iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

attempting to actually answer this question of course gets either very technical or extremely vague, so not that interesting—but I do think it's very interesting to keep the question at heel and take it for a walk across the megatext

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fantasy gets treated as a broad catchall term (if it's not realism and not science fiction and not horror) because it's the big umbrella superset, and sure that's fine from the point of view of typology, but what if you are asking about the cells and organelles instead of just genre boundaries

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Oh yes there are tons of other magazines. It's just sad to see this company go after the three oldest and gut them like this

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 22h

I've been inverting that question because I think it's perhaps even more illuminating: what is fantasy? What distinction, what departure, are we describing by this word?

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Congrats BFA winners and finalists!!!

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 22h

Also congrats on the BFA, Amal!!!!

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Jake Casella Brookins @casella.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Personal hobbyhorse, but thinking about AI in publishing is really making me want criticism to go harder on discussing the actual style & substance of books. If we just talk about plot & vibes, we're leaving the door totally open, & missing out on the good stuff besides. "It's just words on a page."

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buy my book @nmamatas.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

When MRM goes bankrupt, which magazine will you buy for three thousand dollars? I'm thinking Hitchcock's, which I would reorient toward more historical movie features and 4-5 stories per issue.

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Daisy Rockwell @shreedaisy.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

After 12 years of seeming invincibility, the Modi regime is showing cracks due to widespread youth protests. This is the story to watch!

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Indrapramit Das @indrapramitdas.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Not in India at the moment, but ✊ Queasy to watch the massive and all-encompassing state repression, but all strength to everyone pouring out onto the streets right now.

x.com

Hemant Rajaura (@hemantrajora_) on X

🚨 Breaking: Fresh protests erupt at a flyover near Safdarjung Airport in Delhi.

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Scroll @scroll.in · 10/10/2026

"We were dragged on the city streets. Multiple women have sustained bruises. This shows that the Modi government is completely scared," says a protestor detained in Pune. Divya Aslesha reports

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Helen Rosner @hels.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

If gretchen’s stunning coinage of “babyproofing” here doesn’t become regular critical jargon I’ll kms

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Eddie Clark @dreddieclark.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

11 very good to excellent debut fantasies in this thread that I read as part of my 3rd & final year as a Crawford Award judge (no necessary relationship with what ends up on the shortlist - still more to read, and other judges don't necessarily have the same tastes).

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"what should I tell alexa to buy in order to prep for the apocalypse"

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It's also contemptibly hilarious the way they expose their blatant lack of knowledge about the myriad complexities of world—there is a cartoonish video-game sensibility to this "generators and faraday pouches" twaddle, the mentality of someone who has never dealt with the world except through an app

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To these people, speech serves no purpose except market manipulation—there is no such thing as truth or even reality worth paying attention to, no concept of integrity or harm, those are mere casualties or byproducts of line go up

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These fantasies of (other people's) mass death are just a weird way for rich people to dunk on the concept of a public discourse by shitting blatant nonsense into it, secure in the knowledge that they own the media and will only be mocked by plebs where they don't have to see it

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Anton Hur @antonhur.com · 10/10/2026

It's a weird sort of larping … like, if any of this breathless prepper masturbation were actually true IRL, there would be a mass rush to shoot everyone working on AI as soon as possible, whoever can get to them first. But no one is actually bothered, because it's all obviously wank. Just eyerolls

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As translators we really don't nakedly hate Europa Editions *enough*. They shouldn't get a cookie for publishing translations. Fcuk this publisher.

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A massive firehose of new "content" flooding in every single day, for free? That's the only thing here that's worth money.

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They're exposing their actual business model here. Magazines don't make money and don't really have a platform in terms of access to a large audience—negligible eyeballs compared to yr average social media influencer—so why buy them? Because the asset isn't the readers, it's the writers.

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Agita Publishing @agitapublishing.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

This is pure bad faith from MRM—they are not new to this business and are perfectly aware this is all bullshit. These magazines essentially no longer exist: they were bought simply to use their reputations as a trap to suck IP out of writers and artists who don't know any better.

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Somehow the new publisher of Analog, Asimov's, etc., has discovered that magazine publishers have been doing cover contracts wrong for the past hundred years, and it's... somehow the writers' fault?

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R.S.A. Garcia (BUY THE NIGHTWARD) @rsagarcia.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

1. By your logic, every artist working in publishing is violating copyright with their portfolio (they're not). 3. You can strip moral rights w/o using those words. 4. I'd love to know who that attorney is because... 5. Writers & artists weren't born yesterday. Stop trying to exploit us, my god.

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Drew Broussard @drewsof.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Very grateful to see these publishers getting named and shamed. If this stuff is going to happen, and we all know it is, I'd rather see it happen with bright shining klieg lights instead of in darkness and secrecy. We should know that it's happening, and act accordingly.

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Jenny with a Green Ribbon Around Her Neck @readingtheend.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

oh my God. this is all so fucking dystopian. this bit in particular really got me:

screencap from the article I'm quote-posting:

In August, Michael Reynolds, executive publisher at Europa Editions, an independent press in New York best known for publishing Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet of novels, told a room full of booksellers at the New Voices New Rooms conference in Baltimore he was excited about the possibilities for AI in translation and “seemed baffled by critiques of it,” according to attendees. Europa Editions is already controversial among literary circles for leaving the names of its human (for now) translators off the covers of its books.

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LemonCurb @lemoncurdmatcha.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

So this is the shit the LeGuin bot was vague posting about

Ursula K. Le Guin Bot

Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivializes.
It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their truth-telling to sentimental platitude.

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K.C. Clyburn, Author @kccomplainsalot.blacksky.app · 09/10/2026

it's STILL BUY A BOOK FRIDAY! Have you bought your book yet??

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“Loeschenkohl added that he has never had "anything to do with the artificial insemination (AI) side of things before" during his career.” dicaprio-pointing.gif

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My favourite Annie Dillard quote, from THE WRITING LIFE

Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know.

The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time’s scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possibilities; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life’s strength: that page will teach you to write.

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Saudi Arabia executes more people than even the US—approximately one a day.

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Explainer: Sivarasa Anojan, the Facebook comment and the death sentence in Saudi Arabia | Tamil Guardian

On Sivarasa Anojan, the 24 year old Tamil migrant worker from Sri Lanka currently sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for a "blasphemous" Facebook comment during an online argument www.tamilguardian.com/content/expl...

tamilguardian.com

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The Lexorcist @lexidarlingxoxo.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I’m at the Pizza Hut. I’m at the house of leaves. I’m at the combi s n e a v t a i e o l n fo esuoh & tuh azzip

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eḻuttukkiṉiyavaṉ / எழுத்துக்கினியவன் @ezi.asokan.org · 08/10/2026

Canadian friends: On Saturday, Oct 24 at 5 pm, we will introduce our translated short story collection 'kaṭalōṭikaḷ'. We invite you to join us. கனடா நண்பர்களுக்கு: ஓக்டோபர் 24 (சனி) மாலை 5 மணிக்கு எங்களது 'கடலோடிகள்' சிறுகதைத் தொகுப்பு அறிமுக விழா நடாத்துகிறோம். இணைந்து கொள்ளுங்கள். @vajra.me @sugi.bsky.social ezi.asokan.org/2026/10/08/k...

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John Picacio @johnpicacio.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

🧵 Attention, Fellow SFF Artists and Authors -- here is my response to Must Read Magazines, after they presented an Asimov's art contract expecting me to waive all Moral Rights and Copyright to my art. And, I would strongly advise the following to my fellow pros…. 1/

John Picacio’s response to Must Read Magazine’s request for his waiver of all Moral Rights and Copyright of his commissioned art for an ASIMOV’S assignment. Short version — Picacio says a resounding NOPE.

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EMILY WILSON @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Many congratulations to Anne Carson for the well-deserved Nobel Prize! This is also great news for Translation, Classics, Poetry, the breaking of generic and disciplinary boundaries, and the fact that you don't have to fit a pre-existing mould to have a brilliant, successful career.

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Matthew Cheney @melikhovo.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

haha I probably will eventually, it's stuff I've been thinking about (and working through in the novels)

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A valuable short thread on why thoughtful critical discourse is essential for creating a landscape in which certain types of writing can thrive (and maybe even be possible at all).

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P.A. Cornell (She/Her) @cornellwriter.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Why does this not surprise me? Artists (and authors), your work has value. Don’t be afraid to walk away from exploitative deals like this. I did, and I haven’t regretted it once.

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 19/11/2025

Absolutely egregious from the people who bought the three oldest magazines in SFF and are attempting to convert them into a giant funnel of monetizable IP

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Phoebe Barton 🚀🇺🇳 @phoebebarton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

this is absolutely dire horses, and more evidence to me that Must Read is running Analog, Asimov's, and F&SF as IP lobster traps. I was glad to be at Analog's 90th anniversary a few years ago, but at this rate MRM will hollow it out to an Edgar suit before it hits 100

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I think I've read a few of those!

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I'm guessing that's Amazon pulling the number of ratings on the actual WUTHERING HEIGHTS, since this person has framed this as a "translation"

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