With the publication of his debut novel, The Privateer, in 1981, Walter Jon Williams began a career in contemporary popular fiction. His work encompasses cyberpunk (Hardwired), military SF (The Dread Empire’s Fall series), humor (The Crown Jewels), even disaster fiction (The Rift). Much of Williams’s work takes place in the shorter forms, as this volume reflects.

With one exception, The Best of Walter Jon Williams reflects its author’s affection for the novella form. That exception is “The Millennium Party,” an account of a virtual anniversary celebration. “Daddy’s World” takes us into a young boy’s private universe, a world of seeming miracles that conceals a tragic secret. “Dinosaurs” is the far future account of the relationship between the star-faring human race and the less evolved inhabitants of the planet Shar. “Diamonds from Tequila” is an example of SF Noir in which a former child actor attempts a comeback that proves unexpectedly dangerous. “Surfacing” is a tale of alienation featuring a research scientist more at home with the foreign and unfamiliar than with the members of his own species. Finally, “Wall, Stone, Craft” offers an alternate take on a young Mary Godwin, future creator of Frankenstein, and her relationships with the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, culminating in the creation of a monster who would “stalk through the hearts of all the world.”