Thursday, April 08, 2010

HNT - Predictive Science Fiction

Last week I had the pleasure of hosting the book launch for Robert J. Sawyer's latest novel rst at Titles Bookstore McMaster University.

It had been about 11 years since I'd hosting a book event for Rob in a Hamilton area store. (The last time was at Chapters in Ancaster when his novel FlashForward first came out) Not only is FlashForward a great novel (and the inspiration behind the hit ABC television series of the same name), but in it, Rob predicted that bookstores of the near future would have Print on Demand (POD) machines right in their stores in order to instantly access from millions of works of literature.

In his novel, there is a scene where two characters go into a bookstore then sit down to have a coffee while waiting for their ordered POD book to print.

Which is one of the reasons why I wanted to get a picture of Rob and I standing in front of the Espresso Book Machine at Titles Bookstore.

The pictures were taken by my pal Pete Rainford (known to the blogging world as Rainy Pete -- interestingly, I killed Pete in an online fiction serial that I wrote back in 2006 as part of a fund raiser for a local literacy group in Hamilton)


Photo by Pete Rainford

Photo by Pete Rainford

Of course, I'm also eagerly reading Watch right now, curious to see if there are any scenes in which Rob will reveal what I'll be doing in another 11 years.

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