Well, everyone knows Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach books are about climate change. What this essay presupposes is... maybe they aren't?

Includes a link to a great review of Thomas Kendall’s How I Killed The Universal Man, which I also reviewed (and loved) a few years ago. Excellent book for our absurd and unsettling post-cyberpunk(?) age

Over at my Substack, I take a look at How I Killed the Universal Man by Thomas Kendall from @whiskeytit.com

Some new writing I’m working through probably from the fourth novella in the book: thomaskendall.substack.com/p/so-what-if...

@hararereview.com thank you for the repost!

An honour to be read by one of my favourite book blogs

Anyway, HOW I KILLED THE UNIVERSAL MAN by @tkendall.bsky.social — if I compare these early pages to NEUROMANCER, it is (1) to emphasize that the prose has Gibson’s rightfully celebrated quality of fluid confidence (every page has at least one paragraph that is just as fucking cool as peak Gibson)…

HIKTUM

Interesting review of how I killed the universal man up here youtu.be/LE4ABZPb9eA?...

Tapping the sign in solidarity

Interesting review of how I killed the universal man up here youtu.be/LE4ABZPb9eA?...

youtu.be/6NOIIZMCJtg?si… had a really enjoyable (for me at least) talk with @chriszeischegg here:

The Bookworm's Rules | Reading advice from Michael Silverblatt biblioklept.org/2026/02/16/t...

Thomas Kendall's How I Killed the Universal Man (Book acquired, 23 Jan. 2026) biblioklept.org/2026/01/29/t...

And then the first of our essays: the inestimable @megapolisomancy.bsky.social on (what else?) the weird. What is really striking about this piece is the way in which it advocates for critical reading as productive practice, for "weird reading as a way of thinking critically about the world."

open.substack.com/pub/thomaskend…

It was really awesome to work on this piece and learn about weird fiction from the best person to learn from about weird fiction!

Join me and, eventually, @ckunzelman.bsky.social for the new episode of SFULTRA, the antagonistic SF podcast most favoured by formless spawn who dwell in N'kai, 'neath the ruins of Yoth. After some general Lovecraft thoughts, focus settles on Alan Moore's Providence. www.patreon.com/posts/sfultr...

Many thanks to @sd-stewart.bsky.social for putting down some (very astute and kind) thoughts on 'The Veldt Institute' and to HFR for hosting!

If anyone is looking for something to recommend for any awards you might be associated with, "Reading Weird Fiction in an Age of Fascism" by Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social deserves all the awards. Essential reading. ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/05/02/r...

"We are watching a slasher movie...We are young and drunk and animated by indiscriminate libidos. We are laughing at the kills. We are scrolling on our phones. We are discreetly touching each other beneath our clothes." Today on ergot.: "Slasher" by Samantha Barrett www.ergot.press/authors/Sama...

Honoured to have’The Autodidacts’ included in this list by @matthewkinlin.bsky.social alongside Kevin Killian and other great contemporary writers

Thomas Kendall at Black Spring Books, Brooklyn reading from “How I Killed the Universal Man.” @whiskeytit.com

I could beat up a million babies. Vincent almost laughs at the idea, sees himself rampaging through an American football field full of infants with absurdly large shoulder pads.

He wishes everything was tone and resonance and description a total conceptual impossibility. Like colours and shapes. Then he wouldn’t have to pretend reality was communicable

Like the body was a restraint required to experience the materiality of space and space was like ‘oh fuck your body.’ Or like the body was to life what a bed sheet with cutout holes for eyes and animated by some mournful desire for attention was to the idea of death.

The rain arrives, reducing everything to shape and colour. The windscreen fogging like a cataract though the effects are far more malevolent than anything those dainty handed impressionists thought to so sentimentally beautify.

She looks out at the sea and watches as the lightning does something sublimely terrifying to the world. Rendering the world an organ, turning the sky internal, and revealing its subordination.

The vape tastes like the holy spirit dipped in sugar

this one completely wrecked my head for some reason, sorry for the delay bsky.app/profile/did:...

🙌🏻

I'm starting a new series on my podcast SFULTRA (www.patreon.com/SFULTRA) covering my first time reading through the work of William S. Burroughs. It's called Right Where You Are Sitting Now. I made this trailer for it. I'll be keeping this thread updated with each new episode.

‘In essence, the world can’t be programmed only intuited eg. experienced. Chat GPT et al. actually feels regressive to me in a lot of ways, though I suppose it’s typical of our culture that advanced forms of aggregation are being treated as progress.’

New interview up at 3am magazine! Thanks to @chris88.bsky.social for this! www.3ammagazine.com/3am/killing-...

Really lovely review of The Autodidacts up at TriYou: ‘I can say with zero exaggeration that this book made my life better…. And yes, I do think this book can be compared to Joyce or Wolf. It also suggested Don DeLillo. triyou.com/f/the-autodi...

Really lovely review of The Autodidacts up at TriYou: ‘I can say with zero exaggeration that this book made my life better…. And yes, I do think this book can be compared to Joyce or Wolf. It also suggested Don DeLillo. triyou.com/f/the-autodi...

Some recent reviews of how I killed the universal man

Rave review of HIKTUM up at Triyou: triyou.com/f/how-i-kill...

A masterful essay by one of the best writers out there at the moment

@alwayscrashing.bsky.social @tkendall.bsky.social @whiskeytit.com @specktor.bsky.social

‘My body’s a prison but it’s crucial you know I’m an abolitionist’

‘What Vincent wouldn’t give to be totally immaterial. He wishes the world were only tone and resonance and description a total conceptual impossibility. Like colours and shapes, he thinks. Then he wouldn’t have to pretend reality was communicable.’

‘Not so much post-apocalyptic as pre-civilisational’