Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 202
June 19, 2011
Dad's Day
So here it is Father's Day. And here's my dad, a picture taken on a fishing trip before I was born.What to say about the man who nurtured me, supported me, worked hard to keep food on the table, kept me out of trouble, and helped to knock down Hitler?My dad wasn't a hard guy to know, and he wasn't a hard father to have. He wasn't a tyrant or a dictator, and he was willing to let me be myself even if neither of us had a clue what that was, or would be. He was gentle, he was caring, and he s...
Born to Fly
So I'm bummed by the death of Clarence Clemons last night, and I thought I'd post a tribute video.I found quite a number of videos of Clarence doing just his solo from "Jungleland," which is justly famous, but they were just the solo, and I hate cutting up a song. So here's the whole E Street Band doing "Born to Run," with the frenetic Clemons solo in the middle of it, and the rest just shows Clarence being what he was, a member of a really great band.(Young folks may be shocked to discover ...
June 18, 2011
Farewell Fermor
I see from the papers that Patrick Leigh Fermor (DSO, OBE, COP, Chevalier Ordre des Arts et Lettres, etc.) has died, alas before I got a chance to track him down and share a bottle of ouzo with him. (He couldn't wait, I suppose. He was 96.)I have written elsewhere about his marvelous memoir
A Time of Gifts
and its sequel
Between the Woods and Water
, detailing the journey he took by foot across Europe in 1933. It is at once a picture of a Europe that no longer exists, a meditation on time (...
June 13, 2011
Free At Last
Let it not be said that we are not living in a free and open society. After all, the National Security Agency just declassified a 202-year-old book on cryptography. (I didn't know the NSA was around 202 years ago to classify the book in the first place!)In addition to the cryptography text, the NSA declassified 50,000 pages of venerable documents once considered so sensitive that our national security would be compromised should they ever be made public.The document dump was "the first in...
June 12, 2011
Soon At An Ebook Store Near You . . .
Voila! The cover for the upcoming ebook release of Rock of Ages.
The Critics are Unanimous! (Pretty Much . . . )
The latest Locus has not one but two reviews of Deep State.
(The book appeared four months ago, but what the hell, I'll take reviews where I find them.)
Fortunately, one of the reviews is available online. Check it out.
Write-a-Thon
Want to write? Want to encourage someone else to write? You can do one or both of these at the Clarion Write-a-Thon, which begins on June 26!You can agree to sponsor a writer and pay by the word! You can be a writer, and receive encouragement from your sponsor! Or you could both write and sponsor other writers!You also get to interact with the talented students of this year's Clarion Writers Workshop, and help them toward their goals.Your tax-deductible donations will go to support the...
June 9, 2011
Timely Reminder
"Everybody get to work to destroy the Four Pests!"
June 8, 2011
Freakish Fun
My good friend Melinda Snodgrass has a new Wild Cards story up on Tor.com. You can read it for free.
Consider it an introduction to the newly-released Wild Cards anthology, Fort Freak, tales of the mean alternate streets of New York, sixty-odd years after the Wild Cards outbreak.
Enjoy.
June 6, 2011
Shards Redux
Here's the cover to the forthcoming ebook release of House of Shards. Which you should be able to buy Right Soon Now.
