Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 173

Any Rifts Today?

Does anyone happen to have a scan or electronic copy of my novel The Rift?
I should like to turn this wretched, error-filled mess into a proper ebook that we all can enjoy.
There is allegedly a file available on sharing sites, “33 Novels by Walter Jon Williams” or something, that supposedly has the Rift somewhere in it. But it crashes every time I try to download it.
Anyone with better luck?

The Mittster

When Mitt Romney announced his candidacy, I figured, “Well, at least he’s a pragmatist.” He appeared not to believe in anything other than what was necessary to win elections, and if winning the nomination meant disavowing his accomplishments as Governor of Massacnhusetts, he was perfectly okay with doing that. He ran to the right of Rick Perry in 2012, he ran to the left of Ted Kennedy in 1994. Both stances were viewed as necessary at the time, I’m sure.
While I prefer candidates to share at...

Get Yer Progress Here!

My very first SF novel, Ambassador of Progress, is now available for your e-readers at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Smashwords. It should be available via iBooks, Kobo, etc. within a week or so.
Enjoy!
Special thanks to cover artist Phil Booth for revising his work in jig time.
This is the last of my science fiction novels to be made available in electronic form. Next will be the three remaining historicals, and then The Rift, which I suppose might be borderline SF.

After that, I suppose, you’ll s...

Ambassador, Progressing

Behold! The “raw art,” as it were, for the ebook reissue of Ambassador of Progress.
While it doesn’t literally illustrate any scenes in the book, it’s nicely atmospheric, and gets the main point of the story across.
By the British artist Phil Booth, aka “Philzero.”

The Late Mr. Plantagenet

So it looks as if the body of Richard III may have been found.
One is tempted to write “Shakespeare’s Richard III,” because that’s our impression of the character.
After Richard was killed at Bosworth, his body was supposedly stripped and displayed for a few days, then buried at Grey Friars church, some distance from the battlefield.
The hard job for archaeologists wasn’t finding Richard’s body so much as locating Grey Friars, which has vanished over the centuries, but which has now obligingly r...

Skyline

Behold a photo of a rather small portion of the Chicago skyline, taken at night from across the bay at the planetarium.
Downtown Chicago was a banquet of architectural delights. The Great Chicago Fire meant the whole city had to start all over from scratch, and over the decades the tall buildings went up in every style imaginable. Beaux-arts, Gothic revival, Deco, lots of variations on the Mies Box, post-modern, post-this, post-that, post-everything.
And you can see them all. New York has equal...

Flying to Mars

A gloriously HD experience, featuring the rover Spirit on its journey to Mars. I recommend watching it full-screen, if your technology permits.
I’ll look forward to a video this wonderful featuring Curiosity.

[via Gardner]

G Minor Fleas

I’ve had this instrumental tune going through my head for the better part of a week. I had no idea what the tune was or where I’d first heard it— because it was instrumental and full of brass, I assumed it was from the sound track of some movie I’d seen at some point in the dim past.
So here I was this evening, drowsing in an easy chair while listening to the Hawaiian music channel on Dish Network— yes, there is a Hawaiian music channel on Dish Network, and you get it free with a subscription—...

In Which I Am Found In Various Places, All Awesome

My Nebula-winning story “The Green Leopard Plague” can be found as the “e-book exclusive novella” in the current issue of Lightspeed Magazine. You can’t just read the story online, you have to download it.
For those of you who haven’t read it, or for those who wish to read it again, this would seem to be your moment! (Plus, you get all those other stories, too, by the likes of Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, Holly Black, and Adam-Troy Castro.)
Elsewhere on the web, I appear in a question on the bl...

Shiny

Indeed, many alert readers recognized the mystery pic in my last post as the Bean, in Chicago’s Millennium Park.
Here are two more photos, of which I think the top offers a greater sense of mystery.