David J. Williams

It seems a little ironic that the laws allowing the government to indefinitely detain human beings drew less protest than SOPA has. Then again, the line has to be drawn somewhere. As I wrote a few years back in my essay on the Future of War, the national security state is keenly aware that domination of the web is critical. Indeed, this past July, the Defense Department declared that the Internet to be an “operational domain of war”, and what’s going on right now is war by another name. For now, I think (and hope) that the wave of protests that constitute Black Wednesday will stem the encroachment; then again, if they can’t shut down your website, they can always arrest you and throw away the key.

Keep in mind, too, that this is merely the first round. The bills and executive orders that will be the successors of SOPA will be framed and justified by a national security imperative: i.e., telling the American public they need to give away their freedoms because companies need to make more money (e.g., SOPA) is one thing, but telling them they need to give it up for security…. hell, that works every time. Especially if the inevitable cyber-terrorist attacks that will be used to justify it came in the midst of food riots, looting, and economic chaos… shit, you won’t even notice that your screens have gone dark then.

So much to talk about…last night’s GOP primary…my cats’ latest scheme to undermine me….the teetering state of the world economy…but for now I’d simply like to introduce you to a colleague of mine, Benjamin Tate, whose latest book is now OUT.  LEAVES OF FLAME is awesome stuff, and well worth your time.

And yes, Benjamin Tate is a pseudonym, and no it’s not me.

The rumors as to my kidnapping at the hands of fanged space rabbits are unfounded. I have returned. But things are not as they were. To wit: I’m now living in Los Angeles, and I have a new novel coming out this spring. Which I will tell you all about in due course!

But enough about me, I know that what you really care about is seeing a photo of my new kitten. His name is Catticus Finch, and though his older “brothers” Ajax and Captain Zoom find him somewhat annoying at times (because he only has two speeds, Asleep and Insanely Hyper), they have accepted that this is now a three-beast household. My sister tells me this essentially makes me a crazy cat guy, to which I plead GUILTY AS FUCK.

And btw, happy new year!

“The roar was loud, but not really any louder than what you usually hear in the cockpit of a jet plane. Another interesting thing is that a great many new musical nuances and timbres can be heard in that roar. I have never heard anything like it on earth. I got the impression that the powerful rocket engines were creating the music of the future—perhaps more moving than the music of our time.”

An amazing re-creation of the view from Gagarin’s window is now on Youtube to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the flight.

Jim and Jerry over at Cult Pop interviewed me on the Autumn Rain trilogy; the episode was televised on Comcast in Michigan and is available on their website here. Thanks guys!–I think that concludes the Autumn Rain interviews/announcements, but you never know. And make sure you keep watching this space for announcements on new projects as they’re unveiled….

I’ve been radio silent for a while here, but I daresay the end of the year is worth resurfacing for. Especially as THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT has been named the sixth best speculative fiction read of 2010 by Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, which is a nice way to finish up a decade that began with me starting to write the books that would take me on a very long strange trip.  To those of you who stuck with me for the whole trilogy, thanks for sharing the ride, and stay tuned for more announcements shortly.  So on behalf of me and ze cats, happy new year; may we have a better second decade then the last century did…

. . . as of yesterday. Like nothing you’ve ever read, and blurbed by yours truly. Check it out here, just in time for the holidays!

Nader Elhefnawy has penned an extremely thoughtful review of the entire trilogy for Strange Horizons.

On a more personal note, I should say it’s very cool to finally be IN Strange Horizons; I sent them some shitty short stories several years ago, which they (wisely) declined to publish. Though I did have one that featured a gang of space pirates trapped on Titan that I was rather partial to at the time.  Alas, this was before I learned how to write.

Anyway, now I need to get back to the cats and the Sekrit Projects.  Enjoy the Halloween weekend….

Last week I resurfaced from various Sekret Projects to do an interview Patrick Hester and Andrew Liptak over at SF Signal. As you can see, I appear right after a panel discussion on genre series overstaying their welcome, which you may rest assured is pure coincidence, given that in a fit of total disregard for the prevailing fashion regarding series, I actually finished mine. Go figure. And give it a listen.

It’s strange to think there’s an entire generation of kids who don’t remember the day the Towers collapsed. It’s even stranger to think that there’s an entire generation for whom this was their first “event” memory, the way my generation remembers the Challenger exploding or those in the early 60s remembered Kennedy’s assassination. And now we’re almost a decade into the so-called “long war”, a term I resist because it’s impossible to name the victory conditions….as will become woefully apparent the next time an attack occurs on American soil, as it assuredly will, unless we throw out everything that makes us a free society.

Arguably, the most potent damage that Al-Qaeda did to us that day had nothing to do with the death and the carnage.  Thucydides was deeply skeptical of the ability of a democracy to maintain a coherent foreign policy; the ease with which Bin Laden was able to lure us into Middle Eastern quagmires would have done nothing to change his mind on that score.  An even more severe fallout was the division in American society that the event engendered.  America is weaker now because of the near-fratricidal level of venom and vitriol unleashed by those who would label those who disagree with them as traitors.  To some extent this is the natural tension of a republic operating on the world stage; Democrats tend to forget that FDR’s supporters labeled those who voted for his GOP opponents as aiding and abetting the Nazis.  But that a handful of men operating out of caves could have facilitated such polarization of American society beggars belief.  Nine years later, we mourn the victims, yes, but also the path along which we’ve been careening ever since.