Reading Walter Jon Williams

[dreamshark]

I've been reading books by our Minicon 39 Writer GOH, and I'm really impressed! So far I've read Days of Atonement and Angel Station. The former is a gritty police procedural with an s.f. twist; the latter is hard-core far-future science fiction. Both are excellent, although Angel Station is more to my taste. I am impressed with the author's range - on the surface is hard to imagine two more different books, but what they have in common is exceptionally well-developed backgrounds and characters (even the minor ones). After reading Days of Atonement I was convinced that the author had grown up in a small town in northern New Mexico. But then, the background details in Angel Station were equally convincing, and I'm pretty sure he didn't grow up in space. Maybe he's just got a genius for the convincing detail.

Richard read Aristoi, and it sounds like yet another wildly different universe, with a background even more interesting than the two I read: something about skillful management of multiple personalities as a kind of super-power. And nanotech. Hmmm, that suggests some intriguing programming items...

What other books has he written, and how can we build programming items around them?

Comments

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

I've read several of his books:
Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind, Angel Station, Days of Atonement, Metropolitan - which I think was up for a Hugo?, City on Fire

And some of his short stories - at least one "Consequences" was in one of the Liavek anthologies Festival Week

He's part of the cyberpunk crowd with Sterling and Gibson, but I think he's also part of the (ex-)Zelazny crowd and he's written some of the Wild card stories.

So maybe something about shared worlds? Something re. George Martin?

Are you interested in my digging up some of the older stuff?

Walter Jon Williams

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I recommend Metropolitan and City on Fire (this one is my favorite). They're fantasy with the look and feel of science fiction. Warning: They're in present tense, which some people can't stand.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Aristoi is the only one of his novels I've read. I don't know that it's a future I'd want to live in, but I was impressed with the range of his vision. I'll have to check out some more of his work before Minicon.