Identity Theft and other stories (collection)

Introduction Rob Sawyer: Ignore Him by Robert Charles Wilson

Let me explain.

I was asked to introduce Robert J. Sawyer to readers of this collection of his stories—but biographical information about Rob is easy to come by. See, for instance, the About the Author at the end of this book (but don’t skip the intervening stuff: you won’t be disappointed). Or check out his website, sfwriter.com. Rob has even been the subject of an hour-long Canadian TV profile, Inside the Mind of Robert J. Sawyer. You can fairly readily discover that he’s won any number of awards—the Hugo, the Nebula, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award, Canada’s Aurora, Japans Seiun, Chinas Galaxy Award, Frances Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, Spain’s Premio UPC de Ciencia Fictión, some of these more than once. All this is well-known.

And his literary career is easy enough to chart, from his first novel in 1990, Golden Fleece, through the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy (Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids), to his latest, Rollback, with stops for short fiction and nonfiction along the way.

But I want you to ignore all that.

Ignore it, because the avalanche of honors and achievements can begin to seem intimidating. And that is precisely what Rob is not: intimidating. In fact he’s one of the most approachable SF writers around.

Like many readers who came to SF at an impressionable age, I once believed that a published author must be an Olympian being—a wise or at least worldly philosopher-god who rises at noon, feeds his muse a diet of scotch/rocks, and debauches his soul into the keys of a rusty Underwood Noiseless while the rest of the world sleeps. Great, but how would you actually talk to such a creature?

Rob exists to defy these misconceptions. Wise he may be; but he’s more earthy than Olympian, prefers chocolate milk to scotch, and writes from the comfort of a La-Z-Boy recliner. (I don’t know what time he gets out of bed.) He’ll talk to you about paleoanthropology, if you like, but he’s equally at home reminiscing about Thunderbirds or Josie and the Pussycats. (He probably has a favorite Pussycat.) He possesses a well-developed sense of humor, but it’s more generous than cutting. He enjoys meeting people and will usually give you the benefit of the doubt in a conflict; you can get on the wrong side of Robert J. Sawyer, but it takes work.

He’s also conspicuously Canadian, in a way those of us who wander the tenebrous nightland between nationalities (I’m an expat American, myself) can never be. I think this makes some Americans uneasy—the unspoken belief that Canada really is, as the beer ads say, the best part of North America. It’s hard to miss it in his work. But Rob also practices that most Canadian of virtues, Looking at Both Sides of the Question, which means that his love for his native country never comes off as jingoistic or anti-American. And for those of us who do know Canada there’s a pleasing resonance in Rob’s writing—he’s privy to the secret handshakes; he can tell the difference between Wendy Mesley and Peter Mansbridge, Uncle Bobby and Jerome the Giraffe, Jean Chretien and the Honourable Member from Kicking Horse Pass.

But again I have to emphasize, don’t let any of this intimidate you. Rob grew up in suburban Toronto, went to school there, picked up some public-appearance skills at Ryerson University (which is why he’s more at home at a podium than some of us reclusive schlubs and stammering poets), dabbled in journalism before turning to fiction full-time, married a wonderful woman named Carolyn Clink, and currently lives with her, his books, and a collection of hominid skulls in a penthouse condo in Mississauga.

Want to know more? Ask Rob, if you see him at a science-fiction convention or writer’s conference (he goes to lots of them). As I said, he’s approachable. And so is his fiction—it’s among the most accessible SF being produced today, enjoyed with equal pleasure by hard-core fans and those who normally disdain the genre. Ignore his laurels and plaudits, which is what I meant by the smartass title of this introduction. But please don’t ignore this collection of his recent short stories: the work of one of the most interesting, outgoing, and thoughtful SF writers walking the earth today.