Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 70

Corridors

I’m well into the as-yet-untitled second volume of the second series of Praxis novels— now that would make a poor title— and I’ve come to realize that I’m really missing having at least some of the action set on a planet, where there are things like wind and plants and pretty scenery. Every scene is either on a starship or on some kind of station, and that means decks and corridors and machinery.  Each setting is artificial, and there are only so many ways I can describe it. Fortunately the P...

So. This Happened.

It’s the first big winter storm in a number of years, and the world is covered with a layer of ice buried under several inches of snow.  It won’t really get above freezing for over a week, so we’re just going to have to get used to involuntary acts of skating. I hate driving under such conditions, not because I’m afraid of icy conditions, but because I’m afraid of the other drivers.  Practically no one here knows how to drive in weather, and I’m sure the highways are littered with wrecked veh...

Sunset Time

Newtonmass

Happy Sir Isaac Newton’s Birthday!

 

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:
God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.

Complex Waterfowl

Sandhill cranes at sunset, snapped at the Ladd S. Gordon Waterfowl Complex just south of town.

Gifts for Readers #8 and #9: Two for the Price of Two

Here are what I suspect are the final two publications for veterans of Taos Toolbox, all published in the last year.  (Unless someone clues me in to a novel I didn’t know about.) First up is the latest from Hugo-winning author Will McIntosh, a YA fable about a group of teens and their infallible lie detector. In this terrifyingly timely tale for fans of The Eye of Minds, a teen and his group of friends find themselves on the run after using a genius lie-detector contraption to expose their co...

Welcoming Our New Robot Executive Chefs

We’re about to enter a holiday period in which vast quantities of food and beverage will be consumed.  Which means, as a corollary, that there will be a lot of leftovers. Why not do something different with your leftovers this year?  Like make use of a recipe created by an AI?  We have two AIs working on the problem, one at Stanford and the other at the University of Illinois. For instance, what if you wake up on Boxing Day and discover the icebox is full of tangerines, toffee, and mulled win...

Gifts for Readers #7: Tisiphone’s Quest

We are now at #7 of my list of gifts for readers, all written by veterans of Taos Toolbox, the master class for writers of science fiction and fantasy.  (And have I mentioned that all these books were published in 2018?  And these are only the 2018 novels I know about— there may have been more, because not everybody tells me what they’re doing.) R. Jean Stevenson’s Tisiphone’s Quest was workshopped at Toolbox some years ago.  Here’s the cover copy: Senior Detective Samantha “Sam” Sarafian get...

Operatic

Lo!  It’s another photo from our 2019 calendar! This is Olavinlinna (“St Olaf’s Castle”), a 15th century fortification on a Finnish island near the Russian border.  The castle was built by the Swedes to keep the Russians out, but in the early 18th Century Sweden ran out of the money necessary to defend themselves and the Russians got the place anyway.  Eventually the Finns got it back as a gift from the Tsar. The nearby town is Savonlinna (“Castle of Savonia”), set beautifully on the water, a...

Gifts for Readers #6: The Invisible City

Brian K. Lowe’s The Invisible City is #6 in my list of recommended reading from veterans of Taos Toolbox, the master class for writers of science fiction and fantasy. Here’s the flap copy: Captain Charles Clee stumbles onto a secret archaeological expedition from the 23rd century and finds himself stranded nearly one million years in the future. When the woman he loves is kidnapped by one of Earth’s alien overlords, he becomes the enemy of one of the most powerful men in the world. But his qu...