Non WFTL Blogs

Instead of coming back on March 4, 2010, FlashForward, the ABC TV series based on my novel of the same name, will return two weeks later, on March 18.

We're being pushed back two weeks to keep our return from having to go head-to-head with Fox's American Idol juggernaut; this will also let the DVD release of the first ten episodes of FlashForward have a little more time to draw in viewers for the new ones.

We'll still have 13 new hours of the show, but it'll be packaged as a two-hour spring premiere on March 18, 2010, and a two-hour season finale on May 27, 2010, with single hours -- without repeats or pre-emptions -- in between.

They're keeping us at our Thursday at 8:00 p.m. / 7:00 p.m. Central timeslot, which means they do expect us to perform well; TV advertising sells for the highest cost on Thursday nights.

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I'm in nine episodes of the new season of the TV series Writers' Confessions (including the first one), which premieres tomorrow -- Thursday, January 7, 2010 -- on Bravo! Canada, Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. EST. Proudcer and director is Michael Glassbourg.
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I'm always super-proud when my writing students do well, so let me tell you about Matthew Johnson:

Matthew had his first novel published in 2009: Fall from Earth was issued by Bundoran Press, the wonderful publishing house in Prince George, BC, run by Virginia O'Dine.

And Matthew also had a great short story published last year: "The Coldest War" (Asimov's SF, February 2009), which you can read online here.

Both Fall from Earth and "The Coldest War" are eligible for the Hugo and Aurora Awards -- and nominations are open now.

(Matthew was my writing student at the University of Toronto in 2005.)

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That's the message of this guy. Holy shit -- um, so to speak. 
Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
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Bakka-Phoenix Books, Toronto's science-fiction specialty bookstore (and the oldest extant SF bookstore in the world), has just released their list of the bestselling books for the entire year of 2009:

Hardcover Bestsellers

1. Wake, Robert J. Sawyer
   
2. Makers, Cory Doctorow
   
3. Enchantment Emporium, Tanya Huff
   
4. Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett
   
5. Give Up the Ghost, Megan Crewe

Trade Paperback Bestsellers

1. Wondrous Strange, Lesley Livingston
   
2. Black Man, Richard Morgan
   
3. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith
   
4. Cast in Silence, Michelle Sagara
   
5. Alex and the Ironic Gentleman, Adrienne Kress

Mass Market Bestsellers

1. Ages of Wonder, Julie E. Czerneda & Robert St. Martin, eds.
   
2. Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
   
3. Anathem, Neal Stephenson
   
4. On the Edge, Ilona Andrews
   
5. Tyrant, Christian Cameron

Not quite as good as 2003 when I had the #1 hardcover (Humans) and the #1 mass-market paperback (Hominids), but it still makes me happy. (I also had the #1 bestselling hardcover for the entire year in 2007, for Rollback.)

Bakka-Phoenix is located at 697 Queen Street West in downtown Toronto.

Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
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The large-screen Kindle DX from Amazon.com is now available for pre-order for Canada (and other countries around the world); it has a 9.7-inch screen compared to the regular Kindle's 6.0-inch one. (Until now, only the regular Kindle has been available outside the US -- and even that's a recent occurrence.)

The Kindle DX Global Wireless edition will be released on January 19, 2010, for US$489.

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In honour of the new Sherlock Holmes movie, I'll just point out that my science-fiction Holmes story "You See But You Do Not Observe" has long been available for free right here.

It's also available in several anthologies, starting with Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin Harry Greenberg (DAW), for which it was commissioned, and most recently as the concluding story in The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, edited by John Joseph Adams (Night Shade Books). And it's in my own short story collection Iterations and Other Stories.

This story, which I think is one of my very best, won France's top SF award, Le Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire.
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My novel Wake, which was published in the US by Ace and Canada by Viking and the UK by Gollancz, all in 2009, actually had its first appearance as a serial in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, the world's bestselling English-language SF magazine.

It was serialized in four parts, with installments in the November 2008, December 2008, the combined January-February 2009, and March 2009 issues.

But, just so there's no ambiguity, it is a 2009 book. Under both the Hugo and the Nebula rules, a serial is considered published in the year in which its final installment appeared, so Wake is eligible for the Hugo to be given in Melbourne later this year

Anyone who had a membership in last year's Worldcon in Montreal, or this year's in Australia, may cast a nominating ballot.
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I'm hoping Google searches will bring some people here:

On October 16, 1975, Robert J. Sawyer, Richard Gotlib, and Ted Bleaney founded NASFA, the Northview Association for Science Fiction Addicts, based at Northview Heights Secondary School in Willowdale (later North York; later still, Toronto), Ontario, Canada.

We're having a 35th anniversary reunion party on Saturday, September 25, 2010, at the home of Robert J. Sawyer and Carolyn Clink in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, starting at 3:00 p.m.

All past members of NASFA ("Nasforians," as we called ourselves) are invited and encouraged to attend. (And we're defining "members" loosely here: if you were an occasional attendee or just fondly remember the NASFA gang from your days at Northview Heights, you're more than welcome to attend!)

For address and directions, email Rob at sawyer@sfwriter.com.

NASFA was a major part of my life: I met my wife there, as well as and many of the people who are still my very best friends, a fact attested to by how many of my books are dedicated to NASFA members:

• Far-Seer is dedicated to Carolyn Clink
  
  
• End of an Era is dedicated to David Livingstone Clink
  
  
• The Terminal Experiment is dedicated to Ted Bleaney
  
  
• Starplex is dedicated to Ariel Reich
  
  
• Factoring Humanity is dedicated to Asbed Bedrossian
  
  
• FlashForward is dedicated to Richard Gotlib

Our staff sponsors were Robert E. Howley and Joe Marcynuk; Joe phoned me recently to confirm that he'll be attending the party.

(The photo above shows Bob Howley and Rob Sawyer at Northview's 50th reunion in May 2007.)

NASFA also had a spinoff / alumni group for several years called SST: The Society for Speculative Thinking. All former SST members are welcome at this reunion, as well!

NASFA organized three one-day science-fiction conventions in Toronto:

• NASFACON, in 1977, with Judith Merril as one of the Guests of Honour;
  
  
• NASFACON TWO, in 1979, with Phyllis Gotlieb as a GoH;
  
  
• and NASFACON THREE, in 1982, with John Robert Colombo among the GoHs.

And on September 25, 1982, Ted Bleaney, Thomas P. Nadas, and I presented NorthStar, the first ever SF conference devoted to Canadian science fiction, with GoH Donald Kingsbury; this reunion party falls on the precise anniversary of that event (and the reunion is the day before Toronto's annual Word on the Street book fair).

By the way, the 20th anniversary NASFA reunion is where I got the idea for my novel FlashForward, which deals with people having foreknowledge of what their lives will be like 20 years in the future.

If you're a former member of NASFA or know any NHSS alumni from that era (1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, and 1983), please help spread the word.

Oh, and a trivia question: I'm one of two people who attended Northview Heights to have won the World Science Fiction Society's Hugo Award. Who's the other one? (Answer in the comments.)

Here are some of my reminiscences about NASFA, taken from a 10,000-word autobiography of me published in Gale's Contemporary Authors in 2004:In October 1975, when I was beginning Grade 10, I made friends with a guy named Rick Gotlib, who was in my Latin class (yes, Latin was an oddball choice — but I thought it would help me to understand scientific terms; I was planning on becoming a scientist). We both had an interest in science fiction, and spent one lunch period trying to stump each other with trivia questions. Rick and I figured there had to be other science-fiction fans in the school, and so decided to start a science-fiction club: the Northview Association for Science Fiction Addicts, or NASFA (Afsan, the main character in my novels Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner, is NASFA spelled backwards).

The first meeting was a great success, and, to our surprise and delight, a large number of pretty girls joined the club — an unexpected bonus. I'd never really had female friends prior to this — the street I'd grown up on was filled with boys — but suddenly I did. Most of the people who joined the club were older than Rick and I were (back then, Ontario High School went to Grade 13, meaning some of our members were eighteen at the beginning of the year, and nineteen by the time it ended).

And then a miracle occurred: the teachers went on strike. For months, Northview Heights Secondary School — and all the other high schools in Ontario — were closed. But we decided to keep holding NASFA meetings anyway during that period, once a week at different people's houses.

It was an unusual situation: a couple of Grade 10 boys hanging out with boys and girls in Grades 11, 12, and even 13. But since there were no classes to worry about during the strike, we were treated as equals; all that mattered was how clever or funny we could be. Indeed, to my astonishment, I soon found myself dating a gorgeous girl named Lorian Fraser who was two grades ahead of me — quite a heady experience for a guy who, in junior high, had been very awkward around girls.

I'd hung around with some bad kids in junior high, but had avoided getting entangled in the smoking, drinking, and drugs they were experimenting with. There's always been something in me that was averse to peer-group pressure: when bell-bottomed pants came into style in the late 1960s, I refused to wear them, making my mother drive me all over town looking for stores that still had straight legs. And, until I was in my 20s, I never wore blue jeans, despite the fact — or more precisely, because of the fact — that everybody else was wearing them.

But the science-fiction crowd in high school never got into trouble. Not one of us smoked, no one was using drugs, and only a few occasionally drank. (Robert Charles Wilson, another SF writer and one of my closest friends, noted recently that I've never developed adult vices: to this day, I don't drive and I don't drink, but I've got a real fondness for chocolate milk, potato chips, and pizza.)

Still, we members of NASFA had incredible amounts of fun, and I felt intellectually stimulated all the time. Several members of the club talked about wanting to write science fiction, but it seemed clear that I was the only one who was really serious about it, and in the summer after grade ten, I made my first-ever submission to a science-fiction magazine. The story, quite rightly, was rejected, but I wasn't discouraged. On the contrary, I was rather impressed by the simplicity of the process: anyone, anywhere, could send in a story, and it would be seriously considered for publication.If you were a NASFA member, come to the reunion. Until then, live long and prosper!

Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com

The DVD of the first 10 episodes of FlashForward, the ABC TV series based on my novel of the same name, comes out on February 23, 2010. Here's what the box art looks like (click the image for a larger view).
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The Barnes & Noble Desktop Reader for Windows is a new wrapper around the long-standing eReader Pro for Windows software, with some new features, and some old ones removed. It's mostly a very nice ebook-reading platform for Windows, but I sent three notes to B&N tech support today with comments and suggestions:I like the Barnes & Noble Desktop Reader for Windows, and, of course, recognize that it's adapted from eReader Pro for Windows. But the B&N version is missing one very important feature of the original: the ability to set the background color of the page. eReader Pro allows any background color the user might desire, but "Settings | Reading Preferences" allows only foreground colors to be set. A bright white background is much too harsh on my eyes. Please add the ability to set the background color. Thanks! (I'm using the latest 2.0.1.8 version of your software.)Using Barnes & Noble Desktop Reader for Windows 2.0.1.8, I see that you can add only one book at a time to the "my stuff" subsection of "my library." I have hundreds of books from your Fictionwise.com subsidiary that I'd like to add, but it will take forever adding them one at time (especially since the file browser doesn't remember the previous folder location you looked at). Barnes & Noble Desktop Reader is modified from eReader software, and eReader allows the bulk importation of titles. Please add this feature. Thank you!I note that in the documentation for Barnes & Noble Desktop Reader for Windows 2.0.1.8, you have retired several features (listed under "8 - Retired Features" in the manual). Please bring back: 1) Bookshelves, 2) Hot Keys, 3) Two Page Reader View, and 4) Exporting Annotations. In particular, "Two Page Reader View" is important to emulating the paper-book experience, and separate bookshelves are crucial for organizing a large library. Thank you!
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Mark your calendars:

An event is being planned for Saturday, August 14, 2010, in Calgary, Alberta, called "How To Be a Kick-Ass Writer," at which guest speakers (including Robert J. Sawyer) will discuss how Canadian genre writers can succeed in a global print and film market. More details as they become available.
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There is an Aurora category for "Fan Achievement - Organizational." If you enjoyed the programming at Con-Version 25 this past year in Calgary (which was some of the best in years), don't forget to nominate Kirstin Morrell in that category.

She did an amazing job -- a job that was all the more remarkable because she was simultaneously also helping to run the annual iCORE Summit at Banff for her work.

Please nominate:

• Morrell, Kirstin. Programming for Con-Version 25

The nominating ballot is here; all Canadians may nominate and there is no charge to do so.


(That's Kirstin making a last-minute adjustment to the master programming schedule)
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Nominations are now open for the 2010 Aurora Awards, honouring science fiction and fantasy work from 2009. Any Canadian may nominate, and there's not cost to do so.

The nominating ballot is here, and a reminder of what works are eligible can be found at the Canadian SF Works Database.

My novel Wake is eligible in the Best Long Form Work in English category (and, cough, cough, I'll point out that it's been ten full years since I last won in that category; my last novel to win the Aurora was 1999's FlashForward):

• Sawyer, Robert J. Wake. Viking Canada.

And the anthology I edited, Distant Early Warnings: Canada's Best Science Fiction, is eligible in the Best Work in English (Other) category:

• Sawyer, Robert J. Distant Early Warnings, Robert J. Sawyer Books

The 2010 Aurora Awards will be given out at KeyCon in Winnipeg over the May 22-24 weekend.


Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
and WakeWatchWonder.com