25 Nov, 2025
The Realized World
Walter Jon Williams’ 1992 Aristoi is a stand-alone science fiction novel.
Humanity has become as gods! Unfortunately, not inherently wise gods. Thus, following the loss of the Earth1 to mataglap nano (gray goo to you and me), certain innovative social arrangements were embraced.
Half the galaxy falls under a regime of meritocratic autocracy.
28 Oct, 2025
The Realized World
Walter Jon Williams’ 1991 Days of Atonement is a stand-alone, gothic-western, hard-science-fiction police procedural.
Atocha Chief of Police Loren Hawn has a lot on his plate. Atocha, New Mexico is small but diverse. Its people are pious, supporting forty-one different churches. Everyone knows their place or at least the sensible people do. Those who forget can expect a visit from Hawn.
What Atocha needs is a functional economy. What it has is a closed mine. That spells trouble for the town and for Hawn. Hawn could use a distraction.
Distraction comes in the form of a mortally-wounded man.
30 Sep, 2025
The Realized World
1990’s Elegy for Angels and Dogs /The Graveyard Heart was the twenty-fourth Tor SF Double. Originally published in 1964, The Graveyard Heart is by Roger Zelazny. Originally published in 1990, Elegy for Angels and Dogs is by Walter Jon Williams. Both stories take place in Zelazny’s Party Set milieu.
Humanity boasts a small, extremely chic, elite caste, one that is extensively covered by journalists and generally admired. Many are those who aspire (in most cases, futilely) to join the Party Set. Thanks to the invention of the cold-bunk, the Party Set can perform their role for centuries.
26 Aug, 2025
The Realized World
Walter Jon Williams’ Facets is a collection of science fiction short works.
The horrible truth about writing short works — novellas, novelettes, and short stories — is that focusing on them is a fine way to swiftly starve to death. Maybe authors could manage it back in the days when a single word bought a whole candy bar, but in this era, you’d need to sell a whole sentence or more. Better to focus on novels and draw out one’s demise from malnutrition and exposure.
Despite this irrefutable economic logic, Williams does from time to time write short pieces. Facets collected nine of them.
29 Jul, 2025
The Realized World
Walter Jon Williams’ 1989 Angel Station is a stand-alone science fiction novel.
What failed trader Pasco left to his children, Ubu and Beautiful Maria: his rundown starship Runaway, massive debt, and an increasingly untenable lifestyle. Pasco was a self-deluding fool who invested years making a terrible situation worse, but he was not entirely to blame.
24 Jun, 2025
The Realized World
1988’s House of Shards is the second volume in Walter Jon Williams’ Drake Maijstral comedic SF series.
Silverside Station enjoys a splendid view of a star being consumed by its companion black hole. Silverside specializes in lavish luxury. Silverside offers society’s best and brightest the chance to socialize with each other under the watchful gaze of the media.
Silverside offers Allowed Burglar1 Drake Maijstral the opportunity to steal the famed Eltdown Shard… if Drake can bypass one or two impediments.
27 May, 2025
The Realized World
The Crown Jewels is the first volume of Walter Jon Williams’ SF comedy-of-manners Drake Maijstral1 series (according to the ISFDB and various booksellers) or Williams’ Divertimenti (the collective name originally applied to this series). Guess which one I prefer?
Drake Maijstral is a respectable gentleman. Drake Maijstral is a known thief. How can those two facts be reconciled? Thank humanity’s conquerors, the Khosali.
29 Apr, 2025
The Realized World
1986’s Hardwired is the first volume in Walter Jon Williams’ Hardwired cyberpunk series. To my surprise, the title is not camel-capped.
Having decisively won the Rock War, the Orbitals provided the defeated Earth with a bold New World Order. Key axiom: that the Orbitals should extract as much short-term wealth from Earth as possible.
This state of affairs provided Cowboy and Sarah with very different careers, careers fated to intersect.
25 Mar, 2025
The Realized World
Walter Jon Williams’ 1982/19831 Privateers and Gentlemen is an age-of sail tabletop roleplaying game. The game shares a name and setting with Williams’ Privateers and Gentlemen historical novels. The eye-catching cover is by Tom Freeman. Williams published as Jon Williams.
And what did the gamer find when they opened the box2?
25 Feb, 2025
The Realized World
Walter Jon Williams’ Ambassador of Progress is a stand-alone anthropological science fiction novel. Although Williams was a veteran author by 1984, Ambassador was his debut SF novel.
Fiona, her close friend Kira, and the rest of their starship crew intend to guide a planet (Demro to some, Achadan to others) towards modernity. Fione’s path takes her to Arrandal. Kira’s takes her to Neda-Calacas.
Arrandal and Neda-Calacas are about to go to war.