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Welcome to Complete Short Fiction Volume 3 – thirteen short stories, each with an introduction giving context, anecdotes, and a glimpse into the life of Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Robert J. Sawyer. This is the third and final volume collecting all his short fiction. Here are science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories from the downside of relativity to the upside of high-school reunions, from a murdering Tyrannosaurus rex to the arrival of a sleeper ship, · A sequel to H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine · An astronaut returns to her much older family · The only private detective on Mars · A dinosaur civilization faces the asteroid · And (spoiler alert) those pointy teeth seem suspicious… Time Just Like Old Times (Aurora Award winner, Arthur Ellis Award winner, Seiun Award (Japan) finalist); Immortality; If I’m Here, Imagine Where They Sent My Luggage; On the Surface; Relativity; Forever; Iterations; The Right’s Tough; E-mails from the Future; Identity Theft (Hugo Award finalist, Nebula Award finalist, later incorporated into Rob’s novel Red Planet Blues); Biding Time (Aurora Award finalist); Peking Man (Aurora Award winner); and The Shoulders of Giants (Aurora Award finalist). The other two volumes are Complete Short Fiction Volume 1 and Complete Short Fiction Volume 2.
218 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 9, 2019
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About the author
Robert J. Sawyer
227 books2,506 followersRobert J. Sawyer is one of Canada's best known and most successful science fiction writers. He is the only Canadian (and one of only 7 writers in the world) to have won all three of the top international awards for science fiction: the 1995 Nebula Award for The Terminal Experiment, the 2003 Hugo Award for Hominids, and the 2006 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Mindscan.
Robert Sawyer grew up in Toronto, the son of two university professors. He credits two of his favourite shows from the late 1960s and early 1970s, Search and Star Trek, with teaching him some of the fundamentals of the science-fiction craft. Sawyer was obsessed with outer space from a young age, and he vividly remembers watching the televised Apollo missions. He claims to have watched the 1968 classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey 25 times. He began writing science fiction in a high school club, which he co-founded, NASFA (Northview Academy Association of Science Fiction Addicts). Sawyer graduated in 1982 from the Radio and Television Arts Program at Ryerson University, where he later worked as an instructor.
Sawyer's first published book, Golden Fleece (1989), is an adaptation of short stories that had previously appeared in the science-fiction magazine Amazing Stories. This book won the Aurora Award for the best Canadian science-fiction novel in English. In the early 1990s Sawyer went on to publish his inventive Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, about a world of intelligent dinosaurs. His 1995 award winning The Terminal Experiment confirmed his place as a major international science-fiction writer.
A prolific writer, Sawyer has published more than 10 novels, plus two trilogies. Reviewers praise Sawyer for his concise prose, which has been compared to that of the science-fiction master Isaac Asimov. Like many science fiction-writers, Sawyer welcomes the opportunities his chosen genre provides for exploring ideas. The first book of his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, Hominids (2002), is set in a near-future society, in which a quantum computing experiment brings a Neanderthal scientist from a parallel Earth to ours. His 2006 Mindscan explores the possibility of transferring human consciousness into a mechanical body, and the ensuing ethical, legal, and societal ramifications.
A passionate advocate for science fiction, Sawyer teaches creative writing and appears frequently in the media to discuss his genre. He prefers the label "philosophical fiction," and in no way sees himself as a predictor of the future. His mission statement for his writing is "To combine the intimately human with the grandly cosmic."
http://us.macmillan.com/author/robert...
Robert Sawyer grew up in Toronto, the son of two university professors. He credits two of his favourite shows from the late 1960s and early 1970s, Search and Star Trek, with teaching him some of the fundamentals of the science-fiction craft. Sawyer was obsessed with outer space from a young age, and he vividly remembers watching the televised Apollo missions. He claims to have watched the 1968 classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey 25 times. He began writing science fiction in a high school club, which he co-founded, NASFA (Northview Academy Association of Science Fiction Addicts). Sawyer graduated in 1982 from the Radio and Television Arts Program at Ryerson University, where he later worked as an instructor.
Sawyer's first published book, Golden Fleece (1989), is an adaptation of short stories that had previously appeared in the science-fiction magazine Amazing Stories. This book won the Aurora Award for the best Canadian science-fiction novel in English. In the early 1990s Sawyer went on to publish his inventive Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, about a world of intelligent dinosaurs. His 1995 award winning The Terminal Experiment confirmed his place as a major international science-fiction writer.
A prolific writer, Sawyer has published more than 10 novels, plus two trilogies. Reviewers praise Sawyer for his concise prose, which has been compared to that of the science-fiction master Isaac Asimov. Like many science fiction-writers, Sawyer welcomes the opportunities his chosen genre provides for exploring ideas. The first book of his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy, Hominids (2002), is set in a near-future society, in which a quantum computing experiment brings a Neanderthal scientist from a parallel Earth to ours. His 2006 Mindscan explores the possibility of transferring human consciousness into a mechanical body, and the ensuing ethical, legal, and societal ramifications.
A passionate advocate for science fiction, Sawyer teaches creative writing and appears frequently in the media to discuss his genre. He prefers the label "philosophical fiction," and in no way sees himself as a predictor of the future. His mission statement for his writing is "To combine the intimately human with the grandly cosmic."
http://us.macmillan.com/author/robert...
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 3, 2020
The third and, according to the author, final volume of short stories from his career.
There are some amazingly rich pickings here and Robert J. Sawyer should be lauded as one of this generation's SF greats.
There are some amazingly rich pickings here and Robert J. Sawyer should be lauded as one of this generation's SF greats.
November 21, 2021
All of the thirteen short stories were commissioned for different collections including Future War, Men Writing Science Fiction as Women, Down These Dark Spaceways, Dark Destiny III: Children of Dracula, and Star Colonies.
Some are set in the future and a couple involves time travel. Some of them deal with the time differences and how society has changed during that time.
Just Like Old Times: This story was originally written for Dinosaur Fantastic. It starts when Cohen’s mind is sent to the past, inside a Tyrannosaur Rex.
Immortality: The main character returns for her 60th class reunion. A lot has changed from 1963 to 2023. The main character must confront the biggest mistake she has done in her life.
If I’m here, Imagine Where They Sent My Luggage: a 250-word story that (again) has dinosaurs and time travel.
On the Surface: A homage to H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The Morlocks are using time machines.
Relativity: Cathy is one of the few humans who travels to another planet, to explore it. The journey takes seven years, from her perspective. But Earth, a lot more time has passed. Will she even recognize her husband and children?
Forever: Cholo is an astronomer in the Shizoo queendom. He wants to find an unknown planet so that everyone will remember his name forever. Instead, he notices a huge asteroid hurtling toward Earth.
Iterations: Erik knows that he lives in a computer simulation. That he himself is also a simulation. What really drives him crazy is the thought, the knowledge, that in other simulations versions of him are doing unspeakable things.
The Right’s Tough: This story first appears in Vision of Liberty where the world is a better place without governments. The main character lives in such a world. After being in hibernation for 250 years, a crew of the only off-solar system spaceship is returning home.
E-Mails from the Future: This story was written in 2008 for a collection that looked at business a decade down the road. Sawyer’s (imaginary) agent sends him emails. Through them, we can see who far more mercenary businesses will be.
Identity Theft: Alexander Lomax is a private detective in New Klondike, the only town on Mars. It’s small and under a dome. Most of the people who have come here are looking for fossils, but they’re rare, so very few people can get rich. Most just stay in the town hoping to find at least something. A missing husband should be easy to find, but the case turns out to be more complex than Lomax expected.
Biding Time: Set in the same setting as the previous story, this time Alex Lomax is trying to find out why someone killed an old woman who has just transferred her mind to an artificial body.
Peking Man: 130,000-year-old bones of Peking Man were discovered in 1927 near Beijing. During WWII they were supposed to be smuggled out of China and to the USA. But the remains disappeared. What really happened?
The Shoulders of Giants: 50 people have been in cryosleep for 1,200 years traveling to Tau Ceti and to the planet which is in the habitable zone. Now they’re close enough that they’re being revived so that they can finally see if the planet is habitable.
These were all entertaining reads. I like the two Marsian stories the best, but the two dinosaur stories were lots of fun, too. ”Iterations” has also a fascinating idea.
The stories all have a strong central idea. Often, the main character is written in the first person and they aren’t too different from each other. The atmosphere of the stories varies a lot from a detective story to regret about things the MC has done in the past to an MC killing gleefully.
"Identity theft" was apparently expanded to a novel, Red Planet Blues, and I’m very curious to read it.
Some are set in the future and a couple involves time travel. Some of them deal with the time differences and how society has changed during that time.
Just Like Old Times: This story was originally written for Dinosaur Fantastic. It starts when Cohen’s mind is sent to the past, inside a Tyrannosaur Rex.
Immortality: The main character returns for her 60th class reunion. A lot has changed from 1963 to 2023. The main character must confront the biggest mistake she has done in her life.
If I’m here, Imagine Where They Sent My Luggage: a 250-word story that (again) has dinosaurs and time travel.
On the Surface: A homage to H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The Morlocks are using time machines.
Relativity: Cathy is one of the few humans who travels to another planet, to explore it. The journey takes seven years, from her perspective. But Earth, a lot more time has passed. Will she even recognize her husband and children?
Forever: Cholo is an astronomer in the Shizoo queendom. He wants to find an unknown planet so that everyone will remember his name forever. Instead, he notices a huge asteroid hurtling toward Earth.
Iterations: Erik knows that he lives in a computer simulation. That he himself is also a simulation. What really drives him crazy is the thought, the knowledge, that in other simulations versions of him are doing unspeakable things.
The Right’s Tough: This story first appears in Vision of Liberty where the world is a better place without governments. The main character lives in such a world. After being in hibernation for 250 years, a crew of the only off-solar system spaceship is returning home.
E-Mails from the Future: This story was written in 2008 for a collection that looked at business a decade down the road. Sawyer’s (imaginary) agent sends him emails. Through them, we can see who far more mercenary businesses will be.
Identity Theft: Alexander Lomax is a private detective in New Klondike, the only town on Mars. It’s small and under a dome. Most of the people who have come here are looking for fossils, but they’re rare, so very few people can get rich. Most just stay in the town hoping to find at least something. A missing husband should be easy to find, but the case turns out to be more complex than Lomax expected.
Biding Time: Set in the same setting as the previous story, this time Alex Lomax is trying to find out why someone killed an old woman who has just transferred her mind to an artificial body.
Peking Man: 130,000-year-old bones of Peking Man were discovered in 1927 near Beijing. During WWII they were supposed to be smuggled out of China and to the USA. But the remains disappeared. What really happened?
The Shoulders of Giants: 50 people have been in cryosleep for 1,200 years traveling to Tau Ceti and to the planet which is in the habitable zone. Now they’re close enough that they’re being revived so that they can finally see if the planet is habitable.
These were all entertaining reads. I like the two Marsian stories the best, but the two dinosaur stories were lots of fun, too. ”Iterations” has also a fascinating idea.
The stories all have a strong central idea. Often, the main character is written in the first person and they aren’t too different from each other. The atmosphere of the stories varies a lot from a detective story to regret about things the MC has done in the past to an MC killing gleefully.
"Identity theft" was apparently expanded to a novel, Red Planet Blues, and I’m very curious to read it.
April 20, 2020
The last Sawyer short story anthology, and this one he also included the short stories that eventually rewrote in to full novels.
Of these stories he wrote the short story based on Red Planet Blues. it's a story of a detective in a Mars colony who is solving a murder, lots of twists and turns and a bit wordy. I must admit I did not like the novel, and felt similar to the short story. But the ending was a better tightly written piece.
Read these stories they are a lot of fun. Sawyer is one of my favorite sf authors for a reason.
Of these stories he wrote the short story based on Red Planet Blues. it's a story of a detective in a Mars colony who is solving a murder, lots of twists and turns and a bit wordy. I must admit I did not like the novel, and felt similar to the short story. But the ending was a better tightly written piece.
Read these stories they are a lot of fun. Sawyer is one of my favorite sf authors for a reason.
December 22, 2025
I tend to like short story collections, and I'd say 25% of them had the old time science fiction feel, but none felt outdated - dinosaurs/aliens/time travel, at times with a Phillip K Dick feel. I'd say I didn't really enjoy 2 stories, but the rest were a nice read
November 6, 2019
Another great read!
RJ Sawyer has a way of making the extraordinary definable and digestible for the masses! If you love space, dinosaurs, intelligence, action, deep meaningful characters with palpable relationships and creativity that seems stolen from glances at other worlds... Friend, go buy not only this book but also Earth and Space for the complete trilogy of short stories this book is a part of. Murder mystery.
What are you still doing here.... Go get some!
RJ Sawyer has a way of making the extraordinary definable and digestible for the masses! If you love space, dinosaurs, intelligence, action, deep meaningful characters with palpable relationships and creativity that seems stolen from glances at other worlds... Friend, go buy not only this book but also Earth and Space for the complete trilogy of short stories this book is a part of. Murder mystery.
What are you still doing here.... Go get some!
October 13, 2022
The stories ranged from good to excellent, all felt well thought out. Well worth reading!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews