Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 220

Soviet Cola

Long live the glorious proletarian revolution in soft drink technology!

On A Cold, White Table

It's Dr. John and Eric Clapton doing a duet on "St. James Infirmary Blues."I mean, what a fine idea this is!

Needle to the Neck

War's tragedy doesn't end with the war, nor does trauma end when the precipitating cause goes away. When my father's generation came home from the Second World War, a lot of them brought the war home with them. The traditional cure for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in those days was lots of alcohol, followed by kicking the wife and kids around the house.Not that this happened to me. My father

The Great Lost Essay

I started an essay on fiction writing on April 26, but never got around to finishing it till today. Blogger went and posted it as if I'd finished it on April 26, which means it's buried amid old postings and you probably won't see it. Here it is, if you want to jump right to it.

Advancing, the Creeping Enemy

What is this, you ask? It's the entire Afghan war reduced to a flow chart and put on a PowerPoint slide. Of what use is this slide, which was presented to General McChrystal as part of a staff briefing?Well, none. But it sure looks like it contains a vast amount of information, doesn't it? It actually looks as if it might mean something! But it's empty of actual useful information.Up till

Collapse-- the Musical!

And it's all true![via Daniel:]

Dangerous Encounter

I was contemplating the moon at 2:30 this morning from the hot tub, and I looked down to see an enormous hound standing under the elm tree staring at me. It looked big enough to rip my arm off. I had a moment of frigid horror, and then the hound moo'd and wandered off, chewing its cud.

Progress

I just got round to reading an essay/review by novelist/critic James Wood published a month or more ago in The New Yorker. It begins as a reaction to Reality Hunger: a Manifesto by David Shields, and then goes on to review Chang-Rae Lee's The Surrendered both in terms of the Shields book and Wood's own stance as viewed through the lens of the Shields book.(A discerning reader, merely from a

The Persistence of Vision (New Mexico)

Saturday night we drove to Santa Fe to enjoy a baroque concert. It might as well have been titled "Music You've Heard a Lot," as it included Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Bach's Concerto in D for Two Violins, and a concerto grosso by Handel, the precise title of which escapes me. Whether you know it or not, you've heard the first two a lot, and I, at least, have heard the Handel more than a few times.

90 Years and Counting . . .

Happy National Sovereignity Day to my friends in Turkey!