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sawyer@sfwriter.com

Quintaglios:
Far-Seer
Fossil Hunter
Foreigner

In 1991, I began writing a column called Random Musings for The OSFS Statement, the newsletter of the Ottawa Science Fiction Society, of which I'm a proud member. Since 1994, my column has been reprinted in BCSFAzine, the newsletter of Canada's West Coast Science Fiction Association. The column's contents are exactly what the title suggests — just random musings I've had on various SF-related topics.

To my delight, my column was nominated for an Aurora Award in the category of "Best Fan Other" of 1994 (that is, fan activity other than editing a fanzine or running a convention).

Although I gave up writing the regular Random Musings column in 1994, I'll be adding additional little essays as I write them. (The latest ones — Letting Go of God and The Gospel According to Science Fiction — were added in July 2007 and are from my blog.)

On Me and My Writing:

• Are the Quintaglios Too Human?
• Are the Quintaglios Too Clever?
• Moving to Space
• References in my fiction to Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Sawyer's Universe — Not!
• On winning the UPC SF Award
• On writing Illegal Alien
• On writing Starplex
• On writing The Terminal Experiment
• On writing "Lost in the Mail"
• On writing "You See But You Do Not Observe"

On the State of the Art:

• The Death of Science Fiction
• Defining Science Fiction
• Escapism and SF
• Hard SF isn't all bad!
• What Crazy Position is SFWA Taking This Time?

On the Writing Process:

• Fat Books and Computers
• Formal Writing Training
• Workshopping
• On Starting Out Writing Non-Fiction
• Thoughts on the Opening Line of End of an Era
• Rob's "On Writing" how-to-write columns

On Written SF:

• On Arthur C. Clarke
• On Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics
• Characterization and Aliens
• Lawyers in Science Fiction
• On Domestic Canadian SF
• On Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (from The Ottawa Citizen)
• On Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (from Maclean's)

On Media SF:

• On Alien Nation
• On Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
• On Canadian Film-Option Contracts

On the Packaging of SF:

• Online Bookselling: A Big Change at Point of Sale
• Print on Demand
• Judging a Book by its Cover
• On Reviews
• Is Canadian SF Different From American SF?
• On "Speculative Fiction"
• 1993: The Dark Side of the Force
• What's Wrong with the Aurora Awards?

On the Future:

• Science FACTion commentaries from CBC Radio
• 2020 Vision scenarios from Discovery Channel Canada
• The Human Body
• Artificial Intelligence
• The Solar System
• Interstellar Travel
• Daily Life
• Food

On Atheism and Religion:

• Rob picks Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion as "Book of the Year"
  
• About Julia Sweeney's Letting Go of God
  
• First rebuttal to The Skeptical Inquirer
• Second rebuttal to The Skeptical Inquirer
• A Bright Idea for Atheists
• On The Gospel According to Science Fiction
  

  More Good Reading  

Other non-fiction by Rob
Rob's "On Writing" how-to-write columns