Author Robert J. Sawyer writes with news of a donation and a conference:

In honour of the donation of Robert J. Sawyer’s papers and archives to McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, that institution is hosting an academic conference entitled “Science Fiction: The Interdisciplinary Genre” Friday, September 13, through Sunday, September 15, 2013.

Special guests at the conference are Hugo Award-winning author Robert J. Sawyer, Order of Canada member John Robert Colombo, Aurora Award-winning author Julie E. Czerneda, Hugo Award-winning editor David G. Hartwell, Aurora Award-winning author Élisabeth Vonarburg, Hugo Award-winning author Robert Charles Wilson, and Chris Szego of Bakka Phoenix Books.

This is sure to be the largest academic conference about science fiction in Canada in 2013, and the biggest academic conference on Canadian science fiction ever held. The conference will be open to the general public.

Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Robert J. Sawyer has called science fiction “the literature of intriguing juxtapositions,” and so it is, combining a wide range of disciplines including anthropology, astronomy, computer science, evolutionary biology, gender studies, history, literature, philosophy, psychology, religious studies, and sociology.

We’re interested in papers from all academic areas, with a focus on Canadian science fiction in general and Sawyer’s oeuvre in particular.

The call for papers is in this article. The conference is being chaired by McMaster professors Nicholas Serruys and C. Annette Grisé. For more information, contact Prof. Serruys at serruys [at] mcmaster [dot] ca or 905-525-9140, ext. 23756.

Sawyer’s archives will be housed and displayed alongside McMaster’s massive collection of Bertrand Russell material, its large H.G. Wells collection, and its extensive archival holdings in Canadian literature, including the papers of Pierre Berton, John Robert Colombo, Margaret Laurence, Farley Mowat, and publisher Jack McClelland.