Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 78

Nemesis

Here I am preparing for a new career as a Bond villain.  All I need is a white Persian cat and a volcano lair. As part of my preparation for this career shift, I’ve had an operation for a cataract.  Which was done in a couple hours in the doctor’s offices, by a specialist flown in from the secret volcano lair known as Seattle.  The procedure  was pain free, though the whining sound of the little saw, or drill, or laser, slicing into my eyeball was just a little disturbing.  (It sounded too mu...

Whereat I Have Been

I spent all last week at the Rio Hondo workshop, which I ran with the able assistance of Maureen McHugh.  The company was excellent, the critique smart, and you’ll all be seeing the workshop’s stories appearing in magazines and anthologies over the next couple years. And, not least, the food and drink were really excellent. I wasn’t online much last week, because, well, I was running the workshop, but also because the workshop was particularly intense on account of, um, a Plague that fell up...

Passing of a Titan

Here’s a photo of Gardner Dozois and me, taken quite a number of years ago.  I believe we are at a signing or other function and no one else showed up, despite our tempting passers-by with our manifestly seductive appearance. Gardner passed away a few days ago of complications from an infection.  He was 70. Gardner was a writer, critic, anthologist, and the editor for many years of Asimov’s Science Fiction. As an editor, he won no less than 19 Hugo Awards. Book publishers may have made it pos...

A T. Rex is Reading My Mind!

This edition of Dinosaur Comics pretty much sums what’s been going on in my head since I bought the latest model MacBook. If part of this isn’t showing up on your screen (darn MacBook anyway!), click on the art to get the whole picture. Copyright (c) 2018 by the excellent Ryan North.

Cosmic Coincidence

The moon and Venus appeared together tonight.  The sight was magnificent, and the photo is a bagatelle by comparison. (Does anyone know what a “bagatelle” actually is?)

Sabotage in the Home

Of course you knew that when you installed Alexa, Siri, or Google’s Assistant in your home, you were installing a spy.  You just trusted that Amazon, Apple, or Google would use your information for good, or at least would not actively harm you. What you may not have known is that these assistants aren’t just spies, they’re potential enemy saboteurs. Over the last two years, researchers in China and the United States have begun demonstrating that they can send hidden commands that are undetect...

Grumbling

So my innards are grumbling, and I expect the next few hours won’t be any fun at all. I’m doing my prep for tomorrow’s colonoscopy.  You have my permission not to envy me. I’m mentioning this not to elicit sympathy— because there is none on the Internet— but to remind those of you of a certain age that this is one of those things that has to be done regularly, a fact driven home to me twenty years ago, when Roger Zelazny died of cancer because he delayed this annoying but very necessary proce...

A Mythical Beast

A statue of a unicorn eating a lily,  across the road from the James Thurber House. Here’s a link to the story, in case you’ve never read it.

Hello, Columbus

I am in Columbus.  The one in Ohio, not the one in New Mexico that Pancho Villa attacked, or the one in Indiana, or the one in Georgia; and certainly not the Columbus City in Iowa, or the Columbus City in Alabama.  (If Columbus founded any more cities in North America, I’m unaware of them.) I am here for Marcon, which I am informed stands for Multiple Alternate Realities Convention.  I am a guest, but not the Guest of Honor, of whom there are rather a lot.  I am in fact a “featured author,” w...

Archivum Secretum

The Vatican Secret Archives houses 53 linear miles of documents going back 12 centuries, much of it handwritten in Latin using archaic script.  It’s not Secret, exactly, it’s just inaccessible, because in order to look at one of the documents you actually have to be there, in the Vatican, along with your knowledge of Latin and archaic scripts.  Plus you have to know what you’re looking for and where to find it. A lot of it looks like this: But a new project could change all that. Known a...