lol

Roomba should have been a warning.

“I am not interested, nor will I ever be interested. I'm 61, and I hope to be able to remain uninterested in using it at all until I croak. ... The other day, somebody wrote me an email, said, ‘What is your stance on AI?’ And my answer was very short. I said, ‘I'd rather die.’” 🫡

you don't understand. as someone who isn't inherently good at art, stealing paintings from the museum is the *only* way i'm able to express myself creatively. i wouldn't be able to paint beautiful portraits. but by breaking into a museum and stealing the paintings, now i am

To be clear: this is 'Best of' is about AI, not written or assisted by AI. As David Simon put it, I'd rather put a gun in my mouth than use than use LLMs in my writing.

Very cool, to say the least, to share a ToC with such a stellar list of writers in 'The Year's Best Robot and AI Stories'. Looking forward to getting my author copy.

Tawny frogmouth named 2025 Australian bird of the year winner

Baffling, depressing. George Miller's legacy is in part built on his commitment to practical effects, to loving attention to production, to encouraging and empowering human beings to painstakingly create items of beauty. Now he's defending slop. www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oc...

The Australian Ditmar Award ceremony was last night, and I was honoured to receive the nod for Best Novella. Ghost of the Neon God has now won the Australian double (Aurealis and Ditmar). Congrats to all the winners, and a huge thanks to all my readers.

Congratulations to @trnapper.bsky.social on winning the Best Novella at the Australian Ditmar Awards this weekend for GHOST OF THE NEON GOD! 🖤

The Australian Ditmar Award ceremony was last night, and I was honoured to receive the nod for Best Novella. Ghost of the Neon God has now won the Australian double (Aurealis and Ditmar). Congrats to all the winners, and a huge thanks to all my readers.

Ditmar voting closes tonight (the 25th). If you're eligible to vote, and you've read and enjoyed any of the short-listed authors, get on it.

Today (17 September) is the 1st anniversary of the publication of The Escher Man. Ten years in the writing (and trunking, and resurrecting). Big thanks to everyone who's read (and especially talked about, and reviewed). Cheers. @titanbooks.bsky.social

Pleased indeed to see my debut, 36 Streets, make the all-time top ten cyberpunk list, alongside some true giants of the neon-drenched subgenre. Jonathan Cooke's Words in Time is a great channel - check out the full list in the link: youtu.be/HZOGEKl0naE?...

Having just finished Napper's The Escher Man, I can confirm this will happen to you. app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/0df1...

I have no clue whether I will get my 9 grand (I have 3 books in the database, and they're registered in the US, but I'm Australian). However, two points: 1), I would never have licensed my work to these bastards, and 2) Their business model is based on theft - this case has to be just the beginning.

Honoured to have two of my works shortlisted for the Australian Ditmar Awards - 'The Escher Man' (novel), & 'Ghost of the Neon God' (novella)(both published by @titanbooks.bsky.social). Thank you to everyone who voted, and congrats to all the shortlisted authors. www.conflux.org.au/2025-ditmar-...

Ghost of the Neon God by @trnapper.bsky.social is one of my all time favourites. nappertime.com/my-books/

Huge milestone for my current manuscript, a dark fantasy epic (Have I made a massive error, switching genres and taking on a story so ambitious? I mean: yeah, maybe. But that's true of every novel, that creative leap of faith, without a net).

No, authors aren't burnt out because "writing without AI is slow" We're burnt out because we're paid dirt so we need day jobs to survive

Ah, here it is. 'Aren't AIs are people, too?" I engage with this claim in my Asimov's Novella, 'The Hidden God'. The protagonist (Izzy) is talking to an AGI (Huldo) about a tech baron (Bookman):

I wrote this article little while back, partly in response to seeing the same idiot comment over and again in threads about AI in art (the, 'AI is just a tool, like a camera' argument), but also to talk about how we can fight back. I put a lot of time into it, to make it worth a little of yours.

A small milestone for my novella, Ghost of the Neon God. 300 ratings on Goodreads and still going strong. Thank you to all who've read, enjoyed, and rated.

Voting closes tomorrow.

A small milestone for my novella, Ghost of the Neon God. 300 ratings on Goodreads and still going strong. Thank you to all who've read, enjoyed, and rated.

I haven’t been this excited for a bubble to burst since I was a toddler.

I'm not physically attending @seattlein2025.org, and the FOMO is crushing. My meagre compensation is the virtual panel. Times below are for Australian East Coast. But if you're in Seattle, why attend barcon when at 9pm and 1030pm Wednesday, you could be watching me?

I'm not physically attending @seattlein2025.org, and the FOMO is crushing. My meagre compensation is the virtual panel. Times below are for Australian East Coast. But if you're in Seattle, why attend barcon when at 9pm and 1030pm Wednesday, you could be watching me?

1/2 Ditmar Award nominations are open and I've two works I'm particularly proud of: The Escher Man (novel), and Ghost of the Neon God, (novella). If you're eligible to vote (and there's a good chance you are - criteria explained in the linked article), have at it. nappertime.com/ditmar-award...

Prepping for Comic-Con (@ozcomic-con.bsky.social):

1) Fuck the Productivity Commission (@pc.gov.au) ‬ 2) Australian cultural heritage is priceless: our art should never, ever, be given away to venal American techbros.

For any of my non-Australian followers wondering what is the #hottest100, here's the link. If you haven't heard of these Australian musicians, check them out. For a nation of less than 30million, we really punch above our weight when it comes to music. www.abc.net.au/triplej/coun...

One of the all time greats. One of my best short stories used the title (though I couldn't get permission to use the lyrics).

Very pleased (and frankly, hugely relieved), to have signed with the inimitable Joshua Bilmes of Jabberwocky Literary Agency (bsky.app/profile/awfu...). Fame and riches will now surely follow, and if not clearly my agent is to blame. awfulagent.com/jabclients/t...

I'm back in the ring. Comic Con (@ozcomic-con.bsky.social), Canberra August 9&10, and Sydney September 20&21. I'll have all my books (including the new Aliens: Bishop paperback), and should be mostly coherent. So drop by the table and say hi. Link in comments.

I should have mentioned this last month after I read it. "Aliens: Bishop" by @trnapper.bsky.social is a well written sequel to Aliens and Alien 3. I was genuinely terrified reading portions of it. If you want to spend some more time in the Aliens universe, I can recommend this book!

It's not often you see a book with almost 200 reviews get this far without a single one star review and only one two-star--especially a short story collection. But there is a reason for that: @trnapper.bsky.social is one of the best short story authors in the modern SF market. 1/2

This is fascinating: www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/I... Someone “worked on a book with ChatGPT” for weeks and then sought help on Reddit when they couldn’t download the file. Redditors helped them realized ChatGPT had just been roleplaying/lying and there was no file/book…

It's 5 o'clock in Enderbury, Kiribati 🍺

Current TBR:

Had a great conversation with Jonathan on his #Booktube channel, Words in Time (great, except for me being terrible at pitching my own work). 5 SF novel recommendations, including two of my all-time favourites: www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0oy...

The current US regime is threatening tariffs against Australia because we possess common decency when it comes to the price of medication.

Today (the 25th) is the 1st anniversary of the publication of Ghost of the Neon God. It was a very tough sell - novellas always are - so I'm beyond relieved that it has been received so well by readers (and also by award juries). Thank you, to everyone who's given it a chance.

I confess I have watched this creep towards the 1000 milestone. It's immensely gratifying to see, 3 years after publication, that readers are still discovering 36 Streets.

Awesome. Rachel at TheShadesofOrange BookTube channel included my debut, 36 Streets, in her all-time top 10 best SF books*. Check out her list, below. *That you've never read. Can confirm almost no-one has read it.

A friend caught her 7-year-old son reading 36 Streets. She quickly took it away. A few days later, he began writing a story (she sent it to me). First chapter title: 'neon lights in a subway alley'. It's about a detective who shoots people and occasionally yells, 'fuck!'

The greatest minds of Silicon Valley spent 1.5 billion on a Mechanical Turk.

LAPD fired rubber bullets at Australian journalist @laurentomasi.bsky.social