SAWYER, Robert J(ames)

(1960-)

   Canadian writer who began publishing sf with "If I'm Here, Imagine Where They Sent my Luggage" for The Village Voice in 1981, and was moderately active as a short-story writer in the 1980s. His first novel, Golden Fleece (1988 AMZ; exp 1990 US), set on a colony ship named Argo,run by an AI named JASON, perhaps slightly overcopiously engages to meld Greek myth and HARD SF in the story of a murder and its solution by ahuman protagonist so psychologically recessed that the AI cannot read his intentions. The Quintaglio Ascension sequence - comprising Far-seer (1992 US), Fossil Hunter (1993 US) and Foreigner (1994 US) - is set on anunstable Moon orbiting a distant planet, and inhabited by intelligent dinosaurs who were transported there from Earth by a quasi-omniscient Watcher aeons past. True to the conventions of HARD SF, the young dinosaurprotagonist of the sequence both revolutionizes the sciences of his world, and has copious adventures while doing so. Some of the detail work is luminously enjoyable; some of the premises are facile. It is, all in all, a thoroughly readable presentation. End of an Era (1994 US) is also about dinosaurs, but different ones: 2 contemporary Earth paleontologists vie over explanations for the death of dinosaurs on this planet, and use TIME TRAVEL to test their theses. In the end, an overly intricate explanationis offered; but again the journey through the text is swift. The Terminal Experiment (1995 UK), first published 1994-95 in ASF as "Hobson's Choice",is an sf mystery centring on the discovery that, at the instant of death, a form of energy escapes the human brain.

   JC

   See also: CANADA.