Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 96

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...

Enter the Inferno

The Dopes came. We died. All the while the horror of the rite went on, swirling and reflecting off the gold leafed walls, not a cultist in sight. Peterson’s eyes stayed open and blinking. Steam-links were threaded into his still-quivering muscles, crimped through incisions into his bones; pistons and cylinders shoved up inside the empty cavity of his body, bolted to drillings in his bones. His boiler went in. All the steam plumbing was connected up. A flurry of mechanical arms and hands, lik...

O’erwhelmed

I have been hacking my way not through a jungle, but through a half-dozen or more jungles.  Jungles with names like IRS, Conservancy District, Ebooks, Travel, Training, Weed Combustion, Copy-Edits, Tractor Repair, Auto Sale, Deadlines, and others that discretion bids me not mention. And now I seem to be coming down with my third cold of the winter. My current existence might best be described as “character-building.” Progress, however slow, seems to have been made.  I thought I’d finished my...

REREAD

Thursday March 2nd, Tor.com is hosting a REREAD of the Wild Cards series.  If you have a question or a comment, feel free to drop in.  Authors and editors will be there. It’s all about you, my friends.  So the more of you are there, the better this will be.