Man, one of the most depressing aspects of modern scholarship is finding a great article and then looking up the scholar to see what else they’ve done and just catching a glimpse of an abbreviated career hopping between visiting positions and publishing great pieces before disappearing from academia

I like this analogy, and I'm going to try to figure out how to expand it to encompass the fact that at volumes greater than a sip—a novel, a movie, even a three-minute video clip—AI turns inevitably to bilgewater.

Oh there are so many options! Kristina Ten's TELL ME YOURS I'LL TELL YOU MINE is an incredible trip through youth culture, immigrant experience, and haunting. In recent reads of older books, I might offer the slippery poetic surfaces of THE BLUE STAIRS by Barbara Guest or WITCH WORLD by Andre Norton

Thanks to @johncoxon.bsky.social of @octothorpecast.bsky.social for his contribution at the close of the latest podcast. In our last episode, @tristanbeiter.bsky.social and co discussed the space for criticism in fandom. I was curious for a second opinion. Critical Friends: it's for conversation.

A good thread and a good take (and one that resonates with me extra hard as someone who genuinely loves a lot of old stuff but finds the persistence of Ye Olde Beefs and also their "positive" equivalents almost impossibly alienating and a big part in why I have never, for example, joined Worldcon)

A really interesting essay! And a good reminder of why I tend to default to the sense of genre I get from Jonathan Culler and scholars like him where genre is a complex and shifty mass of reading protocols, expectations, and transformations. (He demonstrates this brilliantly 1/

We love "a critic being driven slowly out of her mind" and thank her for her sacrifice.

I HOWL THIS TRUTH TO THE MOOOOOOOOON

A fascinating conversation about style in SFF from Strange Horizons, between Paul Kincaid (who recently reviewed Whitney French's Syncopation), Dawn Mcdonald and Dan Hartland.

"A really pronounced style might feel in the way, but I think that science fiction is such a capacious genre that it has space for a lot of experimentation." Let's talk more about words! Thanks to @ndbooks.bsky.social and @wolsakandwynn.bsky.social for work that sparks these sorts of conversation.

I’d never been so jealous of a cigarette in my life, so envious of ash, to glow from the touch of her lips, to fall at her feet and be completely consumed. Do Not Miss This Incredible CNF👇💔 @barlowadams.bsky.social @whaleroadreview.bsky.social

Yeah, I don't want dunk on this piece, it's got some very cool ideas and some arguments that I broadly agree with—particularly the idea that SF is, alongside everything else it is, a literature that theorizes *power*—but I find myself saying a loud "yes, but" to a lot of its genre theorizing.

Kegstand’s insecurity raises its ugly, ignorant, petulant, pusillanimous head for the nth time today.

Thread. I enjoyed the essay because I think the attitudinal (not aesthetic) distinction approached is interesting and seems an accurate account of why *Palmer* became an SFF writer (and of the appeal of things that touch on "adventure"). But I think this critique is well-reasoned and important

This is real bad and Scouting America should tell the Pentagon to go kick rocks if they want to have any hope of maintaining their (frankly already tenuous) reputation as a positive space for kids to develop leadership. The (para)military elements have always been the weakest part of scouting and 1/

Otoh, we’re getting banger sentences like these: “Drop a gem in thick oil. The brilliance yellows slowly, ambers, goes red at last, dies. That was the leap into hyperstatic space.”

Reading the novel right now and as I hit both this and the passage photographed downthread; it sure is impossible to escape. What is the fatphobia doing? No idea. But it sure is there

We've had a day to pull a few things together, so here's a thread some more targeted info opposing the potential national book ban just proposed in the House of Representatives.

I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it won’t be just as bad for those.

now that everyone is looking for a non-essentialist humanism because of AI, I think existentialism is going to make a comeback

This is a Nazi move. Stripping people of rights, invalidating their IDs, setting them up for criminalization and imprisonment. If you don't support trans rights, you support fascism.

The conflation of porn and LGBTQ (but specifically trans) issues is purposeful. It's part of the Project 2025 plan to criminalize LGBTQ+ ppl. It starts with books. It moves to bathrooms. Then it moves to govt IDs. We're in it already. You don't need to be an expert to see where this goes next.

Don't be fooled by this bill's name-- this is a book banning bill that will exclude LGBTQ books from all public schools NATIONWIDE. Call your congresspeople and tell them to VOTE NO on this nakedly bigoted book banning bullshit. www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...

We have to resist the death cult targeting trans people, not for dumb “first they came for…” reasons, but because trans people deserve not to be targeted by the death cult

"A feminist retelling of Frankenstein" I-- Frankenstein IS a feminist book.

Ooh! My new essay is up on Strange Horizons! Deliberately provocative title 😈 strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

Ooh boy. After what I've seen about the movie, I would love to know what people who don't know the novel and buy the movie-branded copy because they liked the film think of it.

Again and again, for academic authors but *especially* for trade fiction and nonfiction authors alike, and especially folks who decide to self-publish, you need to know that if anyone is asking for money when it comes to your book, it's almost certainly a scam.

it's all just art. "porn" is just art that makes you horny, in precisely the way that "horror" is art that makes you scared and "metroidvania" is art that makes you write video essays

My favorite fruit is plums; I don't buy them unless the person selling them grew them since they are just not worth eating if they're not perfectly ripe and in season

I understand why chatbot cheating happens but every time I read about it I want to gently remind everyone that the point of schoolwork is not for the submission to exist. Teachers are not just greedy for more essays or solved equations. The point is to do the work WITH YOUR OWN BRAIN, FOR LEARNING.

So actually it is pretty common practice for academic publishers to take ownership of copyright as a condition of publication and given that publication is required for tenure, people are actually being forced to sign away their rights upon threat of not having anything to live on

putting aside the cheating and the "expecting me to know things is ableism" crowd, I don't understand this from a pure capitalistic standpoint, do you think the people who refuse to learn things are going to be employable and thus have disposable income to continue to not know things later?

Nebula Ballots are due Sunday, March 1st. This is the the first year for the poetry and comics categories. If you have not submitted already, here is the link: www.sfwa.org/2025-nebula-.... #SFWA #Nebulas #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #NominationSeason

It never ceases to confound me just how many folks think the point of essays is to provide teachers with essays. That teachers just like, collect them, or need them for sustenance or something. Rather than the point of them being the *actual fucking act of learning how to think about shit*

As I told my undergrads at the start of the semester, I'm not asking you to write a paper about Little Rock's school desegregation because I don't know what happened there. Little Rock is just the topic. The act of researching, writing and editing the paper is the whole point.

But it was also a huge mistake *for universities* to accept the 'degrees are for money' framing that was advanced by politicians. We ought to have rejected that framing and advanced our own learning-based framing from the beginning, in all cases.

TO be quite blunt, I think we'd even be better off with "the purpose of a university education is to acquire upper-middle-class signifiers" rather than the current "it is entirely about a premium in expected lifetime earnings" even though both are inferior to, y'know, learning as a telos.

It seems to me that the foundational 'wrong turn' in education was the increasing rhetoric from universities themselves and their supporters that the primary value of a university education was increased earning power. That leads pretty directly to this place we're in now.

If I could change one piece of the discourse-that-drives-policy it’d be to underscore that higher education is not only a benefit to the individual but to all of us. It’s a collective good.

Unflinching refusal to use or allow the use of A.I. in reading & writing should be the uncontroversial, default position of teachers from K-12 to colleges & universities. If our administrators tell us we "have to" we tell them to eff off. We will not kill the planet's water for systemic plagiarism.

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls.

"AITA for wanting a return on my investment?" Great use of form, and extremely satisfying! By Leon Tomova in @khoreo.bsky.social

The idea that to be a good citizen required curiosity about the world was a positive force. Now we just have ignoramuses crowing about "Western civilization" while knowing nothing and wanting to know even less.

One thing I'm getting from rooting around in early postwar periodicals is that middlebrow culture was good, actually and we're impoverished for its demise.