Walter Jon Williams's Blog

I visit my physical therapist this afternoon. We were born in the same town (Duluth), and went to the same junior high school (Ordean). He was a year behind me and we didn’t know each other. My family left town, and he went on to become a ski jumping champion and twice a member of the U.S. Olympic ski jumping team. So far, so awesome.

We were talking about those faraway times, and he said, “There’s one thing that nobody ever believes, which is that the boys were naked in swim class.”

My novella “Elegy for Angels and Dogs” is reviewed on Black Gate by Steven H. Silver. Also reviewed is my story’s precursor, Roger Zelazny’s “the Graveyard Heart.”

“Elegy” was the longest story ever published in Asimov’s, and may still be.

Tor Doubles #24: Roger Zelazny’s The Graveyard Heart and Walter Jon Williams’ Elegy for Angels and Dogs

This is Prince Rupert, B.C., or so I believe. And yes, it was named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, cousin of Charles I and his principal commander during the Civil War. After the Restoration, Rupes returned to Britain along with the new king, and invested heavily in the Hudson Bay Company, getting so much money and clout that a large area of southwestern Canada became known as “Rupert Land.”

While we were very lucky to have sunny and warm days for most of our trip, I could have do...

A pod of harbor seals on an outing. They were having a riotous good time, and it was a joy just watching them.

This was the same day we saw the whales doing their bubble fishing thing.

Where’s Wally? Right here, if you want to know.

Wally is the name given a boss humpback in the Prince Rupert Sound, and is easily identified by the two spots on the white ventral surface of its tail fins.

When you’re looking at Wally, Wally is also looking at you. Just a friendly warning.

We have snaked out of the U.S. and back into B.C. MV Imperial Shadow spent the day in Prince Rupert, while we ventured forth to see cetaceans from yet another catamaran.

Again it was a day of miraculous sun. It’s almost drought conditions here, and I’ll return to New Mexico full of tales of the Inside Passage and its balmy subtropical climate. Friends will show up in their tropical shirts and Bermuda shorts, only to spend days with jets of freezing water shooting down their necks.

Eagles and bears are the two critters that most visitors here want to see here in AK— well, maybe I should add whales to the list— but so far my wildlife adventures haven’t achieved greatness.

Here’s an eagle, one of a pair. They were some distance away, but my Canon has a 50-to-one zoom and I was able to get a reasonably coherent image. The problem with the 50:1 is that any movement or hand tremor is going to send the frame dancing all over the place. The Canon has some software that...

Here in the Inside Passage, we’re so far north that the moon’s terminator appears as a vertical line.

The Dawes Glacier was calving like crazy on this warm afternoon, but not when my camera was pointing in the right direction. Here’s the best photo I got: it shows nothing falling but it does show the big splash afterward. The sound was a big BOOM followed by the crash of water as the ice fell.

Harbor seals slept on the floating ice. We saw a pod of harbor porpoises, just sticking their noses up to look at us. (They’re porpoises but they look a lot like dolphins.) Then they vanished...

Another day, another glacier. This is the Dawes Glacier at the end of the Endicott Arm, as viewed from our catamaran.

The weather has been phenomenally good, sunny and in the sixties or the low seventies. The locals tell us how lucky we are not to have Nature hurl buckets of frigid water at our head every twelve seconds.

We continue to defy the odds,