Robert J. Sawyer was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1960 and now lives just west of Toronto with his wife, poet Carolyn Clink.
(More can be found at Robert J. Sawyer's homepage)

How would you define yourself as a sf writer? Do you follow any trend in writing a novel, or do you just think of enjoying it yourself as a first issue?


Sawyer's Rule: By the time you identify a trend, it's too late to cash in on it. I pay no attention to the so-called trends in SF; I just write what interests me. When everyone else was writing cyberpunk, I wrote intelligent dinosaurs (Far-seer and its sequels); when everyone else was writing about Mars, I wrote about a biomedical engineer who discovers scientific proof for the existence of the hman soul (The Terminal Experiment); when everyone else was writing about nanotechnology, I wrote about whether we have free will (Flashforward). It's precisely that I don't jump on bandwagons that makes my work stand out to whatever extent it does.

The thing I appreciate most in your writing is just the enthusiasm you put in every new idea you get. Which is the secret to keep this up?

I think it's that I'm a kid at heart. I just love learning new things, and I've never gotten over the childlike wonder I had when I first saw a dinosaur skeleton, or the Milky Way, or a shooting star, or a strange insect.

Book market and writers. Do you mean science fiction is directing itself to some new topics of interest, or the secret is still to build up a good story?

You always have to tell a good story -- that's the most important thing. You can toss off dozens of big ideas in a book -- as I did in Starplex -- or explore just one or two in depth, as I do in Mindscan, but if the story doesn't engage the reader, all is lost.

Which are the sf authors that have set their deepest footprints in your writing?

Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, James White, Larry Niven, Hal Clement, Fred Pohl. Asimov, James white, and Hal are gone now, but I got to meet them all before they died, and, indeed, Hal became a good friend.

You have definitely written many books. How is you typical writing-day?

Yes, I've done 17 novels to day, plus 40-odd short stories, and edited four anthologies. I actually try not to have a typical day -- one of the joys of being self-employed is not being in a rut! But over the course of each week, I spend time writing, time reading (both fiction for inspiration and pleasure, and nonfiction for research), time surfing the Internet (not nearly as productive as I like to pretend it is -- but it's fun), and time getting out and interacting with people, which is crucial for a writer, if he or she is going to be able to portray real people. Generally speaking, I'm a night owl -- going to bed around 1:00 a.m. and getting up about 9:00 a.m. And I work seven days a week; I find it breaks my rhythm too much to take weekends off.

Science fiction and alternate history. Are you also interested in points of divergence and parallel worlds?

Absolutely! My Quintaglio Ascension trilogy (beginning with Far-Seer) came from my wondering what would have happened if the dinosaurs had not gone extinct. And my Neanderthal Parallax trilogy (beginning with Hominids has a hinge point 40,000 years ago, when consciousness was first emerging on this world. I love that stuff!

Sf writers and sf prizes. You have won your share. Which is the main way for an author to get a Nebula or a Hugo prize?

Well, I won the Nebula first, and that's the one that really changed my life: it changed me from a struggling writer to someone who makes a very good living; it got me translation sales all over the world; and so on. But there's not much doubt that most people consider the Hugo to be more prestigious than the Nebula. I'm certainly thrilled to have both!

- Sf authors, movies and tv-series. Did you succeed in getting anything of yours on the big or on the little screen?


I make five figures (in dollars) each year off of film/TV work and the optioning of rights to my books, and sometimes six figures, but no, nothing has been made, and, although I'm enthusiastic each time we do a new deal -- four new options so far this year -- I'm realistic enough to know that the chances of any of the projects actually getting made are very slim. Consider how few of the classics of SF have actually come to screen -- where is the Neuromancer movie, the film version of The Forever War, the TV miniseries based on Childhood's End, the summer blockbuster adapted from Ender's Game, the weekly series set in Larry Niven's "Known Space"? If one of my books does get adapted, I'll happily cash the cheque, just as if I'd won the lottery -- which is about as likely.


Speaking of your last work, what are you preparing at this moment?


I'm just going through the page proofs for Rollback. It's the story of Dr. Sarah Halifax, who 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 huge 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. The novel explores morals and ethics on both human and cosmic scales, and I've got to say I think it's one of my very best. I hope readers will agree.

home