Robert J. Sawyer recently talked to Suite101 about writing a potential mystery novel and shares his thoughts on the Mayan calender.
Is there a specific book inside you that you've wanted to write but haven't yet done so?
Despite my love for science fiction—and it’s enormous—I do sometimes think I’d like to write a mystery novel that has no speculative elements. Science fiction and mystery are allied genres—much more so than are science fiction and fantasy—because they both prize the rational, puzzle-solving process. Many of my SF novels—including FlashForward—absolutely are SF/mystery crossovers, and I have won Canada’s top mystery-fiction award, the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, for short fiction, so someday I might like to do a novel that is pure mystery.
Were you at all involved in the new TV series based on Flashforward?
Absolutely. Executive producers David Goyer, Jessika Goyer, Brannon Braga, and I all sat down in Los Angeles before they’d even acquired rights to my book to discuss how it would be adapted; I’m consultant on every episode; I’m writing episode 17 myself; I was on set during the filming of the pilot, and back again for the filming of episodes 5 and 6, and was just talking with www.sfwriter.com/David Goyer this morning about scheduling my next trip to L.A.
What is the one thing a good story cannot be without?
The standard creative-writing class answer is conflict, but I actually have grown tired of that as a paradigm for fiction; I really do think, after millions of iterations of that notion, that we’ve worked that one to death, and it’s time to try things a bit more interesting. For me, the sine qua non of good fiction is something you can sink your teeth into intellectually: a provocative theme. Indeed, it’s that, not the silly chases, that made Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code the success it was, and FlashForward—in both the novel and TV versions—is interesting because it grapples with the question of fate vs. free will.
What will you be doing on December 21st, 2012?
I’m pleased to say that that date means nothing to me. Oh, is that that Mayan-calendar rubbish that’s floating around? Well, rational human being that I am, I’ll be doing nothing special at all—unless it happens to be a night that FlashForward is airing on TV—we’d be in our third season then—in which case I’ll be settling in for a fine evening’s entertainment.
What's next in line for you, writing-wise?
Orion/Gollancz—the same fine folks who have brought out the Australian edition of FlashForward—have also bought my new trilogy about the World Wide Web gaining consciousness, and the blind teenage girl who first discovers that it has. The first volume, Wake, will be out shortly in Australia; I’ve finished the second, Watch, and I’m hard at work now on the third, which is called Wonder.
Robert J. Sawyer is one of only seven writers in history to win all three of the world’s top awards for best science-fiction novel of the year: the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Award (which he won for Hominids), the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Nebula Award (which he won for The Terminal Experiment), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which he won for Mindscan). He was born in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa in 1960, and now lives in Toronto, its largest city. His latest novel is Wake; read more about it on his website. In addition to his work on the TV series FlashForward, based on his Aurora Award-winning novel of the same name, he also hosts the Canadian TV series Supernatural Investigator, which debunks pseudoscience.
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Lynne Jamneck - Lynne Jamneck lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Short listed for the Sir Julius Vogel and Lambda Awards, she has published short fiction in ...
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