Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 96

All Set to Go

Taos Toolbox 2017 is full. After sifting through an unprecedented number of applications, we’ve chosen our finalists, and am now just waiting to hear from the last before starting to prepare for the workshop itself, which begins mid-June. My thanks to Nancy Kress for reading the submissions with me, and thanks also to the applicants.  When you’re just beginning, submitting your work is really putting your heart on the line, and it requires a degree of bravery.  So I salute the courage of all...

Wild Cards on the Great White Way

Wild Cards will soon be coming to a Broadway theater near you.  In a lavish musical production written by members of the Wild Cards Consortium and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of Hamilton. Miranda will himself star as Dr. Tachyon, the flamboyant alien who tries and fails to prevent the spread of the wild card virus on Earth. Also cast are John Hodgman as the supremely evil Dr. Tod, and Sibel Kekilli (Shae from Game of Thrones) as Blythe van Rensselaer. The music will be an innovat...

Them!

They know too much about me.  (You’ve heard of Them, right?) I was looking at Amazon today, and they offered me the Easy Acid Reflux Cookbook.  How do They know I have acid reflux?  Is the pharmacy sending Them insufficiently anonymized data? Or have They been monitoring my doctor’s electronic files? I was browsing Costanza’s LiveJournal page the other day, and up popped an ad for Implied Spaces.  I’d just put Implied Spaces on sale.  (At least They didn’t know I’d actually written the book a...

Another Goodie

Lo!  I am Bundl’d! Once again my work is to be found in a StoryBundle, this one on the theme of Artificial Intelligence. And once again, you decide what you want to pay! (Assuming, that is, that you pay at least five bucks.) If you offer at least $5, you get five books: Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams Arachne by Lisa Mason The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata Queen City Jazz by Kathleen Ann Goonan Rewired – The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel (which has anot...

Random Acts of Violence

I’m working on the new Praxis book, and by way of getting in the mood, I’ve been reading a pack of novels about the Second World War. Not that anything I’m writing about will in any way resemble the Second World War.  I’m really not interested in “World War II in Space” novels, of which there are more than a few.  If I want the Second World War, I’ll read novels about the Second World War and cut out the middle man, along with a whole lot of dumb rationalizations for why hitting the beach on...

Power Chords

I’m pleased to report that my novel Implied Spaces is now on sale for a mere $0.99 wherever fine ebooks are sold!  (Which in this case would be Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks, and Google.) The original publisher seriously bungled the release of this one, and it never found traction with readers.  Here’s hoping that all changes. Implied Spaces is one of those books that’s just packed with ideas, such that (in the words of SM Stirling), it’s “a melange that’s cosmological, theological,...

Glorious Anniversary

75 years ago today, Chairman Mao introduced the dinette into China.

Happy Birthday, J.S. Bach!

I wanted to write an ode in his honor, but I couldn’t find a rhyme for “Lutheranism.”

Revisiting the Classics: Podkayne of Mars

I’m not sure how many people would actually consider Podkayne of Mars a classic, but it is Heinlein, after all . . . and besides, nobody would read a blog series titled Revisiting the Flops. I’d read Podkayne when I was a teenager, didn’t care for it, and never picked it up again until the other week, when I stumbled across the audio book in the library.  How bad could it be? I thought innocently. Well, my friends, I found out. One of the features of audio books is that you have to listen to...

Victory for the Oxford Comma

I stand proudly with the Oxford comma, as it stands for reason, clarity, and mitigates against incertitude.  (Try reading that sentence without the Oxford comma and see where it gets you.) I am pleased to know that the US Court of Appeals agrees with me, insofar as they ruled that a missing Oxford comma was the deciding factor in the case of Kevin O’Connor v. the Oakhurst Dairy. But without the comma, wrote US appeals judge David J. Barron, the law is ambiguous as to whether distribution is a...