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Local Author Series – James Williams
October 27, 2019, 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Author James F. Williams will discuss and read from his first novel, The Pedestrians, a wry, social science-fiction thriller. Set in 2097’s Manhattan Island City, a gated community, data hunter Dale Evans tracks evidence to solve a brutal murder on Wall Street, the city’s red-light district. A terrifying plunge from a flying taxi forces Evans to reconstruct his identity while working the brutal case. He and partner Jimmy Ha encounter lab-grown child clones, fleets of self-assembling robots and an industrialist serial killer. Evans also finds love amidst masses of homeless Manhattanites, which the immigrant one percent now mockingly call “the pedestrians.”
James Williams
James was born in Gainesville, Florida, and graduated from GHS with an Associates degree from UF before he began his travels. Since then, he’s lived, worked and published miscellanea in Wichita, Kansas; Boston; New York City; and possibly Shanghai, China.
Returning to Florida, he became writer and editor of The Lake Region Monitor (a Keystone Heights/Melrose weekly newspaper), serving for nine years. Since then, he has served as stringer or substitute writer/editor for the Monitor, the Bradford County Telegraph and the Union County Times until his semi-retirement in 2014. He writes occasional articles on business and local government.
The Pedestrians
Author James F. Williams describes his first novel, The Pedestrians, as a wry social science-fiction thriller. He is proud to say it has all the clichés of 20th century sci-fi potboilers: flying solar cars, robots, clones, mile-high buildings. Set in 2097, thinly veiled, the Big Apple is now Manhattan Island City, rid of its needless boroughs. The Stock Exchange has fled to Washington to be near the power center and the national treasury. Crime and homelessness are rampant.
Data hunter Dale Evans tracks evidence to solve a bizarre murder on Wall Street, the city’s red-light district. Moving around MIC, a gated community, Evans loses his identity and fights to regain it while encountering lab-grown clones, fleets of robots and a murderous industrialist. Evans also finds love amidst the masses of homeless the immigrant one percent mockingly call “the pedestrians.”