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JMW: Hello, this is Jean Marie Ward, from BuzzyMag.com With me
today, is Walter Jon Williams, award-winning science fiction, fantasy and
historical author, and the toast master of this year's Nebula Awards
weekend. Welcome, Walter.
Walter: Glad to be here.
JMW: Your most recent series of novels featuring augmented reality
games and Dagmar Shaw, were supposed to be near-future science fiction; but
the future you projected turned out to be incredibly close to current
events, especially in Deep State, the second novel featuring Dagmar Shaw.
It was practically a playbook for Arab Spring.
Walter: Yes.
JMW: How does it feel to be a prophet?
Walter: Well, a little startling, actually, because I knew that something
like this was going to happen. I had seen the various precursors of the
Arab Spring happening, and the way that you can eventually crowd source
revolt. But I didn't think anything on that scale would happen for another
6 to 8 years and, instead, it happened the very week that the book came
out.
JMW: Yes. I know. I thought that was amazing.
Walter: I started getting phone calls from government agencies, actually,
that week.
JMW: I bet that was so scary.
Walter: Wants to know how I do it. I was happy to tell them.
JMW: I bet that was the scariest part of the whole thing.
Walter: It was certainly one of the more interesting parts of the whole
thing, yes.
JMW: I'm surprised that more wasn't made of it in the media; that,
once again, novels have predicted the present.
Walter: Well, I think nobody cares what science fiction writers think. Kind
of my impression.
JMW: That's scary. Of course, we always have the last laugh, almost
like Cassandra, which is an even scarier part. Speaking of futures and what
your creating. Would you consider yourself an optimist or pessimist,
regarding what the future technology is creating for us?
Walter: I'm an optimist where technology is concerned. I am a pessimist on
certain other political issues and environmental issues. I think our only
hope of negotiating the future is through improved technologies.
JMW: Yes. Presuming that we learn how use them properly.
Walter: Yes.
JMW: That's always the big . . .
Walter: I think what is been called the Third Industrial Revolution, built
around 3-D printing, is going to be massively trans-formative.
JMW: Yes. I've seen some of the early efforts with it, and it's like
the Holodeck come to life, from Star Trek, only with reality.
Walter: Pretty well. Yes. It means that instead of the great big assembly
line factories, you will have little production plants scattered throughout
the world, the country, that will be producing pretty much anything you
need, and this is a huge game changer for the Third World, if you have a
little shack in every village in the developing world that can produce any
tool that they need.
JMW: Well, it's a game changer for us too. I mean, consider the
mills and assembly plants and all of the things that have become too
expensive to build. Which is one of the reasons why we're losing our edge
in production. It's because the plants that we built can no longer produce
what we need, and yet they're too expensive to replace.
Walter: Yes. That's so.
JMW: So, I think it is a game changer for everybody. Speaking of
that sort of stuff, though, do you plan to write more of Dagmar's
adventures? I know the third book just came out.
Walter: The third book just came out and has to do with the future of media
and it's called The Fourth Wall. I have an idea for the fourth book. I'll
have to talk to the publisher about it.
JMW: Yes. And she's going to have to deal with a rather large life
change. I won't issue any spoilers, but that's going to be pretty big and,
traditionally, difficult to write around.
Walter: Yes.
JMW: On a completely different, you've written many, many books in
just about every speculative fiction genre and, also, as a historical
writer, which is how you got your start.
Walter: I started writing sea stories, basically. I wrote five novels that
were historical sea adventure fiction, in the kind of Patrick O'Brian mode.
JMW: Then, the market changed.
Walter: The market changed.
JMW: So, the question is, given all the publication issues you been
through, from market changes to just about every other horror story that
can be imagined as a writer, how did you survive and overcome them all?
Because you have.
Walter: I always had the writing and that's what I really care about. I
probably shouldn't say this out loud, but one of the secrets of being a
dedicated writer is that you really would do this for free.
JMW: Yes. That's dangerous to say. The whole actors joke about they
don't pay you for acting, they pay for sitting around.
Walter: So, I always have the writing to fall back on and that's what I
love to do and it doesn't so much matter to me in which form I do it. I'm
happy to write novels. I'm happy to write short fiction. I'm happy to write
screenplays. I'm happy to do shared-world work. I've done all of that, but
it's the writing the matters and that's what helps me persevere.
JMW: You been called one of science fiction and fantasy's top prose
stylists.
Walter: Well, thank you.
JMW: Yes. You have. It's not just me.
Walter: Okay.
JMW: How do you interpret that statement?
Walter: Well, I have what I think is a very flexible stomach. I adapt my
style to the subject matter; and I'm not afraid to do stylistic
experiments, structural experiments. I don't deliberately try to make my
work obscure, in any way. I mean, if I do an experiment, there's a reason
for it to be an experiment, and I hope and trust that the reader will be
able to follow me through all that. I don't try to make my work
inaccessible; but I'm not afraid of the occasional tour de force.
JMW: How important do you think style is, in genre fiction?
Walter: It's what makes a writer what the writer is. Even if the writer
says they have no style and try to do an absolutely clear, transparent
style, that's still style and that's what distinguishes that writer from
other writers. So, lots of writers have ideas. Lots of writers can put
words on paper but, in order to make a true, individual, contribution, it's
almost always in the direction of style. That's what people come back to.
JMW: I mention in my intro that you're the toast master this
weekend, Nebula weekend.
Walter: Yes.
JMW: That's a great honor and, congratulations on that.
Walter: Thank you.
JMW: What are you planning for us?
Walter: Well, the trick of the toast master at an award banquet, where
other people are being honored and other people have been nominated for an
award, the trick for a toast master is, of course, to make it all about
him. And that's what I plan to do.
JMW: Oh. That's so scary. Are you going to give us any hints about
what to expect?
Walter: I think you should expect an astronaut.
JMW: Oh, yes. That's right. You have brought NASA to the Nebulas.
Walter: I have.
JMW: In the person of Mike Fink. How did that come about?
Walter: Well, I got lucky. Mike Fink took one of my books up to the
international space station to read.
JMW: Oh, cool. Which one was that?
Walter: Implied Spaces.
JMW: Oh. The one that's downstairs or was downstairs at the book . . .
Walter: It is available at the Dealers Room in this very hotel.
JMW: In paperback and is it full trade or hardcover?
Walter: It's hardcover. But, in any case, Mike took the book up to the
space station; and if you carry stuff up the space station, you have to
provide NASA a list. One of the things that NASA does with its astronauts
that are up on space stations for say six months at a time is to try to
keep them from being bored out of their minds. So, they set up a surprise
video conference between me and Mike Fink.
JMW: Oh, cool.
Walter: So, I got to talk to the space station, and that was a terrific
honor and terrific fun, and Mike and I have stayed in touch. Last year,
when he went up on Endeavor's last flight, he invited my wife and I to come
to Florida and attend the pre-launch party and view the launch from the VIP
section.
JMW: Oh, how nice.
Walter: At the Kennedy Space Center; and that was a delight but, I still
hadn't actually met him because at the pre-launch party he was in
quarantine in case I gave him measles or something. So, he was represented
by a large, life-size cardboard figure. So, I had my picture taken with
flat Mike, but I haven't actually met him until this weekend.
JMW: Yes. And you've had your picture taken many times with real
Mike, this week.
Walter: Yes. I have and he's quite a delight. He's terrific.
JMW: He does seem like a very, very nice man. Are you as
disappointed as the rest of us, that the shuttles are being retired?
Walter: Well, I think it's probably about time for the shuttles to be
retired. The technology has advanced well beyond that now. What I'm
disappointed in is that really isn't a viable program to replace it.
Private industry is stepping in to do certain things and that's terrific.
But, I think there still is a place for utterly visionary, insane,
megamaniacal projects like going to the moon in the '60s, and I want that
sort of thing to continue. I want to see a continued human presence in
space because, for one thing, as an author, I find a really boring to write
about machines in space.
JMW: Yes. That's true, but overcoming the challenges of putting
people in space is a big, big job. What are you working on now?
Walter: I have just completed a novella, about Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla.
JMW: Oh, boy.
Walter: Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla were in fact friends.
JMW: It figures.
Walter: That's in New York, in the 1890s. They hung out in the same social
circles. It's about Mark Twain's reactions to some of Tesla's more arcane
discoveries. I think that's it. The title is the Boolean Gate, and it will
be available online on Subterranean magazine, sometime this fall.
JMW: Oh. That's great.
Walter: And also it's a [chap] book.
JMW: Subterranean does really good work.
Walter: They do.
JMW: They do very lovely work. That's great. And you mentioned that
you've got an idea for the fourth Dagmar Shaw. Anything else that we
haven't covered that you really want to talk about?
Walter: No. Open-ended questions are always troublesome, aren't they?
JMW: Yes.
Walter: Yes. Just that I think of that I just expect to be here for a
while; and I don't always know what I'm going to do next. I have at least
four different projects that I want to do now and I have to see how others
and publishers respond to them. But I'm not quitting because the writing is
what it's really all about.
JMW: Yes. It is. And on that note, thank you very much, Walter, and
thank you from BuzzyMaga.com