OSFest 3’s Author GOH

Imagine a world with a single land mass and the Eye of God watching over it. But only after a very long ocean voyage can you make the pilgrimage to witness your God's beneficence. Then your girl friend invents the telescope. Oh, did I mention you are a dinosaur. Robert Sawyer's, who is OSFest 3's Author Guest of Honor, Far-Seer trilogy brings us the last days of Land where a race of intelligent dinosaurs, the Quintaglio, learn about the heavens, their past, and how to save their future within the scope of a few hundred years. Just one of the many universes created by Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell award winning author Robert J. Sawyer.

Are you enjoying the ABC TV series; FLASHFORWARD? Robert wrote the book on that one, the original novel it's based on. ILLEGAL ALIEN while starting out as a first contact story is a who-done-it with enough twists and turns to keep any mystery reader immensely happy. CALCULATING GOD brings an alien race of pilgrims to Earth in search of the divine. The ending will not let you down. In fact Robert has a propensity to deliver twists and turns as his books progress that you rarely see coming until you go back and see the clues he has left you. So who is this guy?

I'm glad you asked. Robert Sawyer is a Canadian writer of hard science fiction. He went to school wanting to be a dinosaurian paleontologist until he discovered how few of them actually made a living at it, only about 3 dozen. He then focused on a field that had several hundred professional members actually living off their work, science fiction authors. In 1982 he graduated from Toronto's Ryserson University with a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree in Radio and Television Arts, specializing in scriptwriting and taking a lot of psychology electives. From then until he decided to become a full-time SF author, he made a good living writing non-fiction for magazines and corporations. In 1989 he decided to make the change and has written over 20 published novels, numerous short stories and collected several writing awards for doing them.

So where should you start reading? FLASHFORWARD is similar enough to the TV series to evoke images, yet divergent enough to not give anything away in the upcoming episodes and spoil the TV series. ILLEGAL ALIEN is one of my favorites, STARPLEX brings together four intelligent races (two from Earth) to take you on a trip through the cosmos. Then come to OSFest 3 and learn more about this multifaceted writer by attending readings, participating in panels, and having coffee with our Writer Guests of Honor. You will have a great time doing it.