The Best of Walter Jon Williams, Walter Jon Williams (Subterranean 978-1-64524-002-0, $45, 616pp, hardcover) February 2021 A writer always feels an instinctive camaraderie with other writers who debuted more or less simultaneously with one’s own beginnings. This does not mean that all writers in a given generation love and admire each other unconditionally, but only that a person recognizes and bonds more readily with other members of their own generation. It’s a realization that our paths are parallel, a shared journey—and, with luck, of similar extension. We all kicked off at the same starting line, and we will all finish up around the same time, getting to see entire careers, side by side and from start to finish. We were not present at the commencement of the careers of our elders (although we might have shared their later years), and we will not live to see the whole careers of our juniors. But this particular assortment of scribblers, bound by a chance coincidence of birth—well, we’re all stuck in the same span of time, and that’s a potent affiliation.