Search Results for: Walter Jon Williams

New Treasures: The Best of Walter Jon Williams

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The Best of Walter Jon Williams (Subterranean Press, February 28, 2021). Cover by Lee Moyer Walter Jon Williams began his writing career in the early 80s designing games for Fantasy Games Unlimited, most notably the Age of Fighting Sail role playing game Privateers and Gentlemen (1983). He had more success with science fiction in the following years, and his work — especially his novellas, which he’s justly famous for — have been nominated for numerous awards. With The Best of…

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Future Treasures: Quillifer the Knight by Walter Jon Williams

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Covers by Gregory Manchess and Alejandro Colucci Walter Jon Williams is one of the most versatile writers we have. Space opera, military science fiction, cyberpunk, alternative history, SF police procedural — you name it, he’s done it. He’s written historical adventures, disaster novels (The Rift) and even a Star Wars novel (The New Jedi Order: Destiny’s Way). In his Locus review of the opening novel in William’s ambitious new fantasy series, Quillifer, Gary K. Wolfe says “Williams has been cheerfully…

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New Treasures: The Accidental War by Walter Jon Williams

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I love a good space opera. Especially when it features evil empires, civil war, a valiant Terran navy, and ‘splosions. One of the weighty classics of the genre is Walter Jon Williams’ Praxis Universe, which includes the Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy (The Praxis, The Sundering, and Conventions of War), the Tor.com novella Impersonations (2016), a novella in Robert Silverberg’s Between Worlds, and more. The Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy is scheduled to be re-released next year in handsome new Author’s Preferred Editions from Harper Voyager, with…

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Birthday Reviews: Walter Jon Williams’s “The Fate Line”

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Walter Jon Williams was born on October 215, 1953 Williams received the Nebula Award for best novelette in 2001 for “Daddy’s World” and for novella in 2005 for “The Green Leopard Plague.” In 1997 he won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History for his story “Foreign Devils.” His works have also been nominated for the Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award, Philip K. Dick Award, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. “The Fate Line” was published in the Fred Saberhagen festschrift Golden…

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Future Treasures: Quillifer by Walter Jon Williams

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It’s been a good week for review copies here at Black Gate (see some of the recent arrivals here). But the moment Quillifer arrived, I knew it was the most significant release of the current crop, by a pretty good margin. Walter Jon Williams has had an extraordinary career, displaying an easy mastery of cyberpunk (Hardwired, Angel Station), military SF (Dread Empire’s Fall), SF police procedural (Days of Atonement), light-hearted fantasy (the Majistral series), space opera (Aristoi), contemporary disaster (The Rift),…

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Walter Jon Williams Explains Why UFOs Are Actually Made of Bread, and Other Little Known Facts

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The first time I saw Walter Jon Williams, he was singing a song to mock Asimov’s then editor, Gardner Dozois. Melinda Snodgrass, Ellen Datlow, and Pat Cadigan sang backup. My second sighting was a picture in that month’s Locus of Walter standing with Daniel Abraham and his bride, Kat, several other writers, and a toilet prominently displayed in the foreground. Said toilet was the writers’ group gift to the newlywed couple. Rather than slip a gift receipt into a card,…

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A Concentrated Dose of the Best Our Field Has to Offer: Jonathan Strahan’s Best Short Novels 2004-2007

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Jonathan Strahan is one of the most accomplished and acclaimed editors in the genre. He’s edited the annual Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year since 2007, as well as some of our most highly regarded original anthologies — including the Infinity series (Engineering Infinity, Edge of Infinity, etc) and the Fearsome books (Fearsome Journeys and Fearsome Magics), all for Solaris. He’s also edited (with Terry Dowling) one of my favorite ongoing series, the five volumes in the monumental Early…

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Vintage Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois

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The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection (Bluejay Books, April 1986). Cover by Tom Kidd I saw a copy of the third volume in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology series on eBay for $11.45 last week, and decided to take a chance. Turned out to be the Book Club edition, a reprint that’s a smaller size than my other volumes, which was a disappointment. But at least I finally had a copy. On the back of the…

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Vintage Treasures: The 1987 Annual World’s Best SF edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha

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The 1987 Annual World’s Best SF (DAW Books, June 1987). Cover art by Tony Roberts By the time The 1987 Annual World’s Best SF appeared as a paperback original from DAW Books in mid-1987, editor Donald A. Wollheim was of course well established as one of the most important and influential — perhaps the most influential — editor in science fiction. Founding editor at Ace Books, and founder of DAW Books, Wollheim had been editing The Annual World’s Best SF…

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Future Treasures: High Noon on Proxima B edited by David Boop

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High Noon on Proxima B (Baen, February 7, 2023). Cover by Dominic Harman Nobody out there is doing anthologies like David Boop. He started in 2017 with the Weird Western Straight Outta Tombstone (2017), which proved popular enough that he followed up with two more, Straight Outta Deadwood (2019) and Straight Outta Dodge City (2020). Last year he packed up his six-shooters and headed into outer space with Gunfight on Europa Station, the first…. uh… Weird Science Fiction Western anthology?…

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