Robert J Sawyer Chats with CINESCAPE - Part One

By: Chris Wyatt
Date: Saturday, July 13, 2002

Here's how a normal book signing goes: Everyone stands in a nice orderly line while the latest hot author mechanically autographs one volume after another, smiling thinly at the parade of readers who march passed.

Now here's how a Robert J Sawyer book signing goes: A casual group gathers in a chaotic crowd with Sawyer at the nucleus. Sawyer does sign a lot of books, but the readers don't line up, and they don't leave quickly. They just kind of mingle together in a crowd, debating issues and talking about stories.

Sawyer calls out questions like, "So, what's everybody been reading lately?" and the gaggle of responses spins off myriad coversations.

"That's how we move forward," the author says at one point, looking around the room. "We do it through good, healthy discussion."

The atmosphere that Sawyer creates at his book signings is the same one that he creates in his fiction: entertaining, social backdrops where issues can be hashed out.

One of the issues in his latest book, HOMINIDS, is violence against women. The book centers on Ponter Bobbit, an evolved Neanderthal scientist transported to our Earth from a parallel world where Neanderthals, not Homo Sapiens, survived and evolved to run the planet.

Ponter's visit is seen through the eyes of Mary, a Homo Sapien Earth scientist who has to learn to trust an exaggerated Neanderthal male despite her own recent rape.

The scene, early in the novel, where Mary gets raped is the "most talked about scene in the book". It's visceral, graphic nature has inspired passionate letters from several readers.

"The letters have been from two sides of the issue," remarks Sawyer. "Both from those who found it offensive and from those who felt it was an important treatment of a serious issue."

So why did the author decide to include such controversial segment? During an exclusive interview with CINESCAPE, the author explained his position.

"First, I'd like to point out that the scene is only 400 words in the whole book, so it's four tenths of one percent of the hundred thousand-word book," begins Sawyer.

"Now, why is it so graphic? I think that everything in the book is graphic. With all of the descriptions I strive to appeal to the five senses. I try to make every image vivid in the novel."

"I didn't want to soft pedal anything in the book, so I didn't want to treat the rape any differently. There's the exact same degree of sensory information given in the scene near the end where Mary and Ponter are running to get back to the mine in time [as there is in the rape]."

"As a writer I thought, I should face [sexual assult] with the detail I would face any other issue. So much of the novel hinges on the fact that Mary is recovering from the rape. Her character is informed by it. The idea of male violence, which is, in a large measure, the theme of the novel, is encapsulated by it."

"I could have held back. I could have just used rape as a card that I put out on the table. But it seemed to me [that such an approach would] cheapen it. I perfered to accurately depict just how devastating the act is."

"The whole scene is from Mary's point of view and shows how Mary is made to feel by this crime, a crime which is committed routinely all over the world by...hundreds of thousands of males everyday. I wanted to show just how shattering it is for the woman, since Mary is the main character."

"There's going to be a scene in the next book that will get me equal amounts of letters. Without giving too much away, in HUMANS which is the sequel to HOMINIDS, there's a very graphic sex scene when Mary and Ponter [make love] for the first time and there's the same level of detail as the rape scene."

"I know that people are going to say: 'Couldn't you have done the literary equivalent of panning up to the lights or something?' But when I was thinking of the series as a whole I knew that I was going to have a graphically unpleasant sex scene which I felt strongly that I needed in order to set up Mary's emotional journey in the novel. So then why cheat when, for Mary, the sex is wonderful, which it is when she sleeps with Ponter?"

"It would be misogynist for me to write in detail when Mary is having a terrible time in a violent sexual situation... but then to gloss over it when she's having a great time. So I had to make it equally graphic on both sides."

Check back in with us next Friday for part two of CINESCAPE'S chat with Robert J Sawyer. We'll talk with the author about his other work, including the upcoming sequels to HOMINIDS