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Robert J. Sawyer

Personal Information

Born January 1, 1960 (66 years old)
Ottawa, United States
Also known as: Robert J Sawyer, Robert, J. Sawyer
38 books
3.4 (75)
309 readers

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Books

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Mindscan

2.0 (1)
9

Transplanting his consciousness into an android body in order to escape death, Jake Sullivan falls in love with the android Karen, a situation that is further complicated when Jake's biological body takes hostages and demands its mind back.

Hominids

3.3 (15)
38

From back cover Tor paperback February 2003: Hominids examines two unique species of people. We are one of those species; the other is the Neanderthals of a parallel world where they became the dominant intelligence. The Neanderthal civilization has reached heights of culture and science comparable to our own, but with radically different history, society and philosophy. Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist, accidentally pierces the barrier between worlds and is transferred to our universe. Almost immediately recognized as a Neanderthal, but only much later as a scientist, he is quarantined and studied, alone and bewildered, a stranger in a strange land. But Ponter is also befriended -- by a doctor and a physicist who share his questing intelligence, and especially by Canadian geneticist Mary Vaughan, a woman with whom he develops a special rapport. Ponter's partner, Adikor Huld, finds himself with a messy lab, a missing body, suspicious people all around and an explosive murder trial. How can he possibly prove his innocence when he has no idea what actually happened to Ponter?

Calculating God

2.8 (5)
19

Calculating God is the new near-future SF thriller from the popular and award-winning Robert J. Sawyer. An alien shuttle craft lands outside the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. A six-legged, two-armed alien emerges, who says, in perfect English, "Take me to a paleontologist." It seems that Earth, and the alien's home planet, and the home planet of another alien species traveling on the alien mother ship, all experienced the same five cataclysmic events at about the same time (one example of these "cataclysmic events" would be the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs). Both alien races believe this proves the existence of God: i.e. he's obviously been playing with the evolution of life on each of these planets. From this provocative launch point, Sawyer tells a fast-paced, and morally and intellectually challenging, SF story that just grows larger and larger in scope. The evidence of God's universal existence is not universally well received on Earth, nor even immediately believed. And it reveals nothing of God's nature. In fact. it poses more questions than it answers. When a supernova explodes out in the galaxy but close enough to wipe out life on all three home-worlds, the big question is, Will God intervene or is this the sixth cataclysm:? Calculating God is SF on the grand scale. Calculating God is a 2001 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.

Frameshift

3.0 (1)
8

Winner of Japan's Seiun Award and Hugo Award finalist Pierre Tardivel is a scientist working on the Human Genome Project with the Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Burian Klimus. A driven man, Pierre works with the awareness that he may not have long to live: he has a fifty-fifty chance of dying from Huntington's disease, an incurable hereditary disorder of the central nervous system. While he still has his health, Pierre and his wife decide to have a child, and they search for a sperm donor. When Pierre informs Dr. Klimus of their plan, Klimus makes an odd but generous offer: to be the sperm donor as well as to pay for the expensive in vitro fertilization. Shortly thereafter it transpires that Klimus might be hiding a grim past: he may be Ivan Marchenko, the notorious Treblinka death-camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible. While digging into Klimus's past with the help of Nazi hunter Avi Meyer, Pierre and his wife discover that Pierre's insurance company has been illegally screening clients for genetic defects. The two lines of investigation begin to coverage in a sinister manner, while they worry about the possibility of bearing the child of an evil, sadistic killer.

Starplex

3.0 (4)
11

The only novel of its year to be nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Starplex won Canada's Aurora Award for best novel of the year. For nearly twenty years Earth's space exploration had exploded outward, thanks to a series of mysterious, artificial wormholes. No one knows who created these interstellar passages, yet they have brought the far reaches of space immediately close. For Starplex Director Keith Lansing, too close. Discovery is superseding understanding. And when an unknown vessel — with no windows, no seams, and no visible means of propulsion — arrives through a new wormhole, an already battle-scarred Starplex could be the starting point of a new interstellar war . . . ROBERT J. SAWYER has won the Hugo, Nebula, John W. Campbell Memorial, Seiun, and Aurora Awards, all for best science fiction novel of the year. His novels include Hominids, Rollback, Wake, and FlashForward (basis for the TV series).

The Terminal Experiment

4.0 (2)
23

Dr. Peter Hobson invents a machine that detects a brain pattern that leaves the body after death, a pattern many believe is a soul. In order to test their theories on immortality and life after death, Hobson and his friend Sarkar Muhammed create three electronic simulations of Hobson's own personality. When people Hobson had a grudge against begin to die, he and Sarkar must try to find out which is responsible. But all three simulations – two modified, one a "control" – escape Sarkar's computer, into the Internet and the World Wide Web. The book won the 1995 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1996. Sawyer received a writer's reserve grant from the Ontario Arts Council in 1993 in support of his writing the novel. Wikipedia

Relativity

0.0 (0)
2

"If Ruby Wright could have her way, her dad would never have met and married her stepmother Willow, her best friend George would be more than a friend, and her mom would still be alive. Then she discovers a tree in the middle of an Ohio cornfield with a wormhole to nine alternative realities. But is there such a thing as a perfect world? What is Ruby willing to give up to find out?"--

Hybrids

3.5 (4)
15

From back cover Tor paperback November 2004: In Hominids Robert J. Sawyer introduced a character readers will never forget Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist from a parallel Earth who was whisked from his Reality into ours by a quantum-computing experiment gone awry -- making him the ultimate stranger in a strange land. In that book and its sequel, Humans, Sawyer showed us the Neanderthal version of Earth in loving detail -- a tour de force of world building; a masterpiece of alternate history. Now, in Hybrids, Ponter Boddit and his Homo sapiens lover, geneticist Mary Vaughan, are torn between two worlds, struggling to find a way to make their star-crossed relationship work. Aided by banned Neanderthal technology, they plan to conceive the first hybrid child, a symbol of hope for the joining of their two versions of reality. Meanwhile, as Mary's Earth is dealing with a collapse of its planetary magnetic field, her boss, the enigmatic Jack Krieger, has turned envious eyes on the unspoiled Eden that is the Neanderthal world...

Triggers

2.0 (1)
4

When an experimental memory-modification device goes awry and affects the president of the United States, the race is on to determine if someone has obtained the president's memories, including secret military plans.

Decision Points

4.0 (1)
26

In this candid and gripping account, President George W. Bush describes the critical decisions that shaped his presidency and personal life. George W. Bush served as president of the United States during eight of the most consequential years in American history. The decisions that reached his desk impacted people around the world and defined the times in which we live. Decision Points brings readers inside the Texas governor's mansion on the night of the 2000 election, aboard Air Force One during the harrowing hours after the attacks of September 11, 2001, into the Situation Room moments before the start of the war in Iraq, and behind the scenes at the White House for many other historic presidential decisions. For the first time, we learn President Bush's perspective and insights on: His decision to quit drinking and the journey that led him to his Christian faith The selection of the vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state, Supreme Court justices, and other key officials His relationships with his wife, daughters, and parents, including heartfelt letters between the president and his father on the eve of the Iraq War His administration's counterterrorism programs, including the CIA's enhanced interrogations and the Terrorist Surveillance Program Why the worst moment of the presidency was hearing accusations that race played a role in the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, and a critical assessment of what he would have done differently during the crisis His deep concern that Iraq could turn into a defeat costlier than Vietnam, and how he decided to defy public opinion by ordering the troop surge His legislative achievements, including tax cuts and reforming education and Medicare, as well as his setbacks, including Social Security and immigration reform The relationships he forged with other world leaders, including an honest assessment of those he did and didn’t trust Why the failure to bring Osama bin Laden to justice ranks as his biggest disappointment and why his success in denying the terrorists their fondest wish—attacking America again—is among his proudest achievements A groundbreaking new brand of presidential memoir, Decision Points will captivate supporters, surprise critics, and change perspectives on eight remarkable years in American history—and on the man at the center of events. Since leaving office, President George W. Bush has led the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. The center includes an active policy institute working to advance initiatives in the fields of education reform, global health, economic growth, and human freedom, with a special emphasis on promoting social entrepreneurship and creating opportunities for women around the world. It will also house an official government archive and a state-of-the-art museum that will open in 2013