The interviewer speaks

K. Stoddard Hayes, who did the recent SciFi.com interviews with me about Flash Forward, has some nice things to say about the novel in her blog here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Audible.com and Starplex

W00t! I'm thrilled to announce that Audible.com has just bought audiobook rights to my novel Starplex -- without doubt, the hardest hard-SF novel I've ever written.

Starplex was the only novel in its year to be nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula, and it won Canada's Aurora Award and CompuServe's Homer Award, and was a finalist for Japan's Seiun Award.

This brings to eleven the number of my novels that have, or will have, unabridged audiobook editions. I'm absolutely thrilled, needless to say.

Asimov's Science Fiction: "Sawyer's latest should gladden the hearts of readers who complain that nobody's writing real science fiction anymore, the kind of story that has faster-than-light spaceships and far-off planets and interstellar combat and all the neat things they gobbled up so greedily when `Doc' Smith was dealing them out. Here's a story with plenty of slam-bang action but no shortage of material to attract thinking readers, either. Sawyer deftly juggles half a dozen sweeping questions of cosmology (not to mention everyday ethics and morality) while keeping the story moving ahead full speed. His scientific ideas are nicely integrated into the plot, yet they also hint at larger metaphorical levels. Enjoy."

Analog Science Fiction and Fact: "Mind-boggling. A complaint often heard these days is that there's not enough `sense of wonder' in today's science fiction. Robert J. Sawyer's Starplex ought to lay that complaint to rest for quite a while."

Gregory Benford, author of Timescape: "Complex but swift, inventive but real-feeling, with ideas coming thick and fast. For big-time interstellar adventure, look no farther."

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald: "Starplex appears to be traditional science fiction — it takes place aboard a spaceship, and several characters are extraterrestrial — but it's actually a rumination on several very deep questions, including: Where did we come from? Where are we going? And the deepest of the deep, Is there a God?"

Library Journal: "An epic hard-science adventure tempered by human concerns. Highly recommended."

Science Fiction Chronicle: "Excellent hard SF, with Sawyer tossing stars, people and time travel around with reckless abandon. One of the best SF novels of the year."

Sci-Fi Weekly: "An audacious engineering effort that makes Larry Niven's Ringworld look like a high-school science project."

The Toronto Star: "Here, at last, is an ambitious attempt to exploit the possibilities that the genre is capable of."

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Nick Matthews's Ad Astra photos ...

... are here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

SciFi Watch on Ad Astra

See David Halpert's blog here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Ad Astra

Ad Astra, Toronto's annual general-interest SF convention, wrapped up today.

It was one of the best Ad Astras in years, and I had a great time. Highlights included drinks Friday night with David G. Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer, Terence M. Green, Merle Casci, and their children; giving a standing-room-only reading from Wake, a great panel today on ebooks, and a Robert J. Sawyer newsgroup luncheon.

Herb Kauderer took some photos of the luncheon:


Hayden Trenholm, Elizabeth Trenholm


Margaret Chown, Al Katerinsky


Robert J. Sawyer


Sally Tomasevic, Marcel Gagné

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Ottawa and Toronto book-launch parties for Wake

Penguin Canada is giving me two big Canadian launch parties for Wake:

• Book Launch & Birthday Celebration
  The Clock Tower Brew Pub
  575 Bank Street
  Ottawa, Ontario
  Wednesday, April 29, 2009, at 7:00 p.m.
  Book sales provided by Perfect Books
  clocktower.ca
  perfectbooks.ca
  
  
• Book Launch
  Dominion on Queen (pub)
  500 Queen Street East
  Toronto, Ontario
  Thursday, April 30, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
  Book sales provided by Bakka-Phoenix Books
  dominiononqueen.com
  bakkaphoenixbooks.com

(I was born in Ottawa, and I live in Greater Toronto.)

Click here for a printable copy of the Toronto invitation (not that you need one to attend -- all are welcome at both events!)

I'll also be in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Sudbury, Waterloo, and Moncton. See here for info about those events.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

This year's Hugo and Campbell nominations

I was out of town (in Florida) when the Hugo nominees were announced for this year. I'm sure you've all by now seen the list of nominees.

It's a good list, and my hat's off to all the finalists (sincerely -- I had nothing that was eligible last year).

I'm particularly thrilled, though, by the nominations of James Alan Gardner for best novella, and my writing student Tony Pi for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

(That's my Hugo trophy for Hominids above; this year's design hasn't been unveiled yet.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Ad Astra begins tomorrow

I try to make it to as many major regional SF conventions in Canada as I can each year. This year, I'll be at VCON in Vancouver, Con-Version in Calgary, Keycon in Winnpeg, the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal, and, of course, at Toronto's Ad Astra, which begins tomorrow (not to mention Toronto's FilKONtario the following weekend, at which I am Author Guest of Honour).

And -- you heard it here first, folks: special last-minute guests at Ad Astra this year: Dr. David G. Hartwell, Hugo Award-winning senior editor at Tor Books, and Kathryn Cramer, multiple Hugo Award-nominated co-editor of Year's Best SF, The Hard SF Renaissance, and The New York Review of Science Fiction.

I'll be doing a reading from Wake Saturday at 1:00 p.m. in the Crowne Room; the rest of my programming schedule is here.

Ad Astra website.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

ZTreeWin 2.0

My favorite Windows file manager, ZTreeWin, has just been updated to version 2.0, and now supports Unicode filenames. The latest version works with NT, 2000, XP, and Vista, and will work with Windows 7 when it's out. Get it here.

I love, love, love this program.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

I look good in leather

At least, The Easton Press thinks so. Just got word that they'll be doing a signed, numbered, limited leather-bound edition of Wake. Cool!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Penguin Canada accepts Watch

I have separate editors in New York and Toronto. Ginjer Buchanan, my New York editor at Ace, accepted Watch on Tuesday, March 17, and today Laura Shin, my editor at Penguin Group (Canada), accepted it, too, saying, "Watch is wonderful!"

Yay!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Nice photo of me

David G. Hartwell, my long-time editor at Tor, took this shot of me at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando last week. (And, yes, it was cool enough there that I was wearing a fleece much of the time.)

His other shots from the conference are here.

Photo: Robert J. Sawyer

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Pre-order the Wake ebook

Fictionwise.com has the ebook of my next novel Wake available for pre-order right here. The ebook -- and the paper book -- will be available April 7, 2009.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Fictionwise

Yesterday, Publishers Weekly posted a good article about Fictionwise, the company I buy most of my ebooks from (I've purchased 1,230 ebooks of various lengths from them), and the company that offers the largest amount of RJS content electronically.

And today, I got my Fictionwise royalty check -- cool.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Tonight's Supernatural Investigator

Hex or Hoax?

Tues., March 24, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT coast-to-coast in Canada on Vision TV

Jinxes, curses, hexes, the evil eye: many cultures possess their own brands of black magic. Are there really people who can harness dark forces to strike down their enemies? In this episode, Halifax filmmaker Donna Davies enters the world of sinister sorcery to learn about Newfoundland witches' spells, Haitian voodoo rituals and cutting edge contemporary research into the science of the curse. Produced by Sorcery Films Ltd.

Host: Robert J. Sawyer

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

More on Flash Forward at SciFi.com

Part 2 (of 2) of SciFi.com's interview with me about the ABC adaptation of my novel Flash Forward is now up right here.

The interviewer is Karen Hayes.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

SciFi.com (or is that Syfy.com?) interview about Flash Forward

Check it out: "Author Got Misty on the Set."

Above: David S. Goyer and Brannon Braga on the set of Flash Forward, based on the novel by Robert J. Sawyer

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Peking Man lives

I'm delighted to report that John Joseph Adams has just bought reprint rights to my 1996 short story "Peking Man" for his new anthology By Blood We Live for Night Shade Books.

"Peking Man" was originally published as the lead story in Dark Destiny III: Children of Dracula edited by my friend Edward E. Kramer, and it won Canada's Aurora Award for Best English short story of the year.

Above: Peking Man as he appears at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing -- setting, incidentally, for part of my new novel Wake.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Wake "suprisingly good" ...

... despite the "sexual innuendos." So says Flamingnet, a YA book review site with YA reviewers. You can read the 17-year-old reviewer's thoughts here. (Rating: 10 out of 10.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Nice!

So, I spent a lovely afternoon here in Orlando, in the shade by the pool, working on revisions to Watch, the second volume of my WWW trilogy.

My beta-test readers have been getting back to me, and I must say the response has been extremely positive, but these comments from one particular reader made my day:

The last ten pages or so of this novel had me exceptionally transported. When I finished the last page, I paused; and the next thought I had was, “He’s fucked. How the hell is he going to top this?” But I’m looking forward to finding out.

I spent a while trying to decide if this was the best “middle book” of a trilogy ever. The only thing that I could come up with that comes close is the middle book of F. M. Busby’s Demu Trilogy ... Watch is a great book.

:)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

RJS op-ed in today's Ottawa Citizen

The Friday, March 20, 2009, edition of the Ottawa Citizen -- the largest circulation newspaper in Canada's capital city -- has an op-ed piece by me entitled "All Screens Are Not Created Equal" about multitasking, computer use, and attention deficit disorder. At some point it will go behind the subscribers-only wall, but right now it's free to read online right here.

An op-ed is a signed opinion piece that appears opposite the editoral in a newspaper; it is an opinion piece by someone other than the paper's editorial writer. You can find older op-eds by me here (scroll down).

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Philosophical Speculations

Randy Jansen, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, has a great blog called "Philosophical Speculations: An Exercise in Wondering," and he recently did a very kind post about -- cough, cough -- Robert J. Sawyer, saying, among other things:

Many of Sawyer's books (although I confess I haven't read them all) are driven by a provocative thought experiment, often just the sort of thing that you'd find widely discussed in the philosophical literature. What would it be like if... everyone in the world were to catch a glimpse of the future? Or if we were to discover scientific evidence of a soul leaving the body at death? Or if we were able to return our aging bodies to their youthful condition? Or if we were to encounter an alien who believed in God? If you want to know what Sawyer thinks it'd be like if such things were to happen, read Flashforward, The Terminal Experiment, Rollback, and Calculating God, respectively. You can count on his books to engage your mind not only with plot and character but with ideas.

He then goes on to discuss Mindscan.

The post about me is here, and this is a general link to his blog.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Identity Theft and Other Stories contents

In honour of its nomination for the 2009 Aurora Award -- Canada's top SF award -- I'm going to post some excerpts from the my collection Identity Theft and Other Stories over the next little while, starting with this list of the contents:

• Introduction by Robert Charles Wilson.
  
  
• Individual story introductions by Robert J. Sawyer.
  
  
• "Identity Theft," copyright 2005 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in Down These Dark Spaceways, edited by Mike Resnick, Science Fiction Book Club, New York, May 2005.
  
  • Hugo, Nebula, and Aurora Award finalist; Premio UPC winner
  
  
• "Come All Ye Faithful," copyright 2003 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in Space Inc., edited by Julie E. Czerneda, DAW Books, New York, July 2003.
  
  
• "Immortality," copyright 2003 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in Janis Ian's Stars, edited by Janis Ian and Mike Resnick, DAW Books, New York, August 2003.
  
  
• "Ineluctable," copyright 2002 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 2002.
  
  • Aurora Award winner
  
  
• "Shed Skin," copyright 2002 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in The Bakka Anthology, edited by Kristen Pederson Chew, The Bakka Collection, Toronto, December 2002; first U.S. publication in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January-February 2004.
  
  • Analog "Analytical Laboratory" Award winner; Hugo Award finalist
  
  
• "The Stanley Cup Caper," copyright 2003 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in The Toronto Star, Sunday, August 24, 2003.
  
  
• "On The Surface," copyright 2003 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in Future Wars, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff, DAW Books, New York, April 2003.
  
  
• "The Eagle Has Landed," copyright 2005 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in I, Alien, edited by Mike Resnick, DAW Books, New York, April 2005.
  
  
• "Mikeys," copyright 2004 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Space Stations, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers, DAW Books, New York, March 2004.
  • Aurora Award finalist
  
  
• "The Good Doctor," copyright 1989 by Robert J. Sawyer. First published in Amazing Stories, January 1989.
  
  
• "The Right's Tough," copyright 2004 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in Visions of Liberty, edited by Mark Tier and Martin H. Greenberg, DAW Books, New York, July 2004.
  
  
• "Kata Bindu," copyright 2004 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in Microcosms, edited by Gregory Benford, DAW Books, New York, January 2004.
  
  
• "Driving A Bargain," copyright 2002 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in Be VERY Afraid!: More Tales of Horror, edited by Edo van Belkom, Tundra Books, Toronto, 2002.
  
  
• "Flashes," copyright 2006 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in FutureShocks, edited by Lou Anders, Roc Books, New York, January 2006.
  
  
• "Relativity," copyright 2003 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in Men Writing Science Fiction as Women, edited by Mike Resnick, DAW Books, New York, November 2003.
  
  
• "Biding Time," copyright 2006 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in Slipstreams, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers, DAW Books, New York, May 2006.
  • Aurora Award winner
  
  
• "E-Mails from the Future," copyright 2008 by Robert  J. Sawyer. First published in The Globe and Mail's Report on Business Magazine, Toronto, January 2008.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Wake 12-city Canadian book tour: dates

Penguin Canada is sending me to 12 cities to promote Wake -- w00t! We're still finalizing the venues, but I thought I'd give people a heads-up about the cities and dates:

Vancouver: Monday, April 20

Calgary: Tuesday, April 21

Edmonton: Thursday, April 23

Moncton: Saturday, April 25

Montreal: Tuesday, April 28

Ottawa: Wednesday, April 29

Toronto: Thursday, April 30

Winnipeg: Saturday, May 16

Waterloo: Thursday, May 21

Sudbury: Monday, May 25

Saskatoon: Thursday, June 4

Regina: Saturday, June 20

"The wildly thought-provoking first installment of Sawyer's WWW trilogy explores the origins and emergence of consciousness. The thematic diversity — and profundity — makes this one of Sawyer's strongest works to date." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review, denoting a book of exceptional merit)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Aurora Award nominees announced

The nominees for the 2009 Aurora Awards were announced this morning. My short-story collection Identity Theft and Other Stories is one of five finalists for the Best Long Form Work in English Award this year.

In the Long Form category, very unusually, three of the five nominees are short-story collections. Also, three of the five nominees are my writing students: Douglas Smith, Hayden Trenholm, and Edward Willett. Go team!

This is my 37th Aurora Award nomination to date; I've previously won the award 10 times -- that makes me both the biggest winner and the biggest loser on the English side of the awards. :)

The full list of nominees is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Watch

Ginjer Buchanan, my editor at Ace Science Fiction in New York, just emailed me to say she thinks Watch, the second volume of my WWW trilogy, is "even better than Wake."

W00t! As Caitlin woud say, "I am made out of awesome!" :D

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Latest issue of Rob's print newsletter

The 25th issue of my occasional print newsletter (SFWRITER.COM: News from the Robert J. Sawyer Web Site) is going in the mail shortly. I send it to media, bookstores, and so on, but if you'd like a copy you can download a PDF right here (and back issue are here).

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

How's this for a line-up?

World Fantasy Award winner James Morrow

Nebula Award winner Ted Chiang

Hugo Award winner Robert J. Sawyer

All reading together on the same stage: this Saturday morning, March 21, 2009, at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Phil Currie in the news

My friend the great Canadian paleontologist Phil Currie is interviewed by the BBC today about Hesperonychus, the smallest meat-eating dinosaur yet to be found in North America. The story is here

Phil's a big SF fan, and is mentioned in Calculating God.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Darby Speaks ... with Rob

Darby is the YA protagonist of a novel by my friend (and Surrey International Writers Conference programming guru) kc dyer, and here Darby speaks with me.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Even SciFi doesn't like the term "sci-fi"

Old-timers in the science-fiction field hate the term "sci-fi," considering it derogatory; they insist the preferred abbreviation is "SF."

Me, I gave up the fight when the US cable network devoted to the genre chose to call itself SciFi. (And, in fact, the hardcover of my Rollback was branded with the SciFi logo on the lower-right of the front cover, and labeled "A Sci Fi Essential Book" as part of a cross-promotion between the channel and Tor.)

But now it turns out SciFi Channel has decided it doesn't like the term SciFi, either -- in part because they haven't succeeded in trademarking it. And so -- I kid you not -- they are changing the name of the channel, the website, and the magazine to Syfy.

Many years ago, in the heydey of the Great Domain Name Gold Rush, I believe Martin Harry Greenberg got one million dollars for the domain name "SciFi.com" when he sold it to the channel's owners.

Hey, if anyone wants SFwriter.com for a million bucks, let me know, and I'll rebrand as EsEfwriter.com ...

The New York Times has the scoop.

(And tip o' the hat to my friend Kirstin Morrell for drawing this to my attention.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

OMG! RJS in CNQ!

For the RJS completeists out there, I'll note that the new issue, number 75, of the Canadian literary magazine CNQ (aka Canadian Notes & Queries) contains an excerpt from my now novel Wake.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Ad Astra programming schedule

One of the highlights of my year each year is Toronto's SF convention, Ad Astra (which in 2009 takes place March 27-29).

Here's my panel and reading schedule for this year:

Sat 10:00 AM
Ballr. East
What's In a Name
Ed Greenwood, Gabrielle Harbowy (moderator), Robert J. Sawyer

Sat 1:00 PM
Crowne Room
Reading
Robert J. Sawyer

Sat 2:00 PM
Salon 241
Those Pesky Laws of Physics
James Alan Gardner, Robert J. Sawyer, Calvin Climie, Derek Knsken (moderator)

Sat 5:00 PM
Salon 243
First Contact
James Alan Gardner, Robert J. Sawyer (moderator), Timothy Zahn, Steven Kerzner

Sat 9:00 PM
Salon 241
Move Over Meatbrains
Madeline Ashby, James Alan Gardner (moderator), Robert J. Sawyer

Sun 11:00 AM
Ballr. Centre
Working with a Smaller Press
Nick DiChario (moderator), Robert J. Sawyer, Rick Wilber, Erik Buchanan

Sun 12:00 PM
Ballr. East
Adding Humour to Serious Works
Steven Kerzner (moderator), D.K. Savage, Adrienne Kress, Ed Greenwood, Robert J. Sawyer

Sun 2:00 PM
Salon 243
Reading on Screens
Stephanie Bedwell-Grime, Robert J. Sawyer, Karl Schroeder (moderator), Michael R. Colangelo, Sephera Giron

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Major league no-no

So, one of my editor friends just got a partial manuscript that she liked: she took time out of her busy schedule to read it, think about it, talk it over with her colleagues, and ask to see more (and her response time was rapid by the standards of our industry).

And what did the author have to say? Not, "W00t!," or "Yay!," or even "Thank you." Nope. The author replied by saying he'd already sold the book somewhere else.

Folks, you wonder why publishers make reading over-the-transom stuff the last priority? It's because people pulls crap like this. Even if a publisher allows simultaneous submissions (and most don't, precisely to avoid this sort of thing), it's mandatory that you inform editors when your work is no longer available for consideration.

This isn't quite as bad as the clown who 13 years ago thought it was just fine to sell the same story to Carolyn and me (when we were editing Tesseracts 6) and to one of our competitors without telling any of us. But it still sucks.

Writers making submissions: show a little professionalism, please!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

This week's Supernatural Investigator

Remote Viewing

Tues., March 17, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT, coast-to-coast in Canada on Vision TV

During the Cold War, the U.S. government tried to harness ESP as a tool for espionage, through a technique known as "remote viewing." Today, most dismiss the notion. But there are still those who believe remote viewing represents the next step in the evolution of human consciousness. In this episode, Toronto science writer and adventurer Jeff Warren searches for the truth about remote viewing, and enlists famed scientific skeptic The Amazing Randi to help put the idea of psychic spies to the test. Produced by Paradocs.

Host: Robert J. Sawyer

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Crypto-Gram

My buddy Bruce Schneier -- cryptographer, security specialist, incisive commentator -- does a free monthly newsletter called Crypto-Gram. Well worth signing up for -- which you can do right here.

His books -- including the most-recent one, Schneier on Security, shown above -- are also always worth reading.

(Oh, and he'll be on 60 Minutes tonight talking about TSA screening ...)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Craptions on the Pioneer 10 plaque

Cracked magazine puts up a photo or image every day at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time, and invites people to write funny captions (or "Craptions") for it. Today's image is the Pioneer 10 plaque, and some of the craptions are hysterical. Check it out.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

And it's a wrap!

Today is, I believe, the last day of filming on the Flash Forward pilot (based on my novel of the same name). I can't wait to see the finished product!

The buzz has been amazing. The Hollywood Reporter calls Flash Forward "a strong companion to Lost." TV Guide concurs, saying, "It could be an obvious fill-in when Lost ends its run next year." And Entertainment Weekly calls it one of the season's "most notable projects." All the footage I saw in L.A., and everything I saw being filmed when I visited the set, totally lives up to the hype. This is going to be amazing.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Twentieth anniversary of the World Wide Web idea

I was talking with my friend Virginia O'Dine just a couple of days ago about coincidences (after she'd watched Supernatural Investigator, which I host on Vision TV; this week's topic -- people who had dreams that seemed to presage the events of 9/11 -- we both agreed could be chalked up to coincidences).

Well, how's this for a bunch of cool coincidences?

Right now, today, they're filming the pilot for a TV series based on my novel Flash Forward, which is set at CERN, the European particle-physics lab.

Right now, today, I received the very first copy of my new novel Wake, about the future of the World Wide Web, which got its start at CERN.

Right now, today, Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the Web, is back at CERN for the celebration of the 20th anniversary of him drafting the idea for the Web.

And right now, today, he made this observation (as paraphrased by Scientific American Online), which is pretty much the starting point I took in writing Wake:

Berners-Lee pointed out that there are 100 billion Web pages today, roughly the same number of neurons in the human brain. The difference, he added, is that the number of pages grows as the Web ages, whereas the number of nerve cells shrinks as we get on in years.

Cool! :)

More on Sir Tim's CERN homecoming is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

All the Hugo and Nebula winners: just $116,530

My friend David Aronovitz has just listed a one-of-a-kind library of first editions on ABE.com: all the Hugo and Nebula Award winning novels, first editions, 95% of them signed or inscribed. Wow! See here.

I very fondly remember visiting David's house in Michigan in January 2004, and having a tour of his amazing collection of first editions.

(The set includes a hardcover of my 2003 Hugo-winning novel Hominids, the original mass-market paperback first-printing of my 1995 Nebula-winning novel The Terminal Experiment, and the later first hardcover of that book, as well, all signed.)

(Hint: if you have to ask if the $116,530 is Canadian or American dollars, you probably can't aford this ...)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Wow! Wake is a BIG book!

It's always an especially satisfying moment when an author adds a new book to his or her brag shelf -- and I just did that with my first copy of Wake, and had quite a surprise! It's bigger (taller and wider) than any previous hardcover by me.

My previous novel hardcovers were all 8.5" by 5.75", but Wake is 9.25" by 6.25" -- three-quarters of an inch taller and half an inch wider.

The interior type (beautifully designed, by the way) is large, with good leading; it's extremely readable.

Just yesterday, I received an email from a reader complaining about the general trend toward smaller type in books (to save printing costs by reducing page counts), and my 84-year-old father (an avid reader) was decrying that same thing a week ago. But there are no such concerns with Wake.


Size comparison: Wake and my immediately preceding Ace hardcover, Illegal Alien, which came out 12 years ago. It's been a great homecoming!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Wake in my hands!

... and, OMG, is it ever gorgeous.

The FedEx guy just delivered a copy of the finished American edition of Wake, my eighteenth novel, courtesy of my editor Ginjer Buchanan at Ace Science Fiction.

This is, I think, the best-looking book I've ever had (and I've had lots of good-looking books). It's just stunningly beautiful. The cover and spine has selective use of matte and glossy finishes that is really classy. The jacket design is by Rita Frangie.

The back cover has advance praise for the book from Robert Charles Wilson, John Scalzi, Allen Steele, and Jack McDevitt.

Official on-sale date for this edition is April 7, 2009.

W00t!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

My Nebula Award trophy

Carolyn decided the picture of my Nebula Award trophy on my website sucked -- and it did; it was a low-res scan of a print that we'd put up back in 1996.

So she took a new one, and here it is:



I won the Nebula in 1996 for my novel The Terminal Experiment.

That was the period when William Rotsler, the artist who hand-crafted the trophies each year, was designing the best-novel trophies based on the winning author's work.

For Greg Bear, the year before, who had won for Moving Mars, the Lucite block contained a large polished red sandstone sphere that looked like Mars; for Nicola Griffith, who won the following year for Slow River, the lapidary stones in the Lucite had mostly settled to the bottom.

For me, he actually honored my Far-Seer trilogy by featuring a giant polished agate that resembled a Jupiter-like planet, with a too-close moon orbiting around it (you can't see the little moon on the face-on view, but it's clearly visible in the side at the right of the picture and also at the top).

At the top, there's a spiral nebula -- the one constant element in all nebula designs.

The Nebulas are given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; they are the field's "Academy Award."

Oh, and here's an essay about the night I won the award.

Here's another new shot:



And here's the now-retired old .gif photo:

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Happy birthday, Courtney!

I can't remember if he's shooting Flash Forward today or not, but, if he is, I hope he took time out for a piece of cake (there's always delicious cake at the catered lunches): Courtney B. Vance, one of our stars (and one of the first two actors cast for the show) is celebrating his birthday today! Woot!

(That's Courtney and Executive Producer Jessika Borsiczky Goyer above in Los Angeles last week.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Book design

I've been meaning to rant about this for a while, but haven't found the time. But the topic came up in conversation with a good friend today -- a brilliant lady who had done a book with a small press, and had cringed when she finally held the finished product in her hand because the cover, font choices, page design, and so forth all were, in her words, horrible.

Good friend that I am, I, of course, own a copy of her book, and she's being kind. :) So, for those in the small press who think that just because you have layout software you know how to design a book, Rob's four rules of book design, coined spontaneously while looking at the mess in question today:

Rule number one: be conservative.

Rule number two: if you haven't seen somebody else do it that way before, it's probably a bad idea.

Rule number three: actually have a published book at your side while designing your own -- to see how it's done.

Rule number four: don't suck.

(For Robert J. Sawyer Books, we currently rely on the brilliant Karen Petherick Thomas to do our designs, and, back when we were based in Calgary, we used the equally fine Erin Woodward. Yes, designing books is actually a job -- it's not something you just wing.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Educators' Guide for The Savage Humanists

When I commissioned the anthology The Savage Humanists, edited by Prof. Fiona Kelleghan of the University of Miami, for my Robert J. Sawyer Books imprint at Red Deer Press, the idea was to produce a modern teaching anthology of science fiction: recent meaty stories by Hugo and Nebula finalists that could be used in the classroom.

Toward that end, we included a 17,000-word scholarly introduction by Fiona (which formed the basis of the cover story that took up most of the December 2008 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction), and her extensive notes along with the stories.

And what stories! The anthology contains work by Gregory Frost, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, Jonathan Lethem, James Morrow, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, Tim Sullivan, and Connie Willis.

And now we've gone a step further. Prof. Kelleghan has prepared a comprehensive 7,000-word educators' guide (or teachers' guide) to the anthology -- and we're giving it away as a PDF right here.


Fiona Kelleghan

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Audrey Niffenegger gets $5 million for her next novel

And you know what? She deserves it. Her The Time Traveler's Wife is one of the best science-fiction novels I've ever read.

The New York Times has the scoop.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

High-school SF course -- w00t!

Man! Why couldn't they have offered courses like this when I was in high school? In the 2009-2010 academic year, a teacher named David Rice at North Park Collegiate in Brantford, Ontario, is offering a "Studies in Literature" course on science fiction.

The class will do two core novels -- the Hugo Award-winning Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer and the Hugo Award-winning Neuromancer by William Gibson -- plus short stories by (among others):

* Isaac Asimov
* Greg Bear
* Gregory Benford
* Arthur C. Clarke
* Lester del Rey
* Greg Egan
* Harlan Ellison
* Joe Haldeman
* Harry Harrison
* Ursula K. Le Guin
* Murray Leinster
* Vonda McIntyre
* Larry Niven
* Alastair Reynolds
* Spider Robinson
* Robert Silverberg
* Theodore Sturgeon
* Vernor Vinge
* Kurt Vonnegut

How cool is that! ("Too cool for school!" as my buddy R. Scott Bakker is wont to say ...)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Wake is "made out of awesome."

So says the official review from McNally Robinson, Canada's second-largest bookstore chain (which also includes the McNally Jackson store in Manhattan).

You can read the full review here; the review is by Chadwick Ginther who is in charge of science fiction at McNally Robinson's flagship store in Winnipeg.

I will be signing at the McNally Robinson in Winnipeg (the Grant Park store) on Saturday, May 16, at 2:00 p.m., and at McNally Robinson in Saskatoon on Thursday, June 4, at 7:00 p.m.

More about Wake.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Jeanne Robinson surgery

My dear friend Hugo winner Jeanne Robinson is recovering from surgery. Husband Spider has the scoop here.

Spider ends with, "And God bless Tommy Douglas, who created Canada’s socialized medicine."

Amen to that, brother. Amen.

And best wishes to Jeanne!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

FF's Sonya Walger nominated for Saturn Award

The amazing Sonya Walger, who plays the female lead in the upcoming Flash Forward TV series, based on my novel of the same name, has just been nominated for a Saturn Award by The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror Films, in the category "Best Guest Starring Role in a Television Series" for her work on Lost. The full list of nominees is here.

Congratulations, Sonya!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

29,000 counts of accessory to murder

My 1997 Hugo Award-nominated and Seiun Award-winning novel Frameshift deals, in large part, with the hunt for Ivan the Terrible, a real-life Treblinka death-camp guard whose whereabouts have been unknown since the end of the war.

John Demjanjuk, a Cleveland autoworker, has spent the last few decades under a cloud of suspicion: he bears a passing resemblance to Ivan.

Based on all the research I did when writing Frameshift, I'm sure to a moral certainty that Demjanjuk is not, in fact, Ivan, but people continue to go after him figuring even though they were wrong about that, he must be guilty of something.

Today, German prosecutors charged him with 29,000 counts of accessory to murder.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Realms of Fantasy resurrected

Realms of Fantasy is coming back, it seems. SF Scope -- as is so often the case these days, first with the news -- has the scoop here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Supernatural Investigator episode guide

An episode guide for Supernatural Investigator, the series I host on Canada's Vision TV, is here at Vision TV's site, and below:

The Antichrist
Tues., Jan. 27, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
Does the Antichrist walk among us? Are we nearing the End of Days? Surprisingly, belief in the Biblical prophecies of an Antichrist remain alive and well in the 21st century.

Life from Other Planets
Tues., Feb. 3, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
Are we alone in the universe? Or have we already been visited by life from other worlds? These questions burn in the mind of author and futurist Mac Tonnies.

What Killed Joe Fisher--Part 1: The Trap is Set
Tues., Feb. 10, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
In the 1970s, Joe Fisher forged a reputation as one of Canada's leading investigative reporters. But there was another side to him. The rebellious son of Christian fundamentalists, he grew increasingly enthralled by Eastern religions, eventually becoming a popular media expert on paranormal phenomena.

What Killed Joe Fisher--Part 2: The Trap is Sprung
Tues., Feb. 17, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
When Joe Fisher's efforts to learn more about his spirit lover Filipa ended in failure, his life began to unravel. Convinced that he had unleashed psychic forces bent on vengeance, Fisher fled to rural Ontario -- and it was there, on the rim of the Elora Gorge, that his demons, real or otherwise, may have finally caught up with him.

The Crystal Skulls
Tues., Feb. 24, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
Narrated by Robert J. Sawyer (in addition to hosting)
Archaeologist Joel Palka retraces the journey of the adventurers who first found the skulls, and seeks out an isolated tribe that still believes in their mystic powers.

Remembering Past Lives
Tues., March 3, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
Reincarnation has long been a part of many Eastern belief systems, and the idea has gained increasing acceptance in North America during the last few decades. In this episode, Supernatural Investigator pursues some reported cases of reincarnation, from a Canadian singer who believes she was Marilyn Monroe in a past life, to a Louisiana boy who has vivid memories of being a World War Two fighter pilot. Are these simply the stories of individuals with over-active imaginations -- or are they proof of life after death? Produced by Sorcery Films Ltd.

Seeing 9-11
Tues., March 10, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7 PM PT
Can precognitive dreams and visions provide warnings of impending disaster? Did thousands of people with no connection to the event somehow know in advance that 9-11 was going to happen? In this episode, Supernatural Investigator takes a critical look at the claims of those who say they have seen into the future. Produced by Elevator Films.

Remote Viewing
Tues., March 17, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
During the Cold War, the U.S. government tried to harness ESP as a tool for espionage, through a technique known as "remote viewing." Today, most dismiss the notion. But there are still those who believe remote viewing represents the next step in the evolution of human consciousness. In this episode, Toronto science writer and adventurer Jeff Warren searches for the truth about remote viewing, and enlists famed scientific skeptic The Amazing Randi to help put the idea of psychic spies to the test. Produced by Paradocs.

Hex or Hoax?
Tues., March 24, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
Jinxes, curses, hexes, the evil eye: many cultures possess their own brands of black magic. Are there really people who can harness dark forces to strike down their enemies? In this episode, Halifax filmmaker Donna Davies enters the world of sinister sorcery to learn about Newfoundland witches' spells, Haitian voodoo rituals and cutting edge contemporary research into the science of the curse. Produced by Sorcery Films Ltd.

March 31 & April 7, 2009: on hiatus

Chaos Magick
Tues., April 14, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
Newfoundland born mentalist and magician Jeremy Bennett investigates the mysterious brand of sorcery known as "Chaos Magick."

Hunting Houdini
Tues., April 21, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
Gothic rocker Tara Slone (Rock Star INXS) travels to New York City at Halloween to enter the inner sanctum of escape artist Harry Houdini's most obsessive followers. Produced by Arcadia Entertainment Inc.

The Nightmare
Tues., April 28, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
Filmmaker Adam Gray pursues a malevolent entity that strikes sleepers in the dark. Produced by Paradocs.

Occult Architecture
Tues., May 5, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
Filmmaker John Wesley Chisholm asks: is there a secret master plan carved into the Masonic art and architecture of Washington, DC? Produced by Arcadia Entertainment Inc.

The Seducers
Tues., May 12, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
A journey into the secretive underworld of "the Seducers" -- men who use a mysterious power known as NLP to lure women into bed. Produced by Elevator Films.

Detour on the Road to Atlantis
Tues., May 19, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
Have ocean explorers found clues to the whereabouts of the lost civilization of Atlantis? Produced by Arcadia Entertainment Inc.

It's in the Stars
Tues., May 26, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
For thousands of years, astrology has influenced both Western and Eastern cultures. But can the position of the stars really influence earthly affairs? Produced by Sorcery Films Ltd.

FINAL EPISODE: The White Mountain Abduction
Tues., June 2, 2009, 10:30 PM ET / 7:30 PM PT
Narrated by Robert J. Sawyer (in addition to hosting)
What happened to Barney and Betty Hill on the night of September 19, 1961? Their niece investigates the world's most famous case of alleged alien abduction. Produced by Paradocs.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

AdWords and me

I always find it interesting to see who is ponying up to use my name in the Google AdWords program (the thing that puts sponsored links to the right of Google search results). Chapters.ca and Amazon.ca have both bought "Robert Sawyer," which is fine by me, and my speakers bureau has sometimes bought my name in association with other words, such as "talk" or "keynote."

But now ABE.com has bought "sawyer flashforward" -- to steer people interested in the show to their used-book service. Folks, my novel Flash Forward is in print, and has been continuously since it was first published a decade ago. You can get new copies in paperback easily, you can buy it for the Kindle, and you can get it as an audiobook from Audbile.com, or you can buy an autographed copy directly from me: all those things put money in my pocket, and I'm very grateful for that. But if you buy a used copy through ABE.COM or any other source, well, I don't make a cent. Just so you know. :)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Video: Rob invites you to Xanadu Las Vegas

I'm Author Guest of Honor at the convention Xanadu Las Vegas next month (April 17-19, 2009). There's now a nifty video of me talking about why you should come to the con on YouTube.

(It's also a nice tour of my living room and some of my toys.)

More about Xanadu Las Vegas is here, and their latest progress report is here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

A good day for royalties

Nice checks from my agent today for royalties from Audible.com and my Spanish publisher Ediciones B, plus the Korean advance for End of an Era. W00T!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

7 dinosaurs you could take in a fight

Hee hee hee. See Cracked.com.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Oh, yeah, and my other TV show ...

The seventh episode of Supernatural Investigator -- the series I host for Canada's Vision TV -- airs tomorrow night, Tuesday, March 10. This week's topic:

Seeing 9/11: Can precognitive dreams and visions provide warnings of impending disaster? Did thousands of people with no connection to the event somehow know in advance that 9/11 was going to happen? In this episode, Supernatural Investigator takes a critical look at the claims of those who say they have seen into the future.

Oh, and here's a cute little video promo for Vision's Sci-Fi Tuesdays (including Supernatural Investigator).

SI is shown three times (with the debut at 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time / 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time). Check for times in your timezone here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Flashing back to the Flash Forward set

EXT. LOS ANGELES - DAY

ROBERT J. SAWYER, a bald, bespectacled novelist, and CAROLYN CLINK, his beautiful poet wife, survey the dozens of trucks, the hundreds of people milling about, and all the general chaos.

               CAROLYN
    Just think -- all of this
    because of you.

               ROB
    And it isn't even a crime
    scene!

As I said back on Thursday night, I was too tired then to blog about our first day on the set of Flash Forward, so let me play catch-up here.

We arrived at the Flash Forward base camp (where all the trailers were parked: director's trailer, actor's trailers, make-up trailers, etc. etc. etc.) at 8:00 a.m. and were met by executive producer Jessika Borsiczky Goyer's terrific assistant Katie Greisiger, and then a little later by Jessika.

(Jessika, by the way, is from Montreal: although this is literally as big as a Hollywood TV project can get in terms of scope and budget, we have a Canadian executive producer, a source novel by a Canadian, and four UK actors in leading roles).

We took a shuttle over to the actual shooting location (which was really quite close; I never took the shuttle again, and instead just walked back and forth). As soon as we got to the location, we were warmly greeted by David S. Goyer and Brannon Braga; David is directing and David and Brannon co-wrote the pilot script.

Brannon had to leave mid-morning to get over to the offices of 24, the other show he works on. But we had a great chat before he left; he is such a nice guy.

It was an incredible day to be on set: we had 152 extras and background players, making the chaos even more elaborate than usual. (I chatted with a bunch of the extras during the day; it was fascinating that most of them had no idea what project they were part of, or that "David" the director was, in fact, David S. Goyer of Batman Begins fame.)

We were shooting in an existing building, and David (and Rebecca Poulos, his incredible script supervisor) actually didn't watch from the room the filming was happening in, but from another nearby room, where monitors were set up to show what the cameras were getting. Carolyn and I were given headsets so we could listen in to what the microphones were actually recording, and we bopped between sitting in director's-style chairs behind David and standing discreetly out of shot watching the actual filming.

Everything was ramped up to the highest level: long dolly shots, Steadicam shots, etc. etc. The look is amazing.

It's said that a director sets the tone for the entire production off-camera as well as on. David is so approachable, and he has such a great smile, and he was funny and warm with the actors and crew; despite the incredibly long hours and the endless takes (our first day on the set was the ninth day of shooting), everyone seemed loose and relaxed and upbeat because David himself was all those thing.

Lunch was wonderful; David said he's used the same caterers (Mario's Catering) on other projects, and we could see why -- it was a banquet ... that had to be consumed in just 30 minutes, including time getting between the catering tents and the set! We sat with David and the person who is developing the official web site for the series.

After lunch, I was interviewed for the "Making of Flash Forward" featurette -- cool!

We met Jack Davenport, who plays Lloyd Simcoe; I'm a huge fan of the BBC sitcom Coupling, which starred Jack. He is much taller than I would have guessed, and very, very funny (not all people who play in comedies are actually witty without a script, but Jack really is). Today Jack had only 13 words of dialog -- which caused him to quip that at least for one day, he was the highest-paid-per-word actor in Hollywood. :)

I also had a nice chat with Sonya Walger (who had read and enjoyed my novel Flash Forward) and her agent, and I spent a lot of time with actor Zachary Knighton, who is a great guy (and I don't say that just because he's huge fan of my novel).

Near the end of the day, I was introduced to the charming and brilliant Nne Ebong, the vice-president of dramatic programming development for ABC Studios, and she immediately suggested putting me into one of the scenes, and so I got a little cameo as a man on a cell phone (and the super-nice Jennifer Dunn, who was Sonya Walger's stand-in and also a background player, coached me to hold the phone in my other hand, because I was covering my face with it in rehearsal).

Filming the scene I was part of delayed my departure from the set, so we ended up having a later dinner than planned with my terrific Hollywood agent Vince Gerardis and his associate Eli Kirschner; we ate at Luna Park, and I had a great steak. Of course, we're all thrilled with how Flash Forward is going, but we also spent time talking about various other projects ... ;)

All in all, it was a terrific first day on the set, and I am so glad I decided to come down to Los Angeles. I'm way busy with other things, and had been vacillating about whether I should really clear the days to take this trip but -- man! -- it totally, totally has been worth it. :)


Joseph Fiennes, one of the stars of Flash Forward, and Robert J. Sawyer, author of the novel upon which it is based.

MORE FROM THE FLASH FORWARD SET

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Flash Forward on location

Today was outdoor location shooting for Flash Forward, the ABC TV series pilot based on my novel of the same name.

Carolyn and I were on hand from 7:45 a.m until noon, then had to head to LAX for the flight back to Toronto. We had an incredible three days in Los Angeles. Everybody treated us spectacularly well. As I said to Carolyn, the trip simply could not have gone better. :) This has been one of the peak experiences of my life.

I can't say enough about how kind executive producers David S. Goyer, Brannon Braga, and Jessika Borsiczky Goyer have been to Carolyn and me. David kept taking time out from directing to show us things (including the incredible matte paintings Kevin Blank has created for us, and the amazing "sizzle" reel David has put together of the highlights shot so far -- it looks like the trailer for the best damn movie you've ever seen); Jessika made sure we were introduced to everybody; and Brannon kept saying nice things and talking to me about writing. David, Jessika, and Brannon have known each other and worked together for years, but they made us feel like part of their family; it was wonderful.

I was frankly astonished (and thrilled!) by how much attention was paid to me by people, and how many had read or were reading my novel Flash Forward (series regulars Joseph Fiennes, Sonya Walger, and Zachary Knighton have all read it, special-effects wiz Kevin Blank had just started it on his Kindle, etc. etc.). Brannon quipped to David that he was envious because I work in publishing -- an industry in which writers are respected. :)

My biggest thanks, of course, go to my Hollywood agent Vince Gerardis of Created By (who was gently teasing me on Thursday night because four years ago we'd had another offer on the property from a major television player and I'd been reluctant to walk away from it even though Vince said we should, because he felt we could do much better. Now, of course, I'm thrilled that we did walk away).

The buzz from ABC and the industry press is incredibly positive about Flash Forward. It seems highly likely that we'll be picked up for the Fall 2009 season. We'll know for sure by May 17 -- and ABC will announce its fall line-up over two days on May 18 and 19.

A few more pictures:


David S. Goyer and Brannon Braga, authors of the pilot script based on the novel Flash Forward by Robert J. Sawyer


Robert J. Sawyer and Katie Greisiger, the amazing assistant to Jessika Goyer


Carolyn Clink and series star Joseph Fiennes, of Shakespeare in Love fame


Tony Stevens (stand-in for Joseph Fiennes), Jennifer Dunn (stand-in for Sonya Walger), and Sheila Louie (the on-set medic)


Carolyn Clink, Brannon Braga, and Robert J. Sawyer


Joseph Fiennes, John Cho, and Robert J. Sawyer -- it was a chilly morning in L.A., so we're all bundled up.


Robert J. Sawyer and Kevin Blank. Kevin was the special-effects genius on Lost and Cloverfield -- and now he's doing astonishing work on Flash Forward; I was stunned by the samples I was shown.

MORE FROM THE FLASH FORWARD SET

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

More from the set of Flash Forward

Another fabulous day on the set of Flash Forward. We were there from about 7:30 a.m. to 7:15 p.m. (meaning we worked a much shorter day than just about everyone else!).

Had lunch with Sonya Walger, but can't show a picture of her because she was in costume all day. (For those trying to divine the secrets of Flash Forward, sorry, but none of the photos I'm posting are of the actors in costume, and none were taken on the sets.)

Sonya was definitely the hardest working actor today, with the most lines and the most scenes, and she was fabulous. She's incredibly intense when called for, and is absolutely riveting to watch. (How intense? Director David S. Goyer had to remind her at one point yesterday to blink ...) She's British, and has the most wonderful accent, but is playing an American, and it was fun watching her turn the accent on and off (or is that off and on?) when bouncing between playing her part and talking to others.

Zachary Knighton also did incredible work today. In fact, he and Sonya together did what is my favorite scene from the entire script -- and did it and did it and did, from angle after angle after angle ;). Zach's father, stepmother, and girlfriend visited the set today, and I showed them around, which was fun.

Also on hand today and yesterday was Nne Ebong, vice-president of dramatic program development for ABC, and I had a great time talking to her (and yesterday she was responsible for something incredibly cool happening for me -- about which more later).

Brannon Braga was on hand for part of yesterday morning, and it was great getting to chat with him again. He has been wonderfully warm and friendly and supportive, and had some very nice things to say about my Calculating God, which pleased me. He had to leave mid-morning, though, to get back to 24, the other show he works on. :)

John Cho and Courtney B. Vance didn't even have any scenes today, but they dropped by the set (and Jack Davenport came back, too, even though he wasn't filming today, either). Besides being in Flash Forward, John, of course, is Mr. Sulu in the new Star Trek film. He told me he'd just finally seen the whole thing, and thinks it really came out wonderfully.


Robert J. Sawyer, author of the novel Flash Forward, and series regular John Cho.


Series regular Courtney B. Vance and Executive Producer Jessika Borsiczky Goyer; Jessika was the first of the producers to read my novel Flash Forward; the project owes its existence to her enthusiasm for the book.


David S. Goyer who is director, co-author of the pilot script, and executive producer, with Kramer Morgenthau, the Director of Photography; between them, they've given Flash Forward an amazing look -- every frame looks like it's from a feature film, not a TV show; the footage is stunning.

MORE FROM THE FLASH FORWARD SET

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

On the set of Flash Forward

The pilot for the ABC TV series based on my novel Flash Forward is coming along fabulously.

We're having an absolute blast here in Los Angeles. We spent from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on the set today, and it was OMG amazing. I'm way too exhausted to write much now, but here are a few pictures:


Yes, it really is happening!


Robert J. Sawyer, author of the novel Flash Forward, and Jack Davenport, who plays Lloyd Simcoe, the novel's main character


Rob being interviewed for the Making of Flash Forward featurette


Author Robert J. Sawyer and actor Zachary Knighton


Author Robert J. Sawyer and director David S. Goyer

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

BBC Online interviews Rob and Brother Guy on Kepler Mission

Check it out right here.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Off to Los Angeles ...

... to watch the pilot for Flash Forward be filmed. W00t! It's really happening! :D

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

The "Identity Theft" novella

So, I've been emailing a bit this week with the producers who have motion picture rights to my novella "Identity Theft" under option, and that's moved me to actually go back and read the story, something I haven't done for four years now, since before it was first published. I'm pleased to see it holds up well. :)

The easiest place to get it in print right now is in my collection Identity Theft and Other Stories, although that story is also availalbe as a standalone ebook from Fictionwise.

Anyway, here's the introduction to "Identity Theft" from my collection of the same name:

Doubleday's venerable Science Fiction Book Club, which normally only publishes reprint editions of books, recently experimented with doing its own original anthologies — special collections of brand-new stories that would only be available through them. One of the first such collections was an anthology edited by Mike Resnick called Down These Dark Spaceways. It contains six SF hard-boiled detective novellas by award-winning authors (Mike, me, Catherine Asaro, David Gerrold, Jack McDevitt, and Robert Reed).

Why did Mike ask me to contribute? Well, my science fiction often has crime or mystery overtones; indeed, I won the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story of 1993 for my time-travel tale "Just Like Old Times," and The Globe and Mail: Canada's National Newspaper called my SF courtroom drama Illegal Alien "the best Canadian mystery of 1997." My other SF/crime crossovers include the novels Golden Fleece, Fossil Hunter, The Terminal Experiment, Frameshift, Flashforward, Hominids, and Mindscan.

My story for Down These Dark Spaceways follows. At 25,000 words, it's by far the longest piece in this collection, so I'm leading off with it — but I'll note up front that the last story in this book, "Biding Time," is a sequel to it.

To my delight, "Identity Theft" won Spain's Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción, which, at 6,000 euros, is the world's largest cash prize for science-fiction writing. It was also a finalist for the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Award ("the Aurora"), as well as for the top two awards in the science-fiction field: the World Science Fiction Society's Hugo Award (SF's "People's Choice" Award) and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Nebula Award (SF's "Academy Award") — making "Identity Theft" the first (and so far only) original publication of the SFBC to ever be nominated for those awards.

My association with the Science Fiction Book Club continues, of course: my next novel, Wake, will shortly be a Main Selection of the SFBC.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

The Authors Guild on Amazon.com reversal

The Authors Guild sent this note to its members today concerning Amazon.com's announcment last week:

---

Amazon Reversal on Text to Speech on the Kindle 2

At the end of the business day on Friday, Amazon announced that it would allow publishers (and thereby many authors) to block text-to-speech audio functionality on a title-by-title basis for its Kindle 2 reading device.

This is a good first step. Amazon's Kindle 2 can convert text to audio through text-to-speech (TTS) software, making it a combination e-book reader and low-quality audiobook device. (The quality of the audio will improve, of course, as TTS software is refined.) Amazon's initial implementation of Kindle 2 would have added audio playback to your e-book regardless of whether Amazon had properly acquired audio rights. For most of you, Amazon's announcement means that it will now respect your contractual right to authorize (or not) the addition of computer-generated audio to your e-books sold for the Kindle. We will be sending recommendations to you shortly on your TTS audio rights.

One important consideration in those recommendations will be to ensure that visually impaired people have access to this technology. Book authors have traditionally authorized royalty-free copies in specialized formats intended for the visually impaired, and copyright law has long provided a means to distribute recordings to the blind. We can work this out.

Wall Street Journal on Amazon's announcement

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

Why ebooks cost so much

Richard Curtis was my first literary agent (and he still represents several of my friends, including James Alan Gardner, Linux guru Marcel Gagné, Harlan Ellison, and Greg Bear).

Richard is one of the most insightful writers about the book business, and here he sheds light on the mystery of why ebooks cost so much.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

James Alan Gardner is a Nebula finalist -- w00t!

I've been pimpin' for months on behalf of James Alan Gardner's remarkable "The Ray-Gun: A Love Story," as you can see here. And I was mightily disappointed when the final Nebula ballot was released last week, and it wasn't on it. This story made not one but two year's best anthologies, after all, and was one of only nine novelettes on the preliminary Nebula ballot.

Well, well, well, turns out SFWA made a mistake. A revised ballot has now been released, and Jim is on it (and so is another work accidentally left off the earlier version, "Mars: A Traveler's Guide" by Ruth Nestvold).

SFWA actually has a pretty long history of balloting screw-ups; I myself was victim of one in 2000, when the blindingly obvious fact that Flash Forward by Robert J. Sawyer and Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer were the same book escaped notice, and so the novel was left off the preliminary ballot (as was a work by William Barton that same year), and a few years before that Ursula K. LeGuin was left off the ballot, too (although that ballot, at least, was corrected and reissued).

Now, let us hope that there's no harm, no foul, in what just happened to Jim Gardner -- but the fact is that award nominations do tend to be cumulative, and in the crucial last couple of days of nominating for this year's Hugos and Auroras, SFWA blithely announced to the world that Jim's work wasn't, in fact, award calibre in the view of the membership -- only to reverse that stance after the nominating for the other awards had closed.

The Nebulas are a black box -- no one ever sees the nominating or voting tallies; the Hugos do release their nominating stats. If Jim misses that ballot by just a few nominations, well, we'll always wonder what happened in the alternate universe in which the preliminary Nebula ballots were dealt with correctly the first time.

For those who missed the story in the February Asimov's last year, and don't want to wait for the Dozois or Horton Year's Best anthologies (or my own forthcoming Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction, which will also include this story), the full text is here at Jim's site.

Oh, and: Congratulations, Jim!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

First contact with aliens made today

As Don stood, looking at Sarah, the moment came back to him, and he shook his head in amazement. It had been front-page news, back when there were front pages, all over the world. On March first, 2009, a radio message had been received from a planet orbiting the star Sigma Draconis.

So says Chapter 2 of my 2007 Tor novel Rollback, which was a finalist for the Hugo Award, the Aurora Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, received starred reviews in Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, was a main selection of the Science Fiction Book Club, was serialized in Analog, made the American Library Association's list of the top 10 SF novels of the year, and will be read later this year in 25 installments on CBC Radio's Between the Covers.

Rollback tells the story of Sarah Halifax, the University of Toronto astronomer who decodes the message received today, and an attempt to prolong her life so that she can live long enough to engage in a decades-long dialog with the beings from Sigma Draconis.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site