sharks + planes as formerly seen on Twitter

Continuing the periodic book rec posts I've been making here:

Consider the work of H.P. Lovecraft. A lot of people fell in love with the structure and tone of it before it sank in that much, or all, at the horror Lovecraft saw in the world around him was actually just repulsion at entire classes of people. Imagine a project of reclaiming that structure and tone for stories about— or by— the people Lovecraft imagined as monsters.

The Outside (Ada Hoffmann): This is dark, dark, dark and exactly what I needed at the end of last summer. The story of a high-energy physicist who sets out to idealistically solve an energy crisis with science but instead winds up calling into question whether reality exists at all, this is bursting with ideas and there is so much happening in it. One-layer-removed sci fi metaphors for the social construction of everything, for abuse, suppression of the neurodivergent, life under corporations, "AI" as the bureaucracy of corporate autocracy made flesh in a culture that views them as gods. Strong recommend, especially if you're in the mood for something raw.

(This book is actually the first of a trilogy; from the second book it pivots from unflinching bleakness and into the problem of community mutual aid and queer found community as a way of fighting back against bad situations, and that was just a little more hope than I'm able to feel right now. But that may well be what you're interested in so, if so I encourage pushing on._)

No One Will Come Back For Us (Premee Mohamed): This is a collection of short stories that come off like a cohesive whole, as each story builds out another bit of an intricately-developed shared universe about a world recognizably our modern one but with folk gods close and intrusive in day to day life. Makes me really think of "The King in Yellow" (1895, Robert Chambers, which you should also read) in a lot of ways. I've made a few efforts to get into Mohamed's writing and this was the first thing I'd found that really knocked it out of the park, so I'm looking forward to what she does next.

Undercover (Tamsyn Muir): Did you read Tamsin Muir's "Gideon the Ninth" books? Did you think they were basically okay, but what you really wanted was something like that but more fucked up and problematic and gay? Okay. If the answer was yes: Read "Undercover". (Alternately, if you read "Gideon the Ninth" and wanted something that was *less* fucked up and problematic but also more gay: read "Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower".)

It's me, your friendly neighborhood AUTHOR. As you may have noticed, updates to this page have not resumed as quickly as I hoped they would. Long story short, the recovery from my surgery is taking much longer than I expected.

If anybody is still interested in playing, we have two options:

Indefinite Hiatus - I just completely shut this down and pick it back up when I'm able to go full time again, hopefully 2-6 weeks from now.

Sporadic Updates - I post new updates when my health allows me to, which will likely be weekends and early mornings a few times a week.

I definitely haven't forgotten about this place, it's a lot of fun and I want to finish this story and keep building stories for y'all.

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"On January 28, a coalition of Canadians and Palestinians wrote to Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly demanding that the federal government immediately halt all exports and transfers of Canadian military goods and technology to Israel.
The coalition, which consists of Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights (CLAIHR), Al-Haq - Law in the Service of Man, Ayman Oweida and a confidential Palestinian asylum seeker, argues that the Export and Import Permits Act prevents Canada from issuing permits to Canadian companies to export military goods and technology to Israel due to the substantial risk that they could be used to commit serious violations of international law and serious acts of violence against women and children."

Press release link

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