Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 155

Set of Wheels

I learned to drive in a Model A Ford.
And no, I’m not that old!
The Model A in question belonged to my grandparents and was kept on their farm in Markham, Minn., which was not only the headquarters of the Williams clan but the source of the name I gave to my fictional nautical family in the Privateer books.
Check out the video for an idea of the driving experience.
The Model A had been, uh, highly modified, because it had been turned into a tractor. This was common during the Great Depression amo...

The Horizon

We get some spectacular sunsets here in the Southwest, though my particular Western horizon is somewhat limited by buildings and trees that my neighbors inconsiderately put in my sight line.
Still, this one’s pretty good. And while it looks like I’ve amped the color saturation, I totally haven’t. This is exactly what I saw when I stepped out on my front porch.

Raffle! Book! Sign Up!

My friend Emily Mah is running a raffle, and she’s giving away a signed copy of my own Implied Spaces.
It’s not like you’d win a zillion bucks like with PowerBall, but on the other hand you have a much better chance of winning. Click, and good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Green Leopard Gone Live!

My collection, The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories, is now live on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.
It will be available on other sites by and by.
The collection contains two Nebula winners, several other award nominees, and other good stuff that was published in places where award nominators never visit.
Those of you with a good eye for design may note that the cover art is the same cityscape as the backround for Implied Spaces,except that I flipped it 180 degrees and left more in...

A Concise History of My Weekend So Far

The following scene takes place at the Greenport Maritime Museum on the North Fork of Long Island.
A: We’re closed.
Q: The Greenport Maritime Museum is closed during the Greenport Maritime Festival?
A: We’re closed.
Q: Where are the tall ships? There are supposed to be tall ships!
A: They only come once every four years.
Q: But there are tall ships on your web site! There’s a tall ship on the cover of the free program book that you’re distributing to everyone! The official schedule has ship tours a...

The Future May Smell Like Skunk

So the Skunk Works has announced a workable fusion-powered generator by 2017, with a mass industrial rollout by 2027, each unit small enough to sit on a truck and powerful enough to provide electricity for a city of 50-100 thousand people.
The Skunk Works, being a highly secret division of Lockheed responsible for technological breakthroughs such as the U-2, SR-71, and F-117 Nighthawk, is not exactly being open about their design, which has led to a certain amount of paranoia, including specul...

Physics Glam

So here’s McGill physics grad student Timothy Blaise with his a capella masterwork, a cover of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” featuring Feynmann diagrams, string theory, and Sock Puppet Einstein.
Because can never have too much Sock Puppet Einstein!

[via David Axler]

Leaping to the Fore

Since the weather report promised sun, I’ve gone up to the Ski Valley for some face time with Mother Nature. But the weather report was a trifle, um, optimistic, and my nature time has been kinda drowned out in a fairly literal way.
I’ve been indoors a lot.
I don’t have much to report, so please enjoy this pole-dancing video.
Since pole-dancing videos aren’t exactly common in this space, allow me to introduce it properly. The dancer is recent Taos Toolbox grad Ken Kao, writer, parkour enthusiast...

As Long As We’re Talking About Literature . . .

It’s 25 jokes only book nerds will understand.

[via Gardner]

Spare Parts

So I’ve just finished Never Let Me Go,a science fiction novel from Kazui Ishiguro, the British author of Remains of the Day, etc.
A heavy-duty literary author attempting a theme common in genre fiction deserves, I thought, a browse. After all, Timethought this was the best novel of 2005.
I’m not going to make the usual complaint that Ishiguro has “reinvented the wheel” by using a rather hackneyed science fiction trope under the impression that he was the first to think of it, primarily because...