Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 87

Quillifer’s A Guest

The ever-charming John Scalzi is very kindly allowing me to fill up his blog today with a very long essay about Quillifer.  By all means check it out.

Wild Cards at the Jean Cocteau

This Sunday, at 4pm at the Jean Cocteau Theater in Santa Fe, 20-odd Wild Cards writers will be present for a signing.  The cost of admission is to buy a book. I don’t know if any of my other books will be available, but no one will object if you bring your own. The latest list of attendees is as follows: GEORGE R.R. MARTIN (Lohengrin, Popinjay, the Great and Powerful Turtle)
MELINDA M. SNODGRASS (Dr. Tachyon, Dr. Finn, Double Helix)
WALTER JON WILLIAMS (Golden Boy, Modular Man, Pop Tart)
VI...

Angel Sale

October’s been completely packed, and it’s only three days old.  Not only did Quillifer drop just yesterday (I trust you already have your copy), but I’ve just put my classic novel Angel Station on sale for 99 cents. Angel Station was my first attempt at setting a story entirely in space, and I set myself the task of writing a space opera without guns, missiles, or bombs. Though there’s plenty of action, there’s no gunplay or missile attacks, because that would just be too easy.   A...

It’s Here!

Quillifer is released today!

 

 

You can order at your favorite local bookstore, or at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or for ebooks only Google, iBooks, and Kobo.

Alas, Cronkite

Once upon a time, Walter Cronkite did stuff like this.  When Watergate was a confused scandal difficult for the public to grasp, Cronkite took two evenings to put it all together on television.  The second evening was curtailed by a terrified network chairman, but by then Cronkite’s point had been made, and the Watergate scandal went on to unroll on TV and in the courts and Nixon’s presidency was doomed. But now journalists are a despised, compromised profession, working for billionaires and...

Welcome Arrival

Advanced copies of Quillifer arrived today.  They looked so posh I put them on a red velvet cushion. Quillifer, I remind, will be released on October 3.  You can pre-order at your favorite local bookstore, or at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, iBooks, and Kobo.

Gilt and Glory

More gilding from St. Petersburg— I have to think half the world’s gold supply is slathered over the buildings and monuments.  This is part of the Admiralty, originally a fortress built by Peter the Great, now an Empire-style complex built in the early 19th century. The weathervane atop the tower is in the shape of a warship.  Nabokov once wrote a story about the spire. This photo was taken quite late at night, after 10pm, but during the White Nights the sunsets go on quite literally for hour...

Body Count

I’ve been watching the Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam, and trying not to be completely overcome by shell shock.  I lived through the era, but now seeing twelve or more years of folly and slaughter condensed into 10 episodes of television, is something like having 10 bad acid flashbacks in a row while being repeatedly walloped by a baseball bat. I keep having to remind myself that things have got better in the years since.  We may still be involved in endless war, but we’re not spending near...

Sea of Lost Ships

Via Janice, the announcement of a “ship graveyard” in the Black Sea, featuring the preserved remains of wrecks stretching over 2500 years.  Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman . . . it’s all there. The Black Sea is a notoriously stormy sea, and the Greeks called it Euxeinos Pontos, “the hospitable sea,” for the same reason they called the Furies “the friendly ones.”  They didn’t want to give the sea any ideas, it was nasty enough as it was.

 

 

Days of Frenzy

I had a lovely time traveling this summer, but I knew I was going to pay for it later.  And by later, I mean now. I’m working on a number of things more or less simultaneously.  Promoting Quillifer!, which will be released on October 3.  Doing an online sale of Voice of the Whirlwind, which (unfortunately) sort of crowds onto Quillifer! since it starts on October 5.  Preparing a paperback release of Voice of the Whirlwind, which I hope to have ready by the time the sale starts, just in case r...