David J. Williams

As Boing Boing reported earlier today, Canadian SF author and friend Peter Watts was assaulted/arrested at the U.S. border, and then released into Canada in the dead of winter with all his possessions confiscated (including a winter jacket).  He now faces assault charges in a U.S. court.

Please consider making a donation to his legal fund.  I know times are tough, but for Watts right now they’re way tougher.   Please also pass the word on.

UPDATE:  the donation can be made via Paypal to donate@rifters.com; the Boing Boing post has some other methods, but for whatever reason I can’t access it right now.

Per her announcement of yesterday, my agent Jenny Rappaport has closed up shop. She is the reason I made it into print—she took a chance on me when no one else would—and I owe her a very great deal.  I wish her all the best in her new endeavors; her departure is symptomatic of the extent to which this industry is under ever-mounting pressure.

As to what happens next, not sure.  I’m not actively seeking representation at this time, but hope to have a New Direction/Overall Strategy in place by . . well, why don’t we say next decade.  Stay tuned.

I’ve been AWOL doing the pre-copy edit round of revisions on Book Three, but now all normal programming resumes. And what better way to get back into the swing of things then by revealing the cover for the final book of the Autumn Rain trilogy, THE MACHINERY OF LIGHT? Release date:  May 2010.  Stay tuned! 

It’s been ten years since Homeworld was released, and Uberjumper over at Relic News has a great thread to commemorate it. It’s tough for me to express how honored I am to have story concept and co-writing credits on the game; the comment thread is a moving testament to the game’s emotional impact.  It certainly had an impact on me—my involvement in the game was all moonlighting while I was in Vancouver trying to escape the banal reality of my corporate job back in D.C., and in the wake of Homeworld, I had to wonder why I was stuck doing P&L spreadsheets while friends of mine were inking space-fleets for a living.  In many ways, that was the motivation for what ultimately became Autumn Rain . .  . and it seems like only yesterday me and Rob Cunningham were poring over spaceship drawings in his warehouse-loft over Hastings Street trying to figure out what the thread was that tied it all together while junkies howled and gibbered in the alley beneath us and we contemplated endless galactic suns.

Gail and I met at the LA WorldCon in 2006—in a Starbucks line, as I recall, and jesus were those lattes overpriced. We were both Outsiders Looking In at that point: manuscripts in hand that we were desperate to peddle to the powers that be. Three years later, we’ve both succeeded; Gail’s SOULLESS was just released by oh-so-cool Orbit to great critical fanfare—and how could it not be, given that it’s a comedy of manners set amidst vampires in Victorian London?  In addition, she maintains a great blog where she offers readers fashion tips as well as thoughts on how to fight off vampires. I think she’s the next big thing; at least I hope so, as I could use some friends in high places.  SOULLESS is available at Amazon and other fine bookstores (and presumably one or two cruddy ones as well).

An oldie-but-goodie from the vault . . turns out that on Earth 744, Captain Britain was actually Captain Airstrip One, presiding over Oceania’s most exposed province in an ingenious depiction of what life was like for all of Winston Smith’s pals in Orwell’s 1984.   There’s PDFs of the resultant short strip in various places on the net, but it’s been scanned here.  Doubleplusgood!

In Hollywood, nothing is ever truly over. Talk about a fourth Mad Max has been on and off again for so long one wonders if George Miller has taken a leaf or two from the Axl Rose playbook . . . but there have been recent reports that the success of 2006’s HAPPY FEET (!) has given Miller the leverage he needed to put Mad Max 4 into pre-production.  Particularly intriguing to me is that longtime  2000 A.D. artist Brendan McCarthy is supposedly penning the script. . .  McCarthy came up with many of my favorite Judge Dredd storylines, including one in which Ayers Rock gets blown up, which may or may not be a coincidence. Word is that Mel won’t be starring in the movie, perhaps because he’s too old to be an action-hero box office draw, but presumably also because he failed to outrun the cops the one time it counted most and then proceeded to settle some Authorial Intent questions in a far more explicit way than Derrida would ever have bargained for.

There’s also talk that Mad Max 4 will be animated, a la Happy Feet.    This makes me more than a little nervous.  But like I said yesterday, you have to respect this franchise for resisting the urge to make each movie a carbon copy of the one that came before it.  If Miller thinks he can push the envelope with an animated format, then it’ll be interesting to watch what he comes up with.  At the very least, it Fury Road ever DOES come to pass, we’ll get to see the next stage in the history of that world that Miller and Kennedy created back in the 1970s, when oil was drying up and the world seemed on the brink in more ways than one.  Times sure have changed, haven’t they?

Fellow SF Novelist Dave Freer is emigrating from South Africa to Australia, but the costs of quarantine and transport for his four pets run to 19K. He’s set up a special storytellers bowl site where you can contribute $ to an ongoing novel he’s working on; please consider doing so, as those pet-owners out there know how hard it would be to leave an animal behind.

And speaking of animals, there will be a Special Pet Announcement on this site shortly.  The search for Spartacus’ successor is over!  Stay tuned for details.

One of the highlights for me at ComicCon was meeting Richie Dent, a up-and-coming writer who landed a deal for his graphic novel the hard way, partnering with an artist as hungry as he is, and then putting together more than a hundred pages of graphic novel goodness based on a screenplay that got to the quarterfinal round in the Francis Ford Coppola competition.   The Shepherd’s Eye is a “Minority Report style futuristic Sci-fi thriller meets government conspiracy as a woman and a young boy become the key players in a battle to save the earth from the destructive forces of greed.” He’s got some cool art over on his website, so check it out. This is one to watch.

I posted yesterday on Suvudu about how mundane SF should be declared dead so we can get on with more important shit. I also take on atheists, as well as Kurzweil’s Singularity acolytes, so there’s something to piss off everyone. Have at it, folks.

http://www.suvudu.com/2009/08/the-demise-of-mundane-sf.html