Robert J. Sawyer? by RolandReynolds

TALK STORY

Robert J. Sawyer?

POSTED BY: ROLANDREYNOLDS
UPDATED: Monday, April 10, 2006 01:15
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VIEWED: 1751
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Sunday, April 9, 2006 11:50 AM

A friend of mine extolls R.J. Sawyer's authoring greatness periodically. I have read 'Calculating God' which I enjoyed tremendously, and I am not a big science-fiction reader. That is, however, where my exposure ends. Anyone around here familiar with R.J.S. and able to share a brief review or two about some of his other works?

RR
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“When peace comes to mean the absence of conflict on the one hand, and when conflict with an unjust and racist political order is a moral imperative on the other, then it is not difficult to understand that the better class of human beings are, in fact, deeply committed to disturbing the peace and creating conflict.”
~Farid Esack

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Sunday, April 9, 2006 2:57 PM

LAUGHINGMUSE

I own several of his books. I started reading his Quintaglio trilogy; and for quite a while he was on my "buy on sight" list. (I don't currently have a BoS list because those authors haven't released much lately; and because I've been staying out of bookstores to try and change my spending habits. Heh. Yeah. Hold on to that dream.)

If you enjoy reading short story collections, see if you can get ahold of "Iterations". It's a collection of his short stories, and gives you a good sampling of his styles, themes, and universes.

I'm not sure why you enjoyed Calculating God, so it's not all that easy to make other recommendations.

I can tell you that I was less than impressed with Frameshift. It's been long enough since I read it that I can't remember why I didn't enjoy it. I just know that I did resell that book.

I read his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy (Hominids / Humans | Hybrids), but wasn't all that thrilled with it either. As informational and theoretical, it's a very interesting read. As a *story*...it didn't grab my interest the way some of his other books have.

Flash Forward was very enjoyable: everyone in the world blips forward 20 years in time...for about 20 seconds. Then they're back. Simple enough, yes? Except that one man experiences nothing, and another person contacts him saying that they glimpsed a newspaper headline about his murder.

If you ever had a thing for dinosaurs, or want some slightly quicker reads, try getting ahold of End of an Era, or RJS's Quintaglio trilogy (Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, Foreigner). End of an Era follows an archaeologist team who travel backward in time to the Mesozoic era to try and solve the riddle of dinosaur extinction. The Quintaglio Trilogy tells of a society of sapient dinosaurs, and the stories of that society's equivalents to Galileo, Darwin, and Freud. (Here's a link about that trilogy on the author's web site: http://www.sfwriter.com/quintag.htm )

Mindscan deals with an individual who downloads a scan of his mind and personality into an android body, and begins a new life: his dog doesn't recognize him; he falls in love with a woman in a new body; they have to fight for her fiscal rights as a legal entity. The original body isn't dead, either - and a host of other issues are explored as the community of "cast off" bodies, still conscious beings, has to live with their new, changed status.

In The Terminal Experiment, Dr. Hobson tests theories of life, immortality, and morality when he creates three electronic simulations of himself: one has all memories of physical existence erased; one has all knowledge of physical aging erased; one is left unchanged. Then they escape their computer and get loose in the global network...and the real 'fun' begins. Not completely "hard" sci fi, but if you're not fond of technical science fiction, you might want to leave this one alone. (I love it, though.)

What I would recommend, in order, based on your enjoying Calculating God:

* Mindscan
* The Terminal Experiment
* Flash Forward
* Iterations
* the Quintaglio Trilogy and End of an Era, if you enjoy dinosaurs or stories about dinosaurs (that's a hugely simplified description...but again, I'm trying to go on your introduction to RJS.)

Does that help, or is that a gigantic load of babble? (Sorry - I spent all day yesterday writing documentation and fighting with databases. Today, my brain is compensating. This tends to get messy...)

---------------------------------
Mankind makes tools; we use them to augment our hands, arms and legs.
The computer augments the brain and this makes it very unpopular with totalitarians. - Charles J.C. Lyall

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Sunday, April 9, 2006 4:55 PM

ROLANDREYNOLDS

My appreciation of your efforts to answer my query in full knows no end, thank you. I enjoyed Calculating God because it was science fiction that had characters that I could connect with, and the 'science' part didn't detract from that, but was still extremely thought-provoking and well-presented (all seeming to be within the realm of the reasonable, which is good, too).

Iterations might be a good place for me to start, as I'm a relatively slow reader, so novels, unless exceptionally great at hooking me in early on, tend to get put on back burners (it took me over 6 months to read American Gods). I have heard that Iterations is a solid collection before, and adding your voice to that chorus gives me a leaning.

Really, I should learn to put more reading (for leisure and not for school... just not the same) into my every day scheduling.

Thanks again for the awesome response.
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“When peace comes to mean the absence of conflict on the one hand, and when conflict with an unjust and racist political order is a moral imperative on the other, then it is not difficult to understand that the better class of human beings are, in fact, deeply committed to disturbing the peace and creating conflict.”
~Farid Esack

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Monday, April 10, 2006 1:15 AM

XANDERLHARRIS

Flash Forward was the first Sawyer book I read. I think I read it 3-4 times before I bought the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy. Personally I loved that series. I have now since read Terminal Man, Mindscan, Calculating God (Which I would recommend to all first time Sawyer readers) and the Quintaglio trilogy.

Tonight I plan to order the next book from the library. I just don't want to return the others. lol

**********
Ash
Vice President of the Juggled Gosling
**********

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