China, here I come!

To my astonishment and delight, my Chinese publisher has just informed me that I've won the Galaxy Award, China's top science-fiction award, in the category "Most-Popular Foreign Author of the Year." Go me!

And I will: all the way to Chengdu, China, to collect the award in person in August, and to attend the 2007 International SF/Fantasy Conference in Chengdu, where the award will be given. Carolyn's coming along; it should be a blast!

Others attending from North America, as I understand it, include David Brin, Frederik Pohl and Betty Ann Hull, and Locus editor Charles N. Brown.

Carolyn and I won't be continuing on to Japan for the World Science Fiction Convention the following week, though. Instead, we'll be heading back to Canada's far north for our writing retreat at Berton House.

By the way, this means, I've now won the top SF awards in the United States (the Nebula), France (Le Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire), Japan (the Seiun, which I've won three times), and Spain (the Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficcíon, which I've also won three times); I've also won Canada's top SF award, the Aurora, nine times, but I don't group that with the others because only Canadian authors are eligible for it; the Nebula and the Premio UPC are open to authors regardless of nationality, and the Chinese, Japanese, and French awards all have categories for foreign work.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site