Sunday, May 31, 2009

June 2009 events: Saskatoon, Calgary, Regina

Robert J. Sawyer June 2009 events -- all are free and open to the public:
  • Bookstore Reading & Signing from Wake
    McNally Robinson
    3130 8th Street East
    Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
    Thursday, June 4, 2009, 7:30 p.m.
    www.mcnallyrobinson.com/saskatoon_events

  • EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Launch Party
    Featuring a reading by Robert J. Sawyer
    Venturion Art Gallery
    Suite 104A
    214 - 11 Avenue SE
    Calgary, Alberta
    Saturday, June 13, 2009, doors open at 6:15 p.m.; events begin at 7:00 p.m.
    www.edgewebsite.com

  • Bookstore Reading & Signing
    Book & Brier Patch
    4065 Albert Street
    Regina, Saskatchewan
    Saturday, June 20, 2009, 2:00 p.m.
    http://www.bookbrier.ca/

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Wake book trailer now on my site


It's been up on YouTube and the Penguin Canada site for a while, but my buddy Marcel Gagné gave me some extra server space to host more multimedia files on Carolyn and my websites, and so I've now got a hi-res version of the book trailer for Wake on my own website. Have a look. (It's just 70 seconds long, and is only a 7 megabyte file.)
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One appointment left on my first Saturday at CLS

Want a free critique of your manuscript -- and happen to be in Saskatoon?

My first three critiquing days are all booked solid now, except for one appointment on Saturday, June 6 -- I need someone to take the 3:00 p.m. slot for a critique (I don't want to fall behind schedule my first week!).

Normally, I require manuscripts (up to 5,000 words in RTF or Word DOC) to be submitted 72 hours in advance, but if you grab this appointment, as long as I have the manuscript by 10:00 a.m. Friday morning, June 5, you're fine. Any takers?

More info on my residency is here.
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May 2009: An Amazing Month!


What a month this has been!

For all of May -- starting Friday, May 1 -- I was "Author of the Month" at McNally Robinson, Canada's second-largest bookstore chain.

Independently, both The Toronto Star (on Saturday, May 2) and The Globe and Mail (on Monday, May 4) had me as answers to clues in their crossword puzzles this month.

On Saturday, May 2, I got to go to a press preview of the new Star Trek movie -- and loved it.

On Wednesday, May 6, I gave an invited talk at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Penn about the science behind my novel Wake.

On Friday, May 8, ABC picked up the TV series Flash Forward, based on my novel of the same name, for 13 episodes, to air starting this fall.

On Thursday, May 14, the Winnipeg Free Press, the largest-circulation newspaper in Manitoba, devoted the entire front of its Entertainment section to a profile of me.

The following week, Wake hit #1 on the Hardcover Fiction bestsellers list in the Winnipeg Free Press.

Also that week, the June 2009 edition of Communications of the ACM, the glossy magazine of the largest educational and scientific computing society, devoted its last page to me and Wake.

On Wednesday, May 20, the Waterloo Region Record, a major Canadian daily newspaper, ran a profile of me on Page 1 of the Front section.

On Monday, May 25, I gave the closing keynote address at the annual meeting of the Canadian Science Writers' Association.

On Wednesday, May 27, I gave a talk about the science behind Wake at Google Waterloo -- with the talk video-conferenced to all Google facilities worldwide.

And on Friday, May 29, Calculating God won the Audio Publishers Association's Audie Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Audiobook of the Year.

And much more! See all of my May 2009 blog entries here.


May 2009 "Author of the Month" Robert J. Sawyer at the McNally Robinson store in Toronto; this photo by Carolyn Clink also ran in the Winnipeg Free Press on May 14, 2009.

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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Sawyer talks about the web waking up at Google


On Wednesday, May 27, 2009, Hugo Award-winning science-fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer spoke at Google Waterloo, in a talk that was broadcast to Google facilities worldwide, about the science behind the World Wide Web gaining consciousness -- the theme of his new novel Wake. (Wake is set in Waterloo.)

You can listen to Rob's talk right here; he's introduced by Google's Alex Coman.

It was an amazing day. In addition to giving his talk, Rob, Hugo Award-nominated SF writer Paddy Forde, and science-fiction poet Carolyn Clink were given a great tour of new Google products, had one of those famous Google lunches, and participated in a fascinating roundtable discussion about the Web and sentience.

Rob has also been a guest at the Googleplex -- Google's worldwide headquarters -- twice: last month, when he was on book tour for Wake, and in August 2006, where he led a brainstorming session about the web gaining consciousness as part of the first-ever Science Foo Camp. That's Stewart Brand of the Long Now Foundation, Google co-founder Larry Page, and SF writer Greg Bear at that session below:


More about Wake
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Sawyer addresses Canadian Science Writers' Association


On Monday, May 25, 2009, Robert J. Sawyer gave the closing keynote address at the annual meeting of the Canadian Science Writers' Association (Canada's professional organization of science journalists), which this year was held in Sudbury, Ontario.

Rob's 52-minute talk to the CSWA (including Q&A session) is now available right here. (Matthew Dalzell of the Canadian Light Source introduces Rob.)
An excerpt: "In fact, those of us who are writing science fiction are by and large enormously well-versed in science, enormously careful about science, and I think serve an enormously important societal role in the public discourse about science." -- Robert J. Sawyer

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Friday, May 29, 2009

Calculating God wins the Audie Award!

My friend Alethea Kontis is in New York City at the Audie Awards and reports that Calculating God by one Robert J. Sawyer just won the 2009 Audie Award from the Audio Publishers Association for best Science Fiction or Fantasy Audio Book of the Year!

I'm super-proud of the team at Audible.com that produced the audio version as an original production for their Audio Frontiers series, including narrator Jonathan Davis.

(I had thought about going down to NYC for the Audies and BookExpo America, but just couldn't get away, what with moving to Saskatoon for two months this Monday morning.)

Still: yahoo! The full list of all winners in all categories is here.

You can get the Audible.com production of Calculating God right here.

The full list of nominees was:
Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer, Narrated by Jonathan Davis, Audible, Inc.

Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke, Narrated by Eric Michael Summerer, Audible, Inc.

Ghost Radio, by Leopoldo Gout, Narrated by Pedro Pascal, HarperAudio

Skybreaker, by Kenneth Oppel, Narrated by David Kelly, Full Cast Audio

Sunrise Alley, by Catherine Asaro, Narrated by Hillary Huber, Blackstone Audio, Inc.


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What's green and white and red all over? The U of S alumni magazine!

The University of Saskatchewan's alumni magazine is called Green & White, and the Spring 2009 issue has a nice little piece about my stint (which begins this Monday!) as Writer-in-Residence at the Canadian Light Source. It says:
Taking Up Residence

Award winning Canadian science-fiction writer, Robert J. Sawyer, will call the Canadian Light Source synchrotron (CLS) home for the summer. Sawyer states he will be immersed into the life of the CLS to get the “sensory experience of how scientists argue, eat lunch, their social activities ... and you can’t get that on the VIP tour.” Sawyer will spend time working on his own projects, including his next book Wonder (the third book in the WWW trilogy) and an episode for the first season of a TV show based on his novel Flash Forward to be aired on ABC. About half of his time will be dedicated to mentoring other writers on a first come first served basis.
The article is online here and the whole magazine is available for free as a PDF here (I'm on page 8). Kudos to the magazine for a fine bit of close-cropping on the photo of me that they ran, by the way:


(The Canadian Light Source is located on the University of Saskatchewan's campus.)

Many thanks to my friend Ian Wasserman for drawing this article to my attention.
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Wake audio book an Audible.com Editors' Pick

I'm pleased to see that the audiobook of Wake is one of Audible.com's Best (So Far!) of 2009 Editors' Picks -- one of 19 audidiobook titles -- and the only science-fiction one! -- to be so honored.

You can get all my Audible.com audiobooks here.
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Karen Gillan new companion for Doctor Who


Readers of my fiction occasionally think they can tease out details about my private life from what I write. One such surmise I hear periodically is that I must have a thing for red-headed women (they cite Lenore from Rollback and Tess from End of an Era).

I neither confirm nor deny this, but instead simply post the first official photo of the new companion for the Doctor, and say, "Yowza!"
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Wake has "a most satisfying ending"


MostlyFiction Book Reviews has posted a terrific review of Wake; the review is by Ann Wilkes, and says, in part:
Sawyer's treatment of the awakening of a consciousness from a man-made construct (in this case the web) coupled with the awe and wonder of a blind person's journey to sight is brilliant.
And the review ends thus:
Without revealing the ending, I have to say it had one. So many authors of multi-volume works don't bother tying up enough of the loose ends to keep the reader satisfied at the end of any but the last volume. When we have to wait at least a year for the next installment, I think the author owes us one. Sawyer came through with a most satisfying ending -- not even rushed. Wake also ends with a perfect last line. But no peeking!
You can read the full review right here (and read an interview Ann Wilkes did with me here).

More about Wake.

Other reviews of Wake

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Thursday, May 28, 2009

Lovely review of my Neanderthal books


The business blog Knights on the Road has just posted a very nice review of all three volumes of my Neanderthal Parallax trilogy (Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids).

You can read the review, by Reg Nordman, here.

Healthy day!
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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

RJS on the Dr. Howard Gluss Show


Robert J. Sawyer appeared on the Dr. Howard Gluss Radio Show on May 12, 2009, talking about consciousness, computers, his new novel Wake, and his older novel Flash Forward.

The interview is now available online as a two-part podcast:

Part 1 (11 minutes 30 seconds)

(when the break begins at the 11:30 mark, the rest of the MP3 is ads -- time to swtich to part two at the link below)

Part 2 (5 minutes 30 seconds)

Howard Gluss, Ph.D., is a psychologist. His show originates in Los Angeles.
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Richard Curtis on the Kindle and the blind

As always, Richard Curtis -- a leading literary agent -- has words of measured wisdom on the furor over the disabling of text-to-speech on the Amazon Kindle. You can read what Richard has to say on this topic in his blog at E-Reads.

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CTV buys Canadian rights to Flash Forward


The Globe and Mail is reporting that CTV, Canada's largest commercial television network, has bought Canadian rights to Flash Forward, the ABC TV series based on the novel of the same name by Robert J. Sawyer.
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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Nice fan mail from the Pacific Northwest

Got a nice letter today from a person in the Pacific Northwest whose father, blind since birth, gained sight in adulthood after a cataract operation. The letter made my day; it said in part:
Wake has a poignant scene where Caitlin is "seeing" for the first time. I related to that scene so strongly because of my father's first month of vision. Learning what a carrot was by LOOKING not feeling. Learning that a carrot is ORANGE and that Orange looks like this ...

Your writing of that scene and many others as they relate to blindness was so spot on that I was compelled to write to you and ask where you got your research. My parents use JAWS software and many other gadgets you mention. Thank you for being true and sensitive in your storyline.

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Monday, May 25, 2009

Star Trek credits not newbie friendly


Despite all the attempts to make the new Star Trek movie as friendly as possible for people unfamiliar with the franchise to follow, the ending credits actually assume a lot of Star Trek knowledge if you want to figure out who played whom.

Winona Ryder is credited as playing "Amanda Grayson," a name never heard in the film (and a last name that's a real piece of trivia, only uttered a single time, in the animated Star Trek). Ben Cross is credited with playing "Sarek," a name never heard in the film. Jennifer Morrison is credited with playing "Winona Kirk," a character whose first name is never heard in the film (but comes from the Star Trek novels). Simon Pegg is credited as playing "Scotty," a nickname heard only obliquely in the film. And Karl Urban is credited as playing "Bones," a nickname only heard in passing near the end of the film.

Easier-to-follow credits would have called the characters "Spock's Mother," "Spock's Father," "Kirk's Mother," "Scott" (or "Montgomery Scott," since the full name is spoken by the older Spock in the film), and "McCoy" (or "Leonard McCoy," since the character does introduce himself by his full name).

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Upcoming SF conventions with RJS

  • Program Participant
    Readercon 20
    Burlington, Massachusetts
    July 9-12, 2009
    www.readercon.org

  • Program Participant
    Anticipation: the 67th World Science Fiction Convention
    Montréal, Québec
    August 6-10, 2009
    www.anticipationsf.ca

  • Guest of Honour
    Con-Version 25
    Calgary, Alberta
    August 21-23, 2009
    www.con-version.org

  • Program Participant
    VCON 34
    Vancouver, British Columbia
    October 2-4, 2009
    www.vcon.ca

  • Program Participant
    Astronomicon
    Rochester, New York
    November 6-8, 2009
    www.astronomicon.info

  • Guest of Honor
    Capricon 30
    Wheeling (Chicago), Illinois
    February 11-14 (four days), 2010
    www.capricon.org/capricon30

  • Program Participant
    Ad Astra
    Toronto, Ontario
    March 27-29, 2010
    www.ad-astra.org

  • Guest of Honor
    OSFest 3
    Omaha, Nebraska
    July 23-25, 2010
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Sunday, May 24, 2009

Sawyer in Sudbury tomorrow

Tomorrow -- Monday, May 25, 2009 -- I'm off to Sudbury, Ontario, to give the closing keynote address at the Canadian Science Writers Association's annual meeting, and am also doing a free public reading and signing for Wake at the Chapters superstore, 1425 Kingsway Road, Sudbury, at 7:00 p.m. If we're lucky, Ponter Boddit will drop in!

(I'm very fond of Sudbury. Not only is my Hugo Award-winning Hominids set there, but I received an honorary doctorate a couple of years ago from Sudbury's Laurentian University.)

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Saturday, May 23, 2009

Robert J. Sawyer tribute zine


Alan White produced the wonderful tribute fanzine Flashing Forward with Robert J. Sawyer as part of promoting the terrific SF convention Xanadu Las Vegas at which I was author Guest of Honor last month. You can download the amazing zine as a PDF file right here. Needless to say, I'm incredibly flattered.
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Is Robert J. Sawyer a part of Canadian literature?

I was asked that question ten years ago by a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Western Ontario, who was preparing a paper on the relationship between Canadian SF and Canadian Literature. By Canadian literature, he said he meant:
  • the tradition of Canlit and its canon, from Wacousta and Roughing it in the Bush through the Confederation Poets, Frederick Philip Grove, Hugh MacLennan, Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, and more recent writers such as Nino Ricci, Anne Michaels, etc.;

  • the literary institutions that support that tradition (publishers, the Canada Council for the Arts, literary journals, Canadian Literature scholarly journals, university English departments and high school Canlit courses, etc.); and

  • the contemporary [Canlit] writing community
The academic asked within that definition of Canadian Literature:
  • How I saw my relationship to Canadian Literature?

  • Whether I was influenced by Canadian Literature?

  • Whether I saw myself as writing in the tradition of Canlit or in the tradition of SF?
The academic clearly had an agenda back then (we SF writers were not part of "real" Canadian literature, he felt). Here's the response I sent him in May 1999; I hope my answers made him think. (Of course, I could say even more today.)

I am a Canadian writer, born in Ottawa, raised in suburban Toronto, educated entirely at Canadian institutions, and currently residing in Thornhill, Ontario. Being part of Canadian literature is, I firmly believe, my birthright.

That said, my chosen art form — science fiction — is one in which there is very little domestic Canadian publishing. In English, there simply is no author who has published twelve science-fiction novels in Canada (the number I have placed with major U.S. publishers); it would be impossible for me to have published the books I have by staying with domestic publishing houses. (I have, however, had five-figure-per-novel advances offered me by Canadian publishers, including Random House Canada and HarperCollins Canada, who wanted to add me to their domestically published Canadian-fiction lists.)

Of course, I have studied Canadian literature (including a full-year course in this topic taught by Dr. Margaret Morris at Ryerson in 1979-80; it's perhaps noteworthy that it was in this class that I first met Tanya Huff, a major Canadian fantasy writer, who has been a close friend ever since), and I am familiar with what you term "the canon" (indeed, I used an epigram from Margaret Laurence's The Diviners as a chapter head in my novel End of an Era) — although I reject the notion of there being a canon of Canlit other than the totality of ambitious written works in all fields and genres produced by Canadian authors.

I'm lucky enough to have had considerable success outside of Canada's borders, but if one were to delete all of that from my curriculum vitae, I think you'd find what's left is a resume indistinguishable from that of a reasonably successful Canlit writer.

My work has been anthologized alongside that of Margaret Atwood, Katherine Govier, Douglas Fetherling, Timothy Findley, Geoffrey Ursell, Lesley Choyce, and W.P. Kinsella in the anthology Ark of Ice (Pottersfield Press), and as an anthologist, I have published work by Robertson Davies (in Crossing the Line).

Canadian authors I consider particularly influential on my own work include Davies, Martha Ostenso, Susannah Moodie, Stephen Leacock, and Marie-Claire Blais, as well as contemporary Canadian novelists Terence M. Green, Eric Wright, and Carol Shields [and I went on to write the introduction for the most recent edition of Frederick Philip Grove's Consider Her Ways, published by Insomniac Press].

I have studied creative writing at university (a full year course, again with Tanya Huff as a fellow student, under Marianne Brandis at Ryerson, 1981-82); and, in turn, I now teach creative writing from time to time at both Ryerson and the University of Toronto (indeed, this summer I am teaching at the University of Toronto's Taddle Creek Writers' Workshop alongside Barry Callaghan, Austin Clarke, Douglas Fetherling, and M.T. Kelly).

I speak occasionally to Ontario high-school English classes through The Writers' Union of Canada's "Writers in the Schools" program, and served (alongside Katherine Govier, Susan Musgrave, Rick Salutin, Daniel Poliquin, and Lorna Crozier) as a writer-in-electronic residence through the Writers' Development Trust's "Wired Writers" program (and have also been writer-in-residence for Maclean's Online, and am currently hosting the "Writers' Studio" on ChaptersGLOBE.com) [now chapters.indigo.ca].

My first fiction publication was in a Canadian literary journal (White Wall Review, Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, 1980), and I subsequently served as co-editor of that journal (1982); I have also been a contest judge for Prairie Fire, and I have a story of my own coming up in Canadian Fiction Magazine.

In addition, my work is widely taught in Canadian post-secondary institutions (including The Terminal Experiment at the University of Toronto [English department], York University [Multidisciplinary Studies department], and the University of Waterloo [Philosophy department]); Illegal Alien (in a survey of Canadian novels at Humber College); Frameshift (at Ryerson Polytechnic University); and Starplex (at Dalhousie University, in the course Modern Canadian Literature, English 4357R, taught by Patricia Monk, Ph.D.). The full list of required texts in Dr. Monk's course is:
  • Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale,
  • Robertson Davies's Fifth Business,
  • Margaret Laurence's The Fire-Dwellers,
  • Hugh MacLennan's The Watch That Ends the Night,
  • Robert J. Sawyer's Starplex,
  • Sheila Watson's The Double Hook, and
  • Jack David and Robert Lecker's anthologies
    Canadian Poetry Volumes 1 and 2.
I have read at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors (and am currently a consultant to Harbourfront both on cultural components of the 2008 Toronto Olympics bid and on the future of literary programs at Harbourfront), at the Winnipeg Writers Festival, and at the National Library of Canada (plus all the usual Toronto-area literary venues, such as the Idler Pub, the Rivoli Café, and the Hart House Library at the University of Toronto).

I am a past member of the Canadian Authors Association, and served as keynote speaker at their 76th Annual Meeting in 1997; I am a current member of The Writers' Union of Canada (and served on its membership committee in 1996-97). The Richmond Hill (Ontario) public-library board currently has an application before the Canada Council for the Arts to have me be their writer-in-residence in 2000; they sought me out for this position, rather than the other way around [and in March 2000, the Canada Council chose to fund my residency as one of only five library residencies they were underwriting for 2000].

I am profiled in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature and Canadian Who's Who, have been profiled in Books in Canada magazine, and a caricature of me (as part of a series of caricatures of distinguished Canadian authors) appeared as the cover illustration on the May 1993 issue of Quill & Quire (a publication that, incidentally, has awarded my work three starred reviews, denoting books of exceptional merit). I was interviewed repeatedly by Peter Gzowski on CBC Radio's Morningside and have appeared repeatedly on TVOntario's literary books program Imprint.

The Globe and Mail called my novel Illegal Alien "the best Canadian mystery of 1997" [review published in the 13 December 1997 edition] and The Ottawa Citizen put my novel Factoring Humanity on their list of 1998's top nine works of fiction (novels or short story collections, by authors of any nationality) [list published in the 29 November 1998 edition].

I have co-edited three anthologies for small Canadian literary presses (Tesseracts 6, co-edited with Carolyn Clink for The Books Collective, Edmonton [1997]; Crossing the Line, co-edited with David Skene-Melvin for Pottersfield Press, Nova Scotia [1998]; and Over the Edge, co-edited with Peter Sellers also for Pottersfield [in press]).

And I have made a point of supporting small literary magazines: I made a special arrangement with the U.S. editor who had commissioned my story "Just Like Old Times" to have it first appear in On Spec: The Canadian Magazine of Speculative Writing, Summer 1993 edition; that story went on to win both the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award and the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Award ("the Aurora"). In addition, I wrote a column for three years for On Spec. I've also been published in TransVersions, a small-press magazine published at the time in British Columbia [it's now published in Toronto], and that story went on to be an Aurora finalist.

As a reviewer, I've contributed to The Canadian Book Review Annual, The Globe and Mail, and The Ottawa Citizen. I'm also a contributor to The Canadian Encyclopedia, Books in Canada, and Canadian Author & Bookman, Quill & Quire, and Aloud (the newsletter of the Harbourfront Reading Series), and I am quoted in The Dictionary of Canadian Quotations, edited by John Robert Colombo.

I'm cognizant of those within the Canlit establishment who pooh-pooh writers who are enjoying commercial success, darkly hinting that although the books may sell well in stores, they aren't "grantworthy." Well, it is true that my books do sell well in stores, and it is true that I'm lucky enough not to require government subsidies in order to pursue my art, but to silence these critics I nonetheless did apply in 1993 for an Ontario Arts Council grant, specifically to demonstrate that there was nothing inherently ungrantworthy about my work; Books in Canada magazine sponsored my application. I received the grant I applied for, and the novel produced under that grant — The Terminal Experiment  — went on to win the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Nebula Award for Best Novel of the Year, to win the Aurora Award, and to be a finalist for the Hugo Award; the book has been translated into Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, and Spanish.

All the above is a preamble to responding directly to your question, "Do you see yourself as writing in the tradition of Canlit or in the tradition of SF?" It's a false dichotomy in my view; my work belongs squarely in both camps, and, as I believe the foregoing demonstrates, has been embraced by both. I'll end with a couple of questions of my own: have I ever thought about giving up science fiction? Yes, repeatedly — because of the sales limitations, the stigma associated with the genre, the desire to reach a wider audience, and the constraints sometimes imposed by the conventions of the genre. Have I ever thought about giving up being a Canadian writer, exploring Canadian characters, themes, and settings? Never.

Postscript: In March 2008, Quill & Quire, the Canadian publishing trade journal, named Robert J. Sawyer one of the "The CanLit 30: The most influential, innovative, and just plain powerful people in Canadian publishing." Only two other authors made the thirty-name list: Margaret Atwood and Douglas Coupland.

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And speaking of libraries ...

... just got a nice fan letter from a library patron in Salt Lake City:
Let me preface my praise with the fact that I have read all your works. I have just finished your latest book Wake. (no more than 8 min. ago) I found it wonderfully refreshing and deeply interesting. You are an artist. I thank you for continued infusion of literary excellence into my local library.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

Can't wait for the next two in the series.
*Blush.*
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North Perth Public Library blog on my Waterloo event

My event in Waterloo for Wake on Thursday was terrific (and my friend Marcel Gagné saved the day by getting the sound system working with literally seconds to spare).

And now the North Perth Public Library has put an entry about my event in their blog. Check it out.
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New Facebook profile picture


Science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer at work.

That's the Sixteen-12 Collectibles' Thunderbird 1 at the left, a DinoStoreus Triceratops skull in front of that, and the Master Replicas' 33-inch U.S.S. Enterprise at right, and beneath the Enterprise that's X-Plus's Robby the Robot.

I made this my new Facebook profile picture earlier this week. Photo by Carolyn Clink.
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Friday, May 22, 2009

"Random Musings" blogger reviews Wake

And very nicely, too, I might add. Check it out!
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OMG! CGI RJS!

This is so cool. Craig Rintoul of Bookbits took a 90-second audio clip out of the interview he recently did with me about Wake and produced a computer-animated version of me giving the pitch for the novel. You have to see this! (And pay attention to the things in the background!)

(And Craig's full interview with me -- with neat graphics, but not animated is here.)
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Wake in major computing publication


I worked very hard to come up with a plausible scenario for the World Wide Web gaining consciousness for my novel WWW: Wake, and I'm thrilled to have a chance to share some of that background with the members of the Association for Computer Machinery, the world's largest educational and scientific computing society. The last page of the June 2009 issue of ACM's glossy monthly magazine Communications of the ACM is a fanciful piece by me entitled Webmind Says Hello that outlines some of the notions I was playing with in my novel.

If you're one of the 83,000 members of that organization -- or go to just about any university (almost all subscribe to CACM), you can read my piece. I'm quite proud of it, and also proud of the other professionals who have taken notice of the work I've put into this novel, such as the Center for Congitive Neuroscience at Penn, which had me in to give a talk earlier this month, or Google Waterloo, which is having me in to give a talk next week.


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Wake #1 Winnipeg Bestseller!


McNally Robinson, the bookstore chain based in Winnipeg (the capital city of the province of Manitoba), has just released its bestsllers list for the week of May 17, 2009, and Wake by Robert J. Sawyer is #1 in hardcover fiction. Woohoo!

The Winnipeg Free Press, the major daily newspaper in Winnipeg, uses the McNally Robinson list as their own bestsellers' list, so I'll be #1 on that list this weekend, too. W00t!

Of course, I owe all this to (a) being McNally Robinson's "Author of the Month" chainwide for May; (b) the wonderful event I had at McNally Robinson in Winnipeg six days ago; (c) all the good folks who bought my book from the McNally Robinson dealers' table at Keycon, Winnipeg's SF convention, last weekend; (d) the wonderful profile of me on the front page of the Free Press's Entertainment section last Thursday; and (e) my appearance on CBC Radio in Winnipeg. In other words, to answer the question about whether book tours and promotion are actually worth doing, see above. :)

(Oh, and speaking of #1, Wake previously hit #1 on the Amazon.com Technothrillers bestseller list. Yay!)

Since the list as shown above is a graphic, here it is in text, so search engines can find it:



WINNIPEG BESTSELLERS
For the Week of May 17th (2009)
Titles in Green Manitoba Author

HARDCOVER FICTION

1. Wake
Robert J. Sawyer. Science Fiction.

2. Assegai
Wilbur Smith. Fiction.

3. Stripmalling.
Jon Paul Fiorentino. Fiction.

4. The Gargoyle.
Andrew Davidson. Fiction.

5. Wicked Prey.
John Sandford. Fiction.



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World's Biggest Bookstore interviews Rob


Jessica Strider, a bookseller at the World's Biggest Bookstore in Toronto, recently interviewed Robert J. Sawyer for her blog Sci-Fi Fan Letter. You can read the whole interview right here.

Among the questions and answers:
What was the hardest scene for you to write?

I've written lots of gut-wrenching scenes over the years, and some of those have been very difficult to write emotionally, but the hardest scenes I've ever had to write creatively are in Wake: much of the novel is told from a first person point of view by the consciousness that is waking up in the background of the World Wide Web. Making those scenes plausible and captivating was very difficult to do. I ended up using a lot of interesting linguistic tricks to pull it off, and I was delighted when my brother-in-law, David Livingstone Clink, who is a very accomplished poet, said that they read like poetry.
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Federations interview


John Joseph Adams recently interviewed me about my story "The Shoulders of Giants," which appears in his just-released anthology Federations. Among the things I say:
Those who’ve read my recent novels have seen that I don’t have much interest in antagonists; I think the idea that all fiction is fundamentally about conflict, and you need a good guy and a bad guy is simply not true; my latest novel Rollback has no antagonist, for instance, and I don’t really think there’s one in my upcoming Wake, either. Well, I wrote “The Shoulders of Giants” in 1999, when I was experimenting with making exciting fiction that only had good guys in it; that was a challenge, but I like to think I pulled it off.
You can read the whole interview right here.

Federations is available in print everywhere, and Fictionwise just released it as a multi-format ebook -- woohoo!

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Holy cow! I'm on the front page of The Record!

The problem with reading newspaper articles online is that you miss seeing the layout of the article in the actual printed paper. To my astonishment and delight, it turns out that the article about me and my novel Wake in today's Waterloo Region Record, a major Canadian daily newspaper, is on THE FRONT PAGE!

The article begins on A1, and is continued on A2. You can read the full text right here, and my commentary about the article here.

Click images for larger versions
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Waterloo Setting a "No-Brainer"

That's the headline for the article about me, my novel Wake, and why it's set in Waterloo, Ontario, that appears in today's edition of The Waterloo Region Record, the major daily newspaper serviing the twin cities of Kitchener and Waterloo, Ontario.

And, indeed, it really was a no-brainer: people would accuse me of making up a Canadian city that was home to the world's top physics think tank (Perimeter Institute), a place that Stephen Hawking is coming to visit; that is home to the makers of the one device the President of the United States has said he can't live without (Research in Motion, who make the BlackBerry); that has one of the world's leading facilities for research into quantum computing (the Institute for Quantum Computing); that has a major Google facility, that has a world-class math department (at the University of Waterloo); that has a major public-policy think tank, and is surrounded by Mennonites who reject high technology. I literally could not have made this place up -- but it really exists, in all its myriad wonder, just a hour west of where I live now, and it was my home in the summer of 1980.

You can read the whole article (by Brent Davis) right here.

And don't forget to come see me in Waterloo tomorrow night!

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The Globe and Mail already loves Flash Forward

The Globe and Mail: Canada's National Newspaper has a list today by TV critic John Doyle of "10 shows I adore already," his picks for the new TV season. Flash Forward, based on my novel of the same name, is on the list. Check it out.
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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

One thousand autographs!

Actually, 1,050 -- the number of autographs I recently finished signing for The Easton Press, which is producing a signed, numbered leather-bound limited edition of Wake.

The edition is limited to 900 copies; the extra sheets were in case any got damaged during binding. Whew!
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Busy, busy, busy

Over the weekend, I was in Winnipeg for an appearance at McNally Robinson (which totally rocked) and Keycon (ditto). Did interviews there for the local CBC radio station and for National Geographic Online.

Today, I was off to Humber College in Toronto to speak to Cynthia Good's class in the Creative Book Publishing Program there. Also, did a lengthy interview for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record (major Canadian daily newspaper -- it'll be in tomorrow's (Wednesday's) edition.

Tomorrow, I'm off to Waterloo, where I've got four media interviews lined up (two TV, two radio), to promote Wake and my Thursday evening event there, plus will try to bang out a guest editorial for On Spec magazine on my netbook computer while Carolyn does the driving.

Plus tons of other stuff; I'm really looking forward to getting away to Saskatoon for a couple of months!
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National Geographic Online interviews RJS


In a nice little piece about using lasers to communicate with submarines right here.
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Now booking writer-in-residence appointments in Saskatoon


They're going fast! I'm only doing 30 or so one-on-one hour-long consultations while I'm writer-in-residence at the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon in June and July, and I've just booked the first six appointments. If you want one -- absolutely free! -- email me at sawyer@sfwriter.com.

I'll read up to 5,000 words of manuscript (which you need to submit a minimum of 72 hours in advance of your appointment as a Word DOC (not .DOCX) or RTF file, and I'll spend an hour going over it with you in person. All appointments must be face-to-face, and they must take place at the Canadian Light Source. I'm offering daytime and evening appointments on weekdays and weekend appointments during the day.

(If you don't have a manuscript and just want an hour-long chat with me to ask questions, that's cool, too.)

More about my residency is here.
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Hey, Waterloo, Wake Up! :)


My new novel Wake is set in Waterloo, Ontario -- Canada's computing and high-tech capital -- and to celebrate that, I'm doing a reading and Q&A at The Waterloo Entertainment Centre on Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m.

Admission is $10 (to defray facilities rental) or free if you buy a copy of Wake from Words Worth Books in Waterloo either in advance of the event or at the beginning of the event. It'll be a blast -- come on out! More info is here.

Pictured: the apartment building at 11 Austin Drive in Waterloo that Carolyn and I lived in back in the summer of 1980; ours was the basement unit to the right of the front door, behind the tree.
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Gliksins ate Neanderthals

Fascinating article about, among other things, Homo sapiens dining on Homo neanderthalensis in Britain's Daily Mail.

Of course, I said we were the cause of the Neanderthals demise in my novel Hominids and its sequels. :)
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Flash Forward timeslot: Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern

So says TV By The Numbers, which has the whole ABC fall schedule, as announced yesterday, here.

THURSDAYS:

8:00 p.m.: “Flash Forward”

9:00 p.m.: “Grey’s Anatomy”

10:00 p.m.: “Private Practice”

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Monday, May 18, 2009

SF Site reviews Wake


SF Site is the wonderful web site run by Rodger Turner. It's just posted a review of my novel WWW: Wake as the lead review for their Mid-May 2009 issue; the reviewer is Michael M. Jones, and it's a particularly gratifying review because, praise aside, Jones clearly gets the book. :)

The whole review is here.

Some excerpts:
Now, the idea of a digital intelligence forming online is not a new one, by any means. But I daresay most of the people tackling such a concept automatically assumed, as I always did, that such a being would not only have access to the shared data of the Internet, but the conceptual groundings needed to understand it. And that's where Robert J. Sawyer turns this into such a fascinating, satisfying piece. In a deliberate parallel to the story of Helen Keller, he tackles the need for building a common base of understanding, before unleashing an education creation upon the Web's vast storehouse of knowledge.

More than that, Sawyer is an author who's not afraid to make his readers think. The topics invoked in this book cover a wide range, from math to theories of intelligence, from what it's like to be blind, to cutting edge technology. He incorporates the myriad resources available online, including Livejournal, Wikipedia, Google, Project Gutenberg, WordNet, and perhaps the most interesting site of all, Cyc, a real site aimed at codifying knowledge so that anyone, including emerging artificial intelligences, might understand.

He ties in Internet topography and offbeat musicians, primate signing and Chinese hackers, and creates a wholly believable set of circumstances spinning out of a world we can as good as reach out to touch. There's quite a lot to consider, and Sawyer's good at making it accessible to the average reader.

Sawyer has delivered another excellent tale.
More about Wake
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Two nice fan letters about Wake just received

One of them says:
I finished reading Wake and I wanted to tell you that your book and your ending are superb. I was wondering (without knowing it) as I read the book how you would end it, how it could be "self-contained" yet leave us at a place ready for the middle W in the trilogy. You pulled it off as if it were easy! Congratulations. I thoroughly enjoyed Wake including the ending and am eager to read the next book.
W00t!

And the other says:
01001000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01010010 01101111 01100010 00101100 00001101 00001010 01011001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110111 00100000 00100000 01100010 01101111 01101111 01101011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100001 01110101 01110100 01101001 01100110 01110101 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01110100 01100101 01101110 00101110 00100000 01001001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100001 01110010 01110100 00100001 00001101 00001010 01011001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101001 01100101 01101110 01100100 00101100 00001101 00001010 00101101 00101101 01001100 01100101 01110011
Sweet!

I have the coolest fans ... ;)
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Saturday, May 16, 2009

Sacramento Book Review loves Wake

Sacramento Book Review reviews Wake by Robert J. Sawyer right here, saying in part:
From an author who has written many books and has won just about every award a science fiction author can comes one of the most original and fascinating novels to be published in a long time. It’s one of those books that has just as much right to be on a fiction shelf with other literature classics.

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Thursday, May 14, 2009

Bookbits creates a Wake book trailer


Craig Rintoul of Bookbits came by yesterday and recorded an audio interview with me about Wake, which he's now whipped into a nifty book trailer for the novel. You can watch it on YouTube. Many thanks, Craig! (Runtime: 6 minutes.)

(Penguin Canada's trailer -- of a very different sort -- for Wake is also on YouTube; it runs 70 seconds.)
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Major RJS profile in today's Winnipeg Free Press

Morley Walker, the long-time books editor of The Winnipeg Free Press, has a major, lengthy profile of Robert J. Sawyer on page 1 of today's (Thursday, May 14, 2009) Entertainment section.

(The Free Press, a major Canadian daily newspaper, is the largest-circulation paper in Manitoba.)

You can read it online right here.

An excerpt:
Robert J. Sawyer [is] Canada's most successful science-fiction author. In the last decade, as his own career has exploded, Sawyer has become one of Canada's go-to guys for science explanations and prognostications.

As the author of novels that synthesize and dramatize the latest scientific thinking, he is often called Canada's answer to Michael Crichton, the late American author of such books as Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain.

"I like that analogy, except for one thing," Sawyer says. "Crichton had a pessimistic view of science and technology. I am very pro-science."

Winnipeg novelist David Annandale praises Sawyer for creating engaging characters and setting them in fast-paced narrative that contains accessible scientific speculation.

"He has, I think, one of these enthusiasms for science that is genuinely joyful," says Annandale, who teaches English and film at the University of Manitoba.

"And this translates into a drive to pass on to the reader a similar passion."
The article ends with me saying: "I love my job. In the best atheist sense of the word, I feel blessed."

And then there's the sidebar, which says:
Close Encounters of the Sawyer Kind

Robert J. Sawyer was born April 29, 1960, in Ottawa. Raised in Toronto, he resides in Mississauga with his wife, poet Carolyn Clink.

In the last 20 years, he has sold 20 science-fiction novels to U.S. publishers, and his books have been translated into 14 languages.

He is one of only seven writers in history -- and the only Canadian -- to win all three of the world's top science-fiction awards for best novel of the year: the Hugo (in 2003 for Hominids), the Nebula (in 1996 for The Terminal Experiment), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (in 2006 for Wake).

He has also won a record 10 Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (Auroras), as well as an Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada.

He's also won the top science-fiction awards in China, France, Japan and Spain; in total he has received 41 national and international awards for his writing.

In 2008 was named one of the "30 most influential, innovative, and just plain powerful people in Canadian publishing" by Quill & Quire, the Canadian publishing trade journal.

He is "by any reckoning, among the most successful Canadian authors ever," according to Maclean's.

He has made almost 500 radio and TV appearances, including Canada AM, NPR's Science Friday, and Rivera Live with Geraldo Rivera.

His award-winning website,
sfwriter.com
, was the world's first science-fiction author website and has been called "the best author's page on the Internet."

ABC-TV has just purchased 13 episodes of a new sci-fi series called Flash Forward, based on Sawyer's 1999 novel. It stars Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love) and John Cho (Star Trek).


May 2009 "Author of the Month" Robert J. Sawyer at the McNally Robinson store in Toronto; this photo by Carolyn Clink ran in the Winnipeg Free Press on May 14, 2009.

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Flash Forward promo from Lost season finale


... is on YouTube alreday. It's awesome. Check it out! (Click the "HQ" in the lower right to see it in high quality.)

W00t!
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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Asimov's loves DiChario


In the July issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, Paul Di Filippo gives a rave review to Nick DiChario's Valley of Day-Glo, which was published under my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint. The review says, in part:
Nick DiChario has written a new bonkers novel, Valley of Day-Glo (Robert J. Sawyer Books, trade paper, $15.95, 240 pages, ISBN 978-0-88995-415-1), which channels the proud and seminal shades of Robert Sheckley and George Alec Effinger into a vivid and unique tale of some outrageous and bizarre post-apocalypse doings involving a handful of hapless survivors. DiChario's dry wit and antic imagination propels this weird odyssey at an unflagging pace, and carries the reader effortlessly along.

You can read the whole review right here.
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Hardcore Nerdity interviews Rob



Adrienne Kress, Robert J. Sawyer, Lesley Livingston
Yes, my job is way better than your job  ... ;)

Lesley Livingston of the wonderful website Hardcore Nerdity interviewed me just before the start of my Toronto book launch for Wake on Thursday, April 30, 2009 -- and now our conversation is online as a podcast right here (runtime: 15 minutes, 27 seconds).

Lesley, by the way, is an author in her own right; her new novel is the great YA fantasy Wondrous Strange.
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Waterloo: The Centre of the Universe

A FEW WORDS FROM ROBERT J. SAWYER
A posting to the blog of Waterloo's Words Worth Books


I've long known that Waterloo was a special place. I lived there in the summer of 1980 -- has it really been almost 30 years? -- and was immediately aware of how much intellectual excitement there was in your city. Of course, the fact that there were two universities helped a lot.

Still, even I, a science-fiction writer, didn't predict a future in which one of the world's top high-tech companies (Research in Motion), or the world's leading physics think-tank (The Perimeter Institute), or one of the planet's top quantum-computing facilities (Institute for Quantum Computing) would all soon be there.

But now, as a science-fiction writer, I can think of no better place to set a novel than Waterloo, and that's precisely where my new book Wake is set.

Wake is the story of Caitlin Decter, a 15-year-old math genius whose father works on quantum gravity at the Perimeter Institute. It's the first volume of a trilogy; I've already finished the second book, Watch, and in it some CSIS agents tell Dr. Decter not to leave town, to which he replies: "Where would I go? This is the centre of the universe."

It certainly is in a very real sense for me. In fact, I got some of the biggest news I ever had while I was in Waterloo last Friday: I'd come there to help my friend Marcel Gagné celebrate his birthday by going to see the (way cool) new Star Trek movie with him, and after, back at his place, I checked my email, and received the wonderful news that ABC -- the most-watched television network in the United States -- had just ordered 13 episodes of a TV series based on my novel Flash Forward. As my character Caitlin would say, "Sweet!"

I spend a lot of time in Waterloo (and not just because my novel Hominids was the Waterloo Region "One Book, One Community" choice a couple of years ago), and I will be back again next week, on Thursday, May 21, doing a reading and talk at the Waterloo Entertainment Centre, 24 King Street North, starting at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free if you buy Wake at the start of the event or in advance from Words Worth Books; otherwise, admission is $10 to defray facilities rental. Please came out and say hello!



"Wildly thought-provoking. The thematic diversity — and profundity — makes Wake one of Sawyer's strongest works to date." —Publishers Weekly (starred review, denoting a book of exceptional merit)

"Sawyer's erudition, eclecticism, and masterly storytelling make Wake a choice selection." —Library Journal

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

"A fast-paced and suspenseful story full of surprises and humour." —The Saskatoon StarPhoenix

"It's refreshing to read a book so deliberately Canadian in a genre dominated by Americans, and it's easy to see why Sawyer now routinely wins not only Canadian science fiction prizes but also international accolades. His fans won't be disappointed, and readers picking up his work for the first time will get a good introduction to a writer with a remarkable backlist." —Winnipeg Free Press

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First time in 26 years a major US network has based a series on a Canadian novel


1983: HOTEL comes to ABC


2009: FLASH FORWARD comes to ABC

In the 500-channel universe, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the big-four American broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox -- still dominate in terms of audience size. Nothing on cable comes close in audience reach as far as dramatic television is concerned.

And it's with considerable delight and pride that I note that the Flash Forward TV series is the first time in over a quarter of a century that a big-four US network has based a TV series on a Canadian novel.

The last -- and, I believe, only previous -- time was in 1983, with the series Hotel, based on Arthur Hailey's novel of the same name (although Hailey was not born in Canada, and he left Canada for good in 1965, he was a Canadian citizen).

Now, as it happens, two of my favourite ABC TV series when I was a teenager were based on novels, but by Americans: The Six Million Dollar Man was based on the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin, and The Night Stalker was based on a novel by Jeff Rice. Having my novel become a series on ABC, of all places, is extra-special to me because of that.
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The ABCs of WWW


Douglas Adams famously observed that the World Wide Web was the only thing ever for which the abbreviation took three times longer to say than the full name ("World Wide Web" is three syllables, but "WWW" is nine).

But, man, reading all the coverage of the Flash Forward TV series in the trades, it's getting fatiguing to keep seeing ABC (three syllables) referred to as "the alphabet network" (six syllables), which is something Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and othes seem to really like doing. :)
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The best spaceship captains are Canadians


As I've long said, the best spaceship captains are Canadians: Leslie Nielsen (J.J. Adams, Forbidden Planet), William Shatner (James T. Kirk, ST:TOS), Lorne Greene (Adama, the original Battlestar Galactica), and Douglas Rain (HAL 9000, effectively in charge of Discovery in 2001) -- not to mention Keith Lansing in my novel Starplex. ;)

Now we can add to that list Bruce Greenwood, who plays Captain Christopher Pike in the 2009 movie version of Star Trek. He was born in Noranda, Quebec, in 1956, and studied philosophy and economics at the University of British Columbia.
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SFScope reviews Wake


Ian Randal Strock -- formerly of Analog magazine and Science Fiction Chronicle (and one of those who tried out for the job of book reviewer at Analog in the wake of Tom Easton's departure; the job went to Don Sakers) -- reviews my novel Wake over at SF news site SFScope.

The review includes a quite lengthy and detailed plot synopsis, which covers pretty much right to the end of the book -- a fair bit more synopsizing than most other reviewers would consider appropriate, so spoiler warning on reading it all. But he concludes:
Sawyer's story-telling style is almost invisible to the reader; he doesn't get in the way of his own story, and writes short, punchy chapters that keep the reader saying "just one more". (It's the type of book I love when I've finished, but hate while I'm reading, because I can't put it down.) His characters are fully realized, and I always finish his books wanting more.
The whole review is here, but, again, spoiler warning on the synopsis; if you just want Strock's analysis, read only the first and last paragraphs. :)
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Star Trek Imax


Star Trek is playing at the Imax theatre a kilometre from my home, and so, what the heck, went to see the film for the third time today (and the first time in Imax). It is stunning on the big screen -- the clarity and detail is amazing (in a real Imax theatre, at least).

I'm amazed by how good the makeup on the Vulcan ears is -- it's flawless, no matter how big you see it. But why are the computer displays at the Vulcan school in English instead of Vulcan? ;)

And, yes, the film is just as enjoyable on a third viewing as a first; this one will become a classic.
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