Sunday, February 28, 2010

Aurora Award finalists 2010!


I'm delighted and thrilled to be on the 2010 Aurora Award ballot twice: in the "Best Long Form English" category for Wake, published by Viking (Penguin) Canada, and in the "Best English Other" category for Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction, which I edited for Red Deer Press.

The full list of nominees is here.


Robert J. Sawyer online:
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Friday, February 5, 2010

A polite reminder: Distant Early Warnings is eligible for the Aurora


This major reprint anthology -- containing stories, poems, a lightning round of short-shorts, comprehensive biographical and bibliographical notes on each author, and an exhaustive list of award-winning Canadian SF&F is eligible for nomination for the Aurora Award in the Best Work in English (Other) category:
Distant Early Warnings, edited by Robert J. Sawyer. Robert J. Sawyer Books.
Distant Early Warnings contains stories by Hugo Award winners Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, and Robert Charles Wilson, Hugo nominees Paddy Forde, James Alan Gardner, Nalo Hopkinson, and Peter Watts, and Aurora Award winners Julie E. Czerneda and Karl Schroeder, plus poetry by Carolyn Clink and David Livingstone Clink. The fabulous cover painting is by James Beveridge.
Robert J. Sawyer online:
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Thursday, January 14, 2010

Ingram now distributing Robert J. Sawyer Books


January 14, 2010 -- Ingram Publisher Services Inc. (IPS), the full-service book distribution company of Ingram Content Group Inc., today announced a new distribution agreement with well known and award winning Canadian publisher Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

Under the terms of the agreement, IPS will provide Fitzhenry & Whiteside and its wholly-owned associate publishers, Fifth House Publishers, Red Deer Press, Stoddart Kids, and Robert J. Sawyer Books with comprehensive distribution in the United States.

In addition, Fitzhenry also represents selected other Canadian and European publishers, including Thistledown Press, Hades Publications, Edge and Telos Publishing. These houses will also benefit from the increased American distribution possibilities that IPS offers.

"At Ingram, we are committed to offering our clients best-in-class solutions that will deliver long-term success for both them, and the book industry," said Mark Ouimet, Vice President and General Manager, IPS. "We are pleased to add Fitzhenry & Whiteside to the IPS family of distribution clients, and to expand the reach of their excellent list of titles throughout the US marketplace."

Fitzhenry & Whiteside is best known for its highly acclaimed lists of educational and children's titles, and its strong line of Canadian specialty titles. Just recently, Greener Grass: The Famine Years by author Caroline Pignat, a historical children's fiction title from Fitzhenry & Whiteside, was awarded the Governor General's Literary Award winner 2009. The Governor General Literary Award is one of Canada's most prestigious literary awards administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Fitzhenry & Whiteside currently has over 1300 titles in print. In addition to working with IPS, Fitzhenry & Whiteside is exploring print on demand options with Ingram's Lightning Source to bring back into print, many of the firm's out of print titles still under copyright.

About Fitzhenry & Whiteside

Based in Markham, Ontario, and in Brighton, Massachusetts, Fitzhenry & Whiteside is a second generation family company, founded in 1966 by Robert I. Fitzhenry, former Vice President and Sales Director for Harper & Row, and by Cecil Whiteside, former Vice President of Sales for Musson Books. The house specializes in geology, nature, history, biography, poetry, reference and children's and young adult titles. Our books have been honored with many awards, including the Governor General's Award, the Sheila Egoff Award, the Ruth Schwartz Award, and the Silver Birch Award, among others. Visit our website at www.fitzhenry.ca for more information.

About Ingram
Ingram Content Group Inc. provides a broad range of physical and digital services to the book industry. Ingram's operating units are Ingram Book Company, Lightning Source Inc., Ingram Digital, Ingram Periodicals Inc., Ingram International Inc., Ingram Library Services Inc., Spring Arbor Distributors Inc., Ingram Publisher Services Inc., Tennessee Book Company LLC, Coutts Information Services, and Ingram Marketing Group Inc. For more information, visit www.ingrampublisherservices.com or www.ingramcontent.com.

Contact:
Keel Hunt
(615) 321-3110

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Friday, December 25, 2009

The gift I enjoyed giving the most


I gave inscribed copies of the anthology Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction to four very special ladies today. The book. which is edited by me, carries this dedication:
For My Nieces

Melissa Jasmine Beckett
Megan Rose Beckett
Annabelle William Clink
Abigail Maria Clink

Canada's Future

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Sunday, September 13, 2009

Review of Distant Early Warnings


Great review of Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction, edited by Robert J. Sawyer, is here at The Crotchety Old Fan.
Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com

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Saturday, August 1, 2009

RJS Books co-hosts Friday night Worldcon party


Robert J. Sawyer Books, the imprint I edit for Red Deer Press (a Fitzhenry & Whiteside Company), is co-hosting the SF Canada Party at the Montreal World Science Fiction Convention, starting at 9:00 p.m. in the Delta Hotel, Suite 2815.

(But come an hour earlier to the same place for the launch of new novels by two of my writing students, Hayden Trenholm and Matthew Johnson, both of who have books debuting at Worldcon from Bundoran Press.)

And Robert J. Sawyer, Paddy Forde, and Robert Charles Wilson will all be signing Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction Thursday at 4:00 p.m. at the Fitzhenry & Whiteside / Robert J. Sawyer Books table at the Worldcon.


Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
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Sunday, July 26, 2009

The introduction to Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction


Click picture for a larger version

(Table of Contents)

INTRODUCTION

Thirty years ago, in 1979, John Robert Colombo published a massive anthology called Other Canadas in which he culled the best of four centuries of Canadian fantastic literature. That book was a watershed: it established definitively that Canada did have a tradition of science fiction and fantasy writing.

Thirty years ago, I was nineteen; I wasn't part of that book. Except for Spider Robinson, none of the authors collected here were. Colombo planted a seed with Other Canadas; what you hold in your hands is — if I may be so bold — the cream of the crop that grew from that seed.

Recently, Jane Urquhart came under attack for The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories, which she edited. To her critics, some omissions seemed glaring, some inclusions dubious. So, given that I've subtitled this anthology Canada's Best Science Fiction, let me define my terms and explain my selection criteria.

By "Canada's," I mean authors who live in this country. I'm frankly tired of hearing Canadians trumpet that actors Pamela Anderson, Jim Carrey, and William Shatner are Canadians. No doubt they legally are, but they don't live or work here. Likewise, I've left out authors who have decided to call somewhere else their home — my point being that there's no need to reach beyond our borders to fill a book such as this.

"Best" is, I grant you, a subjective judgment — but let me point out an objective fact: every author in this book has either won or been nominated for the Hugo Award (the top international prize for science-fiction writing); or won or been nominated for the Nebula Award (the "Academy Award" of the science fiction field, given by the inaccurately named Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, which has members in 23 countries, and has had a Canadian Region since 1993); or has won Canada's top SF book award, the Aurora.

(Specifically, Robinson, Sawyer, and Wilson have won the Hugo, and Forde, Gardner, Hopkinson, and Watts have been nominated for it; Robinson and Sawyer have won the Nebula, and Gardner and Hopkinson have been nominated for it; Czerneda, Hopkinson, Sawyer, Schroeder, and Wilson have won the best-novel Aurora, and Gardner, Robinson, and Watts have been nominated for it.)

By "science fiction," I mean the real thing: stories that reasonably extrapolate from known science; stories that might plausibly happen. Thirty years ago, when Colombo pulled together his anthology, he needed to combine SF with fantasy, horror, magic realism, and folk tales to make a book. Today, we can easily fill a book not just with real science fiction authored by Canadians, but with real science fiction by world-class writers who just happen to be Canadian.

In addition to the words in the subtitle, I decided to add one more criterion for inclusion in the present volume: Colombo had scoured 400 years of history for his selections; my goal is to demonstrate that there's a vigorous, active SF writing community in Canada right now. Every one of the stories in this book was first published in the 21st century. (This decision did have one sad effect: William Gibson, winner of the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Aurora Awards for best novel of the year, simply hasn't written any short fiction this millennium.)

There is, of course, a separate literary tradition of French Canadian science fiction. I commend to your attention particularly the work of Joël Champetier, Yves Meynard, Esther Rochon, Daniel Sernine, Jean-Louis Trudel, and Élisabeth Vonarburg. Indeed, this book's official launch will be in August 2009 at Anticipation, the World Science Fiction Convention, which this year is being held in Montreal, and is featuring programming in both French and English. Élisabeth Vonarburg is the Invitée d'honneur, Julie E. Czerneda is the toastmaster, and John Robert Colombo — at last getting his due — is keynote speaker (the first one ever at a Worldcon) for the convention's academic track.

Distant Early Warnings isn't dedicated to John Colombo because my wife Carolyn Clink and I dedicated our earlier anthology Tesseracts 6, part of the long-running series of Canadian science-fiction anthologies founded by the late, great Judith Merril, to him. But without John standing up and saying to the Canadian publishing world, and to Canada's academics, that there was such a thing as domestic Canadian SF, the field would not be nearly as rich and varied as it is today, and my hat is off to him.

This book isn't just intended for Canadian readers: after all, every single one of the authors included here has a significant international following (Paddy Forde is the one name that might not immediately ring a bell, since, to date, he has published only short fiction; however he has twice won the Analytical Laboratory Award from New York-based Analog, the world's top-selling English-language SF magazine, for best novella of the year).

And since we are also catering to readers outside Canada, and since I've gone on at length about the subtitle, let me say a word about the title. The Distant Early Warning Line — or DEW Line — was a string of radar stations in Canada's far north designed to detect incoming Soviet bombers during the Cold War. But the phrase also evocatively sums up what good science fiction does, providing us with advance reports of the wonders — and the dangers — that await us in all the myriad futures that might yet come to pass.

— Robert J. Sawyer
Mississauga, Ontario
April 2009


The book concludes with a section I've dubbed the "Lightning Round," introduced thus:
The world's top two scientific journals are the American Science and the British Nature. In recent years, Nature has been running very short science-fiction stories, each no more than 800 words in length, as a feature called "Futures." The initial offering was by none other than Arthur C. Clarke. Five of the authors who have longer stories in this anthology have also contributed pieces to Nature, which we offer here — a final lightning round of distant early warnings.
Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction

Edited by Robert J. Sawyer

Stories by Julie E. Czerneda, Paddy Forde, James Alan Gardner, Nalo Hopkinson, Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, Karl Schroeder, Peter Watts, and Robert Charles Wilson

Poetry by David Livingstone Clink and Carolyn Clink

Cover by James Beveridge

Published by Robert J. Sawyer Books, August 2009, an imprint of Red Deer Press (a Fitzhenry & Whiteside company)
Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
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Friday, July 24, 2009

DEW Launch and RJS Farewell at McNally Saskatoon on Tuesday


This Tuesday, July 28, at 7:30 p.m., there will be a launch for my new anthology Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction at McNally Robinson in Saskatoon; this will also serve as the farewell event for my two months here in Saskatoon as writer-in-residence at the Canadian Light Source.

(Note: this event was orginally announced for this Saturday afternoon but has been changed to Tuesday evening so that I can attend the 20th anniversary event for the Sage Hill Writing Experience.)

I'll be reading from my Hugo Award-nominated short story "Shed Skin," which is included in the anthology.

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Table of Contents: Distant Early Warnings

DISTANT EARLY WARNINGS
Canada's Best Science Fiction
edited by Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer Books [Red Deer Press],
trade paperback, August 2009

[Award wins cited are for the stories listed; all the short-story authors have won or been nominated for the Hugo or Nebula, or have won the long-form Aurora]

Table of Contents
  • "Copyright Notice, 2525" by David Clink [poem]
Introduction by Robert J. Sawyer
  • "In Spirit" by Paddy Forde [AnLab winner; Hugo finalist]
  • "The Ray-Gun: A Love Story" by James Alan Gardner [Sturgeon Award winner; Hugo and Nebula finalist]
  • "Bubbles and Boxes" by Julie E. Czerneda
  • "Shed Skin" by Robert J. Sawyer [AnLab winner; Hugo finalist]
  • "Halo" by Karl Schroeder
  • "The Eyes of God" by Peter Watts
  • "You Don't Know my Heart" by Spider Robinson
  • "A Raggy Dog, a Shaggy Dog" by Nalo Hopkinson
  • "The Cartesian Theatre" by Robert Charles Wilson [Sturgeon winner]
Lightning Round [short-short stories]
  • "Ars Longa, Vita Brevis" by James Alan Gardner
  • "Men Sell Not Such In Any Town" by Nalo Hopkinson
  • "The Abdication of Pope Mary III" by Robert J. Sawyer
  • "Repeating the Past" by Peter Watts
  • "The Great Goodbye" by Robert Charles Wilson

  • "Stars" by Carolyn Clink [poem]

  • Award-Winning Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy [annotated list]
  • Online Resources



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Distant Early Warnings


Cover art by James Beveridge
Cover design by Karen Thomas

Click picture for a larger version

Behold the cover for Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction, edited by Robert J. Sawyer, and published by the Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint of Red Deer Press. Copies arrived in our warehouse from the printer today.

We'll be launching the book at Readercon in Boston in July; McNally Robinson in Saskatoon on Tuesday, July 28, at 7:30 p.m.; and at Antcipation, the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal.

Distant Early Warnings contains stories by Hugo Award winners Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, and Robert Charles Wilson, Hugo nominees Paddy Forde, James Alan Gardner, Nalo Hopkinson, and Peter Watts, and Aurora Award winners Julie E. Czerneda and Karl Schroeder, plus poetry by Carolyn Clink and David Livingstone Clink.
Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com

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Thursday, January 22, 2009

Distant Early Warnings


This evening I delivered the manuscript for the anthology Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction, edited by me, to be published by Red Deer Press under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint this summer.

Included are stories by Hugo Award winners Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, and Robert Charles Wilson, Hugo nominees Paddy Forde, James Alan Gardner, Nalo Hopkinson, and Peter Watts, and Aurora Award winners Julie E. Czerneda and Karl Schroeder.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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