Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 198

Windy Newscasters

I spent the weekend enjoying myself at Bubonicon, but every so often I'd check the news to see whether Hurricane Irene had destroyed the East Coast, as our bold media establishment had been predicting for days.Of course the hurricane had been downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it made landfall in the Carolinas, and did only a modest amount of damage and produced only an insignificant death toll, which proved to be a catastrophe for the newscasters if not for the country.Not that the n...

Bubonicon Schedule

 

So here's my schedule for Bubonicon, Albuquerque's finest convention.   For a gathering named after the Black Death, it's had a surprisingly long life span, and is currently in its 43rd year.I've been to most of them, God help me.This convention will have more writers than you can shake a stick at, and I'm betting you can shake a stick at a lot of writers.  GoH will be Stephen Leigh/S.L. Farrell, toastmaster Ian Tregillis, and artist guest John Picacio.Wandering the halls of the convention y...

Snob Burgers

 

To get a good hamburger I seem to have to pay $10 these days.I don't eat a lot of our national dish, but every so often I get a craving, and then I go in search of that special taste.   But the average burger is pretty pathetic— the meat isn't high quality, and for reasons having to do with liability it's always cooked well-done, which means it's largely flavorless and often dry.  Plus here in New Mexico the fries are pathetic— pale, usually, and limp, and tasteless.(I'm not sure why that...

News From the Dismal Science . . .

So Moody's has downgraded Japan's debt.  Zero Hedge, my favorite site for economic paranoia of all stripes and dimensions, offered a suitable comment: "What was that word Freud used when you are a weak, pathetic, corrupt, powerless, piece of anachronistic filth and instead of doing the right thing (for fear of losing your job or worse), you lash out at a weaker and irrelevant substitute? Oh yes, projection."And over at Forbes, Steve Denning offers a detailed and fascinating explanation of ...

People 3, Dictators 0

While I was in sunny Reno enjoying the Worldcon, another autocratic regime crumbled into the desert sand.  I only found out when I turned on CNN Monday morning, but then regime c0llapse happened very, very quickly, within the previous 24 hours.An offensive by a largely Tamazight-speaking Berber force from the western highlands coincided with a massive uprising in Tripoli itself. By the time the rebels arrived, the Tripolitanians had pretty much liberated themselves.  As I watch CNN now, I...

I'm Busy Today, So Please Enjoy this Broody Mountain

 

Here's a piece of the Canadian Rockies.  I'm sure it has a name, but I don't know what it is.

Question for the Group Mind

 

So here I am in this huge resort/casino thing, and to get anywhere you have to wander by hundreds of gaming tables.  I've been watching the gamblers, and none of them seem to be having a good time.   They're all grimly working away at whatever it is they're doing.
Why is that?  Any idea?

Postcard Shot

I'm writing this from the Peppermill Hotel in Reno where I'm attending Worldcon.  (And is the pseudo-renaissance decor ever tackeeee!)Yesterday Calgary writer Tim Reynolds took me out into Banff National Park.  There was cloud and a lot of rain, which enabled me to take some spectacularly broody shots of the Canadian Rockies.  But the clouds opened up long enough for me to take this postcard shot of Moraine Lake.(Hmm.  For some reason the right side of the picture is cut off.  But if you...

Cruising With the Waiter

 

The writer Lawrence Schoen has been collecting stories from writers about their most fabulous meals.
I couldn't decide what my most fabulous meal was, but I did make an attempt to describe my most fabulous dining experience.  Which lasted for over ten years, in two countries.
Oh my god, the gumbo . . .

All Good Things . . .

When Words Collide is over.   I feel as if I've been talking nonstop for five days.I'm looking forward to a couple days in which I don't need to talk at all.   Perhaps I will communicate only by gesture.For those of you concerned about how best to spend your travel dollar, I can thoroughly recommend the trip to WWC in 2012.  Though this was the first WWC, the con committee is very experienced, and they really know how to throw a convention.  It was extremely well organized, and the events...