Robert James Sawyer is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 writer. He has had 20 novels published, and his short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine. As of 2011, it is the longest running continuously published magazine of that genre...

, Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories

Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...

, On Spec

On Spec

On Spec is a digest-sized, perfect-bound, Canadian quarterly magazine publishing stories and poetry in science fiction, fantasy, and allied genres broadly grouped under the "speculative ficton" umbrella. Based in Edmonton, Alberta, On Spec was founded in 1989 by a small group of Edmonton writers...

, Nature

Nature (journal)

Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

, and many anthologies. Sawyer has won over forty awards for his fiction, including the Nebula Award

Nebula Award

The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...

 (1995), the Hugo Award

Hugo Award

The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...

 (2003), and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (2006).

Sawyer was born in Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

 and is now a resident of Mississauga.
Sawyer's work frequently explores the intersection between science and religion, with rationalism

Rationalism

In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...

 frequently winning out over mysticism

Mysticism

Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

 (see especially Far-Seer

Far-Seer

Far-Seer is a novel written by Canadian science fiction author, Robert J. Sawyer. It is the first book of the Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy, and is followed by two sequels: Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner...

, The Terminal Experiment, Calculating God, and the three volumes of the Neanderthal Parallax [Hominids, Humans, and Hybrids], plus the short story "The Abdication of Pope Mary III," originally published in Nature, July 6, 2000).

He has a great fondness for paleontology, as evidenced in his Quintaglio Ascension trilogy

Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy

The Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy is a series of award-winning novels written by acclaimed Canadian science fiction author, Robert J. Sawyer...

 (Far-Seer, Fossil Hunter, and Foreigner), about an alien world to which dinosaurs from Earth were transplanted, and his time-travel novel End of an Era.