Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 28

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.

Onward Into the Past

Back in April Kathy and I drove the three and a half hours to Portales for the 45th Jack Williamson Lecture, and had to figure out how we were going to entertain ourselves for the long drive across the Llano Estecado. Kathy suggested we listen to the audio book of To Glory Arise, the first of my Privateers & Gentlemen books. I’d met Kathy more than ten years after saying goodbye to that series, and she’d never read them, so she was coming to them fresh.

So we listened to the book drivi...

Exterminator Wanted

At 5:30am I was awakened by a spider biting me on the haunch.

I was somewhat familiar with the sensation, since last year I was bitten twice, on two successive nights, by a large centipede that had taken up residence in my easy chair. After the second bite, I jumped up, turned on the light, and hunted for the malefactor. Eventually I beat it to death with a shoe.

I have no mercy for centipedes. They are creepy.

On feeling the sting, I rolled over and commenced swiping at my haunch...

Props

I stumbled across a review of Hilary G. Hallett’s Inventing the It Girl, a biography of the potboiler novelist Elinor Glyn, who is credited with inventing the form and style of the Hot Romance in the early 20th century. You’d likely recognize the image of a person in a sleek gown of silk velvet, languidly playing with a long strand of pearls around her neck (and possibly clutching a rose between her teeth), as an early icon of sexually-emancipated modern womanhood. Who among us can’t ident...

Fully Housed

A new Wild Cards volume— #30!!!— has been released with a story of mine in it. There are also stories by Daniel Abraham, Victor Milan, Caroline Spector, Carrie Vaughn, David D. Levine, Paul Cornell, Melinda Snodgrass, Stephen Leigh, and Marko Kloos. A powerful group of writers to set loose in the wilds of Jokertown.

This is my favorite kind of Wild Cards collection, a select number of discrete stories that share a common background but are otherwise about themselves, allowing for maxi...