Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 152

Afterlife

These are “waruga,” the stone tombs of the Minahasa people of North Sulawesi. The earliest date from around 900 CE, and the latest from the early 19th century, when the Dutch put a stop to this form of burial on the grounds that it was contributing to an epidemic.
The deceased was laid to rest with knives, plates, and jewelry, mostly bracelets or armbands, and placed in the fetal position in the lower part of the monument. Other family members were dropped in later, as they died, and some of t...

Picture of the Day

This, my friends, is something called an “ornate ghost pipefish.” It’s maybe 4-5 inches long, and it’s one of those fish so cleverly disguised as something else that it stands out for miles.
Underwater, where the reds fade out, it looked completely white. Putting the red back in makes it a good deal more striking.
Here at Lembeh the diving is completely different from Siladen, where I lodged last week. At Siladen it was wall diving, cruising with the current along magnificent coral cliffs. Some...

Nudi Photo

I was diving with a group at night on the black volcanic sand, and I saw this nudibranch cruising over the pebbles. I tried to attract the attention of the others, but they were too busy playing with their $10,000 cameras, so I was the only one who got the photo (with my relatively cheap Sealife).
Score!

Taxonomy

The taxonomic name for this lovely creature is “wonderpus photogenicus.”
No, really. It absolutely is.
Sometimes you gotta love reality.

A Quiet Reminder . . .

That you should all be honing your submissions for Taos Toolbox, the master class for writing SF and fantasy, which will be held July 6-19, 2014, in Taos Ski Valley. Teaching will be Nancy Kress, Walter Jon Williams, and special lecturer Ian Tregillis.
Submissions open on December 1! And in the meantime, sharpen your prose.

How Can You Possibly Resist This Darling Face?

Nudibranchs in Love

Mother Ocean must be singing songs of sweet, sweet love, because I keep finding nudibranchs in pairs. Nudibranchs are found all over the reef, and most of them are small and lovely. (The shorter nudis in these photos are only a couple centimeters long.)
Nudibranchs are basically sea snails that have lost, or rather drastically shrunk, their shells. Instead of defending themselves with armor, they defend themselves by tasting really, really foul, such that no predator wants to eat them. And the...

Bandwidth

A note on the bandwidth here. The last photo I uploaded took 40 minutes. The last email I sent took over an hour. For the last two or three days, I’ve got no email at all.
This I could perhaps have dealt with gracefully: if it doesn’t Send the first time, you just keep hitting Send. But there was only one small area that had wi-fi, and it was the hottest, most airless part of the place. My last update, the sweat was pouring off me, dropping from my nose onto the keyboard, and probably ruining...

Spot the Fish in This Picture

Picture of the day

This turtle was, for some reason, quite interested in me. He sailed along the reef, encountered me taking pictures, and then circled me two or three times before moving on. He was maybe four feet long, and quite blasé about meeting us. Maybe turtles are blasé about everything.
There are more turtles here than I’ve seen anywhere, including one huge old guy, named Rambo, who is longer than I am, and probably much older. Shortly after I met the chap in the photo, Rambo came rolling down the reef...