26 May, 2026
The Realized World
Walter Jon Williams’ 1998 Frankensteins and Foreign Devils (edited by Timothy P. Szczesuil) is both a collection and evidence of a flaw in my approach to this project.
28 Apr, 2026
The Realized World
2002’s The Praxis is the first volume in Walter Jon Williams’ Dread Empire’s Fall series.
31 Mar, 2026
The Realized World
Walter Jon Williams’ 2002 Destiny’s Way is the fourteenth book in the New Jedi Order series, which takes place in the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
Goodness has triumphed. The Empire has been reduced to a mere remnant. The New Republic is the Old Republic restored, minus the Old Republic’s fatal flaws. It’s all over except for the triumphant improvisational jizz solo1.
There is the small matter of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion.
24 Feb, 2026
The Realized World
Walter Jon Williams’ 1999 The Rift is a stand-alone disaster novel. In more senses than one.
Dramatis personae:
Omar Bradley Paxton, newly elected sheriff of Spottswood Parish, Louisiana is a busy man. The people of Spottswood knew Paxton was the King Kleagle of Louisiana when they elected him. Now, Paxton has to ride herd on the more excitable Klan members so that the voters don’t have cause to regret their decision.
Jason Adams has been dragged by his crystal-waving mother to dreary Cabells Mound, Missouri.
Divorced Nick struggles to maintain a relationship with his young daughter.
The US president finds himself without a grand crisis, seemingly doomed to be a mere placeholder.
Many more characters, most of them soon to die.
None of the characters take an interest in geology. They will.
27 Jan, 2026
The Realized World
1997’s City on Fire is the critically acclaimed second book in Walter Jon Williams’ Metropolitan series.
Having successfully absconded with a huge stock of magic-powering plasm, Aiah now encounters a challenge many heist stories ignore:
What follows the One Last Job?
30 Dec, 2025
The Realized World
1995’s Rock of Ages is the third and thus far final book in Walter Jon Williams’ Drake Maijstral comedy-of-manners space opera.
Geoff Fu George having retired, the Imperial Sporting Commission now deems Drake Maijstral the number one Allowed Burglar in both the Empire and the Human Constellation. It’s a tremendous honour… and also a pain, as it makes Drake the logical suspect whenever a flamboyant burglary occurs in his vicinity.
The recent Louvre burglary is case in point. Drake did not commit it; there are official eyewitnesses who can attest to the fact; and yet the authorities would be remiss if they did not interrogate Drake.
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.