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“… I thought there really was a very interesting scenario that if you got an (anti-Muslim) into the White House, what reaction would he have if Canada had, and I think very plausibly in a few years, a (Muslim prime minister)?”

A year ago, Sawyer would have never believed Trump had a chance of ascending to the presidency. It was just too far-fetched, even for a sci-fi novel. While the prospect frightens him, it now also seems like a bit of a missed opportunity for the author.

“There’s this ramp up period when you do a book,” Sawyer says. “You finish it and it goes through a process. If I had until Feb. 29 to polish the text, I would have made it President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Naheed Nenshi.”

Rather than invent a politician to become our prime minister, Sawyer liked the fact that Nenshi was a ready-made “case in point” for the argument that Canada could very well have a practising Muslim heading our government in the near future. (Nenshi, for his part, did not respond to the Herald’s request for a statement about Sawyer promoting him to PM. But in a statement to Postmedia earlier this month about the novel, he said: “While I didn’t know this book was coming, I’m certainly familiar with Mr. Sawyer’s work I’m curious to see how the story goes.”)

Anyone familiar with Sawyer’s writing knows that he generally goes to great lengths to make his flights of imagination seem plausible, whether they are dealing with aliens, alternative realities, advancements in artificial intelligence or new discoveries in human consciousness. As with most of his novels, there’s an emphasis on the science part of science-fiction in Quantum Night. It mixes the seemingly far-flung disciplines of psychopathology and quantum physics into a tale that takes a fresh look at well-worn questions about the nature of evil.