Background
Son of Walter Ulysses and Eva Williams, Mr. Williams was born in Duluth, Minnesota, United States, on October 15, 1953.
Son of Walter Ulysses and Eva Williams, Mr. Williams was born in Duluth, Minnesota, United States, on October 15, 1953.
Walter Jon Williams graduated from University of New Mexico, obtaining Bachelor of Arts in 1975.
Walter Jon Williams began his authorial endeavors with sea stories under the shorter name Jon Williams. In 1984 his science fiction novel, Ambassador of Progress, was published in the genre in which the author, now writing as Walter Jon Williams, would settle. Mr. Williams let only a year pass before the publication of Knight Moves, which proved a more successful than his previous work.
By the mid 1980s, he found himself beguiled by the then-emerging popular science fiction subgenre called “cyber-punk” whose most widely known practitioner is William Gibson. Critics noted the influence of Mr. Gibson’s innovations in Mr. Williams’s 1986 effort, Hardwired.
Mr. Williams played roleplaying games (in a group with other sf authors including George R. R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass, becoming a contributor to their Wild Cards series), 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, Walter Williams founded the Taos Toolbox, a two-week writer's workshop for fantasy and science fiction writers. In 2017, he was the Guest of Honor at the 75th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Helsinki.