Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 228

Walter Saves the Union

Ever since the Supreme Court's recent ruling that bribes are a form of protected free speech, I have been pondering its implications. I've come to a conclusion or two, chief among them that I should invest in the first Rollerball team I can find. Cuz we're sure as hell heading for that future, you betcha.Rollerball aside, it has been pointed out by others, among them our president, that the

Just In Case

Here's a potentially useful article titled "How to Fall 35,000 Feet—And Survive."Because you never known when this kind of information will come in handy.Granted, the odds of surviving a 6-mile plummet are extra­ordinarily slim, but at this point you've got nothing to lose by understanding your situation. There are two ways to fall out of a plane. The first is to free-fall, or drop from the sky

I'm Coming to Seattle

I'll be in Seattle next weekend. Friday night I'll be signing and reading at the University Book Store from 7pm.Sunday I'll be running a workshop at the Richard Hugo House. The workshop runs from 10-5, and is titled Writing Backwards in the Year 2010. It's all about the plotting! Check it out.

Mini Reviews Too Late

I've seen a bunch of stuff lately. None worthy of lengthy analysis, but some worthy of note.Dirigible (1931). In Dirigible, a very early film by Frank Capra, we watch our brave hero Jack Bradon (Jack Holt) battle for the future of US Navy rigid airships! (Well, we know how that turned out.)Our hero is married to Fay Wray, but there's a triangle with fighter pilot Frisky (Ralph Graves), who is

Hebrew Edition

A special alert for those of you who read backwards! Friend of the blog Michael Grosberg tells me that the Hebrew edition of Implied Spaces just hit the beaches in Tel Aviv. Enjoy!

Airship Hotel

This is a hoax. (Despite what you may have seen on CNN.) This is only a hoax. (Despite what you may have read in the Daily Telegraph.) Do not consume except with a dose of salt.If they built this thing, they would have no way of controlling it and it would crash and kill everyone in a giant hydrogen explosion.But it is purty, no?

Rupes Weighs In

So far I've been watching the Macmillan-Amazon feud with a degree of disinterest--- other than my wide-eyed jaw-dropping awe at Amazon's bad, irrational behavior, and my compassion for my fellow authors who are being screwed, I have no books with Macmillan, so I didn't really have a dog in the fight.But now Rupert Murdoch has weighed in, suggesting to Amazon that it is, in fact, time to

My Glorious Name Shall Ring Forever

Locus magazine has bowed to the inevitable and put This Is Not a Game on their end-of-the-year recommended reading list. The other stuff on the list isn't too shabby, either!

25 Years After . . .

I'm pleased to report that I've just signed contracts for a French edition of my 1985 novel Knight Moves, from Editions l'Atlante. Go, me! Go l'Atlante!

Speeding Past in the Blink of an Eye

While I was enjoying a pleasurably distracting weekend and unable to properly follow events, a huge earth-shaking contretemps broke out between publisher MacMillan/St. Martin's/Tor and Amazon, to determine which business model will prevail on the Internets of the Future. The whole thing seems to have flown past in an eyeblink, to what some are claiming as a sort of resolution, but which really