To wit: got to talk to Jeremy McCarter and Ethan Lipton about Wilder, THE SEAT OF OUR PANTS / THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH, and why Wilder could be ~the~ great underappreciated American writer... lithub.com/contract-que...

If you wrote an SF/F/H story that was published in 2025 (or read a story that you thought was great), tell me about it in this thread! Authors, also send your story to me here: johnjosephadams.com/basff-submis... (Please read the guidelines before submitting.)

When you've pissed off one of the kindest and most generous people in the literary world, you should know you've really gone and done it—but also, more people should be shouting this loudly about this kind of thing. A boycott is a bold stance and I wonder what'd happen if more of us joined him.

MORE ETHAN LIPTON! MORE THORNTON WILDER! MORE FUN IN THE THEATER AGAIN!!

One of my favorite books of the century so far, without exaggeration.

Not to replace substance with message but I genuinely do not think that the GOP establishment is prepared, nor capable, of regulating itself in a world where all high profile democrats are directly staring into a camera and telling Trump to go fuck himself.

New: The FBI filed a subpoena trying to unmask the person or people behind archive.is / archive.today, which have been running anonymously for 13 yrs. Site was widely used by GamerGate, and then to bypass paywalls but has become kind of core archiving infrastructure www.404media.co/fbi-tries-to...

I fucking love bookmatch season, there are always questions that make me genuinely crack up, but this is an all-timer forever.

realizing (after I almost posted about his awful mamdani op-ed yesterday, and then the thing this morning) that my life would be better if I just muted "douthat" and I tell you what friends! this freedom! is so good.

Oopsies.

During the holidays, I highly recommend that when someone tells you "The party just doesn't have anyone to get behind for President," you remember that this is not a serious statement in 2025, and instead of engaging it, you eat more pie.

People: you know what not to do.

1/ The 2015 Paris Agreement set a goal to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Sophie Yeo considers whether it’s time to abandon the target. www.thedial.world/articles/new...

(1/2) Speaking as a math person, I question the validity and rigor of the sample and study given who commissioned it. However, more writers/readers must adopt a zero tolerance policy when it comes to supporting OTHER writers using AI for fiction. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

For 2 + years now, when asked for a blurb from me, the writer requesting the blurb must confirm that they did not use AI/LMMs in the writing/researching of the book. If I blurb something and find out later that the author lied to me, I will loudly retract my support. I don't support scabs.

I really dig ICE CREAM MAN's "The Mortal Coil Shuffle" (out today, holding it in my hand) but it is 1000% a missed opportunity own-goal that they did not make this a shufflable story?! In fact, it is kind of deranged that you are explicitly instructed NOT to shuffle it?!

The paperback of A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY, a novel that came out more than 30 years ago, is now $26. The madness has got to end, is almost certainly *going* to end in some way shape or form, and I just hope it doesn't wipe a bunch of people out when it goes.

In a stirring "back down to earth" reminder for me, the guy who was an asshole to me on Friday about the bookstore allowing dogs... reported us to the health inspector, like a rat-fuck regime collaborator.

be stoked, stay stoked, all around the country the people are back at it

After 13 years, Mississippi Democrats have broken the Republican Party’s supermajority in the Mississippi Senate. Democrats flipped two GOP-held Senate seats and one House seat in the special elections. buff.ly/nTvLlFI

a beautiful thing on its own

Down with the cowardly gerontocracy.

I hope the centrists learned a hard lesson last night. No more reaching across the aisle to people who have been spitting in our faces for decades. Run young people, run socialists, run on actionable ideas that seek to make our lives better.

Chalk up another absolutely laughable L for the total dinguses of this country. You're mad that a nice guy with big dreams beat your cranky racist uncle?! Really?? In, and I don't say this lightly, this economy?!? May the road lead us away from those asshats forever and ever, amen and inshallah.

Honestly TELL THE STORY. Won’t someone just tell the fucking story of how Brexit created this economic hardship, how a Muslim immigrant just saved the lives of those commuters on that train, won’t someone in politics or even media just connect the fucking dots and TELL THE STORY. IT’S RIGHT THERE

What if I ran a DND game a la a Monster-of-the-Week show but it's Dungeon-of-the-Week and it's a team who have to go clean out dungeons and I ran the slate of You Can Breathe Now dungeon modules

I don't know what will happen in NYC tonight, but I do know that regardless of outcome, any number of public figures, celebrities, politicians and institutions that oppose Mamdani have done so with a level of rhetorical ugliness, racism, and dishonesty that should neither be forgotten nor forgiven.

Twin Peaks: A red traffic light in the dark.

It's going to take this kind of rivaled juice that only Zohran-types have to get past the combined forces of lawless morass of fused media and capital from now on, which is basically the dictionary definition of fascism. Dems have to pitch perfect games nonstop for several years.

I'm so sick of this shit, not only from Trump but from most politicians, even many Democrats—this belief that people only deserve to eat if they've first done something to prove they deserve it. Do we deserve to live?? Universal basic income ends the asking of this question and poverty as a weapon

Finally, the claw machine got a good one

Unknowable

Damn, this killed Dick Cheney.

I fucking love this book and think you should all read it.

been pondering what the new Florence record has been making me think of... and I realize: Patti Smith.

Hey if you're in New York and want to see some good old fashioned put-on-a-show zany fun theater... THE SEAT OF OUR PANTS, Ethan Lipton's musical riff on Thornton Wilder's THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH, is really charming and delightful. It's not perfect, but it's somehow all the better for that?

Do you have a passion for, hot take about, or inexplicable animosity towards the literary work of Thornton Wilder? Especially about the novels as opposed to the plays? Would loooove to hear from you for a pod thing—voicemail would be groovy but also could possibly swing a short chat! d/l: Thurs.

I'm not even stressing (besides this kinda sweaty post) about the fact that I'm too tired/hungover to write after last night's party. November shall be a healthy writing month and it shall be robust and I shall make it so, starting.... tomorrow.

“One Battle After Another, prepared and shot before Trump’s reelection, is something more than prescient; it seems to have won an existential gamble.” —Jonathan Lethem

I feel like boomers think about how good they had it and take credit for it. And they made a point of hoarding that good. But as a millennial, it’s been pretty horrific to have a glimpse of how much better a lot things used to be as well as an acute awareness of the decline.

the current push to start advertising christmas before halloween is even done is fascist, i will not be elaborating further

To celebrate the season, this week's Lit Hub Podcast is a bit of a departure... in that it's just me, reading a truly great Halloween tale. Hope that's alright, thanks for spending a little more time with me this season 🧡🖤🌚🎃 lithub.com/happy-hallow...

A MOMENT IN HISTORY!!!!! NONE OF US WERE EVER THE SAME!!!!

re-reading THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH before diving into THE ROSE FIELD and I have more patience for the Lyra/Pantalaimon dynamic — it's like Pullman understood what would happen over the last six years, what had already started in the 2010s but accelerated since. I just wasn't ready for it then.

When the same situation has the US congress shut down and the British monarchy doing everything but guillotining one of their own, it’s hard not to go full tin foil hat

Should note, that even before...all of this...small, locally owned businesses generally donate a higher % of their profits to charity. So every time some article boasts an eye-popping donation from some Fortune 500, you've got to remember it's often a meaningless amount in terms of their profits

as we near the 48 hour period that marks my HRT and sobriety anniversaries, it's time for the post I do every year: if you have ever—for more than six minutes, total—considered that transition and/or sobriety might improve your quality of life, you should try it. your only regret will be waiting.

How is it that every Democrat within walking distance of a podium isn't in front of it right now patiently explaining that Dems have proposed a fix (in fact several) and are waiting on feckless ghouls in the Republican party to stop dicking around? (stronger language encouraged)

And here, at nearly the end, I have left the Country before time; traveling, perhaps, beyond—into realms fantastical, territories uncharted and a different kind of strange, in the great hopes of getting lost there for a while. I will return to October again, or so I greatly hope. But now, away.

Do some of you remember how I said a few months ago that the fascists aren't having fun? They still aren't, lol. Their parties [when they have them] SUCK. They make bad art. They aren't funny. They CRAVE Leftist popular culture & resent the fact that they do. They aren't actually having fun