Walter Jon Williams (born October 15, 1953) is an American writer, primarily of science fiction.
Several of Williams' novels have a distinct cyberpunk feel to them, notably Hardwired (also an homage to Roger Zelazny's novel Damnation Alley), Voice of the Whirlwind and Angel Station. However, he has explored a number of different styles and genres, including farce (e.g., the Majistral series), postcyberpunk space opera (Aristoi), military science fiction (Dread Empire's Fall series), alternative history (Wall, Stone, Craft), science fantasy (Metropolitan and City on Fire), disaster thriller (The Rift), a Star Wars novel (The New Jedi Order: Destiny's Way) and historical adventure (Privateers and Gentlemen series), and police procedural (Days of Atonement), usually in a science fiction context. He has also contributed to some of the Wild Cards cooperative novels.
Williams was born in Duluth, Minnesota and attended the University of New Mexico, where he received his BA degree in 1975. He currently lives in Valencia County, south of Albuquerque in New Mexico.
Williams played roleplaying games (in a group with other sf authors including George R. R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass) and has written both fiction and rulebooks for the games Privateers and Gentlemen from Fantasy Games Unlimited and Cyberpunk from R. Talsorian Games.
In 2006, Williams founded the Taos Toolbox, a two-week writer's workshop for fantasy and science fiction writers.
Famous quotes containing the words walter, jon and/or williams:
“Of course I’m a black writer.... I’m not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren’t marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call “literature” is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hassidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.”
—Toni Morrison (b. 1931)
“The dog is mentioned in the Bible eighteen times—the cat not even once.”
—W.E. Farbstein. Quoted in “Hundkeit,” Mondo Canine, ed. Jon Winokur, Dutton (1991)
“they appear youthful, rare
as the light of a happy eye, live with the grace
of all that in the mind is fleckless, free and
naturally to be desired.”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)