Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 80

Bull Piss and Mummies

Would it change the power or poetry of Rain, Steam and Speed: The Great Western Railway if we learned that the evaporative yellows that infuse the atmosphere with mystical light were wrought from the distilled urine of cows cruelly raised on a diet consisting exclusively of mango leaves? Here Kelly Grovier asks the question: What is great art actually made of?  Or from? The answer is found in  An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Colour, which explores the vast array of colors of the Forbes Pigment Co...

Miss Jones

I’ve finished watching Season Two of Jessica Jones, wherein it was demonstrated that our alcoholic, PTSD-afflicted, short-fused trainwreck of a heroine is by far the sanest person in her family. I mean, wow.  Turn the cray-cray up to 11. The first season had David Tennant as Kilgrave, the creepy stalker who is, basically, the obsessed character seen in a lot of genre romance, except that in romance he’s seen for some damn reason as a good guy. Kilgrave is that character as he would exist in t...

Terran Prize Awarded!

The 2018 Terran Prize, founded by George R.R. Martin and consisting of a full tuition scholarship to the Taos Toolbox master class for writers of science fiction and fantasy, has been awarded to Joey Yu. Joey Yu was born in Taipei, educated in Vancouver, and now works in Shanghai as a freelance creator.  He is the author of several novels published in China, including The Sunlight Trilogy of futuristic fantasy novels, The Mirrored Truth, and The Locus, which won the Excellence Award of the T...

Gucci Does Wild Cards

Gucci at Fashion Week?  Totally inspired by Wild Cards. Check it out.

Local Sunset Time

A view off the back porch just at sunset. I noticed, just after I snapped this picture, that in the far distance are a couple horses caught in the act of making little horses. It’s all just part of Nature’s Pageant, folks.

Talking with George

So here I am any the Jean Cocteau Theater in Santa Fe, being interviewed by George R.R. Martin.  Right at the start he says I’m an important guy, so I must be. The whole interview runs an hour and twenty-two minutes, so prepare yourself for a surfeit of delights. I’ve had some download trouble with this massive file, but have faith, you’ll hear it all eventually.

Roll Away!

It’s the weekend, so I’m off amusing myself with one thing or another. In the meantime, please enjoy Fred and Ginger on roller skates in Dance With Me, choreography by Hermes Pan.  I don’t know why this dance isn’t more famous than it is, because it’s brilliant. Kathy pointed out to me that there’s only one cut in the entire dance, toward the end.  Otherwise it’s just one continuous dazzle-dazzle with no interruptions.

Shrinkage

So I’m halfway through reading this novel when I realize that the author has been through therapy. There’s nothing good or bad about this, and it doesn’t affect whether or not it’s a successful story, but while reading I realized that therapy can be apparent in the toolkit that the author brings to the work. Being through therapy provides you with a method of looking at psychological states, family relationships, self-destructive behaviors, traumatic experiences, addictions, etc.  And it also...

Facebookery

Via Bruce Sterling and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, here’s how to alter your Facebook settings to opt out of platform sharing. Facebook has allowed third parties to violate user privacy on an unprecedented scale, and, while legislators and regulators scramble to understand the implications and put limits in place, users are left with the responsibility to make sure their profiles are properly configured. Over the weekend, it became clear that Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics compa...

Standup

So in last night’s dream I enrolled in a workshop in standup comedy.  Which, I should mention, I have never had any ambitions whatsoever to do. The workshop took place in a barnlike hotel in a place like the Berkshires, with snow and winter sports, and the woman who ran the place kept telling us that we had to look deep into ourselves to find our material, and I tried this but without much success.  It appears I have looked as deeply into myself as I care to, and the rest can remain a mystery...