Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 184

The Toolbox Abides . . .

There are only a few places left for Taos Toolbox 2012, the master class for writers of science fiction and fantasy.
If you want to come, better get your application in very soon.

Reviews in the Nick of Time: John Carter of M***

Honestly, I have no idea why this movie didn't do better at the box office.  It's not perfect, but in the category of action SF movies that make no sense, this one is head and shoulders above the rest.And it's got a reason why it doesn't make any sense.  The book it was based on was written a hundred years ago, when folks didn't know shit about Mars or space travel or science or anything.  Back in the Nineteen-oughts, people probably thought it was a perfectly sensible thing to carry a sword ...

Creeping On Little Cat Feet . . .

Okay, kinda scared now . . .Turns out that cats can alter our brains.   I mean literally restructure them. I mean, change our freaking behavior.Well, not cats actually.  A parasite that lives in cats, Toxoplasma gondii. It's long been known that Toxoplasma can physically alter the brains of rats, to make them sexually attracted to the smell of cat urine.  It also eliminated the fear response, which means they lose their fear of predators.  This makes them want to hang around cats, who of...

Dance, Other Saint, Dance!

There's this Other Saint that has a celebration the day after St. Urho, but I can never remember his name.  (Probably because of the hangover.)
Anyway, for those of you who celebrate the Day of the Other Saint, here's some Irish Hand Dancing for y'all.
(Note the authentic Irish lyrics to the tune.)
[via Gardner Dozois]

Crowdsource Challenge!

 

My next ebook will be Aristoi, my insanely ambitious 1992 novel that came within a couple votes of a Hugo nomination.But there's a problem.  I can't seem to format it properly.See, parts of Aristoi had a unique structure.  The prose was displayed in two columns, the first a description of what was happening in the scene, the second a description of the complex things going on in the (posthuman) narrator's head.(This wasn't gratuitous, but an attempt to visualize on the page what was...

Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen!

Baby, it's
St Urho's Day!

I need all you Midwestern types to dress up as grasshoppers and start drinking right now!
"Grasshopper, grasshopper, go from hence to heck!"

Junior G-Men

Friend of the blog Ralf sent me this useful document telling us how to spot terrorists and spies in Internet cafes. Suspicion should be directed, for example, at people who are attempting to maintain privacy while browsing (in a public cafe).  Or folks who use ciphers, or who travel long distances in order to use the cafe. Or who pay in cash.I've done all of these things.  I've used Internet cafes in places far from home, like Prague, Lyon, and Ankara.  I've made efforts to maintain my...

Après sam@alshahba.com le déluge

Couldn't have happened to a nicer dictator.Turns out that Basher al-Assad and his wife got his private email hacked by the Supreme Council of the Revolution, Syria's chief opposition group.  The hack was exposed when Anonymous launched an attack on Syrian government sites and inadvertently exposed the Supreme Council's back door.  (Big oops, there, Anonymous.)The Guardian has been combing through the big stack of emails, which give us the idea of Mr. and Mrs. Après-moi-le-déluge at home...

Each to His Drone . . .

Via Bruce Sterling, the news that Liam Young and his Tomorrows Thoughts Today cronies have created a cheap drone network capable of embodying a nomad Internet.The key role that the internet has played in the last year of protests and activism was one so important that it saw Governments cut off internet access nationwide in a bid to slow the momentum of demonstrations, an act that has led to the creation of the project which would act as a solution to that precise scenario. A fleet of...

The Joys of Broadband

Since I got broadband, six or seven years ago, I've had it through the local cable monopoly, Comcast.  No one loves Comcast— they're too big, too slow, too expensive, and have infamously bad customer service (which, however, seems to be improving— when I had trouble last year, they really did their best, for all that the problem was too complex for them). So anyway, I've always been on the alert for an alternative.Qwest, the local phone company, offered DSL in some neighborhoods, but not in m...