Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 177

Where’s Walter?

I’ve been traveling the last couple days. This photo should offer a clue as to my present location.
Where am I?

Detective Dee. Plus a Temple of Doom.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame never made it to New Mexico, so far as I know, so it took me a while to see it. Directed by my onetime creative associate Tsui Hark, the film showcases Tsui’s deranged imagination as well as his usual breathtaking imagery. Along with lots of big, bright, expensive special effects.
You won’t be bored.
The film is based vaguely on history, but that doesn’t slow it down much. Judge Dee— Di Renjie— was a jurist and imperial official during the Tang...

The Life Cycle of the Red Corpuscle

I found out how long my mountain-boosted pulmonary system lasted. Ten days.
During Taos Toolbox I spent two weeks at nearly 10,000 feet, which means my body was madly churning out red blood cells to carry all the extra oxygen I needed to survive.
When I came home, I figured I’d be bringing a ton of O2 with me, and I would be, like, Superman, at least till all my extra corpuscles kicked the bucket. And in fact I was. I blasted through my karate class the other day. When I was running on the elli...

Advice on Titles?

Since it’s the bicentennial of the War of 1812, I’m going to see if I can get a little bounce off the anniversary and release my old sea stories as ebooks. Beginning with those set in the War of 1812, of course.
(For those of you who don’t know, I had a career writing historical novels before I found a new berth as a science fiction writer.)
First up will be The Raider. Except that The Raider wasn’t my original title, it was the title that Dell foisted on the book following its own strange algo...

From Our Friends in Mockba

Hey, sometimes it’s just about the joy, y’know? Start the weekend with some toe-tapping and finger poppin’, secure in the knowledge that Irving Berlin will be with us always in spirit.

[via Sue Casper]

O Rage! O Désespoir!

As most of you probably know, I’ve kept a finger, sometimes a whole arm, in the game business, and there’s nothing I like more than a game based on a literary source. (Particularly if the source is mine.)
But of course the literary works chosen for games tend to be, well, full of large-scale violence and massive peril. Spells and swords collide in Stormbringer, and adventurers battle Elder Gods in Call of Cthulhu. More swords and spells in Conan, and superheroes bash each other in the Marvel H...

Year One

It’s been roughly a year since I started making my backlist available in epub formats, so this seems a good time to shuffle through the records and come to some kind of conclusion.
And the conclusion is this:
Thank God for Amazon!
Even if Amazon is yet another megalomaniacal Internet company bent on annihilating all competition and achieving total world domination in its chosen field (250 points!), Amazon has still provided more options for writers than anyone since Gutenberg. The Kindle broke o...

TGIF

Taos Toolbox is finally over. And, as when any class comes to an end, the happiest people are the teachers.
And look! David’s gone all entrepreneurial!

Must Have Slipped My Mind

Did I forget to mention the Taos Toolbox Sacrifice Stone?
My bad.

As We Stagger Half-Blind Onto the Shores of Marathon

Only two days left at Taos Toolbox, and we are narrowing our focus down to the finish line. Yet the participants have somehow retained enough brain cells to make amusing remarks, of which a selection follows.


There aren’t enough vegetarians in fiction.


I’ve been reading a lot of writing books looking for my soul.


While I cannot recommend “jumble and blurt” as a story method, it nevertheless seems to be working for you.


I am suffering from Taos Brain.


I flipped through some books at the supermarket...