Robert J. Sawyer

Props to Gough

2009-11-07T11:00:00.002-05:00

For fans of FlashForward, the ABC TV series based on my novel of the same name, a historical note on Agent Al Gough (played wonderfully by Lee Thompson Young), who had the big story line this past week (in "The Gift").

In the actual TV series, he should be credited as the character who, in the story, coined the term "flashforward" for the event. There was a scene filmed for the pilot ("No More Good Days") in which Agent Janis Hawk (the amazing Christine Woods) appeared to coin the term (and that part of the scene was used in some of the promos), but her line was cut from the pilot as aired, so the credit for coining the term in-universe goes to Gough, who first uses it when discussing Fiona Banks with Demetri and Mark.

On Rochester, NY, NPR station on Friday

2009-11-05T13:23:00.005-05:00

I'll be interviewed about my novels Wake and FlashForward on 1370 Connection with Bob Smith, the noon (Eastern time) show on AM 1370, the NPR station in Rochester, New York, this Friday, November 6, 2009. You'll be able to listen live here, and I'll be on for most of the hour between noon and 1:00 p.m. (then it's off to Astronomicon, Rochester's SF convention, where I'm one of the guests).

Five years of working on the WWW books

2009-11-05T12:22:00.004-05:00

Holy cow! It was five years ago today -- Friday, November 5, 2004 -- that I wrote the first words of what went on to become my WWW trilogy. Back then, it was only going to be a single book (to be called Webmind). I began writing that first book at a Write-Off writing retreat sponsored by Calgary's Imaginative Fiction Writers Association (IFWA). The first words I wrote were:

Not one word of that draft survived to the final, published version of Wake, which begins like this:

Still, that passage I wrote five years ago today was the start of the trilogy.

Of course, I haven't spent five years solid on this trilogy; I took time off to write Rollback, for instance, among many other interesting things. :)

Anyway, enough reminiscing! Time to get back to work on Volume 3, Wonder, which today passed the 50,000-word mark.

Come see prize-winning Sawyer script performed

2009-11-03T14:37:00.004-05:00

On Friday, November 27, 2009, Robert J. Sawyer's television pilot script for Earthfall will have a staged reading by professional actors at the National Film Board of Canada's Theatre at 150 John Street, in the Entertainment District in downtown Toronto.

I wrote Earthfall as a pilot for an hour-long episodic science-fiction TV series; it's not currently sold to anyone, but I'm proud of it. The pilot episode is called "Vanguard," and here's a little synopsis:

(Actually, there's a lot more to it than that!)

The script will be read using some of the top actors working in Toronto, and after the performance a moderated discussion about the script will be held, with audience participation welcomed.

The Earthfall pilot script beat over 150 TV pilot-script submissions in the WILDsound Screenplay Festival.

I'm delighted to have won this competion, but I'd also like to tip my hat to the other finalists. The six pilot-script finalists were:

COMPUTER GUY
by Rich Hynes
Ronkonkoma, NY

EARTHFALL
by Robert J. Sawyer
Mississauga, ON

EXPRESSIONS
by Shawand McKenzie and Steven Van Patten
Hackensack, NJ

THE FILTHY STINKIN TRUTH
by Will Phillips
San Francisco, CA

HUMOR ME
by John Betz, Jr. and Randy Reese
Rochester, NY

TRAFFICKING
by Clark McMillian
Bowie, MD

Tickets for the evening -- which will also include readings of two other short scripts -- are just $6 in advance, or $8 at the door. More info is here.

This is a good month for me for scriptwriting (thirty years after I started my degree in Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson!). On Sunday, I head down to L.A. to spend a week at the FlashForward offices, gearing up to write my own episode of the TV series based on my novel of the same name

Guest Editorial in On Spec

2009-11-01T00:57:00.003-04:00

I've long been associated with On Spec, English-Canada's leading SF magazine. My short story "Just Like Old Times" first appeared there in 1993 (and went on to win both the Aurora Award and the Crime Writers of Canada's juried Arthur Ellis Award for best short story of the year, as well as being reprinted in the best-of anthology On Spec: The First Five Years), and for three years (1995-1997), my "On Writing" column ran in the magazine.

This is On Spec's 20th anniversary year, and I am very proud to have been called upon to write a Guest Editorial for the Fall 2009 issue. For the time being, you can read that editorial right here.

Rollback gets a FlashForward boost

2009-11-01T00:14:00.002-04:00

It's always nice when a novel goes into a new printing. My most-recent mass-market paperback is the Hugo Award-nominated Rollback (which had a very successful run in hardcover prior to that). Tor Books has gone back to press for another printing -- which gave them the chance to mention that I'm also the author of FlashForward, the novel behind the ABC TV series of the same name.

More about Rollback.

And where do the main characters on FlashForward live? Why, on Sawyer Court, of course!

2009-10-31T19:22:00.003-04:00

This week's episode of FlashForward, the ABC TV series based on my novel of the same name, not only added a whole lot of physics to the show but also revealed where Mark Benford and Dr. Olivia Benford live: at 25696 Sawyer Court. We see the above address label in the flashforward vision of Dylan Simcoe, son of Lloyd Simcoe, in episode 6, "Scary Monsters and Super Creeps," and the street name is spoken repeatedly in dialog.

Cool! Almost as cool, in fact, as my cameo in the first episode, "No More Good Days" (below).

NaNoWriMo begins tomorrow

2009-10-31T14:13:00.002-04:00

I won't be a formal participant in National Novel Writing Month -- indeed, I'll be spending much of November working on my script for FlashForward, the ABC TV series based on my novel of the same name. But I do think NaNoWriMo is a cool idea. Check it out.

David S. Goyer discusses Robert J. Sawyer's upcoming FlashForward script

2009-10-30T14:37:00.004-04:00

David S. Goyer, executive producer and showrunner of FlashForward, the ABC TV series based on my novel of the same name, discusses (among other things) my involvement with the series and the episode that I'll be writing (episode 17) in this 1 minute 46 second YouTube interview.

For a larger picture or HD version, go here.

Toronto subway posters advertising Wake

2009-10-29T12:47:00.005-04:00

They're finally up! Penguin Canada's subway poster advertisements for my novel Wake are now up on some subway cars on the Yonge-University-Spadina (main north-south) route in Toronto.

Toronto's subways are operated by the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC). I'm in Calgary right now, but sightings of the ads this week have been made by longtime SF fan Hope Liebowitz, Romanian SF writer Costi Gurgu, and Kari Trogen, sister of former Asimov's SF intern Brittany Trogen. That's Kari's snapshot below; click it for a slightly larger version.

R.I.P., Made in Canada

2009-10-28T15:46:00.003-04:00

The Aurora Award-winning webiste MADE IN CANADA -- Don Bassie's elaborate and detailed repository of information about Canadian science fiction and fantasy -- is no more. It had been hosted on Yahoo's Geocities service, and, in a spectacular act of online genocide, Yahoo wiped out all free Geocities sites on 26 October 2009.

Don's site had been an enormous asset to us all, and it's terrible that it's gone. For the record, the URL for it was www.geocities.com/canadian_SF.

Don had stopped updating the site -- which won Auroras in 2000, 2003, and 2004 -- some time ago, but it was still an enormously valuable historical resource.

Thank God for the Internet Archives. The most recent version from there, dated August 2004, can be accessed here. Sadly, it only contains bits and pieces of the now-gone full site, though.

Warning: if you're a complete Star Trek geek like me ...

2009-10-28T12:12:00.003-04:00

... reading this discussion thread will eat hours of your time. It's a fascinating, hyper-detailed look at every prop that ever appeared more than once in classic Star Trek. Tons of great pictures and screen captures.

Covers for new Canadian editions of The Terminal Experiment and Illegal Alien

2009-10-26T11:29:00.003-04:00

Coming December 1, 2009, from Penguin Group Canada: new premium mass-market editions of two of my novels: The Terminal Experiment, which won the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Nebula Award for Best Novel of Year for 1995, and Illegal Alien, which the Globe and Mail's mystery-fiction reviewer Margaret Cannon said was "the best Canadian mystery of 1997."

Premium mass-market is the format used for most bestselling fiction paperbacks these days; it's about an inch taller than regular mass-market (and has bigger type); Penguin Canada's paperback edition of my latest hardcover, Wake, coming in March 2010, will also be done in premium mass-market.

Ace Science Fiction in the United States has separately acquired US rights to these titles, and will be producing their own editions, with their own covers, later.

Jessika Borsiczky on adapting my novel

2009-10-22T12:32:00.003-04:00

A nice video interview with Jessika Borsiczky, executive producer of FlashForward, the TV series based on my novel. (Jessika's last name is pronounced Bor-shees-key.)

Tune in tonight for episode 5, "Gimme Some Truth." I was on the set for much of the filming of this one, and enjoyed having lunch with guest star Glynn Turman. (I'll be watching it in a hotel room in Winnipeg.)

Why I'm not going to the World Fantasy Convention this year

2009-10-21T15:39:00.003-04:00

Answer: because they don't sell memberships at the door, and they cap sales for pre-registration.

This weekend, I have to be in Vancouver, British Columbia, as a presenter at the Surrey International Writers Conference. Sometime shortly after that -- but the date is yet to be precisely nailed down, but it might be Friday, October 30, and it might be Monday, November 2 -- I have to go to Los Angeles, to do some work on FlashForward, the TV series based on my novel of the same name.

So, what's in between Vancouver and Los Angeles, and is taking place between the dates I have to be in those two places? Why, San Jose, and this year's World Fantasy Convention, which is being held there.

But I can't buy a ticket now, unless I hunt around to find someone who isn't going and is willing to sell theirs, and I can't buy one at the door at any price. I understand that World Fantasy wants to keep out last-minute local goths and vampire-junkies who might get wind of the convention through the media as it's happening, but the effect of their membership-cap and no-at-the-door-sales policies is to keep me away.

Surely the same effect of keeping outsiders out could be accomplished by limiting at-the-door sales to publishing professionals (employees of publishing companies, active members of SFWA, etc.)? And surely a handful of at-the-door sales to people who obviously belong couldn't really overrun the convention's capacity?

Flashing back to FlashForward

2009-10-21T14:40:00.002-04:00

In honor of the release of the new tie-in editions of my 1999 novel FlashForward, which is the basis for the hit ABC TV series, I wrote a little essay about the book for Tor.com. Here it is.

First-season Star Trek episodes in production order

2009-10-19T17:38:00.004-04:00

FlashForward -- the TV series based on my novel of the same name -- is a serial drama: it's meant to be watched in sequence, and the episodes are being filmed in the order in which they will air.

But the original Star Trek (and, indeed, most nighttime television for decades) was an episodic drama, with little changing between episodes, and, in theory, the episodes could be watched or aired in any order. In fact, for classic Trek the original broadcast order bore little resemblance to the sequence in which the shows were produced.

But now that I'm working my way through the series again on Blu-ray (where it looks amazing), I've decided to watch the episodes in the order they were produced, so that I can trace the development of ideas. For the record, this is the production order for the first (1966-67) season:

The Cage (unaired pilot)
Where No Man Has Gone Before
The Corbomite Maneuver
Mudd's Women
The Enemy Within
The Man Trap
The Naked Time
Charlie X
Balance of Terror
What Are Little Girls Made Of?
Dagger of the Mind
Miri
The Conscience of the King
The Galileo Seven
Court Martial
The Menagerie (Parts I and II)
Shore Leave
The Squire of Gothos
Arena
The Alternative Factor
Tomorrow is Yesterday
The Return of the Archons
A Taste of Armageddon
Space Seed
This Side of Paradise
The Devil in the Dark
Errand of Mercy
City on the Edge of Forever
Operation: Annihilate!

Should you do a book tour?

2009-10-19T14:49:00.002-04:00

I got asked today by a new writer if it was worth touring for a second book, and whether I'd done that for my own second novel, Far-Seer. My reply:

The first thing to remember is that Far-Seer came out 17 years ago: before the World Wide Web, or any of the social media associated with it. I might well do things very differently today. But even back then, I did not tour for Far-Seer.

Here's the dirty little secret of book tours: you do them mostly to get local media coverage. A news story helps sell your book in every store in town for several days; a specific book-store event helps sell it for one hour in one store (although, yes, the signed stock you leave behind will also sell well in that store after you're gone).

But a local paper, radio program, or TV show won't cover a story without a local angle: an appearance by the author in town is a local angle, so that's why you do it, but, that said, "Author visits town" is not in itself a news story. And that brings us to why most book tours for fiction fail.

Those that succeed do so because the newsworthiness is intrinsic to the topic of the book. As I wrote in an article for The Writers Union of Canada: "The best way to have a hook, of course, is to build it in to the book from the outset. When John Grisham or Michael Crichton set out to create a novel, they decide what issue they're going to tackle -- what hook the book is going to have -- before writing the first sentence. Whether it's the controversy around capital punishment (Grisham's The Chamber) or the perceived problems with biotechnology (Crichton's Next), they give the media something to sink their teeth into."

My touring started taking off when I started writing books that interested the media because of their subject matter: science vs. religion (Calculating God), constant monitoring of our lives (Hominids), medical efforts to arrest and reverse aging (Rollback), the future of the World Wide Web, young girls and math, the potential for a bird-flu pandemic, etc. (Wake).

So, if your second book is one that the media will note because of its theme or topic, then maybe a tour is worthwhile. But otherwise, it probably isn't worth doing, especially if you're paying for it from your own pocket.

Ask yourself this: have you ever bought a book because you have stumbled on a desperate-looking author trying to hawk it to all and sundry at a bookstore? Most tours attract existing fans to your events.

The best-bang-for-the-buck in promotion these days is probably doing stuff online. Here's an article on that topic that happened to come to my attention today. Unless you've got a news hook, I wouldn't tour, but I would do everything I can to attract positive attention to the book online.

#2 Bestseller storewide at Play.com!

2009-10-19T09:54:00.005-04:00

Holy crap! My novel FlashForward -- basis for the hit TV series -- is currently the #2 bestselling book store-wide at Play.com, the UK's second-largest online retailer. Here's the list:

Congratulations to Simon Spanton and the team at Gollancz, my British publisher, for getting the book out there with such success.

McNally Robinson interviews Hayden Trenholm

2009-10-18T17:43:00.001-04:00

McNally Robinson's Chadwick Ginther interviews Aurora Award-winning Canadian SF writer Hayden Trenholm, whose SF-crime novel Steel Whispers is just out from Bundoran Press, here.

"Come All Ye Faithful" now a free podcast

2009-10-16T20:28:00.004-04:00

Thanks to the fine people at Escape Pod, there's a wonderful free podcast of my short story "Come All Ye Faithful," first published in the anthology Space Inc., edited by Julie E. Czerneda, and available in my collection Identity Theft and Other Stories, published by Red Deer Press. The reading by Mike Boris is absolutely terrific.

Charity auctions and SF conventions

2009-10-16T15:20:00.002-04:00

More and more science-fiction conventions have taken to asking authors to donate things to charity auctions, which, on its surface, seems like a great idea: let's see if we can raise some money for this cause or that.

The problem: conventions that don't have the turnout, or don't do the hustle at the con, to actually get the fair value of the things being auctioned. (Many charity auctions turn out to be "silent auctions," with bidding sheets hidden away somewhere and not promoted much or all during the convention; others have real auctioneering, but with tiny turnouts.)

At one recent con, a copy of The Bakka Anthology -- one of only 400 in existence, signed by me (and containing the first appearance of my Hugo-nominated story "Shed Skin"), Tanya Huff, Michelle Sagara West, Fiona Patton, Cory Doctorow, Nalo Hopkinson, Ed Greenwood, and others, went for just $10, a fraction of its original cover price, let alone what it's worth now.

Another con recently got me to donate a Tuckerization [naming a character after a real person] in one of my upcoming novels -- something I might agree to do once per book, maybe -- and then managed to raise just 25% of what the last Tuckerization I let be auctioned off went for, because the con was so small.

Memo to con-runners: there aren't an endless number of such goodies out there, folks. Think twice before you decide to mount a charity auction; it's real work to do one properly, and they don't do well at small cons. If you're not coming close to realizing the actual value of the things you've gotten authors and others to donate, please note that you are likely taking those things away from other conventions that might have managed to actually raise some real money for charity with them. Just sayin'.

Don Sakers of Analog reviews Wake

2009-10-16T10:31:00.003-04:00

Analog Science Fiction and Fact, the world's top-selling English-language SF magazine, recently changed book reviewers.

Of course, all of us long-time Analog readers have been curious to see what sort of approach the new reviewer, Don Sakers, was going to take, and so I turned with interest to "The Reference Library" section of the October issue, never expecting to see my own latest novel, WWW:Wake, reviewed there.

After all, before Sakers had come on board at Analog, that magazine had serialized the entire book in four parts, in the November 2008, December 2008, combined January-February 2009, and March 2009 issues.

But, lo and behold, Don Sakers does review Wake in the October issue, and indeed starts out by commenting on the fact that my novel was serialized in the same magazine:

He then goes on to do just about the best one-paragraph synopsis of the kind of book that I write that I've ever seen:

He notes that Wake is no exception to the above, and goes on to say:

Needless to say, I think Stan Schmidt, Analog's redoubtable editor, has made a great choice for his new book reviewer. :)

You can read Don Sakers entire October "Reference Library" column online here.

Front page lead story in Kingston Whig-Standard

2009-10-15T17:49:00.003-04:00

Look who's the cover boy on today's Kingston Whig-Standard!

The Whig-Standard is the major daily newspaper in Kingston, Ontario, and the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in Canada.

Today's cover story is in honour of my appearance yesterday at Queen's University, located in Kingston, where I gave a public talk sponsored by Queen's Faculty of Applied Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, arranged by Dr. Michael Greenspan, the ECE Department Head.

You can read the full article from the 15 October 2009 edition of the Whig here, and see a lager, different shot of me and Deep Green, the pool-playing robot, here.

#22 storewide at Amazon.co.uk

2009-10-12T22:02:00.003-04:00

The UK edition of the FlashForward novel by Robert J. Sawyer hit #22 storewide at Amazon.co.uk today; has moved up to #5 in genre; and is holding strong at #1 in science fiction.

(And the book has now spent nine days in the top 100 at Amazon.co.uk -- yay!)