Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 93

Anvilstruck

I’m continuing my prep for the worldcon by investigating Finnish culture, and I discovered this video by Steve’n’Seagulls, with their own interpretation of a modern classic. Gotta love the anvil.  The accordion player with a dead animal on his head.  And the fact that, for the first time, I can actually understand the words.

Shandification

So what does the classic but gonzo 18th Century novel Tristram Shandy have to do with video and console games? Quite a lot, according to this video, which also offers some fairly astute ideas about narrative and structure.  Plus a newly-coined term with which the more pretentious among us can annoy our friends.  Win/win!

 

Long Live the New Zealand Space Corps!

Today we breathlessly awaited the launch of New Zealand’s first rocket, which finally happened after bad weather forced several delays.  Check the video to see the Electron two-stage vehicle leaping into orbit on its fiery kerosene/LOX tail.  (I advise going to full screen.) The Electron is a small, low-cost vehicle, designed to hurl aloft small satellites and/or cubesats (which Autocorrect keeps insisting really means “cubists,” some of whom definitely deserve to be flung into space).  The...

Whereat I Have Been

So I’ve been very, very busy. First, last week was the Rio Hondo workshop, hosted by Michaela Roessner and myself.  This was the 20th Anniversary Rio Hondo, which oddly enough did not make me feel old, but young, young, young!  It was the most trouble-free workshop experience I can remember, and everyone pitched in and worked to make the manuscripts and the food and the fun better. Left to right, we see: Walter Jon Williams, Sally Gwylan, Isabel Whiston, Barbara Ferrer, Maureen McHugh, Diana...

I Am Cover’d

Behold!  The Gregory Manchess cover for Quillifer, my next book, complete with blurb from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz!  How cool is that! The protagonist’s expression turned out to be key for this, and according to my editor went through several versions.  “It was a goldilocks scenario of just too old, too war weary, not enough snark, way too much snark, then, oh no, now you’re embarrassing drunk uncle . . . “ But what they really needed was this guy.  Part Flashman, part James B...

I Just Won’t Shut Up

Carl Slaughter interviews me for File 770.  I talk about Quillifer, so if the cover in the post just above intrigues you, feel free to check this out. And also, File 770‘s appreciation of the Praxis series.

For the Folks Abroad

This is an announcement for my readers outside of North America.  The Praxis, the first in my Dread Empire sequence, is on sale for 99 cents, or 99 cent-equivalents in whatever your currency happens to be.  You can find the book at Amazon.co.uk, iBooks, Kobo, and Google. This is the revised and slightly expanded Praxis, guaranteed to be even better than any Praxis you find at Brand X! I’m sorry I can’t extend the sale to readers in the U.S. and Canada, but I don’t control the ebook rights her...

Up and Live

My tale of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla is now available on Apple, Amazon, Smashwords, Google, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble.  For a mere $2.99! Click here for an essay about this labor of love.

 

Interview, Part II

Behold!  It is Part II of my interview by Devin Fields on the Flyover Fandom blog.

Clews

I saw this guy tonight.  Safe to say I was amazed. Except the fellow’s name is Colin Cloud.  And having practically majored in the Elizabethans, I keep thinking of him as “Colin Clout.” But if you don’t know Spenser, it won’t matter.