Okay, first I have to get this off my chest. Robert J. Sawyer. He writes books that are often at least partially set in Canada and that contain Canadian characters. That’s great. I’m Canadian, and I’m happy that our country is represented in current science fiction. However, I don’t see why the characters have to harp on it. Maybe the people around me are continually thinking how different they are from Americans, I don’t hear them say it, and I don’t think it.
Okay. I feel better. Still with me? I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t.
I’ve read some Sawyer in the past, notably the Neanderthal Parallax and Flashforward . they were pretty good. Fast-moving, with a few generally interesting ideas, but I’ve never found him to be a particularly gifted writer, and his characters don’t seem to be very well developed, in stark contrast to Spin, which Mindscan recently beat out for the 2006 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.
Still, for some reason I always find myself racing through the books, and enjoying them while I read them. It’s weird, it’s like he’s science fiction’s slightly more gifted Dan Brown.