Saturday, April 18, 2009

The National Post on Wake


The National Post -- a major Canadian daily newspaper distributed coast-to-coast and headquartered in Calgary -- has a wonderful review by Michel Basilières of my novel Wake today, which says in part:
Sawyer is one of the most successful Canadian writers ever. He has won himself an international readership by reinvigorating the traditions of "hard" science fiction, following the path of such writers as Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein in his bold speculations from pure science.

[In Wake,] he has marshalled a daunting quantity of fact and theory from across scientific disciplines and applied them to a contemporary landscape -- with due regard to cultural and political differences, pop culture, history, economics, adolescent yearnings, personal ambition and human frailty. He paints a complete portrait of a blind teenage girl, and imagines in detail -- from scratch -- the inside of a new being.

Clashes between personalities and ideologies fuel the plot, but they're not what the book is about. It's about how cool science is.

Almost alone among Canadian writers, he tackles the most fundamental questions of who we are and where we might be going -- while illuminating where we are now.
You can read the whole review here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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2 Comments:

At April 18, 2009 1:06 PM , Blogger Brenda Cooper said...

Lovely review -- I guess I'm going to have to go get a copy of Wake!

 
At April 18, 2009 3:20 PM , Blogger RobertJSawyer said...

Let me add one little note: what's astonishing about this review is that the lengthy plot synopsis is 100% accurate. I've been reviewed hundreds of times, and almost never does the reviewer (regardless of the stature of the publication or the tone of the review) get all the facts right. Given that this review contains a particularly detailed synopsis, and that it goes into some of the technical aspects of computing the novel discusses, this is particularly remarkable. My hat is off to the reviewer, Michel Basilières.

 

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