Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Canadian science-fiction author of 25 novels including THE DOWNLOADED ; keynote speaker. Member, The Order of Canada.

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

TORONTO! Join me this Saturday, September 12, at 3:00 p.m. at SF&F specialty bookstore Bakka-Phoenix Books, 84 Harbord Street, for the launch of SAWYER ON SCIENCE FICTION.

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

Come see me in LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA, at Word on the Street Lethrbridge, on Saturday, September 19. My main event is at 1:00 p.m., and my signing is at 2:00 p.m.

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

CALGARY! Book launch for SAWYER ON SCIENCE FICTION is this Saturday, Aug 15, at 1:30pm at Thomson Social Hub (Hyatt Regency) 700 Centre St S. Free!

Bonus! If you buy the book from publisher @ShadowpawPress at the launch, you get a free coupon for the ebook edition, as well!

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

@anis0ptera Thank you, James! And I wrote the entire book in WordStar for DOS 7.0! :D

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

Yesterday at Star Trek Las Vegas, my dear friend Chase Masterson received The Fleet’s Star Cross Founder Award for her charity work with the Pop Culture Hero Coalition, and today I won Canada's Aurora Award for Best Novel of the Year for THE DOWNLOADED 2: GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE.

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

Terrific article at @cbcbooks about this year's winners of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards ("the Auroras"):

https://t.co/mG7Isdl0ue

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

Today's ceremony for the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (the Auroras) is now online. Here it is, cued up to the Best Novel category: my THE DOWNLOADED 2: GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE was the winner!

https://t.co/KpezqCDFCf @audible_com @audible_ca

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time today (Sunday, August 9), this year's ceremony for the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (the Auroras) streams live online. My THE DOWNLOADED 2: GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE is one of the nominees for year's best novel:

https://t.co/m3TwY09Ncy

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

TODAY is the official publication date of SAWYER ON SCIENCE FICTION, my 225,000-word collection of articles, columns, speeches, and more, celebrating the genre I've devoted my life to.

SAWYER ON SCIENCE FICTION
Robert J. Sawyer
ISBN 978-1-998273-74-4

https://t.co/hWwy7x4EFR

[Shadowpaw Press @ShadowpawPress]

Happy Book Birthday to SAWYER ON SCIENCE FICTION by Robert J. Sawyer, a 225,000-word collection of his writing about science fiction. "A wonderful anthology of columns, addresses, introductions, interviews, profiles, reviews and autobiographical sketches . . . " — Toronto Star

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

My 19-minute interview on CFRB NewsTalk Radio this morning, with the great @towhey (Mark Towhey):

https://t.co/XbZmLd4CnC

[CollectingTrek.ca @CollectingTrek]

The transporter solves a lot of story problems...and it creates a bunch more.
David's Gerrold's 1973 book The World of Star Trek explores the creative successes, missteps, and challenges of making our show.
Here are some bits from that book and from David: https://t.co/QmGsMRvCgw

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

My programming schedule for LAconV, the World Science Fiction Convention ("Worldcon") in Los Angeles:

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world."

My Take
This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email.
ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation."

I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate.
"We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline.

Hedgie🤗

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

TORONTO STAR on SAWYER ON SCIENCE FICTION:

A wonderful anthology. Sawyer has all the qualities you could want in a guide, being well read, perceptive and a keen and generous critical writer. You can dip into this book at any point and come away with some insight that will stick.

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

@SubcommanderT Small button: Do what I want ...

Large button: ... and make a noise about it.

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

Want an autographed copy of SAWYER ON SCIENCE FICTION? We have stock on hand!

https://t.co/lmQadx2hYH

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

New interveiw with my about SAWYER ON SCIENCE FICTION on House of Mystery Radio on NBC:
https://t.co/Yj2aMKXFlo via @acast

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

Pleased to see SAWYER ON SCIENCE FICTION as the "#1 New Release" in "Literary History & Criticism Reference" on https://t.co/eOmwQnLFMv just now:

https://t.co/hwb84qg3Un

[Robert J. Sawyer @RobertJSawyer]

This is the Coalsack nebula. Trivia time: it's mentioned twice in STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES — by whom and in which episodes?