Science & Tech Quote by Walter Jon Williams

There is a quiet provocation in how Walter Jon Williams frames “technology” not as novelty, but as plumbing: whatever gets the words to readers, cheaply, is good. For a working genre writer who’s watched formats churn from mass-market paperbacks to e-books to subscription bundles, that pragmatism is the point. He’s not pledging allegiance to any platform; he’s refusing to be drafted into a culture war between nostalgia (print purity) and tech evangelism (disruption as virtue).

The subtext is a two-sided critique. On one side: gatekeepers who treat scarcity as a proxy for value, pricing books like luxury goods and then acting surprised when audiences drift. On the other: technologists who talk about “access” while routing most of the money and control away from creators. Williams’s line threads the needle by centering the reading public and the price tag, not the gadget. “Reasonable” does heavy lifting here: it signals affordability without conceding that writing should be free, and it implicitly defends the author’s right to be paid without sanctifying inflated markups.

Context matters, too. Science fiction has long been the genre most willing to meet readers where they are, from pulps to paperbacks to piracy-era digital distribution. Williams’s intent reads as a professional ethic: maximize reach, minimize friction, keep the work in circulation. It’s a market-savvy statement that still feels moral, because it treats access as part of the art’s job, not a charitable afterthought.