Sometimes you take the train, others…

Simultaneously delighted and concerned about the 41.3% who voted Reform/Restore. It’s a result that only further hardens my wish for electoral reform. No sane government can form around a coin toss between such polarised mandates.

BOOK REVIEW: @trnapper.bsky.social's GHOST OF THE NEON GOD is a reminder of why I fell in love with the Cyberpunk genre. This novella's full of action and drama, but it's also introspective and human. I absolutely loved it. Read the full review on FanFiAddict fanfiaddict.com/review-ghost...

This might be one of the funniest chart about energy scenarios I’ve seen. You can hardly see “actual” for gas

Just saying, if anyone makes a supercut of all the dads dancing in the stadiums, I’d be very into it.

I’m not a football guy but these hydration breaks don’t make any sense to me. It’s a game of four halves…?

Sound up, I beg of you.

(not for nothing, this is also partly what Calculation of Volume is about)

Having said that, it is going to be printed adjacent to a review of Luis Othoniel Rosa's Animal Spiral (Charco) which is big and brash and incredibly imaginative about the future ... so it's not that nobody at all is writing or publishing that stuff.

20-something years ago we had Pattern Recognition, there was *too much* future possibility; now (in this novel) there is too little.

I have a review coming out of The White Desert by Luis Lopez Carrasco (Granta), which among other things is a book in which the characters are paralyzed by the loss of the idea of the future - in this case post-2008 as well as climate and right-wing nationalism.

Extremely interesting, but not surprising. Fantasy and horror seem to have found lenses through which to view contemporary issues. Where SF sits right on top of so many of them.

Dylan, on life in your 80’s, is incredible. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/o...

@jonnelledge.bsky.social catching up on newsletters, and the order of adjectives thing. I know it as the Royal order of adjectives. Not sure why, or which monarch claimed to codify it, but it has a name! One day I’m going to write a character who refuses to use it btw, and they will be a maniac.

My goodness, Ed Luce is furious giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

I’m still waking up, very sleepy - but the livestream has almost no scaffolding, letters still there and it’s daytime at 3:15am?

I asked my agent @jjbker.bsky.social last week how many submissions he gets a year. His latest estimate is between 3-4000/annum, which equates to somewhere between 12-15 submission emails per working day. And it’s not just John, it’s many agents working in the industry.

Much love & sympathy to Caro. I have 185 submitted MSs TBR, and I’m going to read them all, because it took a huge amount of work to get into my inbox in the first place, which shouldn’t be ignored. I’ve read as fast as possible in the last fortnight, responding to lots, and I’m still at 185.

This map is absolutely fascinating

I'm beginning to think it's just not possible to make any progress with the backlog, no matter how fast I read...

New: Asylum appeal backlog rises to 87,450 cases — by Colin Yeo

@stellacreasy.bsky.social Do you think this would be a good time to leave X? I appreciate you might want to reach a larger audience, and that your posts are typically well-intentioned, but your presence tacitly endorses its facade as a forum for debate, when it is instead legitimising violence.

I hope the MPs who use this platform use this moment to tell their colleagues they should quit the race riot and non-consensual pornography platform once and for all, and call them out when they refuse. Musk clearly has no intention of cleaning up his platform, quite the opposite in fact.

We need leaders who can spell out what's happening clearly and with force.

We are delighted to announce that Titan Books will be publishing multi-award winning author Usman T. Malik’s debut novel, A DARK AND NARROW HOUSE in Spring 2027! ✨ This will be followed by the World Fantasy award-winning short story collection MIDNIGHT DOORWAYS and one further novel!

Tomorrow!

Just realised I've received 8 novel submissions in the last 6 days.

(Spent all morning running around to Waterstones in Gower St, Trafalgar Square, and Picadilly, plus Hatchards Picadilly, so go get your signed copies!)

Come and hear me talk about THIS IS WHERE THE FUTURE BLEEDS at @srfantasyclub.bsky.social tomorrow evening from 6.30! Come and hear RJ talk about MORTEDANT'S PERIL! Throw things! It's important enrichment activity for authors!

One Thousand and One Wishes by @rakanrrk.bsky.social The Sun Wells by @aiden-ng.bsky.social There Will Come Soft Rains by Jessica Tsang Zonbi by Zarah Elouis-Ro. 2/2

Massive congrats to all the shortlisted authors for the @futureworldsprize.bsky.social - some tough choices this year, as always. There's such a wealth of talent out there.

AI SCAM ALERT. I've just found out scammers are pretending to be me and contacting authors/agents. Example here - the picture is actually me (from a socials profile) but the email address isn't mine, the job title is wrong, and the prose style *execrable*. PLEASE BLOCK AND REPORT!

For the UK daytime crew

Hive mind - alternatives to GoogleDrive? I mainly use it for writing, so multi-device/platform sync, being able to type/edit on my phone and it being extremely free of AI are all dealbreakers. Seeing some suggestions of Proton or Filen perhaps?

THERE'S NO DEBATE, STOP TRYING TO MAKE DEBATE HAPPEN

the only people having that debate are flag-hanging, roundabout-painting, hotel-shouting nonces. every BAME person has a catalogue of stop-and-search stories. every study into the police for like fifty years has consistently revealed ubiquitous, institutional racism at every level in the service.

Some extremely egregious and dangerous bullshit.

Dan is one of the most enthusiastic, positive and knowledgable editors I've worked with. Also one of the busiest...! Well worth getting some time with his brain if you can.

Delighted to see THE DISCO AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Nathan Tavares selected by Amazon as an Editors' Pick! If you're after uplifting queer SF, joy as resistance, and a banging disco soundtrack, then come on in. Your disco needs you!

TRAD WIFE is ace, so this sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Seeing posts about the drop in quality of Google searches - I switched to Ecosia a while back. They put profits into reforestation and climate change projects. And, you know, the search still works. blog.ecosia.org/tag/where-do...

Finishing off an accidentally themed ‘the queer kids are alright’ evening with the ending of Blippo+. Silly, beautiful, cheekily weird, unafraid of sneaking in avant garde drone and glitchy electronica, frequently hilarious. Get bent for a better world, people, and stay attuned.

Just watched I SAW THE TV GLOW (on Netflix atm), and had a _great_ time. What a gorgeous, uncanny and scratchy thing that is. The banal and ambiguous horror of living our lives through screens kinda nailed. The Sloppy Jane/Phoebe Bridgers tune is a clear keeper too.

Your semi-regular awkward reminder that I've got signed copies of my really weird out-of-print book for sale, and they're nearly gone, so there's that sense of urgency and all the rest. ko-fi.com/s/7292dd0671

@blippo.plus just saying, from 4-5 packets in, if there was a RUBE YOUR CUBE T-shirt, you’d already have my money 🖤

Just finished up the week by editing* the new @caitlinrozakis.bsky.social with the sun shining down on me. Some days, gotta love this job. * Pro tip - the editorial process here mainly involves cracking up, then writing a comment on the bit that broke me.

Just finished On the Calculation of Volume vol 1. A mixed bag for me, some excellence and some things that tested my patience. People who've read on, should I bother? How much does it evolve across later volumes?

“Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year…Citing data that shows the risk of pedestrian fatality is cut in half by reducing a car’s speed from 40 to 30km/hr, city officials imposed the lower limit in most of Helsinki’s residential areas and city center in 2021.”

SOCIOLOGY FOR BEGINNERS Classical sociology: Dave punched Steve. Marx says this is capitalism. Durkheim says social cohesion has broken down. Weber says bureaucracy will shortly produce a form in triplicate explaining the punch.