Past President, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

sawyer-on-big-ideas-2008-02-02.mp3

Hybrids

For the most part, Ponter Boddit is happy to be back in his own world of  Neanderthals. He has reunited with friends and family, and returned to his life  as a physicist. Yet he can't help but feel that unfinished business remains from  his trip to the parallel world inhabited by the strange, possibly dangerous  people who call themselves Homo sapiens. And he would like to see Mary Vaughan  again. Humans, the second volume in Robert J. Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax  trilogy, tells the story of Ponter's second trip to our world and the opening of  the portal between worlds to a few other travellers. It is for the most part a  quiet story of the deepening relationship between Ponter and Mary, as Ponter  continues his investigation of the human world and develops a growing interest  in the preoccupation of its residents with religion. Meanwhile, intercut scenes  of Ponter in therapy in his homeworld contribute to a growing tension in the  story, as the reason for Ponter's feelings of guilt is slowly revealed. At the  same time, scientists are beginning to notice that something odd is happening  with the magnetic fields of both Earths. Although it's the middle volume of a trilogy, which began with Hominids, the main story in  Humans stands alone. Sawyer's enjoyable prose is sprinkled with sly  comments on the mutual foibles of Canadians and Americans, and Ponter in  particular is given several good lines. Set firmly in our present, Humans  relies on hard science for its set-up, but the heart of the novel is Mary and  Ponter's acceptance of their love for each other. It's a hard-science-fiction  romance, and Sawyer tells this story of love across boundaries very well.  --Greg L. Johnson

Humans

Hominids examines two unique species of people. We are one of those species; the other is the Neanderthals of a parallel world where they became the dominant intelligence. The Neanderthal civilization has reached heights of culture and science comparable to our own, but with radically different history, society and philosophy. Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist, accidentally pierces the barrier between worlds and is transferred to our universe. Almost immediately recognized as a Neanderthal, but only much later as a scientist, he is quarantined and studied, alone and bewildered, a stranger in a strange land. But Ponter is also befriended—by a doctor and a physicist who share his questing intelligence, and especially by Canadian geneticist Mary Vaughan, a woman with whom he develops a special rapport. Ponter’s partner, Adikor Huld, finds himself with a messy lab, a missing body, suspicious people all around and an explosive murder trial. How can he possibly prove his innocence when he has no idea what actually happened to Ponter?  Hominids is the winner of the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Hominids

Calculating God

Flashforward

Mindscan

Dr. Sarah Halifax decoded the first-ever radio transmission received from aliens. Thirty-eight years later, a second message is received and Sarah, now 87, may hold the key to deciphering this one, too . . . if she lives long enough. A wealthy industrialist offers to pay for Sarah to have a rollback—a hugely expensive experimental rejuvenation procedure. She accepts on condition that Don, her husband of sixty years, gets a rollback, too. The process works for Don, making him physically twenty-five again. But in a tragic twist, the rollback fails for Sarah, leaving her in her eighties. While Don tries to deal with his newfound youth and the suddenly vast age gap between him and his wife, Sarah struggles to do again what she’d done once before: figure out what a signal from the stars contains.

Rollback

Wonder

Watch (WWW Trilogy, Book 2)

Wake

On the eve of a secret military operation, an assassin's bullet  strikes President Seth Jerrison. He is rushed to the hospital, where  surgeons struggle to save his life.At the same hospital, researcher Dr. Ranjip Singh is experimenting  with a device that can erase traumatic memories.Then a terrorist bomb detonates. In the operating room, the  president suffers cardiac arrest. He has a near-death experience-but  the memories that flash through Jerrison's mind are not his  memories.It quickly becomes clear that the electromagnetic pulse generated by  the bomb amplified and scrambled Dr. Singh's equipment, allowing a  random group of people to access one another's minds.And now one of those people has access to the president's memories- including classified information regarding the upcoming military  mission, which, if revealed, could cost countless lives. But the task  of determining who has switched memories with whom is a daunting one- particularly when some of the people involved have reason to lie...

Triggers

Robert J. Sawyer, the author of such “revelatory and thought-provoking”* novels as Triggers and The WWW Trilogy, presents a noir mystery expanded from his Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated novella “Identity Theft” and his Aurora Award-winning short story “Biding Time,” and set on a lawless Mars in a future where everything is cheap, and life is even cheaper… Alex Lomax is the one and only private eye working the mean streets of New Klondike, the Martian frontier town that sprang up forty years ago after Simon Weingarten and Denny O’Reilly discovered fossils on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, where anything can be synthesized, the remains of alien life are the most valuable of all collectibles, so shiploads of desperate treasure hunters stampeded to Mars in the Great Martian Fossil Rush. Trying to make an honest buck in a dishonest world, Lomax tracks down killers and kidnappers among the failed prospectors, corrupt cops, and a growing population of transfers—lucky stiffs who, after striking paleontological gold, upload their minds into immortal android bodies. But when he uncovers clues to solving the decades-old murders of Weingarten and O’Reilly, along with a journal that may lead to their legendary mother lode of Martian fossils, God only knows what he’ll dig up... *The Globe and Mail

Red Planet Blues

Bestselling science-fiction writer, futurist, and foresight consultant -- one of only eight people ever (and the only Canadian) to have won all three of the science-fiction fields top awards for best novel of the year; the ABC TV series FlashForward was based on his novel of the same name. Clients have included CA (Computer Associates), Federation of State Medical Boards, Institute for Quantum Computing, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, Professional Engineers Ontario, Sanofi-Aventis, Saskatchewan Registered Nurses' Association, and dozens more.  Speaking venues have included the Library of Congress, the Googleplex, the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, and Saskatchewan legislature.

Rob's specialty is extrapolating today's scientific, medical, and ethical concerns into the near future, and making the radical changes that are forthcoming understandable to any audience.

Called "the dean of Canadian science fiction" by The Ottawa Citizen and a master of "bold scientific extrapolation" by The New York Times, Rob opens up people's minds about cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, stem-cell research, and nanotechnology, exploring the societal impact they are going to have.

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Science Fiction Writer

Robert J. Sawyer is one of only eight writers ever to have won all three of the world's top awards for best sciencefiction novel of the year: the Hugo Award (which he won for Hominids), the Nebula Award (for The Terminal Experiment), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (for Mindscan). The ABC TV series "FlashForward" was based on his novel of the same name. His 21st novel, Triggers, comes out in April 2012. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

TEDxManitoba - Robert J. Sawyer: To Live Forever - or Die Trying

What will it mean to be human in the future? Uploading consciousness into virtual worlds and prolonging life through biotechnology are already being contemplated. Canada's leading science fiction writer, Robert J. Sawyer, offers his insights in a lecture entitled Humanity 2.0, produced in collaboration with the Literary Review of Canada.

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