Walter Jon Williams

"I finished my first novel when I was 14, I think. It was a very large, very extravagant, and highly derivative fantasy novel, which will remain in my closet forevermore." --Walter Jon Williams (in Locus , Issue 428, Vol.37, No.3, September 1996).

"After getting a B.A. in English, he started on a M.A. but quit, deciding the academic life was not for him. So in 1976 he headed for Boston, where he spent some time as a traditional starving artist, working on his 'great unsold historical novel' after mornings spent in a futile search for work. Finally recognizing that the cost of living was far lower in New Mexico, he moved back, and wrote a thriller which also didn't sell. But then he began to write historical sea stories that sold to Dell -- which marketed them as by 'Jon Williams', all with two-word titles...

"Williams got his first SF recognition for cyberpunk thriller Hardwired (1986) and its sequel Voice of the Whirlwind (1987), followed by a two-book SF/farce sequence, The Crown Jewels (1987) and The House of Shards (1988). Beginning with Angel Station (1989), he began to find a more serious individual voice as a science fiction author, continuing with such impressive stand-alone novels as Days of Atonement (1991) and Aristoi (1992). In 1993, he ventured closer to fantasy with the alternate history Wall, Stone, Craft . Then, with Metropolitan (1995), he moved directly into what he proclaims as 'urban fantasy' -- though he still has to defend the book against charges that it's really SF. (He recently finished the sequel)." -- (in Locus , Issue 428, Vol.37, No.3, September 1996).

"Walter Jon Williams is an enthusiastic small-boat sailor and a student of kenpo karate". [publisher's bumpf]

Married to: Kathy Williams.
He lives on a ranch outside Albuquerque, New Mexico.

"This guy can be funny and he can be serious, and he's certainly clever. Walter Jon Williams has written some of the best science fiction in recent years. If you haven't read him yet, I heartily recommend: Hardwired (hardcore cyberpunk), Days of Atonement (sci-fi detective fiction), and the absolutely brilliant Aristoi (glorious virtuality). --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 1995).