text: ROBERT J. SAWYER is one of only seven writers in history to win all three of the world's top awards for best science-fiction novel of the year: the Hugo (which he won for Hominids), the Nebula (which he won for The Terminal Experiment), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (which he won for Mindscan). The ABC TV series FlashForward is based on his novel of the same name.
  
  In total, Rob has won forty-three national and international awards for his fiction, including ten Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards ("Auroras") and the Toronto Public Library Celebrates Reading Award, one of Canada's most significant literary honors. He's also won Analog magazine's Analytical Laboratory Award, Science Fiction Chronicle magazine's Reader Award, and the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award, all for best short story of the year, as well as the Collectors Award for Most Collectable Author of the Year, as selected by the clientele of Barry R. Levin Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature, the world's leading SF rare-book dealer.
  
  Rob has won the world's largest cash prize for SF writing, Spain's 6,000-euro Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción, an unprecedented three times. He's also won a trio of Japanese Seiun awards for best foreign novel of the year, as well as China's Galaxy Award for "Most Popular Foreign Science Fiction Writer." In addition, he's received an honorary doctorate from Laurentian University and the Alumni Award of Distinction from Ryerson University.
  
  Rob's books are top-ten national mainstream bestsellers in Canada and have hit number one on the bestsellers' list published by Locus, the American trade journal of the SF field. Quill & Quire, the Canadian publishing trade journal, included him as one of only three authors on its list of "The CanLit 30: The Most Influential, Innovative, and Just Plain Powerful People in Canadian Publishing." Rob hosts the TV series Supernatural Investigator for Canada's VisionTV. He lives in Mississauga, Ontario, with poet Carolyn Clink, his wife of twenty-five years.
  
  Rob has been online since 1983; used to be a system operator for the pioneering online service CompuServe; was a regular contributor in the 1980s to ProFiles, the magazine for KayPro computer users; has one of the world's oldest blogs; and is widely recognized as having been the first science-fiction writer to have a website. That site, which contains more than one million words of material, including a bookclub discussion guide for this novel, is at sfwriter.com.
  
  New in hardcover from award-winning author
  
  ROBERT J. SAWYER
  
  WATCH
  
  Webmind is an emerging consciousness that has befriended Caitlin Decter and grown eager to learn about her world. But Webmind has also come to the attention of WATCH—the secret government agency that monitors the Internet for any threat to the United States—and the agents are fully aware of Caitlin's involvement in its awakening.
  
  WATCH is convinced that Webmind represents a risk to national security and wants it purged from cyberspace. But Caitlin believes in Webmind's capacity for compassion—and she will do anything and everything necessary to protect her friend.
  
  Read on for an excerpt…