Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 113

Reviews in the Nick of Time: Hail, Caesar!

Hail, Caesar is a love letter from the Coen Brothers to Old Hollywood, and if you’re a fan of old movies, this is the movie they made just for you. The film is even better if you have any memories of Esther Williams flicks, hokey Victor Mature historical epics, and anything with singing cowboys and/or Carmen Miranda. And hey, the star power! George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Jonah Hill, Francis McDormand, Channing Tatum, and Alden Eh...

Toolbox: the Video

A friend of the workshop, indiepub guru E.M. Tippetts, has created this awesome promotional video for Taos Toolbox. Because a picture is worth 1000 words. And she did this totally on her own, without my asking even. Now how cool is that?

Newer. Prettier. But the Same.

I’ve been engaged in the detail work of bringing my ebooks up to the modern standard, modern being “2016” as opposed to “2012.” Which is to say they look prettier, are better organized, have functioning tables of contents, and almost entirely up-to-date clickable lists of my other works, so that you can find them and buy them very easily, nearly without having to think, which is sort of the point. Don’t think, just buy! (Clickable links not available at Smashwords or Google, for technical rea...

Touching on the Toolbox

There are still some places left at Taos Toolbox, the master class for writers of science fiction and fantasy. If you’re a workshop veteran and missing the workshop community, or someone who’s sold some work and stalled, or someone who hasn’t sold anything at all but is serious about your career, you owe it to yourself to apply. This year is offering the collective publishing wisdom of instructors Nancy Kress and Walter Jon Williams, indiepub guru E.M. Tippetts, and James S.A. Corey, author o...

Turtle Tag

Turtles. Because they’re awesome. Last year on Maui, we were diving Lahaina Pier, and there was this little turtle, maybe a foot across, that was kind of swooping in and around and playing tag with us. And then the guide pointed out something, and we got interested in that, and the turtle got more and more frantic as it circled around, because we’d stopped paying attention to it. Just like a little kid. Older turtles are more sedate, but I always get the impression that we bore them a lot fas...

Genres Extinct

My recent post about Nevil Shute set me thinking about literary genres, and their rise and fall. Shute’s own particular niche is pretty well dead— not a lot of stories about zeppelins or epic aircraft flights being written these days. But Shute’s in good company. For example, I think we can safely say that the Homeric epic is dead. At one point producing a long narrative poem was a writer’s best chance of getting a Nobel Prize, particularly if it could be considered anational epic, a poem def...

Happy Weekend

Have a great weekend! And wherever you are, I hope you’re having at least much fun as these guys.

End-of-the-Month Sale

The fine folks at Kobo are offering every ebook in the store at 50% off through January 31. Just use the promo codeJAN1650. The best part of this is that authors still get full royalties. CHA-CHING! Here’s the link to my own immortal works. Or if you want someone else’s less-immortal works, you can click from my page to someone else’s. (Note: What if you don’t happen to have a Kobo readers? No problem! Kobo sells books in .epub format, which you can read the books with free readers like iBoo...

Swimming With Sharks

Another photo by Troy, this of a nurse shark taking a nap under a piece of sheltering coral. Contrary to myth, sharks do in fact sleep, though sometimes it’s hard to tell, because they can’t close their eyes. The shark’s man-eating reputation, despite what you’ve seen on Shark Week, is ridiculously exaggerated. People just don’t look like anything a shark would want to eat, and besides, we all taste of neoprene. On this last trip sharks were always cruising around, so many that I got bored wi...

Mr. Norway

Some of you may have noticed that I contributed to a discussion of hard vs. soft science fiction over at Tor.com. One of the things I’ve noticed about so-called hard SF is that a lot of it isn’t all that hard— the science is often extremely speculative or sometimes even non-existent— but the label attaches anyway, because of the book’sattitude toward the science. The science, and the problems the science causes or solves, is front and center, and the characters have to work within a rigorous...