John Walters » Clarion West

I have been going through some tough times lately and enduring situations that have left me stressed and depressed. In search of reading material to lift my spirits, I picked up this volume that ...

https://johnwalterswriter.com/2024/01/03/book-review-harlan-ellisons-watching-by-harlan-ellison/

It may seem odd to interrupt the posting of a lengthy three-part book review for an essay on another subject, but I have just received the disheartening news that my friend Bruce Taylor died a fe...

https://johnwalterswriter.com/2022/09/03/an-appreciation-of-bruce-taylor-aka-mr-magic-realism/

I woke up this morning with the song “What a Wonderful World” playing in my mind. It was no bland cover version either; the version in my head was the original recording sung by Louis Armstro...

https://johnwalterswriter.com/2020/09/19/what-a-wonderful-world/

On the short list of writers who most influenced my own career, Harlan Ellison has one of the top positions, if not the number one spot. Others on the list would be Jack London, Henry Miller, and...

https://johnwalterswriter.com/2019/02/23/book-review-a-lit-fuse-the-provocative-life-of-harlan-ellison-by-nat-segaloff-part-one-what-h-e-means-to-me/

I have been reading a dynamic new book called The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present, and I thought about my Native American friend Russell Bates and wondered what...

https://johnwalterswriter.com/2019/02/09/russell-bates-kiowa-writer/

Ursula Le Guin was one of my instructors at Clarion West 1973. It’s a shame I don’t remember very much about my Clarion experience; but after all, that was about 45 years ago and I had just t...

https://johnwalterswriter.com/2018/03/17/book-review-no-time-to-spare-thinking-about-what-matters-by-ursula-k-le-guin/

When the original series of Star Trek first appeared on network television in 1966, I was thirteen years old. I had already been exposed to science fiction on television in the form of Lost in Sp...

https://johnwalterswriter.com/2017/08/07/book-review-the-fifty-year-mission-the-complete-uncensored-unauthorized-oral-history-of-star-trek-the-first-25-years-by-edward-gross-and-mark-a-altman/

This is a monster of a book: eight hundred pages of stories.  It’s also an excellent book, and probably the best value for the money of any book I’ve ever bought.  I came across it at the a...

https://johnwalterswriter.com/2017/05/06/book-review-the-best-american-mystery-stories-of-the-century-edited-by-tony-hillerman-and-otto-penzler/

I recently started re-watching the original Star Trek series on Netflix.  You know, the one with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and Bones the doctor, not to mention Scottie, Uhura, Sulu, and the res...

https://johnwalterswriter.com/2016/10/22/what-star-trek-means-to-me/

While I was at the Norwescon science fiction convention last spring, I attended a panel on the value of workshops for writers.  There are all sorts of different types of such workshops, from loc...

https://johnwalterswriter.com/2016/07/30/book-review-telling-tales-the-clarion-west-30th-anniversary-anthology-edited-by-ellen-datlow/