Author Robert J. Sawyer posts his hard-boiled detective novella “Identity Theft” online

Thanks to the generosity of Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer, you can read his novella “Identity Theft” for free online. Originally published in the anthology Down These Dark Spaceways (2005), “Identity Theft” is a hard-boiled detective story set on Mars. The opening lines:

The door to my office slid open. "Hello," I said, rising from my chair. "You must be my nine o'clock." I said it as if I had a ten o'clock and an eleven o'clock, but I didn't. The whole Martian economy was in a slump, and, even though I was the only private detective on Mars, this was the first new case I'd had in weeks. ...

The story was reprinted in Sawyer’s collection Identity Theft and Other Stories (2008), which has been nominated for an Aurora Award. The Aurora Awards -- Canada’s top SF awards -- will be announced at Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in Montreal in August 2009.

Thanks to the blogs QuasarDragon and SF Signal for the tip.