Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 28

Ears, Pointy, Two

I’ve watched three episodes (all there is, so far) of Amazon’s billion-dollar Tolkien fanfic, Rings of Power, and I find my reactions mixed.

Public reaction so far has featured complaints that the series isn’t faithful enough to the source, but that complaint doesn’t have any weight with me. The filmmakers didn’t have the rights to the Akallabêth, and had to settle for the appendices to LOTR as a source. Drama is different than written narrative, and will inevitably take shortcuts, combi...

Signed Books

Apropos the Privateers & Gentlemen books, a whole box of the original paperbacks has been discovered!

Our friend Nadine is making them available . All are signed, and all but one are unread and in good condition.

You can buy them singly or buy the whole set of five. These have been out of print since the 1980s, and are unlikely to be reprinted anytime in the next millennium. If you’re a collector of these sorts of things, you’ll probably be interested.

Five by Five

The fifth of my Privateers & Gentlemen series is now available as an audio book. read by the estimable Bronson Pinchot. It may be available only on Audible for the next 90 days or so, but that rule does not seem universally enforced.

The Tern Schooner is appearing as if it’s the final book in the series, which it is not. Under its original title, The Yankee, it was published second. According to internal chronology it’s either third or fourth, depending on how you count these things. ...

Electronic Vacation

I returned home from Worldcon to find that my neighborhood had been hit by an electronic blackout. Without AC, our house was unlivable and we spent the evening with Terry and Jim, whose hospitality was much appreciated.By the time we got home, the electricity was on and the house was cool, but wifi and our landline were both out of commission. Probably the cable was cut by the crews repairing the transmission line.We await the arrival of a technician, but in the meantime I’m doing my posting fr...

Amuse-Bouche

Tesla’s Egg.

The first course at Next restaurant, with a menu inspired by the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

Nikola Tesla lit the entire fair with electricity, the first time electricity had been used on such a scale. Among the wonders on display was a copper egg suspended above a magnetic field.

Here we find a golden sphere made of potato, containing a generous helping of caviar and floating in a mushroom foam. We had to break the egg to find the treasure.

Imaginative, amusing, ...

Hey Y’all!

Guess what town I’m in!

Chicon Schedule

In a couple days I’ll be flying to Chicago for Chicon 8, this year’s world science fiction convention. Here are my program items:

Autographing – Walter Jon Williams, Thursday, 1 September 2022, 14:30 CDT, Autographing

Table Talk – Walter Jon Williams, Thursday, 1 September 2022, 17:30 CDT, Crystal FoyerTitle (This is what is usually called a Kaffeeklatsch, though apparently we can’t drink coffee in the pandemic.)

Beyond Campbell and Campbell: New Story Forms and Structures, Saturday, ...

To the New City

Here’s the cover of the City on Fire re-issue, again by Hugo-winning artist Elizabeth Leggett. (And I just this minute noticed a problem with it. Anyone else see it?)

There have been a number of my books that were difficult to illustrate. I was never satisfied with the covers on the original hardbacks or on the ebooks I issued myself, but now I have Leggett art for every one of them.

I am deeply pleased with the way this one looks. (Except for that one thing, fortunately fixable...

Fashion Statement

So here’s the new addition to my wardrobe, a plastic brace that straps around my leg.

This is intended to help my achilles tendon heal. I tore the tendon back in January, and what with one thing and another (including my black belt test) it never healed, and I kept re-injuring it. This is intended to keep my foot and ankle immobile and to freeze the foot in a position ideal for relaxing and healing my tendon.

Needless to say it took six or more weeks for the thing to reach me, after...

Born in Fire

I’m re-releasing the ebook of Metropolitan with new cover art by Hugo-winning artist Elizabeth Leggett.

I think this should attract a bit of attention.

NOTE: It’s not yet up on Smashwords, but it’s everywhere else.