Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 99

Spot the Fish in this Picture

It’s a crocodile fish, known less descriptively as “de Beaufort’s flathead.” It’s also an ambush predator, so if you happen to be a small crustacean, don’t get too close.

Revisiting the Classics: The Man in the High Castle

WithThe Man in the High Castle premiering its third season on HBO, I thought I’d seek out the book on which the series was based. I didn’t want to see the TV version before re-reading the book, because I wanted to see how well the original material was adapted. It took me a while, but I finally found on my shelves the paperback book I’d read when I was in my twenties. The book was a 1962 Popular Library edition with the front cover missing— it hadn’t been stripped, I’m pretty sure, just torn...

Wild Cards x 5

If you haven’t tried Wild Cards yet, here’s your chance. Tor has bundled the first five Wild Cards books into a single ebook, and put it for sale at Amazon and their own MacMillan site (which has links to other retailers). Check this out. Lots of good reading for cold winter nights.

Padding

I’ve complained here and thereabout stories that don’t actually seem to get anywhere, or which get lost in a detour for a few hundred pages before finding the path again, or that can’t seem to work out what they’re about. Lately I’ve been watching a lot of television with much the same problem. Original Netflix series, Amazon Prime series, and series off regular ol’ TV. Most of these original series have thirteen episodes per season, because as we all know, God cleverly arranged a year to con...

Goodbye Cruel Year

I wish you all a most successful and peaceful 2017. I had a very pleasant New Year’s Eve in Santa Fe, at GRRM’s annual party. Here’s George and Parris, toasting the end of 2016 while fireworks burst behind them. George used to regularly host New Year parties back in the 1980s, but then he went off to Hollywood and went on to become the world’s most famous writer, both of which occupied a certain amount of his attention. But these last few years he’s reinstated his New Year parties, though on...

Stick to the Ribs

Got any leftover ribs from your beef roast? Here’s something to do with them. Slather them with mustard. Then cover them with bread crumbs. Then put them in the broiler, turning as necessary, until they’re brown and crispy and sizzling. Eat them with your fingers, as your caveman ancestors did. I got this from Vincent Price’s seriously old-school cookbook, which presents a glimpse of high-end world cuisine as it existed around 1960. Pressed duck from La Tour d’Argent! (You’d pay $250 for that...

That Warehouse, Looming

So I’m reading along in this novel, and I come to the scene where the protagonist, desperate to find the answers to his questions, decides to go into the abandoned warehouse alone, knowing that the bad guy is there with all his minions. Or maybe it’s not a warehouse, but the bad guy’s manor house. Or if not a manor house, a tall modern skyscraper with the answers on a laptop in an office on the 88th floor. Now the protagonist is just some doofus, okay? He doesn’t know how to break into anythi...

Filling and Fulfilling

So here’s a shot of last night’s roast beast, fresh from the oven. I splurged on a USDA Prime rib roast, the price of which quite startled me. I sprinkled it with Indonesian white pepper, garlic, and allspice (the Finnish housewife’s best friend), and then dusted it with flour before tossing it in the oven. I served it with buttermilk mashed potatoes stirred up with garlic and horseradish, brown-braised pearl onions, baby peas, and a gravy I made with red wine, sea salt, yet more garlic, yet...

Sprint for the Story!

Carrie Vaughn’s new Wild Cards story, “The Thing About Growing Up in Jokertown,” is live at Tor.com. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you just might like it. No previous knowledge of the series is necessary, I’m sure.

Carols

This is the time of year for caroling. But what do we actually know about carols? For one thing, carol services are very recent. They were invented in 1880 by Edward White Benson, the Bishop of Truro. And what do we know about him? He later became Archbishop of Canterbury and his whole family had something of a mania for writing. His wife had 39 lesbian lovers. How do we know that? Because she kept a diary, and numbered them. One of his sons was the eminent gay novelist EF Benson. Another was...