Coincidentally enough, the panel was on mystery-SF genre blending. Sawyer was the star on the panel that everybody came to hear, and I was a nobody there to fill out the panel. But I got plenty of opportunity to speak & it was fun.
Then I went to a reading of his new novel, and wasn't impressed by the book at all. However, I was very impressed by his reading of it, which was quite theatrical.
A little while later I ran into him in the hallway, and he invited me to join him for lunch, which I did. I found him a very pleasant fellow. The third person in our party was Fiona Kelleghan.
Over lunch I complimented him on how well he read his work & found out that his first career & formal training were in radio.
I've never read anything by him, although I do own a copy of Frameshift. Frankly, when I found out that I was to be on a panel with him I went looking for a book by him in order to get it autographed as a pretext to give him copies of my books. Which I did, at lunch. (I didn't imagine I would be lunching with him.) Anyway, "Frameshift" is evidently premised on the notion of shifted reading frames in DNA.
Obsessive readers of my nanoscopically famous novel Acts of the Apostles may recall that the character the super-hot Bartlett Aubrey does something or other with shifted reading frames in her Gulf War Syndrome research. That character is based on my Dear Wife Betty, who in fact was a co-author of the second article, ever, on that topic. It was in Nature or Science, I forget which, & she presented it to Watson & Crick at Cold Spring Harbor in 1978.
Well, now we're far away from Robert J. Sawyer and mystery-SF genre blending, but I do like to brag about my Dear Wife from time to time, so shoot me.Buy my books, dammit!
Sawyer, on the panel and at his reading, did no small amount of reminding people that he makes his income by selling books. He talked quite frankly about the economics of being a full-time SF writer. He's quite organized about it.
I don't know if he could write better if he put more time and effort into it, but I do get the sense that he's trying to optimize for income, not literary quality.
Meanwhile I've been working on The Pains, a novella, for four years. I wish I had more of Sawyer's mercenary ability to just crank the stuff out.Buy my books, dammit![ Parent ]
Irony: ammo says it's time. Tom is blocked.[ Parent ]
Only last week I found the notebook in which she had written her email address for me. I think I'll send her a note!Buy my books, dammit![ Parent ]
