Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 174

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.

Back From Chicago

I’ve got back from Worldcon in Chicago. Sorry to be absent so long from this vicinity, but I had a choice to make. I could go on having fun with the fun people I was having fun with, or I could go by myself to my hotel room and write about it.
Which choice would you make?
Since Chicago is a beautiful city, I took lots of pictures, and I would have uploaded some of them here, but unfortunately I left the cable at home that connected my pocket camera with my travel computer.
So y0u’ll still get to...

Reviews Too Late: Margin Call

Somewhere between the end of Bubonicon and packing for Chicon, I found time to watch a movie. Lucky it was a good one.
Gotta say, this little independent film brought out the heavyweights. Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Paul Bettany, Mary McConnell, Zachary Quinto, Simon Baker, Demi Moore. All acting the fuck out of a script written in four days by writer/director J.C. Chandor.
It’s a very unusual film. There’s enormous suspense, but not a lot of plot. No one is saved. No one change...

Emotivation

“Scientists,” who are always nameless in these kinds of reports, claim that they are now able to “hack” the brain with a $299 off-the-shelf mind-machine interface.
Using an Emotiv interface, “researchers” (as they are also known) could read the P300 signal coming off the brain. When showing the subjects images of banks, faces, and PIN numbers, subjects gave off the P300 wave when an image was recognized. There’s still a certain amount of guesswork involved in pinning down passwords and PIN num...

Bubonicon and Chicon Schedule

The next two weekends I’ll be successively at Bubonicon 44, in Albuquerque, and at Chicon, the World Science Fiction Convention, in Chicago. Here’s my schedule, should you be at either of these events and want to meet me.
Bubonicon 44
Friday, Aug 24.
9:30PM. Panel # 6 – PUMP UP THE

VOLUME: WRITING BIG

SCIENCE FICTION

D Abraham, M Cassutt,

B Sanderson, WJ Williams.

Moderator: S.M. Stirling
Saturday, August 25
3pm: Reading
5:30pm: mass autographing
Sunday, August 26
10am, Panel #18 – WHAT’S SPACE OPERA, DOC...

Happily Hebrew

Behold the Israeli editions of Metropolitan, This Is Not a Game, and Implied Spaces.
If reading right-to-left is your thing, check these out.

In Which A Camera Is Pointed At Me, and I Talk

JeanMarie Ward from Buzzymag.com interviewed me at last May’s Nebulas, and this is the result.
I can tell that I hadn’t had yet had my coffee.
Walter Jon Williams Video Interview | Buzzy Mag.