iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Very casual blog post on a friday night because sometimes you just need to feel like you've done something so you can go to sleep with a clean conscience.

thehinterlands.blog

Book Haul Volume 1

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 7h

8 stories in, have liked most of them but "MS. Found in a Bottle" is on a different level. Extremely good, spooky, feels like "cosmic horror" almost a century before Lovecraft and co. Rocks.

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 07/10/2026

OnThisDay in 1849, Edgar Allan Poe passed away under mysterious circumstances. Of all the artists who gave life to Poe's macabre tales over the years, perhaps none captured them quite so brilliantly as the Irish artist Harry Clarke publicdomainreview.tumblr.com/post/8298154...

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headfallsoff @headfallsoff.com · 06/10/2026

sorry. unfollowing now. i just wanted to support queer poc authors. i didn't know he committed seppuku after a failed coup to restore the emperor of japan.

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Read House of Leaves for the first time earlier this year and loved it. The format was a big part of the pleasure of reading it, and I found it surprisingly funny in places while the scary bits were genuinely unsettling as advertised.

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Emmett Nahil @emnays.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

the crazy thing about making time for any creative pursuit is that you literally have to do what you have a gut-deep yearning to do or else you'll see other people doing it, and it WILL make you insane.

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Often I have a big Halloween themed October project, but this year I'm taking it easy and just trying to get back into the swing of the blog and my fiction writing after a crazy month of September. However, I am going to work my way through this behemoth for the first time. So far, excellent.

a picture of a 1000 page paperback edition of the complete tales & poems of Edgar Allan Poe

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J. Kiyoshi Kurosawabury @kislingconnection.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The Third Age of Middle Earth is followed by what the Valar called the "Attitude Era."

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Shout out to M. John Harrison, author of the Viriconium series, beloved by true speculative fiction ball-knowers. I haven’t read it yet myself, and his stuff is extremely hard to find at used book stores, but I’ve managed to pick up a couple of his books and am always on the lookout for more.

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Liked this a lot. Realizing I had kind of written off Judgement at Nuremberg without even learning much about it because it seemed unlikely a hollywood film could bring anything worthy of the material - will be seeking out both movies now, both long on my watchlist but neglected.

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

As a side note, I read A Case of Conscience earlier this year and in contrast to the youtuber “bookpilled” whose videos I enjoy a lot even when he’s wrong, Leibowitz is so much better. Case of Conscience has its moments but boy did I hate the ending.

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Finished a re-read of Canticle for Leibowitz over the weekend as I’m getting caught up on shelved by genre. Great book, but not a shock i didn’t get it as a teenager given its pessimism. This time I was enchanted by how funny it is and the way it balances an empathy for humanity with a deep nihilism

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

What was the best original SF anthology of 1972? Probably Again, Dangerous Visions! But I wrote a blog post about Universe 2 and New Dimensions II instead as they slug it out for second best.

thehinterlands.blog

Universe 2 vs. New Dimensions II

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Heinlein chat spurred by Scalzi and Paolo Bacigalupi talking about Heinlein and how they've written books that try to capture what they liked about his novels for the contemporary reader. Might be a good blog/video idea, going through the many times authors have tried to remediate Heinlein

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Very funny quote re: Heinlein that Damon Knight printed in Orbit 14

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Heinlein talk is interesting and frustrating as always. He’s still inescapable all these decades later. Delany called him “the enemy of good speculative fiction” in the early 70s which was pretty controversial at the time. Now he mostly gets brought up to complain about people recommending him.

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Wallace Polsom @wallacepolsom.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Eight issues of PLANET STORIES with cover art by Allen Anderson (1908-1995).

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Harris Foster - Biddy Blas FAN ACCOUNT @harris.zone · 08/09/2026

what zelda will look like in 2026

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

The USA has been amalgamated into the GTA. We are going to run the 401 through the white house.

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

New blog post! Stalling for time as I work on a bigger project by showing off some book covers from my collection.

thehinterlands.blog

Cover Art Showcase 1

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Now I want to hear more about Damon Knight’s open letter calling Sam Moskowitz the enemy of good science fiction

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

After @ckunzelman.bsky.social described his deep dive into the archives of SF literary correspondence on shelved by genre, I was very jealous. So excited to see this piece drop! I’ve spent the last year neck deep in SF of this era so this was a must read. Highly recommended.

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

It took a month but I have overcome my malaise and written a blog post. Some notes on the background and inspirations of the stories in Hinterlands Annual #1.

thehinterlands.blog

Hinterlands Annual #1 Release and Notes

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Patrick Monahan @pattymo.com · 14/08/2025

This is a masterpiece. Simply excellent www.instagram.com/reel/DMVGMIC...

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【Naru the Ghost 👻】 @narumynatsue.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I tried to draw it in the style of Naoki Urasawa sensei!

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

It’s just 2001 in new york city, except the internet is like a weird VR thing i think? Based on Bleeding Edge i’m pretty sure everything Thomas Pynchon knows about the internet came from cyberpunk novels. Also there’s a tv channel that only shows increasingly funny fake biopics

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

That’s not to say that people who like Nolan are dishonest or anything! I believe they are sincere. But i have given myself permission to not worry about it, because we just care about different things.

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I used to have complicated feelings about Nolan, and then last year I saw Batman Begins in 35mm and had a revelation: no I don’t! I had been carrying around other people’s gripes in my head for too long, and I let myself feel my own feelings, which were: that’s a great time at the movies.

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

One thing the odyssey has made clear to me is a large number of people have Christopher Nolan Derangement Syndrome.

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cmrn knzlmn @ckunzelman.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

eagerly awaiting the day they make a science fiction film so i can write a review of it and really get into the weeds about my literature of choice

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I note that the people who seem most shocked at pushback on Wilson’s review tend to be literary types whereas the strongest pushback is coming from film and television critics… perhaps there’s a common thread there

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

this will probably be the most read film review of the year! There’s been lots of good discussion!

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Are some people responding badly? I’m sure, and that sucks, but it’s not because people are more sensitive, it’s because everything is written in public and everyone can respond back in public

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I think it’s a little disingenuous to suggest negative responses to Wilson’s review mean that “people today can’t handle real criticism” or what have you. People are responding!

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

New york times columnist pointing at twitter for you feed “against the power that now arises there is no victory”

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

For all the “don’t make the torment nexus” stuff we really did make the palantir with social media and especially twitter. A seeing stone which in theory should give you an overview of all things, but which a malicious will controls, showing you only that which will drive you to despair and madness

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

A lot of people seem to think that a work of art being a masterful and sublime experience and also having hamfisted and goofy dialogue is a contradiction of some kind. These people have never experienced the work of Hideo Kojima

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Images are not jingling keys to distract us from bad writing. Images are what cinema is.

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Criticize the odyssey as you please, but it’s funny the universal disrespect for the MCU has been turned on a movie that is different from those movies in key ways, their only similarity being that they are big budget films that made a lot of money

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I’ve seen a few people know try to dismiss the odyssey by claiming it is “equivalent to the MCU” and I find it just baffling. The critique of the MCU was that they are sloppily filmed, authored by producers rather than artists, and undermine their own themes by refusing to take themselves seriously

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gita “the formalist” jackson @xoxogossipgita.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

You kind of can’t just be like ”yeah and there were some visuals there that were quite a spectacle.” A movie is made up of visual information. The entire movie is visuals. You have to talk about the images on the screen!

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

I do think people from writing backgrounds often make the error of engaging with movies as though the image is noise you need to translate back into words. The image is the movie. I had to teach myself this as an adult. If you aren’t engaging with the images you aren’t engaging with the movie

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Also! The Hinterlands Annual 2026 is now available digitally! Very proud of this, even though I think my writing still has a long way to go.

thehinterlands.itch.io

The Hinterlands Annual #1 by Alex Johnston

The first Hinterlands Annual, a collection of short horror fiction

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

New blog post! Quick thoughts on some great books and comics that I'm considering into my "canon". Kind of a mid-year overview, a companion to a youtube video I'll have coming out in a couple of weeks.

thehinterlands.blog

Canon Class of 2027 Preview

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Leo @infrabeige.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Book of the New Sun retold by dril

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michael lutz @ztul.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

What I will say about Dungeon Crawler Carl is that I have not read it and will not read it and if you like it godspeed but nothing I've ever heard about it has surprised me in any way because I feel like I actually already have read it but as a webcomic in 2005

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alex @alexcj.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

I was considering whether to formally review Dungeon Crawler Carl on my blog, but thank god Alice Bell has already done a much better job of picking it apart than I could. The book sucks!

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