Science Fiction Writer
ROBERT J. SAWYER
Hugo and Nebula Winner

HOME • MENU • Search:

Factoring Humanity, the tenth novel by acclaimed Toronto-area writer Robert J. Sawyer, will be a "June" 1998 hardcover release from Tor Books, a division of St. Martin's Press, New York. The book will be in stores across North America on Monday, May 18.

As is often the case in Sawyer's work, Factoring Humanity combines the very human with the grandly cosmic.

Heather Davis is a psychology professor at the University of Toronto in the year 2017. She's trying to decipher a series of radio messages received from inhabitants of a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to our own.

Meanwhile, her husband Kyle is working on artificial intelligence, trying to create a computer that can think like a human being.

But before either of them makes a breakthrough, their lives are shattered when their nineteen-year-old daughter Rebecca accuses her father of having molested her as a child.

An alien technology gleaned from the Alpha Centauri messages holds the key to determining the absolute truth about what happened all those years ago. What Heather Davis learns will not only transform her family, but the entire human race, as well.

An excerpt from Factoring Humanity has already won the world's largest cash prize for science-fiction writing: the Premio UPC de Ciència Ficción, given by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain.

Booklist raves, "Sawyer gets high marks for working out extraordinary concepts in ordinary human terms. Heather's machine is a thing of great beauty, and her trip through our collective racial consciousness is an amazing cruise." Kirkus calls Factoring Humanity "intelligent and absorbing."

Sawyer, Canada's only native-born full-time SF writer, is the new President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. His The Terminal Experiment won the Nebula Award (the "Academy Award" of SF) for Best Novel of 1995. His Frameshift is a current finalist for the Hugo, SF's "People's Choice" award, and his Illegal Alien is a current finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award.

Factoring Humanity will be formally launched at Toronto's Ad Astra SF Convention, Saturday, June 6; Sawyer is Guest of Honor at Ad Astra. Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Director of SF Publishing for Tor Books, will be flying in from New York for the launch. There will also be a wine-and-cheese reception for Factoring Humanity at Bakka, Toronto's SF specialty store, on Thursday, June 18, and Sawyer will be signing copies of the book at the Canadian Booksellers Association's annual tradeshow on Sunday, June 21. Immediately after that, Tor and Tor's Canadian distributor, H.B. Fenn, are sending Sawyer on an eleven-city U.S./Canada book tour.

More Good Reading

More About Factoring Humanity
Press Release index
Top Ten Things to Know About Robert J. Sawyer
Rob's Newsletter

My Very Occasional Newsletter