Had a fascinating bottle of Paw Paw Cider from Blackduck Cidery (Ovid, NY) yesterday. Great tropical notes from a great native North American fruit.

The Ithaca Irrealist Liberation Front reemerges from a period underground to resume its revolutionary literary activities with a reading at Liquid State Brewing on March 20th, featuring @vajra.me and @debbieurbanski.bsky.social! Join us!

How are the Fossoways making cider in years’ long summers? How are those trees getting the required chill hours? That’s my question.

Happy to have sold another story to @lightspeedmagazine.com. “And all will be well, friend(s)”, a kind of fabulist story about consciousness, animism, and where we go when we die (in every moment). Forthcoming sometime.

Rank-and-file nurses, now on week 4 of their historic open-ended strike in New York City, organized an action on Monday targeting state governor Kathy Hochul over the executive order that's allowed hospitals to bring in scab nurses from out-of-state. Photos by Labor Notes Organizer Sarah Hughes

We're horrified & outraged: Immigration agents have once again committed cold-blooded murder of a public observer who posed no threat to them. This time, they've executed a fellow nurse, Alex Pretti. We demand justice and accountability. Abolish ICE, now! https://bit.ly/4big77u

My next-next-next book is about the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919 so I've been reading about it, and to a lesser degree other general strikes, and some things struck me in the research. I'm not a historian or any kind of expert, but here are a few of the things that struck me. +

$5 fiction sale! No coupon code needed. Offer ends tonight at midnight PST.

Crawling back from a very nasty bout of flu by posting some of my favorite stories I read last year. Is it a perfect list? No, there's a ton of amazing stuff out there. But I am happy with it and I hope you can find something in here for you <3

If you're in the Ottawa area, please come out to our rally at Carleton University on Jan. 22 at noon, in support of AI protections for education workers. You absolutely don't have to RSVP to come, but if you feel comfortable, it helps us plan. Dress warm, bring a sign, bring a friend:

The second smallest domino is “Prose doesn’t matter, just ‘the story’”

Interesting discussion of short fiction collections and story order in here. As a reader, I definitely jump around, but when I’m reading for a review, I go in order. Good listening while I put my bookcases back together (including maybe a hundred collections, though many only lightly dipped into).

This has been the default imperialist position for centuries, so really the oddity was that brief period of comfortable unipolar hegemony where it seemed gauche to say it out loud. No clearer sign of late imperial anxiety than the contemporary return of this old ass monocle and pith helmet blather

These imperialists will burn down the world if we let them. Today it’s Trump, but it didn’t start here. U.S. domination of Latin America (and the broader Global South) must end.

Loved this one-sentence piece. Incidentally, when misfortune strikes, I also cycle through three or four different culprits before realizing who's really to blame.

Big thanks to everyone who joined me this year on A Meal of Thorns, and to everyone who listened along and supported us! Feeling like a thread as we leave 2025 behind us: a chance to boost these again. Great guests & great books—take a look, and take a listen wherever you find your podcasts!

This piece is a tour de force. A great read.

Another special week of reviews was our focus on spec fic in translation via US small presses. thank @willmcmahon36.bsky.social for prodding us to do this: some great, clarion-call pieces. @casella.bsky.social channelled his 68er: "Beneath the pavement, need I remind you: the beach."

I should have tagged @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org on this one! Always going to screw something up. This excellent book wasn’t even on my radar before their monthly call for reviews. Everyone who wants to think critically about the genre should be reading ARB regularly.

An essay & some research I did for ARB, on the nationality & language trends of the Hugos, led me to start Translated Hugo Initiative (@translatedhugo.bsky.social), with loads of help from @tallesteden.bsky.social, @rachelcordasco.bsky.social & more. Lots more to come on that in 2026.

I've been MIA from the writing world for months due to my organizing work, but I still had several publications in 2025: four pieces of fiction, three reviews, and a podcast appearance. I also started a reading series which, while irregular, was a lot of fun. Thought I'd look back, with links below.

Some of my favorite works of #SFinTranslation from 2025:

Readercon is doing a final call for program item proposals for the forthcoming Readercon 35. Use our handy form to suggest panel ideas or people you think should be at Readercon: readercon.org/contribute Thank you, it's your suggestions that make Readercon wonderful.

Casella has recommended it to me before, but this episode finally prompted me to drop by my local bookstore and pick up Sea Now. Whole episode is a good listen. Give it a go for your year-end critical needs.

As a special holiday treat, my poem "The World To Come" is out today at @strangehorizons.bsky.social ! strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

Check out my 2800-word sentence about a shipwrecked Andalusian merchant losing his mind in a field!

Deep breath Ok I'm going to try and stay calm But I'll point out that AI translation is literally causing translators to be fired (see the whole Harlequin line in France) (1/?)

For over a millennium, the winemaking traditions of the Kalash, an ethnoreligious people, have endured in Pakistan’s Hindu Kush mountains. In one of the most remote regions in the world, beliefs and customs are passed down orally.

I've been thinking about this story at least once a week since October. Easily my favorite sentence this year

Check out my 2800-word sentence about a shipwrecked Andalusian merchant losing his mind in a field!

Understanding they are apparently backtracking now due to the response, but— I left SFWA for a number of reasons, which this unfortunately fits neatly within. Rather than an overly cautious, compromised “professional association,” freelance writers need a union. Read on if you want to help.

All PM Press books are 50% off with coupon code GIFT through 1-1-2026. Stock up while you can. pmpress.org/index.php?l=...

CANADIAN CARTOON STYLE ARTISTS are you able to spare a picture for a great cause? Our voice acting peers need our support in bringing awareness to their challenges! The requests are super simple and flexible, and donating art is a fantastic way for us to move the needle and volunteer!

BCS Patreon has fallen below the monthly amount we need to pay our authors a pro rate and our First Readers a worthy honorarium ($125/mo). Sometimes folks need to lower or pause their support; we understand. But less than 1% of BCS readership donates or supports. www.patreon.com/beneath_ceas... 1/3

Be weirder and more unsettling

Are there any fan artists who can do (Western) TV cartoon characters reasonably true-to-style who want to donate a little mischievous labor to some Canadian creative industry workers in a union fight against corporate greed? If so, send me a message and I can give you details!

Are there any fan artists who can do (Western) TV cartoon characters reasonably true-to-style who want to donate a little mischievous labor to some Canadian creative industry workers in a union fight against corporate greed? If so, send me a message and I can give you details!

Congratulations to Vajra Chandrasekera (@vajra.me), recipient of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for Rakesfall! Chandrasekera's book was chosen by authors Matt Bell, Indra Das, Kelly Link, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Rebecca Roanhorse.

Well they, burned the Apple Man down in FLX tonight. And they, burned his barrels too.

My novelette “The Third Movement of Time,” is now free to read in @bcsmagazine.bsky.social ! "Winter observes her frustration at Gorgós's irrational behavior and, within it, a particle of jealousy..." www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-...

Live in BCS #442: "Pools of Light at the Center of the World" @willmcmahon36.bsky.social "...and the singing of the insects reminded him of another villain in the story of his exile, which was the lute player, from whose clicking mandibles had come..." www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/pool...

📣 NEW CRITICAL FRIENDS! In a new ep of the @strangehorizons.bsky.social SFF criticism podcast, I talk with @redfernjon.bsky.social and Nileena Sunil about books that might be longer, and others that could be shorter. How to read a text that offers too little, or too much, stuff? Some ideas.

Over 2 million people across Italy have rallied in more than 100 cities for a one-day general strike.

My story “Pools of Light at the Center of the World,” a 2800-word sentence about a shipwrecked Andalusian merchant losing his mind in a field, is now free to read in @bcsmagazine.bsky.social! Check it out. www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/pool...

Too bad this Asian pear tree lost a limb, but it worked out for me. I’ve heard mixed things about making perry from them, but figure I’ll give it a try.

My story “Pools of Light at the Center of the World,” a 2800-word sentence about a shipwrecked Andalusian merchant losing his mind in a field, is now free to read in @bcsmagazine.bsky.social! Check it out. www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/pool...

New Issue: BCS #442 Seventeenth Anniversary Double-Issue, with stories by James Morrow and @willmcmahon36.bsky.social today, @patricksamphire.bsky.social and @rjtaylor.bsky.social next week (but in the ebook now), McMahon podcast, art Bruce Brenneise: www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/issues/issue...

Italy's largest union, with over 5.5 million workers, has called a general strike for Friday in solidarity with the Global Sumud Flotilla. And smaller Italian unions have said they will join CGIL's general strike.