Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 128

Submariniana

Here’s a mother humpback whale breaching, while her calf waves a fin good-bye. We had to head for port before this pair became really active, and they started jumping once we were too far away to really get a good view. This was a formal whale watching cruise, sort of a disappointment because the whales were given to “logging,” which is pretty much what it sounds like. I’d seen much more active whales from the dive boat on the preceding couple of days, and I’d been expecting a bit more specta...

Geocontest

I’m on the road again, so posting may be erratic. But my question to you all is,Where am I?
Anyone guessing where the above picture was taken will win free downloads of the audio books for all three Praxis books. Begin . . .now!

Cape Sounion

Here’s another photo from my long-ago trip to Greece, of sunrise at the temple to Poseidon on Cape Sounion, at the end of the Attic peninsula. I took the bus out to Sounion, bought a ticket, viewed the ruin— which is perhaps the most perfect small temple ever built— and then had souvlaki in a seaside cafe. I had a bathe, and met two Second World War vets who’d been in the underground. One showed me the scars from a German machine pistol, which stitched him from his right shoulder across his b...

Secret Masters

So for years, when visiting Santa Fe, I’ve been driving past a giant pink Moorish castle, and wondering what went on inside. For the place was Santa Fe’s Scottish Rite Temple, where met the Secret Masters of Whatever It Is They’re Secret Masters Of.
The other day, for the first time in history, the temple was opened to the public in a kind of open house. So I hied myself thither to check out the scene.
I’ve always had a modest interest in Freemasonry, partially on account of a couple literary p...

Analog Me

I’m in search of lost time, as Proust might put it. I’ve got a closet full of slide carousels documenting my various travels through the multiverse, and I’ve just bought a scanner/converter to bring them all into the digital age. So for the last few days I have been soaking in nostalgia for the lost worlds of my youth.
Here I am, barely out of my teens, on the island of Hvar, trying to hitchhike down the Dalmatian coast, which is hard because there’s no road, and you have to flag down a boat....

The Multiverse on Sale!

Implied Spacesis now on sale for $0.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.
It’ssupposed to be on sale at iBooks, but for some reason Apple seems not to have got the word. This situation may be corrected by the time you read this, however.
The book was originally published on such a garbled schedule that most of my readers never found it. If you haven’t encountered the book before, consider this your invitation.

Lessons for Writers: Dr. Funkenstein

I’ve been enjoying the autobiography of George Clinton, with its somehow perfect title,Brothas Be, YO Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You?
I really didn’t follow Parliament/Funkadelic back in the day, for various reasons. I liked my rock and roll more straight up. P-Funk was so prolific, with its various incarnations— Parliament, Funkadelic, P-Funk, the Rubber Band, P-Funk All Stars, Brides of Funkenstein, the Horny Horns, etc.— coming out with on the order of six LPs per year, t...

Bloody Jane

“From this period, the intimacy between the Families of Fitzroy, Drummond and Falknor, daily increased till at length it grew to such a pitch, that they did not scruple to kick one another out of the window on the slightest provocation.”
Who was it, d’ye think, that wrote such an elegantly balanced Augustan sentence, and with such a sting in its tail?
Here’s another sample:
“Lovely and too charming Fair one, notwithstanding your forbidding Squint, your greasy tresses and your swelling Back, whic...

Skunked

More details about the fusion reactor being developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, courtesy ofAviation Week.
“We would like to get to a prototype in five generations. If we can meet our plan of doing a design-build-test generation every year, that will put us at about five years, and we’ve already shown we can do that in the lab.” The prototype would demonstrate ignition conditions and the ability to run for upward of 10 sec. in a steady state after the injectors, which will be used to ig...

To the Moon, Alice!

If Paul Allen builds it, it will fly.
The world’s largest aircraft, with a wingspan wider than a football field is long. Longer even than the Hughes Spruce Goose, which is still the largest to date.