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With the creepypasta zeitgeist, it would be remiss of me not to draw your attention to this tale of creepy pasta I wrote so long ago it predates the term.

What's great about this is how many ways it's dumb, bad, and presages worse, and how the comments thread covers them all.

An interesting list with many books I'd never heard of, but will now inevitably acquire and add to The Pile

Every third YA novel is a dystopia with skiffy substitutions for commonplace modern terms: "I transferred the fnargles and the zootbooster shot me a moistener. Deepdrive stasis was like gargling ferrodust." Contextual clues are part of understanding older texts too.

Every third YA novel is a dystopia with skiffy substitutions for commonplace modern terms: "I transferred the fnargles and the zootbooster shot me a moistener. Deepdrive stasis was like gargling ferrodust." Contextual clues are part of understanding older texts too.

Late this summer Frost Zone Stories book 4 will be released. Stories by @kristalstittle.bsky.social, Ian Inglis, @hvpatterson.bsky.social , @phenryward.bsky.social , James Hobbs, Christian Macklam, Elizabeth Guilt, Mark Keane, Nissa Harlow, Kimberly Y. Choi, Lawrence Dagstine

Reading @tananarivedue.bsky.social's THE REFORMATORY, thinking about ICE and the people who want to work for it.

Updated our list of labour unions in SFF. The list is now up to 300 (!) stories of science fiction and fantasy where collective worker action is a part of the story. As spreadsheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets... On the blog: hugoclub.blogspot.com/2018/12/orga... 1/2

This is my favourite type of film.

Just when you thought you'd seen it all

Working on some writing about the wonderful queer British writer Joel Lane, and though I've long known he was prolific, it wasn't until today that I tried to put together a list of his uncollected stories. This is somebody who published 7 collections 1994-2015.

I think about Jack Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Violence a lot. Incredibly vindicated vision of the future.

God bless a tiered rejection. Three of these counts as an acceptance and no-one can say different.

Very excited to see this cover, and delighted to have a story inside! It's a sweet and sad tale of children lost and found, with an accidental seance...

An off-shape specificity is haunting Europe—the off-shape specificity that models still struggle to produce unprompted.

Increasingly feel like the Titan submersible disaster was one of the defining moments required to understand the start of the 21st century, in the same way that the Titanic itself provided an emblem for the start of the 20th.

An off-shape specificity is haunting Europe—the off-shape specificity that models still struggle to produce unprompted.

God bless a tiered rejection. Three of these counts as an acceptance and no-one can say different.

Hoo boy. Those wires.

4′33″ and Grogu

Tbh, had to reassess my snobbery when I read this about the Warhammer books (also I just discovered there are Warhammer books)

As this becomes a thread of mini-dunks by way of a history of fog/mist horrors, let me chip in to say that 'The Night Wire' - a hundred years old this September - is extraordinary.

Today's story is "Cross-Attachment" by Mari Harrison. @javajnkie.bsky.social #ratbag #ratbaglit #litmag #literarymagazine #drabble #drabbles

This is an excellent article

The perfect kicker to this cartoon is the film's content rating.

I don't know the work of the Cottrell-Boyces but they seem pleasingly sane and reasonable here

The perfect kicker to this cartoon is the film's content rating.

I need a six episode adaptation of this mad bastard of a book ASAP. Think we're finally at the cultural moment where a tv show could be sufficiently explicit to do justice to a novel from 1796.

"The Master & Margarita", illustrations Gennady Novozhilov

I need a six episode adaptation of this mad bastard of a book ASAP. Think we're finally at the cultural moment where a tv show could be sufficiently explicit to do justice to a novel from 1796.

I haven't listened to the podcast that occasioned all this discussion yet, but I did just read a review column by Algis Budrys (obviously in the author-critics camp) from February 1969, and he says this when reviewing Bob Shaw's second novel The Two Timers

I don't see how ten different pictures of my parents fighting could possibly be a useful diagnostic tool

I don't see how ten different pictures of my parents fighting could possibly be a useful diagnostic tool

This end note in my edition of The Monk made me think of the most recent Knives Out movie. (The Monk, btw: really very fun. And funny!)

From the Robot Doctors series created by Mary Bishop, in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital c.midC20th. One of 100s of paintings she made during 30 years compelled to live there, which express & explore traumas & distresses within & outwith the psychiatric system which held power over her

An interesting piece from the @birminghamdispatch.bsky.social ... www.birminghamdispatch.co.uk/exclusive-sh...

The Grogucible

Man that literature prize really is Desperate, huh?

An interesting thread about another film that left an indelible effect, watched too young.

This was wildly enjoyable for a topic about which I knew nothing

As always, Heather Parry (no longer on bsky?) is good and right here. Had no idea about the pure horror story of Finnish psychotherapy provider Vastaamo's cyberhack. open.substack.com/pub/heatherp...

Has anyone earned thanks for a train that runs so infrequently? A comical, barely-helpful contribution to moving around the city.

As always, Heather Parry (no longer on bsky?) is good and right here. Had no idea about the pure horror story of Finnish psychotherapy provider Vastaamo's cyberhack. open.substack.com/pub/heatherp...

Good conversation. Reminded me what I learned from abandoned PhD on the English Disaster Novel: vernacular fiction doesn't have to be good to be interesting, and doesn't even have to be interesting to be useful - especially when it's revealing by virtue of what it doesn't include or can't imagine.

Waded through some melodramatic and back to the wild stuff. (There's also a funny little satire about the politics and practicalities of running an arts institution as a D-plot.)

This is good.

Didn't get job, going to eat apples and puke worms.

Ah well. We should have the strength to admit our errors:

This is a good addition to the 'late capitalist work practices change our bodies' genre. (Though probably not the story to read while waiting - as I am - to hear back after an interview.)