Paul O. Williams

Paul O. Williams (born 1935) is an American science fiction writer and haiku poet. Williams is professor emeritus of English at Principia College, in Elsah, Illinois.

His most notable science fiction works are a series of novels, the Pelbar Cycle, set in North America about a thousand years after a "time of fire", in which the world was nearly totally depopulated. The novels track a gradual reconnection of the human cultures which have developed. Much of the action takes place in the communities of the Pelbar, along the Upper Mississippi River — in the general vicinity of Elsah. Several cultures, including the matriarchal Pelbar, join together in the Heart River Federation. Others, especially the tyrannical Tantal and slave-raiding Tusco, fall apart after suffering defeats. The predominant characters are change agents: Jestak, Stel and his wife Ahroe Westrun. All are Pelbar. Williams won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction in 1983.

He is also known as a writer of haiku, senryu, and tanka, and has written a number of essays on the haiku form in English. In a 1975 essay, he coined the word "Tontoism" to refer to haiku with missing articles ("the", "a", or "an"), making the haiku sound like the stunted English of the Indian sidekick, Tonto, in the Lone Ranger radio and television series.Williams has been the president of the Haiku Society of America (1999) and vice president of the Tanka Society of America (2000).

The Pelbar Cycle

* "The Breaking of Northwall" (1981)
* "The Ends of the Circle" (1981)
* "The Dome in the Forest" (1981)
* "The Fall of the Shell" (1982)
* "An Ambush of Shadows" (1983)
* "Song of the Axe" (1984)
* "The Sword of Forbearance" (1985)

: (The Pelbar Cycle was republished in 2005–2006 by the University of Nebraska Press.)

Gorboduc

* "The Gifts of the Gorboduc Vandal" (1989)
* "The Man from Far Cloud" (2004)

Haiku, senryu, and tanka books

* "The Edge of the Woods: 55 Haiku" (1968)
* "Tracks on the River" (1982)
* "Growing in the Rain" (1991)
* "Outside Robins Sing: Selected Haiku" © July 1999. Brooks Books 56 pages. ISBN 0-913719-98-6
* "The Nick of Time: Essays on Haiku Aesthetics" by Paul O. Williams, Press Here, © 2001, ISBN 1-878798-23-5 [winner of the Haiku Society of America's 2003 Merit Award for Best Criticism]
* "The Day of Strawberries", edited by Paul O. Williams (San Francisco: Two Autumns Press, 2004) — the companion chapbook to the Haiku Poets of Northern California’s fifteenth annual Two Autumns poetry reading series