Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 40

Chin Up, Bear

Alas, Covid has forced Taos Toolbox 2020 to postpone for the third time. We hope to hold the 2020 workshop sometime in mid-2022.

I couldn’t see putting 16 people in a classroom for six hours per day over a two-week period and trusting that no one would get sick. And of course if someone did get sick, we’d all be quarantining for two weeks, and my idea of a dream vacation has never involved being locked in with over a dozen grumpy writers.

Next year in Angel Fire!

First to Die

So a few years ago we booked a hotel online in Rennes. Though this wasn’t obvious from the online site, the hotel was brand-new, and sat in a half-completed industrial park just outside the city proper. The street it was on was so new that it wasn’t to be found on any map. We had a devil of a time just finding the place.

When we arrived, we drove into the underground parking garage and parked. There were no other cars in the garage. We walked through the cold echoing garage to the e...

I Am Dragon’d

Fleet Elements has been nominated for a Dragon Award, given at Dragoncon in Atlanta over Labor Day Weekend.

It’s been nominated in the Military SF category, which I suppose ends the discussion over whether the Praxis series is MilSF at all. I’ve always maintained the book isn’t about the military, but about people who happen to be in the military.

But there’s no category for “Epic Multi-Volume Far-Future Science Fiction,” so I guess the voters worked with what they had.

If y...

Reviews in the Nick of Time: The Green Knight

The Green Knight is a film that makes absolutely no sense, but the nifty thing is that it makes no sense in exactly the way that medieval romance made no sense. The characters live in a liminal world. Miracles happen all the time, sorcery is common, magical objects clutter every cupboard, prophetic dreams descend on people without warning, and none of it is explained, it just happens. King Arthur sits with his knights at the Round Table every New Year and waits for a miracle to occu...

Electric Boogaloo

I had all sorts of pleasant things to post here, about the Colorado trip and some other things, but then my electric fixtures began to act up, and it’s using up all my energy.

The day after the return from our trip, the air conditioner died, and will need to be replaced. Unfortunately it will take two weeks for all the parts to arrive, during which time we’re subjected to 90+ degree heat. The contractor has loaned us a couple of portable AC units, one of which is adequate for the space it’...

Thin Air

Our week-long trip to Colorado is over, and now that I’m back, I can’t help but feel this vacation was a little too much work. The plan of driving somewhere new (nearly) every day was too busy. We should have chosen a base or two and stayed there for a few days at a time.

Which isn’t to say there wasn’t plenty of spectacular scenery to enjoy. Here’s a grandiose view of Dillon impoundment with mountains and clouds in the background. This was taken with my iPhone, because though I ...

EXCELLENT ADVICE

An excellent suggestion from the closed movie theater in Center, CO.

Local Green

So the sign on the hotel door read NO SMOKING OF ANYTHING INSIDE!

“Hmm,” I thought to myself. “I must be in Colorado.”

We are on our first trip out of state since August 2019, cruising up central Colorado to Steamboat Springs and back, magnificent scenery all the way, cool temperatures, and signs of a thriving green economy. No less than three cannabis dispensaries are lined up in a row next to our hotel. I wondered if this was the one block zoned for cannabis.

New Mexico recently d...

Sun and Smoke

The other day we meandered down to Belen to view a work by the artist Judy Chicago. She and her husband moved to Belen some years ago and bought an old brick railroad hotel. They live in part of the hotel, and use the rest to store art. (Since Chicago tends to go in for massive installations along the lines of The Dinner Party, they need a lot of room.)

(I might point out that while I live close enough to Belen to share a zip code, I live well out into the country amid the waving fiel...

Foot of the Bow

I apologize for the poor quality of this photo, but I shot in through the screen, in some haste to capture the image before it vanished.

If you observe the rainbow from today’s cloudburst, you’ll see it stretches all the way to the ground in front of the treeline. The rainbow actually touches ground a couple hundred yards from where I stood. I’d never seen that before.

The rain was intense while it lasted, and all the while in brilliant sunshine. I expected to see a unicorn, or a...