"You did it! You crazy son of a bitch, you did it!" An essay in which I write about James Gurney's illustrated utopian adventure fiction novel DINOTOPIA: A LAND APART FROM TIME and tell you why it's pretty fucking awesome. Plus, images of lots of Gurney's art, including his sff covers from the 80s!

We must act before the sharks become venture capitalists. www.wdef.com/cocaine-caff...

The phrase "stick a fork in me, I'm done" expresses the ethos of sceptical inquiry: the listener is not invited to believe the speaker's central assertion, but to immediately test it for themselves.

Exciting ScotLit opportunity for someone!

MAX DOWMAN. 16 YEARS OLD. ETCH THAT INTO EMIRATES HISTORY, ARSENAL HISTORY, PREMIER LEAGUE HISTORY!

At 16 years and 73 days, Max Dowman has become the youngest scorer in Premier League history. (Opta)

MAX DOWMAN

Our crowdfunder to raise more money for small presses in the UK is also live now!

I said lately, after seeing True Detective Night Country ep.1, that I must have a low CGI Animal Tolerance (CGIAT). See also The Green Knight: I struggled to look past that odd, glossy fox. Theory: CGIAT is a cilantro-gene where artists don't realise how much it sticks with certain viewers.

Belatedly and delightedly caught up on this exceptional discussion of style in science fiction from @strangehorizons.bsky.social / @danhartland.bsky.social . Great stuff. (props for including a transcript; I didn't have to stop walking every five minutes to take note of my new favourite bon mot.)

good morning to @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social in @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social on the art & science of criticism! "Paying attention to something is a form of love... Criticism makes you slow down and stay and reflect, just like art does." chireviewofbooks.com/2026/03/11/w...

The team @stingingfly.bsky.social are looking for an experienced and highly organised individual to be their General Manager. This is a new hybrid and part-time role (28 hours per week). Deadline 31 March stingingfly.org/news/general...

Bennett here says that Waiting for Godot "would carry more credence if one of the characters cut short the runic wisdom and made a bolt for the bushes." Not the best choice of target; this does, explicitly, happen in Waiting for Godot.

Everything Mervyn touched became weird.

Some good news for once!

The mad thing here is I used to watch Daryl Murphy play up front for Waterford United in the early 2000s. Man of many talents I guess.

Outer Wilds, if you haven't played it yet, is one of the best games of all time. It's a fun space exploration game with a timeloop twist, and 90% of all game progress happens in your head, as you learn things about the universe and your situation. Absolutely play it if you haven't yet.

Replace all social media with Good Trailcams. We'd be happier.

Deleted my account a while back and I can't say I've noticed its absence. "Academia" sounds important to sign up to when you're just starting to publish but it's just an online CV which sends you annoying emails. If you have an OrcID, that's already better.

In 1993, Octavia E. Butler wrote a defense of public libraries. “Public libraries in particular are the open universities of America. They're free; they're accessible to everyone… I'm a writer at least partly because I had access to public libraries.“

Douglas Adams was a true visionary for realizing that if doors could talk, that would actually be really terrible.

Join us at 3:30 pm ET on Thursday, March 5, for this event with Aran Ward Sell, one of our Yeats Fellows in Irish Literature!

Notre Dame people (or anyone passing through South Bend, IN, in a couple weeks' time, I suppose): I'm giving a public lecture @ndirishstudies.bsky.social on my book project, "Streams of Damaged Consciousness, on March 5th. All welcome! irishstudies.nd.edu/events/2026/...

Jobs! Senate House Library is embarking on an ambitious project to transform access to one of the UK’s largest and richest collections of queer literature —the remarkable Haud Nominandum Collection, donated by activist, bookseller and co-founder of Gay’s the Word bookshop, Jonathan Cutbill.

Writing is thinking. It's not some marginal boring task you can skip. It's the heart of it.

Councillors have today agreed the first spend programmes for the Edinburgh Visitor Levy! The package of funding will help us manage tourism sustainably and create exciting projects for residents and visitors.

Oh I see we're no longer using "AGI" to mean "the technological singularity resulting in eternal abundance for all and the end of human misery," and instead it means "email triage widgets" now.

Given my school's near-total nondescriptness, I have a startlingly strong player here: J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan.

We are looking for review essays! You can see some of our selected titles at the post below. Get in contact with our review editors @heyitsdenisew.bsky.social and @olihaslam.bsky.social to request some or for further info

Big thanks to @casella.bsky.social @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org for including my "really insightful" (his words!) LARB piece on Mervyn Peake in this roundup.

Don't think I've seen anything unite my timeline so emphatically as this wonderful man reading these venerable words.

Ok, I'm going to have to write something less sarcastic about this, but this is... not wonderful. More importantly, in the longer term, this isn't going to help anyone. This is volume over quality, rapid-slop. This is Thorium Toothpaste - let's use this for everything before we understand it.

Welcome to the 2026 Criticism Special Issue! The Brackish Pool: Towards a Critical Practice of Reading Weird Fiction by Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social Link ⬇️ strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

New blog post: (Just reiterating my @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social piece on Peake, but also a text for how these posts display on BlueSky as I plan to post more soon!) reasonstoremain.co.uk/2026/01/21/l...

HE IS RISEN I love Gabriel Jesus so much

DELIGHTED to be making my LARB debut with an in-depth piece about one of the most important writers in my world, Mervyn Peake.

This @aranws.bsky.social article on "Titus Alone" quotes me, so naturally I consider it excellent: lareviewofbooks.org/article/titu...

Here's my own essay on the topic, if you want more to read on Titus Alone:

I was so excited to commission and edit this piece by @aranws.bsky.social, which challenges the reaction by many critical that Peake's Titus Alone is a "failure." And I 100% agree! Titus Alone is easily as interrsting than the other two books in the series combined!

DELIGHTED to be making my LARB debut with an in-depth piece about one of the most important writers in my world, Mervyn Peake.

Very happy to have my chapter included on this super-valuable list of academic work by contingent literary scholars! Great work from the team at @contingent-mag.bsky.social

"Are Arsenal to reliant on own goals?"

HE IS RISEN I love Gabriel Jesus so much

Yes! The thing abt public libraries that is so beautiful & crucial is the idea that *anybody* could do this — you need no credential, there’s no gatekeeping, literally any person can be an intellectual. You can come from absolutely nothing & yet, by means of curiosity + work, create real knowledge

Annihilation / Authority / Acceptance / Absolution ( @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social )

The moment a main character is revealed to be (or want to be) a writer, English major, or English teacher, the book should self-destruct and be composted. (Ofc the rare exceptions know this and charge it head-on, e.g. Portrait of the Artist, If On A Winter's Night a Traveler)

New/Old publication day! My 2018 article on Eimear McBride's "A Girl is a Half-formed Thing" has been spruced up for a new book: "Tradition and Experimentation in Irish Literature and Theatre" Big thanks to editors Katarzyna Ojrzyńska and Wit Pietrzak reference-global.com/book/9788368...

How is this repeatedly made into a policy issue - by *all* parties - when the blunt fact of the matter is that grown adults who are obliged to pay for their own education, and relentlessly pursued to repay their loans, should be able to study whatever the fuck they want.