Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 124
June 20, 2015
“. . . And They Is Us.”
John Stewart, rocked back on his heels by the horrific events in Charleston, improvising, and unable to come up with a single joke, nevertheless manages more coherence and resolution than I could, even when I have time to prepare. Which is why he’s the TV star and I, obviously, am not. Not that I feel like joking or anything. And it’s not like the thing is new, or even unusual, or something that belongs in another age. I remember Bill Clinton’s speech back in the mid-Nineties, when something...
June 19, 2015
Waterloo
So we find ourselves on the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. More than marking the end of Napoleon’s great adventure, the battle gave Europe 100 years of peace. Not that there weren’t wars now and then, but there was nothing that tore apart the social order and massacred a whole generation the way Napoleon or Wilhelm II did. On the other hand, the war and the Congress of Vienna froze in place a number of European autocracies that required war and revolution to overthrow, somethin...
June 17, 2015
Saintly Repose
Behold, it is the corpus of St. Celestini— taking a rest, I guess, from his holy labors in the apse of the cathedral in St.-Malo, where I encountered him last autumn. I have been unable to find out anything about St. Celestini— there is a St. Celestine, but he was a pope and was buried in Rome, and there’s no papal tiara or other paraphernalia to indicate that these are the remains of the Vicar of Christ. Celestini seems very well preserved, though it’s possible that this is an effigy and the...
June 14, 2015
Scribble Scribble Scribble (eh, Mr. Williams?)
I will be signing copies of my story in the new collectionThe Change, edited by S.M. Stirling,on Monday, June 15, at 7pm, at theViolet Crown Cinema, 1606 Alcaldesa St., Santa Fe, 87501. I’ll be there alongside colleagues Diana Paxson, Jane Lindskold, John Jos. Miller, Emily Mah, M.T. Reitan, Keir Salmon, Victor Milán, S.M. Stirling, and Lauren Teffeau. The event was originally announced for George R.R. Martin’s theater, the Jean Cocteau, but scheduling with Steven Spielberg didn’t work out or...
June 10, 2015
Signals from Fred
In critique, “Signal from Fred” is shorthand for those moments in a text in which the author’s subconscious issues a cry for help, usually by pointing out that the action doesn’t make any sense. A character might say, “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it!” or “This was unbelievable!” or “I can’t make any sense of what’s going on!” All leakage from a mind disturbed by a plot gone terribly, terribly wrong. I recently encountered an entire chapter in which Fred was signaling like mad...
June 9, 2015
Not The Magi You Were Expecting
Stained glass from the church atSainte-Mère-Église, showing American paratroopers dropping to the rescue of Mary and Baby Jesus. As surprise attacks go, I’m guessing this one was successful.
June 7, 2015
Nemesis In the House
Nemesis Games, the new book by my pal James S.A. Corey, appeared a couple days ago. I’ve been reading it, and it’s a winner, which I know because I’m having a hard time putting it down. This is the fifth book inThe Expanse,the first book of which isLeviathan Wakes, so you should probably start there. It’s smart space opera, with an extremely complex and well-worked out future, and with well-developed characters who act not from an excess of genius or self-righteousness, but from a complex mix...
June 3, 2015
99 Cents
My 99-cent sale ofTo Glory Arise ended a few days ago, and was a success. It reached #21 on Barnes & Noble, and #52 on Amazon . . . though, as is normal with these kind of promotions, it retained those numbers for less than a day. Because action-adventure sells better than SF, To Glory Arise sold better than any of my science fiction, though not as well asThe Rift,which is my biggest seller and still going strong. But though the numbers were good (for my work, anyway), the follow-through was...
June 2, 2015
Time for a Change
May I recommend to you my new story, “The Venetian Dialectic,” to be found inThe Change, a brand-new anthology edited by S.M. Stirling? The story takes place in Steve’s Emberverse, in which he’s been writing for damn near 20 years now. In order to understand the story, you need only to know that in this alternate world, all advanced technology ceased to work back in 1998, and the planet was thrown back to the tech of the late Middle Ages. In addition to Steve and myself, the anthology feature...
Family
So what good is family, exactly? Raising children, obviously, and caring for the elderly; establishing a financial and property arrangement to the benefit of all members; providing emotional support, a loving and safe environment; a sensible division of labor. All of which is to some degree supported and regulated by law. But what’s the point of familyin fiction? Well, you could be writing a novel about family, in which case a family should be right there center stage. But families in family...
