Robert J. Sawyer Autobiography From Contemporary Authors Copyright © 2003 by Robert J. Sawyer All Rights Reserved. Robert J. Sawyer wrote this 10,000-word autobiography in January 2003 under commission for Gale Research's Contemporary Authors. My father, John Arthur Sawyer, was born in Toronto in 1924; his ancestry is Scottish and English. My mother, Virginia Kivley Peterson Sawyer, was born in Appleton, Minnesota, in 1925, but grew up in Berkeley, California. Her background is Swedish and Norwegian. They were married at the University of Chicago in 1952, where they were both graduate students in economics. Shortly thereafter, they moved to Ottawa, Canada's capital, where my dad was employed by what was then called the Dominion Bureau of Statistics and is now known as Statistics Canada. I was born in Ottawa on April 29, 1960 — but my parents almost immediately moved again, this time to Toronto, so that my father could take a teaching post at the University of Toronto starting in the fall of 1960. After a few years, my mother started teaching at the University of Toronto, as well, lecturing in statistics. It was unusual, back then, having a mother who worked outside the home, and even more so to have one who worked in an intellectually challenging field; my friends didn't quite know what to make of it. Still, it had advantages: we were the first family on our street to have two cars — one for my dad and one for my mom. These days, that's very common, but it wasn't then, and I was very proud of both my parents. I have two brothers, Peter Douglas Sawyer, who is six years older than me, and Alan Bruce Sawyer, who is sixteen months younger. My parents had hoped to space their children more evenly, but there were medical complications after my older brother was born. It's too bad: I've never been as close to Peter as I would have liked, but of course no sixteen-year-old wants a ten-year-old tagging along. And my relationship with Alan was strained during much of our childhood; we were so close in age that a rivalry was inevitable. Still, I was very much the traditional middle child, always trying to make peace and build bridges. My mother had been a bona fide gifted child, graduating from the University of California at Berkeley when she was 17, and my older brother had been accelerated (put ahead a grade) twice at school. The teachers and my parents meant well in doing this, but Peter had a bunch of troubles in his early years, in large measure because he was pushed ahead. I was a bright kid, too, but, because of what happened to Peter, my parents resolutely kept me at the grade appropriate for my age. It was probably for the best, but I remember being bored most of the time in the classroom, and that led to me being somewhat disruptive there. But at the end of every week, my father took me down to the Royal Ontario Museum's Saturday Morning Club, where bright kids got to go behind the scenes in the museum's various departments and learn all sorts of fascinating things; that was the intellectual highlight of my childhood. I was a chubby kid, and lousy at sports. I'm sure this disappointed my dad, who was a big baseball fan. I also had a coordination problem — and still do, to some degree — and couldn't throw a ball well or get my body to do the things that my friends could do with ease. (Ultimately, I think this problem had something to do with me becoming a writer. An athlete has to get it right on the first try: if you're taking a shot at the goal, you don't get a second chance to score a point. But a writer revises, and keeps going back until he or she is satisfied.) So, instead of playing sports, I watched a lot of TV. There's never been much domestic Canadian dramatic television. Instead, Canadian channels fill their prime-time schedules with American programs. But, since 90 percent of all Canadians live within a hundred miles of the U.S. border, we also receive American TV stations. Today, with almost all Canadians getting their TV via cable, the cable operators simply delete the US signal and simultaneously substitute the Canadian one — meaning we see the same episode of the same series, but with Canadian, instead of American, commercials. But in the 1960s and 1970s, things were different. Canadian stations had to entice us to watch their broadcasts of the program (with the ads they'd sold), rather than the American ones. To do that, they showed the American-made programs earlier in Canada. When I was 12, in 1972, my favorite new series was called Search, starring Hugh O'Brien and Burgess Meredith. It was an intricately plotted caper series, with high-tech agents, linked by miniature cameras and radios to a mission-control center, working to recover missing objects. In Toronto, we got the Canadian broadcast of the latest episode on Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. on local channel 9, and then, the next night, at 10;00 p.m., we got the American broadcast, spilling over from the NBC station in Buffalo, New York. I never missed an episode on Tuesday nights, but I wanted more. Every Wednesday night I had a fight with my mom, because I wanted to stay up to watch Search again — the exact same episode I'd seen the day before. It was an hour-long series, meaning it wasn't over until 11:00 p.m. — way too late, my mom felt, for a 12-year-old on a school night. But I whined and wheedled, and she would usually give in. Back then, I couldn't articulate why it was so important to me to watch the same episode a second time — but I understand it perfectly now. I was learning how to write. On Tuesday nights, I'd be surprised by the twists and turns the plots took — and on Wednesday nights, knowing how the story turned out, I was able to see how the writer had developed the plot. Now, television drama may not be the greatest form of literature — but the structure it uses is wonderful for learning plotting. There was always something else on and, at every commercial break, there was an opportunity for you to switch to another program, so TV writers had to end every act — indeed, just about every scene except the last — with a little cliffhanger, to keep you in suspense, to keep you from turning away. (Today, of course, there are videocassette recorders and DVD players; no one has to go through the difficulties I did to see the same program twice in rapid succession. Still, I think watching a program twice — or reading a book twice — is a great way to see exactly how the writer accomplished what he or she had set out to do.) Search wasn't the only TV program that had an impact on me. The original Star Trek — the one with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy — was also a huge influence. I only saw one episode in first run: "The Devil in the Dark," the one with the Horta. That had been a special treat; my parents didn't approve of me watching violent TV shows (the spy program The Man from UNCLE was banned in our house); nor did they ever buy us toy guns (although we did receive a few as presents from neighborhood kids over the years, over my parents' objections). Those bans certainly had an affect on me; I consider myself a pacifist today, and most of the characters I write about go out of their way to avoid a fight — not out of cowardice, but out of principle. Anyway, there was a book published in 1968, while Star Trek was still in first run, called The Making of Star Trek. It was the first book of its kind, and I found it absolutely fascinating. The edition I have has "The book on how to write for TV!" emblazoned above the title. The authors were Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry (the latter the creator of Star Trek), and it contained all sorts of materials: blueprints of the starship Enterprise, close-up photos of props, character sketches of the ship's crew, and dozens of memos sent between various people involved in the production arguing about every little background detail, from what powered the starship to what sorts of family names Vulcans might have. These days, many DVD releases come with commentary by the screenwriter or director, but back then this sort of insight into the creative process was completely unprecedented. I'm sure I would have loved Star Trek regardless, but I learned an enormous amount watching the 79 original episodes re-run over and over again, once the show was in syndication, because of the background in that book. One of the key skills for an SF writer is "world building" — creating a convincing alternate reality, and giving the audience insights into it through well-chosen background details. There's no doubt I learned this skill through Star Trek. Of course, my very first stories didn't have much in the way of world building — but I do think it's interesting that from day one, I was writing from non-human perspectives. The very first story I ever wrote, when I was six or seven, was called "Bobby Bug." Ironically, at that time, I had no idea that "Bobby" was a form of my own name, Robert. (Actually, I was called "Robin" as a child. That was what my mother wanted to give me as my legal name, but my father thought it would be better to have a more masculine name; also, he had a great fondness for his Scottish heritage, and so my given names, Robert James, are after historic kings of Scotland. But I was registered at school as Robin Sawyer, and the local Parks and Recreation Department, guessing my gender by my name, kept sending me invitations to join girl's ice-skating teams and similar things. When I was ten, I rebelled against the name Robin, and have used Robert (or Rob) ever since. I actually regret it now; Robin is a great name for a writer.) In 1968, when I was eight years old, my father took me to see the then-new movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was my introduction to the work of Arthur C. Cl...
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