Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 80

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...

Review Too Late: Nordic Noir

 Over our long winter months, I’ve been watching TV set in brooding northern climes.  How depressing can it get in northern Europe? Very, apparently. Bordertown .  Netflix kept trying to get me to watch this, but I assumed it was set on the US-Mexican border, and I’m all too familiar with that.  But then Netflix played me the trailer, unasked the way they do, and I realized everyone was speaking Finnish.  So hey, that’s more interesting! Bordertown stars acting stalwart Ville Virtanen as Detec...

The Muffin Conundrum

I have an important scientific question here.  The answer may save the world, or at least my breakfast. I am fond of English muffins.  (Or, as I believe they are known in England, “muffins.”) Yet these muffins have one peculiarity that I can neither understand nor condone. When I take a muffin out of the container to drop into the toaster, there is always one corner of the muffin that’s soggy.  (I know a round object can’t have a corner, but bear with me.  You know what I mean.)  Opposite the...

Slammed

I haven’t been posting here much, or posting anywhere really.  I’ve been just a little bit slammed. I’m writing Quillifer the Knight.  I’m working on Taos Toolbox.  I’m doing my taxes, and going cross-eyed looking at all the little receipts that made sense months ago, but don’t now, and looking for the little receipts that I know I once had, but don’t seem to have at present.  And I got hit with the copy-edit for The Accidental War.   Plus I have, y’know, a life.  Which I recommend to those o...