Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

For your Hugo consideration: "Identity Theft" novella

by Rob - January 12th, 2006

For those of you who can nominate for this year’s Hugo Awards (everyone who had a membership in last year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow or in this year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles), may I politely draw to your attention my novella “Identity Theft,” first published in Down These Dark Spaceways, a May 2005 anthology of hard-boiled-detective SF edited by Mike Resnick for the Science Fiction Book Club.

The full text of the story is available as an Adobe PDF file and as a Microsoft Word file (so that you can format it any way you wish, or synch it to your PDA).

“Identity Theft” is a current finalist for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Nebula Award for Best Novella of the Year, and has already won Spain’s 6,000-euro Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción.

CANADIANS, PLEASE NOTE: “Identity Theft” is also eligible for the Aurora Awards to be presented this year at Toronto Trek.

(If you spot any typos or formatting glitches in these files, please let me know let me know — thanks!)

I love eBay!

by Rob - January 12th, 2006

Scored five — five! — high-capacity lithium-ion batteries, all in great shape, for my trusty Compaq Armada M300 notebook computers (I have two of them), for US$60 total, less than half the price of just one new battery. And — bonus! — turned out the guy selling them lives two kilometers from my home, so I just dropped by to pick them up, saving the shipping charge.

Compaq Armada M300s are great little notebooks — 1″ thick, 3.4 pounds, quiet. And, since they’re a few years old, they’re are lots of them cheap on eBay.

I’m also quite fond of NEC MobilePro palmtops, either model 780 upgraded to the 790 ROM, or an actual 790. They’re also common and cheap on eBay. (Nice thing about being a writer is that you don’t actually need the newest or fastest computers.) Put either “M300” or “MobilePro 790” into the search box on eBay and you’ll see lots of them.

Blogged on "Confessions of a Book Pimp"

by Rob - January 10th, 2006

I’ve been blogged! A fellow named Justin B. Maltais has a very nice and thoughtful entry on his blog about my novel Mindscan.

Fascinating essay on innovation in Canada

by Rob - January 9th, 2006

An online exclusive, from the website of The Globe and Mail: Canada’s National Newspaper. The author is Roger Martin, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto; my father is professor emeritus there.

Excellent resources for hard-SF writers

by Rob - January 8th, 2006

Solstation.com has some great resourses for hard-SF writers. As the site says, “SolStation.com provides information and software for those interested in astronomy and in writing, education, or entertainments related to science or speculative fiction.”

Solstation’s database of stars is tremendously useful; my current novel involves Sigma Draconis, and I got a lot of the info there.

Also way cool is the free ChView software (the name is short for CherryhView, referring to my friend, writer C.J. Cherryh), which produces three dimensional star maps, showing how the stars in the local universe are positioned relative to each other; I made great use of this back in 1999 when I was plotting the multilegged flightplan of the starship Merelcas (named, incidentally, for my friend Merle Casci, the wife of Toronto SF writer Terence M. Green) in my novel Calculating God.

French interview

by Rob - January 7th, 2006

The French SF magazine Phenex (number 7, just out) has a long interview with me, in French, conducted and translated by Marc Bailly; the issue is available online in PDF format.

Bruce Holland Rogers in the Toronto Star

by Rob - January 7th, 2006

Nebula Award winner Bruce Holland Rogers, who does a nifty by-subscription short-story service, is featured in today’s Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation newspaper; the article has a couple of quotes from me, and is by the redoubtable Bert Archer.

The trade in illegal fossils

by Rob - January 6th, 2006

My novella “Identity Theft” deals in part with the trade in illegal fossils (albeit, Martian fossils), so this story from today’s Globe and Mail caught my eye: “Beijing — A Chinese-Canadian academic and five other people have been sentenced to prison for trafficking nearly 3,000 dinosaur and other fossils from China, some up to 200 million years old, the government said Friday …”

"Identity Theft" will be on the final Nebula ballot!

by Rob - January 6th, 2006

SpacewaysWoohoo! SFWA has just released its Preliminary Nebula Award Ballot, which contains all works that have had signed, personal recommendations sent in by ten or more Active SFWA Members. My “Identity Theft” (which first appeared in the anthology Down These Dark Spaceways edited by Mike Resnick and published as a Science Fiction Book Club original) is one of only five works on the preliminary ballot in the novella category.

The Active Members of SFWA now vote on the works on the preliminary ballot, and the top five works in each category end up on the final ballot, which the whole membership votes on again. But since there are only five novellas on the preliminary ballot, all of them automatically make it to the final ballot, which means that “Identity Theft” will be a Nebula nominee this year.

If you’re a SFWA member, or a nominator for the Hugos (member of last year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, or this year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles), drop me an email at sawyer@sfwriter.com and I’ll be glad to email you the story for your consideration.

By the way, “Identity Theft” has already won the world’s largest cash prize for SF writing, Spain’s 6,000-euro Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción.

Secret Master of Prodom

by Rob - January 4th, 2006

My friend Andrew Zimmerman Jones points out that I’m referred to in this article over on Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. On the topic of how to move out of the slush pile, my editor David G. Hartwell says: “Get a personal recommendation. If Robert J. Sawyer comes up to me at a con and says I know this talented writer and you’ve got to read her right away, I will.”

Criminal review of one of my books

by Rob - January 3rd, 2006

Talk about an unlikely place for an SF review! The current issue of the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Volume 47, Number 4), published by the Canadian Criminal Justice Association, reviews my novel Hybrids, calling it “a useful book to any student or instructor of criminological theory.”

Rendezvous with Ramses

by Rob - January 3rd, 2006

My friend Paul E. Martens has just drawn to my attention that tonight’s episode of Nova on PBS is about whether a mummy found in Niagara Falls might be that of Ramses I.

Well, I’d dealt with that very issue in my Hugo-award nominated Humans, published in 2003 — science catches up with the Rob-man! In Humans, I wrote this, involving my character Mary Vaughan:

Daria Klein — one of Mary’s grad students — had clearly been in repeatedly during Mary’s absence, though. Her work area had been rearranged, and the chart on the wall showing her sequencing of the ancient Egyptian Y chromosome she was working on had many more spaces filled in.

Arne Eggebrecht of the Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany, had recently suggested that an Egyptian body purchased from an old Niagara Falls tourist attraction might in fact have been Ramses I, founder of the line that contained Seti I, Ramses II (the one portrayed by Yul Brynner in The Ten Commandments), Ramses III, and Queen Nefertari. The specimen was now housed in Atlanta’s Emory University, but DNA samples had been sent to Toronto for analysis; Mary’s lab was world-renowned for its success in recovering ancient DNA, a fact that had led directly to her involvement with Ponter Boddit. Daria had made considerable progress on the putative Ramses in Mary’s absence, and Mary nodded approvingly.

And, later on in the book:

“Daria!” exclaimed Mary. “How good to hear from you!” Mary pictured the slim brown-haired girl’s angular, smiling face.

“It’s nice to hear your voice, too,” said Daria. “I hope you don’t mind me phoning. I didn’t just want to send an e-mail about this.” She could practically hear Daria jumping up and down.

“About what?”

“About Ramses!”

Mary’s first thought was to quip, “You know, they’re only ninety-seven percent effective,” but she didn’t. Daria was obviously referring to the ancient Egyptian body whose DNA she’d been working on. “I take it the results are in,” said Mary.

“Yes, yes! It is indeed a member of the Ramses line — presumably Ramses the First! Chalk up another success for the Vaughan Technique!”

Mary probably blushed a bit. “That’s great,” she said. But it was Daria who had done the painstaking sequencing. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” said Daria. “The people at Emory are delighted.”

“Wonderful,” said Mary. “Great work. I’m really proud of you.”

And a much less swanky event …

by Rob - January 1st, 2006

In response to many requests, Carolyn and I are hosting another of our occasional open parties for members of science-fiction fandom and fans of my books on Saturday evening, January 14, 2006, at our home in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. If you’re reading this, you’re invited! E-mail me at sawyerrj@sfwriter.com for all the details …

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Book Lover’s Ball in Toronto

by Rob - January 1st, 2006

Looking for a truly swanky night out in Toronto? The Toronto Public Library Foundation is holding its first-ever black-tie Book Lover’s Ball on Thursday, February 16, 2006, and I’ll be one of the attending authors.

The web site is attractive but terribly designed, in that almost all the text is actually graphics, making it impossible to cut-and-paste. But I swiped this desccription from the ticket order-form PDF:

Join a veritable Who’s Who of the world’s most celebrated authors for a stunning evening. Mix and mingle with authors and other guests at an old-fashioned mystical Library cocktail reception. Savour a divine meal prepared by celebrity chef authors. Enjoy a fabulous novel-inspired designer fashion show, and much more!

Ticket Price: Cdn$5,000 per table, Cdn$350 per person (tax receipt for maximum allowable)

Fossil Hunter unearthed

by Rob - January 1st, 2006

Nice way to start a new year: Stephen Hunt’s SFCrowsnest, Europe’s most-popular SF site, just posted a review the recent Tor reissue of Fossil Hunter, the second volume of my “Qunitaglio Ascension” trilogy, calling the book “a delightful read.” (Please note that the review has major spoilers for the first volume in the trilogy, Far-Seer.) The review is by Geoff Willmetts.

WordStar connections

by Rob - December 31st, 2005

To my absolute delight, I got an email this week from Seymour Rubinstein. He was the founder of software maker MicroPro International, and co-creator (with Rob Barnaby) of WordStar, the great old wordprocessing program (originally for the CP/M operating system, and later for MS-DOS).

To this day, I still use WordStar for DOS 7.0, Revision D (the last version, released 13 years ago this month); I find it much more efficient than Word. Seymour had run across this essay of mine about WordStar that’s been up on my website for years, and he liked it! Woohoo!

If that wasn’t enough for WordStar connections, I also just got an email from a librarian who used to work in tech support for MicroPro, asking me if I might be interested in doing a reading at his library in Indiana …

^KS forever!

Mindscan paperback in my hands

by Rob - December 29th, 2005

MindscanWoohoo! A delivery man just dropped off two cartons of the Tor mass-market paperback of my Mindscan. It looks fabulous! It should be showing up in stores shortly (it’s a January 2006 title).

I’m pleased that Tor has priced it aggressively. My last mass-market edition, Hybrids, was US$7.99 and Cdn$10.99; Mindscan is the same length (100,000 words), but is priced at US$6.99 and Cdn$9.99.

John Demjanjuk ordered deported

by Rob - December 29th, 2005

My 1997 novel Frameshift (a Hugo finalist, and winner of Japan’s Seiun Award), which has just been reissued by Tor in a handsome trade-paperback edition, deals in part with the story of John Demjanjuk, the Cleveland autoworker falsely accused of being Ivan the Terrible, the notorious guard at the Treblinka death camp. The real Ivan the Terrible was actually a man named Ivan Marchenko, who bore a passing physical resemblance to Demjanjuk; Marchenko was never apprehended.

A U.S. immigration judge has just ordered Demjanjuk, now 85, deported to his native Ukraine. The Globe and Mail has the AP story, and there’s also coverage on the CNN web site.

NYRSF and Locus on Canadian SF

by Rob - December 29th, 2005

By coincidence, today’s mail contained both the December 2005 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction and the January 2006 issue of Locus. Both have a decidedly Canadian focus this time out.

The NYRSF features reviews of Peter Watts’s two most recent novels, “Three Snapshots of Canadian SF” by Ursula Pflug (discussing the magazine Neo-Opsis, and recent novels by Marie Jakober and Lisa Smedman), and an article about yours truly by Donald M. Hassler entitled “Robert J. Sawyer in Summer 2005: Mad Play,” which begins: “This past summer I discovered a couple of Robert J. Sawyer’s novels from the last years of the twentieth century, looked once again at his more recent Neanderthal novels, and ended with Mindscan.”

In typical NYRSF fashion the article about me says things like, “At the moment, however, I want to explore a deeper theme in Sawyer’s recent larger fictions. This is the borderless dynamic of narrative and speculative playfulness and joy that distinguishes sf writing from both popular media culture and conventional storytelling and literature … I suppose the high literary theorist, then, would label what follows in my look at Sawyer a study of intertextuality.” I actually quite enjoyed the piece, which touches on Illegal Alien, Factoring Humanity, and The Terminal Experiment, and rather like his description of me as “a gentle giant of a writer.”

The Locus issue features interviews with Canadian writers Geoff Ryman, S.M. Stirling, and Dave Duncan, and short articles about Canadian SF by me, Cory Doctorow, Derryl Murphy, Elisabeth Vonarburg, and Candas Jane Dorsey; my piece is entitled “The Old Pemmican Factory,” and talks about the Canadian fondness for hard SF and space opera. In aggregate, the various piece in the issue provide an interesting overview of that strange beast that is Canadian SF, although I did feel compelled to send this note to Locus:

In the January 2006 Locus, Candas Jane Dorsey says that my imprint, Robert J. Sawyer Books, has only published one book to date; that’s simply not true. We’ve been reliably doing a book every six months ever since our launch in April 2004. Out already are Marcos Donnelly’s Letters from the Flesh, Andrew Weiner’s Getting Near the End, Karl Schroeder’s The Engine of Recall, and Danita Maslan’s Rogue Harvest (the one title Candas mentions). Our fifth book, Nick DiChario’s A Small and Remarkable Life, will be published in April, and our new owner, Fitzhenry and Whiteside, has given me the go-ahead to increase the line to three titles annually.

North of Infinity II table of contents

by Rob - December 27th, 2005

Editor Mark Leslie Lefebvre has posted the table of contents for North of Infinity II, the second in the series of Canadian SF anthologies published by Mosaic Press.

My story “Forever,” originally published in Mike Resnick’s Return of the Dinosaurs, is included, as are, to my delight, stories by my writing students Karen Danylak and Doug Smith, plus one by Andrew Weiner, whose novel Getting Near the End was published under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint:

North of Infinity II contents

The book should be out early in 2006.

Time to move into the 21st Century

by Rob - December 26th, 2005

The problem with being an early adopter is you sometimes get stuck in old ways of doing things. I like to say I’ve had a blog since long before such things were fashionable, and, indeed, since 1990, I’ve been posting regular online updates about my career, first in CompuServe’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature Forum (the command “GO SAWYER” would take you there from anywhere on CompuServe), then for a while also on GEnie, and, later, on my own website at www.sfwriter.com — you can find update posts there going back to 1999.

But creating blog posts by hand with an ASCII editor seems a roundabout way of doing it these days, and so I’m switching to Blogger (although the blog will still be physically hosted on my website).

I’m going to start 2006 with this new version of my blog. For those looking for older posts, they’re still available on my website:

If you’re looking for blog entries related to the Rob and Bob Tour — the fourteen days Robert J. Sawyer and Robert Charles Wilson spent on the road together in the spring of 2005, promoting their novels Mindscan and Spin — those entries are here and here.

So, to the future!  Happy New Year, everyone!