Extended Call for Nominations: 2026 SFRA Innovative Research Award sfra.org/extended-cal...

VP is a cursed chalice

(Jan 3) 🎵 🎶 I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me 🎶 🎵

With a knock on your door, a kindly wizard invites you to join us on Shelved By Genre's LORD OF THE YEAR, in which we will consider the popular but contested works of JRR Tolkien, kicking things off with a long rumination upon the first four chapters of THE HOBBIT: rangedtouch.com/2026/01/02/t...

The media using "captured" to describe what happened to Maduro is really strange. He is the sitting president of the country, not a fugitive!

(guy running for president in 2035 on Trump nostalgia) guy: And what did Trump used to say, folks? crowd (absolutely rabid): THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!!!!

I coedited a collection titled "Reactionary Worldbuilding: From Speculative Imagination to Political Practice" with Anindita Banerjee, Sherryl Vint, and David M. Higgins. It's forthcoming from MIT Press, and you can preorder at a discount here.

the classical formulation is “the magic goes away” and “the magic comes back” (Niven)

Homestuck Made This World 2

that the Whos celebrate Christmas suggests some knowledge of Christ, but whether this is our anthropic Christ or a distinctive Who-Christ remains obscure; some have argued Christianity was introduced to them during their refuge with Horton, which of course turns us to the matter of Elephant Religion

as adam kotsko teaches us, all gods long to die

Sometimes the scroll is startlingly on point.

Can’t believe Griffin Newman got to “fire AND ash? in this economy??” before me. I’ve lived too long at the top of the game. I’m losing my touch.

spotted on Facebook

Congressional candidate and staunch anti-ICE activist @katmabu.bsky.social loves sci-fi and... One Direction fan fiction.

When @danhf.bsky.social shared with me his idea for a special issue on The Dark Fantastic, I was surprised, honored & (truly) shy about it all. My dear colleagues @srtoliver.bsky.social & @autumnadia.bsky.social have curated an incredible issue here. Grateful to SR, Autumn, Dan, Gerry & SFFTV! 🖤✨🎬

almost too easy Wordle 1,644 3/6* ⬛⬛⬛🟩🟨 🟨⬛⬛🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I'm so happy to see this tribute to @ebonyteach.blacksky.app's groundbreaking book THE DARK FANTASTIC in print: a special issue overflowing with wonderful creative and scholarly work on Black girl protagonists in science fiction film and television.

SFFTV 18.3 (a special issue on the Dark Fantastic guest-edited by S.R. Toliver and Autumn A. Griffin) is now live! This is a special one (including SFFTV's first venture into creative praxis). TOC and articles for subscribers at liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/toc/sfftv/18/3

seems less than ideal that every day 2 to 3 Milwaukee restaurants announce they’re closing permanently

SFFTV Call for Reviewers - Winter 2025-2026 gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2025/12/18/s...

he'll never wriggle his way out of this jam

Astride of a grave *and* a difficult birth? in this economy??

Hearing about more and more restaurants that are community institutions on the verge of closing. A growing sense of local conditions worsening faster than indicators can catch up with: www.wpr.org/news/milwauk...

NO WAR WITH Venezuela? that can't be right, who are they trying to go war with

techbros: we have created AGI cognitive scientists: you fucked up a perfectly good spreadsheet is what you did. look at it. it's got anxiety

plenty of context here and it's not as bad as it sounds but what a juxtaposition

25th

Really fun interview with Marquette Tolkien archivist Bill Fliss at the Entmoot podcast! shows.acast.com/entmootpod/e...

If the last thing he ever directs is a Fortnite animation with a dancing banana, all that talk about legacy will have been for nothing

in retrospect, perhaps colleges did get too woke

We are shooting toward the most grimly funny outcome, which is one where the machine is very restrictive of what you can do with Beloved Disney Character Mickey Mouse but will still blithly encourage you to kill yourself

this is shocking - Disney has got to be the most protective of its IP of any corporation on the planet, but now they're going to let people make AI snuff films and porn from its characters? www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/b...

Will Arnett was on Conan and told a story about how Conan dealt with the death of his parents by accusing Jason Bateman of killing them. It’s so funny.

If you care about higher ed in America, this excellent piece might be the most depressing thing you've read in a long while. Small liberal arts colleges are in deep trouble all over the country. (The problems started well before Trump.) Many are closing. Some might be saved, but at a terrible price.

I just don’t think a country can come back from this

not ideal

Da Pope: "Human beings are called to be co-workers in the work of creation, not merely passive consumers of content generated by artificial technology." www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

on the AOL/Time Warner timeline this means we're two months out from the next stock market crash

we came so close to opening Hegel’s Bagels in grad school

actually I don’t think I like star trek anymore

i'd go even further and say there is a reason even nixon kept this kind of stuff to himself. you would have to go back quite a bit to find a point at which is acceptable for a president to say anything like this *in public*, to say nothing of in the oval office.

it's called meritocracy and if you hate it you hate america

unreal

and on the pedestal these words appear www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Man I should teach Rusty Brown again.

Pleased to report that I think WAKE UP DEAD MAN is the best of the three.

I’ve spent a chunk of this month just reading the hell out of these two books and I wrote down what I think is up with them and how they speak to where D&D is going.

Attention Trekkies and SF scholars! Honored to be giving a keynote at this wonderful conference next year in Paris! #StarTrek