse until after midnight. A few didn’t want to say good night at the end.

I found it fascinating to watch a man so many people are drawn to, who still communicates with them as an equal. Sawyer was the one bridge between the truly esoteric levels of thought and those like me, who live on a plane with the majority.

However, I did not realize his true contribution until I heard a recording of his keynote address, days later. He did not lord over us with lofty concepts or browbeat us with his intellect. Instead, he guided us and showed us how to think of a future beyond anyone’s prognostications.

Thinking back on the weekend, I realize the conference was sadly not meant for people like me. It was wonderful to be privy to the secret underground, where silent smiles are exchanged between peers who found each other in the crowd.

Networking was the real bustling underground city of these days. Intellect was drawn to intellect and I’d like to believe some ideas were exchanged, some fires stoked.

When you bring minds like Dorsey, Anderson and Sawyer together, the resulting conflagration is a spectacle to watch. However, the real symposium took place in the restaurants and coffee shops and even in the hallways between sessions.

Many voices doubted SF was anything other than a shout in the dark. I disagree. If nothing else, these blazing exchanges of ideas inspired me.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

Today, Warner Archive released the complete 1972-73 NBC TV series Search on DVD (manufactured on demand) for US$49.95 (23 hour-long episodes on six discs). I loved this series (and loved its pilot movie, Probe, even more). In honour of today’s release, some reminiscences of watching the show in first run. Lockwood, do you copy?

Today, with almost all Canadians getting their TV via cable, the cable operators simply delete the US signal and simultaneously substitute the Canadian one — meaning we see the same episode of the same series, but with Canadian, instead of American, commercials.

But in the 1960s and 1970s, things were different. Canadian stations had to entice us to watch their broadcasts of the program (with the ads they’d sold), rather than the American ones. To do that, they showed the American-made programs earlier in Canada (yes, Star Trek‘s world television debut was not September 8, 1966, as usually claimed; rather it was September 7, 1966, in Canada).

When I was 12, in 1972, my favorite new series was called Search, starring Hugh O’Brian and Burgess Meredith (best known as the Penguin from the 1966 Batman TV series). It was an intricately plotted caper series, with high-tech agents, linked by miniature cameras and radios to a mission-control center, working to recover missing objects. In Toronto, we got the Canadian broadcast of the latest episode on Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. on local channel 9 (CFTO, the Toronto CTV affiliate), and then, the next night, at 10:00 p.m., we got the American broadcast, spilling over on channel 2 from the NBC station in Buffalo, New York.

I never missed an episode on Tuesday nights, but I wanted more. Every Wednesday night I had a fight with my mom, because I wanted to stay up to watch Search again — the exact same episode I’d seen the day before. It was an hour-long series, meaning it wasn’t over until 11:00 p.m. — way too late, my mom felt, for a 12-year-old on a school night. But I whined and wheedled, and she would usually give in.

Back then, I couldn’t articulate why it was so important to me to watch the same episode a second time — but I understand it perfectly now. I was learning how to write. On Tuesday nights, I’d be surprised by the twists and turns the plots took — and on Wednesday nights, knowing how the story turned out, I was able to see how the writer had developed the plot.

Now, television drama may not be the greatest form of literature — but the structure it uses is wonderful for learning plotting. There was always something else on and, at every commercial break, there was an opportunity for you to switch to another program, so TV writers had to end every act — indeed, just about every scene except the last — with a little cliffhanger, to keep you in suspense, to keep you from turning away.

Today, of course, no one has to go through the difficulties I did to see the same program twice in rapid succession. Still, I think watching a program twice — or reading a book twice — is a great way to see exactly how the writer accomplished what he or she had set out to do.

For the uninitiated, here’s what was so cool about Search:

First, remember, this was the Great Drought for television science fiction. Star Trek had gone off the air in 1969; Next Generation was still 15 years away. So, we were starving.

And we got this gift: a stylish super-good-looking show. The set for PROBE Control, especially as depicted in the pilot, was the second-best science-fiction TV set ever done for TV (the best was the bridge of the original Enterprise). They only kept that set for the first half of the season, but it was gorgeous.

Speaking of gorgeous, this was a show of amazingly good looking people. Besides the three handsome male leads, there were stunningly beautiful women working in PROBE Control (at various times, Angel Tompkins, Ginny Golden, Stefanie Powers, Cheryl Ladd, and Deanna Lund). Add to that beautiful guest stars that included Jo Ann Pflug — oh my!

Then there was Burgess Meredith, who is absolutely riveting in everything he does (and gives one of the very best performances of his entire career in the one episode that really focuses on him, “Moment of Madness,” in which he’s captured and tortured by a deranged man who served under him during the Korean War).

Also, just like 2001: A Space Odyssey, these guys were doing computer graphics before there was any such thing as computer graphics (beyond the very, very primitive). The visual futurism was stunning and prophetic.

And then there was the PROBE Scanner — coolest device ever: tricorder, iPhone, etc., all small enough to fit on a ring or tie-tack, envisioned — again, very prophetically — in 1972.

And, finally, of course, the writing, with Leslie Stevens of Outer Limits fame penning many of the scripts, which were fast-paced, clever, witty (with lots of risque double entendres, mostly from Burgess Meredith’s character and his shapely assistants back in PROBE Control).

It was escapism, pure and simple, but stylish as hell, and a whole lot of fun.

Warner Archive‘s description of the series:

Hugh O’Brian, Doug McClure and Tony Franciosa rotate leads as elite high tech espionage operatives for Probe Division of World Securities Corporation in this spy-sensational SF-flavored actioner from Leslie Stevens (creator, The Outer Limits) and Robert Justman (Producer and one of the guiding lights of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation).

Each agent, dubbed a “Probe,” is wired for worldwide surveillance thanks to a Scanner (miniature video camera) and dental/ear implant. Tracking their telemetry and giving real-time mission advice is a team of specialists at Probe Control directed by the brilliant, irascible V.C.R. Cameron (Burgess Meredith).

O’Brian plays Lockwood, Probe One, an ex-astronaut. McClure plays CR Grover, Standby Probe, brilliant beachcomber goofball. Franciosa plays Nick Bianco, Omega Probe, a street savvy ex-NYC cop tasked with organized-crime capers.

The Probes hunt stolen moonrocks, missing agents, a deadly Probe defector, and more alongside special guest luminaries like Stefanie Powers, Bill Bixby, Mary Ann Mobley, Sebastian Cabot, Barbara Feldon, Mel Ferrer, and Joanna Cameron.

Three very different agents, one very out-of-this-world show.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

Award-nominating season is upon us, and so allow me to share some of the praise for my 2013 novel Red Planet Blues (published Ace Science Fiction in the US and Viking in Canada):

“Red Planet Blues is a perfectly executed gem of a book. Sawyer sets a classic work of noir against a Buck Rogers backdrop without ever hitting a sour note. A gorgeous and engaging read.” —Mystery writer Linda L. Richards, bestselling author of Death was the Other Woman

“A cause for celebration; a tour de force.

“This is Robert J. Sawyer, so you know it’s a well-written, intelligent story with some unexpected twists. Red Planet Blues isn’t just a mystery story with science fiction trappings, it’s a fusion of the two genres in which the mystery depends on the SF elements. Definitely worth reading.” —Don Sakers in Analog Science Fiction and Fact

“A Robert J. Sawyer novel guarantees a provocative scenario bursting with questions in every direction. Red Planet Blues delivers a mother lode of them.

“To science-fiction fans, it’s obvious that Sawyer’s work is SF. Its attention to scientific detail and plausibility allows it to benefit from the Vonnegut gambit: major book sales to non-SF or SF-hostile readers by hiding its SF-ness in plain sight. This krypto-SF approach has helped Sawyer to become one of Canada’s most successful authors in terms of sales, reader acclaim, awards and reach.” —Minister Faust in VUE Weekly (Edmonton, Alberta)

“Sawyer had done his homework about Mars … an interesting take on what a colony based on a `Great Fossil Rush’ to Mars could be like.

“The novel is chock full of references based on science fiction stories and old movies, and I am sure I did not catch all of them. Perhaps my favorite was that the local watering establishment, where water ice is more expensive than dry ice, is aptly called Bar Soom as a nod to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ name for Mars.

“I found Red Planet Blues a great merger of science fiction with the old style detective genre, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
—National Space Society

“My praise is about to get effusive, so settle in peoples. Two of my favourite cinematic genres are film noir and science-fiction, combine them in a novel and you can understand my enthusiasm. Referencing classic films like Casablanca, the gumshoe protagonist gives out a world weary Humphrey Bogart feel and the human transfers are reminiscent of the neo-noir Blade Runner. While Sawyer draws on these popular references, he also elevates them, transforming them into a compelling and original story with his `unputdownable’ touch.

“5 out of 5 — get me on a shuttle to Mars along with requisite hot new transfer body!” —Kristine Upton in Fictional Fix

“Red Planet Blues resurrects the noir mystery, the gold-rush western, and the science-fiction adventure and the result is a unique, fun story that keeps you guessing, keeps the pages turning, and manages to put a smile on your face every few pages, in spite of the pulse-pumping action and adventure.” —Jamie Todd Rubin in Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show

“There’s always been an exuberance to Robert J. Sawyer’s writing, and reading Red Planet Blues one can’t miss the feeling that he’s having a lot of fun with a story featuring whiplash plot twists, lethal babes, superhuman `transfers’ who have had their minds uploaded to robotic bodies, greedy prospectors, and even a writer-in-residence who doubles as a femme fatale. Red Planet Blues delivers a pulp buffet of strange things done ‘neath the Martian sun.” —Alex Good in The Toronto Star

“Sawyer has an absolute ball playing with the mystery form. The result is a lively love poem to the mystery genre that is terrific fun.” —Adam-Troy Castro in Sci Fi Magazine (Syfy Channel)

“How interesting it is to see how well the mystery genre blends with science fiction and builds successfully on the differences. Mars comes to rich life in Sawyer’s hands. This is a complex, imaginative story firmly based on Earth’s red neighbour and its unique circumstances — and its own brand of murder.” —Saskatoon Star-Phoenix

“Lomax is more layered than your standard-issue private eye, and whether you read it as a science fiction story with a good mystery inside or as a pulp mystery with a science fiction setting, Red Planet Blues is a rollicking read, at turns funny, exciting and full of twists and turns.” —C.A. Bridges in The Daytona Beach News-Journal

“Red Planet Blues rocks! This is the best book I’ve read for months! Maybe years! What’s not to love? The mystery involved so many reversals and plot twists which I totally didn’t see coming that it kept me guessing throughout.” —Ann Wilkes in Science Fiction and other ODDysseys

“Red Planet Blues combines all the twists and turns of a classic noir adventure with all the hard science goodness of Sawyer’s previous work.” —Science Fiction writer James Alan Gardner, finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards

“The type of book codified perfectly by Isaac Asimov in his The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun is rare indeed, hard to bring off since the writer must obey and honor two sets of genre expectations at once. Robert Sawyer’s newest novel — incorporating and expanding his well-received novella `Identity Theft’ — joins these ranks with zest and enthusiasm, providing a ride both criminal and stefnal.

“Red Planet Blues should sit on the shelf right next to David Brin’s thematically and topically allied Kiln People, as an example of how to hit two targets with one shot.” —Paul Di Filippo in Locus Online

“In Red Planet Blues Sawyer has imagined, and written, his best book yet.” —Mystery writer Eric Wright, four-time winner of Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel of the Year

“A wonderful Raymond Chandler-meets-Ray Bradbury vibe permeates Red Planet Blues. Sawyer’s Mars is as realistically realized as his settings always are; no one creates a plausible near-future quite like he does. There’s a richness of detail — particularly in the descriptions of New Klondike — that is particularly engaging. From the shady dive bars to the spaceships to the sweeping Martian plains, Sawyer paints a vivid picture.

“But it’s his creation of Alex Lomax where Sawyer really shines: a hard-boiled noir detective on Mars — the sort of character a guy like Sawyer was born to write.

“Red Planet Blues is an excellent detective novel that just happens to take place on another planet. It’s a genre mash-up that might have felt gimmicky in less capable hands; however, with Sawyer at the helm, it succeeds beautifully. A ripping good read.” —Allen Adams in The Maine Edge (Bangor, Maine)

“I flew through the book, unable to put it down, and completely hooked. Red Planet Blues is equal parts Philip Marlowe as played by Bogart, the film Blade Runner, and The Martian Chronicles. All the traditional trappings one would expect to find in a film-noir are present, but twisted ever so slightly to the lessened gravity and the thin and dangerous atmosphere.” —TD Ridout on The Mind Reels

“Sawyer’s new book is more gripping than a pair of pliers.” —SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak

“In Red Planet Blues Sawyer has found a highly original and fun way to pay homage to the great hard boiled detectives of the past. Mars, like the sun-kissed streets of Los Angeles Philip Marlow once patrolled, may sound like it’s an exotic location, but underneath the glamor of being on another planet there’s just as many dark and dangerous secrets as anywhere else. You’ll have a lot of fun wandering the mean streets of New Klondike and over the surface of the Red Planet with P.I. Lomax, and he might even give you a few things to think about.” —Richard Marcus in Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Combining hardboiled noir detective, the Wild West, and classic Martian pulp into a singularly potent cocktail, then spiking it with the big ideas that made the WWW Trilogy, Triggers and FlashForward unmissable landmarks of contemporary SF, Robert J. Sawyer serves up frontier justice in Red Planet Blues. It’s a two-fisted tale of greed, murder and alien paleontology — straight, no chaser!” —Science Fiction Book Club

“Red Planet Blues: Take equal parts Raymond Chandler’s noir detective novels, Robert Service’s poetry of the Yukon gold rush, and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, add a generous splash of The Road to Utopia, shake it all up in Rob Sawyer’s noggin and chill in the Yukon for a few months. Decant onto pulp paper, and knock the concoction back like cold Sarsaparilla in a dirty glass.” —Ernest Lilley in SFRevu

“Riveting reading. Sawyer has done a great job in creating a concrete, believable world and some strong characters. Science fiction readers will not be disappointed; noir crime readers will not be disappointed; and where the twain shall meet shall be one very satisfied reader.”—Bookbanter

“SciFi noir at its best! A superb romp on the red planet. Sawyer’s delightful combination of action and humor make this suspenseful tale of crime on Mars one of my top reads this year.” —The Qwillery

“Mystery and science fiction fans alike will enjoy this fast-paced adventure. Gritty and a bit dark, this thriller is a fun read with plenty of surprises along the way.” —SciFi Chick

“Robert J. Sawyer is an absolute master of science fiction, and Red Planet Blues just adds more luster to his already towering reputation.” —Science Fiction writer Mike Resnick, Hugo Award-winning author of The Buntline Special

“Red Planet Blues is science fiction. But it’s also a fun mystery novel, one that’s replete with all the action readers would expect to find in a book from the crime fiction genre — the sexy women, the weapons, the greed, the chases, the friendly and surly cops. It’s got them all.

“In Red Planet Blues, Sawyer has successfully used his wealth of science-fiction lore to create an intriguing mystery novel, one that is bound to have readers hoping for more.” —Eugene McCarthy in Waterloo Record

“Red Planet Blues is a total hoot. It’s funny more than once in a while, it’s a terrific page-turner, it moves faster than a rocket heading to Jupiter’s moons. Red Planet Blues is a humdinger of a read.” —Nick Martin in Winnipeg Free Press

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

Fifty years ago today, United States Surgeon General Luther Terry released the landmark report Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States, demonstrating the causal link between smoking and lung cancer.

That’s right, smokers: you’ve had a half-century of warnings; it really is high time you quit.

It’s almost impossible to imagine a modern-day political appointee taking on big business in the way Dr. Terry did — he truly epitomized government for the people (and not the modern “corporations are people, too” approach).

My 2012 novel Triggers is set at a fictional Washington, D.C., health-care center named Luther Terry Memorial Hospital. A germane excerpt, from the point of view of Seth Jerrison, the president of the United States, being treated there:

He knew he was in good hands here — and not just because the hospital was named for the man who had saved more American lives than anyone else in history, even though a recent survey had shown that less than one percent of Americans knew who he was. In fact, Jerrison had to admit, he himself hadn’t — the only holder of the same office that he could name prior to becoming president was the one immortalized by the B-Sharps, Homer Simpson’s barbershop quartet: “For all the latest medical poop, call Surgeon General C. Everett Koop — koop koop a koop.”

But Luther Terry was responsible for more people knowing of the office of Surgeon General than anyone else, for he was the one who in 1964 had released the report linking smoking to cancer, and in 1965 had instigated the “Surgeon General’s Warning” on cigarette packs.

Seth had recently reviewed proposed new warnings, designed to prevent teenagers who see themselves as invincible from picking up the habit. “Smokers become slaves to Big Tobacco.” “The maker of this product intends to addict you to it.” “Smokers are pawns of heartless corporations.” And his favorite, short and sweet: “You are being used.”

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

Of course, I’ll always remember 2013 as the year I lost my younger brother Alan Sawyer to lung cancer. But it was also a good year in a lot of ways, including:

• Marking my 30th anniversary as a full-time self-employed writer

• Having my 22nd novel Red Planet Blues published in hardcover (bringing to two million my total number of published science-fiction words) and my 21st novel Triggers reissued in paperback

• Having Penguin Canada send me on the largest book tour they did for any author in 2013, hitting eleven cities

• Hitting #3 on the fiction bestsellers list in Maclean’s: Canada’s National Newsmagazine with the Red Planet Blues hardcover and hitting #1 on the paperback bestsellers list in Locus: The Magainze of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field with the Triggers paperback

• Getting commissioned by Copperheart Entertainment to adapt my novel Triggers into a feature-film screenplay

• Having my short story “Flashes” adapted as a stage play at the Vancouver Fringe Festival

• McMaster University holding the conference Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre in my honour

• Giving one of the annual Darwin Lectures at Cambridge University

• Giving keynote addresses at the Lockheed Martin Center for Leadership Excellence in Bethesda, the Association of Professional Engineers & Geoscientists of Saskatchewan annual general meeting in Regina, and the Mensa Education & Research Foundation colloquium in Dallas, plus being the closing speaker at IdeaCity 2013 in Toronto

• Being brought to China for the launch of the Chinese editions of Triggers and Factoring Humanity

• Being Guest of Honour at Celsius 232 in Spain and Can-Con (the 2013 Canadian National Science Fiction Convention) in Ottawa

• Reading for the International Festival of Authors in Thunder Bay; headlining Word on the Water in Kenora; being Featured Author at Word on the Street Saskatoon; being Featured Author at ImagiNation Writers Festival in Quebec City; and being a Guest Author at Book Lover’s Ball in Toronto

• Receiving the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal from the Governor General’s office

• Receiving the first Lifetime Achievement Aurora Award from the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association given to an author in 30 years, and becoming only the fourth author ever to receive this honour

• Receiving the “Most Popular Past Guest” award at Keycon 30 in Winnipeg

• Being a finalist for the Ontario Library Association’s Evergreen Award for Most Popular Book by a Canadian Writer, for Triggers

• Being the cover boy on the Shanghai Review of Books

• Teaching Master Classes for the Manitoba Writers’ Guild and Lakehead University

• Other Years in Review: 2014 / 2007 / 2001 / 2000 / 1999 / 1998 / 1997 / 1996 / 1995

• Decade in Review: January 1999 to December 2008

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

NOTE: For information on using WordStar with modern computers under Windows, see my instructions here.

Thirty years ago today, on Friday, December 16, 1983, I started learning the word-processing program WordStar.

I’d bought my first computer, an Osborne 1 CP/M luggable (24 pounds, the most portable computer in the world back then — see picture below), for the princely sum of Canadian$1,495, in large measure because it came bundled with WordStar, which was then the reigning champ of word-processing programs.

Three decades on, I still use WordStar. I started with WordStar for CP/M 2.26, and today use the final release, WordStar for DOS 7.0 Rev. D (the datestamp on the files for that version is 21 December 1992, twenty-one years ago now).

WordStar is still, in my humble opinion, the best program ever written for the efficient and creative manipulation of text, for all the reasons I outline here, and I’m not going to switch.

For my very first writing project involving WordStar, I decided to write an article about Canadian achievements in Science Fiction over the past year.

I choose this project in part because I had become aware that a lot of stuff was starting to happen in Canadian SF, and also because, with all the boldfacing and underlining/italics, it would be a good exercise for learning how to format with WordStar.

The previous year (1982), I’d worked at Bakka, Toronto’s SF specialty bookstore, and, back then, they did an occasional newsletter called The Bakka Bookie Sheet. My article was published in The Bakka Bookie Sheet — and here it is, a thirty years after it was written, an intriguing snapshot of what the field was like here all those years ago …

In September 1983, Bakka Books published an amusing chapbook entitled Toronto’s Fantastic Street Names by John Robert Colombo.

Continue reading »

First, the bad news: there won’t be a new Robert J. Sawyer novel in 2014.

My younger brother Alan was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer in September 2012, and he passed away in June 2013. His illness and his death have taken a significant toll on me, and, even before Alan’s passing, I’d asked my Canadian and American publishers for a deadline extension on my 23rd novel, The Philosopher’s Zombie.

April has been my traditional publication month for many years, and we ultimately decided rather than have my new book appear in some other month to simply delay it a year. Instead of coming out in April 2014 (which would have required me to deliver the manuscript in May of this year), The Philosopher’s Zombie will be published in April 2015. I will deliver the manuscript to my publishers in the spring of next year.

This was the right decision for me; I’m still struggling daily with Alan’s passing. My thanks to my editors Adrienne Kerr at Penguin in Toronto and Ginjer Buchanan at Ace in New York for their support and understanding — and I hope my readers will consider The Philosopher’s Zombie, which is a very ambitious book, to ultimately be worth the wait.

And now the good news: I’m thrilled to announce that film rights to my 2012 novel Triggers have been optioned and that I’ve been commissioned to write the screenplay based on the book.

The book has been optioned by Copperheart Entertainment of Toronto, a company best known for the Ginger Snaps series of horror films and the science-fiction thriller Splice.

Copperheart is the same company that currently has Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern in development. Copperheart is also currently in post-production on Debug, an spaceship-based science-fiction movie directed by David Hewlett, and on Darknet, a horror TV series premiering in January 2014 on Canada’s Super Channel.

I’m working directly with Steven Hoban, the head of the company (who approached me about adapting my own novel), and Brian Morey, Copperheart’s head of development — and I’m having a blast.

Of course, we’re a long way away from having a movie made, and any number of things can derail a project like this. But I have my fingers crossed: last week, we agreed on the beat-sheet treatment for the screenplay (an outline of the scenes that will appear in the script). Projected budget for Triggers is sixty million dollars — which, if it actually gets done, will make it the most expensive Canadian independent feature film ever produced.

Matt Kennedy of Vince Gerardis’s Created By in Los Angeles negotiated the very handsome deal for me, and I’ve been enjoying every minute of this project.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

The first BookBale.com ebook bundle has gone on sale! The basic bundle includes my Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated Starplex, available for the first time ever as an ebook. Also included are five other books by major, award-winning writers.

The bundle is on sale for one month only, until the end of November. Until then you can get the Basic Bundle for any price you’d like to pay (minimum $2.99), and if you pay $10.00 or more, you get two bonus books — by Heinlein and Haldeman!

All books are in both Mobi (Kindle) and ePub (Kobo, Nook, Sony, etc.) formats, and are DRM-free:

Basic Bundle (six ebooks; $2.99 minimum):

• Climbing Olympus by Kevin J. Anderson
  
• The Jesus Incident by Frank Herbert & Bill Ranson
  
• Future Perfect by Nancy Kress
  
• The Elvenbane by Mercedes Lackey & Andre Norton
  
• Birthright: The Book of Man by Mike Resnick
  
• Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer

Bonus Books (two more ebooks for a total of eight; $10.00 minimum):

• The Hemingway Hoax by Joe Haldeman
  
• Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein

This is my first personal venture into novel-length ebook territory (I used to have short stories at Fictionwise), and I’m very excited about it!

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

The 1996 paper “Helen Keller as Cognitive Scientist” was one of my inspirations for writing my WWW trilogy of Wake, Watch, and Wonder, about a formerly blind girl gaining sight via a post-retinal implant — while a nascent consciousness evolving on the World Wide Web learns to see the world through her.

The paper’s author is philosopher Justin Leiber, the son of famed science-fiction writer Fritz Leiber.

The linked PDF is an OCR scan of the paper, provided by Prof. Leiber; here’s the abstract:

Nature’s experiments in isolation — the wild boy of Aveyron, Genie, their name is hardly legion — are by their nature illusive. Helen Keller, blind and deaf from her 18th month and isolated from language until well into her sixth year, presents a unique case in that every stage in her development was carefully recorded and she herself, graduate of Radcliffe College and author of 14 books, gave several careful and insightful accounts of her linguistic development and her cognitive and sensory situation. Perhaps because she is masked, and enshrined, in William Gibson’s mythic and false _Miracle Worker_, cognitive scientists have yet to come to terms with this richly enlightening, albeit anecdotal, resource.

[The William Gibson mentioned above is, of course, the playwright, not the author of Neuromancer.]

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

For this article in Canada’s National Post newspaper, Books editor Mark Medley asked me about killing my characters. Here’s what I had to say:

My brother Alan died this past summer. I got a call from my sister-in-law telling me he was slipping away, and I grabbed the first plane back to Toronto from Montreal, but he was gone before my flight took off. I’ll always regret not being with him in his final moments, but at least in the ordered world of fiction, I can — and do — make a point of letting my readers see my characters die; the reader should always get to say goodbye. In my novels I’ve sometimes jumped ahead decades — and in one case millennia — so that I could properly show the reader, quite literally, the final chapter of a character’s life. I think you owe it to the reader to do that; Sophocles had it right in the last line of Oedipus Rex: you can’t assess the quality of anyone’s life until it has reached its end.

One thing you won’t see me do, though, is bring a character back to life; it’s become a cliché in science fiction to do so, and I hate it. Sorry, Mr. Spock, but you should have stayed dead; you lived long, you prospered — enough already! That said, I do often write about uploading consciousness — including in my most-recent novel Red Planet Blues (Penguin Canada) — and I do actually think that will be possible this century. I also like to write about profound life prolongation, as in Rollback. Death is indeed final … but it doesn’t have to come anytime soon.

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION: Has there been one death in particular that seemed to resonate more strongly with readers, or got you in trouble?

See, that’s a tricky question; the answer, of course, is yes — but you’re asking an author to give away the ending of one of his books, and I’m loath to do that. Still, I vividly remember working on the concluding volume of a trilogy when the first one had just arrived in stores. A reader said to me, “I love your main character!” I replied, “Thank you — I just wrote his death scene.” The reader was angry, and I realized that although death is the true end of any character’s story, readers prefer not to know in advance that you’re going to tell the character’s whole story; they equate being alive at the end with a happy ending, which is what everyone wants. But there’s no tragedy in a long life well lived coming to its inevitable close.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

After my keynote address at Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre, the academic conference held in my honour in September 2013 at McMaster University, I was asked by an audience member about where my interest in, and sympathetic treatment of, religion — which is clearly evident in many of my works, including Calculating God and Hominids — came from.

I replied that I’d spent my teenage years a typical arrogant atheist, thinking that those benighted fools who believed in gods or an afterlife clearly weren’t intelligent or well-read. But thirty years ago today, on Wednesday, October 12, 1983, when I was 23, I began a job — the first really big assignment of my nascent freelance-writing career — that changed that perception.

I’d graduated in April 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in Radio and Television Arts from Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, and had spent the 1982-1983 academic year working at Ryerson as an instructor/demonstrator for TV studio production techniques — and, by that point, I’d already published some fiction and a few articles.

At the beginning of October 1983, Rev. Des McCalmont, the United Church of Canada’s head of TV production, called up his friend Ryerson professor Syd Perlmutter. Des was looking for a recent grad who was up on all the ins and outs of Canadian broadcasting policy to write portions of and supporting materials for an interfaith TV license application. Syd recommended me, and I got the freelance contract (although it was for full-time work).

I moved into an an office at the United Church’s Berkeley Studio, becoming the fifth member (and only full-timer) of The Rosewell Group, a consultancy specifically created to spearhead this license applicaton. The Rosewell Group consisted of Des McCalmont, documentary filmmaker Peter Flemington, lawyer Douglas Barrett, Rev. David MacDonald, who was formerly Canada’s Secretary of State and Minister of Communications — and now me.

I was was with Rosewell for for nine months (moving on at the end of June 1984 to pursue my freelance-writing career), although I continued to do freelance consulting for them for a few years thereafter.

During those nine months, I met and worked closely with people from a wide range of faith groups, and discovered that many, indeed most, were bright, questioning, thoughtful individuals; that experience changed my own perceptions enormously. I remain an atheist, but I learned to respect and appreciate those who have a different perspective.

Continue reading »

This morning at Can-Con 2013 in Ottawa, this year’s Canadian National Science Fiction Convention, I received a Lifetime Achievement Aurora Award — the first one given to an author in 30 years — from the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association; the award was presented to by Hayden Trenholm. This was my acceptance speech:

Thank you all very much.

Since it was announced that I was getting this award, some people have said to me, “Well, I guess you can stop now” — although they usually leave it unsaid as to precisely what I should stop.

Do they mean I should stop writing? Well, perhaps. I’ve published twenty-two novels and forty-four short stories — over two million words of fiction, all of which is currently in print.

Earlier this year, I shipped my manuscript archives off to McMaster University, and, looking back over that body of work, I’m content. If the vicissitudes either of life or of publishing mean that the novel I’m writing now turns out to be my last, so be it.

But perhaps when people suggested I should stop, they meant I should stop winning Aurora Awards.

Well, I gave up writing short fiction eight years ago, and I have no new novel coming in 2014, so for the Auroras being given out in 2015, at least, there’s no way I’ll be on the ballot; as in every year, may the finest novel win, and I wish all the writers here the best of luck. Believe me, I know what it’s like to lose Auroras — I’ve lost them twenty-seven times to date.

But you know what? I was happy to lose all those Auroras. That these awards have been won by such a diverse and talented range of people — including my great friends James Alan Gardner, Edo van Belkom, and Robert Charles Wilson — makes the ones I did win have value.

Of course, I’ve been particularly delighted when Auroras have gone to my own writing students. No one was happier than me when Eileen Bell, Derwin Mak, Randy McCharles, Ryan McFadden, Douglas Smith, Isaac Szpindel, Hayden Trenholm, and Edward Willett took home their trophies; teaching and mentoring have always been as important to me as my writing.

Still, far more common than people saying to me “I guess you can stop now” has been people suggesting “you’re too young to win a lifetime achievement award.” No one meant this insensitively, of course, but in June I lost my younger brother Alan Sawyer to lung cancer; he was 51 when he passed away, two years younger than I am now.

Alan was a multimedia producer, and the year before he died he won an Emmy award — an honest-to-God Emmy from the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Fortunately, no one said he was too young when he got it, and that honour, which turned out to be the culmination of his career, awarded just months before his terminal prognosis, has ensured his place in the history of his field.

As it happens, I’m part of the committee that chooses another lifetime achievement honour, the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master trophy given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America — that organization’s highest distinction, presented at the Nebula Award banquet.

Choosing the recipient is a process another SFWA past president has referred to as “actuarial.” Or, as I explained it to my brother-in-law David Clink — himself an Aurora nominee this year — the sad reality is that when the Grand Master trophy shows up in your home, it means somebody thinks you’re about to die. To which Dave replied, “Ah, I get it — it’s the Horsehead Nebula Award.”

In 1996, SFWA’s Grand Master Award went to A.E. van Vogt. By coincidence, that same night, I won the best novel Nebula for The Terminal Experiment. At the end of the banquet aboard the Queen Mary, I sought out van Vogt. We’d never met, I explained to him, but he had been an inspiration to me: this guy from Manitoba who’d published 600,000 words of science fiction with major US publishers while still living in Canada had been proof that the goal I intended to devote my life to — being a Canadian science fiction writer — was possible.

A.E. van Vogt looked warmly at me, then his face grew sad. “You know,” he said, “I remember having been a science-fiction writer — but I can’t remember a single thing that I wrote.” By this point, van Vogt, whose 84th birthday had been the day before, was in the grips of the Alzheimer’s disease that would kill him.

But fortunately for all of us, the founders of the Aurora Awards weren’t actuaries; they didn’t wait until it was almost too late to honour van Vogt. Rather, he received his lifetime achievement Aurora Award — the very first Aurora ever given — in 1980, when he was 67 years old, with another two decades of life ahead of him.

So when is the right time to give a lifetime award? Hugo-award winning fan writer Susan Wood got the second Lifetime Achievement Aurora ever given, in 1981. She was just 32 when the award was presented — or she would have been had she lived to see it; her trophy was bestowed posthumously.

And so, at this point in my career, however close to its end it might be, and at this date in my life, however far off the final chapter still is, I am pleased, proud, and deeply touched to be receiving this trophy.

This award is for a lot of people. It’s for my own mentors, John Robert Colombo, Terence M. Green, and Andrew Weiner. It’s for the editors who have worked so closely with me over the years, including Peter Heck, Susan Allison, Stanley Schmidt, David G. Hartwell, Ginjer Buchanan, and Adrienne Kerr. It’s for my wife, Aurora Award-winning poet Carolyn Clink, who has been along for this whole crazy ride. But most of all, as I look back over a lifetime, it’s for my brother Alan. It ain’t no Emmy, broski, but it truly does mean the world to me.

Thank you all very, very much.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

I’m being honoured this weekend with a lifetime achievement Aurora Award, which isn’t just for my writing — it’s also, I’m told, for my work as an editor, teacher, and advocate.

And one of the things I’m proudest of as editor is the anthology Crossing the Line: Canadian Mysteries with a Fantastic Twist, which I co-edited with David Skene-Melvin. Our anthology was published 15 years ago today by Lesley Choyce‘s Pottersfield Press in Nova Scotia.

When the book came out, I was president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; David, the king of Canadian crime-fiction anthologists, had recently retired from long service as administrator of the Crime Writers of Canada.

The anthology included stories by Robertson Davies, Charles de Lint, James Alan Gardner, William Gibson, Terence M. Green, Tanya Huff, James Powell, Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, Edo Van Belkom, and Andrew Weiner.

Here’s the introduction I wrote to Crossing the Line: Canadian Mysteries with a Fantastic Twist:

Whenever they travel to the United States, Canadian writers get asked a question they’re not used to hearing: what kind of stories do you write? By that, the American questioner means, do you write mystery or horror, western or science fiction, fantasy or romance?

Americans are natural categorizers of literature, and I suppose that’s not surprising: tens of thousands of books are published in the United States by presses big and small each year. That prodigious output has to be organized somehow.

The problem, of course, is that not just the books but also the authors end up being categorized. Stephen King? He’s a horror writer. Tom Clancy? Technothrillers. John Grisham? Courtroom dramas. Lines have been drawn around categories, and writers end up, by market necessity, staying within them.

Not so in Canada. Here, writers tend to produce whatever it is that strikes their fancy at a given moment, and so we’re not surprised to learn that Margaret Atwood wrote a very good science-fiction novel (The Handmaid’s Tale) or that Eric Wright, best known for his Charlie Salter mystery novels, has also written a biting satire of academic life (Moodie’s Tale).

Still, there are three genres that have a long history of blurring the lines between them: science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Many authors — even in the States — work in all three forms, and often the reader who enjoys the fantasies of J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles de Lint will also enjoy the SF of Isaac Asimov and William Gibson or the horror of Clive Barker and Edo van Belkom. Because of this, SF, fantasy, and horror are often referred to under a single umbrella: speculative fiction.

But even that giant playground isn’t enough for many writers, and so they often cross the line into crime fiction. There, the fantasists see a natural arena for the struggle between good and evil; the SF writers recognize that forensics and physics are sibling disciplines; and the horror writers realize that fictional Paul Bernardos are as terrifying as any supernatural demon.

And, of course, to a crime-fiction author dealing with death, detection, and the dear departed, what could be more natural than occasional forays into the worlds of horror, science fiction, and fantasy?

The stories in this book all involve crimes — mostly murder, but also suicide and theft. But the venues include a Toronto that never was, alien vistas, impossible courtrooms, and the glowing matrix of cyberspace. And the villains and heroes number among them ghosts, vampires, computer hackers . . . and, of course, cops (some of whom have laser pistols instead of revolvers) and private eyes (one or two of whom just happen to be working in outer space).

Sit back and enjoy these eleven speculative-fiction crime tales . . . but remember that danger may lurk in the most unexpected places. After all, you’re crossing the line.

More about CROSSING THE LINE: CANADIAN MYSTERIES WITH A FANTASTIC TWIST:

Table of Contents

Notes on the Contributors

Rob’s Hugo Award-nominated story from this anthology

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

A press release from the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association:

For the first time in 30 years — and only the fourth time ever — the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (CSFFA) is bestowing a Lifetime Achievement award on an author.

The award will be presented in Ottawa on Sunday, October 6, 2013, to Ottawa-born author Robert J. Sawyer. Sawyer is one of only eight writers in history — and the only Canadian — to win all three of the world’s top awards for best science-fiction novel of the year:

• The World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Award, which Sawyer won in 2003 for his novel Hominids;

• The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Nebula Award, which he won in 1996 for his novel The Terminal Experiment;

• The John W. Campbell Memorial Award, given by the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at Kansas University, which he won in 2006 for Mindscan.

He’s also won more Prix Aurora Awards, given by CSFFA, than anyone else in history, with thirteen wins to date (seven for best novel, five for best short story, and one for best related book).

Sawyer’s other honours include winning Japan’s top SF award three times, Spain’s top SF award three times, France’s top SF award, the Toronto Public Library Celebrates Reading Award, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University, the Alumni Award of Distinction from Ryerson University, Humanist Canada’s inaugural Humanism in the Arts Award, and an Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada.

Sawyer is being honoured not just for his writing but also his decades of support for other writers. David G. Hartwell, senior editor at Tor Books in New York, was quoted in Publishers Weekly as saying, “Sawyer is very generous to young writers.”

And in naming Sawyer one of the “thirty most influential, innovative, and just plain powerful people in Canadian publishing” (one of only three authors to make the list), the publishing trade journal Quill & Quire called him “a generous mentor to other writers.”

In 2009, The Ottawa Citizen observed, “It seems like everywhere I go, people are talking about what an incredible friend Sawyer is to young SF writers, how much he gives back to the community.” And Manitoba author Craig Russell has said, “Robert J. Sawyer is one truly amazing gentleman — a mentor to the entire Canadian SF/F world.”

But Sawyer’s contributions were perhaps best summed up by TV personality Liana K, when she hosted the 2010 Prix Aurora Award ceremony, where many of Sawyer’s writing students and mentorees were on the ballot: “At the Oscars, the winners thank God. At the Auroras, they thank Robert J. Sawyer.”

Rob Sawyer was born in Ottawa in 1960. He has taught science-fiction writing at the University of Toronto, Ryerson University, Humber College, and the Banff Centre. And he has been writer in residence at Berton House in Dawson City; the Toronto Public Library’s Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy; the Richmond Hill Public Library; the Kitchener Public Library; and the Canadian Light Source, Canada’s national synchrotron facility, a position created especially for him.

His latest novel — his 22nd — is Red Planet Blues, published by Penguin Canada; the book reached #3 on the Maclean’s bestsellers’ list, and the mass-market edition of his previous title, Triggers, which is a current nominee for the best-novel Aurora, recently hit #1 on the bestsellers’ list of the US trade journal Locus. The 2009 ABC TV series FlashForward was based on his novel of the same name.

The Prix Aurora Awards were founded in 1980. Authors previously awarded lifetime achievement Auroras, now all deceased, are A.E. van Vogt in 1980; Phyllis Gotlieb in 1982; and Judith Merril in 1983. At 53, Sawyer is the youngest author ever to receive a lifetime-achievement Aurora.

The award will be bestowed as part of the 2013 Prix Aurora Awards breakfast banquet Sunday, October 6, at the Minto Suites, Ottawa, during Can-Con 2013, this year’s Canadian National Science Fiction Convention. Ottawa author Hayden Trenholm, one of Sawyer’s former writing students and himself a multiple Aurora Award winner, will make the presentation.

For more information, see Rob’s website at sfwriter.com and the official Prix Aurora Awards site.

(Photo by Christina Frost of Argent Dawn Photography.)

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre turned out to be one of the best weekends of my life. Over one hundred scholars from all over North America joined us for this amazing conference in honour of the donation of my archives to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The conference was sponsored by the McMaster Faculty of Humanities, Library, and Office of University Advancement, and chaired by Dr. Catherine Grisé and Dr. Nicholas Serruys.

Before the conference began, The Silhouette (the McMaster campus paper) did great interviews with me and with Catherine Grisé, The Hamilton Spectator did an absolutely terrific article, and the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections unveiled its description of the archival donation.

Friday night, September 13, 2013, began with a wonderful reception at the University Club, which included my keynote address and a lovely display of items from my archives ranging from a short story I wrote in pencil when I was eight years old to the final manuscript for my Hugo Award-winning Hominids. (Here are McMaster’s official photos from the reception.)

On Saturday, Spetember 14, I introduced three speakers, all of whom were among our Special Guests for the conference:

• John Robert Colombo started us off with a plenary talk called “400 Years of Rob Sawyer,” a fascinating look at my career against the backdrop of the history of fantastic literature in Canada.

• Tor Books senior editor Dr. David G. Hartwell then gave an excellent talk on the history of science-fiction anthologies (and announced that Tor Books had just had its best year ever financially!).

• And Chris Szego of Bakka Phoenix Books, the world’s oldest extant science-fiction bookstore gave an insightful talk about the retail side of the science-fiction industry.

There were three programming tracks at the conference, so I couldn’t attend everything, not even all the papers on my own work. I had to miss David DeGraff‘s presentation on using my novels and those of Julie Czerneda in the classroom, and Danielle Gagne‘s presentation on using my novel Rollback in a course about ethics and aging.

But I got to see Herb Kauderer‘s fascinating presentation on my use of pop-culture references; Rebecca McNulty‘s excellent paper on predictions in my novel FlashForward, and my stories “The Hand You’re Dealt” and “The Abdication of Pope Mary III”; Nick Matthews wonderful paper on ethics in my fiction; and Andrew Kidd‘s truly fascinating “Factoring Unity: E.O. Wilson’s Consilience and the Science Fiction of Sawyer and Van Vogt.”

(Andrew brought me a most thoughtful gift: two old collectible paperbacks of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass scripts.)

Carrie J. Cole — who had been on the Not End of the World Cruise with us in the Caribbean last December — gave an excellent talk entitled “Science and the Staging of the Speculative Imagination: Interdisciplinary and Intertextual Performance Strategies.” Nothing like a theatre person to knock the presentation out of the park!

The Saturday night banquet was incredible: I heard many people say it was the best university and/or the best conference food they’d ever had. Although I had lots of old friends in the room, I made a point of sitting with a table of undergrads — and called Robert Charles Wilson over to join us. I think it’s fair to say the students were pleased to dine with us.

Julie Czerneda had to bow out at the last minute, leaving a slot open on Sunday morning, September 15, and so Robert Charles Wilson and I mounted the Rob and Bob Reunion Tour. We’re both working on books on a similar theme, and we each gave very well received readings from them in a plenary session: Bob read from his forthcoming Burning Paradise and I read from my forthcoming The Philosopher’s Zombie. The readings were introduced by Chris Szego.

Then John Robert Colombo, Élisabeth Vonarburg, and Mark Leslie Lefebvre joined us on stage for a writers’ panel discussion.

Then began the day’s three tracks of programming. I really wanted to hear a trio of papers touching on the theological and psychological themes in my work (including one by David Corman, who had just finished his master’s thesis on my novel Mindscan), but I was busy in a different session, listening to great papers by Rev. Paul Fayter and Kobo’s Mark Leslie Lefebvre, then giving my own talk on “Martian Geology and Paleontology in Sawyer’s Red Planet Blues. Nick Serruys moderated this session.

After a wonderful lunch, chatting with Edo Van Belkom and others, it was time for the first of the two afternoon programming blocks. I moderated the “Philosophy” session, in which Joseph A. Novak of the University of Waterloo presented a lengthy, fascinating paper on “Consciousness in the works of Robert J. Sawyer” and game theorist David Robinson from Laurentian University did a wonderfully lively presentation on “Games, Minds, and Sci-Fi.”

For the final session, I sat in on a trio of papers on the theme of Disability and Queer Studies, and then the conference chairs and I made a few closing remarks — and Cathy and Nick shared the news that the proceedings of Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre will indeed be published; they have already been approached by one publisher and are evaluating options, but a printed book of the papers is forthcoming.

This was doubtless the biggest and best academic conference about Canadian science fiction ever held anywhere, and it exceeded my hopes in every way. Cathy and Nick did a fabulous job pulling it together, and McMaster got 100% behind the event. I could not be more pleased or more honoured.

Some photos (first six by Carolyn Clink; last one by David G. Hartwell):

A few choice items from the 52 bankers’ boxes of materials comprising the initial donation, including a story Robert J. Sawyer wrote when he was eight, and the final manuscript for his Hugo Award-winning novel Hominids

Conference co-chair Cathy Grisé, Guest of Honour Robert J. Sawyer, Conference co-chair Nicholas Serruys

Special Guests John Robert Colombo, David G. Hartwell, Élisabeth Vonarburg, and Guest of Honour Robert J. Sawyer

Presenters Herb Kauderer of Hilbert College, Rebecca McNulty of the University of Florida, and Carrie J. Cole of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Tor Books senior editor David G. Hartwell, who holds a Ph.D. in comparative medieval literature

Presenters David Robinson from Laurentian University; Mark Lefebvre from Kobo; and Isabelle Fournier from the University of Buffalo

Last year’s World Fantasy Convention chair Peter Halasz and Dr. Carrie Cole

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre will surely be the biggest and best academic conference on Canadian science fiction. It will be held this weekend (Friday, September 13, through Sunday, September 15, 2013) at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

The conference is in honour of the donation of my archives to that institution. Special guests are Robert J. Sawyer, John Robert Colombo, Julie E. Czerneda, David G. Hartwell, Chris Szego, Élisabeth Vonarburg, and Robert Charles Wilson — plus academics attending from all over North America.

We’ve got multiple tracks, author readings, keynote addresses, and 30 academic papers — including several in French — in such disciplines as anthropology, astronomy, philosophy, theology, and English literature.

Admission is free, but please send an email to conference co-chair Cathy Grisé at grisec@mcmaster.ca to let her know you’re coming.

The conference Facebook page is here and the conference website is here.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

Cover boy! On the occasion of the release of the Chinese editions of my novels Triggers and Factoring Humanity, I was featured on the cover of the Shanghai Review of Books on 18 August 2013, which comes with the Sunday edition of the Shanghai Oriental Morning Post newspaper. My Chinese publisher, Guokr, organized a fabulous book tour in China; I was there from August 15 to August 23, 2013.

Here’s the cover in high resolution and the accompanying article (in Chinese) as a PDF file.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

Ten years ago today — Sunday, August 24, 2003 — the following short story, entitled “The Stanley Cup Caper,” was first published, in, of all places, The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper.

The Star had commissioned this story from me in honour of the fact that the World Science Fiction Convention, or Worldcon, was about to begin in Toronto. Since it had been thirty years since the Worldcon had last been in Toronto, the editor asked me to predict what Toronto might be like thirty-odd years in the future (in the early 2030s).

When I received the commission, I’d just finished reading Dan Brown’s runaway bestseller The Da Vinci Code (which I had rather enjoyed), and so puzzles and mysteries were very much on my mind. I’m not a hockey fan — sacrilege for a Canadian, I know — but somehow hit on this premise.

To my delight, the four opening words — a riff on famed Canadian sportscaster Foster Hewitt‘s trademark “He shoots! He scores!” — are included (along with twenty-two other quotes from me) in The Penguin Dictionary of Popular Canadian Quotations, edited by John Robert Colombo.

Here’s the story:

“She shoots! She scores! For the first time in sixty-seven years, the Toronto Maple Leafs have won the Stanley Cup! Captain Karen Lopez and her team have skated to victory as the 2031 NHL champions. The hometown crowd here is going wild, and — wait! Wait! Ladies and gentlemen, this is incredible … we’ve just received word that the Stanley Cup trophy is missing!”

Detectives Joginder Singh and Trista Chong let their car drive them east along the Gardiner Expressway. At Bathurst, the vehicle headed down into the tunnel. Jo shuddered; he hated the underground portion of the Gardiner. Sadly, his fear of tunnels also kept him from using the subway, even though it now ran all the way from Pearson Airport to the Pickering Solar Power Plant.

Continue reading »

Triggers byr Robert J. Sawyer is #1 on the paperback bestsellers list in the July 2013 issue of Locus, the US trade journal of the science fiction and fantasy field. The list covers the data period of April 2013. In second place: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin.

Meanwhile, Red Planet Blues by Robert J. Sawyer is #3 on the hardcover bestseller list, making it the highest-ranked science fiction (as opposed to fantasy) title for the month.

The complete bestsellers lists are here.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

with special guests:

• Robert J. Sawyer
  
• John Robert Colombo
  
• Julie E. Czerneda
  
• David G. Hartwell
  
• Élisabeth Vonarburg
  
• Robert Charles Wilson
  
• Chris Szego

Multiple paper tracks!
Banquet!
Author Readings!

Everyone is welcome. Free admission! (Optional Saturday night banquet: $50.)

Web page for the conference is bit.ly/mcmaster-sf.

The tentative program schedule is here.

The Facebook event page is here.

More about the conference is here.

And the original Call for Papers for this academic conference on Canadian science fiction is here (plus a flyer announcing the conference is here).

Accommodations for the conference are available at Staybridge Suites in downtown Hamilton, approximately 10 minutes from McMaster University by taxi or 15 minutes by bus. Please call the hotel as soon as possible to book your suite (905-527-1001). All rooms will be held for the “Science Fiction Interdisciplinary Genre” group until August 23rd, which is three weeks prior to arrival. Those of you who know one another may opt to save on expenses by sharing a suite, each of which is equipped with a queen-sized bed as well as a pull-out, in addition to a kitchenette.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

Over on Quora, someone asked why FlashForward was canceled, and someone else replied with an answer that was partially right but significantly wrong. That answer:

The Lost curse. In the 6 years that Lost was on the air, ABC failed at using that monster hit to launch any new shows. The term “Flash Forward” was first used in the third season finale of Lost, and the show featured Lost alumni Dominic Monaghan and Sonya Walger.

ABC launched FlashForward as well as a remake of V (with Lost‘s Elizabeth Mitchell) as shows that would take on Lost‘s audience after it ended. At the end, it was reported a choice between FlashForward and V over which one would continue, and ABC went with V, which only lasted one more season.

My response:

Despite XXXX’s comment (he asserts “the term ‘Flash Forward’ was first used in the third season finale of Lost” — as if that’s where the idea came from), that’s just not true.

FlashForward the TV series was an adaptation of my 1999 novel of the same name, published five years before the first season of Lost debuted.

More: as announced in Variety on 26 September 2002 — two years before Lost debuted — David Goyer was attached then to write, direct, and produce an adaptation of my novel FlashForward … which is precisely what Dave eventually went on to do (co-authoring the pilot with Brannon Braga).

Also, the pilot script for FlashForward was developed at HBO (which is why HBO is credited on each episode); HBO was not looking to imitate anything on broadcast TV. The casting of Sonya Walger (who appeared in only 14 of the 121 episodes of Lost) as FlashForward‘s female lead was in no way an attempt at Lost-related stunt casting.

FlashForward was cancelled for two reasons. The first was scheduling: the series was not suitable viewing for 8:00 p.m. / 7:00 p.m. Central (the traditional TV “family hour”), but that’s when ABC slotted it (and kept it for its entire run): the intensity, violence, gun use, and presence of a major lesbian character, brilliantly played by Christine Woods, is not what America wanted in that timeslot. So, by the end of the first season, the ratings were low.

The second reason was budgetary: Stephen McPherson, then president of ABC, did only want to keep one science-fiction show. In the end, we were delivering the same ratings each week as V, also on ABC, but we were produced in Los Angeles and had an expensive cast; V was produced in Vancouver and had a much less expensive cast. So, V was (sort of) renewed and we were not.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release:

• Anderson and Savile win New $1,000 Science-Fiction Award
• New $1,000 cash award for science fiction writing
  
• Theme: interstellar fiction
  
• Finalists: Anderson & Savile, Benford & Niven, Bishop, Bova, McDevitt, Reynolds, and Santos.
  
• Coordinating judge: Robert J. Sawyer
  
• Presented at the 2013 Campbell Conference

On Friday, June 14, 2013, the Lifeboat Foundation presented the “Lifeboat to the Stars” award to Kevin J. Anderson and Steven Savile for their collaborative book Tau Ceti. The authors split the $1,000 prize, and each received a handsome trophy in an hourglass design.

Anderson was in attendance at the ceremony, and received the award from SFWA Grand Master James Gunn; Savile, who lives in Sweden was not able to join us at the event.

The “Lifeboat to the Stars” award honors the best work of science fiction of any length published in 2011 or 2012 contributing to an understanding of the benefits, means, and difficulties of interstellar travel.

Editors and readers were invited to nominate eligible works and a judging panel drawn from Lifeboat Foundation advisory boards winnowed that 50-plus-item longlist down to a final seven-item ballot:

• Anderson, Kevin J. and Steve Savile. Tau Ceti. Arc Manor, 2011.

• Benford, Gregory and Larry Niven. Bowl of Heaven. Tor, 2012.

• Bishop, Michael. “Twenty Lights to `The Land of Snow'” from the anthology Going Interstellar, Baen, 2012.

• Bova, Ben. “A Country for Old Men” from the anthology Going Interstellar, Baen, 2012.

• McDevitt, Jack. “Lucy” from the anthology Going Interstellar, Baen, 2012.

• Reynolds, Alastair. Blue Remembered Earth. Ace, 2012.

• Santos, Domingo (translated by Stanley Schmidt). “The First Day of Eternity.” Analog, January-February 2011.

The award was suggested by Frederik Pohl and James Gunn, and named by Gunn.

Tau Ceti was the first volume in Phoenix Pick’s “Stellar Guild” series, which pairs an established writers — in this case, New York Times bestseller Anderson — with his or her handpicked protege to write a pair of connected works. Mike Resnick is the series editor. Phoenix Pick is the science-fiction imprint of Arc Manor Publishers, Rockville, Maryland.

Says coordinating judge Sawyer: “Tau Ceti tells of a generation ship approaching that nearby sun-like star of the title, and it does so in an unusual manner, combing a novella by Kevin J. Anderson and a sequel novelette by Steven Savile into one fast-paced, character-rich, technologically accurate adventure story.

“In the capable hands of both authors, interstellar travel doesn’t just seem possible but inevitable, and they bring real depth to the issues of generation ships, the politics surrounding such voyages, and the danger A.E. van Vogt first alerted us to in the classic ‘Far Centaurus,’ namely that just because you head out first doesn’t mean you’ll arrive first.

“Tau Ceti is a terrific work of hard science fiction, and the Lifeboat Foundation congratulations the authors and their editor, Mike Resnick.”

####

About The Lifeboat Foundation

The Lifeboat Foundation is a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards the Singularity.

Lifeboat.com

Photo of Kevin J. Anderson (holding trophy) and presenter James Gunn by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

My younger brother Alan Bruce Sawyer passed away Saturday night. He was born September 12, 1961, in Toronto, and died in that city June 8, 2013, at the age of 51.

Alan was diagnosed with lung cancer last September [2012], and by the time it was diagnosed, it had already metastasized to his brain, abdomen, and sternum. He passed away Saturday, June 8, at 10:00 p.m., at home, after a very rapid decline. He had been well enough to attend a play at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, on Thursday night, and really only went into steep decline three hours before he passed away.

Alan was 16 months younger than me. A digital-content producer, he won an International Emmy Award for his work on the webisode companions for the TV series Endgame. He had no children, but is survived by his wife Kim. His website: twosolitudes.com

This death notice appeared in the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail on Monday, June 9; it has details about visitation and the celebration of life:

SAWYER, Alan Bruce – 51, passed away at home June 8. Beloved husband of Kim Sawyer (Piekarz), dear son of John and Virginia. Fondly missed by Peter (Jacquie) and Rob (Carolyn) and Piekarz family.

Visitation Wednesday, June 12, 2-4 p.m. and Thursday, June 13, 6-8 p.m. Celebration of Life Saturday, June 15, 10:30 a.m., all at GIFFEN-MACK, 2570 Danforth Ave., 416-698-3121.

Due to allergies, please no flowers. If so desired, donations to the Hospital for Sick Children.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email

Back in 2006, when my novella “Identity Theft” — which makes up the first ten chapters of my new novel Red Planet Blues — was a Nebula Award finalist, I was asked to comment about the story’s origin for the SFWA Bulletin. Here’s what I had to say (“Identity Theft” first appeared in Mike Resnick‘s Science Fiction Book Club anthology Down These Dark Spaceways):

There’s a tendency in our industry to pooh-pooh theme anthologies. Somehow, the notion of writing a story to order strikes people as inherently wrong, and the idea that a story might be commissioned, as opposed to written on spec, seems outrageous to some. I disagree. For me, many of the greatest challenges I’ve faced as a writer came from anthology commissions, and they’ve resulted in me successfully going in directions I simply never would have otherwise.

When I sit down to do a new novel contract, my publisher is, quite rightly, looking for me to propose something that plays to my strengths and builds on my existing audience (and all those who complain about commissioned stories never seem to discuss novel commissions, the engine that drives our industry — but I digress). But when a short-fiction editor approaches me for a theme anthology, very often it’s in an area that is new to me, and those commissions have inspired me to produce some of the work I’m most proud of.

A few years ago an anthologist asked me to do libertarian SF — me, the bleeding-heart big-government Canadian liberal — and the result was the Hugo Award finalist “The Hand You’re Dealt.”

The same editor came to me later looking for horror — me, the hard-SF quantum-computers-and-aliens guy — and the result was the Bram Stoker Award finalist “Fallen Angel.”

My Hugo finalist last year, “Shed Skin,” likewise was commissioned for an anthology, one that also contained work by such other hacks as Nalo Hopkinson and Cory Doctorow, produced in honor of Bakka, the SF bookstore we all used to work at.

And this year, “Identity Theft” isn’t just a Nebula finalist, it’s also a Hugo finalist and has already won the world’s largest cash prize for SF writing, the 6,000-euro Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción — in blind judging, I might add. And yet, I never would have written it — or even once thought about creating an SF hard-boiled-detective story — if Mike Resnick hadn’t come knocking.

If it weren’t for theme anthologies, and commissioned works, if it weren’t for creative and versatile editors like Mike Resnick and Marty Greenberg and Julie E. Czerneda and John Helfers, and for publishers like DAW and now the Science Fiction Book Club that have vigorously supported the original-anthology market, quality stories like these by myself and dozens of other authors simply wouldn’t exist. My hat is off to those editors and publishers, and I am honored and thrilled to be the first-ever Nebula nominee for an original Science Fiction Book Club publication.

2006 Bio:

Robert J. Sawyer is the author of 17 science-fiction novels including the Nebula Award winner The Terminal Experiment (serialized in Analog as Hobson’s Choice), the Hugo Award winner Hominids, the Nebula and Hugo Award finalist Starplex, and the Seiun Award winners End of an Era, Frameshift, and Illegal Alien.

Three of his ten Hugo nominations and four of his nine Aurora Award wins have been for short fiction, and he’s won the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, Analog magazine’s Analytical Laboratory Award, and Science Fiction Chronicle‘s Readers’ Award, all for best short story of the year, as well as France’s Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire for Best Foreign Short Story of the Year.

Rob’s latest novel is Mindscan from Tor, and his next, Rollback, will be serialized in Analog starting in the October 2006 issue, with the hardcover to follow from Tor in April 2007. His novels have earned starred reviews in Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Kliatt, and Quill & Quire, have hit the top-ten national mainstream bestsellers’ lists in Canada, and have reached number one on the Locus bestsellers’ list. He runs an intensive week-long SF writing workshop in Banff, Alberta, each year, will be writer-in-residence at Odyssey this summer, and edits the Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint for Fitzhenry & Whiteside, one of Canada’s leading publishers. His million-plus-word website is at sfwriter.com.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
Website • Facebook • Twitter • Email