The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories

College of Mystery #1-3

by Walter Jon Williams

From Walter Jon Williams, author of Implied Spaces, Hardwired, and Voice of the Whirlwind, comes The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories, a stunning collection of short fiction including the Nebula Award winning story "The Green Leopard Plague," an introduction by Charles Stross, and in-depth story notes. Contents: Introduction by Charles Stross Daddy's World Lethe The Last Ride of German Freddie Millennium Party The Green Leopard Plague The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid Incarnation Day Send Them Flowers Pinocchio

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, Ebooks, Speculative Fiction, Short Story Collection

Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2006

About the author

Walter Jon Williams has published twenty novels and short fiction collections. Most are science fiction or fantasy -Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind, Aristoi, Metropolitan, City on Fire to name just a few - a few are historical adventures, and the most recent, The Rift, is a disaster novel in which "I just basically pound a part of the planet down to bedrock." And that's just the opening chapters. Walter holds a fourth-degree black belt in Kenpo Karate, and also enjoys sailing and scuba diving. He lives in New Mexico with his wife, Kathy Hedges.

Reviews

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sept 2020 reread:
Like most of WJW’s work, this collection repaid rereading. Two 5-star stories, four 4-stars, and just three that weren’t quite to my taste — and one of those a Nebula winner! So: if you missed this one, or if it’s been awhile — well. You should check it out. Strong 4-star rating for the collection, highly recommended. In particular, the two 5-star stories are remarkably fine work.
Story histories and details: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?3...

• Daddy's World (1999), novelette. Nebula award-winner, 2001. Creepy story about uploading a kid to a digital playground. It doesn’t work out well for anyone involved, and I’ve never much cared for this one. Weak 3 stars for me. Online copy: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/willi...
• Lethe [College of Mystery series] (1997), novelette. Three married couples; two couples were clones of the “parent” couple. One of the women is killed in a freak accident, a very, very rare event, as people in the story-now are (almost) immortal. Near-great story, 4+ stars.
• The Last Ride of German Freddie (2002), novella. What if Friedrich Nietzsche had been a Western gunslinger in Tombstone, in the gunfight at the OK Corral? Eh, 2.5 stars.
• Millennium Party (2002), vignette. Online copy: http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories... 5 minute read, 4.5 stars. What’s keeping you?
• The Green Leopard Plague [College of Mystery] (2003), novella. Astonishingly fine story of the invention of a post-scarcity economy plus indefinitely long lives for people. if you've read this one, you will forever recall the lonely mermaid, sitting on a Rock Island in Palau. Won a well-earned Nebula award in 1995. An easy 5 stars, and arguably his best short fiction yet.
• The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid (2004), novelette. An underworld salvage job from a sunken ship near Shanghai. Chinese hopping vampires are involved. Too confusing to re-read this time.
• Incarnation Day (2006), novella. WJW’s brilliant pastiche of a Heinlein juvenile, updated for the 21st century. In this future, children in the space colonies are brought up as software. Until they reach their Incarnation Day, they are legally property of their parents. Troublemakers might not make it to their majority. And the MC, a spunky teenage girl on Titan, is a big fan of Dr. Sam’l Johnson. Wonderful story. 5 stars!
• Send Them Flowers (2007), novelette. Two pals on the run in space, with troubles ahead and troubles behind. An sfnal road movie, and a good one. Strong 4 stars.
• Pinocchio [College of Mystery] 2008), novella. A future teen star worries that his ex-GF is taking his audience. He decides to ghost in from Mars. Complex, thoughtful and entertaining story. 4 stars.

The collection was edited, and the stories were selected, by Jonathan Strahan -- but for some reason the publisher didn’t give him credit. WJW did here, in this nice interview: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/wjwil...

In the afterword to “Lethe,” WJW lists his early goals as he began to write SF:
  “1.) A future in which everything went right. (This became my novel Knight Moves.)
2.) A future in which everything went wrong. (This became Hardwired.)
3.) A mystery/thriller. (Voice of the Whirlwind)
4.) A first-contact story. (Angel Station)
5.) A Restoration-style comedy of manners. (The Crown Jewels and its sequels)
6.) A hard-boiled mystery. (Days of Atonement)

Within a six-to-eight month period, I had these works outlined, at least in my head….”

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fine collection of some of Williams' best short fiction. Daddy's World, an award winner, is a good virtual reality story. Lethe, one of his College of Mystery stories, is a very poignant story of loss set in a complex romantic triangle. The Last of German Freddie is an alternate history which reimagines the famous gunfight at the OK corral with Nietzsche as one of the main participants; I didn't like it as well as his similarly themed novellas featuring Shelley and Poe, perhaps because I was more familiar with those historical figures. Millenium Party is an amusing short-short, and the title story, another in the College of Mystery sequence and another Nebula Award winner, is a nifty hard-science (including economics and civics) sort-of romance. The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid is my favorite story in the book, a delightfully clever caper story. Incarnation Day is another uploaded-intelligence story, this time with a YA focus, that didn't really grab me. Send Them Flowers is a terrific space-opera, another clever caper story, and (of all things!) a riff on the Hope-Crosby buddy travel films of a few generations back. The book concludes with Pinocchio, another YA-themed story... it's from 2007, and makes some social-media observations that were quite accurate and prophetic. Altogether a very good and amazingly varied collection; as Charles Stross notes in his introduction, Williams is an under-appreciated master of the form.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though many of the stories in this collection are award-winners, including the title tale (as with the collection Recovering Apollo 8 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch that I also recently read), Walter Jon Williams is still most definitely, as Charles Stross' Introduction has it, an underrated author. Williams writes visceral, versatile and solid prose—and he displays a virtuoso range as well. Within the space of this one short collection, Williams moves assuredly through post-scarcity hard SF (most of the stories are set in a milieu where personal immortality is a commonplace) to quirky alternate-universe Western (!), in "The Last Ride of German Freddie," along the way taking on hot sfnal topics like the attention-based economy ("Pinocchio"), digital personality transfers ("Daddy's World" and "Incarnation"), and space opera shown from its gritty underside ("Send Them Flowers").

"The Green Leopard Plague" itself is exemplary, a near- and far-future forensic excursion with all of the immediacy and inventiveness of a Bruce Sterling story, switching viewpoints and time periods with aplomb to convey that rarity in utopian fiction: at least some sense of how one might actually get from here to there.

It may well be the case that short science fiction is harder to place these days, with sf magazine subscription bases shrinking and so many book-buying dollars going towards endlessly-expanding series of novels... but if so it's not because the quality of the available short sf has gone down, not while we have Walter Jon Williams writing it. Recommended.

[Ethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book pretty well. I'd already read the lead-off story, Daddy's World, and really liked it. The other stories were also pretty good, if a bit familiar at times -- for example, Incarnation Day felt like a riff on Daddy's World, and the setting of Lethe reminded me of a novel of Williams's that I just read, Implied Spaces.

One thing that's worth mentioning is that these stories are pretty pulpy and I wouldn't necessarily classify a few of them (such as Pinocchio, The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid, and Send Them Flowers) as speculative fiction: they take place in science fictiony settings, but the setting isn't really important to the story premise.

Overall, it's still a good read. Plenty of humor and action and exotic ideas.

[Tim Hicks · Rating 2 out of 5]

I dunno. I *know* WJW is a good writer, and I have enjoyed other works by him. This one just didn't draw me in. A couple of stories felt more like craftsmanship than stories. I found, for example, that while it's an impressive feat to have Nietzsche meet Wyatt Earp, I wasn't a story that made me eager to learn how it ended.

Maybe it's because I was just coming down from reading Fonda Lee's Jade Wars, which is tense and loaded with action. I should have gone to a light fantasy or something next.

[Jim Mann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Walter Jon Williams' The Green Leopard Plague is a great collection of nine stories, all good, and several award winners. A number involve a post-human future, when people can back themselves up, and real death no longer occurs (though one of he strongest, "Lethe," explores what happens when someone really does die in a world where death no longer occurs). In this future, bodies and even personalities (and emotions and knowledge) can be changed out, removed, and replaced.

In addition to these stories -- of which the title story is one -- there are several other strong, inventive stories worth noting. "The Last Ride of German Freddie" is an alternate history story about Friedrich Nietzsche in the old West of Tombstone and the OK Corral. "The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid" features Peruvian folk singers who also happen to be secret agents. And "Send them Flowers" is a futuristic buddy story, involving not just space travel but travel between universes with different probabilities.

Williams has consistently been one of the best, most reliable, and diverse SF writers for 20 years or more. He doesn't get the attention he deserves at times, but this collection deserves a wide readership.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite authors.
This collection includes:

*Daddy's World ( Nebula winner, novelette)
*Lethe ( Nebula nominee, novelette )
The Last Ride of German Freddie ( Sideways Award for alternate history )
Millennium Party
*The Green Leopard Plague ( Nebula winner; Hugo nominee, novella )
The Tang Dynasty
Underwater Pyramid
Incarnation Day
Send Them Flowers
Pinocchio

*Must-Read sez me

(Goodreads popped up a notification this morning saying, 'you recently marked this as read, but no finish date. Do you want to add one?' Whatever, I don't think that's accurate, but here you go. Alexa also sometimes chimes in randomly with a definition of something we didn't ask her for.)

[Chrystal Hays · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant anthology, which I went to the trouble to find when the title story came up in discussions of the best conceptual sci fi short fiction.

It's one of 4 stories in the collection set in the same reality, and it definitely provokes thought about the definition of self, self-image, life, death, mercy and the bounds of cruelty. With charm, no less.

As often happens with sci fi, stories written some time ago can feel as if they were written yesterday because they touch on themes made ripe by current events.

In other cases, it is clear that ideas which were once bold are now more processed by our culture...but reading those is like seeing a warning beacon. They remind us, "Don't go back this way. Here be dragons."

[Matthew Gatheringwater · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed a number of memorable stories in this collection. Many of them are set pieces to illustrate a single idea or concept, but they are well done and the ideas are interesting in themselves. Of special interest to me:

The real dangers of virtual lives:
Daddy's World
Incarnation Day

Post-scarcity economy/bioterrorism:
The Green Leopard Plague

I'm going to look for more works by this author.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good collection of SciFi stories from a writer I haven't encountered before. The collection is worth reading just for Green Leopard Plague alone (I really like this story with its surprise twist), but several other standouts are included. Incarnation Day is a story that parents of teenagers (and their teenagers) will enjoy.

I will look for more writing from Walter Jon Williams.

[Mjhancock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was surprised by how much I liked this story. It does a lot--there's issues of parental and child relations, representation and simulation, and a kind of classic sci-fi feel where the narrator wouldn't have felt out of place in a story 50 years ago, but the issues discussed feel fresh. I might put it on a course, if I ever get a chance.

[Sorcered · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uneven collection, but the (very) good make up for the average/bad.
Great - The Green Leopard Plague, Incarnation Day
Good - Daddy's World, Pinocchio
Too whiny to be good - Lethe
Whatever - the rest.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Walter Jon Williams is a severely underrated writer. Very talented. This collection of short works is a treat.

[Trish Graboske · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wide-ranging and imaginative stories. I though "Daddy's World" and "The Green Leopard Plague" were the most thoughtful, with their interesting ideas. "The Last Ride of German Freddie", or Nietzsche at the OK Corral, was a gonzo idea, "The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid" was a techno-spy romp, and "Send Them Flowers" was a space opera with pals on the run. Nine stories in total.

[Carleton Tanner, · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic group of short sci-fi. Well written and engrossing.

[Tamara Wilhite · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Green Leopard Plague" contains two stories that are the best representation of how economics would work - including taxes - in a post-scarcity economy.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good. Scarcely a weak story in the anthology.

[Leons1701 · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's weird, I know of Walter Jon Williams, I know he's supposed to be good, I could swear I've read something by him before, but digging through various lists of what he's written, I can't find anything familiar. I bailed out of SW:NJO before he started writing in that series and while I've heard of a lot of his books, I haven't read them. Strange. Anyhow, after reading this collection of shorts, I probably have to track down some of his other work now.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of these short stories involve one my favorite science fiction tropes -- the ability to upload one's entire consciousness and replicate it in a brand new body which is not necessarily human. I was also pleasantly surprised with Williams' writing style, although I'm not sure I could handle the rapid fire nature for an entire novel. I guess I'll find out when I read The Praxis, which is wending it's way to my local library as I type (thanks melcat).

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting set of stories with a couple of standouts: the titular "The Green Leopard Plague," "Incarnation Day," and "Daddy's World."
I enjoyed the author's interesting ideas about "splitting" ourselves in order to experience more of life, as well as his concept of an economy based on work/calories.

[Helge Moulding · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection of Walter Jon Williams's short stories. Here's my brief review.

[Nathalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic! I would recommend this short story to anyone who enjoys Science Fiction.

[Karl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Strong prose, intricate technologies, and great characterizations. Even some humor. Buy it. Read it.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very enjoyable novella.