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Two years ago, Walter Jon Williams returned to the setting and subgenre of his ingeniously unconventional Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy with the first of a set of sequels,
The Accidental War (now branded A Novel of the Praxis). Though perhaps I should call the series “multi-conventional,” since, while the packaging and promotional language correctly signal “space opera” and “military SF,” the books also include strong elements of romance (if not romantic comedy), novel-of-manners, and even crime/intrigue-thriller.
The comparisons I settled on for the first three were to Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin wooden-ship naval adventures and Jane Austen’s distinctly non-military novels of manners, money, and marriage. Those comparisons still apply, but in the new novel,
About Fleet Elements and the Praxis Series Posted on
Walter Jon Williams at Worldcon 75 in Helsinki (2017). Photo by Henry Söderlund.
WALTER JON WILLIAMS is the winner of two Nebulas and a five-time Hugo nominee. His most recent books are
The Sundering, The Praxis, This Is Not a Game, and
Quillifer. In 2006, Williams founded the Taos Toolbox, a two-week writer’s workshop for fantasy and science fiction writers. He was the guest of honor of the 2017 Worldcon in Helsinki. Williams lives near Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife, Kathleen Hedges.
File 770 reviewed his latest book,
Fleet Elementshere.
MIKE GLYER:
Fleet Elements is the latest novel in your Dread Empire’s Fall series. (Which I confess to thinking of as the Praxis series.) You once told an interviewer, “As for the Shaa, for now they’re all dead, but I reserve the right to alter reality at any point.” They’re still dead in