Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 97

Second Line

Happy Mardi Gras, y’all!

 

Lovecraft’s Nightmares

H.P. Lovecraft was notoriously afraid of fish.  (As well as Jews, Italians, Irish, Negroes, and immigrants generally.) But Lovecraft was afraid of ordinary fish.  Cod, for example, or maybe prawns.  What he didn’t know was that the sea was full of stuff that would have caused him to shriek, gibber, and drop away in a dead faint, as his hero Randolph Carter was wont to do when confronted with an eldritch monster from the depths of space and time. Behold some examples. Lampreys.  They bore int...

Totally Not a Game

An Indonesian woman arrested for suspected involvement in the killing of the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s half-brother in Malaysia was duped into thinking she was part of a comedy show prank, Indonesia’s national police chief has said, citing information received from Malaysian authorities. Tito Karnavian told reporters in Indonesia’s Aceh province that Siti Aisyah, 25, was paid to be involved in pranks . He said she and another woman performed stunts which involved convincing men to c...

My Boskone Schedule

I’ll be in Boston this weekend for Boskone 54, one of my favorite conventions.  It’s large, it’s literate, it has a very large percentage of professional attendees, and even after all these years it’s still about the books, which is clear the second you walk into the large dealer room, with table after table of (often rare or obscure) volumes by your favorite authors. At Boskone, events on Friday afternoon are free (including a couple of mine, apparently).  So if you want to see me (or Brando...

Valentine Special

I’ve written a long Valentine’s Day love letter to Croyd Crenson, Roger Zelazny’s character in the Wild Cards series, thus kicking off a new series, “My Favorite Wild Cards Character (that I didn’t create).” And while you’re visiting, check out the other content at  wildcardsworld.com.

Cold Night Special

A cold, miserable, drizzly day just begs for this cioppino, with shrimp, tilapia, oysters, scallops, and littleneck clams.  Enjoyed along with a tart cabernet sauvignon from Marlborough. Happy eating, y’all.

An Imaginary Conversation in Which I Triumph Totally

As opposed to “an actual conversation,” here’s one I wish I could have.  With any number of writers. ME: I enjoyed your new novel, but there was one part that puzzled me. HIM: What was that? ME: The part about the squidlike alien beings who were fans of Sonic Youth.  I mean, the book’s set in the far future— how did Sonic Youth get into the picture? HIM: Oh that?  That’s satire. ME: Satire?  Of what? HIM: Well, you know . . . satire. ME: But what are you satirizing, exactly?  Sonic Youth?  So...

Fly, My Little Ebooks! Fly!

May I just stand in croggle-eyed amazement and point out that the 99-cent sale on The Rift is the best ever? The sale was supposed to last one week, but it was extended into the second, and now the third, because the book just kept selling! Shows you what might have happened twenty years ago, if the original publisher had been the least bit interested in selling it.  Everybody could have made money, but now it’s just me. Still, the sale will end one of these days, so if you don’t have a copy,...

Unto the Breach

So I’m pleased to announce that I have signed the contract for three more Praxis books. Now I announced the offer in September of 2015, but it took until now to negotiate the contract. What with publishers becoming more monolithic— only five left standing, after all— and feeling threatened by Amazon and new technologies, they’ve reacted by trying to get a bigger slice out of everyone else’s pie, particularly the authors.  Their contracts have grown more, well, oppressive.  Particularly as re...

Five Beats per Second

An excerpt from the surreal Helzapoppin‘, starring the comedy duo Olsen and Johnson. (Not to mention Slim & Slam, Shemp Howard, and Elisha Cook, Jr., as “the writer.”)  A film which, with its dreamlike action and constant breaking of the fourth wall, would nowadays would be considered metafictional, except the word didn’t exist back in 1941. Dancing here are Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, who also performed as the Congaroos.  These were the dancers who dominated the Cat’s Corner, reserved for the b...