![[Robert J. Sawyer]](rjssmhd.jpg "Robert J. Sawyer")
Science Fiction Writer
ROBERT J. SAWYER
Hugo and Nebula Winner
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================================================================= I've been blogging since even before 27 September 1999, starting with journal entries in the section devoted to my work on CompuServe's Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature Forum, but below are the oldest ones I've salvaged from there. (My current blog is here.) ================================================================= 27 September 1999 I'm delighted to announce the sale of one new short story, and five reprints. Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers have bought my 6,300-word short story "The Shoulders of Giants" for their anthology STAR COLONIES, to be published by DAW next year. Meanwhile, Edo van Belkom, the editor of genre-fiction titles for Canada's Quarry Press (one of Canada's most prestigious literary presses), has bought reprint rights to my stories "Just Like Old Times" (marking this story's seventh English-language publication) and "Peking Man" for his anthology AURORA AWARD WINNERS. "Just Like Old Times" was originally commissioned for Mike Resnick's anthology DINOSAUR FANTASTIC, and "Peking Man" was originally commissioned for Ed Kramer's DARK DESTINY III. The anthology will be out next month in trade paperback. And Peter Sellers (president of the Crime Writers of Canada) has bought reprint rights to "Just Like Old Times" (the story's eighth seventh English-language publication) for his anthology (and a companion to the above) ARTHUR ELLIS AWARD WINNERS. The Arthurs are the Canadian mystery-fiction awards. That anthology should be out before the end of the year. And Peter Sellers, as my coeditor on the book OVER THE EDGE: STORIES BY MEMBERS OF THE CRIME WRITERS OF CANADA, has bought reprint rights to my Hugo Award-nominated story "The Hand You're Dealt" for that book. That story originally appeared in the Tor anthology FREE SPACE, edited by Brad Linaweaver and Edward E. Kramer. Meanwhile, Edo van Belkom (again!) has bought reprint rights to my HOMer-Award winning story "Above It All" for an all-horror special issue of CANADIAN HORROR FICTION, a special anthology under the aegis of CANADIAN FICTION MAGAZINE, one of Canada's leading literary magazines. "Above It All" originally appeared in the anthology DANTE'S DISCIPLES, edited by Peter Crowther and Edward E. Kramer. Like all authors, I love reprint sales -- found money is the best kind <grin>. ================================================================= 27 September 1999 The dates have been set for next year's Taddle Creek Summer Writers' Workshop at the University of Toronto: Friday, June 30, to Monday, July 3, 2000 (at Hart House, on the U of T main campus right smack dab in the middle of downtown Toronto). For many Canadians, Monday, July 3 is a holiday (since Canada Day falls on a Saturday in 2000), so in theory most people can do this four-day workshop with only one day taken off from work. I will be returning to teach science-fiction writing. A sterling crop of mainstream Canadian literature writers will be teaching other forms; those writers are Barry Callaghan, Stephanie Bolster, Austin Clarke, Douglas Fetherling, M.T. Kelly, Erin Moure, and Molly Peacock. The workshop will see participants spending morning sessions workshoping with the writer of their choice; afternoon sessions on various topics of general interest given by the various writers; evening social events and readings. Last year's tuition was Cdn$400 (less than US$270); next year's rate should be similar. Groups are small, and there's plenty of opportunity to network with all the teachers and students. I have to say, I had just the greatest time teaching this last year, and my students really seemed to enjoy it, too. I'll post full details and registration information when it becomes available in January 2000. ================================================================= 28 September 1999 I'm delighted to announce that I will be the Guest Speaker at the Jefferson Community College North Country Writers' Festival, to be held at the Watertown, New York, campus (way upstate in New York, near the Canadian border on the west end of Lake Ontario) of Jefferson Community College, part of the State University of New York, Tuesday, April 25, to Thursday, April 27, 2000. The conference theme will be "Different Worlds," and will center around science-fiction writing. I'll provide more details as we get closer to the date. The college's web site is at www.sunyjefferson.edu. ================================================================= 29 September 1999 An amazingly hot and humid day today in Toronto ... but a good day, nonetheless. Orson Scott Card is in town today, promoting ENDER'S SHADOW. Carolyn and I had a terrific dinner with him and a few of the fine folk from H.B. Fenn this evening. ================================================================= 30 September 1999 Had one of those classic wannabe-writer phone calls just now; I find myself getting more and more terse with these guys. (There's a president of a local amateur writers' club who seems to think he should give out my number to everyone who wants to write SF.) I hate being rude to people under any circumstances, but, gee whiz, this guy was a particular classic. His first question was: "Would you like to collaborate?" I replied by simply saying "No." His second question was: "Would you introduce me to your agent?" I replied also with the single word "No." His third question was: "Is this a one-off phone call, or can I call you repeatedly?" My answer, of course, "It's a one-off." He then asked some more general questions -- the ones they always ask, about copyright and manuscript format and how much they'll get paid. I answered briefly, but then he came back to the collaboration question again. By this point, I was probably quite curt. I said, "I've spent twenty years honing my skills and building my name as a professional writer; you bring nothing of value to the table, and it's insulting to suggest that I should simply give you everything I've attained." And, of course, he hinted around repeatedly that I should read something he's written to let him know if it's any good. I really, really do try to live by Heinlein's edict, and pay forward whenever I can, but, good golly, this sort of intrusion does get tiresome. ================================================================= 1 October 1999 Just a note to remind y'all of my two Guest of Honor stints in October. October 8-10, I'm Guest of Honor at Context XII in Columbus, Ohio. October 29-31, I'm Guest of Honor at Concinnity in Ottawa, Ontario. In between those two Guest of Honor stints, I'm Master of Ceremonies at the Canadian National Science Fiction Convention in Fredericton, New Brunswick, October 15-17 . . . ================================================================= 2 October 1999 Had a wonderful day today. Went to York University's Glendon College, where they teach a course in "Religion and Science Fiction." The class had just finished reading my Far-Seer, so I went to meet the students. They were a terrific group, and one student made what I thought was a truly insightful observation: she pointed out that there is a tendency in my work for God to appear as nonanthropomorphic (such as the false god known as the "Face of God" in Far-Seer, and the more-or-less true God, the Watcher, in Fossil Hunter). She opined that this might in fact by related to my upbringing as a Unitarian -- Unitarians being a Christian denomination who reject the divinity of Christ (which is why they are Unitarians, as opposed to Trinitarians), in other words, who reject the anthropomorphizing of God. The professor, Paul Fayter, is doing a critical study on my work, and said he would incorporate the student's idea. I must say the idea surprised me -- I hadn't been conscious of any impact that particular aspect of my upbringing had had on my work, but it certainly seems to make sense. I always find going to classes that have been studying my books particularly energizing. And, lucky me, I get to do another one this month: Toronto's Humber College teaches my THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT, and I'm going to drop in for a visit there. Early next year, I'm going to a different SF course at York; in that one, they teach Factoring Humanity. York and the University of Toronto have a real rivalry going, so it will be interesting to see how the York students take to a book set at U of T ... ================================================================= 6 October 1999 Had lunch today with my editor, David G. Hartwell, and fellow writer Terence M. Green (David is visiting Toronto). The good news is that Tor's trade paperback reissue of my first novel Golden Fleece has been printed! It should start showing up in stores over the next few weeks. I'm delighted to have this book back in print! ================================================================= 7 October 1999 Carolyn and I are off to Columbus, Ohio, tomorrow, where I'll be Guest of Honor at ConText XII. We're really looking forward to it! As most of you know, I sell copies of my books, old and new, directly through my web site. Yesterday was the biggest single day for book orders I've ever had -- twenty-two assorted titles, from seven different customers! Tonight is the Toronto SF community's monthly pub night; Carolyn and I are looking forward to that -- we've missed the last couple of events because we've been out of town. ================================================================= 11 October 1999 Carolyn and I had a fabulous time this weekend. I was Author Guest of Honor and she was Poet Guest of Honor at the SF convention Context XII in Columbus, Ohio. It was a FABULOUS convention. Mike Resnick had characterized it as the Readercon of the Midwest, and that's bang on target. I've been to SF conventions with five times as many people where there were fewer actual readers. The hotel was an older one, but its facilities were just fine. Sadly, though, it's slated to be demolished in two weeks. The staff was very pleasant, despite the fact that they were all soon to be out of work. The bartenders were particularly liberal with the mixed drinks, seeing no reason not to drain their bottles before the closing came. There was a great group of other writers present, including old friend Ron Sarti, Maureen McHugh (who I finally met face to face), Jack Nimersheim, Yvonne Navarro, J.R. Dunn, Carol Ottolenghi-Barga, Linda Dunn, Geoffrey Landis, Mary Turzillo, and others. I gave a very well received reading of the opening chapter of Calculating God; this is the third time I've read that at a con, and people seem to really like it -- I sure hope they like the rest of the book as much! My Guest of Honor speech -- "The Future is Already Here: Is There a Place for Science Fiction in the 21st Century?" was also very well received, which was nice. Ron Sarti went so far as to say it was the best GoH speech he'd ever heard. I was on lots of panels. One of the best was on the impacts of genetic research: very lively, very informative. A special treat was getting to see the new Tor edition of GOLDEN FLEECE for the first time: Sally Kobee from Larry Smith Booksellers had managed to get five in time for the convention (it was just printed last week) and they all sold out, along with lots of copies of my other books. The new edition looks absolutely terrific; I'm thrilled with it. Another nice thing: THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH did a huge (2/3 page), very flattering article about me and my work in last Wednesday's edition -- the books reporter there turns out to be a big fan of my work. The only downside to the convention was the trip down: we were flying aboard a Dash-8, a little Turbo prop (the only direct flight from Toronto to Columbus), and there was tons of turbulence, owing to bad weather. On the other hand, the trip back last night was very relaxing and pleasant, with the plane almost completely empty. This is the first of five consecutive weekends I'm spending at SF conventions: next weekend, I'm off to Fredericton, New Brunswick for the Canadian National Science Fiction Convention, at which I'm toastmaster. ================================================================= 11 October 1999 So I get a nice invitation to be a program participant at Boskone in Massachusetts in February 2000, and I say to myself, February in 2000, well, sure, I can't think of anything I'm doing then, but before saying yes, I check my electronic time-planner just to be sure, and what do I discover but that Toronto's Ad Astra 19 will be held the same weekend as Boskone next year, and I'm already committed to being at Ad Astra. Ad Astra used to be a summer convention, but they've moved to February because of hotel troubles. I just wished they'd picked a different weekend! Boston and Toronto are close enough to each other that attending both would have been a real possibility for lots of people. ================================================================= 12 October 1999 As some of you may know, except for advances on books, authors basically get paid twice a year -- when royalty checks are issued in April and October. Well, today was payday, at least as far as the titles represented by my old agent, Richard Curtis, was concerned. It's nice to see that all of my in-print books that he represents (Starplex and Illegal Alien from Ace, as well as The Terminal Experiment from HarperPrism), are still generating nice royalty amounts. For those curious about how such things work, the April royalty payment covers the preceeding July to December, and the October payment covers the preceeding January to June. ================================================================= 14 October 1999 We all make mistakes, but I just ran across one of Isaac Asimov's that made me smile. In his introduction to the 1987 Signet anthology ISAAC ASIMOV'S NEANDERTHALS, he writes, "In 1911, a nearly complete skeleton of Neanderthal man was studied by a French scientist, Pierre Boule." Nope. Pierre Boulle -- with two L's -- wrote the novel PLANET OF THE APES; it was Marcellin Boule who studied the Neaderthal fossil. ================================================================= 15 October 1999 I'm off to Fredericton, New Brunswick, today for the Canadian National Science Fiction Convention -- the CanVention -- at which I'll be Master of Ceremonies. The Aurora Awards will be presented at a banquet there. My Factoring Humanity is a nominee, but even if I don't win, I'd say the chances are good that I'll be bringing back a trophy or two anyway. I'm the designated accepter for Robert Charles Wilson in the novel category, both David Shtogryn and Edo van Belkom in the short-story category, Edo van Belkom (again) in the "Other" category for his interview collection NORTHERN DREAMERS, Chris Krejlgaard for PARSEC magazine, also in the "Other" category, and Lloyd Penney in one of the fan categories. (Fredericton is a LONG way from Toronto <grin>, so not too many of the nominees from here are making it out there.) Tanya Huff is the convention's Guest of Honor -- and a better choice I can't think of; she was born in the Maritimes, and so is the only significant Atlantic Canadian SF writer. She and I are on the same flight from Toronto (she has to take a train in to Toronto from where she lives, out near Kingston, Ontario, where she lives now, to get the flight). Tanya and I have been friends for twenty years, but don't see each other nearly often enough. It'll be great to get to sit with her for a couple of hours and just chat. I'm staying in Fredericton until Monday morning, so that I can do the Dead Dog party Sunday night. Talk to y'all when I get back! ================================================================= 21 October 1999 The Canadian National Science Fiction Convention in Fredericton, New Brunswick, this past weekend was great fun. It was a VERY small convention -- Fredericton is pretty darn remote and very expensive to fly to. Just 75 people, give or take. But nonetheless I had a fabulous time. Tanya Huff, one of my favorite people, was Guest of Honor, and we were on the same flight to/from Toronto on the way out and the way back, so we got to spend lots of time chatting. I gave yet another reading of the opening of Calculating God, and, yet again, it was very well received. I was also Master of Ceremonies for the Aurora Awards, which came off very well this year. Factoring Humanity came in second; the winner -- deservedly so -- was DARWINIA by my good friend Robert Charles Wilson; it was an honor to accept the trophy on his behalf. For short fiction, Edo van Belkom got the nod for his alternate-history story "Hockey's Night in Canada;" I was also Edo's designated accepter. And in the "Other" category, the anthology ARROWDREAMS, in which Edo's story appeared, took the award. (Monday night -- the day after the con -- Carolyn and I hosted our quarterly party for Toronto-area SF professionals; we had a particularly good turnout -- almost ran out of sandwiches and did run out of pizza! -- and the highlight of the evening was me re-presenting the Aurora trophies to Edo and Bob.) The Fredericton crew put on a terrific buffet banquet prior to the awards ceremony on Saturday night, and this year's Aurora trophies were the nicest I'd ever seen (they were the standard Franklyn Johnson design, but Frank had done an exceptional job on the workmanship this year). After MCing the Auroras, I was master of ceremonies for the masquerade. I kept the audience occupied while we waited for the judges' decisions with a spontaneous Canadian science-fiction trivia quiz ("Name Terence M. Green's 1987 short-story collection." "What's the name of the SF specialty store in Vancouver, British Columbia?" "Name the member of the Stratford, Ontario, Shakespeare company who provided the voice of HAL 9000." etc. etc. Lots of fun.) Sunday was the CanVention business meeting, which lasted three hours. Although there was much controversial stuff -- including a proposal that died without a seconder to give the French Aurora Awards a separate ballot, different deadline, and separate awards ceremony -- the meeting was actually almost congenial, and very productive. Considerable discussion ensued about the fact that the only bid to be designated as next year's CanVention was the con "TT2000" -- where TT, historically, has stood for Toronto Trek. Now, Toronto Trek has a sterling reputation as a media con, but there was much debate about whether they were an appropriate venue for presenting the Auroras. There was also concern that this date might conflict with Readercon (the 2000 Readercon date is listed as "TBA" on their web site). Ultimately, though, the TT2000 bid was accepted. Two substantive changes to the Aurora rules passed (although they have to be ratified at next year's CanVention to become official): novels, which previously had been eligible for two years will now only be eligible for one year, a recognition of the fact that there are now so many good Canadian SF novels published each year that we don't have to worry about having a problem coming up with five decent nominees (this year's ballot was an example: all the works were 1998 books, and of the five nominees, two were also Hugo finalists, two more were World Fantasy Award finalists, and one of the WFA finalists was also a top-ten GLOBE AND MAIL bestseller in Canada). The other change will require works to receive at least five nominations (instead of the current minimum of two) or a minimum of 10% of all nominations cast in that category, whichever is higher, to appear on the ballot, and any category that has fewer than three nominees will be declared vacant for the year, with no award given. This won't affect the English pro awards, but may have an impact on the fan and French awards. The big topics of gossip at the con was the fact that a member of SF Canada (a ten-year-old writers' group) had absconded with all of the organization's funds, putting the group's future in real jeopardy (gee, and I thought I'd had problems to deal with when I was SFWA president!). The hotel was excellent -- an older, but rather classy hotel, with a staff that really seemed delighted to have the con on site. Sunday night, I had dinner with a couple of Fredericton friends not attending the con, then headed back for a very pleasant dead-dog party. Right next door to the hotel was the local art gallery, with three fabulous Salvidor Dali paintings, including one that was two stories high. Very impressive. All in all, a great weekend! ================================================================= 21 October 1999 I've been visiting the halls of academia. Yesterday, I returned to my alma mater, Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto, to give a talk to an organization called the LIFE Forum ("Learning Is For Ever"), a group of retired faculty members. I gave a talk about SF, then signed books. After that, I was interviewed for an hour and a half by a reporter for the Ryerson student newspaper, who had certainly done her homework! She had lots of excellent questions to ask me. We then went over to the World's Biggest Bookstore (the world's first book superstore, just a block from Ryerson). To my delight, they had a total of 104 mass-market paperbacks by me on hand (assorted The Terminal Experiment, Frameshift, ILLEGAL ALIEN, and Factoring Humanity), plus 21 hardcovers of FlashForward. Quite an impressive display! Of course, I signed all the copies before I left. That evening, Carolyn and I went out to Pearson (Toronto's airport) to meet John Mansfield, the chair of the 1994 World SF Convention, for dinner; John had a six-hour stopover on his way to England. We had a great time! Today, I met this morning with Peter Sellers, to put the final, final touches on the anthology of mystery fiction we've been editing for the Crime Writers of Canada. Then I went down to Humber College, to give a reading and talk. They teach THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT there -- and, to my delight, I was told that the bookstore had sold out 130 copies of the book, the largest number (and the only 100% sell-through) they've ever had for a novel in the campus bookstore in a single semester. After that, it was up to the beautiful McMichael Canadian Collection -- one of Canada's most important art galleries -- for a book launch for the 10th annual EARLY HARVEST anthology of writing and art by young adults in Vaughan (the city I actually live in, just north of Toronto); Carolyn and I edited the 1994 and 1995 editions. All in all, a busy -- but very pleasant -- couple of days! ================================================================= 24 October 1999 Many of you who attend eastern US/Canada cons will know my brother-in-law, the affable David Livingstone Clink. Well, I'm pleased as punch to announce that David, who, like his sister and my wife, Carolyn Clink, is already quite an accomplished poet, has just sold a poem called "First Contact" to Stanley Schmidt at ANALOG. For more on Dave and his work, see his web site at: www.poetrymachine.com ================================================================= 24 October 1999 I've finished the third of the five conventions I'm doing on consecutive weekends. Because of other commitments (Carolyn's poetry writers' workshop, and a 20th anniversary party for the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors), we are not attending the con today (Sunday). Primedia was SMALL -- highest badge number we saw was 1293, and they started numbering at 1200 -- but nonetheless we had a great time. I gave another reading of the opening of Calculating God, and, to my astonishment, it had the highest turnout, I'm told, of any panel/reading/etc. at the con, about 30 people. It went over very well. More interesting, though, was the presentation Michael Lennick and I did later on Saturday afternoon. This one was entitled "Illegal Alien: From Novel to Screenplay." Michael, as some of you may recall, is the screenwriter adapting my novel ILLEGAL ALIEN for film. Usually, the author has no input into this process, but I am a consultant on this film, and so have been kept in the loop an inordinate amount. Everybody thought the panel was fascinating, talking about what things in the book had to be changed in order to make it work as a screenplay or a film. Despite the small size of the convention, lots of good people were on hand, including a significant percentage of the buying SF editors in Canada: Edo van Belkom, who runs the SF line for Quarry Press; Sally Tomasevic and Marcel Gagne, who run TRANSVERSIONS; Don Hutchison, the editor of the NORTHERN FRIGHTS anthology series; and Julie E. Czerneda, who edits a line of anthologies using SF stories to teach high-school science for textbook publisher Trifolium Books. So, a good con to do business at. Saturday night, twelve of us had a fabulous dinner out at a nearby all-you-can-eat Italian buffet, then returned to the con for a double book launch (for a small-press horror/romance by Stephanie Bedwell-Grime, and the latest title from DAW Books by Julie E. Czerneda). Sadly, there was no SF book dealer in the dealers' room; only a horror-book dealer (and, judging by the appreciative murmurs Edo van Belkom kept making over the stock, a good one, at that). So, I ended up selling copies of my own books directly after my panels; I never do that if there's a dealer present -- I never undercut a dealer -- but, since there wasn't, we moved a bunch of books, which was nice. (I always have some car stock with me.) Next con, starting in just five days: Concinnity, in Ottawa, at which I'm Guest of Honor. ================================================================= 25 October 1999 The party this evening for the 20th anniversary of the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors was fabulous. Lots of great food, and lots of great conversation. I had a nice chat with mystery writer Sara Paretsky about the trouble genre-fiction writers have getting respect; a good conversation with Philip Marchand, Canada's top book critic; a pleasant cat with the host of the Canadian TV show about books (who said that the panel discussion Nalo Hopkinson and I did about SF earlier this year was widely regarded by the show's producers as the best panel they had last season); a fascinating discussion with a writer from Pakistan who had been jailed for criticizing the authorities; and more. But there's no rest for a busy writer. Today, I also reviewed the entire copyedited manuscript for Calculating God, reviewed the galleys for a short story I have coming up in an anthology, and read about 35 pages of a fairly technical book I'm working my way through as research for my next novel, plus did about two hours of work finishing up the anthology OVER THE EDGE that I'm co-editing. Not bad for a Sunday ... <grin>. ================================================================= 26 October 1999 Today was a blast. SATURDAY NIGHT -- a Canadian magazine that's sort of the northern counterpart of THE NEW YORKER -- had five Canadian SF writers participate in a 2.5-hour video conference, brainstorming about the process of imagining the future. In Toronto, Nalo Hopkinson and I, plus two editors from SATURDAY NIGHT, were hooked up with Spider Robinson and Don H. DeBrandt in Vancouver and Elisabeth Vonarburg in Chicoutimi. As you might expect, the conversation was quite lively, and ranged all over the map. And it had been far too long since I'd seen Spider, Don, or Elisabeth, so it was great to spend a couple of hours with them, in a virtual sense. We had two TV monitors in our room; Nalo and I could see Spider and Don on one, and Elisabeth on the other; similar setups were available to the other participants. The fruits of all this -- an edited transcript of the session -- will appear in the January 2000 issue of SATURDAY NIGHT magazine. ================================================================= 27 October 1999 Today was a day for photographs. The new issue of the NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION arrived, with a nice photo of me and Carolyn, and Stephen Baxter and his wife, at the Worldcon in Australia. And I spent the afternoon down at Toronto's lakeshore having a new author photo taken of me (by renowned Canadian horror writer and journalist Michael Rowe); my last author photo (that hand-on-chin shot that appears in The Terminal Experiment, Illegal Alien, Factoring Humanity, and FlashForward) was taken five years ago, and, although striking, always seemed a bit dour to me. But it was also a day for paintings ... Lesley Choyce, the publisher of Pottersfield Press, called my editing partner Peter Sellers today to say that he'd secured rights to an Alex Colville painting to use on our anthology OVER THE EDGE. Colville, born in 1920, is one of the absolute top painters in Canada, so this is a real coup. ================================================================= 29 October 1999 I'm off to my fourth consecutive weekend of con-going. This weekend, I'm Guest of Honor at Concinnity, a convention in Ottawa. Speaking of Ottawa, on Monday, November 15, at 8:00 p.m., at the National Library of Canada, Terry Brooks and I will be reading, introduced by Charles de Lint. Admission is just two dollars, 100% of which will be donated to an Ottawa literacy group. Just finished reviewing the transcript of the SATURDAY NIGHT video conference. It's surprisingly readable. The article will be in the January 2000 issue. ================================================================= 3 November 1999 I was guest of honor at Concinnity in Ottawa this past weekend. It was a tiny convention -- Ottawa has been without a con for a few years, since the collapse of CanCon, and this was an attempt to get a new one off the ground. Publicity left much to be desired: they never managed to get a listing in LOCUS's convention calendar, and the proprietor of the local SF shop told me that flyers first showed up in his store three days before the con. Ah, well. That didn't stop those of us in attendance from having a good time. For a change, I didn't read from Calculating God -- too many of those at the con had already heard me read the opening at other conventions. Instead, I read "Fallen Angel," a horror story I'd written for Ed Kramer's forthcoming anthology STRANGE ATTRACTION. I must say, that's one fun story to read aloud; I hope to get to read it again soon. Saturday night was a combination STAR TREK jeopardy game and charity auction; I was both the auctioneer and a contestant. I won handily (yes, I know such worthless information as the fact that Kirk was born in Iowa; his quarters are on deck 5; the Vulcan eden is named Sha-ka-ree in honor of Sean Connery; and Malachi Throne played both Commodore Mendez and Romulan Senator Pardek). Carolyn and I left the con just before 1:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, and did the six-hour drive to Rochester, New York, where we had dinner with friends Nick DiChario and Mary Stanton. We spent most of yesterday evening and most of today with them, as well, while staying at my father's vacation home on Canandaigua Lake. Tomorrow, we head out for the seven-hour drive to Milford, Pennsylvania, where I'm signing at Toadstool Books that evening (Wednesday) from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. ================================================================= 3 November 1999 I'm going to be in Canada's capital city of Ottawa on Monday, November 15, at 8:00 p.m. I'll be reading in the auditorium of the National Library of Canada on Wellington Street. The reading, sponsored by Leishman Books, has a $2 admission charge, with all funds gathered donated to Ottawa literacy groups. The evening, being billed as "A Fantastical Event," features: Robert J. Sawyer Nebula Award-winning author of THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT and FLASHFORWARD Terry Brooks Author of STAR WARS EPISODE 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE and ANGEL FIRE EAST both readers introduced by Ottawa's own CHARLES de LINT Author of SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING For more information, contact Leishman Books at (613) 722-8313. ================================================================= 5 November 1999 I am delighted to announce that my agent, Ralph Vicinanza, has completed negotiations with David G. Hartwell at Tor for a new three-book contract for yours truly. These will be my thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth novels. The first of the three will be called NEANDERTAL PARALLAX. Everyone -- my agent, my publisher, and moi -- seems quite pleased with the outline, and I'm now heavily into doing research for the book. On top of that, Tor has bought reprint rights to my long out-of-print time-travel novel End of an Era; they will be re-releasing the book in trade paperback. I'm really delighted about this because End of an Era remains, to this day, my favorite of all my novels. (End of an Era, by the way, won both this forum's HOMer Award for Best Novel of the Year and Japan's Seiun Award for Best Foreign Novel of the Year.) Tor is the only publisher I've worked with for the last couple of years, and, with this new deal, they handily surpass Ace as the publisher to have done the largest number of titles by me: Ace did six of my books (Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner; End of an Era; Starplex; and Illegal Alien). Tor has now contracted for a total of seven new novels by me (Frameshift, Factoring Humanity, FlashForward, Calculating God, Neandertal Parallax, and the prosaically titled Novel #14 and Novel #15), plus the trade-paperback reprints of Golden Fleece and End of an Era, for a total of nine Sawyer books to have the Tor logo on their spines. I'm extremely grateful to David G. Hartwell and Tor publisher Tom Doherty for their ongoing support of me and my work. Although I've done four two-book contracts before, one of those (Far-Seer and End of an Era) was for two already-completed manuscripts), and another (Frameshift and Factoring Humanity) had one of the two books already written. I've never before had the luxury of a THREE-book contract, especially with none of the books yet written. It's nice, in a volatile market, to have some job security for the next couple of years, and I'm very thankful for it. ================================================================= 9 November 1999 I've been having the most fantastic time on the road. Wednesday night, Carolyn and I were in Milford, New Hampshire, where I signed at The Toadstool Bookshop, a wonderful general-interest bookstore with a large SF section. I've never been treated better at a signing. Factoring Humanity was their number-one SF bestseller for October 1999 (and is number three on their year-to-date SF bestsellers' list), and prior to my arrival they'd sold 32 hardcovers of FlashForward -- a terrific number for a single store. I read a bit from FlashForward, and chatted with a very interesting group of people, and, of course, signed books. The next day -- Thursday -- Carolyn and I went to Providence, Rhode Island. We spent the afternoon at Brown University, meeting with Philip Lieberman, the world's leading expert on Neandertal speech capabilities. He showed us casts of skulls, and casts of various primate vocal tracts. Fascinating stuff! Thursday evening through Sunday, Carolyn and I were at the World Fantasy Convention in Providence. I had only once before been to a WFC -- in 1984, when it was in Ottawa -- and, frankly, I don't remember much of that one. I'd stayed away from WFCs because I'd thought, as an SF writer, there wouldn't be much for me. But I had a terrific time -- not quite as good as I'd had at Worldcon, but still really, really fine. (WFC has been described as being like Worldcon but without the fans -- it's very heavily skewed towards pros and serious book collectors -- but I like fans.) I had great chats with many writers and editors, including, of course, my agent Ralph Vicinanza and his associate Chris Lotts (who had details of the sale of Frameshift and Factoring Humanity to Spain for me), David G. Hartwell and Jim Minz from Tor, Tor publisher Tom Doherty, Betsy Mitchell from Warner, John Helfers from Tekno-Books, anthologist Ed Kramer, Warren Lapine from DNA, Ian Randall Strock from Artemis, Robert Vardeman, Robert Silverberg, Josepha Sherman, Allison Baird, James Hartley, Ron Collins, Sean Russell, Charles de Lint and MaryAnn Harris, and lots more. I don't think I'll go next year -- Corpus Christi is a little far afield -- but I'll certainly go to the WFC the year after in Montreal. At the WFC, John Helfers gave me the good news that my short story "The Shoulders of Giants" will be the lead story in the anthology STAR COLONIES, edited by Marty H. Greenberg and him, coming from DAW early next year. And both John and Ed Kramer commissioned new stories from me at the con, which was nice -- I've now got a total of four short-story commissions I have to fulfill, the most, I think, I've ever had at one time. My old buddy Bob Eggleton was there, and I told him that Tor would be reissuing End of an Era in trade paperback. He immediately sought out Irene Gallo, Tor's art director, and got the job of doing the cover, which delights me. Bob had five cold-cast bronze busts of Toroca, the main character from my 1993 novel Fossil Hunter, in the art show; they were terrific, and Carolyn and I bought one (the others all sold, as well). (Bob did the cover for Fossil Hunter.) After the WFC, Carolyn and I drove to Princeton, New Jersey, where we spent Sunday night. (In the car on the way, I wrote a 500-word piece on SF conventions for THE OTTAWA CITIZEN's books section; it will appear in the Sunday, November 14, edition.) On Monday morning, we went to Princeton University. I'm co-hosting (with the fabulous Gillian Deacon) a special for the Discovery Channel Canada about the millennium; it will air Sunday, January 2, coast-to-coast in Canada. Gill is doing the historical stuff -- what happened in the last millennium -- and I'm doing the futurism stuff -- what will happen in the next millennium. For that, my producer flew down from Toronto to join us, and we videotaped me interviewing Dr. Joe Tsien, created of the Doogie mice that grabbed headlines around the world back in September (the Doogies have an extra gene that gives them enhanced memory, and apparently superior intelligence). And, yup, I got to see the Doogies. (On Tuesday, we tape more for that special at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.) After Monday's taping, Carolyn and I took the train into Penn Station in Manhattan, and went up to the American Museum of Natural History. We spent a good long time talking with Ian Tattersall, the curator of anthropology, and got a nice behind-the-scenes tour with Gary Sawyer (no relation), the senior technician. Man, I love this job! ================================================================= 15 November 1999 In theory, my little article about SF conventions appeared in today's OTTAWA CITIZEN (Sunday, November 14, 1999), but I haven't seen it yet. Carolyn and I are still on the road. Picking up the trip report where I left off (in New York City on Monday, November 8) ... On Tuesday, November 9, we arrived in Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb of Washington D.C.; we stayed for two days with Roger MacBride Allen, his wife Eleanore Fox, and their son Matthew. They have a beautiful house on an acre of land, with a separate guest house out back -- which is where Carolyn and I stayed. That afternoon, we went into the National Air and Space Museum (part of the Smithsonian Institution), where I recorded my "stand ups" for the Millennium documentary I'm co-hosting for The Discovery Channel Canada. We did the shots of me standing in front of Columbia, the Apollo XI command module. Just call me Mr. One-Take: it was a fairly long standup, but I pulled it off in a single take -- although we did a couple more for safety's sake. Afterwards, Carolyn and I headed down the Mall, while the Discovery crew gathered "B roll" (the stuff I'm going to talk about in voice-over narration). We went to the Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam Memorial -- three that always move me every time I see them. (The Washington Monument is currently entirely enclosed in metal scaffolding -- it looks sort of like it's covered by a Borg condom.) That night, Carolyn and I went to Catherine Asaro's house for a wonderful home-cooked dinner -- which, after over a week on the road, was much appreciated! I think Catherine and I could have gone on talking shop all night long; we had a great time. The next day, Carolyn and I headed out to the Library of Congress, where we got the VIP behind-the-scenes tour before my talk. The talk was very well received; every one seemed to find it very interesting, and we had a lively Q&A session afterwards that could have gone on much longer, if we'd had the time. Surprise guests in the audience: Dick Lynch, coeditor of the frequently Hugo-nominated fanzine MIMOSA; Farah Mendlesohn, one of the editors of the British SF critical journal EXTRAPOLATIONS. After, 14 of us (including Dick and Farah) went out to a fabulous Chinese restaurant -- the best Chinese food I've ever had. Carolyn and I then did something utterly fannish: we went to find the part of the Senate office buildings used as the establishing shot for Oscar Goldman's office on THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN. We then headed back to Takoma Park, for more fascinating shop talk, this time with Roger. That evening, we took Roger, Eleanore, and Matthew out for dinner. Thursday morning -- the Veteran's Day holiday -- we headed to the home (!) of Rick Potts, the director of the Human Origins Project at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Considering that Rick didn't know me from Adam -- or any other putative ancestor <grin> -- it was extraordinarily kind of him to take time out on his holiday to have Carolyn and me over to his house to chat about Neandertals. There, we met up with my old buddy Michael Brett-Surman, the dinosaur specialist at the Smithsonian. We went back to his place for three fabulous days. Mike and his wife are great SF fans, and they live on two acres of land very close to the Chancellorville civil-war battle field (at which Stonewall Jackson was accidentally shot by his own troops, leading to the loss of his arm, and, shortly thereafter, his death). Mike gave as a great tour of the battlefield. The CBC really wanted me to be in Toronto to do an installment of "One on One with Peter Mansbridge" -- a talk show hosted by the anchor of the CBC's national nightly TV newscast. They offered to fly me from Washington to Toronto, and then back down to Washington again after the interview, which would have taken place at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, but I didn't want to take time out from seeing Mike and Kim to do that. Still, it's nice to be wanted! On Saturday night, we all drove out to Maclean, Virginia, to rendezvous with Jim Gurney, the author of DINOTOPIA. Jim was on the tail-end of a five-week (!) book tour promoting the latest DINOTOPIA book. We all went out to a terrific Turkish restaurant. It turned out that Jim had recently done a Neandertal reconstruction for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, so we had a great time chatting about both Neandertals and dinosaurs. We were joined by Jim's publicist at HarperPrism, who is now working with Josette Kurey, who used to be my publicist at Tor ... (By coincidence, about two weeks ago I was offered the job of writing one of the DINOTOPIA young-adult novels; I was flattered, but I turned it down -- I've got plenty on my plate as it is.) We spent Sunday driving from Virginia to my dad's vacation home on Canandaigua Lake, where we spent the night. Tomorrow, we'll head back to Toronto -- although I'll only make it as far as the airport. Carolyn will drop me there, and then I fly to Ottawa for Monday night's readings by me and Terry Brooks at the National Library of Canada, introduced by Charles de Lint. I've gotten a lot of work done on the road, thanks to my trusty laptop (I'm writing this in the car, while Carolyn drives), but I am looking forward to getting home, at least for a little bit. But it's only for a little bit: two weeks today we leave for Barcelona, Spain, so that I can give the keynote address at this year's Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya "Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficcion" award ceremony. ================================================================= 17 November 1999 Final installment of my trip report: Monday was a crazy day: we left upstate New York around 9:30, and drove to Toronto. Carolyn dropped me off at Toronto's airport on her way back to our home, and I flew to Ottawa (it's just a one-hour flight), getting in about 5:00 p.m. At 6:00 p.m., I met Terry Brooks and his wife Judene at Wilfrid's in the Chateau Laurier hotel, and we had a lovely dinner in advance of our reading/signing at the National Library. We got a crowd of 125 people, which was nice ... and even nicer, there were hardly any wookiee-heads present. Perhaps because the event didn't start until 8:00 p.m. on a school night, very few of Terry's STAR WARS readers showed up. Charles de Lint read briefly, then introduced me, then Terry. We each read for about 20 minutes (I read from FlashForward), then did a Q&A session (one guy asked Terry a lengthy question about Jar Jar Binks, which began, "Would you care to comment on ..." After the questioner was finally finished, Terry simply said, "No," to a big round of applause). But I must say I got the biggest laugh of the evening. Terry and Charles had both commented on the fact that I'm somewhat younger than either of them. I got even when one of the questions from the audience was, "What did you read as schoolboys?" My response: "Charles de Lint and Terry Brooks." It brought the house down. Afterwards, we all signed books for what I thought was a surprisingly long time. The sponsoring bookstore, Ottawa's Lieshman's, seemed very pleased with sales. (And the had the Canadian debut of the trade paperback edition of Golden Fleece on hand, which was great.) I stayed overnight in Ottawa at the Radisson. To my delight, the coffee shop was closed for renovations, so I had breakfast in La Ronde, the revolving restaurant on the roof of the Radisson, with a fabulous view of Canada's capital; La Ronde normally isn't open until lunch. I spent Tuesday following up on offers made in a couple of fan letters I'd received in the last year. One was from a scientist who worked for the National Research Council of Canada: he said if I was ever in Ottawa, I should give him a call. Well, of course, I set it up weeks ago, but I spent the morning and lunch at the NRC, getting a terrific behind the scenes tour, including having my entire clothed body scanned in 3D, and turned into a manipulatable computer file, and visiting their virtual-reality lab, which really is cutting edge, allowing you to interact with the projected objects. Meanwhile, another fan letter had been from Mauril Belanger, a Member of Canada's Parliament. He'd written to say how much he'd been enjoying my books, so I went to see him at the House of Commons, and afterwards had dinner with him and his wife in the Parliamentary Dining Room. Way cool! Sheila Copps, Canada's Minister of Culture, came over to say hello while we were eating. After that, I flew back to Toronto. All told, I was on the road for nineteen days. It was a terrific trip -- Guest of Honor in Ottawa; guest lecturing in Rochester; signing in New Hampshire; the World Fantasy Convention; meeting with Neandertal experts at Brown University, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian; my talk at the Library of Congress; filming documentary footage for The Discovery Channel Canada at Princeton and the National Air and Space Museum; touring Civil War battlefields; dinners with writers Nick DiChario, Marcos Donnelly, and Mary Stanton; Catherine Asaro; Roger MacBride Allen; James Gurney; and Terry Brooks; staying at the home of a Smithsonian paleontologist; reading at the National Library of Canada; visiting the National Research Council of Canada; and a dinner with a member of parliament. As I say, a terrific trip -- but I'm glad it's over, and I'm delighted to be back home. ================================================================= 17 November 1999 The Discovery Channel Canada has a nifty web site, which includes a section called THE SEX FILES, that deals with the science of human reproduction. Well, if you go to the link below, you'll find an article about what SF writers think sex will be like in the future; it contains interviews with Robert J. Sawyer, Melissa Scott, Phyllis Gotlieb, and Ben Bova. http://exn.ca/html/templates/mastertop.cfm?ID=19991116-51 ================================================================= 19 November 1999 The bad news is that my trusty Lexmark Optra R+ printer needs service. It's been acting up for a few days, and this afternoon I'm taking it in to Lexmark Canada's headquarters, which, fortunately, is only a few kilometers from my home. It's been a GREAT printer, and I've got tons of accessories for it, including a duplexer, envelope feeder, lower paper tray, and more, that, unfortunately, don't fit the later Lexmark models; I sure hope it can be fixed for a reasonable cost. ================================================================= 19 November 1999 Found a nifty CD-ROM a couple of days ago: STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION COMPANION -- A SERIES GUIDE AND SCRIPT LIBRARY. Yup, you read that right: script library. The full teleplays for all 178 episodes of ST:TNG are on this one CD, a real bargain for those, like me, who like to read scripts. (Also included are the video trailers for all episodes, as well as episode summaries and production notes.) I found it at a Best Buy in Virginia; it's just US$19.95 -- or just ELEVEN CENTS per script. A real bargain. (And, yes, you can print out the scripts, in standard script format, if you want to read them in hardcopy.) (There's also a version for DEEP SPACE NINE.) ================================================================= 24 November 1999 My baby is home! My Lexmark Optra R+ is back home from being serviced, safe and sound. Although I do have a second printer -- an Epson Stylus Color 600 -- I've really missed the Optra. When you've gotten used to 16 pages per minute -- meaning an entire novel in manuscript format can be printed out in 25 minutes -- having to use a slow, noisy inkjet can drive you batty. Just for the record, Lexmark Canada's service people were very knowledgable and very pleasant to deal with. ================================================================= 24 November 1999 Busy day today! At 11:00 a.m., I arrived at the CBC Broadcasting Centre, and recorded a four-minute commentary about life in the next century; the text of the commentary will be posted on the CBC Newsworld soon (it may indeed already be up there, at www.cbc.ca), and me reading the commentary will be aired on The Arts Tonight on CBC Radio at some point soon. At noon, I went to Ontario Place (a park on Toronto's lakeshore), where they have a big geodesic dome that houses an Imax theatre. There I was interviewed for a TV documentary that will air early in 2000; the documentary is part of a series on architecture, and this installment was about domes. I talked about domed cities as a motif in science fiction. Then at 2:00, it was off to meet a print journalist who is doing a profile on me. I got home around 4:00 p.m. -- then went to work writing! I did 2,150 words this evening on a new short story (commissioned for a Marty Greenberg anthology). Tomorrow (Wednesday) should be a little less hectic: I write all day until about 5:00 p.m., then I'm off to meet a writer who is doing a book about how creative people use the Internet for research; he wants to interview me for that. Then it's off to the book launch for the short story collection by my friend Peter Sellers (the guy I co-edited an anthology with this earlier year). Thursday, all I've got on my plate is a luncheon date with Rob Howard, the marketing manager for H.B. Fenn (Tor's Canadian distributor) -- but it'll take an hour to get up to Fenn and an hour to get back, plus at least an hour for lunch. Still, while I'm at Fenn, I'll pick up some copies of the trade paperback of Golden Fleece. The rest of the day will be spent writing. Friday, I'm with the Discovery Channel Canada people all day, doing the remaining "standups" for the documentary on the Millennium that I'm co-hosting for them that airs January 2 (and sometime between now and then I have to memorize my lines!). Saturday is a day of writing, followed by an evening party for my father's 75 birthday. And Sunday, I leave for Spain for a week. Life be good ... ================================================================= 25 November 1999 Peter Sellers's book launch last night was quite nicely done. It was held at a pub called Vox, which was closed to the public for the launch. Peter had booked a nice jazz trio to entertain for the evening. I finished a good draft of my story for Marty Greenberg's FAR FRONTIERS anthology today; I'm calling the story "Star Light, Star Bright." I also finished the little collaborative story I'm doing with Stephen Leigh. Tonight, Carolyn and I are off to the gala opening party for a new Chapters superstore. ================================================================= 26 November 1999 The new Chapters store, at 2400 Yonge Street in Toronto, is FABULOUS -- one of the nicest I've seen. And the grand-opening party was JAMMED; they couldn't have fit many more people in there, even though it's a 35,000-square-foot store. We had a fabulous time, and did a fair bit of business with various people. ================================================================= 26 November 1999 Miserable day today! We did the shoots for my remaining "stand-ups" for the Discovery Channel Canada special I'm co-hosting -- but it was pouring rain in Toronto, and I had to wear the same light-weight jacket I'd worn in the other shots we did earlier. I'm chilled to the bone right now. Still, we put the six stand-ups in the can, plus recorded all my voice-over narration (in a mercifully warm studio). I've just got one studio day left, then my work on this special is done. It will air January 2. ================================================================= 27 November 1999 The December 1999 / January 2000 issue of SATURDAY NIGHT magazine is now out; SATURDAY NIGHT is the closest thing there is to a Canadian counterpart of the NEW YORKER. It has a huge circulation: besides newsstand and subscription copies, this issue also went out for free with home delivery copies of newspapers across Canada yesterday, including THE NATIONAL POST and the VANCOUVER SUN. This issue contains the transcript of the videoconference I did on October 23 with Nalo Hopkinson, Spider Robinson, Don DeBrandt, and Elisabeth Vonarburg. The introduction begins: SATURDAY NIGHT issued a challenge to five of Canada's most celebrated science-fiction writers: to predict the future by creating, together, a story of life in Canada in 2067. First, they explained why the assignment was wrongheaded, condescending, and displayed a grasp of science fiction that clearly hadn't progressed beyond reruns of THE TWILIGHT ZONE ... and then they came up with a twisted tale of tiny robots, emotional freak shows, a futuristic Howard Stern, and a strange trip into tomorrow ... The piece actually turned out quite well. Instead of photos of the five authors, they used pen-and-ink caricatures off us, by Ottawa artist Ron Sutton. The ones of me and Spider look particularly good. The whole article runs seven pages. All in all, very nice. ================================================================= 28 November 1999 Received a whack of reviews of my novels from Tor today, from magazines and newspapers big and small: On Factoring Humanity: BRATTLEBORO REFORMER (Brattleboro, Vermont): "Robert Sawyer handles the `first contact' scenario with more panache and plausibility than was done in the book and movie CONTACT. Sawyer knits up a lot of philosophical loose ends in this book -- entertaining science fiction as well as food for thought." THE DAVIS ENTERPRISE: "Some hard SF confines itself to examining the science of the story -- delving into the theory and the minutia of what's happening -- while the better stuff focuses on how science affects both the people most closely involved, and humanity as a whole. Sawyer usually writes the latter sort, and that's what makes this one of his best novels. The tension between Kyle's acute distress and Heather's solid scientific investigation is compelling, and you're likely to stay up late just to finish the book. Highly recommended." THE DENVER POST: "Sawyer writes books with truly original ideas. He is adept at presenting novel scientific possibilities that resonate with the lives of his characters." SCIENCE BOOKS & FILMS: "A scientifically brilliant science fiction novel that weaves a plot with several twists into a scientist's discovery of travel through a realm beyond previous human imagination. The novel capitalizes on its use of accurate facts and the incorporation of current events to give the reader a context for its story. Factoring Humanity is a book that, while maintaining a spellbinding plot, stays true to the science fiction tradition, giving fans of the genre and others who normally don't read sci-fi an interesting, informative novel." ----------------------------------------------------------------- On FlashForward: COMICS CORNER: "FlashForward presents disturbing questions. Robert Sawyer once again challenges his readers to think and think deeply. By focusing on the effects of the experiment on a small group of individuals he brings his frightening vision of tomorrow heavily to bare on his readers. FlashForward is a flash of genius." THE DAVIS ENTERPRISE: "Sawyer's strength lies in combining human-sized problems with cutting-edge science ... he does a masterful job of blending them here." THE DENVER POST: "Sawyer presents scientific scenarios that directly affect his characters' lives. The science-humanity interplay illuinates both the ideas and the characters." SUNDAY HERALD (Nevada, Missouri): "Entertaining and thought-provoking. Sawyer -- a crisp, incisive writer with a playful and keen imagination -- generates plenty of action from his psychological and paradoxical whatifing. Excellent sci-fi." NEWS (Tuscaloosa, Alabama): "Science fiction readers are in for a treat with FlashForward; a great read." THE ORLANDO SENTINEL: "FlashForward is another of the author's intriguing thought-experiment science fiction novels in the vein of Factoring Humanity. Sawyer's book is both intellectually and dramatically satisfying." STARLOG: "An excellent SF novel, a perfect blend of cosmic speculation and human drama, and Sawyer's best book yet. FlashForward's plot lets Sawyer muse on true love, free will, quantum reality and the nature of consciousness while telling a funny, wrenching tale of fallible humans in a mystifying universe." ================================================================= 7 December 1999 Hola, everyone! Carolyn and I are back home after a week in Barcelona, Spain. We had a fabulous time, despite a few glitches. The reason for the trip was so that I could give the keynote address at the ninth-annual Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficcion awards ceremony at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC); as some of you may recall, I've won prizes in that contest the last three years in a row, so they asked me to give the talk. Previous speakers have included Connie Willis, Joe Haldeman, John Gribbin, Marvin Minsky, Gregory Benford, and Stephen Baxter. I must say, the UPC was quite generous, both in covering travel expenses and hotel, and in the fee for the speech; they really are a classy outfit. My speech, "The Future is Already Here: Is There a Role for Science Fiction in the 21st Century?" was very well received. I gave it in English, of course, but simultaneous translation into Spanish and Catalan was provided via earpieces. Since Spanish takes about 30% more words to say the same thing, I had to deliver the speech at something slower than my normal pace, so that the translators could keep up, but no one seemed to mind. The winners of the UPC awards this year were all Spanish-language authors, but one was from Colombia, rather than Spain. Our own Mike Resnick was an honorable mention. I did three press interviews while I was there. One, in La Pais, Spain's major daily newspaper, has appeared already. I don't really know what it says <grin>, but they devoted a lot of space to it -- close to a full page. The other, in another paper, will appear next week, and the third, for the Spanish SF magazine BEM, will appear sometime after that. Of course, we did a lot of sightseeing in Barcelona, including seeing Snowflake, the world's only albino gorilla, visiting the Roman ruins beneath the present-day city (easily accessible as the extensive basement of a museum), and seeing the architecture of Gaudi. The disappointments in the trip were minor: the Spanish edition of my Frameshift was supposed to be out in time for my visit, but it wasn't ready yet (I have two Spanish publishers: Ediciones B, and Factoria de Ideas -- the latter is doing Frameshift and Factoring Humanity). And I came down with a cold for about two days -- but I can't really complain, since I've done a lot of traveling in the last year, and this is the first time I've gotten sick (and it really wasn't that bad a cold). Barcelona has a very good subway system, with many more stations than the one in Toronto (although the stations are not as clean <grin>). There's no such thing as a non-smoking area in restaurants, and the Barcelonans smoke a lot. The weather was great -- in the sixties during the days. We never had any rain, and only one night was really cold. All in all, a very good trip! Still, it's good to be back home. Carolyn and I have no major trips planned for several months; it'll be nice to stay put for a while! ================================================================= 9 December 1999 Got a fascinating commission today: The weekend editor for THE GLOBE AND MAIL: CANADA'S NATIONAL NEWSPAPER, called and asked me to write a short science-fiction story explaining what really happened to the Mars Polar Lander. Fee: a cool dollar a word. Deadline: 24 hours away (I got the assignment at 3:00 p.m. Wednesday; it's due 3:00 p.m. Thursday). Too good to pass up, I've spent the last few hours pounding out the short story. It will appear in this Saturday's edition of THE GLOBE AND MAIL (the big weekend papers in Canada are on Saturday, not Sunday). ================================================================= 9 December 1999 Well, my story for THE GLOBE AND MAIL is done. It's called THE BLUE PLANET, and weighed in at 1,400 words. It should appear in this Saturday's edition. (I actually got it done by noon -- three hours ahead of deadline!) ================================================================= 9 December 1999 Just a publicity update: I am co-hosting (with Gillian Deacon) a two-hour documentary for The Discovery Channel Canada. The documentary is entitled "Inventing the Future: 2000 Years of Discovery," and deals with the last thousand years of scientific progress and my predictions for what the next thousand years will bring. The documentary will air in prime time (8:00 to 10:00 p.m.) coast-to-coast in Canada on Sunday, January 2, 2000. ================================================================= 10 December 1999 Finished another story today -- and this one, in fact, you could call a mainstream story if you were so inclined. It was written for a horror anthology being edited by Edo van Belkom, but my story has no supernatural elements in it at all. It's called "Last But Not Least," and will be an anthology of young-adult horror to be published by Tundra Books (an imprint of McClelland and Stewart, Canada's largest publisher) next year. ================================================================= 12 December 1999 Busy, but very pleasant last few days ... Wednesday, I did my final day of shooting for the Discovery Channel Canada documentary; Gillian Deacon and I shot our intros and extros, and all the "we'll be right backs" out in a park on the shore of Lake Ontario. Wednesday night, I wrote most of the story for THE GLOBE AND MAIL. The story wasn't posted on their web site (just as well; we never discussed electronic rights when we did the deal), but it did indeed appear on page 1 of the "Saturday" section of yesterday's GLOBE AND MAIL (and, to my delight, was the first thing mention on the paper's page one under "What's inside."). That's not it for me and the GLOBE, though: they've also hired me, at a very generous rate, to write a 2,000-word article about the science of the 21st century; it'll appear in the last edition of the year. That's due in five days, and is going well. Thursday night, I popped into The Discovery Channel studios to record a few additional bits of voice-over narration. Friday, I finished a good draft of a new short story I'm calling ITERATIONS. Friday night was the book launch for my friend Robert Charles Wilson's latest, BIOS, published by Tor. There was a nice launch party down at Bakka, Toronto's SF specialty store. After, Bob, Carolyn, and I, plus several other fine folk, went out for pizza to continue to celebrate. Yesterday, I did a signing at a Smithbooks (mall bookstore) in Brampton, then went over to Edo van Belkom's place for a pleasant evening of conversation. Today, I'm reading through series bibles for animated TV series; one of North America's largest animation studios has hired me to write a series bible for a new computer-animated science-fiction series. I'll say more about that project later ... ================================================================= 13 December 1999 Bakka is the world's oldest science-fiction specialty store (there were ones founded before it, but they've all gone out of business). It's not a huge store, by any means, but it contains a very good selection of new, backlist, and some used science fiction, plus an array of small-press items hard to find elsewhere. The address is 598 Yonge Street, a half-block north of Wellesley subway (or about six blocks south of Yonge and Bloor, the central intersection in Toronto). Bakka is also a great place to meet writers. DAW author Michelle West (aka Michelle Sagara) and Warner author Nalo Hopkinson are both currently on staff there (and Tanya Huff and I both used to work there, although in my case it's been 17 years since I worked at Bakka ...). ================================================================= 14 December 1999 Nice night last night: attended a Toronto fandom pub night -- and had some FABULOUS chicken wings. News of the day: Ralph Vicinanza just sold Italian rights to FlashForward. Did a radio interview today for the CBC about our enduring fascination with extraterrestrials. Tomorrow, I'm recording an interview for WBAA-AM, the public-radio station in East Lafyette, Indiana. I've been SO busy that I haven't had a chance to get my hair cut since August -- it was getting rather long. But I got a buzz cut today. Ironically, as a guy with thinning hair, I look like I have more hair when it's really short than when its long (at least that's what my barber says). ================================================================= 15 December 1999 Howdy, all! BN.COM, the online service of major U.S. bookseller Barnes and Noble, has announced its 1999 "Year's Best" list for Science Fiction and Fantasy. Robert J. Sawyer's FlashForward is listed third, with the following review: Robert J. Sawyer consistently makes intelligent, mind-blowing science fiction accessible to the mainstream reader with his efficient, easy-flowing prose, his exciting ideas, and his superior character development. Over the past several years, Sawyer's stunning thrillers have produced multiple Hugo and Nebula nominations, enough for most to recognize him as the leader of SF's next-generation pack. His newest novel, the near-future FlashForward, is every bit as good, if not better, than his previously recognized high-tech whirlwinds. The full list, in the order it appears on the web site: Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon Neil Gaiman, Stardust Robert J. Sawyer, FlashForward Michael Crichton, Timeline Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow Elizabeth Haydon, Rhapsody Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson, Dune: House Atreides Brian Jacques, Marlfox: A Tale from Redwall L.E. Modesitt Jr., Gravity Dreams Guy Gavriel Kay, Sailing to Sarantium George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky Richard Bowes, Minions of the Moon Elizabeth Hand, Black Light Frank M. Robinson, Waiting Terry Goodkind, Soul of the Fire Ken MacLeod, The Cassini Division Brendan DuBois, Resurrection Day Ben Bova, Return to Mars Sean McMullen, Souls in the Great Machine Thomas Harlan, The Shadow of Ararat ================================================================= 17 December 1999 I'm tickled to announce that I will be a Guest of Honor at V-Con 25, to be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, May 26-28, 2000 (the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of the U.S. Memorial Day weekend). The other GoHs are Spider and Jeanne Robinson (pro) and Lloyd and Yvonne Penney (fan). I'm giving up Mike Glicksohn's annual birthday bash here in Toronto for this, so I sure hope it's a great con -- Mike's party is always great ... ================================================================= 17 December 1999 Just a note to say, to my astonishment and delight, the Tor Books trade-paperback reissue of Golden Fleece is the "By Canadian" Feature Book on the main page of ChaptersGLOBE.com, the web site operated by Chapters (Canada's leading bookstore chain) and THE GLOBE AND MAIL, Canada's National Newspaper. ChaptersGLOBE.com is discounting Golden Fleece 40%. http://www.chaptersglobe.com ================================================================= 18 December 1999 I now claim something that very few other authors can: the cover artist for my next novel is none other than: Michelangelo! Sample dustjackets for Calculating God arrived today from Tor. The cover is fabulous. Drive Communications, who has been doing my covers for Tor, has taken the famous picture of God's hand touching Adam's hand from the roof of the Sistine Chapel as the basis for the cover. They've processed it in large pixels, so it looks computer generated. The cover looks AMAZINGLY classy. I've liked the designs for all my Tor covers, but this one is the best. The overall color scheme is a lovely copper color (in fact, the whole cover is done in just various shades of copper and white -- with selective varnishing. I should have a picture of it up on my web site before the end of the weekend. Which reminds me of a great trivia question I saw on WIN BEN STEIN'S MONEY (a show I quite enjoy). The category was "You're Sistine, You're Beautiful, and You're Mine" -- and the question was "What was what was Michelangelo's last name. Had me stumped! ================================================================= 18 December 1999 I was just watching an episode of "Win Ben Stein's Money" on The Comedy Network (Canadian cable channel), and an SF reference turned up: The category: "Electric Sheep Not Found in Adult Bookstores." The question: "Name the science fiction writer whose `Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' was turned into the movie `Bladerunner.'" Ben's answer: "Dick." Host's response: "Screw you, a**hole ... oh, sorry, I thought you were making a personal reference." (The host's response wasn't bleeped on Canadian TV; I don't know if they would have bleeped it in the States ...) ================================================================= 22 December 1999 Today isn't just the day on which the moon is closer to Earth than it has been in more than a century ... It's also Carolyn and my fifteenth wedding anniversary! Yup, we got married December 22, 1984 (back then, lots of Canadians used to get married in the last few days of the year, because of a nifty tax loophole that no longer exists: you could claim a spouse as a dependant for the entire year based on his/her income ... but the tax people only counted the money you made after you got married; obviously, if you got married in the last few days of the year, your spouse would have only a few days worth of income, and even if he/she had a lucrative full-time job, they'd still qualify as a dependant). It's been a fabulous fifteen years, but, in many ways, the last thirty months -- since Carolyn quit her job in the printing industry and came to work full-time as my assistant -- have been the best. We get to spend lots of time together and we travel a great deal. It really has been fabulous. We're counting our trip to Spain earlier this month as our anniversary celebration, so today's festivities will be low key. We're going to see the new Jim Carey movie, MAN ON THE MOON, and then out to dinner at our favorite steakhouse. Although Carolyn and I have been married for 15 years, we've been living together for eighteen years, and we've been friends for twenty-four years now. I couldn't imagine life without her, and I love her with all my heart. ================================================================= 24 December 1999 We had a great anniversary, despite a few glitches. We went to see MAN ON THE MOON, but the movie was half an hour late starting, due to some technical problem. The upside, though, was that an assistant manager was waiting as everyone walked out of the theater at the end to hand out passes for a free movie, because of the inconvenience. Then we went out to the parking lot to get our car, and it was dead; we waited half an hour for a CAA (counterpart of the AAA) tow truck, who towed us off to our mechanics' place (fortunately, only about 15 minutes from the theater). Turned out the ground lead to our battery was damaged; he fixed it (for free) in a few minutes, and we were on our way. The moon, at its closest approach, looked fabulous; we watched it rise while the mechanic fixed our car. MAN ON THE MOON was a fascinating film, but I'm not sure I enjoyed it. Indeed, I found it rather disturbing. My take is that Andy Kauffman seemed to be more mentally ill than anything else, but, because he was funny and people were getting rich off of him, no one ever got him the help he needed. It's not really a comedy film, and there are few laughs. It's more of a drama about a person who happened to be a comedian. Still, I will say this: it's a more Philip K. Dickian film than either BLADE RUNNER or TOTAL RECALL. ================================================================= 1 January 2000 I'm off to a good start for year 2000. The year is only twelve hours old and I've already had my first publication and my first TV appearance. The publication is a 2,000-word article about what science will learn in the next century. It appears in today's issue of THE GLOBE AND MAIL, Canada's National Newspaper. (In the same issue, my friend Spider Robinson engagingly looks at what a typical human will be like in the year 3000.) And I was on TV this morning (and it'll be repeated throughout the day) on DISCOVERY CONNECTION, the program The Discovery Channel Canada does about upcoming shows. Of course, I was talking about the two-hour documentary INVENTING THE FUTURE: 2000 YEARS OF DISCOVERY that airs coast-to-coast tomorrow evening at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on The Discovery Channel Canada. Happy New Year, everyone! ================================================================= 4 January 2000 Carolyn and I hosted our quarterly party for Toronto's SF professionals this evening. Despite several people sending their regrets because of flu or the freezing rain Toronto was hit with this evening, we had a good turnout. But we had a taste of what Y2K would have been like at the end of the evening: the power went off in all of Vaughan (the town I live in, just north of Toronto) from 11:00 p.m. until midnight -- apparently a car skidded off the icy roads and ran into a key transformer or switching station. On another topic, I bought myself a new printer today: a new-in-box refurbished HP LaserJet 6P, with a one-year warranty, on ebay, for US$310. I've wanted a second laser for a while (my main printer is an Lexmark Optra R+, which is a fabulous machine), and the 6P seemed like a great choice for use with WordStar. In a separate auction, I picked up another eight megs of RAM for the printer for 20 bucks ... ================================================================= 11 January 2000 Well, at long last, my 767 account on CompuServe is dead. I received it over a decade ago, on October 10, 1989, and it lasted until yesterday, January 10, 2000. I certainly can't complain about its passing; I resigned as a sysop of the WordStar forum on May 24, 1991, and my account sponsor would have been within his rights yanking the account back then. Instead, it endured for almost another nine years, for which I was very grateful. (A 767 account gives unlimited free access to CompuServe, without any billing charges at all. I got mine back when I was an associate system operator of the CompuServe WordStar Forum; that forum still limps on, but the company that sponsored it, WordStar International, is long gone.) Anyway, I'll still be hanging around on CompuServe, but any mail or Forum messages sent to my old account will not be seen by me. Please DO NOT use these accounts anymore: 76702,747 (on CompuServe) 76702.747@compuserve.com (via the Internet) Rob_Sawyer (on CompuServe) Rob_Sawyer@compuserve.com (via the Internet) Please DO use these accounts: 102261,1433 (on CompuServe) 102261.1433@compuserve.com (via the Internet) sawyer (on CompuServe) sawyer@compuserve.com (via the Internet) My permanent E-mail address is: sawyer@sfwriter.com ================================================================= 11 January 2000 It's been a week of good news -- and it's only Tuesday! On Sunday, I received an invitation to be Guest of Honor at "Contact Japan 2000," an SF conference to be held in Tokyo in November. Needless to say, I said yes! On Monday, I received an invitation to the be the featured writer at the Writers Guild of Alberta Annual General Meeting and Conference in Calgary in October. I jumped at that, too. And today, I received acceptance of my story "Wiping Out" for the DAW anthology GUARDSMEN (an anthology of space-opera stories told with a modern sensibility), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff. ================================================================= 20 January 2000 I've been offline for a bit. Carolyn and I are in upstate New York, on the short of glorious Canandaigua Lake, on a writing retreat. Tor has kept me busy down here: they sent the typesetting page proofs for Calculating God (which looks fabulous -- a very nice interior layout to match the dynamite cover), and I'm doing minor revisions (at my own volition) on End of an Era before it's republished; those are due January 31. Meanwhile, DAW sent the page proofs for STAR COLONIES, for which my "The Shoulders of Giants" is the lead story; they also sent along some cover flats for the book, which look fabulous -- a great Vincent DiFate painting. The book goes on sale June 18. Meanwhile, I'm currently hosting a chat about "The Death of Science Fiction?" on ChaptersGLOBE.com, the web site operated jointly by Canada's largest bookstore chain, Chapters, and its national newspaper, THE GLOBE AND MAIL: www.chaptersglobe.com. Feel free to drop by and add your thoughts. Last week, we went to see Lois Gresh give a talk about her new book THE COMPUTERS OF STAR TREK at a Borders. Yesterday, I was guest speaker in a creative-writing class at the Rochester Institute of Technology (where my friend Nick DiChario is adjunct professor). Tonight, we go to the launch party at a different Borders bookstore for the latest issue of HAZMAT, a literary magazine that Carolyn has a poem in. ================================================================= 20 January 2000 The Toadstool Bookshop in Milford, New Hampshire, has released its 1999 SF Bestsellers list; I'm delighted that my Factoring Humanity came in number two, beaten only by this year's Hugo winner! Now, yes, I did do a signing at that store back in November, but so did all of the other authors marked by asterisks below. Indeed, I was so pleased by how the signing went that I've arranged to sign again at Toadstool -- this time for the Calculating God hardcover -- on Wednesday, July 19, 2000, at 7:00 p.m. Here's the list: Toadstool Bookshop - Milford 1999 SF Bestsellers (statistics from the 1999 calendar year) 1. To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis 2. Factoring Humanity - Robert J. Sawyer* 3. Mars - Ben Bova* 4. Briar Rose - Jane Yolen* 5. Child of the River - Paul McAuley 6. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card 7. Price of the Stars - Doyle/MacDonald* 8. Last Dragonlord - Joanne Bertin* 9. King of Infinite Space - Allen Steele* 10. Runelords - David Farland 11. Game of Thrones - George R. Martin 11. Forever Peace - Joe Haldeman 13. God's Fire - Patricia Anthony 14. Darwinia - Robert Charles Wilson 15. Polgara the Sorceress - David Eddings 16. Red Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson 17. Newton's Cannon - J. Gregory Keyes 18. Children Star - Joan Slonczeswki 19. River of Blue Fire - Tad Williams 20. Mairelon the Magician - Patricia Wrede 21. Doomsday Book - Connie Willis 22. Knight of the Word - Terry Brooks 23. Hogfather - Terry Pratchett 24. Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula LeGuin 25. Temple of the Winds - Terry Goodkind ================================================================= 25 January 2000 I'm going to be attending my first STAR TREK convention in twenty-four years (and my second one total) this summer: the convention Toronto Trek bid for, and won, the right to be designated the "Canvention" this year -- the Canadian National SF Convention, where the Aurora Awards will be presented ... An interesting bit of SF history occured at that convention, by the way. They had the official launch for Laser Books, a paperback SF line published by Harlequin, Canada's -- and the world's -- largest publisher. Laser Books made some marketing blunders, and only lasted about two years, but they did publish early novels by such later notables as Jerry Pournelle and George Zebrowski ... ================================================================= 22 January 2000 This is my year for appearing at mainstream literary festivals. I've just accepted an invitation to appear on Sunday, April 9, at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal, alongside such literary lions as Michael Ondaatje (THE ENGLISH PATIENT) and Alberto Manguel. This is in addition to the other festivals/events I'm doing this year: Principal Speaker, North Country Writers Festival, Watertown, New York, April 25-27. Guest Reader, Sunshine Festival of the Written Arts, Schlet, British Columbia, August 10-13. Featured Author, Writers Guild of Alberta AGM, Calgary, Alberta, October 20-22. What I love is that none of these are science-fiction events; they're all established mainstream literary festivals. Out of the ghetto, endlessly orbiting, that's me ... <grin>. ================================================================= 23 January 2000 My writing retreat in upstate New York is going well ... Interesting day yesterday. I team-taught for the first time: that is, I taught along with two other teachers in the same classroom. Nick DiChario, Mary Stanton, and I gave a full-day course called "Breaking Into Genre Fiction Markets" at Rochester's Writers and Books. It was a lot of fun to do, and I enjoyed playing off of two other instructors. The evening was spent at a party at Lois Gresh's place near Rochester; a great time was had by all. It has been BRUTALLY cold down here for the last few days, but today, for once, it's reasonably mild. ================================================================= 4 February 2000 As you may have gathered, I'm back from my 24-day writing retreat in upstate New York. While there, I did work outlining and researching the novel I'm currently working on, Neanderthal Parallax, plus a whack of other stuff, including: * revising End of an Era for Tor; they will be reissuing the book in about a year's time; * finishing my short story "Wiping Out" for the DAW anthology Guardsmen of Tomorrow; * proofread galleys for Calculating God; * completely redesigned my web site at www.sfwriter.com (adding frames, a cascading style sheet, "You are here" trees to every page, and a new color scheme that matches my letterhead); * Did two weeks hosting the Writers' Studio on ChaptersGLOBE.com.com; * Was a guest lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology; * Co-taught a day-long genre-fiction writing course with Mary Stanton and Nick DiChario; * Proofread galleys for my story "The Shoulders of Giants," the lead story for the DAW anthology Star Colonies; and, best of all, I was the honored guest at a three-hour dinner for 25 students from the Canandaigua Middle School (Canandaigua is the nearest town to the place I go for my writing retreats), all of whom had been reading my books either on their own or for classwork. It was, truly, one of the top ten greatest events of my professional life. These young people were so enthusiastic, so sharp, and so polite -- it was just incredible. Truly a fabulous evening. ================================================================= 23 February 2000 This past weekend was Ad Astra 19, Toronto's regional SF convention. I have to confess to being dubious of its chances of success. The convention had moved from its traditional summer date to February, and had picked the same weekend as Boskone. The weather in Toronto was not cooperating; there were numerous school closings the opening day of the convention because of a snow storm. And then, to make matters worse, they lost guest after guest after guest. Originally, Bob Eggleton was to be artist Goh, but he bowed out; Nancy Kress and Charles Sheffield were scheduled to be Author Guests of Honor, then Charles had to bow out because of a scheduling conflict, and at the last minute Nancy (Charles's wife) had to bow out, too, because Charles was having health problems. But it turned out to be a FABULOUS convention -- one of the best I've been to lately. The quality of panels was remarkably high. I was lucky enough to moderate two truly excellent ones: one on religion in SF (with Michelle Sagara West, Julie E. Czerneda, Phyllis Gotlieb, and Rev. Paul Fayter) and another, sponsored by Eastman Kodak, on the future of imaging (with Peter Watts, Dr. Isaac Szpindel, Pat York, Julie E. Czerneda, and Ed Covannon from Kodak). My reading was one of the best attended I've given in Toronto: 40-plus people; standing room only. I read "The Shoulders of Giants," which will be the lead story in STAR COLONIES, a DAW anthology coming in July. The audience was very appreciative. Overall, the con was quite well attended, and I'm very much looking forward to next year's. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Meanwhile, Carolyn and I are on Canandaigua Lake on another writing retreat (these are always a boon for Carolyn's youngest brother, since he gets to move out of his mom's house, and into our place for a few weeks). We'll be down here for three weeks, so I may be scarce online during that period. We just got down here yesterday, but today was a great day of writing on my next novel. ================================================================= 23 February 2000 On January 1, 1998, back when I switched my domain name to SFWRITER.COM, I added a hit counter to my web site. Today, the counter passed the 30,000 hit mark -- 30,000 hits in just over two years. Actually, the pace has increased a fair bit in the last few months (doubtless due to the overall increase in traffic on the web). A year ago, I was averaging a thousand hits a month; these days, I'm averaging 2,000. If you haven't visited my site for a while, have a look; it had a complete facelift last month: www.sfwriter.com ================================================================= 1 March 2000 Made my flight reservations for Florida today. Carolyn and I are going down to West Palm Beach for 11 days, and we'll be spending three of those days at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Fort Lauderdale (can you say "tax deductible"? <grin>). I'm giving a reading there Friday afternoon, Mach 24, and, I must say, I've got a terrific reading slot. ICFA does readings in ninety-minute blocks, with three authors. I'm hammocked between this year's winner of the Crawford Award for Best First Novel (an award that will be presented at this conference) and Daniel Keyes, the author of FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (the reading block is from 4:00 to 5:30). Meanwhile, my writing retreat in Upstate New York is going well: I've done 20,000 words in the last nine days. I'm trying to keep distractions to a minimum done here, although I am doing a half-day of consulting about the future of imaging for Eastman Kodak, and I'm giving a guest lecture at St. John Fisher College. ================================================================= 3 March 2000 I'm pleased to announce that I will be Writer in Residence at the Richmond Hill Public Libraries for April, May, and June 2000. Richmond Hill is a part of Greater Toronto. The residency is paid as if it were a full-time appointment, but 60% of the writer's time is to be spent writing; in other words, I'll be pulling down a salary to write my current book (good work if you can get it <grin>). I'll spend the other 40% of the time -- fourteen hours a week -- working with aspirant writers on their manuscripts. Richmond Hill residents will be able to submit manuscripts, which I'll critique for them in one-on-one private sessions. There's no cost to the residents for this; the money for my salary comes out of the library budget and from arts councils. Writer-in-Residence jobs are few and far between -- the Richmond Hill Public Libraries have never had one before --- and I'm absolutely thrilled to have this gig. The residency will conclude with a gala launch party at the central library branch for my twelfth novel, Calculating God. It's going to make for a busy three months, though: during that same period, I'm also teaching for a week in Banff, Alberta; appearing at two mainstream writers' festivals (one in Montreal, the other in upstate New York); speaking at the Annual General Meetings of two writers' associations (including Canada's largest, the Canadian Authors Association); being Guest of Honor at an SF convention in Vancouver; attending another SF con and a mystery-fiction con; giving a futurism talk to executives of a life-insurance company; and starting my four-day workshop at the University of Toronto. Whew! I'm sure it will be terrific, and well worth doing in its own right, but, actually, I also think of it as a bit of a stepping stone ... This will be my first residency, and the library I'll be working at is only a 20-minute drive from my home. But there are other residencies elsewhere in Canada that I'm interested in, and having one under my belt will make me a much more credible candidate for those. In particular, Carolyn and I have our eye on one up in the Yukon, which quarters the writer and his spouse in the childhood home of Pierre Berton, one of Canada's most popular writers -- we'd love to spend one summer (but not winter!) up there. It's my intention to apply for that one for 2001 or 2002. ================================================================= 5 March 2000 The latest enhancement to my web site at sfwriter.com is this: I've added a little search function, so that you can type in keywords, and see a list of all the pages on my site that contain those keywords. Although I think my site is well designed for easy navigation, it does have 415 separate pages now, and so it's sometimes tricky finding exactly what you want. Now, though, a search on "wordstar" or "isaac asimov" or "homer award" will turn up exactly what you're looking for. The search function is provided by a nifty free web service called whatUseek.com. To try it on my site, just click on "Search" in the navigation bar at the left side of the screen. ================================================================= 8 March 2000 We were talking here a bit a while ago about famous Canadians. One such was John Colicos, the actor, known to genre fans as Kor, the original Klingon, from STAR TREK, a role he reprised several times on DEEP SPACE NINE, and for playing Count Baltar, the human traitor, in BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. He lived in Toronto, commuting to Hollywood when working there; he was an accomplished Shakespearean actor, best remembered for playing King Lear at the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival, and London's Old Vic. Colicos died in Toronto on Monday at age 71 following a series of heart attacks. I saw him once years ago on the subway in Toronto; I wanted to go up to him and tell him how much I enjoyed his work, but I didn't do so. Now I wish I had. ================================================================= 10 March 2000 Signed up today to attend the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society in Philadelphia next month ... there are a number of fascinating-sounding papers being presented about Neanderthals, which should provide excellent grist for the NEANDERTHAL PARALLAX project I'm working on. ================================================================= 11 March 2000 My writing retreat in upstate New York has come to an end. First thing tomorrow, Carolyn and I drive back to Toronto (starting early to beat some forecasted bad weather). I was down here for 18 days, one of which I took off to do some consulting for Kodak. My goal was to get 25,000 words of my new novel written. I did that, and more: I wrote 36,000 words, more than one-third of a book. Of course, it's just first draft, but I'm pleased with it. Tomorrow night, I'm off to a party at writer Robert Charles Wilson's place; Sunday, it's my Mom's birthday party. I'm in Toronto for a couple more days after that, then it's off to Florida. ================================================================= 14 March 2000 I see Dave Truesdale has elsewhere posted the contents of David G. Hartwell's YEAR'S BEST SF 5 anthology, so I suppose I should formally announce here that I am tickled pink that my story "The Blue Planet" is included in that book. "The Blue Planet" is the story I wrote under commission to THE GLOBE AND MAIL: CANADA'S NATIONAL NEWSPAPER back in December, explaining what really happened to the Mars Polar Lander ... (THE GLOBE retitled it "Mars Reacts!" David has restored the author's preferred title.) ================================================================= 14 March 2000 Yesterday's mail brought an Italian double-header: my author's copies of the Italian edition of Factoring Humanity ("I TRANSUMANI"), plus a contract for an Italian edition of my forthcoming Calculating God. Also in yesterday's mail were two other contracts: a reprint sale of my story "Forever," from Mike Resnick's RETURN OF THE DINOSAURS, to NORTH OF INFINITY II, the second in a series of Canadian SF anthologies edited by Micheal (sic) Magnini, and the contract for my story "Iterations," commissioned by the Canadian SF magazine TRANSVERSIONS to help them re-launch under their new editorship. Not a bad day at all, at least as far as the mail was concerned. But I also had a major Windows crash on my laptop yesterday -- I couldn't even boot to Windows safe mode. I had to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows. Fortunately, I could boot to the DOS prompt, and managed to get all my new files off my hard drive and on to Zip disks (and I'd done a complete backup the day before), so nothing was lost. But it was irritating. My friend Marcel Gagne, coeditor of TRANSVERSIONS, writes for LINUX JOURNAL, and is trying to convince me to switch to Linux, which is apparently much more stable than Windows 98. I'm sorely tempted ... Other news: Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems is releasing an antitechnology manifesto tomorrow, in WIRED; parts have already been leaked to the press. THE GLOBE AND MAIL: CANADA'S NATIONAL NEWSPAPER commissioned me moments ago to write a 1,000-word response/reaction to Joy's position; it will appear in the "Comment" section of Friday's GLOBE. ================================================================= 15 March 2000 My article responding to Bill Joy's antitechnology manifesto will appear in TOMORROW'S (Thursday's) edition of THE GLOBE AND MAIL: CANADA'S NATIONAL NEWSPAPER (not Friday's, as I originally said). Look for it on the cover of the Opinion section. ================================================================= 16 March 2000 Just a small note that the Bernae Gunderson, featured (with photo) on the front page of today's (Wednesday's) NEW YORK TIMES, and tonight on ABC's 20/20, leading the fight against the deceptive lending practices of First Alliance, is my cousin ... (My mother's family is mostly Swedish and Norwegian.) ================================================================= 16 March 2000 A little behind-the-scenes peek: I thought some of you might be interested in the queries an author receives from a translator of his or her work. Here are the questions I was asked today by my Italian translator, who is just finishing up his translation of my novel FlashForward (page numbers refer to the 1999 Tor hardcover): ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 13: Moving up the cube. - Do you refer in advance to the Minkowski cube? Or what? Yes, I'm referring to the Minkowski cube ... a little foreshadowing. ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 24: Solid-state microphone. - What do you mean exactly? A futuristic technology; a solid block that picks up sounds. You can drop the "solid-state" reference if it's confusing. ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 71: Christmas-banquet. - Should be a game of words referred to something I ignore. What is it? Just a screw-up involving translating the menu for CERN's staff Christmas dinner into other languages, resulting in inappropriate dishes being served. This is supposed to be a humorous reference in the novel. ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 105: KEK- Acronym for what? I'm not sure, to be honest. But it's a real particle accelerator in Japan. I checked two sources; neither spelled out the acronym. ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 110: A blind copy of your message - I use email but I never heard this expression. A blind copy is a copy you get of a message that has gone to multiple people -- but your copy doesn't include a list of who the other recipients are ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 132: I could use a trip - I don't remember the film Casablanca, but what is a trip, in this case? "Trip" just means a "vacation" in this context -- "I could use a vacation." ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 135: Begats - I couldn't find this word in any of the dictionaries I have. What does it mean? In English translations of the Bible, the archaic English word "begat" (past tense of "beget") is used to denote parental lineages. If John is the grandfather, and David is the father, and Peter is the son, it would say "John begat David, who begat Peter." There are pages and pages of such family-history listings in the Bible. ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 143: Quadrapole magnets. And (p. 275) Sextupole magnets. - Are they magnets with a particular form (4 or 6 poles)? Yes. ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 153: Indeed it's just relativity writ large. - I didn't exactly grasp the sense of the phrase "writ large" is a somewhat pompous English idiom. It means "expressed in a grand sense" (as if you'd written the words in big letters on a wall; "writ" is Old English for "written"). Lloyd might have simply said, "It's just relativity on a grand scale" or "It's just relativity taken to the next level." ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 173: HEP - Acronym for what? High-energy photon (a gamma-ray photon is a HEP) ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 174: High-end stereo and virtual reality decks. - Inventions of a not far future, I imagine. "high-end" in English just means pricey or expensive -- something offered to the high end of the marketplace (those people with lots of money). So "high-end stereo decks" already exist, but "high-end virtual-reality decks" are yet to be invented. ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 197: And that Lloyd had stopped to smell the roses? - Is there a hidden meaning, under the literal one? "stop to smell the roses" is an idiom in English; it figuratively means to take time out of one's busy schedule in order to appreciate the simple joys of life. ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 198: This End Up & following. - Well, I understand these are common phrases, but could you explain better? This End Up: phrase printed on shipping cartons to show what way they should be oriented when placed in a truck. A carton containing a TV set will say "This End Up," for instance, on its top. Best Before Date on Bottom: appears on containers of perishable foods, such as single-serving plastic cups of yogurt, to indicate that an expiration date, after which the food should not be consumed, has been printed on the bottom of the container. In order to form a more perfect onion: this refers to a line from the preamble to the United States Constitution: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union ..." But I changed the word "union" to "onion" (a kind of plant) to show that the Japanese clothing manufacturer who had put this slogan on a shirt had no idea what the words actually meant. ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 224: Souls are about life immortal... and religion is about just rewards. - This puzzled me a lot. Does it mean that souls look for immortality and religion only gives a reward that is not what souls are looking for? But this should be in contrast with the credo of Mr. Cheung, who is a Christian. I'd like to understand the exact sense of the phrase. "just rewards" is an English expression; the "just" in "just rewards" means properly due or merited -- your "just rewards" are what you really have coming to you, such as going to heaven or hell after death. Cheung says: "Souls are about life immortal, Dr. Procopides, and religion is about just rewards." A little less poetically, he could have said: "As a religious man, I believe my soul will exist forever after my death, Dr. Procopides, and whether it exists in paradise or damnation depends on what I've done while I'm alive." ----------------------------------------------------------------- p. 243: At 20 solar masses. - Is solar mass a unity of measure? A solar mass is the mass of our own sun; a star of 20 solar masses is 20 times as big as our sun. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Btw, is there a scientific base for the hypothesis of the novel? The FlashForward, I mean. This is just curiosity. No; I just made it up. ================================================================= 17 March 2000 Just bought a wonderful product: the CD-ROM archives of the last five years of SCIENCE NEWS: THE WEEKLY NEWSMAGAZINE OF SCIENCE. It's fabulous: a total of 5,342 articles and letters, all in Acrobat PDF format, all full-text searchable, all on one CD-ROM. Since I started subscribing to SCIENCE NEWS, back in 1982, it has been THE main source of the science information in my novels. I highly recommend this CD! For information, see http://www.sciencenews.org ================================================================= 18 March 2000 Saw the latest SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE today. I'm pleased to report that my FlashForward is on Don D'Ammassa's (unnumbered) list of the Best Science Fiction Novels of the Year for 1999. (The book was also number three on BN.COM's list of the year's best SF, and has qualified for the Preliminary Nebula ballot.) ================================================================= 21 March 2000 Things are going fabulously here in West Palm Beach Florida (where I've been since Thursday on another writing retreat). The weather is gorgeous and I'm getting lots of work done. Tomorrow, Nancy Kress and Charles Sheffield show up; they're staying here overnight, then we all head off to Ft. Lauderdale for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. ================================================================= 28 March 2000 I'm back home from my writing retreat in West Palm Beach, and the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. The weather was beautiful, and I had a very relaxing time. I wrote 13,000 new words on NEANDERTHAL PARALLAX prior to the conference -- meaning I've now got 50,000 words of first draft; given that my deadline is over a year away, I feel I'm in very good shape. The conference was terrific; I'd never been before, but had a great time. Ann Bishop, sadly, wasn't able to attend, meaning that the 4:00 p.m. Friday reading slot was just me and Daniel Keyes, of FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON fame. Carolyn and I had a great dinner at an Indian restaurant with my editor, David G. Hartwell, and his wife and son, and a great lunch with Jennifer Marcus, the head of publicity at Tor; we were joined halfway through the meal by Brian Aldiss, which was terrific. Saturday evening, Gordon Van Gelder (the editor of F&SF) and I sat with Daniel Keyes for a long time, and just listened to Dan spin stories about his adventures in publishing and in Hollywood; fabulous. I was also the guest speaker at the South Florida Science Fiction Society meeting on Saturday, and on Sunday, Nancy Kress, Mary Stanton, and I did a signing at a Waldenbooks in West Palm Beach. All in all, a great trip! ================================================================= 28 March 2000 The nice news at the signing I did in Florida on Sunday is that Starplex is now in a fourth printing; this is the first I've seen of it. I'm delighted to see the book is still selling for Ace ... ================================================================= 31 March 2000 Tomorrow, my residency at the Richmond Hill Public Library begins with a welcoming tea. Immediately after that, we head off to Niagara Falls, New York, for Eeriecon, at which the wonderful MIKE RESNICK and the spiffy EDO VAN BELKOM are guests of honor. ================================================================= 8 April 2000 I'm back home -- for one evening -- after a week on the road. Eeriecon in Niagara Falls, New York, was fabulous. Mike Resnick really is the consummate Guest of Honor, always available to the fans, and staying up to the wee hours to party. Edo van Belkom was the other GoH -- his first stint as such -- and he did a great job, too. The only downside about Eeriecon was its attendance. I'm guessing, but it was maybe 130 people -- down by about 20 from last year. My suspicion is that Ad Astra -- Toronto's regional con -- hurt Eeriecon by moving to a February date from its historic June date. Toronto is just 90 minutes from Niagara Falls; having two cons so close together geographically and temporally presents some problems. Still, I really did have a great time at Eeriecon, as did just about everyone else I spoke to there. Next year's Eeriecon will have yours truly and Samuel R. Delany as Author Guests of Honor, plus my lovely wife Carolyn Clink as Poet Guest of Honor. After Eeriecon, Carolyn and I drove down to Philadelphia for the annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society, where I got to speak with some of the world's leading Neandertal experts, including Erik Trinkaus, Shara Bailey, and Milford Wolpoff from the U.S., Anne-marie Tillier from France, and Jakov Radovcic from Croatia. Several very interesting papers were presented on Neandertals, too. I'm very glad I attended the conference. We listened to a fascinating mix of audio books on our road trip: THE BELL CURVE, WHEN ELEPHANTS WEEP: THE EMOTIONAL LIVES OF ANIMALS, and MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT: ARGUMENTS ON ABORTION. All were quite thought-provoking; the last was actual trial recordings from eight U.S. Supreme Court cases related to reproductive rights. We spent yesterday at my dad's vacation home in upstate New York, where I got a good day of writing in, and today we came back home, stopping in at the Richmond Hill Public Library to pick up the first batch of manuscripts I'm supposed to critique as part of my residency there. Tomorrow, I fly to Montreal for two days to attend a mainstream literary festival called Blue Metropolis, where I'm giving a reading and sitting on two panels. Life be good -- but hectic <grin>. ================================================================= 10 April 2000 The news of the day is that my agent Ralph Vicinanza has sold unabridged audio rights to my 1995 Nebula Award-winning novel THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT to Recorded Books of Maryland. Today's mail also brought nice royalty checks for both Starplex and Illegal Alien ... ================================================================= 11 April 2000 Speaking of The Terminal Experiment, today's mail brought the semiannual royalty check for HarperPrism's edition of THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT ... I love getting paid for work I did years ago <grin>. ================================================================= 10 April 2000 The Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal was a lot of fun, and for Saturday's events they had an amazing turnout: standing-room only in practically every event. That day, I was on a panel discussion about the sources of inspiration for novels. Each of the five writers gave a brief reading (I read the opening of Calculating God) -- some in English, some in French. They had a very-well-stocked bookroom, selling books by the writers present. I was very pleasantly surprised at how many copies of my books sold after the event, given that it was a mainstream literary festival, and this was a general-interest panel. It rained all day, though, so I never made it out of the hotel, opting for the excellent Italian buffet in the hotel. Saturday night, I went up to my hotel room and read the first three manuscripts that had come in for critique in my stint as Writer in Residence -- and they were also a very pleasant surprise. I'd frankly been nervous about the quality of work I might see, but all three were very, very good. I meet face-to-face with the writers later this week. Sunday, Montreal was hit by a blizzard. I spent a fair bit of time with the head of the Cuban Writers' Union -- and his absolute delight at seeing, for the first time in his life, a city buried in snow, made the blizzard easier to take, but it had a devastating effect on the festival. As I said, events were packed on Saturday, but Sunday saw a very modest turnout (I certainly wouldn't have gone outside on a day like that). I did a panel on Sunday about science-fiction, along with Francophone SF writers Yves Meynard, Elisabeth Vonarburg, Jean-Louis Trudel, and Daniel Sernine, but we, like every other event that day, had a tiny audience. I got to the airport on time for my 6:00 p.m. flight back to Toronto, only to find, as I'd feared, that it had been canceled. The airport was absolutely packed with travelers. Fortunately, I fly enough that Air Canada calls me an Elite Gold customer, so I didn't have to stand in the enormous lines to get booked on a replacement flight. Instead, I headed off to the Maple Leaf lounge. I was originally told they could get me out on a 9:00 p.m. flight, but that got changed to 10:00, then 11:00. I finally got out at 11:45 on a Canadian Airlines flight. Still, my time at the airport was actually quite pleasant -- the lounge is very well-appointed with private stereos, big-screen TVs, and open bar, and lots to nibble on. So, although I was at the airport for hours, I at least managed to get a lot of work done there. Today (Monday) is my first real day at home since March 31 ... but I won't be home for long. I leave on Saturday for Banff, Alberta, were I'm teaching SF writing for a week. ================================================================= 13 April 2000 Busy times. A few notes: * Last weekend in Montreal I gave my 150th public reading. I read the opening of Calculating God, and a new short-short story, "The Abdication of Pope Mary III," commissioned by and forthcoming in the prestigious British science journal NATURE -- they commissioned the story a while ago, but I asked for them to hold off publishing it until June, so that it would be in the magazine the same time Calculating God was hitting the bookstore shelves. * Yesterday, I had a terrific lunch with my Canadian publicist, Heidi Winter, at H. B. Fenn, the Canadian distributor for Tor Books. The Canadian media is showing great interest in Calculating God, which is gratifying. * Cities now on the Calculating God book tour: Richmond Hill, Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, and Sudbury, Ontario; Montreal, Quebec; Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany, New York; Milford, New Hampshire; Boston, Massachusetts; and Vancouver, British Columbia. I should have an updated itinerary on my web site shortly. * Tonight, I give a seminar entitled "How Publishing REALLY Works" at the Richmond Hill Public Library, as part of my residency gig. * I now have my editor's copies of OVER THE EDGE: THE CRIME WRITERS OF CANADA ANTHOLOGY, edited by Peter Sellers and Robert J. Sawyer, and published in trade paperback by Pottersfield Press in Nova Scotia; it looks fabulous, and it got a rave review in THE GLOBE AND MAIL: CANADA'S NATIONAL NEWSPAPER. * The Japanese edition of Frameshift is now out -- and the cover is gorgeous! I think all of my Japanese editions have had terrific covers, but this is one of the nicest yet. * From April 26 to April 28, I'm the Guest of Honor at the North Country Writers Festival in Watertown, New York, sponsored by the State University of New York. * Saturday morning, I leave for Banff, where I'm teaching SF writing for a week, in some of the most beautiful natural countryside in the world. Whew! ================================================================= 13 April 2000 I'm pleased to announce that I'm a double nominee for the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (the Auroras) this year. My FlashForward is a finalist in the best English novel category, and my "Stream of Consciousness" (from the anthology PACKING FRACTION, edited by Julie E. Czerneda) is a finalist in the best English short story category. ================================================================= 22 April 2000 I'm back home after my week in Banff, Alberta, as a faculty member at the "Writing with Style" workshop. I had a FABULOUS time -- really, one of the peak professional experiences of my life. My seven students (six females and one male) were all enthusiastic, talented, friendly, and fun -- each one was an absolute joy to be with. They ranged in age from 20 to 70, and came from Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, and San Francisco. (In total, there were 56 students and seven faculty members at the whole workshop, covering science fiction, poetry, short fiction, and memoir writing.) I've been involved with great workshops before. What made this extra special was the Banff Centre for the Arts. The scenery -- nestled in the Rocky Mountains -- was unbelievably gorgeous, the weather was fabulous, the recreational facilities (skiing and hiking obviously, but also tennis, squash, swimming, etc. etc. etc.) were excellent, the conference facilities were first rate, and the meals (terrific all-you-can-eat buffets three times a day) were sumptuous. I describe it as like being on a literary luxury cruise that happened to take place on dry land. The daily readings/seminars by faculty members went very well (I wowed everyone -- including those who had never read SF before -- with the opening of Calculating God). It wasn't particularly lucrative for me as a faculty member, but it's an incredible bargain for the students: Cdn$700 (about US$475) for seven days at a mountain resort, accommodation and meals included, would have been a real bargain even without the workshopping on top. I got a lot of excellent writing of my own done in the evening (faculty had excellent multi-room apartments), and so did the students. The creative energy level was incredibly high. On the last day, a bunch of people from Calgary did the two-hour drive up to see me; they were members of the Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, for whom I'd led a different workshop four years ago. It was really a treat to see them, and very touching that they were willing to go that far out of their way to see me again. Mike Resnick has described his definition of heaven as a Worldcon that never ends; for me, it might very well be a workshop/writing retreat at Banff. ================================================================= 23 April 2000 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY has weighed in very positively on my twelfth novel, Calculating God, which should start appearing in bookstores next month: Sawyer is one of contemporary SF's most consistent performers. Much of this novel is relatively cerebral, as Jericho and Hollus argue over the scientific data they've gathered in support of God's existence, but Sawyer excels at developing both protagonists into full-fledged characters, and he adds tension to his story in several ways. This is unusually thoughtful SF. ================================================================= 25 April 2000 Some of you asked to be notified when more information became available about Robert J. Sawyer's four-day science-fiction workshop this summer at the University of Toronto. My workshop will be part of the Taddle Creek Summer Writers' Workshop, to be held Friday, June 30, to Monday, July 3, 2000. Tuition is Cdn$412 (about US$280), including the Cdn$12 registration fee. Full information, including registration forms, is now available at: http://learn.utoronto.ca/creative/events.asp I've reported a bug in the online-registration form. At the moment, if you try to register online for "Workshop 6" (the science-fiction section), the form comes up with you registered for workshops one THROUGH six (with a tuition of six times $412!). I'm told this will be fixed shortly; in the meantime, you might apply for the workshop by fax or phone instead. ================================================================= 28 April 2000 Just got back from two days at the North Country Writers Festival in Watertown, New York, where I was guest of honor. The conference was held at Jefferson Community College, part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system. I had a great time. Stephen L. Burns, this year's winner of the Compton Crook Award, made a surprise appearance at my reading Wednesday night; first time I'd met him. We had a great chat. ================================================================= 29 April 2000 Today is my 40th birthday. We're having a party tonight to celebrate. (As Carolyn's invitation said, "It's not a surprise party -- at Rob's advanced age, his heart probably couldn't take it.") As it happens, I sold my first novel just before I turned 30, so my own personal decades of life, and the decades of my novelist career, happen to coincide. Ten years ago this month, I was at the one-third mark in the first draft of Far-Seer, my third novel (I'd already written and sold Golden Fleece, and had written End of an Era, which at that time was sitting on Brian Thomsen's desk at Warner Questar). So, in the ensuing decade, I wrote all of Fossil Hunter, Foreigner, The Terminal Experiment, Starplex, Illegal Alien, Frameshift, Factoring Humanity, FlashForward, and Calculating God, plus two-thirds of Far-Seer, and about half of the first draft of my current novel -- or almost exactly a novel a year for a decade. (In addition, I wrote a book's worth of short SF in that same period.) Not overly prolific, but not too shabby. Meanwhile, a decade ago, I was just finishing up a major freelance job I'd been doing for a few years: editing special reports for THE FINANCIAL TIMES OF CANADA newspaper (ten years later, that paper is defunct); I'd just received and returned the copyedited manuscript for Golden Fleece (ten years later, that book has been reissued by Tor in a handsome trade paperback); I was being courted by WordStar International to move to Novato, California, to work in broad-strokes word-processor product development (ten years later, that company is defunct); and the Richmond Hill Public Library called to ask me to do a paid public reading there (ten years later, I'm the Writer in Residence at that library). It's been a good decade, and a good forty years (although I just got off the phone with my brother-in-law Brian -- Carolyn's youngest brother, who is 30 -- who had called to wish my a happy birthday. He said turning 30 had been no big deal for him; I thanked him, but said that turning 40 meant I'd likely reached the halfway point in my life, to which Brian felt compelled to point out that actually I was probably now PAST the halfway point ... Gee, thanks.). ================================================================= 30 April 2000 Hi, Everybody. Many thanks for the birthday wishes! The party just broke up, and it was a blast. Nick DiChario and Dave Smith came in from Rochester, New York; James Alan Gardner came in from Kitchener. Some big public announcements, too: Robert Charles Wilson announced his engagement to Sharry Walderman (they will honeymoon at Worldcon this year); Terence M. Green and Merle Casci announced that they are expecting a child. It was a terrific party. My mother-in-law seemed rather awed by the presence of Rick Green, formerly host of Prisoners of Gravity, and a major TV star in Canada (he currently stars in History Bites, a terrific comedy series). We'd told people not to bring presents, but best-fanzine Hugo winner Mike Glicksohn brought me a great one nonetheless: a hardcover of A Canticle for Leibowitz inscribed by him thus: "A copy of the best SF novel that first appeared in 1960 for undoubtedly the best SF novelist who first appeared in 1960." Rick Green brought a great present, too: a half-dozen critical works about SF that his local library had been selling off in a discard sale. Lots of great stuff. We had a great mix of people in attendance: one of my high-school girlfriends; members of my old high-school SF club; my brothers and their wives; two of Carolyn's brothers; various writers; friends who aren't part of the SF community; some neighbors; and more. I think it was the most people we've ever had in our home, and I must say I feel just absolutely terrific tonight.
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