“For God's sake! -- quick! -- quick! -- put me to sleep -- or, quick! -- waken me! -- quick! -- I say to you that I am dead!"
Nonfiction about weird fiction at Seize the Press, Strange Horizons, Interzone, Los Angeles Review of Books, Nightmare, and Ancillary Review of Books, where I am also an editor. Also jazz, metal, leftism. he/him https://doomsdayer.wordpress.com/writings/
2,686 followers 1,794 following 4,029 posts
view profile on Bluesky
“For God's sake! -- quick! -- quick! -- put me to sleep -- or, quick! -- waken me! -- quick! -- I say to you that I am dead!"
Just in time for lots of fall sales and later holidays, my list of Fall 2025 recommendations of 100+ new titles from dozens of university presses and related academic publishers, ranging widely across the humanities with specialties in American studies, literary/media studies, and sff studies.
Not just that but anyone you think MIGHT make ten times your annual salary, that’s a bourgeois person right there
December is usually a light publishing month, and ARB is going to be following a lighter end-of-year schedule this year while we do some behind-the-scenes cleaning & updating. That said, some cool books are still on their way; pitch us! ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/09/02/c...
I’m a leftist, of course I know what bourgeoisie means!!! It’s that you went to law school, or order a latte
Spinning up my 2026 “someone publish a collection of their stories already” wishing machine for Donyae Coles, J. F. Gleeson, Siobhan Carroll… who else are we hoping for? If you name yourself then you’ll be sacrificed to power the wishing machine.
Thank you!
I could swear I had ordered this at some point but it resolutely refuses to turn up on my shelves
Ouroboros territory, I know, but I’m sketching out a project and the heart wants what it wants: anybody have any favorite pieces ABOUT criticism of speculative fiction?
Most somethings, even, perhaps!
Let’s GOOOO!!!!! Been looking forward to this for like a full calendar year.
Ain’t that the truth
Horace Silver was born in Norwalk, Connecticut on this day in 1928 📸 Alan Nahigian, 1997
@uncertainstories.com is kind of an offshoot of the New Ghost Stories series from The Fiction Desk. They will be producing illustrated anthologies of short stories with a supernatural or speculative twist, and they have some really exciting plans for future projects.
Some people, somewhere, shady and unnamed, might have a PDF of tDG, if that sort of thing is helpful (it’s a book I find more frustrating than elucidating)
Spinning up my 2026 “someone publish a collection of their stories already” wishing machine for Donyae Coles, J. F. Gleeson, Siobhan Carroll… who else are we hoping for? If you name yourself then you’ll be sacrificed to power the wishing machine.
Well, who am I to resist that
Not yet, but I imagine I should?
This and Emily Alder’s book are on my shortlist to get asap!
Most of the good writing so far is in absurdly-aggressively-priced academic works. The Sederholm/Woofter reader is (somewhat) less aggressive and I’m looking forward to it. Someday someone will write a good intro/overview for a trade press…
Bah!!!
Ha and for me it’s historian brain going “ok, you’ve done a good job of setting forth your theoretical approach, now to dig into the actual application of it - wait a minute…”
Unfortunately!!
Always!
I was frustrated that Fisher set up the distinction between w/e and then didn’t do anything substantive with it
Thank you for your service!
They used to do those sales (I got three hardbacks on the weird for $10 each from them some years ago)! The (full price, oof) Cisco was my big birthday present the year it came out
Most of the good writing so far is in absurdly-aggressively-priced academic works. The Sederholm/Woofter reader is (somewhat) less aggressive and I’m looking forward to it. Someday someone will write a good intro/overview for a trade press…
Science fiction is just weird fiction with unnecessary explanations
Here goes nothing!
Ah!!
Ah, perfect - I actually have this one but haven’t ever figured out the best way to get started or pick through it
🫡
Ah, perfect (Delany, duh!!), thank you
Exactly like that!
Ouroboros territory, I know, but I’m sketching out a project and the heart wants what it wants: anybody have any favorite pieces ABOUT criticism of speculative fiction?
If you are okay with this, if you think this is justified, if you think people living on the street have brought this upon themselves, if you think this is good leadership, you may be able to fool yourself that you care about others but you don’t fool me
Preorder my “great” foreword and Undertow will even throw in some @thomasha.bsky.social stories, as a treat
Chasing down and catching pieces of discourse like stray cats, must be
My sources say the death penalty, for losing (to weird fiction), being considered for science fiction. I am pro-life and take no pleasure in reporting this.
Finally, an author for me!
Nonfiction reader that just came out this year. I’m doing an essay on that one as theory and another book of stories as practice that might be of interest to you…
I’m gonna write this book proposal or cry trying to
As long as he never uses those disgusting, terrible unreliable narrators…
Weird?
Gotta check out this Wolfe guy
… I wish I could tell Kai Ashanti Wilson, personally, that this is one of the most beautiful fantasy novellas I’ve ever read. It’s everything I want fantasy to be: strange, mystical, visceral, romantic in flesh and spirit, dense with suggestion and playful misdirection… and gay as hell.
I’m working on it, I’m working on it
Tomorrow my September newsletter is going out! @thomasha.bsky.social’s favorite short story recs are in there. And a few @sarahpinsker.bsky.social recs from me. And of course a new story!!! If you want to join in the fun, sign up today: coreys-stories.beehiiv.com
WILDEEPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I like that! I like the time-based def for SF although I might pick at “displacement” there - that would imply an affective weirdness that isn’t always there. Would be interesting to investigate that with/against the weird disruption…
Those would have been before my time, probably, think it would have 98 or so when I started heading there (probably initially to see Chapel Hill heroes The Scaries? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
Weird?
🙏
Opposite of teal deer (too short; need more?): you should read “Reading Weird Fiction in an Age of Fascism" ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/05/02/r...
tl;dr genres become genres through the technology of received language, which all too easily devolves to retvrn
This is also true of fantasy, crime, romance, and westerns
As a set of aesthetic signifiers it has no inherent political valence. But as a (set of) tradition(s) it borrows so heavily from imperialist propaganda and race science that it tends to lean right unless checked.
Science fiction is the subset of fantasy where we are being fashionable about science. This is science fiction's own novum: the idea that "science" can be an aesthetic and that then-current models and ideologies of knowledge, both in form and content, can be a source of both constraint and excession
I’ve somehow never written about Harrison at all (or read the KT novels, even), but I’m hoping to fix that next year
weird fiction is also dead; long live weird fiction!
Science fiction is dead; long live weird fiction
I think they’ve been doing good work recently!
Keeps things more interesting that way!
Good question! Lots of weird fic draws in sf elements, of course, but yeah, especially if we take a Suvinian approach to sf emphasizing a “possible” novum rooted in realism, it’s exceedingly rare (not impossible!) for the author to then emphasize the unsettlement at the heart of the weird
No, I must have missed that one(s?), sadly. Went to a million rock shows at the coffeehouse but don’t think I ever saw any jazz there. Did you?
Wellll note that KV doesn’t say anything about death! He answers the question he wanted to be asked, about tensions between art as something active and commerce/marketing as something static
Wait which of us is the Vandermark and which the Marsalis?!
One of these days I’m going to finally combine my niche interests in an essay comparing Stanley Crouch and S. T. Joshi in their roles as toxic neotraditionalist enforcers of jazz and weird fiction, respectively
I guess it’s going to have to be; I have an essay on VanderMeer and genre that I plink away at occasionally where it might fit nicely…
Borges on Kafka
🔥
One of the all-time greats!
authorities are saying he's gone from killing formats to killing publishing categories, folks, and media may be next
Per today’s genre discourse, Ken Vandermark on being asked “is jazz dead”
Science fiction is dead; long live weird fiction
Borges on Kafka
Revelation (The watch) https://www.wikiart.org/en/remedios-varo/revelation-the-watch-1955
Idly musing about Steve Albini singing in “Prayer to God” Just fucking kill him Fucking kill him Kill him already, kill him Fucking kill him Kill him Fucking kill him already, kill him Kill him, fucking kill him Kill him, just fucking kill him Kill him already Kill him already Kill him Amen
We had editors on the road for Worldcon and all kinds of other end-of-summer activities, and yet! Some great reviews and columns in August, and still managed to pull together this month's link round-up: ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/08/29/w...
Working on developing a classification spectrum that runs from GOOPY to SHADOWY
🙌
Book mail! Can’t wait to read @thomasha.bsky.social’s short fiction collection UNCERTAIN SONS AND OTHER STORIES from @undertow.bsky.social with a foreword by @megapolisomancy.bsky.social! Weird fiction dream team. That cover is stunning too. 🖤 📚 #bookmail
Grim!!!
You and me both. My review venues have kind of dwindled but the TBR pile has not
I already have three other books that DLR has sent me that I need to make time for, get thee behind me, satan!!!
Not gonna vote for him for dog catcher much less president so you all better find someone who isn't a heartless asshole
Working on developing a classification spectrum that runs from GOOPY to SHADOWY
I fully, 100% take credit for this
[theme music plays] ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/05/02/r...
More Episode 32 previews:
[theme music plays] ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/05/02/r...
