Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 204

Crowdsource Success!

I know I've reached the big time when I see my name in Techdirt.  So helloooo, all you people out there!  Buy my books!Thanks to you lovely readers, I now have some excellent, readable files of Days of Atonement, Angel Station, and Knight Moves.  These will all be made available soon through electronic outlets.Winners of the prizes for first and/or most useful files are Mark Probert, Tilmon Hocutt, Bruce Albrecht, and Ivan Yakubovitch from the far-off Russian Federation.  Thanks, guys! ...

Obey: I Am Your Cult Leader

The recent excitement over the failed Rapture has brought to mind the fact that I have often thought that, if only I were a sociopath, I'd be really, really rich now.  I'd start a religion, like L. Ron, and make a lot of money, and not pay taxes.It would be a damn good religion, too.  It would answer most of the major questions and gloss over the rest.  ("Why is there pain?  BECAUSE GOD HATES YOU!  And God will KEEP ON HATING YOU until you LEARN TO OBEY WALTER IN EVERY LITTLE DETAIL!")Why...

Rapture Crash

Via Charlie Stross, How God is Managing the 2011 Rapture.

Orbiter Montage

Exciting moments at the Cape, condensed.We arrived predawn.  Yes, that is an alligator cruising along in the lower left.

The sun arrives.

Main engine start.  (Five seconds before liftoff)

A tower of brilliant flame, brighter than any camera can record.

The orbiter vanished into low cloud just as the sound reaches us across the water.  The sound is a massive rumble that you can feel in your viscera, something like what I imagine an earthquake must be like.  The sound continues long after the...

Enough Knight Moves Already! (And sincere thanks, by the way)

Thanks to you lovely readers, I now have a couple dozen scans of Knight Moves.   My cup runneth over.  You need not send more.   I am content. The prize has been awarded, though anyone who helped in any way will be mentioned in thanks.

I also seem to have a copy of Days of Atonement, though I haven't had a chance to look at it yet.  Angel Station is still up for grabs.

You are wonderful, you folks.  Thanks very much.

And now back to my frenetically busy day.  I flew 2000 miles and still have to ...

Endeavor Forever

So I saw the launch of Endeavor, which was deeply cool but only about five seconds long before the orbiter penetrated the low-lying cloud level and disappeared.  The sound seemed to go on for ages.  

I got great pictures, which I was planning on posting here, but I brought the wrong connector and I can't link my camera to my computer.   And I can't use my computer anyway in the place I'm staying, because their wireless is truly fcked.  I'm posting this from a borrowed computer in a hotel...

Return to the Cape

I'm off to Florida (again) to see the shuttle launch (again).
Let's wish the crew of the Endeavor all the luck in the world, plus that of near-Earth orbit.

Crowdsource, Please

Like every other midlist writer on the planet, I'm striving to get my out-of-print books and stories online so that (a) you can enjoy them, and (b) I can make a few bucks.To this end, I embarked upon a Cunning Plan.  I discovered that my work had been pirated, and was available for free on BitTorrent sites located in the many outlaw server dens of former Marxist countries.  So I downloaded my own work from thence with the intention of saving the work of scanning my books— I figured I'd let...

To All My Friends in Turkey

Happy, umm, Atatürk lands in Samsun Day!

Or month.  Whichever.

Long live the Turkish Republic!

Card via Chris Mills.

Computers Stealing Our Dreams

Ah, to be in England now that Adam Curtis has a new documentary series . . .All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace will premiere in a couple weeks on the BBC, and by all accounts is a sort of meta-critique of digital society and its proponents and heroes.  (About time, too.)The most intriguing of the series' various theses is that computers have stolen all our big dreams.   Computers and systems theory showed that everything was a component in a system, right?" . . . people started to...