David J. Williams

So here I am in the middle of the prairie, getting ready for the start of Willycon XII, where I’m Guest of Honor, which promises to be a lot of fun. There’s even a panel on supervolcanoes tomorrow!—which makes me sad for not having one in my book.  (Originally I was going to put the Autumn Rain base in an underwater volcano, but settled for an abandoned 21st century sea-fortress instead.).

And of course last weekend I was at Norwescon, which rocked.  Great panels on directed energy weaponry and tomorrow’s tech, as well as the chance to catch up with a number of folks—highlights include meeting Vernor Vinge in person (we’d shared a virtual stage last year), having a coffee with space opera maestro S. Andrew Swann, catching up with fellow Clarionite Derek Zumsteg (whose account of Norwescon you can find here), wandering through the endless late-night halls with Daryl Gregory and Jack Skillingstead, and realizing that Cat Rambo and I are both obsessed with Julian May’s Saga of the Exiles.

And in between, I’ve been cranking away nonstop on Secret MegaProject Alpha, which is the no-space/radio-silence into which the last week has dropped.  Stay tuned. ..

Some of you live in a permanent state of it.  Some of you don’t know what the fuss is all about.  

I get it every few years.

It’s called Dune Fever.

And I go fucking crazy.

So crazy I start to think the series actually lives up to its promise in the later books.

Actually, my view of the Dune franchise falls somewhere in between (a) those people on the one hand who think the first book ruled and the rest was just a giant drone-on, and (b) those people on the other hand who will buy and read anything as long as it has a sandworm and at least half of Frank Herbert’s name on it.  Specifically, I think DUNE MESSIAH is every bit as good as DUNE —  I could talk all day about how it’s, frankly, the best sequel ever written.

But then cometh the Fall.

CHILDREN OF DUNE.

Where Herbert’s editors gave up.  And I’m tempted to as well.

But I stumble on, like the dying Planetologist Kynes staggering through the desert . .  I reach GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE, and it all comes back to me in one awesome rush that lasts until . . . oh, about the hundred page mark of HERETICS OF DUNE.  Which I finally finished three years back, in the midst of a business trip abroad where I literally had no other reading and no other excuses.

Now I’ve bought CHAPTERHOUSE DUNE and will be reading it on the plane to Norwescon this weekend.  Stay tuned.

(And no, I don’t think I’m ready to deal with the Anderson/Herbert collaboration yet.  For now, I refer you to my esteemed colleague David Louis Edelman, who’s said it all better than I could.)

Anyone itching to get obsessed all over again with Asimov’s Foundation series can go check out the post I just made over at Random House’s www.suvudu.com.

Meanwhile, there are rumors that more ARCs for MACHINERY OF LIGHT are on their way to Chez Dave, and that feline units Ajax and Captain Zoom will be orchestrating a contest to determine who gets them.  Watch this space.

If it’s a viral meme, count me in. Besides, it’s not like I need an excuse to talk about my favorite books. In no particular order:

1. American Tabloid, by James Ellroy. Ellroy’s foray into political conspiracies continued through two more books (Cold Six Thousand and Blood’s a Rover) but this is the standout: a whole new way to view the Secret History swirling around JFK in the early 1960s.  I make a point of re-reading AT every year, and it only seems to get better each time.

2.  Thucydides, the Peloponnesian War. The genius who invented the whole idea that history could be objective. . even though he was one of the combatants in the war he was chronicling.  I recommend the illustrated version, which has a map on every single page.  This isn’t one of those books where you can just put some maps at the beginning, and turn back to them to find the name of that damn town that’s somewhere on this isthmus . . . or maybe over here. . ah fuck it.

3.  V for Vendetta, Alan Moore.  Superheroes have never really done that much for me, which I suspect is one reason why I regard V rather than Watchmen as Moore’s masterpiece.  Btw, have you ever noticed how both graphic novels have a character achieving an epiphany through hallucinogenics?

4.  Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, The Illuminatus Trilogy.  Okay, technically that’s three books, but they’re published as one volume, so there.  Crowley, giant yellow submarines, Cthulu, talking dolphins and the hint that this is more of a gateway than a book:  Wilson and Shea put themselves on the map for good with this one.

5.  Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah.  I may be the only person out there who thinks this is better than Dune (though before you send me hate-mail, I’m obsessed with them both).  Only a portion of the length of its predecessor, the second book focuses on a single problem:  how do you conspire against a being that can see the future?  Messiah also includes the best single quote in SF:  “This whole thing is explosive.  It’s ready to shatter.  When it goes, it will send bits of itself out through the centuries.  Don’t you see this?”

6.  John LeCarre, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  Another book focused on a specific problem:  how do you find a double-agent when that double-agent works in your own counterintelligence department, and by definition will be aware of any investigation?  The climax is all dialogue and all the more devastating for it.  My agent actually pitched my work to Bantam as “LeCarre on sci-fi crack”; hype, sure, but hey, that’s what you have an agent for.   But I guess it’s fitting, as I probably read more LeCarre than I did science fiction while I was working on the first Autumn Rain novel.

7.  Edward Gibbon, the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  What I love about Gibbon is that he just doesn’t stop; he kept his history going all the way up to 1453, when the Turks overran Constantinople–three volumes across a few thousand pages, and not once does his style falter.  Virginia Woolf called his sentences “finely crafted jewels”; they just don’t make ‘em like this anymore.

8. Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger.  Here Wilson throws off the fiction guise and talks directly and dispassionately about what’s really going on, politically and metaphysically.  Best line:  “study enough conspiracy theory and you ultimately become either paranoid or agnostic.  I became agnostic.” It’s also fascinating for what it tells us of the man’s own life story; not your typical entry into the counterculture, that’s for sure.

9.  Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel.  The third history book I’ve listed, but if you only read one, read this one.  For me, this was a whole new way of looking at history. Did you know it all depends on how many types of domesticated animals your civilization has?  Me neither.

10.  Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire.  The great thing about Asimov is that he didn’t dumb his stuff down; instead he pulls the audience up to his level. And I guess FAE would have to be my favorite; not only do we have the dapper wonderkind general Bel Riose, but the novella involving the (first) search for the Mule has an ending that blew my eighth-grade mind, and still does today.

Peter Watts was convicted this past Friday of obstructing a border guard. His own post on the matter is so stoic as to verge on the heroic; I seriously doubt were I the one to be punched in the face by a border guard that I’d be as calm and dispassionate as Watts.  Worth noting, too, is that he wasn’t convicted of the assault charge, even though the press continues to report it in those terms. Given that members of the jury have written to Watts expressing their dismay at the wording of the statute under which they were forced to convict him, one can only hope that the judge sees reason, lectures the cops from the bench, and hands Watts a suspended sentence.

One thing I find fascinating about how all this has played out is that it’s very much a Rorshasch test for one’s own proclivities.  The law n’ order anger-management types out there are crowing about how Watts Got What He Deserved, while those who think Uncle Sam Sucks are damning the “stupid” jury for not engaging in jury nullification while they rant on about how awful and corrupt America has become.  I’m certainly not going to claim any special objectivity on this; Watts is a good friend of mine, not to mention the reason I’m in print.  But as the man’s noted in his work, we don’t make as many conscious decisions as we might like to think; we simply ratify decisions already made for us by our subconscious/hindbrains.  Much of the reaction to his own ordeal is a case in point.

Gaming goddess Roz Clarke has posted an interview with me about my part in the first Homeworld game, and the relationship between gameplay and narrative.  I don’t think I’ve ever gone on record regarding my experiences with Homeworld, beyond simply saying that it changed my life.  But now the full story can be told.

Well, last year I missed the Campbell nominations for Best New SF Writer by one measly vote, so for my final year of eligibility I’m throwing caution to the winds and announcing my unofficial non-campaign to put me over the top.  It’s bad form to campaign TOO hard for those things (though you have until March 13th to vote here).  Meanwhile I have a team of strategists digging up dirt on my competitors.    For example:

Erin Cashier:  who I went to Clarion with. . . she can switch across the breadth of SF (and beyond) with astonishing skill, and is as happy writing about wizards as robots.  If I tried to write about wizards, it would be embarrassing, and I would create crap like “Fred the Magician and his Magic Fucking Hat.”  And Erin writes about planet-sized spaceships too:  her “Cruciger” remains one of the best stories I’ve ever read, and can be found in last year’s Writers of the Future Anthology.

I’m not doing a great job of character assassination, am I?  Ok, how about:

Jenny Rappaport:  not only was she the agent extraordinaire who sold my Autumn Rain trilogy to Bantam, but she also is a top-notch writer in her own right; stories include “The Sock Thief,” and my personal favorite, “The Untimely Demise of the Quack Quacks,” which she wrote when she was in the third grade, and which still cracks me up every time I read it.    So technically her eligibility really ought to have passed by now.  Besides, when I was in the third grade I was largely preoccupied with picking my nose and no one ever thought of giving me a prize for it.

DB Grady:  who served as a paratrooper in Afghanistan (!), and whose writing combines two of my favorite things:  Mars and noir.  And from the looks of his website, the man’s as big a Raymond Chandler fan as I am.

Ian McHugh:  guy writes fab stories, and won Writers of the Future altogether last year. And he’s Australian too, which clearly gives him an advantage in that that’s where this year’s convention is.  At  least I sure hope it does, because I’M HALF AUSTRALIAN MYSELF AND AM DESCENDED FROM A FUCKING CONVICT WHO GOT HORSEWHIPPED BY THE BRITISH SO VOTE FOR ME DAMMIT.  (That’s actually true.  And thanks for letting me get it off my chest.)

And the most vulnerable target of all:

Gail Carriger:  who is so commercially successful these days that there’s no way she could be a good writer too.  Because that would be too much for my heart to bear.  <Leafs through Gail’s debut novel SOULESS while weeping >

Anyway, here’s the ballot, which you have until March 13th to fill out. . though my razors hacked Aussiecon’s computers so that you can’t submit it without putting my name on there.  Because that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re descended from convicts.

So the bad news is that there are no more ARCs for THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT available. Re-reading the rules of yesterday’s contest, I note I didn’t do anything smart like say “while supplies last” or “the first three to respond with the correct answer win”, so I’ve had to piss off everybody who wrote in clamoring for their well-deserved copies.  Alienating my diehard fans—I’m smooth that way.  Stay tuned, guys, I’m doing what I can to get more.

In the meantime, the good news is that you CAN get ahold of Book Three right now, in bookstores.  Only it’s the Book Three of a totally different trilogy. . . for the last few years, fellow D.C. writer David Louis Edelman and I have been busy cranking out our respective trilogies, with our own dramatically different takes on the future of cyberpunk; well, he’s crossed the finish line first with GEOSYNCHRON, which brings the acclaimed (and quite brilliant) Jump 225 Trilogy to a halt.  Featuring gorgeous art by Stephen Martiniere, who you know and love as the guy who drew the cover of BURNING SKIES.  So what are you waiting for?  That’s what I thought.

The JUMP 225 TRILOGY

INFOQUAKE

MULTIREAL

GEOSYNCHRON

The first ARCs of THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT have arrived. Each one containing the terrible final secret of Autumn Rain. No bullshit fake endings, no lame stealth set-ups for a fourth book . . this is it.

You want a copy, send me an email by Friday to djwATautumnrain2110.com and name at least two members of Autumn Rain.

UPDATE:  folks, we are fresh out –congratulations to the winners (Mike C. of NY, NY; Andrew K. of LA, and Justin K. of Houston, TX) and stay tuned for more offers for free stuff.  I hope to have more ARCs in soon. . .

There’s a certain strand of geek culture that seems to almost pride itself on being unable to see the wood for the trees. In particular, it’s pretty funny to watch Aint It Cool News firing away at Avatar after having hailed the latest Star Trek movie as the second coming earlier this year.  Yet there’s not even a comparison.  The one was warmed-over triumphalist nostalgia, the other a totally original visionary freight-train.  Avatar’s storyline is being derided as thin in some quarters; for me, it was stripped down to its archetypal essentials, and all the more epic as a result. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that featuring a physically disabled lead character is in many ways as groundbreaking as the 3-D lushness that makes this movie something you could get so lost in.  As of this writing, 3-D tickets were outselling 2-D tickets two to one, though the movie itself did well under a hundred million in the States.  Which doesn’t really matter when it raked in more than $150 million overseas, and looks set to have strong legs, in part because the snowstorm that blanketed so much of the east coast acted as a considerable downer on box office performance.  Unless next week’s Sherlock Holmes becomes a ticket-stealing juggernaut, Avatar looks set to roll back and forth over the holiday box office like one of those killdozers from the first Terminator movie.

To be fair, I think what might have pissed off some at AICN is Cameron’s high-handed tone, which drifted perilously close to eco-preachiness.  This didn’t bother me, partially because I think that regardless of the specifics, he’s right on the fundamentals (we ARE going to be a planet bereft of green if we keep this up), but also because I really got into the idea that the moviemaker who took human-eating aliens to a whole new level back in the 1980s has now turned the whole equation on its head:  now humans are the invaders, and the notion of alien becomes relative.  “The aliens went back to their dying world”, concludes Sam Worthingon’s voiceover . . . but movies are never going back after this.