Walter Jon WilliamsNovelist

Dispatches since 2005

The journal

Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 102 entries, all of them here in full.

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  1. January 26, 2021 · 169 words

    Interestingly Various

    Mr. Russell Letson has reviewed The Best of Walter Jon Williams. I’m a terribly modest fellow, as I’m sure you know, so I won’t quote the whole review, but only a couple salient excerpts. Exactly 30 years ago, this column’s lede was “Walter Jon Williams is an interest­ingly various writer….” The intervening decades hav

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  2. January 24, 2021 · 139 words

    Rediscovered

    I recently found an old pocket notebook with four carefully numbered entries. 1. Larod (?) not major (?) 2. Lament 3. Beast 4. Tune The first line is my best guess. It might be “Earon not manor,” or any combination of the two possibilities. I’m guessing these aren’t updates on the status of my psyche, […]

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  3. January 22, 2021 · 74 words

    The Hogfather Approves

    Instead of continuing in my normal course of cynicism and gloom, I thought I would celebrate the detectible and growing spirit of optimism in our world by showing this video of Hogmanay in Edinburgh. Since Hogmanay is what non-Gaels call “New Year’s Day,” I’m posting a few weeks late, but my friend Louy only sent [&hel

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  4. January 7, 2021 · 1,046 words

    Predictable

    So after watching the US Capitol stormed by a hostile force for the first time since the War of 1812, and after hearing reporters bleating out their catchphrase, “Who could have predicted this? (usually employed when something happens that is completely predictable), I bethought myself of an article I first read in Nov

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  5. January 4, 2021 · 156 words

    The Frog. In the Pool.

    The copyright of The Great Gatsby expired on the first of the year, so now it (and other classic works) have entered public domain. Go forth and make your revisionist art, creators! The eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg are upon you! But what no one expected was a groundswell of fans demanding a new Gatsby film starring [&hel

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  6. January 3, 2021 · 731 words

    Doppelgänger

    I’m working on The Restoration, which is the Praxis book following Fleet Elements, and lately I’ve been having a hard time with it. Part of it has to do with how much less amusing it is to write about a great empire that’s tottering because of greed, mendacity, scapegoating, and stupidity when I’m actually living in a

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