Relativity

By Robert J. Sawyer

1996

First Published

3.86

Average Rating

332

Number of Pages

10H08M

Audio Length

obert J. Sawyer established his reputation as a fine novelist when he burst on the science fiction scene with Golden Fleece in 1991. More quietly, he has built an impressive body of short fiction, essays, articles, and speeches. Relativity is his first collection of these. Read the stories collected, and you'll... ...become a modern day killer who walks with dinosaurs in "Just Like Old Times." ...experience first contact with an alien race, with all that implies in "Ineluctable." ...fly on board a space ship in "The Shoulders of Giants." And enjoy five more flights of the imagination in "Immortality," "The Stanley Cup Caper," "Star Light, Star Bright," "The Hand You're Dealt" and the title story, "Relativity." This collection also gives you a chance to read a selection of Sawyer's speeches, including his acceptance of the prestigious Hugo Award for his novel Hominids in 2003. Among his articles, you'll discover how the author views science and religion, science fiction's importance to the world, what exactly he thinks is the difference between Canadian and American SF, and his fond remembrance of Judith Merril. Relativity also contains all three years of his column "On Writing" from the Canadian SF magazine, On Spec, collected here for the first time. Fascinating, controversial, thought-provoking, this collection looks into the works and the mind of one of SF's most influential "new" writers. Illinois Science Fiction in Chicago Press is proud to Relativity, a book every Robert J. Sawyer and SF fan should have in their collection.

Avg Rating

3.86

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

35%

4 STARS

31%

3 STARS

22%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Robert J. Sawyer

Author · 38 books

Robert J. Sawyer is one of Canada's best known and most successful science fiction writers. He is the only Canadian (and one of only 7 writers in the world) to have won all three of the top international awards for science fiction: the 1995 Nebula Award for The Terminal Experiment, the 2003 Hugo Award for Hominids, and the 2006 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Mindscan. Robert Sawyer grew up in Toronto, the son of two university professors. He credits two of his favourite shows from the late 1960s and early 1970s, Search and Star Trek, with teaching him some of the fundamentals of the science-fiction craft. Sawyer was obsessed with outer space from a young age, and he vividly remembers watching the televised Apollo missions. He claims to have watched the 1968 classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey 25 times. He began writing science fiction in a high school club, which he co-founded, NASFA (Northview Academy Association of Science Fiction Addicts). Sawyer graduated in 1982 from the Radio and Television Arts Program at Ryerson University, where he later worked as an instructor. Sawyer's first published book, Golden Fleece (1989), is an adaptation of short stories that had previously appeared in the science-fiction magazine Amazing Stories. This book won the Aurora Award for the best Canadian science-fiction novel in English. In the early 1990s Sawyer went on to publish his inventive Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, about a world of intelligent dinosaurs. His 1995 award winning The Terminal Experiment confirmed his place as a major international science-fiction writer. A prolific writer, Sawyer has published more than 10 novels, plus two trilogies. Reviewers praise Sawyer for his concise prose, which has been compared to that of the science-fiction master Isaac Asimov. Like many science fiction-writers, Sawyer welcomes the opportunities his chosen genre provides for exploring ideas. The first book of his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, Hominids (2002), is set in a near-future society, in which a quantum computing experiment brings a Neanderthal scientist from a parallel Earth to ours. His 2006 Mindscan explores the possibility of transferring human consciousness into a mechanical body, and the ensuing ethical, legal, and societal ramifications. A passionate advocate for science fiction, Sawyer teaches creative writing and appears frequently in the media to discuss his genre. He prefers the label "philosophical fiction," and in no way sees himself as a predictor of the future. His mission statement for his writing is "To combine the intimately human with the grandly cosmic." http://us.macmillan.com/author/robert...