RASC, Mississauga Centre: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Black Holes, and Project Orion (ONLINE)

Speaker: Robert Sawyer, Science Fiction Writer, Best Novel Hugo and Nebula Award Winner

Bestselling futurist Robert J. Sawyer has been called “Canada’s answer to Michael Crichton” by The Toronto Star and “a writer of boundless confidence and bold scientific extrapolation” by The New York Times.

Now he turns his keen eye back on the past in this, the 75th-anniversary year of the birth of the atomic age. His 24th novel, The Oppenheimer Alternative, tells the secret history of physicists behind The Manhattan Project, the desperate effort to create the world’s first atomic bomb.

As J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of that project, famously observed after the first A-bomb exploded, “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” And, in our reality, that remained his legacy.

But in the “What if?” vein of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, Sawyer’s novel veers cleverly into alternate-history territory. Oppie and his colleagues — including Edward Teller (the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove), flamboyant Richard Feynman, Leo Szilard, Kurt Go¨del, and Enrico Fermi — join forces with Albert Einstein, ex-Nazi rocketeer Wernher von Braun and computing pioneer John von Neumann to try to save our planet from impending ecological doom. If they succeed, they’ll be able to declare, “Now we have become Life, the saviors of our world.”

Robert J. Sawyer is one of only eight writers ever to win all three of the world’s top awards for best science-fiction novel of the year: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He has also won the Robert A. Heinlein Award, the Edward E. Smith Memorial Award, and the Hal Clement Memorial Award; the top SF awards in China, Japan, France, and Spain; and a record-setting sixteen Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“Auroras”). His latest novel—his 24th—is The Oppenheimer Alternative.

Rob’s novel FlashForward was the basis for the ABC TV series of the same name, and he was a scriptwriter for that program. He also scripted the two-part finale for the popular web series Star Trek Continues.

He is a Member of the Order of Canada, the highest honor bestowed by the Canadian government, as well as the Order of Ontario, the highest honor given by his home province; he was also one of the initial inductees into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Rob lives just outside Toronto. His website and blog are at sfwriter.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Patreon he’s RobertJSawyer.

· Website: https://sfwriter.com
· Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/robertjsawyer
· Facebook: https://facebook.com/robertjsawyer
· Twitter: https://twitter.com/robertjsawyer (@RobertJSawyer)

More about The Oppenheimer Alternative is here: https://sfwriter.com/exoa.htm

Who can attend: Everyone
Fee: Free
Registration: Not required
Organized by: RASC, Mississauga Centre
Link: Zoom

http://earthshineastronomy.ca/events/2020/09/11/rasc-mississauga-centre-meeting