Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 199
August 13, 2011
Calgary Crew
Here I am with the twelve brave Canadian writers who actually volunteered to have me run their workshop!
They are a talented crew, and I expect that you'll be hearing from some of them soon.
They are a talented crew, and I expect that you'll be hearing from some of them soon.
August 8, 2011
My Horrible August
Lots of wonderful things are going to happen to me in August. The problem is that they're all going to happen in August.This coming weekend, August 12-14, I will be at When Words Collide in Calgary, a brand-new literary SF convention, where I will be sharing Guest of Honor privileges with Jack Whyte, Rachel Caine, and Rob Sawyer. I'll also be running a writers' workshop prior to the convention. For any Albertans or others who may wish to meet me, I'll include my schedule below.Without...
Downgraded
So now S&P has downgraded US government bonds from AAA to AA+. The result is that people are stampeding to buy them.Perhaps they remember that it was the ratings agencies who gave AAA ratings to sub-prime loans, and S&P who rated Ireland's debt AAA until April Fool's Day, 2009, and Spain as AAA until January 2009. Maybe they remember how S&P rated Iceland's debt at AA+.Or perhaps they noticed that S&P made a 2 trillion dollar error in their calculations. (Two trillion is the cost of two...
August 5, 2011
Meanwhile, On the Western Horizon . . .
I spent eight hours today at the karate school, during which time I learned many things that do not necessarily translate to this medium.
Most notably I brushed up on my Iron Palm work— and, in one case, my Iron Elbow.
The end result is that I'm too tired to do much of anything but contemplate the sunset. Here it is, so you can contemplate it with me.
And no, it's not retouched. That's the actual color.
August 4, 2011
Days of Atonement, Newly Duplicated Along the t Axis
August 3, 2011
Keeping it Real
A few days ago I saw Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen's new movie. All the reviews told me how wonderful and magical it was, and the last movie the Woodmeister made in Paris, Everyone Says I Love You, actually was wonderful and magical, so I went to see it.I was reasonably charmed by Midnight in Paris, but I have to say that the movie's focus stayed resolutely on all the wrong characters. This is a fantasy film in which a modern writer travels back to Paris in the 1920s to meet Scott, Zelda, ...
July 30, 2011
Spam and its Discontents
Remember back in April when people were happy that the world volume of spam had decreased by a third or more? Some of the more notorious botnets, like Rostock and Mega-D, were being dismantled, presumably with the aid of the governments of the former-SSRs that had been hosting them all this time.My spam count went way the hell down, far more than a third. April was the cruelest month, for Oleg Nikolaenko anyway. Some days I actually enjoyed looking at email, an experience I usually find m...
July 28, 2011
The Return of Days of Atonement
Just a little advanced glimpse of the cover for the forthcoming e-release of Days of Atonement. One of my finer works, if I do say so myself.
The News This Week is Mighty Fine, Thanks for Asking
July 25, 2011
The Wit of the Toolbox
The French have a term, l'esprit d'escalier, "wit of the staircase," for those incredibly pithy and clever remarks that you never actually deliver, because by the time you think of them, the party's over and you're heading down the stair on your way home. Taos Toolbox has a similar sort of wit. Not because it's not timely, because it always is, but because the context is completely lost to any observer who isn't present at the critiques. Nancy Kress jotted down quite a number of these...
