GenreCon Guest of Honour

Today, Saturday, May 12, 2007, was the final day of Phase Three of the Rollback book tour: by car in Southern Ontario.

Carolyn and I woke up at 9:00 a.m. in Sarnia, Ontario (just across the river from Michigan), and hustled over to the Sarnia Public Library for the sixth annual GenreCon, a free, public one-day festival of genre fiction held there.

I was the Guest of Honour, even though I could only be there for the first three hours. Still, I had a blast. I did a solo talk about science fiction from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. (the only solo event at the conference); the next hour was a meet-and-greet (with a lucky draw for three copies of Rollback, donated by H.B. Fenn and Company). Then there was a panel discussion on genre-crossing, moderated by Sarah Zettel.



A great crowd for Rob's talk.



Rob signs a book for Jeffrey Allan Beeler, one of the organizers of GenreCon (the other organizer was Ellen Dark)



Bestselling fantasy writer Kelley Armstrong and bestselling science-fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer



A panel discussion on crossing genres. Left to right: fantasy writers Caitlin Sweet and Kelley Armstrong, moderator (and SF writer) Sarah Zettel, short-story writer Jean Rae Baxter, and SF writer Robert J. Sawyer. Sarah was in favour of genre jumping; Rob was against it (unless you're very prolific, and even then you should do it under separate names); the conversation was quite lively.

GenreCon was a great event. Many thanks to the sponsors: the County of Lambton and the Bookkeeper -- and to H.B. Fenn and Company, Tor's Canadian distributor, who paid for my hotel and donated copies of Rollback as prizes.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site