David J. Williams

I’ve got a new post up on Suvudu, in which I explain why Ursula Le Guin is barking up the wrong tree.

And why not check out BURNING SKIES on Amazon?

I contributed a piece to Suvudu yesterday on dystopias and “positive” science fiction and why the latter is one of the most dangerous things ever invented. Other than Pez Dispensers. Anyway, check it out.

And why not buy BURNING SKIES while you’re at it.

I participated in the latest round of SF Signal’s MindMeld: Q: Which SciFi films and/or television shows do the best job in adhering to realistic science? Which ones do the worst? Find out how I manage to come up with an answer that calls for Jar-Jar Binks to be annihilated by space-to-ground weaponry. I’ve also got a friendly exchange in the comments with colleague Mike Brotherton on whether or not OUTLAND can be taken seriously, in spite of the fact that some Hollywood producer got a little too interested in the spacesuits and what ought to happen when you’re not wearing one.

My novel BURNING SKIES can be pre-ordered on Amazon.

You know what’s great about being a cat? Every day is the WEEKEND. All the more so as now Dave has switched my chicken-turkey combo to “Ocean Fish and Tuna Formula”. The stuff stinks up the house, but the day the smell of finned creatures gets old is the day I retire from all this cat stuff anyway. And now it’s spring, and BIRDS ARE EVERYWHERE. What a great universe, I can tell it was created just for me.

Certainly not for Dave, though. He’s locked himself in his study with the last three years of New Scientist magazine and God only knows what the hell he’s cooking up.  In the meantime, I’m here to announce that I’m GIVING AWAY A COPY OF THE SPANISH TRANSLATION OF MIRRORED HEAVENS WITH MY COOL SIGNATURE NOT DAVE’S LAME ONE.  You don’t even need to speak Spanish to get your hands on it—and believe me, the trippy cover is something you will WANT on your bookshelf.  All you need to do is obey the following not-at-all arbitrary rules:

1.  Send an email to djwATautumnrain2110.com.

2.  Subject line should be Cielos Reflejados

3.  This is the important part.  The email text should offer some words of praise to me.  You could say, for example, that I’m a Sleek Beast, or that I run really fast, or that I can catch more mice than any other cat.  I don’t care, as long as it sounds like you mean it.

4.  The best panegyric will get the book.

5.  You have until 5 p.m. eastern standard time next Friday to send in the praise.

6.  Multiple entries are encouraged, particularly if you feel like you were a little begrudging in your initial laudatory comments.

Sound good?  Good.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go wonder where my balls went.  I know Dave hid them somewhere.

The sequel to Mirrored Heavens is BURNING SKIES, and you can pre-order it right now on Amazon!

Two interesting SF movies: I gather the first is already out in some theaters but the second isn’t due out till later in the year.

Sleep Dealer: which looks to be a provocative examination of immigration and the growing stratification of wealth in the “global village.”  Anyone seen it yet?

Moon: dark psychological thriller directed by David Bowie’s son and starring Sam Rockwell.

And yeahyeahyeah. . .  I know I had all these Grand Plans about promoting Burning Skies on the blog this week.  Sorry guys, the third book took priority.  But next week I’ll be giving away Spanish copies of Mirrored Heavens, and Spartacus the Wondercat will be BACK AS PROMISED.  (Right now he’s shedding though.  Like crazy.  How much hair can one #$# animal have???)

Now surfacing after three days locked in a room with my cat and this #$# manuscript . . .and here are some cool links:

—If you haven’t watched the full Susan Boyle video, you really #$# should. Don’t mind admitting I can’t watch it without getting a little teary.

—Hat tip to Making Light: these are the principles of the American cargo cult.

—If you’re into electronica, may I recommend Sonic Solutions?  Their Pax Romana album is available on itunes, and is definitely part of the Autumn Rain soundtrack that’s usually cranking away in my head.

—Fuck, this is a cool preview-–only Roland Emmerich could pull this off.  This movie will be h-u-g-e.

—Margaret Roland over at Magic District has put together a “how to write a novel” version of the old text-based Adventure.  As hilarious as it is accurate.

I’m giving Amazon a day or two to get their arse in gear and explain what’s up before I pay my web dudes to take down their banner/link.  But simply saying it was a glitch isn’t exactly what I’d call a full mea culpa. This was either:

A.  A soon-to-be-ex middle manager’s “executive” decision.

B.  A fundamentalist Easter egg.

C.  All of the above.

I’d expect that Bezos will get ahead of this issue quickly with a public statement, but power and wealth does funny things to people’s heads/sense of accountability, so who knows? It’s amazing how a digital powerhouse is acting like a bunch of bricks-and-mortars morons.

So I’m hauling up the curtain on BURNING SKIES . . . still more than a month away from release, but now you can see what it’s all about. If you’ve got me on RSS, come on over and check out the stellar new art and all the Tasty Sequel Action. I’m particularly pleased with Randall MacDonald’s Europa Platform artwork:  most of the stuff that’s out there featuring O’Neill cylinders dates all the way back to the 1970s, and Randall has cranked out some gorgeous stuff that feels oh-so-modern.  Almost makes you want to live there . . though you should probably wait till the book is done.  Hey, why not pre-order now?

Have been AWOL this week figuring out some details regarding the last 40,000 words of the Autumn Rain trilogy. Am still working the thing over, but in the meantime let me wish you a good weekend with . . . the epic speech of The Humongous in Road Warrior, complete with boomerang hijinx! Don’t let it be said I don’t love ya.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

With the pressure mounting, Ronald Moore did what most of science fiction’s high-profile series-builders have done: he choked in the clutch. Sure, the conclusion of Battlestar Galactica was spectacular, with plenty of moments to remind us of what made this franchise the most compelling of the decade. . . but it was nonetheless still deeply—massively—flawed, in so egregious a manner that you can only wonder what the fuck he was thinking (besides licensing agreements and royalty checks).

Usually when narrative arcs fall apart, we get deus ex machina.  This time we just got deus.  Battlestar Galactica’s rebooting tried in so many ways to hold up a mirror to our own culture; in so many ways it succeeded, and this was certainly one of them.  Back in the year 2009, our world is moving out of control, and all we seem to be able to do is hope (however explicitly/implicitly) that God will save us from the results of our own decisions—or that the worst and most irrational of those decisions will turn out to be, miraculously, What God Really Fucking Wanted All Along.

There’s a name for this kind of thinking:  infantile.  Moore promised more, and we deserved better.  Particularly problematic was the anti-science back-to-the-land meme that engulfed the ending.  Again, an apt reflection of our own time—a kneejerk reaction against the technology that threatens to overwhelm us.  In our current crisis, science-fiction is the only genre that offers the scope we need to navigate our way forward.  Last Friday, we saw the genre stumble toward wish-fulfillment fantasy.  The scale of the missed opportunity is nothing short of breathtaking.