Robert Sawyer: Triggers

And here now all those who call the Galápagos home, as well as the visiting biologists and geologists and science-oriented tourists, join in, the last group to fuse with the collective. It is appropriate, judges the gestalt, that the place that taught the human race the most about evolution is the site of the completion of humanity’s transcendence into its next stage of existence.

Darwin’s closing words from The Origin of Species swirl through the collective consciousness:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

The gestalt recasts the words ever so slightly: there is indeed grandeur in this view of life, with its combined power breathing now as one, and that, while this planet completes its most recent cycle according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning a new form most beautiful and most wonderful has now evolved.

Huge thanks to my lovely wife Carolyn Clink, to Ginjer Buchananat Penguin Group (USA)’s Ace imprint in New York, to Adrienne Kerrat Penguin Group (Canada) in Toronto, to Malcolm Edwardsat Orion Publishing Group in London, and to Stanley Schmidtof Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine. Many thanks to my agents Christopher Lotts, Vince Gerardis, and the late, great Ralph Vicinanza.

Thanks to my writing colleagues who saw this project through multiple drafts, especially Paddy Fordeand Herb Kauderer. And thanks to James Alan Gardnerfor being there early on and getting me on the right track.

Thanks, too, to all the other people who answered questions, let me bounce ideas off them, or otherwise provided input and encouragement, including: Chris Barkley, Asbed Bedrossian, Ellen Bleaney, Ted Bleaney, Linda Carson, David Livingstone Clink, Marcel Gagné, Shoshana Glick, Julie Marr Hanslip, Larry Hodges, Al Katerinsky, James Kerwin, Brian Malow, Christina Molendyk, Kirstin Morrell, Kayla Nielsen, Virginia O’Dine, Sherry Peters, Alan B. Sawyer, Sally Tomasevic, Jeff Vintar, and Romeo Vitelli. And a tip of the hat to Danita Maslankowski, who organizes the twice-annual “Write Off” retreats for Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers Association.

Many thanks to Lisa McDonaldand Nicole Pokryfkaof the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC, and to Bettina Trotterof the Woman’s Hospital of Texas in Houston.

Finally, thanks to Pauline Martin, Librarian/Archivist, The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas; to Ian Randal Strock, author of The Presidential Book of Lists; to Zachary Wiitaof the office of Congressman Maurice Hinchey, Washington, DC; and to The New America Foundation, Arizona State University, and Slate magazine, which jointly brought me to Washington in February 2011 to speak at their “Future Tense” conference entitled “Here Be Dragons: Governing a Technologically Uncertain Future”—I piggybacked much research for this novel on that trip.

Robert J. Sawyer’s novel FlashForward was the basis for the ABC TV series of the same name. He is one of only eight writers ever to win all three of the world’s top awards for best science fiction novel of the year: the Hugo (which he won for Hominids), the Nebula (which he won for The Terminal Experiment), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which he won for Mindscan). According to the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards, he has won more awards for his novels than anyone else in the history of the science fiction and fantasy fields.

In total, Rob has won forty-six national and international awards for his fiction, including twelve Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“Auroras”), as well as Analog magazine’s Analytical Laboratory Award, Science Fiction Chronicle ’s Reader Award, and the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, all for best short story of the year.

Rob has won the world’s largest cash prize for SF writing, Spain’s 6,000-euro Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción, an unprecedented three times. He’s also won the Hal Clement Award (for Watch, the middle volume of his WWW trilogy) and a trio of Japanese Seiun Awards for Best Foreign Novel of the Year (for End of an Era, Frameshift, and Illegal Alien), as well as China’s Galaxy Award for “Most Popular Foreign Science Fiction Writer.”

In addition, he’s received an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University and the Alumni Award of Distinction from Ryerson University. Quill & Quire, the Canadian publishing trade journal, calls him “one of the thirty most influential, innovative, and just plain powerful people in Canadian publishing.”

Rob lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, with his wife, poet Carolyn Clink. His website and blog are at sfwriter.com, and on Twitter and Facebook he’s RobertJSawyer.