The acknowedleged inspiration for the games Cyberpunk Red and Cyberpunk 2077, my novel Hardwired has been re-released in its Thirtieth Anniversary Edition.  My most popular SF novel now has new content, essays about the novel’s origins, another essay about the bizarre first German edition, plus a spiffier cover.

The subtitle is a little misleading, since it’s actually thirty-four years since the book came out, and thirty-seven since I started writing it.  But the marketplace likes nice round numbers, doesn’t it?

If you already have the ebook, I believe most ebook retailers will allow you to download a new edition for free.  And if you don’t have the ebook, it’s probably high time you did!

Unless of course what you want is a nifty paperback, to replace the one you’ve read to death.  Because I’ve made that available at Amazon and B&N, a deluxe 6×9 trade paperback with cream paper and a stylish interior courtesy of E.M. Tippetts Book Designs, the Ghia or Fisher Body of the book design world.  It’s really really really pretty.

You’re in lockdown, right?  Might as well have something good to read.

Under certain conditions (which I don’t fully understand) you may be able to purchase the audio book for $4.95.  I don’t have anything to do with this, but that’s the price I’m seeing here and there.

Find your Thirtieth Anniversary Edition right hereabouts:

[kindle] [nook] [Smashwords] [iBooks][Google][Kobo]

NOTE: the Barnes & Noble edition of the paperback might not be available just yet, but it should be in the catalogue within days.

UPDATE: The B&N edition is now available.

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So New Mexico today posted another record number of Covid cases.  Most days we post a new record number.

Our lowest numbers were in early September.  Since then, daily reported cases have risen by a factor of 45.  That’s 45 TIMES THE NUMBER WE HAD JUST TWO MONTHS AGO.

The hospitals are at full capacity.  Any more cases, we just toss ’em in tents or something.  There’s some talk of opening up a recently-closed hospital.  There’s enough equipment there, but we’ve run out of medical personnel.  There’s talk of using National Guard doctors, but since National Guard doctors are civilian doctors outside their Guard duty, that means shifting them from one medical job to another, with a possible net effect of zero.

After her vigorous response to the pandemic earlier in the year, our governor’s current inertia is astounding.  Her stance seems to be something along the lines of, “If you keep disregarding my guidelines, I’ll just have to issue more guidelines.”

I had thought that maybe she was holding off until after the election, for fear the Republicans would call her a Mask Nazi or something.  But no.

Not that the rest of the country is doing much better, since the USA is now generating 160,000 cases per day.  (How’s that herd immunity workin’ for ya?)

If Trump hadn’t been such a coward, the pandemic could have been largely contained by May.  But he was terrified of giving bad news, and he didn’t want the stock market to go down for fear of losing the election, so he lied, and 260,000 died.  He left the bad news to the governors, but some governors refused to give the bad news, and the rest were inconsistent in their policies.  If Trump had told everyone to isolate and mask back in February, he’d be a hero now.

As it is, some states have given up contact and trace, because the virus is simply everywhere, and there are too many places any given victim might have found it.

2020.  The year that keeps on giving.

UPDATE: The governor finally moved, and the state is basically ordered to shut down for two weeks except for essential businesses.  Fingers crossed.

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Next Saturday is the beginning of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights that symbolizes the spiritual “victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance.”

I think Diwali came a week early this year.

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Two bit of good news arrived on the same day!  First, a review of Fleet Elements from Booklist.

Fleet Elements.

By Walter Jon Williams

Dec. 2020. 512p. Harper Voyager, paper, $16.99 (9780062467041); e-book (9780062467065)

This follow-up to The Accidental War (2018) fulfills the promise of the first book, which seemed to be more about opera than space, by delivering two exciting fleet battles. Terrans have been declared outlaws by the Convocation of the Praxis and are gathering their battered forces at Harzapid. Gareth Martinez leads a rescue mission to gather up a fleet being chased by the Praxis. Lady Sula, meanwhile, is on Harzapid, overseeing the restoration of ships to fighting fitness and dealing with saboteurs. Once they have mustered what ships they can, they are still outnumbered by more than two-to-one when Praxis forces approach. Martinez, with Sula as his tactical officer, is counting on Lord Tork, Supreme Commander of the Fleet, to follow his arrogant, outmoded tactics. The opera elements are as tight as the fleet elements, making readers care about those inside the starships desperately evading missiles and proton blasts. A satisfying setup for the final showdown at Zanshaa promised in the next book.

—Don Vicha

And second, a starred PW review of the Best Of collection.

Best-known for space operas, Williams (Fleet Elements) showcases his versatility in this impressive collection of 12 stories, whose wide-ranging subjects include a superhero-supervillain battle in the Old West (“The Golden Age”) and a moving account of a child who learns that his world isn’t want he believed it to be (“Daddy’s World”). In perhaps the most ambitious and memorable entry, “The Green Leopard Plague,” Williams concocts a gripping plot involving an ape turned mermaid, a mystery surrounding an influential academic, copyright police, Sovietism after the fall of the Soviet Union, and ethnic cleansing. Fans of Williams’s Praxis series will also welcome “Margaux,” a taut prequel that provides the complex backstory of a major character in those books, and which maintains suspense even for those who already know how it will end. Across every entry, Williams displays his superior prose, an ability to craft well-rounded worlds, and a facility for creating engagement and empathy in readers, whether for a recognizable human character or an alien intelligence. This stellar volume should grow Williams’s devoted fan base. (Feb.)

Am I really best known for space opera? Who knew?

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