Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Video Star | 1986 | Walter Jon Williams | Buy |
| 2 | Wolf Time | 1987 | Walter Jon Williams | Buy |
| 3 | Dinosaurs | 1987 | Walter Jon Williams | Buy |
| 4 | Prayers on the Wind | 1991 | Walter Jon Williams | Buy |
| 5 | Daddy’s World | 1999 | Walter Jon Williams | Buy |
| 6 | The Last Ride of German Freddie | 2002 | Walter Jon Williams | Buy |
| 7 | The Green Leopard Plague | 2003 | Walter Jon Williams | Buy |
| 8 | The Tang Dynasty Underwater Pyramid | 2004 | Walter Jon Williams | Buy |
| 9 | The Boolean Gate | 2012 | Walter Jon Williams | Buy |
| 10 | No Spot of Ground | 2014 | Walter Jon Williams | Buy |
| 11 | Surfacing | 2014 | Walter Jon Williams | Buy |
Walter Jon Williams’s shorter fiction is where some of his most celebrated work lives. “Daddy’s World” (1999) is a disturbing story about a child growing up inside a simulated reality, and it won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette. “The Green Leopard Plague” (2003) won the same award for a story that weaves together biotech and historical parallels about famine. Both stories show Williams operating at a level of emotional and intellectual precision that is hard to match.
The rest of the list covers a wide range of subjects and tones. “Video Star” (1986) is early cyberpunk. “Wolf Time” (1987) deals with nuclear terrorism. “The Last Ride of German Freddie” (2002) is an alternate history Western featuring a young Friedrich Nietzsche in Tombstone. “Surfacing” (2014) is set in a flooded future where people have been genetically modified to live underwater. Williams treats short fiction as a place to take risks, and the results have been consistently strong over three decades.