iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

My Death is good, and I'm very hard to please at novella-length so it started at a disadvantage with me. The Pillow Friend is my favorite thing I've read of hers, but that's a close second.

Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I felt the same way when I got around to it, as well as the other Tuttle collection I've read (Riding the Nightmare). Ultimately I think Tuttle is an immensely talented novelist whose short fiction just doesn't often do it for me.

pbbeta (comms open) @pbbeta.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

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🔥Yo! I had the honor of making the cover for the coolest comic, made by the coolest people🔥 "A deserting corsair and his hostage, an old pregnant priestess from Ile, must join forces to escape the leader of a vengeful insurgent group... by going Down North Where No One Goes!"

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Ramonkey Perales @ramonkey.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

My friend @aickmanwill.bsky.social and I are making a bronze age-inspired sci-fantasy comic: Down North, Where No One Goes. We've received few but great lil reviews of issue 1 (available digital and physical). So, we hope you like issue 2! Coming *very* soon! Less than a month! Help us, share! 💀🖤

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Up On Goblin Hill @upongoblinhill.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

🍂 𝔊𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔱 𝔎𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔎𝔯𝔞𝔱𝔱 🎃 The dim-winged spirits of the night Do fear and serve me well. They creep from out the hedges of The fields where I dwell... ...Then dig a treasure called the moon, A very precious thing, And keep it in the air for me Because I am a King!

Text: Great King Kratt

Image: a double spread illustration at a dutch angle depicting a harvested field of corn under moonlight. A huge construct of branches, rope, and twigs skitters and lurches across the field on many legs like a great artificial spider. It possesses a face of many carved jack o lanterns, eyes and mouths flickering dimly under its shadowy bulk.

Image: a double spread illustration at a dutch angle depicting a harvested field of corn under moonlight. A huge construct of branches, rope, and twigs skitters and lurches across the field on many legs like a great artificial spider. It possesses a face of many carved jack o lanterns, eyes and mouths flickering dimly under its shadowy bulk.

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Ramonkey Perales @ramonkey.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

AAAAAAND WE GOT A COVER FOR ISSUE 2!! Courtesy of EXCELLENT artist and friend @pbbeta.bsky.social! Couldn't ask for better art!🖤🔥

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

As I've mentioned, the reread is where they really come alive in my experience, but I think a span of years between first read and reread is best. I don't see myself being ready to do a post-Waterblack reread for another 3-4 years probably.

Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Yeah duh, that's why I sold it to you and not someone else. So you'd have to eat the ghost

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Dude you didn't even know you bought that off me and it's haunted

Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Nothing I love more than a British writer setting a story in the US and then having characters go on at length about candyfloss

Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Yeah? What do you call these, then, hotshot?

Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Bro I told you this in confidence

Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

One. It was carved pre-transplant, and he wasn't planning for Piaton to stick around. He just needed Piaton to keep the body alive until his brain synced fully to the nervous system and assumed the autonomic functions, which would take time. Then, Piatonectomy.

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Warmest congratulations on the release! It's been a pleasure following development, and something of an education as well as you've documented the process in such detail. I look forward to playing it, but right now I'm just happy for you.

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Gotta say I really want the one against the new weird

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Ramonkey Perales @ramonkey.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

"A seemingly simple narrative that hinted at a deep well of humanity and charm" - AIPT COMICS "A wonderfully grounded yet creative piece of fiction fiction with a surprising framing device" - ILLUMINATED Digital: ramonkey.itch.io/down-north-w... Physical: strangerspublishing.com/products/dow...

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Oh yeah, I should have specified "film" when I said adaptation, because there's a perceived objectivity there that actively works against some material. I will never get enough of different artists' takes!

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Oh yeah, I'm excited for both of those! Some things, though...there's no version of New Sun that works from a camera positioned outside Severian's skull, imo, and a Gormenghast without Peake's prose is like a swimming pool without water.

Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I could live without adaptations of most things I like, and actively, militantly oppose the idea of some (New Sun, Gormenghast). I've already got my ideal version in my head.

Emiel Boven @emielboven.itch.io · 16/09/2026

Reposted by Will Aickman

I own three copies of issue 1 and have read all three. It's that good! So do yourself a favor and go read this before the next issue comes out next month!

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Ramonkey Perales @ramonkey.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

be ready cause I'm gonna be sooooo insisting with this, we've worked so hard

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Believe me when I say Ramon has masterminded something awesome here, and the next issue will take you to even more fantastic and unexpected places. And I wrote a song for this one!

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The only other solution--and I mean the ONLY one I can think of--is to have one guy write the introduction to every book reprinting, adjacent to, or touching on Lovecraft's fiction for 40 years straight. Dunno where we'd find such a person though. (Maybe he could be real cranky? Just brainstorming.)

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Just had this idea: what about commissioning some anthologies of *new* Lovecraftian fiction, to shift the conversation away from his person? Give them titles like CTHULHU RISING or ALHAZRED'S APOSTLES. Maybe bring an editor on board who's helmed 15 similar books to ensure quality. Can't fail, really

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Even outside of The Problem, I can't tell you how little I would like to read a 1,260 page novel by China Mieville (or anybody, really)

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Nooooo don't share stuff like this, I'm at work right now

Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It's notoriously difficult to evaluate what age range a vampire game is appropriate for

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Sorry, is having a ghost in my house who always wants to talk about under-read horror literature and the contours of genre fiction a circumstance you think I'd want to avoid

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Not to beat a dead vat-grown copy of a mirror-horse here, but I felt the same way on my first read, and on my second I went "Ohhhh..." Not saying you *need* to reread it, but the trilogy has a very Wolfe-like "you read it the first time so you can read the real book the second time" thing going on

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

One of the trilogy's central themes is that attempts to achieve complete understanding of anything are doomed by the simple fact that you had to start by looking away from everything else. I feel like as a series it's motivated in part by dissatisfaction with "lore" and the fantasy of the knowable.

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That said I recognize that "Keep reading, it reminds me of Melville's famously well-loved whaling chapters" is perhaps not the greatest elevator pitch here

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For me the value in those sections is roughly congruent to that of the whaling sections in Moby-Dick, where the emphasis placed on empirical understanding and explication feels more and more ironic as you realize it mostly serves to distract from helpless screaming in the face of the infinite.

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You're gonna hate this, but in my experience Malarkoi works best A) when you've read Mordew right beforehand and B) when you've read Malarkoi previously.

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I legitimately think less of anyone who seeks to illustrate a point using the work of Randall Munroe

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And the worst lesson publishers took from that period, "the people love Mieville"

Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Yeah, absolutely, and I think it represents the point where he himself recognized that he'd reached the limits of what that format was good for. Then Wyrd Sisters feels like the place where the series really starts to actively and purposefully know what it *is*.

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The two things I love about Sourcery are the little references to it in later books where the Dean et al are *very* adamant about how they were actually out of town at the time, thank you very much, and the "unique opportunities" joke, which is an all-time pun. Eric though...

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Lur Noise @lurnoise.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

How lucky I am to be able to collaborate with artists I had long admired, and to find out they are delightful people.

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

"The chirurgeons insisted on it, actually." "Continuity of the imperial bloodline. It makes a certain sense." "Oh...uh, yeah. Yeah, it really does, actually. That's...damn, yeah, that's way harder to argue with. Anyway. They also said it was consistent with other men in my demographic, size-wise."

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I imagine the whole head transplant surgery having to be rescheduled by three months as the idea occurred to him on the operating table

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The infernal lighting is perfect.

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Seth Jacob @sethjacob.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I really like Prometheus, but I think one of its problems is that it makes all of human life revolve around the Alien mythology. I prefer the idea that the xenomorph wasnt particularly special…it was one monster in a vast, infinite dark full of monsters. Thats more interesting than the xeno itself.

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Will Aickman @aickmanwill.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Oh I definitely see Hauer (he's my main mental Typhon reference too, sort of mixed with Malcolm McDowell and maybe a bit of a young Jamey Sheridan). I think the Feyd-ness is in the smirk for me here