Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 106

Released

The Turkish government is now using last week’s coup as a bridgehead toward complete control of the country’s education system. 1500 university deans have been ordered to resign, and the licenses of 21,000 teachers have been revoked. These teachers mostly worked at private institutions, many of which had been founded by the Gülen organization as part of its educational mission. The government knows who the Gülenists are, because when the AK/Gülen alliance was in effect, the government helped...

Saving Great Britain

After the Brexit vote, it’s clear that Great Britain is in danger and needs saving! Eric Idle and her majesty Elizabeth II did it before, and maybe it’s time for another teamup.

Worst. Possible. Result.

So a couple days ago there was a military coup in Turkey. And that coup has failed. Which is the worst possible result. Much worse than if the coup hadn’t happened, worse than if the coup had succeeded. Prior to the election of Erdogan and his AK Party in 2003, Turkey was under the thumb of the Deep State (derin devlet), a creepy alliance of politicians, military figures, and mafia whose chief ideological task was to keep the reins of power (and of money) in their own hands, and to make sure...

Straight Face

I’m up on a mountain along with Nancy Kress, helping fourteen very talented new writers hone their craft, and so I’ve been very busy. But I’m not totally out of touch, and I was as surprised and baffled as anyone when Britain’s new PM appointed Boris Johnson* as foreign minister. If you want to start your day with a smile, check out this video of the State Department spokesman trying to keep a straight face when responding to the news. *(Mr Johnson is an odd choice for head diplomat, having o...

Lord Nelson in Spaaaaaace!

Today is the release day for my friend David D. Levine’s first novel,Arabella of Mars. The story features the Napoleonic Wars fought between planets by a sailing navy, and showcases a young heroine described as“a Patrick O’Brian girl fighting a Jane Austen world.” David talks more about the book and its concepts over on Scalzi’s blog. If you’re into swashbuckling, cross dressing heroines, classic interpretations of Mars, and Jules Verne-type scientific romances, this is one you should definit...

Crescent Moon Kingdom

I’ve finished the novel. (Yay!) But all that means is that I have to finish reading and critiquing 140,000 words of fiction for the Taos Toolbox workshop, which starts on Sunday. (Yay?) So I am still buried in work, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy this photo of the crescent moon at sunset, taken a couple nights ago.

Billionaires in Spaaaaace!

I’m still on a mad rush to finish the novel, so I thought I’d pose a question for you all, and let you do the work of filling up this blog space. A number of American billionaires (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Paul Allen, and Robert Bigelow, for starters) plus one highly-leveraged Brit (Sir Richard Branson) have started up their own space programs. We in the States tend to approve of this (free enterprise on the final frontier, yeah!), but I wonder what we’d think of private space programs were bei...

The Final Hours

We’re down to the last hours of the 99-cent sale onVoice of the Whirlwind, so if you want an inexpensive ebook with a preposterous number of five-star reviews, now’s your chance. Check out the linksatAmazon,Google,Smashwords,Barnes & Noble,iBooks, andKobo.

Super. Liminal.

I’m still slogging through the final pieces of the book, trying to mop up the subplots in something resembling an organized manner. But you don’t have to wait for my new work to be published, you can read something by meright now in Lightspeed Magazine! Admittedly “Surfacing” is a novella that’s decades old, and that you may already have on your hard drive, but it’s one of my best, and there’s alot more to this issue, like stories by Genevieve Valentine, Lochita Loenin-Ruiz, Ted Kosmatka, Jil...

Struggle

I’m fully engaged in trying to finish a novel, while also preparing for this year’s Taos Toolbox, so I’ve not been posting much here. I recently came across a quote from Vladimir Nabokov: “In a first-rate work of fiction the real clash is not between the characters but between the author and the world.” I’m inclined to agree with him, but what do you think?