Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 237

Shroud II: the Deliverance

An Italian scientist has succeeded in duplicating the Shroud of Turin, which he says exposes the Shroud as a fake.Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.They placed a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbed it with a pigment containing traces of acid. A mask was used for the face.The pigment was then

Reviews Too Late: In Bruges

Imagine a gangster film in which nothing happens. That's where I thought I was for the first half of this movie, in a film about what gangsters are like when they're on vacation and not being gangsters. Not that this is a bad thing. The first half of In Bruges is the best part. Nothing happens in very interesting ways. Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrel) are a couple Irish hit men who

Free Spaces

The first seven chapters of Implied Spaces are now available for free on the Baen webscription site. If you don't have your own copy yet, you might want to give them a read. For the following eighteen chapters, however, you still have to buy the book.

Resting Place

Here I am at my parents' final resting place. "Resting" being an understatement, since their activities may also include flying, swirling, scudding, and fertilizing giant fir trees. My mom passed away a little over a year ago, and my father twelve years back. His ashes have since resided in a kind of shrine I built to him atop a bookshelf. My mother's wish was that her ashes be scattered

Who Ya Gonna Call?

It's the trailer for Ghostbusters (1954), starring Bob Hope, Fred MacMurray, and Dean Martin.[thanks to David Boop}

It's the trailer for Thostbusters (1954), starring Bob Ho...

It's the trailer for Thostbusters (1954), starring Bob Hope, Fred MacMurray, and Dean Martin.[thanks to David Boop}

Nero's Movable Feast

A few years back, when we were in Rome, we visited the Domus Aurea, the Golden House built by the Emperor Nero during the last years of his reign. This fabulous 300-room palace was the centerpiece of Nero's entertainment empire--- walls were plated with fabulous marbles, or ivory, or frescos. A large part of the palace was plated with gold. Sliding panels in the ceilings could open to shower

The Brew That is True

From Candas Jane Dorsey, it's Satchmo doing a duet with Danny Kaye (who holds up his end with remarkable verve).I detect the hand of Sylvia Fine in the lyrics.

Doomsday Now!

Doctor Strangelove would seem to be my favorite movie. I believe I've seen it more often than any other film--- I've watched Slim Pickens ride that H-Bomb to Laputa something like twenty times. It was Strangelove that popularized the notion of the Doomsday Device. (The Doomsday Bomb was actually conceived by Leo Szilard, who also conceived the idea of the nuclear chain reaction and later [

Trying Not to Blush

Christian Sauvé says some kind things about This Is Not a Game on his web site: But there's a bit more at stake than a look at games that bring together thousands of people in a global clue-hunt: As This Is Not a Game begins, our ARG-creating protagonist Dagmar Shaw sees her holidays in Indonesia become a catastrophe as the country is shut down and riots break around her hotel. Engineering her