WAKE The New Novel by Hugo and Nebula Award Winner Robert J. Sawyer
Robert J. Sawyer — called "the dean of Canadian science fiction" by The Ottawa Citizen and "just about the best science-fiction writer out there these days" by The Denver Rocky Mountain News — is one of only seven writers in history (and the only Canadian) to win all three of the science-fiction field's top honors for best novel of the year:the World Science Fiction Society's Hugo Award, which he won in 2003 for his novel Hominids;
the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Nebula Award, which he won in 1996 for his novel The Terminal Experiment;
and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, which he won in 2006 for his novel Mindscan.
Rob is also the only writer in history to win the top SF awards in the United States, China, Japan, France, and Spain. In addition, he's won an Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada as well as ten Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards ("Auroras"). The ABC TV series FlashForward is based on his novel of the same name.
Maclean's: Canada's Weekly Newsmagazine says, "By any reckoning, Sawyer is among the most successful Canadian authors ever," and Barnes and Noble calls him "the leader of SF's next-generation pack."
Rob's novels are top-ten national mainstream bestsellers in Canada, appearing on the Globe and Mail and Maclean's bestsellers' lists, and they've hit #1 on the bestsellers' list published by Locus, the U.S. trade journal of the SF field. His twenty novels include Frameshift, Factoring Humanity, Calculating God, Wake , and the popular "Neanderthal Parallax" trilogy consisting of Hominids, Humans, Hybrids.
He's often seen on TV, including such program as Rivera Live with Geraldo Rivera, Canada A.M., and Saturday Night at the Movies, and he's a frequent science commentator for Discovery Channel Canada, CBC Newsworld, and CBC Radio.
Rob — who holds an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University — has taught writing at the University of Toronto, Ryerson University, Humber College, the National University of Ireland, and the Banff Centre. He has been Writer-in-Residence at the Richmond Hill (Ontario) Public Library, the Kitchener (Ontario) Public Library, the Toronto Public Library's Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, and at the Odyssey Workshop. And he edits Robert J. Sawyer Books, the science-fiction imprint of Red Deer Press.
Rob has given talks at hundreds of venues including the Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada, and been keynote speaker at dozens of events in places as diverse as Los Angeles, Boston, Tokyo, and Barcelona. He was born in Ottawa in 1960, and now lives just west of Toronto with his wife, poet Carolyn Clink.
Not darkness, for that implies an understanding of light.
Not silence, for that suggests a familiarity with sound.
Not loneliness, for that requires knowledge of others.
But still, faintly, so tenuous that if it were any less it wouldn't exist at all: awareness.
Nothing more than that. Just awareness — a vague, ethereal sense of being.
Being ... but not becoming. No marking of time, no past or future — only an endless, featureless now, and, just barely there in that boundless moment, inchoate and raw, the dawning of perception ...