Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 174

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.

The Kickstarter War

Two veteran freedom fighters have begun a Kickstarter campaign to finance their trip to Syria, to participate in the rebellion against the government of Bashar al-Assad.
Libyan Masood Bwisir and American journalist and filmmaker Matthew vanDyke participated in the Libyan rebellion, and vanDyke spend six months in one of Gaddafi’s jails before escaping.
The money is to be spent on making and publicizing a documentary film about the Syrian rebels, not specifically on actually fighting Assad’s arm...

Missed Opportunities

So I finally saw The Dark Knight Rises— two or three weeks later than most of you, I’m sure— and I was inspired, both by this movie and Spider-Man 3, to create the following rule:
“Directors, if you’re helming the third installment of a superhero franchise, for God’s sake don’t let your brother write the screenplay!“
The plot barely existed, there were just ideas that got thrown up on the screen, and some of them sort of stuck, and some of them didn’t. (Bruce Wayne is so paranoid that he bugs h...

Pussies in Prison

(No, this isn’t a post about Paul Ryan’s views on family planning. Or a review of Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS. This is about art, dammit!)
Last February, the Russian all-girl punk band Pussy Riot initiated a 30-second demonstration in a Moscow cathedral in which they called upon the Virgin to save Russia from Vladimir Putin. As a result, they’ve been sentenced to two years in a labor camp.
This was a demo in which no one was hurt, no property was damaged, the perpetrators gave their names when ask...

Travel Envy

The winners of the National Geographic Traveler Photos Contest have been posted. (Strangely, at the Atlantic.)
Check them out. Bask in their glory.