Hi, Drog. Many thanks for asking our first question!

From the time I was five, until the time I was eighteen, I wanted to be a paleontologist. And not just ANY kind of paleontologist, but very specifically a dinosaurian paleontologist. It’s what I’d planned to do my whole life … but then, as I was finishing high school (Ontario, were I live, goes to Grade 13, rather than just Grade 12, although that’s about to be eliminated), I started looking seriously at the job opportunities for dinosaurian paleontologists. There were only three jobs in all of Canada (and only 24 in the entire world at that time). It just didn’t seem a practical career goal, and so I gave up on it. But I’m still absolutely fascinated by ancient things, particularly dinosaurs (of course!) but also ancient forms of humanity.

There’s no question that I’ll return to paleontological and paleoanthropological themes in future works. I just can’t help myself :-)

The SF community is lucky, then, that you were born in 1960 and not 1980… what with major paleontological discoveries stumbling over themselves these days (this year’s four winged dinosaur announcement springs to mind, a mere three years after 2000’s find of the first dinosaur generally agreed to have feathers). There has been lots of excitement on the paleoanthropology front as well (Scientific American just had an article about it in the January 2003 issue). I suspect there are more job openings for paleontologists now than there ever have been.

Given what you know today about how your career actually developed, if you were facing that career decision now, would you choose paleontology over writing?

Thank you for your very kind words, Sweetwind.

I never thought I’d be making a living writing science fiction; I always thought it would be a hobby. That it’s turned out not only that I can do it full time, but actually be quite financially comfortable by so doing is astonishing to me every single day. But I absolutely adore being a science-fiction writer, and can’t think of any other job — not even being a dinosaurian paleontologists — that would make me as happy.

Still, one of the truly great fringe benefits of being an SF writer is getting to know real scientists. I count myself as extraordinarily lucky because, through my SF, I’ve gotten to know and become friends with real dinosaurian paleontologists, including Michael Brett-Surman of the Smithsonian and Phil Currie of the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Don’t get me wrong: writing does have its ups and downs, and it certainly took a while before I was making a decent living writing fiction. But when I get asked where I see myself twenty years down the road, I always answer that I hope to be doing exactly what I’m doing today: writing SF.

Your novel Calculating God (perhaps my favourite) was widely expected to win the 2001 Hugo Award, but it lost to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which although a fine book loved by children around the globe, is a children’s book and is definitely in the fantasy genre, not science fiction. What a scandal! Why was it even allowed to be nominated? The Hugo Award is also known as the Science Fiction Achievement Award, given annually by the World Science Fiction Society. I know it wasn’t the first fantasy novel ever to be nominated–Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings lost to Asimov’s Foundation Series–but at least LOTR was written for adults. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow. What are your thoughts on the matter now, almost two years later?

Last Saturday’s tragic destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia has dealt a huge blow to the NASA space program and perhaps also to the International Space Station. What effect do you think it might have on our utilization and exploration of space in the short term and the long term? With the expensive shuttle program having been under so much criticism before this tragedy, do you think this will force a re-evaluation of the shuttle program and possibly encourage some outside-the-box thinking for a safer and cheaper replacement? Could private industry ultimately succeed where government has failed at making a profit out of space exploration? Might a space elevator even be around the corner?

Your novel Calculating God is based on the principle that the theory of Intelligent Design–that that intelligent causes are responsible for the origin of the universe and of life in all its diversity–is true, that God really did create this universe, which could be deduced by the myriad of highly improbable circumstances that allow matter and cellular life to exist and flourish. This theory is denounced by most scientists as being pseudoscience. Mathematician John Allen Paulos said, “… rarity by itself shouldn’t necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable.”

What are your thoughts on Intelligent Design? Do you give it any credence, or did it just make for a great idea for a book?

Thank you for the kind words about CALCULATING GOD. Obviously, I’d by lying if I said I was happy about losing! But I really do try not to dwell too much on the past. Fantasy books are indeed fully eligible for the Hugos (and for the Nebulas, for that matter). I certainly don’t object to this in principal, although I do note that Science Fiction books are not normally contemplated for the World Fantasy Award.

What that means is that science fiction is the only genre without a world-class award of its own. The only SF-only award that I can think of that has any stature is the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (a juried award, not to be confused with the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer). For what it’s worth, CALCULATING GOD tied for second place for that award.

But, you know, just after losing the Hugo, LOCUS published their bestseller’s list for June 2002 (publication of the list lags a few months after the data period. CALCULATING GOD was number one on their paperback bestsellers’ list. I’d much rather have good sales than award :-) Still, a number of people have said my HOMINIDS has a shot at being nominated for the Hugo this year, and certainly making the ballot would please me enormously.

All best wishes!

John Allen Paulos’s analogy isn’t apt, because not all hands in card games are equally valuable. One hand of cards is NOT as good as another as far as winning money with it is concerned, and one set of physical constants is NOT as good as another as far as getting a universe that will last for a long time and support complex chemistry is concerned.

I’m in no way an advocate for the intelligent design theory, but I am an advocate for looking at ideas regardless of their source of one’s own preconceptions. I think intelligent design deserves serious scrutiny, and I’m dismayed about how it isn’t even looked at.

But, just to be clear, CALCULATING GOD isn’t a novel about intelligent design. Rather, it’s a novel about scientific dogmatism. Carl Sagan used to say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Fair enough; that’s a rational position. But if no proof, no matter how overwhelming, would lead you to accept an extraordinary claim, then you aren’t being rational, you’re being irrational. CALCULATING GOD looks at a classic science-fictional what if: what if we did get extraordinary proof that the universe had an intelligent designer?

It’s a question worth thinking about: what sort of proof would we accept? Or would no proof, no matter what it was, be sufficiently persuasive? A true scientist can’t hold that latter position, it seems to me.

The problem with the shuttle wasn’t that it was costing too much money; the problem is that they weren’t spending enough money. I certainly do think that the private sector has a role in space — but so does the public sector. Fundamental, non-applied research into basic scientific questions, with no profit motive, is the kind of thing governments are meant to fund.

I certainly hope this tragedy won’t derail the manned space program. I think Senator John Glenn had it right when asked what we should do now. He said, “Go to Mars.”

Your novel HOMINIDS deals with quantum computing gone awry, opening the door to a parallel Earth. This past year has seen great advancements in quantum computing, the most recent coming from UK researchers’ use of cold atoms. Aside from providing the enormous gift of parallel worlds to science fiction writers, how do you think quantum computing might affect us in the decades to come?

You’ve described yourself as a hard-SF writer, who grew up reading Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Their inspiration shows in your writing, but you differ from most hard-SF writers in that you also excel in characterization. Do you think it is that rarity which is the secret to your success? Are there any writing styles that you would like to explore in future writings? Perhaps adding pulse-racing action to the mix?

As a Canadian science fiction writer, do you try to distinguish yourself via your Canadian perspective, without getting hung up on it? Are there any values in particular that you try to express in your novels that you consider to be truly Canadian?

Well, first, let’s not downplay the access to parallel universes, which might indeed be an outgrowth of quantum computing (and might therefore provide the rational-nontheistic answer to the intelligent design question, namely that there are an infinite panoply of universes, all subtly varying in physical laws). Of course, that’s the far-out par tof quantum computing.

The more down-to-earth part is the end of encryption. Any encryption scheme based on supposedly intractable mathematical problems — such as RSA, commonly used by banks — can be easily cracked by quantum computing. I actually deal with this, peripherally, in another of my novels, my Hugo Award-nominated FACTORING HUMANITY.

A world where it’s impossible to have computer files be secret would be a very, very different place. But, I’m actually not sure it would be a worse place; so much of what is negative in this world are the things that happen in secret.

As a Canadian, I find it very refreshing to read your novels that are set in Canadian locales. Do you think this has, in any way, helped your career in Canada or hindered it in the U.S.?

You’re very kind in your comments about my characterization. I do indeed think that is one of my strengths — but I hasten to add that it comes about BECAUSE I consider psychology a valid and important science. Many SF writers ignore it, for reasons that baffle me. I find it fascinating, and the characters I write are believable characters precisely because the psychology underpinning their actions is believable. (I did a minor in psychology, by the way.)

Still, it is indeed a rarity for hard-SF writers to write complex, appealing characters, and there’s no doubt, as you say, that that’s one of the principal reasons for whatever success I’ve had.

On new story-telling modalities, that’s always something I like to experiment with. I do think that both END OF AN ERA and the three volumes of my Quintaglio trilogy (FAR-SEER, FOSSIL HUNTER, and FOREIGNER) had a lot of pulse-pounding action, but you’re right to say I haven’t done much of that lately, and it’s very much on my agenda to get back to doing some of that.

Could you take us through the steps you go through in creating a novel? There’s coming up with a concept, doing the research, establishing the plot, developing the characters, charting the story arc, etc. What order works best for you?

What prompted you to write a trilogy again? Was it that the story was just too big in scope to fit in one novel? Or did you set out to write a trilogy and come up with a concept and plot that would work in trilogy format?

Well, being a Canadian writer is who I am; it’s like asking John Grisham if he’s trying to accomplish something by presenting himself as an American writer :-)

Still, you’re right that I take great pride in setting my works in Canada, and am surprised that so few other Canadian authors routinely do this.

I am indeed exploring Canadian values. In fact, it’s been observed that my Neanderthal parallax trilogy (HOMINIDS, HUMANS, and HYBRIDS) isn’t really about Homo sapiens in comparision to Neanderthals, but rather is about Americans in comparison to Canadians. On average, Canadians are more secular, more atheistic, more envrionmentally conscious, more tolerant of differing sexual orientations, less materialistic, less viloent, and so on, than are Americans. I mean no disrespect to Americans — my mother is one, and I’m a dual Canada/US citizen — but the differences between the two countries are endlessly fascinating to me.

You are a former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). How did that come about? What was the experience like?

There’s no doubt that the Canadian locales have enormously helped my sales in Canada. I never intended that, but I’m delighted by it. I’ve been on the national top-ten mainstream bestseller lists in Canada, something SF novels simply never appear on, and that’s doubtless because of the Canadian content.

But I don’t think it’s hindered my sales at all in the U.S., where my books seem to be doing just fine. I refuse to believe that Americans are so provincial (if you’ll excuse the pun) that they would be turned off by reading a book set outside their borders.

No American editor, bookseller, critic, or reader has ever commented negatively to me about my Canadian settings, and many have said they find them quite refreshing.

It takes me about a year to write a novel. I spend two to four months doing nothing but research (which I adore doing), two to four months doing the first draft (which is really hard work for me; it’s like pulling teeth), and perhaps four months doing revisions (which I really enjoy doing).

I tend not to write long outlines — only long enough to get a contract from my publisher. The entire NEANDERTHAL PARALLAX trilogy (HOMINIDS, HUMANS, and HYBRIDS) was sold on an outline only three or four pages long. I very much like discovering things as I write, although the principal source of inspiration is the research that I do (see the bibliography at the back of HOMINIDS for a partial list of sources that inspired me).

I don’t write in a linear fashion, but rather bop all over the manuscript, creating scenes out of sequence. It takes a lot of editng to get them to flow properly from one to the next at the end, but that’s the method that works for me.

Well, truth by told, I think of the Neanderthal Parallax as my first trilogy. Yes, FAR-SEER, FOSSIL HUNTER, and FOREIGNER became a trilogy (the Quintaglio Ascension), but they weren’t planned out in advance as such. Rather I wrote the first book, got asked to write a sequel, then got asked to write another sequel.

With every new project, I try to challenge myself in a different way. Doing a trilogy that would be conceived of as such was very much the specific challenge I set for myself in undertaking this project. It’s the biggest canvass I’ve ever worked on, and I found it exhilirating.

Honestly? I hated every minute of it. I threw my name in because nobody else had, and because I really felt I owed an enormous debt to SFWA after I had received the organization’s Nebula Award for my 1995 novel THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT.

I am not by nature a political animal. My degree is in broadcasting; I thought I wanted to be a scriptwriter, but realized early on that I didn’t, not because I don’t enjoy the form, but rather because I’m not by nature a collaborative individual, and all screenwriting ends up being collaborative; that should have taught me to stay away from politics, but I didn’t draw the parallel at the time. Politics is better suited to a different sort of person than I happen to be.

Your novel HOMINIDS starts off at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), 6800 feet under ground in INCO’s Creighton mine. I read in your diary that you actually visited there for your research. Did you get a grand tour of their facilities? What did you think?

Your 1997 novel ILLEGAL ALIEN has been optioned and may be turned into a movie. Any word on how that is progressing? I understand that you will serve as consultant to the production. You said earlier that the collaborative process of scriptwriting does not appeal to you. Are you at all tempted, though, to lend your services to the screen adaptation of your own novel? Or will you be content to watch how someone else’s vision of ILLEGAL ALIEN turns out?

Yes, indeed I did! My wife and I went down into Inco’s Creighton Nickel Mine in Sudbury, Ontario, and made the long hike out to the drift containing the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. It was an incredible experience! The SNO staff was very cooperative, even when I told then I was going to destroy the observatory in my book :-) The facilities are extremely impressive; it really is a fabulous facility.

The SNO website is at: http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/

In November 2002, producer David Coatsworth, one of the producers of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s THE 6TH DAY, Jackie Chan’s THE TUXEDO, and MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING, optioned ILLEGAL ALIEN for another year, and he says the project will move to the front burner this year. His screenwriter, Michael Lennick, was tied up most of last year, because he sold a TV series to Discovery Channel Canada (ROCKET SCIENCE, about the manned space program), but Michael has produced about a dozen drafts of the script, and it is VERY good.

I’m happy to give Michael and David advice when I have something useful to say, but I’m quite content to have Michael doing the screenplay. I’d much rather work on a new novel than on adapting one of my older works. Besides, Michael is doing a fabulous job!

HOMINIDS seemed to have more social commentary than your earlier works. In it, you explored such issues as rape, bisexuality, lack of privacy and punishment. As might be expected, this has made HOMINIDS your most controversial novel thus far. Did you intend from the outset to explore these issues or did it just evolve as you wrote? Was there a specific message you wanted to get across with this book?

I hadn’t consciously thought of HOMINIDS as my most controversial book, or as being more controversial than, say, THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT (which, after all, talks about the abortion issue).

Still, you’re absolutely right that there’s a lot of social comment in HOMINIDS (and in HUMANS, its just-published sequel). I don’t really have an agenda, except to get people to look at things they might have grown complacement about. So, yes, the books are meant to shake people up a bit, but they aren’t really advocacy pieces.

I do think that science fiction is at its best when it deals with social comment; otherwise, it tends to fall into mindless escapism.

As a reader of many of your books (and a resident of Mississauga :), I find them to have a broad range of science topics. Your books range from medicine to quantum physics; from anthropology to space exploration.

Now obviously you have to do some research when you’re writing about some of these subjects.

What I was wondering, was in what field of science are you most specialized in?

Kent Carter

Who’s your favourite SF author of all time? What makes him/her stand out from the rest?

I imagine the life of a writer must have a lot of up-sides, such as being able to avoid rush hour and working from home or a cafe. But you also miss out on the daily interactions with colleagues in the workplace. Do you and your peers (other sci-fi novelists) make a point of getting to know each other, chatting or corresponding regularly, bouncing ideas off each other, etc? Or do you mainly only meet at the award banquets? What are some of the ups and downs of being a full-time sci-fi writer?

Hi, Kent. Many thanks for the kind words! In terms of scientific education, I have very little. I have a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree in Radio and Television Arts from Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnical Institute; while there, I did what amounted to a minor in psychology.

But I read constantly ABOUT science, and go to scientific conferences, and talk a lot to scientists (I had dinner last week with theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, for instance).

I try to keep up on everything, and consider myself a generalist, but the sciences I personally know the most about are paleontology and astronomy.

Without hesitation, I say Arthur C. Clarke. I love his work for its optimism, grand sense of wonder, scientific rigor, gentle irony and humor, and pellucid prose. In my mind, he’s head and shoulders above everyone else who has ever worked in this field.

Of more recent authors, I’m very fond of the work by and highly recommend Robert Charles Wilson, Jack McDevitt, and Mike Resnick, among others.

Well, my life is hardly lonely or solitary <grin>. Since 1997, my wife has worked at home with me fulltime as my salaried assistant, taking care of all the non-writing parts of my career. It’s truly wonderful that we get to spend so much time together.

I also have lunch at least once a week with other friends who are self-employed (although not necessarily writers). And four times a year, I host ROB — Rob’s Occassional Bash — a gathering for science-fiction professionals at my home. Although the actual work of writing — the time at the keyboard — is very much solitary and introspective, I’m quite a social animal, and my wife and I spend lots of time visiting friends, going out to dinner with other couples, and so on.

What do you think of yesterday’s news that after 10,000 years, mammoths may once again walk the Earth?

With HOMINID’s sequel HUMANS now in stores, I assume you’re well underway on the final installment HYBRIDS. In fact, the opening chapter is already available on your website! Without giving away too much, are there any juicy details you can share about HYBRIDS?

Thank you, Rob, for an enjoyable week-long interview! As a huge fan of your work, it was a thrill for me to have you participating in this site, to be able to ask you so many questions and to read such detailed responses.

I’m sure HUMANS (now available in hardcover) will be as big a success as HOMINIDS (which is now available in paperback). I’m eagerly anticipating the final installment, HYBRIDS.

Best wishes for 2003!

It was my pleasure, Drog! I had a great time — and you’ve got a great site! Scifitoday has become one of my permanent bookmarks!

All best wishes!

Robert J. Sawyer

http://www.SFwriter.com

Actually, I’ve finished HYBRIDS, and am very pleased with how it turned out. Its publication date has been moved up to September 2003 — just seven months after HUMANS — so that HYBRIDS can be released at the World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto (where I live), which is being held over Labour Day Weekend.

I almost put a big new excerpt from HYBRIDS on my web site this past week, because there’s a part of it that makes the case for going to Mars, which seems very timely what with a some short-sighted people calling for an end to manned space exploration in the wake of the COLUMBIA tragedy. But I’ve decided to leave it until the book is out.

THE NEANDERTHAL PARALLAX trilogy was the most ambitious thing I’ve ever written, and I had a blast doing it! I hope readers enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

All best wishes.

Robert J. Sawyer

http:/www.SFwriter.com

I think it’s fabulous news. I’m part of the contingent that believes Homo sapiens sapiens was very much responsible for the demise of the mammoths. It would be wonderful to have them back, and Canada is a perfect home for them, so I hope we’ll get some here!

All best wishes.

Robert J. Sawyer

http://www.SFwriter.com