By Robert J. Sawyer

I’m experiencing cognitive dissonance related to FlashForward. My novel is all about seeing the future, but I find myself constantly flashing back to the past as I think about it.

See, although there’s a TV series based on my book debuting Thursday, September 24, 2009, I finished writing the novel back in 1998 (and Tor published it in June 1999).

Over the past decade, I’d forgotten much of what the book said. I never re-read my novels after they’re published, but, since I’m a consultant on the FlashForward TV series (and writing an episode myself), I broke with tradition and recently read FlashForward again.

To tell the truth, it was never one of my favorites (of all my books, Factoring Humanity is the one I think most fondly of). This has nothing to do with the actual book, but rather with how I felt when I wrote it, and, for reasons I no longer remember, I hadn’t enjoyed working on FlashForward much.

But others knew FlashForward was special right off the bat. It earned me my first-ever starred review in Publishers Weekly, denoting a book of exceptional merit. And Vince Gerardis, my Hollywood agent, was so enthusiastic about FlashForward that he actually talked me into turning down a film-rights offer from a major Hollywood studio because he felt it was destined for even bigger things.

In this case, my agent was certainly better at predicting the future than I was! By all accounts, FlashForward is the hottest prospect on the American TV schedule this fall, and I’m absolutely thrilled that we waited until Vince was able to put together the right deal.

Still, in defense of my own abilities at foretelling the future, I will observe that the one thing I’ve received the most email about in my entire career is a mention in FlashForward that by 2009, the Pope’s name will be Benedict XVI. People constantly wonder if I had a flashforward of my own enabling me to get that right.

I’m thrilled with the job David Goyer, Jessika Goyer, Brannon Braga, and Marc Guggenheim have done with adapting my novel. Of course, they’ve made some changes; that’s to be expected. But there’s one I’m quite fond of: the FlashForward date in the TV series has been moved from the April 21, 2009, I specified in the book to April 29, 2010—my fiftieth birthday!

And, you know what? On re-reading the novel after a decade, I was, if I may be so bold as to say this, very pleased. And I hope you will be, too.

(from the Tor/Forge August 2009 newsletter)