Science Fiction Writer
ROBERT J. SAWYER
Hugo and Nebula Winner

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• January 2: Discovery Channel Canada airs Inventing the Future: 2000 Years of Discovery, a two-hour documentary co-hosted by Rob and Gillian Deacon.

• I began the year with 57,000 words of Hominids that I'd written in 2000; I went back to work on this, my thirteenth novel.

• On January 4, our car was totaled in an accident — being rear-ended by a Canadian Automobile Association tow truck. I had back problems for most of this year because of it.

• I signed the contracts for Iterations, a collection of my short fiction to be published by Quarry Press of Kingston, Ontario.
• My novel Calculating God won the Rocky Award, given by the Denver Rocky Mountain News for Best Science Fiction Novel of 2000.
• I wrote an introduction for the Bakka Books edition of the classic Canadian SF novel Consider Her Ways by Frederick Philip Grove.
• Dissatisfied with the current candidates, I beseeched Norman Spinrad to run for the SFWA presidency, convincing him to do so; Norman went on to win the election.
• Sold Polish rights to Calculating God.

• Sold Italian rights to End of an Era and French rights to Calculating God.
• Finished the first draft of Hominids on March 21.

• Led a week-long science-fiction writing workshop at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
• My "Above It All" was named one of four finalists for the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker Award for Best Short Story of 2000.
• Wrote a short story called "The Right's Tough" for DAW's Give Me Liberty anthology (published in 2003).
• Calculating God was named one of five finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Novel of 2000.
• Wrote a short story called "On the Surface" for the DAW anthology Future Wars (published in 2003).
• I was Author Guest of Honor (and my wife Carolyn was Poet Guest of Honor) at Eeriecon 3 in Niagara Falls, New York.
• Gave a guest lecture at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, Japan.

• Writing vacation on the appropriately named Retreat Island, British Columbia.
• I was toastmaster at the Canadian National Science Fiction Convention, in Burnaby, British Columbia.
• On May 22, submitted Hominids to David G. Hartwell at Tor and Stanley Schmidt at Analog
• On May 25, started a Yahoo Groups discussion group devoted to my work.
• Sold Italian rights to Calculating God.
• The British Columbia Ministry of Education adopted my 1982 short-story "Ours to Discover" for use in a province-wide standard reading-comprehension exam.

• Wrote a story called "Kata Bindu" for Gregory Benford's anthology Microcosms.
• Sold serialization right for Hominids to Analog.
• The paperback of Calculating God was released.
• Sold Japanese rights to Illegal Alien.
• Wrote an essay on Canadian crossover works in the fantasy genre for the CD-ROM to be given to attendees of this year's World Fantasy Convention.

• Led a four-day science fiction writing workshop at the University of Toronto.
• Calculating God came in second for the John W. Campbell Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of 2002 (the winner was Poul Anderson's Genesis).

• Frameshift won the Seiun Award — "the Japanese Hugo" — for Best Foreign Novel of 2000.

• Began writing Humans, the sequel to Hominids.
• Tor's trade-paperback reprint of End of an Era rolled off the presses.
• Wrote "Black Reflection" for Byron Tetrick's anthology In the Shadow of the Wall: Vietnam Stories That Might Have Been
• Gave a talk at a conference of the Life Communicators Association (communications professionals for the life-insurance industry) in Reno, Nevada.
• Calculating God hit number one on the paperback bestsellers' list published by Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field
• Wrote "Mikeys" for the DAW anthology Space Stations.

• Finished a draft of Humans, my fourteenth novel.

More Good Reading

Rob's 2014 Year in Review
Rob's 2013 Year in Review
Rob's 2007 Year in Review
Rob's 2001 Year in Review
Rob's 2000 Year in Review
Rob's 1999 Year in Review
Rob's 1998 Year in Review
Rob's 1997 Year in Review
Rob's 1996 Year in Review
Rob's 1995 Year in Review

Decade in Review: January 1999 to December 2008

My Very Occasional Newsletter