Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 148

Ambiguity

Back in September, friend of the blog Marcus Geduld posted a long, thoughtful essay in response to an essay I wrote about Kazuo Ishiguro’s novelNever Let Me Go. That essay was my response to a literary writer turning to a science fiction trope, and necessarily involved theorizing about the differences between literary fiction and genre.
Among the many intelligent comments Marcus made had to do with ambiguity, which literary works tolerate more than does genre. I’ve been thinking about this eve...

Tesla vs. Edison

It’s the rap battle that all true geeks want to see:
Tesla vs. Edison!

We Make Writers

Writers are made, not born. The talent itself may be innate, but it must be conditioned and developed, and developed in such a way to maximize the writer’s potential.
At Taos Toolbox, we don’t tell you what to write, we help you make what you write better.
If you want to write better, you need to the tools to do it. And the tools are right where we put them, in the Toolbox.

Oo-ee-oo

The Muppets do to those stupid ghost hunter shows whatought to be done to those stupid ghost hunter shows.
(cue sinister organ music)

Reviews in the Nick of Time: Saving Mr. Banks

I was surprised thatSaving Mr. Banksreceived only one Oscar nomination (for Original Music), since it’s such a well-written, well-acted film with a powerhouse cast of past and future Oscar contenders: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Colin Farrell, Bradley Whitford, Jason Schwartzman. Thompson is terrific, and Hanks is very good, even if he’s somewhat inconsistent in rendering Walt Disney’s Missouri dialect, and everyone else inhabits their characters very well indeed.
So for anyone w...

Neal

Our field has lost another unique voice: Neal Barrett, Jr., who died on January 12th at the age of 83.
I got to know Neal sometime in the early Eighties, when I was breaking into the field. I can’t say I knew him well, but I enjoyed his company and his wry observations, which always came from a slightly different quarter than you might expect
As did his mature writing. As Emily Dickenson might say, Neal “told it slant.” His characters were eccentric when they weren’t bizarre, prone to stopping...

Award List

It’s award nomination season, so I notice other writers’ blogs are listing all their works published in 2013 just in case their readers want to nominate them.
I’d like to follow suit, but the sad fact is, though I’ve been working right along, nothing of mine was published in 2013, all due to the vagaries of publishers’ schedules. (Though due to these same vagaries, a wholelot of stuff written over the past few years is going to appear in 2014, so yay!)
So I thought I’d let you all nominate for...

Name My Sparring Partner

Thanks to Chris Fogel of the karate school, who was downsizing his home, I now have a new sparring partner! View him in his new home!
(He’s an outdoor sparring partner, and Kathy thought he looked cold, and so better equipped him for the season.)
Now the Century catalog says his name is Bob, but he doesn’t look Bobbish to me, and besides, I feel he deserves a more individual name.
So I’m inaugurating a contest. Name My Sparring Partner, and I’ll send you the signed book of your choice (assuming...

From the Karate School

“This stance is called ‘Fist Under Elbow.’”
“‘Fist Under Elbow?’ That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not ‘Monkey Fist Shelters Beneath the Wing of the Phoenix?’”
“No.”
“It’s not ‘White Crane Feigns a Broken Pinion?’”
“No.”
“It’s not ‘Monkey Reaches Beneath the Bough for the Peaches of Heaven?”
“No. It’s just ‘Fist Under Elbow.’”
“Well, it can’t be any good then, can it?”

Subaquatica

I’m busy today, so please enjoy this picture of a nudibranch.