David J. Williams

Last fall I wrote this was the movie in which Vin Diesel approached the Rutger Hauer Event Horizon: that point beyond which a star makes only straight-to-DVD crud. It’s just as well for Vin that he was able to get back in on the Fast and the Furious franchise, and there’s been more recent talk about more Riddick movies, but I remain skeptical, especially after the underwhelming performance of Riddick director Twohy’s latest flick. Then again, if the Riddick franchise goes in the space-noir rather than space-opera direction, they might be able to recapture Pitch Black’s edge with Pitch Black-level budgets.  Stranger things have happened. .  .

But I’m here to talk about Babylon A.D.  Which, yes, I bought when I was in Montreal two weeks back for WorldCon.  But as the string physicists say, I can explain everything. . . so. .  .  I was looking for a copy of Sunshine, but that was 23 bucks, and I found Babylon A.D. for $8!  And, to be honest, I . .  .(deep breath) LIKE Babylon A.D.  The plot is incoherent, but I’ve got (as you can tell) a soft spot for Vin Diesel, and enjoyed watching him thrash his way through two hours of terrible dialogue and pointless action scenes.  And it’s a real shame the movie’s so bad, because some of the sets are spectacular (like the one where the Russian train goes through radioactive wastelands). I’ll go out on a limb, in fact, and say that this was a cyberpunk classic waiting to happen, but something went terribly wrong on the way to the studio.

But at any rate, when I got back to D.C., I realized I’d left the damn thing on the plane.  This has not been a good summer for me on planes.   I left a BURNING SKIES poster on the flight back from ComicCon, and I left an ipod on a flight before that.  I blame all of this, of course, on Gerard Depardieu’s appearance in Babylon A.D.  I mean, what else could be responsbile?

is one heckuva of a cool town. Reading at Malaprops went great, and it was awesome to see my high school pal Karen Casey (now an Asheville denizen), as well as writer friends Richard Dansky and Melinda Thielbar, who drove three hours (!) from Durham to the reading. I love towns with lots of laid-back people and steep hills, and Asheville certainly qualifies. Weirdly enough, the Washington Post ran an article on Asheville the day I got back; I gather the reporter was at the same drum circle Friday night that I was.

And that’s all she wrote for the BURNING SKIES readings.  The summer’s almost over, and I am now steeped in book three edits.  (And I can’t help but notice that I’ve bought myself yet another day to explain that Babylon A.D. purchase to you. . . . )

I’ll be reading from BURNING SKIES Thursday night at legendary indie bookstore Malaprop’s at 7 p.m. I’ve never been to Asheville before, so can’t wait. Normal blogging will resume next week, which gives me a few more days before I have to try to explain to you guys why I succumbed and bought the Babylon AD director’s cut.

I missed the last two days of the 2009 WorldCon due to a friend’s wedding on the west coast, so I had a slightly truncated Montreal experience. At any rate, Gaiman deserves full credit for his second Hugo (though personally I would have rather seen the prize go to Stephenson for ANATHEM). Oh, and apparently I missed the Campbell nomination by one vote!—21 votes to Felix Gilman’s 22. Hey, there’s still next year. . . .

Other highlights:

—Meeting up with Peter Watts again, who I hadn’t seen in over two years. Peter is in many ways the reason I’m published, since he read MIRRORED HEAVENS way back in the day and told me what was wrong with it.  Something about it needing an ending, as I recall.

—Watching Charles Stross and Paul Krugman converse on the problems inherent in predicting the future.  Without those crystal balls, it’s tough.

—Seeing Montreal.  Amazing city.  But how come everyone speaks French?

—Having lunch with Patrick St. Denis of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist.  Per the above, it was cool to be going around Montreal with a native, and Pat’s sense of humor is my type of dry.

—Reading alongside cyberpunk legend Pat Cadigan.  Not only is her writing awesome, she’s got one hell of a personality.  Lives in London too!

—Seeing Joshua Palmatier again.  Joshua is probably the only professor of mathematics who also writes fantasy; I suppose that beats a history major who writes science fiction . . .

—Catching up with my inimitable agent Jenny Rappaport.  We talked about lots of things, including what I’m going to be working on next.  Watch this space.

I’ll be at WorldCon the next couple of days, but will have to leave early for a friend’s wedding on the west coast—I fly out Saturday morning from Montreal, so will miss all the award hoopla. And my WC schedule is simplicity itself:

Friday, August 7th, reading w/Pat Cadigan (!), 5 p.m.

The bad news is I’m not on any panels.  The good news is I’m not on any panels, and can focus on catching up with various cronies. See you in Montreal!

“Predicting anything’s hard, especially when it involves the future.” —Yogi Berra

Vernor Vinge and I tag-teamed “science fiction hour” at the National Research Council in D.C. yesterday; he was calling in from his home in California while I foolishly biked ten blocks through the humidity over to the National Academies of Science. Under the chairmanship of Gilman Louie, the NRC is doing some really interesting stuff, drawing on more than just the usual Inside the Beltway perspectives in taking stock of what’s to come. My contribution can be found here:  a series of slides that start by outlining the current realities of 4G warfare, and then sketch out a vision of what future 5G space/net-centric warfare might look like.

And for another vision of what such warfare might look like, check out BURNING SKIES!

Along with Vernor Vinge (!), I’ll be presenting on Forecasting Future Disruptive Technologies in downtown D.C. at 1 p.m. at the National Research Council/Air Force Studies Board (The whole day looks to be very interesting; I gather Vernor and I each have 15 minutes, and then there’ll be a half hour of discussion.  As to the address:

Keck Center, National Academies
500 5th Street, NW
Washington D.C. 20001

Did I mention that BURNING SKIES is available on Amazon and all sorts of other cool places?

Yesterday you would have been one year old. Happy birthday, Spartacus, I miss you so much, and am so grateful our lives intersected for the time they did.

(Comments closed on this post. I really appreciate everybody’s thoughts on the earlier post, but this one is just for the Beast.)

. . . are over at Suvudu.

Back from ComicCon, which ruled. I’ll have more detailed thoughts later, but in meantime, I forgot to link to an article I wrote for Bantam’s Suvudu last week re my thoughts on the fortieth anniversary of Apollo. So check it out. . .

UPDATE:  Discover Magazine has written up an account of proceedings!

(And if you want to see what happens when humanity finally DOES get back into space, all is revealed in BURNING SKIES!)