Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 249
May 27, 2009
Baad Movie Digest, Volume One
Oh my. It's a plot summary of the Turkish Star Wars.. . . My next best guess is that they’re hit by lasers since they both fall down when a man in armor shows up. Turkish special effects are not what you’d call an exact art, and here the picture is severely scratched up, which I think indicates a failed attempt at scratching a laser-like beam onto the film itself. They’re captured and taken to a
May 26, 2009
Portrait of the Youngster as an Artist
I was looking through some old photos the other day and found this picture of me, circa 1984. Looking at the image, I recognized the Student Union building at Texas A&M before I noticed the AggieCon badge on my lapel. I was smack in the middle of writing Hardwired when this photo was taken. The picture was taken by Leigh Kennedy and developed and printed in an improvised darkroom in her
The Terror. The Terror.
I was visiting yesterday with some friends, and one of them put on the first ten minutes of Team America: World Police. (For those who haven't seen it, the first ten minutes are the brilliant part of the movie, and after that it's just so-so, except for Kim Jong Il's plaintive little song halfway through.)Imagine my terror when I saw, parodied in the film, some dialog I had just written for my
May 23, 2009
Reviews Too Late: Twilight
Urban romantic fantasy isn't really my metier, but I thought I'd catch Twilight on pay per view and check what the zeitgeist has been up to while I wasn't looking.Filmed in Pale-O-Vision, Twilight was actually a pretty good movie, as far as that goes. (I mean, it is what it is, you're not going to learn any profound truths in this film.) The plotline was very straightforward and simple, with no
May 22, 2009
Galtic Paradise
USA getting too socialist? Tea-baggers too wimpy? Here's a place for you to go galt in style!
May 21, 2009
Dinosaurs of War
Cracked magazine presents: 7 WTF Military Weapons You Won't Believe They Actually Built I'd post some sarcastic comments here . . . but really, they'd be superfluous.
May 20, 2009
Not Girly In Singapore!
This Is Not a Game has garnered a great review from the Straits Times, Singapore's foremost newspaper! While all of this is interesting, without strong characters and an engaging plot, This is Not a Game would be nothing but another bit of 'fan fiction' about the joys of living online. Instead, Williams' novel is punchy, tightly plotted – very tightly with a strong twist or two – and
Cell Tower . . . Tree . . . Thing
Kathy and I were driving through Albuquerque the other day and we saw this . . . object . . . on the horizon. "What is that?" Kathy asked in bewilderment. "Is that a Norway spruce?"No, it wasn't. It was a cell phone tower cleverly disguised as a Norway spruce.Kudos to whoever thought to make the cell tower look like something more pleasant and natural.But next time, could you disguise your cell
May 18, 2009
Clarkson v Honda
Some say that Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson is a swaggering sexist lout. Some say that he's a smug, anti-environmentalist, gas-guzzling enemy of the ozone layer. All we know is that he's done a wonderfully savage review of the new Honda hybrid Insight . . . It’s terrible. Biblically terrible. Possibly the worst new car money can buy. It’s the first car I’ve ever considered crashing into a tree, on
Real Science
The National Institute of Health, following the instructions of President O, have released their new guidelines for stem cell research.We are now nearing the end of the two-week comment period. Despite the new guidelines being rather on the timid side of the political spectrum, various conservative religious organizations have organized a mass protest, resulting in the NIH being flooded with
