Non WFTL Blogs

My great friend Rick Wilber has a new novel out called Rum Point: A Baseball Novel.

Rick is well known in SF circles for (among other things) being the administrator of the Dell Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing, associated with Asimov's Science Fiction magazine.

But he's also a life-long baseball fan (and his father was major-league player Del Wilber) and an accomplished writer of mystery fiction, and he combines those two things wonderfully in this masterful novel. Check out the reviews:"(Rick) Wilber has the kind of voice that makes the writing transparent, in that the reader connects directly with characters and emotions. His vibrant sense of wonderful locales is that much gravy." --Tim Dorsey, author of Nuclear Jellyfish

"Rick Wilber is the sort of writer lots of us like to turn to at the end of a long day: relaxed, inventive, knowledgeable, good-humored, and honest right down to the core. This man tells you the truth, a quality that may be unsettling sometimes, but is never less than absolutely refreshing. Wilber knows how to do justice to the nuances of a complex story, and he deserves a huge readership." --Peter Straub, author of Lost Boy, Lost Girl

"Set in hometown St. Petersburg and the Cayman Islands, Rick Wilber's Rum Point is a taut thriller/mystery in which a brave young woman cop and her baseball manager father battle to stop a violent pair of CIA types from building a drug-smuggling empire. The characters are compelling, the plot intricate, and Wilber even tosses a little baseball into the mix. Don't miss it." --Peter Golenbock, author of George: The Poor Little Rich Boy Who Built the Yankee Empire

"Wilber will exhilarate, startle, and dazzle you." --Michael Bishop, award-winning author of the baseball fantasy Brittle Innings

"With Rum Point, Rick Wilber has given us a police thriller with an intriguing heroine, a likable TV evangelist, and a rousing mix of curves and fastballs." --Jack McDevitt, award-winning author of Time Travelers Never Die
Robert J. Sawyer online:
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Over on my Facebook page, I noted the above fact, and someone popped up to say, "Anybody else remember when they sold whole seasons on DVD?"

My response:Sure, but we're competing now with Hulu and online viewing and the whole darknet, where episodes are available pirated the day they're broadcast. There's a market out there that doesn't want to wait until the end of the season to get to watch shows -- and if you do want to wait, you can; that market is served, too.

The half-season FlashForward set is $19.99 at Amazon.com -- two bucks an episode, with the later ones on the disk available just two months after they were broadcast; I don't see a gouge there.

And, if you want to wax all nostalgic, remember when shows were released one or two episodes at a time on pricey VHS cassettes? Or maybe, you'd like to wait until demand somehow magically rebuilds for a show that's gone? The Gods are smiling on you, then: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, the complete sixth season, came out on DVD last week as a single set -- thirty-four years after the episodes were first broadcast. So much better, right? ;)
Robert J. Sawyer online:
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Britain's The Mail on Sunday (which has a circulation of 2.2 million copies) solicited a Letter to the Editor from me about the forthcoming Apple iPad and its science-fictional precursors. Here's what I had to say in full; a shorter version appears in today's (14 February 2010) print edition of the newspaper:Once again, science fiction has become science fact. The Apple iPad brings us very close to the portable flatscreens on which the astronauts in the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey watched the BBC World News -- and read their documents.

Even before that, the original Star Trek had characters reading books and manuals on their computer screens, and in one episode Elisha Cook, Jr., guest starred as a Luddite lawyer who, much to Captain Kirk's amusement, still used paper books.

But as the cover note on the most famous ebook of all -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- proclaims, "Don't panic." Marshall McLuhan was wrong; the medium is not the message, and a book is a book even if it's displayed on a Kindle, an iPad, a smartphone, or a desktop computer.

-- Robert J. Sawyer, Toronto

Sawyer's novel FlashForward -- available in print and as an ebook -- is the basis for the TV series of the same name.
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The new showrunning team at FlashForward, the ABC TV series based on my novel of the same name, is: Jessika Borsiczky, Lisa Zwerling, and Timothy J. Lea.

Jessika -- who is from Montreal -- was the person who first read my novel a decade ago, and pursued getting it made as a TV series; that's her pictured above with Courtney B. Vance, who plays Stanford Wedeck. (Jess's last name is pronounced Bor-shees-key.)

Let me underscore this: Jessika Borsiczky has been behind this series from the very beginning, and she's been executive producer since day one; there is absolute continuity of vision here.

Lisa has been with the show since the beginning, too (and before that worked on ER). Tim joined the show in November (in fact, his first day was one of the days I was working in the writers' room), and immediately brought wonderful insights to the room; he's previously worked on CSI: NY and Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

They're all terrific people, and the show is indeed in very good hands.

You can read more at Variety and Zap 2 It.

FlashForward returns with all-new episodes on Thursday, March 18, 2010.
Robert J. Sawyer online:
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An email I received today:I wondered if I could pick your brain. Firstly, I am about to self-publish a book I have written and wondered what format I should choose, size, paper weight, etc. for a Science Fiction book. I have read about them being about 100,000 words and 288 pages in a 8-1/2" x 5-1/2 or 5-1/4 size however, my first is closer to 150,000 words. I also plan to launch it as an e-book once I have figured out what to do about cover art. Do you have some suggestions or have you always used publishers?

I think I need to publish my first on my own and if the publishers come knocking after that, I will take a look. Because I am retired, I cannot put out feelers to publishers for the next ten years hoping to get something off the ground. I am a later in life writer when it comes to books and I have some fifteen in different genres to launch so I have to get things started.

Any input you would be kind enough to give me would be greatly appreciated.My reply:My advice: DO NOT self-publish, full-stop. Self-publishing does NOT work for science-fiction novels. You would be throwing your money away.

Seriously: if you want advice on the questions you're asking, find someone who has successfully gone the self-publishing route with an SF novel, and ask him or her. The point is: no such person exists, and so you won't be able to find him or her.

Don't do this.Update: And, of course, my post above generated the usual round of idiocy, to which I have replied thus:I never said this would "never" work in the future, Charlie Jane Anders. You are wrong to say that I did. I said that the person thinking RIGHT NOW of self-publishing a science-fiction novel should point to the actual current successful examples of others doing that before he opens his or her checkbook. For Pete's sake, I was talking in print about the "post-publisher economy" back in 1998.

As for Anne Gilbert, EVERYONE knows that publishing is in a fluctuating state. The question was whether self-publishing a science-fiction novel right now was likely to succeed. It isn't.

You know, you guys who say "Oh, go ahead and do it -- spend your money that way; it's a GOOD idea!" never seem to be around when the poor sap ends up heartbroken at the end with a book that no one has read.Another Update: The very savvy Kirstin Morrell, former small-press managing editor, has posted a wise rebuttal to Anne Gilbert, which I'm reprinting here:First, be careful. Don't conflate "self-publishing" with "e-publishing" and "independent publishing" (or the one you didn't mention, "small-press publishing"). Sawyer is a huge proponent of the e-book revolution. He's the one who introduced me to e-books and he owns literally hundreds of bought and paid for e-books.

And he's been a tireless supporter of the small press. Ask the people of Edge Press or Red Deer Press or Bundoran Press.

And actually, he does not say that you can't find an SF writer who has self-published, just that you can't find an SF author who has self-published and was successful.

Now, let's define success. To me, it would be someone who makes a full-time living from writing SF novels, novellas, and/or short stories, without living below the poverty line. That's success as I would define it. And I don't know one SF author who self-publishes who would meet my criteria for success.

Maybe if you were to set your sights sufficiently low, you might be able to be "successful" by going that route. Just lower the bar until you can get over it. But is that really success?

He doesn't say that this might not be a valid way of going in the future. He said what he said, which is that a successful, self-published SF writer does not exist.

Yes, Mr. Sawyer is completely aware of all the arguments you've made. He mentors many beginning writers and many of his students have gone on to real, money-in-the-bank publishing experiences.

Sawyer's not going to end up with a red face. His statements, as he made them, are all factually true. You act as if you don't know that he's part of the push to make e-book publishing mainstream. If you don't, read his site or his blog a bit more.

So it's almost like you're boxing with shadows. You're refuting arguments he never made by characterizing his argument as something that it is not, then saying he'll be embarrassed when what he never said becomes untrue. Very strange.

So let's talk about his actual argument. Let's talk about successful, self-published SF authors, people who actually make a living from their self-published books. Name a few and let's talk about them.Robert J. Sawyer online:
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Toronto Life, a glossy newstand magazine devoted to the finer things in Canada's largest city, profiles Robert J. Sawyer in the March 2010 issue; as a subscriber, I received my copy in the mail today.

It's a terrific article; I'm absolutely thrilled with it. And it's accopanied by an amazing photo of me in my office. The article is by Sheena Goodyear, and the photo is by Finn O'Hara.

An excerpt:Sawyer's fast-paced prose blends adventure and philosophical exploration, riveting readers to implausible narratives populated by talking space dinosaurs; dimension-shifting, bisexual Neanderthals; and six-legged aliens (who infiltrate the ROM). They're also meticulously researched examinations of modern culture in the face of world-altering progress. He pits spirituality against pragmatism and shows characters at their most vulnerable, usually within recognizable Canadian settings. It's like CanLit on meth, and he has made addicts out of thousands of middle-aged sci-hards."Like CanLit on meth." I like that.
Robert J. Sawyer online:
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It was five years ago today that I finished writing my last short story. That story, "Biding Time," was written for the DAW Books anthology Slipstreams, edited by Martin Harry Greenberg and John Helfers.

I guess I went out with a bang. The story was reprinted in the prestigious Penguin Book of Crime Stories and (after some on-stage drama!) won the Aurora Award. And the film option on it (and its prequel, "Identity Theft") was just renewed for a fourth year.

I had a nice little career as a short-fiction writer: 44 stories published (all now collected in two handsome volumes available from Red Deer Press), two Hugo nominations, one Nebula nomination, a Bram Stoker Award nomination, four short-story Aurora Award wins, plus winning France's top SF award for best foreign SF story, as well as winning Analog magazine's Analytical Laboratory Award, Science Fiction Chronicle's Reader Award, and the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award, all for best short story of the year.

I gave up writing short fiction because I just didn't really enjoy writing it, and life's too short to spend on things that aren't fun.

I also gave up writing it, to be honest, because short fiction pays abysmally poorly. Six cents a word is a super rate for short science-fiction stories from the traditional SF markets (and those rates haven't gone up in the 30 years since I sold my first short story), which works out to about $250 for a typical 4,000-or-so-word short story; a while ago, I did a treatment for a miniseries, which was also 4,000 words long, and was paid $25,000 -- or six dollars (one hundred times as much) per word, and I had a blast doing the treatment.

And I gave it up because, frankly, after 19 years of publishing novels, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who have ever said they first discovered me through my short fiction instead of my books.

All of which leads to a rather ironic announcement: I've just made my first sale ever to Canada's venerable Tesseracts anthology series. I'll be in Tesseracts 14, edited by John Robert Colombo and Brett Alexander Savory. Did I relent, you ask? Nope, not really. The work that's appearing in that book, coming this fall, is not a story but a prose-poem (one I performed for a very appreciative audience last year the the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal).

In the intervening five years since I finished writing "Biding Time," I've turned down numerous commissions to write more short stories, including several dollar-a-word ones from glossy publications. I'm quite content about the decision; what I really enjoy doing is writing novels and scripts ... and I should get back to that right now. Toodles!


Robert J. Sawyer online:
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TV Jumble by David L. Hoyt is a syndicated puzzle from Tribune Media Services, Inc., that appears in countless newspapers, including The Toronto Star, Canada's largest circulation paper.

This weekend's jumble has, as the answer to its puzzle the name of a TV show I'm involved with. The cartoon illustration that's part of the puzzle shows a woman watching a TV set and thinking, "I can picture myself watching this show in the future." And beneath that it says:Clue: This show is based on a Robert J. Sawyer novel published in 2000.How cool is that!

Note that this is the TV Jumble dated 7 February 2010, which is tomorrow: that's when it'll be in most American newspapers; Canadian newspapers have their big weekend editions on Saturday, not Sunday. In The Toronto Star, it's on the inside back cover of Star Week, the TV-listings section.

Thanks to my old pal Hugo-winning fanzine publisher Mike Glicksohn for alerting me to this.
Robert J. Sawyer online:
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The Hollywood Reporter has now posted a comment from David S. Goyer about him stepping down as showrunner of FlashForward, the ABC TV series based on my novel of the same name: "As my feature projects have started ramping up again, I felt I was being pulled in too many directions. I'm proud of the show and excited about the relaunch. It's in great hands."

And indeed it is. FlashForward has a fabulous team of staff writers, all of whom are still hard at work on the show:

Byron Balasco
Scott Gimple
Ian Goldberg
Seth Hoffman
Tim Lea
Barbara Nance
Quinton Peeples
Dawn Prestwich
Nicole Yorkin
Lisa Zwerling
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After six days of being unavailable for purchase there, paper editions of Macmillan books -- including Tor Books such as my novels FlashForward, Hominids, and Rollback -- are now back on sale at Amazon.com.
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David S. Goyer has stepped down as showrunner (head of the writing staff) on FlashForward, the ABC TV series based on my novel of the same name.

The Hollywood Reporter has a brief notice here. David is extremely talented, and he ran the writing room with verve, panache, courtesy, and intelligence.

Above, left to right: David S. Goyer, Robert J. Sawyer, and Brannon Braga in Los Angeles
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Toronto's Divani films has renewed its option on Robert J. Sawyer's Nebula Award-winning The Terminal Experiment for a fifth year. Pictured above: the new Canadian paperback edition, in stores now!

And Terminal Experiment director Srinivas Krishna's latest film, Athletes in Motion, premieres on Canadian TV this Saturday. Says Srinivas:A series of short films I produced have been packaged into an hour-long special called Bravo!FACT Presents: Athletes in Motion that will premiere in HD on Saturday, February 6 at 4 p.m. on CTV.
Inspired by winter sports and Olympic athletes, these 11 entertaining, moving, cutting-edge shorts combine the brightest directors, actors, musicians, cinematographers, designers, animators, and choreographers with world-class Canadian athletes to create two-minute films that celebrate their passion. Featuring talents such as Jason Priestley, Gord Downie, Liz Manley, Douglas Coupland, Jennifer Jones, and more, the films were shot in B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec last summer and fall.
Musical artists contributing scores/soundtracks include Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip, Jay Malinowski of Bedouin Soundclash, Deadmau5, and JUNO award-winning bass guitarist/music producer Orin Isaacs. Additionally, one of the shorts features CTV’s “The Hockey Theme” while another features fashions from Canadian designer Paul Hardy.
In addition to the shorts, the one-hour special, hosted by CTV’s Seamus O’Regan, includes commentary and introductions by both filmmakers and athletes, as our cameras go behind-the-scenes to capture athletes and artists collaborating in action.
ATHLETES IN MOTION has already made it’s mark internationally -- the 11 shorts recently won the Best Drama/Fiction Award at the 2010 European Video and Mobile TV Forum in Paris. Encore presentations will air on Bravo!:

Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PTFeb. 10 at 8:30 p.m. ET / 5:30 p.m. PTFeb. 12 at 8:00 p.m. ET / 5:00 p.m. PTFeb. 12 at 8:00 a.m. ET / 8:00 a.m. PT
You can also catch a half hour version of the show on CTV’s ‘A’ Channels on Feb. 13:-8:30 p.m., London , Vancouver Island and Barrie -11:00 p.m. Ottawa and Vancouver Island .
In addition, you can check out on going commentaries and enjoy multiple viewing opportunities for the shorts outside of television online at CTVOlympics.ca/bravofact along with bonus interactive elements including bios, photos, interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. For full film synopses and to download hi-res photos, visit ctvmedia.ca/bravo.
The Globe and Mail has published a story in today’s edition, read it on-line here.
Finally, catch Kurt Browning chatting about AHLETES IN MOTION tomorrow, Friday, evening on ETalk ( 6 p.m. ET on STAR! and at 7 p.m. on CTV ) .
ATHLETES IN MOTION is produced by Divani Films and Crowsnest Films in association with Bravo!FACT and CTV Inc. with the participation of CFC/Telus Innovation Fund, Rogers Telefund and the Alberta Film Development Corporation. Producers are John Kerr and Srinivas Krishna.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
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Used to be, back in the day, if you wanted to buy science fiction and fantasy by Canadian authors, you turned to Tor Books: they had tons of Canadian authors on their lists: Charles de Lint, Candas Jane Dorsey, Ed Greenwood, Phyllis Gotlieb, Terence M. Green, Matthew Hughes, Karl Schroeder, Robert J. Sawyer, Robert Charles Wilson, Peter Watts, and more. A few of those are still doing new books with Tor, but it certainly can no longer be called the go-to house for Canadian SF&F.

DAW, on the other hand, has been quietly building a major list of Canadian authors, including Julie E. Czerneda, Tanya Huff, Fiona Patton, Michelle West, Edward Willett (last year's winner of the long-form English Aurora Award), and more. And DAW's on-going commitment to original short-fiction anthologies has provided the home for many a story that has gone on to be nominated for an Aurora Award (and has produced four Aurora winners).

And so it's wonderfully appropriate that Keycon 26, which has been designated this year's Canadian National Science Fiction Convention, has just announced DAW's Sheila Gilbert as its Editor Guest of Honour. Not only is Sheila a terrific person and a terrific editor, but she's done an enormous amount for Canadian science fiction and fantasy authors.
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This major reprint anthology -- containing stories, poems, a lightning round of short-shorts, comprehensive biographical and bibliographical notes on each author, and an exhaustive list of award-winning Canadian SF&F is eligible for nomination for the Aurora Award in the Best Work in English (Other) category:Distant Early Warnings, edited by Robert J. Sawyer. Robert J. Sawyer Books.Distant Early Warnings contains stories by Hugo Award winners Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, and Robert Charles Wilson, Hugo nominees Paddy Forde, James Alan Gardner, Nalo Hopkinson, and Peter Watts, and Aurora Award winners Julie E. Czerneda and Karl Schroeder, plus poetry by Carolyn Clink and David Livingstone Clink. The fabulous cover painting is by James Beveridge.
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An email I sent this morning:My little line of books can only publish Canadian authors, so there's nothing I can do for you. But, trust me, hyping your book as a "mass market dream" and hoping that it's somehow going to drive sales that you started writing as a teenager are statements that will just turn other editors off. They hear hype like that all the time, and what you're actually doing is insulting: it's their job, not yours, to assess the market potential of a manuscript; why tell them their business?

Seriously, you say you're a chemistry student, so you must understand something about the need to present data to support claims -- and you've presented none, just fervent hucksterism. It'll work on no one.

And, for God's sake, saying, "I completely understand that this is probably not how you normally talk with authors, but I feel the query process really doesn't show how motivated and serious I am about my work" and so just going ahead and bypassing how it's normally done, is wrong, wrong, wrong. The only way publishers can deal with the volume of manuscripts they receive is by having an established process; if you choose not to participate in that process, you're dead from the start.

Biggest problem with your proposal? Science fiction and fantasy are separate categories; mixing them willy-nilly makes your book hard to market (later in your career, you can do whatever you want; early on, you have to be categorizable). Choose one, write the best book you can, and submit it exactly and precisely according to the publishers guidelines. I wish you the best of luck.
Robert J. Sawyer online:
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Although eReader is a very robust application on Palm OS devices, and the Windows implementation isn't bad (although the B&N Reader version has lots of bugs, and many features stripped out), other recent implementations have left much to be desired, especially when dealing with complexly formatted ebooks.

The Foxit eSlick, as I observed before, can't even properly format basic text properly. The ECTACO jetBook - Lite does a much better job with eReader-formatted books, but still isn't anywhere near as good as the Palm implementation (for instance, hyperlinks for tables of contents and footnotes don't work).

I hereby suggest that Fictionwise and Barnes & Noble (owners of the eReader format), and Foxit, ECTACO, and others making hardware designed to interpret that format, use the following book as one of their standard in-house-testing samples:

Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene

Why? Because it is a great example of what the electronic edition of a print book should be, and it incorporates features that will put any ebook-rendering software through its paces:

* Hyperlinked table of contents

* Chapter headings and subheadings coded to be in different text sizes

* Bulleted lists

* Block quotations set off from the main text

* Numerous footnotes (including often more than one on a single page/screen)

* Foreign-language characters (including Hebrew and Greek) embedded in the text

* Numerous illustrations

* Captions for these pictures

* Proper typography (including em-dashes and smart quotes).

It is, in fact, a joy to read on a Palm -- and should be a joy to read on all platforms.

As an example of work still to be done, when reading this book with the ECTACO jetBook - Lite implementation of eReader software, subheadings appear in the same text size as normal text (on the Palm, the render at a size intermediate between Chapter headings and normal text); pictures that are small enough to show on screen render properly, but larger ones don't (instead they show as just a black square), and all hyperlinks and footnote calls are dead.

Indeed, on the ECTACO jetBook - Lite, depending on the dimensions of the picture, the picture may show properly when using the device in portrait mode but not in landscape, or vice versa.

Now, as it happens, this is also a truly fascinating book, and I'm enjoying it immensely -- but that's not the point.

The point is that Fictionwise clearly hasn't been testing eReader sufficiently on new platforms (and particularly not on platforms that they are actually selling as the single most expensive things available for purchase on their site). Testing the software in-house with this book would be a good start.

Oh, and hats off to Penguin/Viking, the publishers of Reading in the Brain in both print and electronic editions, for doing the ebook version right. (On the other hand, a pox on whoever set the price for the ebook edition; $27.95 is crazy.)
Robert J. Sawyer online:
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First The New York Times and now The Washington Post have reported that Amazon gave into Macmillan's demands, and it's been flashing all over the web that this is the case for four days now.

But check the source. The only reference is to this unsigned anonymous post buried deep on the Amazon.com site; that's the one and only bit of evidence to support the belief that Amazon has changed its tune.

The reality is that there's been NO public surrender by Amazon.com, NO change in their policy, and NO announcement by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and, as of right now, Macmillan books are still not for sale in either electronic or paper editions from Amazon.com.

How much weight should we give to the anonymous blog post cited above? Here's a test. Go to the Amazon.com main page, and try to follow a chain of links to get to that supposedly big, important, game-changing public announcement. Go ahead, try. You'll never find it.

Amazon is based in Washington state. That unsigned blog post went up at 2:22 on a Sunday afternoon Pacific time, when no one in real authority was likely in the building. It's either a case of some clueless eager beaver deep in the bowels of the Amazon.com hierarchy speaking up when he had no authority to do so, or -- if you want to take a more sinister approach -- a brilliant bit of misdirection, knowing that the little posting would go viral (and then be picked up by lazy old-media reporters), and so any planned boycott or collective action by customers or authors against Amazon would dissipate, with everyone saying, "Whew, glad that's over!"

But it isn't. Nothing has changed in the standoff. The books are still off-sale, Amazon has reached no agreement with Macmillan, and authors are getting hurt.

Robert J. Sawyer online:
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I suggested to the coordinator for this conference that she stop using that subject line in emails -- I thought it was a come-on for a porn site! But it isn't. It's the title of the 2010 Book Summit coming up in Toronto. The full name is: "Hot New Models: the amazing transformation of business and culture in the world of books." The event will take place at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto on Friday, June 18 2010.

I"m thrilled to be the only author (as opposed to publisher, editor, or agent) invited to give a solo presentation at this event. I'll be presenting this 75-minute workshop from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m.; I'll put up registration details when I have them:The 21st Century Author
Robert J. Sawyer

Today's savvy authors are taking the lead in building their personal brands through social media, their own touring, and other initiatives; they're also increasingly marketing themselves as media pundits and keynote speakers, all in service of generating buzz for their books.

Bestselling novelist Robert J. Sawyer (whose FlashForward is the basis for the ABC TV series) was the first science-fiction author in the world to have a website, pioneered the notion of giving away sample chapters online, and has been blogging since before the word was invented. Join him for a case-study analysis of what works and what doesn't for writers in the 21st century -- and a spirited discussion of whether authors will continue to need traditional publishers."Hot New Models" is presented by Humber College and the Book and Periodical Council in association with Authors at Harbourfront Centre; my workshop is sponsored by Simon & Schuster Canada.
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That's how it works: everyone who had a membership (attending or supporting) in Anticipation, last year's World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal, may nominate for free for the Hugo Awards to be presented at Aussiecon 4, this year's World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in Melbourne (members of Aussiecon 4 are also entitled to nominate, too, of course).

All you need is your Anticipation membership number, which you can probably get here, and your Hugo voting PIN, which should have been emailed to you in January. If you didn't get the PIN, send an email to hugopin@aussiecon4.org.au along with a note saying you were a member of Anticipation (the Montreal Worldcon), and including your membership number, and you'll be sent a PIN.

You may then cast your nominating ballot here.

Any work first published in English in 2009 anywhere in the world is eligible. For a list of eligible Canadian works, please see The Canadian SF Works Database.

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Since we're in the thick of Hugo, Nebula, and Aurora Award-nominating season, forgive me for this roundup of reviews of my 2009 novel Wake (published in the US by Ace as WWW: Wake).


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


"Extremely well written and complex making Tron look like pre-school, this is a terrific first tale in what looks like will be a great trilogy." —Alternative-Worlds.com


"Wake was serialized in Analog recently; those who read it in these pages don't need me to tell them what a good book it is.

"For many years now, Robert J. Sawyer has been turning out imaginative, thought-provoking science fiction novels set in the present day and dealing with the impact of science and technology upon relatively ordinary people. A typical Sawyer tale brings together multiple diverse elements from popular culture, psychology, physics, and philosophy; stirs together plausible advances in science with appealing characters; adds some realistic depictions of actual scientists at work and a generous helping of old-fashioned sense-of-wonder; and filters the whole mix through a distinctly Canadian filter. Wake is no exception.

"Caitlin is an appealing enough character, and the premise is fascinating: a girl, blind from birth, gains the ability to see the structure of the Internet from within. A lesser writer would go with this story, following Caitlin as she learns to deal with this new, expanded world. But this is Sawyer, and there's much, much more going on.

"Along the way, Sawyer raises fascinating, complex questions about the nature of consciousness and self-awareness, of communication between disparate intelligences, and compassion across huge gulfs. This is a book that you'll still be thinking about for weeks after you finish reading it." —Analog Science Fiction and Fact


"Wake provides a refreshing intersect of science and real life, of consciousness and perception, of imagination and potential. Sawyer puts the science back in science fiction and does it with panache." —Bitten by Books


"Sawyer's take on theories about the origin of consciousness, generated within the framework of an engaging story, is fascinating, and his approach to machine consciousness and the Internet is surprisingly fresh." —Booklist


"A very entertaining read. Sawyer has written a pretty fast paced novel with Wake. Deceptively so in fact. Although it does not slow the story down he has packed the text with references to developments in information technology, mathematics, physics, linguistics and a number of other fields. Parts of the novel read like Oliver Sacks writing science fiction." —Bookspot Central


"While this is clearly a novel of big ideas, the author never neglects the individual characters. Caitlin, her parents, Dr. Kuroda, and even the kids at school all seem very realistic. Allowing us to follow Caitlin's story from her point of view works perfectly. She's a teenager, so she's moody and very human; but she's a very smart girl, applying knowledge to new situations and grasping abstract concepts with relative ease. She's a great character, with flaws and a sense of humor." —CA Reviews


"I shouldn't be shocked that Sawyer has done has homework and is able to predict things that could happen in the near future. He's had a long, distinguished career of doing just that and his new novels are always those I look forward to reading next. Wake is no exception.

"While the book is full of big ideas, those ideas are grounded in identifiable characters. The main focus of the story is Catlin and her journey from lack of sight to her new ability to see. Sawyer ably puts the reader inside the mind and experience of Catlin, making us see how she works within the world while being blind and how she must learn to adapt to a world where she can see. Catlin's story will have you feeling her joy, her frustration and her curious nature in how she relates to the world." —The Dragon Page


"I love the fact that Robert J. Sawyer is smarter than me. There is a breadth to his concepts and ideas in his latest novel,

Wake, that is exhilarating, if not exhausting. In the hands of a less skilled and less focused author, it would be like tab-surfing Wikipedia. Wake, however, is an engrossing, fascinating and, yes, challenging novel to read. Wake has more great and intriguing ideas, philosophies and concepts interwoven throughout the plot than should be allowed in a single novel.

"Wake is founded on theories that communication, in any form, is not just a way of sharing information, but is the central construct for all education, for true emancipation as well as the vehicle of all empathy and understanding. This is why Sawyer's Wake succeeds; his unabashed optimism and hope for a shared future that is no longer bound and tethered by tyranny, petty opportunism and fear." —FFWD, aka Fast Forward Weekly (Calgary, Alberta)


"Wake by Robert J. Sawyer is another delight from the pen of an author who knows how to romp through the kind of speculation which makes science fiction most fun. Definitely give this one a try." —Fort Morgan Times (Colorado)


"Robert J. Sawyer's books are for me among a select group. When there's a new Robert J. Sawyer book available, all other leisure activities go on hold until it's read. Robert J. Sawyer writes science fiction that makes you think. His books often tackle the philosophical questions of our time, and the philosophical questions we may need to confront at a future time.

"The main human character in [Wake] is Caitlin Decter. She's 15, a mathematics wizard, a frequent blogger on her LiveJournal &#151 and a blind user of JAWS. It's rare to find novels where the main character is blind, let alone when where the research has clearly been so meticulous." — Jonathan Mosen, Vice-President of Blindness Hardware Product Management, Freedom Scientific [makers of JAWS]


"Wake often feels like a counterargument, both in style and content, to Neuromancer. One hopes that the next two volumes will step out of Gibson's long, dark shadow and build on the solid foundation laid in the first book. If Sawyer succeeds in this, the final nail will be hammered into Cyberpunk's coffin and the world will have a new way to write about the Internet. ... Wake is a major work by one of SF's heavyweights.

"Reading this book feels like watching a magic trick. Sawyer starts with a few pieces of string, shows you what's up his sleeves — nothing — and then starts tying them together. He steps back, gives the ropes a good yank and — Ta-Da — you have a tidy knot in the shape of a brain.

"The literati could very well be, to a person, too bloody stupid to see any of this. They seem to think that a tight plot construction and a clear prose style are inartistic. Sawyer gets a lot of well-deserved respect as a storyteller and as a science pundit but not enough as a prose stylist. It should not be overlooked that he is a science fiction writer. Sawyer attacks the novel from different points of view, using different styles and narrative tools; creates suspense while never employing an antagonist, tells history through a symbolic representation of consciousness and creates a character out of nothing. He does all of this so well and layers in so much page-turning, forward thrust, that the extent of his style is invisible." —The Grumpy Owl


"Robert J. Sawyer is widely considered one of the most inventive and popular writers in the science fiction genre, and here's why: he imagines things that are wildly fanciful, and he makes them seem not only plausible, but downright inevitable. Sawyer has a knack for taking realistic characters and plunking them down in stories that might seem far-fetched, if they weren't so vividly imagined and elegantly told. He's an excellent storyteller, and you catch him here at his very best." —Halifax Chronicle-Herald


"Sawyer continues to push the boundaries with his stories of the future made credible. His erudition, eclecticism, and masterly storytelling make this trilogy opener a choice selection." —Library Journal


"Wake is a marvelous story [with] a convincing narrative from the AI perspective. What I like best about this novel is Sawyer's casual dropping in of various bits of history that I know, and other bits of current fact that I haven't paid attention to. Eye openers on Chinese politics and insights into research into communicating with chimpanzees make this novel an eclectic reading SF fan's delight.

"Sawyer's SF story of an Artificial Intelligence dawning in the World Wide Web has the emotional impact of Buffy fighting demons from another dimension." —Jacqueline Lichtenberg in The Monthly Aspectarian


"Wake is about as good as it gets when it comes to science fiction. In Caitlin, Sawyer has created a likable and sympathetic hero. She's smart, sure, but also full of sass, which lends itself to some wildly entertaining reading. Sawyer's combination of writing skill and computing background come together marvelously in this book. The characters are rich and realistic, while the ideas are fresh and fascinating." —The Maine Edge, Bangor, Maine

"Unforgettable. Impossible to put down." —Nebula Award-winner Jack McDevitt
"When I am asked what my favourite science fiction novel is, invariably the answer is: `The last one by Robert Sawyer.' With the publication of Wake,

Rollback must sadly make way for the new title holder. Wake is, in the words of its heroine, made out of awesome." —McNally Robinson, Canada's second-largest bookstore chain


"Sawyer's treatment of the awakening of a consciousness from a man-made construct (in this case the web) coupled with the awe and wonder of a blind person's journey to sight is brilliant.

"Without revealing the ending, I have to say it had one. So many authors of multi-volume works don't bother tying up enough of the loose ends to keep the reader satisfied at the end of any but the last volume. When we have to wait at least a year for the next installment, I think the author owes us one. Sawyer came through with a most satisfying ending -- not even rushed.

Wake also ends with a perfect last line. But no peeking!" —MostlyFiction Book Reviews


"Sawyer is one of the most successful Canadian writers ever. He has won himself an international readership by reinvigorating the traditions of hard science fiction, following the path of such writers as Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein in his bold speculations from pure science. Clashes between personalities and ideologies fuel [Wake's] plot, but they're not what the book is about. It's about how cool science is.

"Sawyer has marshalled a daunting quantity of fact and theory from across scientific disciplines and applied them to a contemporary landscape — with due regard to cultural and political differences, pop culture, history, economics, adolescent yearnings, personal ambition and human frailty." —National Post


"Sawyer paints a complete portrait of a blind teenage girl, and imagines in detail — from scratch — the inside of a new being. Almost alone among Canadian writers, he tackles the most fundamental questions of who we are and where we might be going — while illuminating where we are now." —The Ottawa Citizen

"A superb work of day-after-tomorrow science fiction; I enjoyed every page." —Hugo Award-winner Allen Steele
"From an author who has written many books and has won just about every award a science fiction author can comes one of the most original and fascinating novels to be published in a long time. It's one of those books that has just as much right to be on a fiction shelf with other literature classics.

"Sawyer has done a fantastic job of researching the science, but also throws in lots of references that any savvy Internet user will recognize, appreciate, and be amused about; as well as putting the readers in the mind of a blind person and how they do the amazing things they do each day." —Sacramento Book Review


"Sawyer's fascination with the birth of consciousness and the relationship of consciousness to humanity makes this more than your typical `the machine is alive' story. Likewise, his compassionate writing lets us avoid the trap of assuming monstrosity in difference. As Caitlin and the consciousness of the Web learn to communicate, readers can easily begin to question what it is that makes us human — and whether or not that is enough to make us special, or just one variation among all consciousness, artificial or natural. Like all great science fiction, Sawyer's work ultimately stirs up philosophical questions, and Wake is no exception." —Sacramento News & Review


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


"Wake is a gripping story with a novel premise and almost flawless execution." —Science Fiction and Fantasy Insider [Night Owl Reviews]


"Emotionally satisfying and intellectually stimulating. Along with William Gibson's Neuromancer and Neal Stephenson's

Snow Crash, Robert J. Sawyer's Wake presents a unique perspective on information technology. I eagerly await its sequels." —SFFaudio


"Sawyer is a brand name in the genre and rightfully so. The book [Wake] was very enjoyable; I highly recommend it!" —SFFWorld


"A brilliant look at interspecies communication with some remarkable insights into the future of artificial intelligence; one of Robert Sawyer's best efforts and one that will open your eyes to new possibilities. He's likely to score a hit with everyone from Gibson and Stephenson's crowd to science oriented YA readers of both genders looking for a summer read." —SFRevu


"I'm impressed. Sawyer's story-telling style is almost invisible to the reader; he doesn't get in the way of his own story, and writes short, punchy chapters that keep the reader saying `just one more.' (It's the type of book I love when I've finished, but hate while I'm reading, because I can't put it down.) His characters are fully realized, and I always finish his books wanting more." —SFScope

"Once again, Robert J. Sawyer explores the intersection between big ideas and real people. Here the subject is consciousness and perception — who we are and how we see one another, both literally and figuratively. Thoughtful and engaging, and a great beginning to a fascinating trilogy." —Hugo Award-winner Robert Charles Wilson
"Now, the idea of a digital intelligence forming online is not a new one, by any means. But I daresay most of the people tackling such a concept automatically assumed, as I always did, that such a being would not only have access to the shared data of the Internet, but the conceptual groundings needed to understand it. And that's where Robert J. Sawyer turns this into such a fascinating, satisfying piece. In a deliberate parallel to the story of Helen Keller, he tackles the need for building a common base of understanding, before unleashing an education creation upon the Web's vast storehouse of knowledge.

"More than that, Sawyer is an author who's not afraid to make his readers think. The topics invoked in this book cover a wide range, from math to theories of intelligence, from what it's like to be blind, to cutting edge technology. He incorporates the myriad resources available online, including Livejournal, Wikipedia, Google, Project Gutenberg, WordNet, and perhaps the most interesting site of all, Cyc, a real site aimed at codifying knowledge so that anyone, including emerging artificial intelligences, might understand. He ties in Internet topography and offbeat musicians, primate signing and Chinese hackers, and creates a wholly believable set of circumstances spinning out of a world we can as good as reach out to touch. There's quite a lot to consider, and Sawyer's good at making it accessible to the average reader.

"Sawyer has delivered another excellent tale." —SF Site


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


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