Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 121

Mr. Dreyfus, Your Ride is Here

Ride the Now! (For only 99 Cents!)

For a mere 99 cents, you can now purchase my novelAngel Station at Amazon, Google Play, iBooks, Kobo, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. It’ll be available at Flipkart as soon as the word gets to India, preferably soon, As always, ebooks I publish myself are DRM free. The sale will run through the 23rd, but Ubu sez you might as well click the links and pick it up now. If you’re unfamiliar with the novel, check out the essay I wrote about it, or stay tuned for the cover copy: ORPHANS OF DEEP SPAC...

Bad Lands

Heading West again, by easy stages, and have viewed Badlands National Park. The geological layers are so regular that the terrain looks crosshatched. I’m currently in the Black Hills, hoping to strike gold.

Brisk

The weather got a bitbrisk this morning as I went for a sail on the good sloopAmicus,out of Knife River. Half the passengers got seasick, but I was in the other half. The boat was bounding about so much that half my photos are of the sea, the sky, or the sails. I couldn’t keep anything in frame long enough to snap a picture. I did get soaked and very, very cold, but I had a great time anyway. Thanks to skipper Mark and mate Dan for a good time. South of us there was a big fogbank stretching o...

Another Meteor

The US Patent Office has approved Airbus’ application for Concord 2.0,an “ultra-rapid air vehicle and related method for aerial locomotion”. In other words, a commercial aircraft capable of reaching 100,000 feet, after which the ramjets will kick in and the vehicle will approach Mach 4.5. The 2.0 will take off vertically, like the space shuttle, and passengers will be in hammocklike webbing for the trip. (Paris to New York, one hour.) Airbus says the designfeatures “concepts and ideas in a ve...

Behold the Mighty Meteor!

Behold theSS Meteor, at 119 years old the sole surviving whaleback freighter, and now in Superior, WI, moored in, um, mud apparently. (I actually took these pictures a couple weeks ago, but haven’t got around to looking at them till now.) My interest in anachronistic technology led me to view this glorious Victorian creation, which actually served on the Great Lakes from 1896 until 1969. The whaleback ships were invented by uncanny Gaelic engineer Alexander MacDougal, who built them on his ow...

The Weekend

Here’s your pretty sunset picture for the day. Have a lovely weekend!

The Return . . .

So you all said you wanted more Caroline Sula, the heroine of the Praxis novels. I wrote “Investments,” which featured co-protagonists Martinez and Severin, and you all said, “Thanks, Walter, that was very nice, butwe want more Sula!“ Well, I hope to heck you all meant what you said, because I’ve just sold “Impersonations” to the new novella line at Tor.com, and it’s all Sula, lots of Sula, doing Sula-type things. Sula, you may remember, was assigned to Earth at the conclusion ofConventions o...

Superior Moon

Here we view Lake Superior beneath a (nearly) full moon. The first part of my road trip was full of frenzied travel, the second filled with visits to relatives, and now I’m on my own and kicking back. I’ve rented a one-bedroom “condo” with a kitchen, and tonight I roasted myself a chicken, ate it with a tossed salad and some pasta, and stared out the door at the lake till the sun went down. I expect the leftovers will last me several days. I also went for a trail hike today— the first real ex...

Wisdom from the Marmot

If you’re at least as smart as your average marmot, you’ll want to subscribe to my newsletter and get a free Hugo- and Nebula-nominated ebook! Now I call that equitable! (If you’re already a subscriber, you’ve already received an email offering the ebook, so you won’t have to join all over again.)