Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 159
June 29, 2013
Toolbox Cleans House
Congratulations to Taos Toolbox graduate Saladin Ahmed, whose Throne of the Crescent Moonjust won a Locus Award!And congratulations as well to Nancy Kress, my co-instructor, whose “After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall” just took the novella award.
We are Taos Toolbox, and we live in the Province of Awesome!
June 28, 2013
Enter Mr. Depp
Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman are making one of them post-holocaust flicks in my neighborhood. Parts of downtown Belen have been grimed and gritted up to look suitably battered by time and ill fortune— not that some parts of the downtown didn’t look like that to begin with.When photography begins on Monday, it’s going to be hard to travel in that area.
Here we see a building partly into its conversion. Belen’s old railroad hotel is getting a new porch. (The hotel, by the way, is owned, or at...
Two Centimeters Forward, One Centimeter Back
This week has been full of really insignificant achievement.
Time after time, I’ve started to accomplish some trivial task, only to have it takehours out of my day and prevent me from doing the stuff I actually want to do. Like write.
And then yesterday, just as I was buckling down to a job I knewwould take hours, the air conditioner quit working on a day with a record high temperature. So I ended up sleeping in an air-conditioned motel, and nothing of any significance was accomplished.
Today I...
Time after time, I’ve started to accomplish some trivial task, only to have it takehours out of my day and prevent me from doing the stuff I actually want to do. Like write.
And then yesterday, just as I was buckling down to a job I knewwould take hours, the air conditioner quit working on a day with a record high temperature. So I ended up sleeping in an air-conditioned motel, and nothing of any significance was accomplished.
Today I...
June 26, 2013
New Wind
New Mexico author Emily Mah Tippets has done an interview with New Mexico writer Sally Gwylan, and is also giving away a free copy of Sally’s new book, A Wind Out of Canaan. It’s a gutsy, beautifully written story that starts with child hobos in the Great Depression, and leads to alternate worlds, questions of sexual identity, and finding one’s place in the world.
Or, if you don’t like the odds of winning the drawing for Sally’s book, you can get it free on Amazon, if you buy it in the next 24...
Or, if you don’t like the odds of winning the drawing for Sally’s book, you can get it free on Amazon, if you buy it in the next 24...
June 25, 2013
Textbook: Deep State
A scene from my novel Deep State comes to life as Turkish police shoot down a protestor’s camera drone. Apparently the video was taken on June 11.
Before it was knocked down, the drone managed to capture part of the police assault on Gezi Park. Here it is, complete with absurdly dramatic music. (The actual police assault begins about 4:00.)
It’s clear we’re entering a world where drones aren’t necessarily controlled by the authorities.
Before it was knocked down, the drone managed to capture part of the police assault on Gezi Park. Here it is, complete with absurdly dramatic music. (The actual police assault begins about 4:00.)
It’s clear we’re entering a world where drones aren’t necessarily controlled by the authorities.
Not Easy Being Green
Marvel Comics isn’t content, apparently, with conquering the world of cinema. Now Marvel has its sights set on . . . romance fiction!What in the name of Millie the Model is this? It’s double-barreled chick-lit, in the form of books featuring the romantic adventures of She-Hulk and Rogue.
While I don’t know much about these particular characters, I can nevertheless imagine their romantic lives would be, well, fraught. The average Joe might be wary of ladies who can hulk out and turn into rampag...
June 23, 2013
Glorious Archive
National Geographichas dug through their vast collection of unpublished photographs and made an amazing selection available online.
You gotta wonder why some of these weren’t published in the first place.
June 22, 2013
Science Prison
My sometime student and terrific writer Kim Jollow Zimring has a great idea.
(Inspired, by the way, by the legislator who opined that global warming was caused by wind farms, because the giant turbines stole the cooling breezes.)
She suggested that everyone in this country be sentenced to Science Prison, and that the only way to get out was to pass a test on basic science.
Gotta say, it sounds like a better idea all the time.
(Inspired, by the way, by the legislator who opined that global warming was caused by wind farms, because the giant turbines stole the cooling breezes.)
She suggested that everyone in this country be sentenced to Science Prison, and that the only way to get out was to pass a test on basic science.
Gotta say, it sounds like a better idea all the time.
June 19, 2013
ACE
This coming weekend I’ll be at ACE, the Albuquerque Comics Expo, where I will be sharing the Convention Center with Neal Adams, Claudia Wells, Dean Stockwell, Nicholas Brendon, Chrissie Zullo, Larry Welz, and a host of others.My only program item will be a panel at 1pm, on the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Not exactly my best area of expertise, for all that I’m pleased to be included.
However, not having a lot of programming leaves me a lot more time to meet readers, and so I hope I’ll be seein...
June 17, 2013
Privacy
I’ve been considering the proposition that maybe privacy is a mid- to late-Twentieth Century concept that’s already proving obsolete.
Up until the 20th Century there wasn’t any privacy to be had, unless you were some kind of hermit that lived by himself in the wilderness far away from any civilization. (And even some hermits wouldn’t have had privacy— none of that on a desert pillar, for sure.)
Hunter-gatherers lived in small communities, in caves or huts made of twigs and leaves. No privacy th...
Up until the 20th Century there wasn’t any privacy to be had, unless you were some kind of hermit that lived by himself in the wilderness far away from any civilization. (And even some hermits wouldn’t have had privacy— none of that on a desert pillar, for sure.)
Hunter-gatherers lived in small communities, in caves or huts made of twigs and leaves. No privacy th...
