Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 140

Stuff On The Market

So here we have Gaby Moreno, Hugh Laurie, and the rest of the Copper Bottom Band performing “The Weed Smoker’s Dream” with the original lyrics. Hugh Laurie does some fooling about after the song is over. The video is amateur and pretty well looks it.
Originally recorded by the Harlem Hamfats in 1936, the song with cleaned-up lyrics and a new title (“Why Don’t You Do Right”) later became a big hit for Lil Green (with a guitar solo by Big Bill Broonzy). When Peggy Lee was later singing with the...

Rewriting

Hear the agonized cries of the science fiction writers who, on release of a new paper by Stephen Hawking, must now revise the fundamentals of their future world.

Virtual Tee

We’re down to the last 24 hours of Toolbox, and Nancy’s been busy on her collection of Great Moments of Critique. Which I am now going to steal.
Some of these, maybe, depend heavily on context.
“You need to get more involved with the characters who are dead.”

“I didn’t know we were in Hell–I thought it was a recycling plant in Denver.”

“I loved the extra ears.”

“There is too much slurping.”

“Where are the bikers and crackheads?”
“I don’t want to read too much about aliens munching fingers.”
“I have p...

Plot Array

The most valuable card used in breaking the plot of your next work.

Fantasy Casting

Since I’m still up the mountain at Toolbox, I keep trying ways to make you do my blogging work for me. So here’s the latest!
If you were making a movie out of my Dagmar books, who would you cast?
Bear in mind that I didn’t describe many of the central characters. Dagmar is in her thirties and has prematurely gray hair, and that’s the only description I ever gave. She could be practically any ethnicity. Who should play her?
Helmuth is blond and Germanic. Richard the Assassin is young and olive-sk...

Prismatics

Double rainbow over Taos Ski Valley, as seen at dusk last night. At moments it became a triple rainbow, but the third was so faint that it never registered on my camera.
An ephemeral loveliness that caused the whole world to stop, take a breath, and admire.

That’s Entertainment!

I’ll be on the mountain for another six nights or so, doing my Taos Toolbox thing, so you might as well look somewhere else for entertainment. I’d like to suggest reading the new novel by my buddy Jimmy Corey,Cib0la Burn. The latest in Jimmy’sExpanse series, it’s a corking good extraplanetary adventure, and I think it’s damned good.
Of course it’s from Orbit, which is to say Hachette . . . so if you want an actual paper book printed between cardboard covers, you’ll have to buy it from someplac...

Caption Contest! Go!

Drone + Spectacle

I’m up the mountain for Taos Toolbox, so I probably won’t be posting any long, thoughtful essays for the next few weeks.
So while I’m sitting here amid a pile of manuscripts, please enjoy this slightly belated Independence Day fireworks celebration, in which a quadcopter drone equipped with a GoPro camera flies through gorgeous scintillating beauty.
You’ll probably have to endure an ad first, alas.

Jaguars Worshipped Here

This is the Jaguar Temple at Lamanai. There’s a big jaguar face sculpture in the center of the photo, and another on the right side of the temple, out of frame.
In front, also out of frame, is a big circular stone Mayan calendar. Which, oddly enough, failed to correctly predict the end of the world in 2012.