OBIR: Occasional Biased and Ignorant Reviews reflecting this reader’s opinion.
SAWYER ON SCIENCE FICTION – by Robert J. Sawyer
Publisher: Shadowpaw Press, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, September 2026.
Cover Art and Design: by Bibliofic Designs.
On a personal note, some of you may have noticed I wrote only one review for Amazing this year. Health reasons. My ill health involved reduced physical stamina and a lack of mental energy. As a result, I narrowed my creative activities to the two magazines I publish plus a daily blog about my 1981 Mesoamerican field trip. The bare minimum I could manage.
Now, however, thanks to a simplified diet and my choice of placebos supplements, I seem to be on the mend. Less brain fog, for one thing. With any luck, I’m back to writing reviews for Amazing.
I should remind everyone my ignorance is as vast as the universe itself. Imagine my delight on recently discovering, on reading Mary Beard’s Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old, that the ancient Greeks had a word for “sense of wonder,” namely “thauma.”
It shows how provincial I am that I hitherto associated “sense of wonder” strictly with science fiction, and that it was a matter of personal idiosyncrasy that I extended the concept to include archaeology. It turns out that Aristotle himself declared thauma the wellspring of philosophy and that without it rational philosophy would never have been invented by the Greeks. Seems to me, Aristotle being the pupil of Plato, who was the pupil of Socrates, that he knew what he was talking about. I’ll take his word for it.
I fell in love with science fiction at a very young age because I was much taken with its thaumatic premise. The very best science fiction exudes thauma. Robert J. Sawyer, the master of exciting extrapolation beyond current knowledge and consequently, no surprise, a noted futurist as well as a best-selling science fiction author, is the embodiment of the sense of wonder. I really like his stuff.
So, it is no wonder that I was thrilled when Robert asked me to interview him on stage during his book launch for his latest book, a non-fiction work titled Sawyer on Science Fiction, which will take place at this year’s When Words Collide Writers Festival in Calgary. Specifically, the book launch will start at 1:30 PM on Saturday, August 15th and run for several hours. My participation as interviewer is limited to the first hour or so. No doubt Robert will do a Q&A session, perhaps a reading, and I don’t yet know what else. The launch is still in the planning stages.
Why did Robert ask me to interview him? Well, to start with, we’ve known each other since I invited him to be Author Guest of Honour at VCON 25 in Vancouver back in 2,000 C.E. I’m no match for his intellect and breadth of knowledge, so I’m always amazed when we occasionally hang out together. He has a knack for putting fellow fans at ease. Unlike some SF authors I could name, he enjoys being in the presence of fans because he unashamedly enjoys being a fan as well as a being a professional’s professional.
I suspect another reason he chose me is because he knows my retirement shtick is promoting Canadian Science Fiction. I avoid giving bad reviews. I choose to celebrate the genre. From an interviewee’s point of view, I am mostly harmless. No muck-raking journalist, I.
Last but not least, he knows that I know the event isn’t about me, it’s about him and his book. I won’t talk about myself. I won’t attempt to debate him. My job will be to unleash him on the audience, to prompt him to share this or that aspect of all things worth knowing. In effect, to unleash his thauma on attendees in his usual stimulating and inspirational manner, for he is a superb speaker.
So, it is extremely unlikely I’ll begin by asking, “Who the heck are you and why should we care?” I’m going to assume everybody in the audience knows the answer and that’s why they are there. Apart from a number of short, precise questions, I’m going to keep my mouth shut. I know everyone wants to listen to Robert. I’m just a prop on the stage.
That being my attitude re: the book launch, why am I talking so much about myself in this review? Simple, because it’s my review. And I’m notorious for wigging out in unexpected digressions depending on what something I read in the book reminds me of. That’s the way I think about what I read, so that’s the way I review them. Besides, I figure that if I have fun writing the review, you’ll have fun reading it. It’s a theory.
As for Sawyer on Science Fiction, it’s a massive 225,000 word compendium of darn near everything Sawyer has said or written about. 669 pages, no less, loosely (because there’s a certain amount of overlap in theme) organized under headings such as: “Decoherance” columns, Speeches and Keynote Addresses, Articles on Science Fiction and Science Fiction Fandom, “Random Musings” columns (some of which which appeared in BCSFAzine when I was editor), “On Writing” columns, Articles on Canadian Science Fiction, “Profiles” of famous authors, Book Reviews, Media Reviews, Introductions to Books by Other People, Introductions to “My Own Books,” and Autobiographical Essays. In effect, the summation of a creative life.
Quickly perusing the table of contents, one article title leaped out at me, namely “Nick Bostrom Can Suck My Philip K. Dick.” I have an offbeat sense of humour, so I couldn’t resist reading that essay first. I was expecting a humorous literary discussion on the merits of Dick’s approach to writing. Turned out to be a serious, not to say grim, account of an academic turf war which explains how subtle yet vicious the infighting among academics can be. Never mind “publish or perish,” the use of the sin of omission to absorb all credit for a “revelation” is breathtaking.
Leads me to believe that it’s not the public or the university administration that academics fear. Plain and simple, it’s their peers. So much for the hallowed sanctity of academia. The knives are always out. And naturally, me being me, I found this hilarious. It is, in fact, a dose of reality. Something to take note of if you fantasize about pursuing an academic career. It’s not as easy or as peaceful as you think.
The second column I read, from the fandom section, is simply labelled Taral. I knew Taral Wayne. Corresponded with him regularly. He was a talented Canadian artist, eleven times nominated for best artist Hugo, and rather bitter about never winning. In my fanzines beginning in the early 1990s I often used his fillos for interior art and occasionally more elaborate pieces for cover art. Best of all, he designed the Winner’s certificate for the Faned Awards I founded and administered circa 2013-2016 in a desperate effort to revive moribund Canadian Fanzine Fandom. He also did a regular column for me in my perzine “Space Cadet” on the subject of collecting ancient coins, a hobby he was passionate about. I even published a poem of his, “The Devil’s Riddle,” in issue #4 of Polar Borealis in 2017, and a story, “A Close Shave,” in issue #11 in 2019. Something of a renaissance man was Taral.
And something of a curmudgeon with a strong, impulsive tendency toward shit-disturbing. Sawyer details this well in his account of his decades of experience dealing with fellow fan Taral from the 1970s on. In my case, Taral helped me tremendously with my research putting together my “Canfancyclopedia” covering the history of Canadian science fiction fandom from the 1930s to the end of the 20th century. In particular, it is largely thanks to him that the fanzine index aspect is the most comprehensive in existence. Well and good, you might say. What am I complaining about? I should be grateful, and I am.
But, what drove me nuts was Taral’s elitism. Even as he sent me reams of information he argued I was wasting my time devoting energy to listing and describing every fanzine I could research, including crudzines. To me, as a fannish historian, even the worst crudzine is an example of fannish aspiration in action. To him it was simply garbage. He went so far as to claim there were only 3 or 4 fanzines in the entire world which met his artistic and literary standards, and that all the others, including every contemporary Canadian fanzine, wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. It is to arrgh!
Did he mean what he said? Well, he was quite jaded about life in general and fandom in particular. His tirades were consistent over the years I knew him. But I think he enjoyed being a contrarian. It was one of his hobbies. Truth is his legacy is secure. He was a major contributor to the revival and expansion of Canadian fandom in the 1970s and a frequent, if annoying contributor, from then on. One thing for sure, nobody who knew him will ever forget him. Perhaps that was his plan all along.
Sawyer’s article is valuable and noteworthy even if you’ve never heard of Taral. It lays out the fact that organized fandom includes many people of talent who are often difficult to get along with (the basis of many a fannish feud) yet are vital movers and shakers without whom fandom would sink into complacency and stagnation. He even implies that these people are not only worth tolerating, but that the needful toleration of such is the foundation of fandom’s habit and reputation of embracing a wide variety of fen who collectively make up the exciting, ever-shifting kaleidoscope of fannish culture. Granted, the embrace may sometimes reflect the philosophy of keeping your enemies close, but it’s all part of the joy of fandom. Social dynamism run amuck. Well worth the pain.
The third article I looked at was published in BCSFAzine #544 (I was editor at the time) in September 2020. Titled “The Auroras Are Just Fine,” it addressed the recent AGM meeting of the body (the Canadian SF&F Association) which puts out the awards, during which the Chair expressed concern that the number of voters on the last Aurora Award ballots had dwindled to a mere 140 active participants. What to do about it? How to attract more participants?
Here Sawyer commented, “My feeling is two-fold. First, it’s not an Aurora-Specific issue, and second, it’s not even a problem.” He went on to outline how the nomination process remained as phenomenally good as always, with a wide diversity of nominees chosen from across Canada in all its cultural, ethnic and genre diversity, every candidate on the ballot of the highest standard. Which, in a sense, implies it doesn’t matter who wins, because they all deserve to win, all candidates being equally valid. Having helped CSFFA compile a complete listing of all the nominees and winners since the awards began in 1980, I agree with what Sawyer stated.
He goes on to mention that a considerable amount of time was spent discussing how to attract young fans. Somewhat shockingly, or so it seemed to me when I originally published this column, he argued that it doesn’t matter and isn’t worth bothering about. He explained:
“Young fans, by and large, aren’t SF&F readers and have their own fandom traditions—they expect, for instance, their events to be high-cost and run to professional standards… They want to see actors and comic-book artists. Politely, they don’t need us—and we don’t need them.”
“If traditional fandom is shrinking—and it is, mostly through attrition as people get old and finally go on to that great huckster room in the sky—then so be it. But is that hurting the Aurora awards?”
“I studied the ballot and the actual winners this year, and my verdict is this: the Auroras are doing just fine… The Auroras ain’t broke, so don’t try to fix them: they work, and I hope they will continue to shine for another forty years.”
There was more to the column than just the above, he talks about a number of controversies over the years. But his essential message is clear. The Aurora awards are a phenomenon unique to traditional fans who love SF&F literature and the traditions of organized fandom. Since the vast majority of modern fen have very little interest in either and are unwilling to convert (in half a century of trying I never talked even a single SF fan into joining fanzine fandom), it’s pointless to attempt to recruit from the gazillions of media and comic fans.
Traditional fandom is a narrow niche fandom equivalent to a bunch of people who like to handcraft buggy whips. There’s still a market for that, and great satisfaction to be derived from creating a superb buggy whip, but the majority of transport-minded fen are into automobiles and speculation about flying cars. Buggy whip fandom is seen, at best, as quaint and nostalgia orientated. Not what the progressive crowd eager for the next new thing wants.
As an aside, let me note that statistics show that reading is falling out of fashion. In both Canada and America, the percentage of people who constantly read is shrinking. Fortunately, readers like me are voracious in their appetite. Recruiting those who love reading SF&F is eminently doable. The trick is to figure out how let them know the Auroras exist. They are exactly the people who can keep the Auroras alive “for another forty years.” They are the potential recruits CSSFA should go after. Such is my opinion.
CONCLUSION:
So, I picked three columns which have personal relevance to me and I gave a typically idiosyncratic response to each. Is this how I’m going to handle the interview with Sawyer at When Words Collide?
Certainly not. In this column I simply explained, through these three examples, why I enjoy reading and/or listening to Sawyer’s views on the genre. I will now gleefully explore the rest of the collection in search of comment hooks I can use to get Sawyer to elaborate further on his incisive and often startlingly frank views on writing, publishing, and human shenanigans past, present and future.
In a sense it doesn’t even matter of I ask stupid, pointless or irrelevant questions. Sawyer’s strength of mind and knowledge will render every answer a gem of insight and revelation. Nevertheless, I will endeavour to come up with brief but purposeful questions appropriate to this opportunity to mine the contents of Sawyer’s mind. I’m not worried I might fail. I know Sawyer will save the day. At the very least, I’m going to have fun. And thanks to Sawyer, I know the audience will come away exhilarated and inspired. Nothing to do with me. Entirely due to him.
In a sense, I’ll just be a member of the audience with the best seat in the house. I can hardly wait.
Pre-order here: < Sawyer on Science Fiction > It will be released on August 4th, 2026.
