<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Canadian writer Robert J. Sawyer (April 29, 1960 –) was selling short stories as early as 1980 but was largely unknown until his first novel, Golden Fleece (1990), a murder mystery set aboard a starship. He followed up this promising first effort with a trilogy set on a world of intelligent dinosaurs, and while the stories may have been a bit scientifically implausible, they were nonetheless effective allegories. On the eve of a religious pilgrimage, Afsan begins to doubt the priesthood's explanation for the physical nature of the world in the first, Far-Seer (1992), ignores the customs of his people in his search for a metal suitable to protect his people in outer space in Fossil Hunter (1993), and eventually is responsible for the salvation of his race in Foreigner (1994).

One minor novel followed, after which he wrote The Terminal Experiment (1995), the story of a man who creates three virtual variations of himself as part of an experiment, only to have them escape into a worldwide computer network of the future. The novel won the Nebula and established Sawyer as a major voice in the genre. Starplex (1996) solidified his reputation and demonstrated his versatility with a wide-ranging and exciting space adventure. Frameshift (1997) was thought provoking though rather low key, and was followed by Factoring Humanity (1998), a first contact through radio story that shows humanity facing a potentially disastrous decision.Illegal Alien (1997) was another murder mystery, this time with an alien as chief suspect.

Sawyer's more recent novels have shown him working at the top of his form. Flashforward (1999) explores the consequences that follow a freak accident which gives every person alive a brief glimpse of their own personal future. More ambitious was the trilogy consisting of Hominids (2002, Humans (2003), and Hybrids (2003), the first of which won the Hugo. Scientists inadvertently open a limited gateway to an alternate Earth where modern humans died out and an alternate version of the species remained masters of the world, eventually developing a technology equivalent to our own. The author uses this situation to contrast our society with the alternative one, which is initially described as a virtual Utopia, although in the later volumes we discover more significant flaws in their culture as well.

Sawyer has served as President of the SFWA. The best of his short fiction has been collected in Iterations (2004).