Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 36

Another Holiday Goodie

In another festive treat for you, we celebrate the Feast of the Slaughter of the Innocents by marking the ebook of Fleet Elements down to $1.99. The Praxis still seems to be in sale for $1.99— I don’t know when that sale ends, so buy now— and Quillifer is $1.99 through the end of the year.

The sale on Fleet Elements ends on February 7, but why wait? Buy it now!

(The Slaughter of the Innocents seems an odd excuse for a feast, especially a religious one, but it has to be admitted that...

Lifetime Lion

So we watched The Lion in Winter, one of our favorite Christmas movies. I’ve seen the movie many times, and I think I startled Kathy by singing along with the theme music.

Regis regum rectissimi
prope est dies domini,
dies irae et vindictae,

tenebrarum et nebulae
diesque mirabilium
tonitruorum fortium,
dies quoque angustiae,
maeroris ac tristitiae.

(It’s pretty much the only Latin I know other than E Pluribus Unum.)

And I also enjoy singing with Alais in a rather more cheerful tune.

...

The Sales Never Stop!

The ebook of The Praxis is on sale for $1.99. I don’t know how long the sale will be in effect, so if you want a copy, get it now. And be sure to tell your friends who might benefit by an introduction to the series.

Not only is The Praxis on sale, Quillifer is still on sale for $1.99, and will be till the New Year. So that’s the first book of two series that you can get for a more-than-reasonable sum.

More holiday presents to come!

Primed

The tamales are standing by, and and the roast beast lurks in its cooler. (It was too large to fit into the already overstuffed refrigerator.) The potatoes are already cooked, and the pearl onions stands ready for brown-braising. The cat prowls the corridors, ready to repel invading miniature reindeer.

All that said, the holiday weekend will be a quiet time, albeit one with too much food. Last year Kathy and I were apart for basically the whole winter, so this year we’re taking it easy ...

New Reads (1)

Worldcon was enormous fun, and I was delighted at being able to see my friends face-to-face, or rather mask-to-mask. I enjoyed my panels, especially the one in which we got to lavish praise on Nancy Kress for a full hour.

It’s past time to begin my usual end-of-the-year roundup of works by veterans of Taos Toolbox, the master class for writers of SF and fantasy. Deep Roots is a novel from Detroit-based author Edward R. Rosick, a novel which was workshopped at Taos Toolbox, and which fe...

I Am At Worldcon

I am at Discon III, in Washington D.C., the long-postponed Worldcon for 2021. We’re all masked and vaccinated and I will find out if it’s possible to have fun under these conditions.

In the meantime, I’m on a bunch of programming, so if you’re in the neighborhood, please stop by and say hi.

Here’s my schedule.

The 1:00 PM 1 Hr Blue Room 721 The Work of Nancy Kress Thu 5:30 PM 1 Hr Forum Room ...

I am Yorkered

About a year ago I got a call from New Yorker writer Chris Byrd, who asked about my connection to the Cyberpunk 2020 RPG and the soon-to-be-released video game Cyberpunk 2077. A lengthy interview followed, along with a series of emails.

The article was scheduled for January 2021, then shifted to June. When June came and went, I figured the article had been cancelled as no longer timely. Then, a few days ago, I got a call from a fact-checker. Color me surprised!

Color me not-surpris...

Wavy

Here’s a photo of Lisbon’s  Monument of the Discoveries (Padrão dos Descobrimentos) taken from across the plaza on the landward side, looking out toward the Tagus. Note the way the waves roll across the plaza, like the ocean billows rocking a caravel on its voyage of discovery.

It’s an optical illusion, of course. The plaza is perfectly flat.

One of the delights of Lisbon was its sidewalks and roads, surfaced in black and white granite often set in complex and interesting patterns. ...

Western Horizon

Tonight’s sunset, complete with crescent moon.

Time for Wolf Time

Friend of the blog Marc Sobel wrote to say that “someone’s been reading Wolf Time.”

That “someone” seems to be working at Microsoft, which has now made a breakthrough on using human DNA to store data, which was a significant element in my novelette.

Microsoft, one of the pioneers of DNA storage, is making some headway, working with the University of Washington’s Molecular Information Systems Laboratory, or MISL. The company announced in a new research paper the first nanoscale DNA sto...