Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 8

Age of Wonders

It’s the Tower of Pyrex! At the Corning Museum.

Shoveling It

In my last post, I mentioned that much of my life consists of dealing with bullshit, stuff that matters so little that there’s no sense of challenge or accomplishment in coping with it.

Let’s take last week as an example.

Firstly there was a cold snap, that climaxed on a full-on winter storm that knocked out the power and drenched the tree limbs in many inches of heavy, wet snow. We have three large elm trees on our property, and four big limbs came down, one hitting a corner of th...

Love in the Wainscot

I’ve posted only a few times in the last months, which is an indication of how exciting my life has become. I bounce between two poles, Pain and Duty, and I don’t much care to write about either. Pain is always there, and Duty isn’t even interesting— it’s mostly being obliged to do stuff that doesn’t matter, that will be forgotten in days or weeks or months. The tasks are meaningless, which means there’s no sense of accomplishment on completion, just a sense that I’ve dug my way a little...

No Accident

The Accidental War, the first book of the latest Praxis trilogy, is on sale through November 18 at Amazon for a mere $1.99. So far as I can see, the other online vendors have matched this price, so you can get it from your favorite online source.

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, here’s a brief recap:

Blending fast-paced military science fiction and space opera, the first volume in a dynamic trilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Praxis, set in the unive...

Palomar

This is the mirror blank for the Hale Telescope at Mt Palomar. It doesn’t look like a mirror because it hasn’t been silvered and polished.

This 5-meter, 36-ton disk was cast at the Corning Glass Works in 1934, and is made of their brand-new miracle glass, Pyrex. The hot glass caused part of the frame so soften, with parts of it floating up into the hot Pyrex, and the mirror was cracked and ruined.

A second minor was successfully cast and is still in use at Mt. Palomar. This first mir...

Yours For the Taking

Ebook Daily is offering The Praxis as a $1.99 bargain special. I don’t know when this special will end, so it’s best to buy while you can.

Ratsy

Furry friend discovered on the wainscoting of a large building in Cooperstown, NY. There were seven rats in the building, and I found six. I think I knew where to find the last, but by that point my feet were tired.

My Best– On Sale!

The audio book of my collection, The Best of Walter Jon Wiliams, is now available for half price through 11 October.

No point in waiting till October to listen to it— get it now!

Good News. Better News.

Had my nine-month checkup.

Cancer still dead.

Any number of messy medical issues remain, but none of them are going to kill me.

Good News. Bad News. Airborne Assault.

The good: the eye surgery has been a success. I can now read newsprint with my left eye, where before it would just have been a blur. My retina has been slowly uncrumpling.

In bad news: my knees are in worse shape than I thought. Knee replacement has been recommended. I’m reluctant to do this until I get over the side effects of my 2019 hip replacement: a tilted pelvis, scoliosis, 24/7 chronic leg pain, and a limp.

For the last two days we’ve been beset by hordes of tiny, very hungry m...