Subscribe via RSS 2.0by Chadwick Ginther - Tuesday May 13 2008 10:00 am
Posted in: Staff Pick, SciFi & Fantasy, Mystery & Crime
A Double Shot of Short Fiction
is best known for his award-winning hard sci-fi novels, and rightly so. Sawyer has won every major prize in the field for his long-form work. However, his short fiction chops should not be ignored. Both Iterations and Other Stories and the just-released Identity Theft and Other Stories bring together a career-spanning collection of stellar short stories.
As with any short story collection, there will be entries that speak to an individual reader more than others, but I defy you to find a bad story in this particular bunch. For myself, personal standouts include "Iterations", "The Hand You're Dealt" and "Just Like Old Times", all from Iterations and Other Stories. From Identity Theft and Other Stories I especially liked the titular novella, the story "Come All Ye Faithful", and what Sawyer says may be his last short story, "Biding Time". If that is the case, then I sure wouldn't mind reading a novel about Alex Lomax, the hard-boiled Martian P.I. who stars in "Identity Theft" and "Biding Time".
You don't read science fiction? Don't worry, Sawyer has also won the Canadian Crime Writer's Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story, and has been nominated for Horror's Bram Stoker Award. Both of his short story collections go beyond tales of aliens and starships. What's more, Sawyer's short fiction -- like his novels -- is both uniquely Canadian and of the world. Among other things, his writing is full of philosophical questions ("sci-phi" as he likes to call it), grapples with the intersection of science and theology, and (best of all) even contains the occasional dinosaur.
See Also:
Robert J. Sawyer, an Interview
Hugo and John W. Campbell Shortlists Announced
Iterations and Other Stories - trade paperbackBy Robert J. Sawyer - $15.95
This first collection of short stories by the man The Ottawa Citizen calls "the dean of Canadian science fiction" includes Hugo Award nominee "The Hand You're Dealt," Bram Stoker Award finalist "Fa...
Identity Theft and Other Stories - trade paperbackBy Robert J. Sawyer - $15.95
This new collection by the man Anne McCaffrey calls "an absolutely marvelous writer" includes Hugo Award nominee "Shed Skin," Nebula Award nominee "Identity Theft," and Aurora Award winner "Ineluct...
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Hominids - mass market paperbackBy Robert J. Sawyer - $10.99
Winner of the 2003 Hugo Award Hominids is the first book of The Neanderthal Parallax, in which two species that are alien to each other are bound together by the never-ending quest for knowledge a...
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In this sequel to Homonids, the Neanderthal physicist Ponder Boddit returns to our world, and to his relationship with geneticist Mary Vaughn, as cultural exchanges between the two Earths begin. Ro...
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Robert J. Sawyer's Hominids, the first volume of his bestselling Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, won the 2003 Hugo Award, and its sequel, Humans, was a 2004 Hugo nominee. Now he's back with a pulse-p...
Rollback - mass market paperbackBy Robert J. Sawyer - $8.99
Dr. Sarah Halifax decoded the first-ever radio transmission received from aliens. Thirty-eight years later, a second message is received and Sarah, now 87, may hold the key to deciphering this one,...
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