iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Particularly pleased with the Birnie and Tufnell stories here

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Undertow Publications 🇨🇦 @undertow.bsky.social · 21h

Some may recall the great run we had with my 'lit rag' Shadows and Tall Trees. A Shirley Jackson win, several stories reprinted in "Best Of's. Our new lit rag, Pale Grey Idol, harkens back to that aesthetic. 100 pages at 5" x 8". A little gem of dark wonders.

Covers to Issue Zero of Pale Grey Idol, and issues 1 thru 5 of Shadows & Tall Trees.

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Julio Cortazar’s astonishing ‘Axolotl’…. ‘There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl.’

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This is a wonderful thing. Everyone should have a copy….

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Weightless Books @weightlessbooks.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

A new folk horror series from @undertow.bsky.social! PALE GREY IDOL ZERO includes work from @seanbirnie.bsky.social, @brianevenson.bsky.social, @stevetoase.bsky.social and more: weightlessbooks.com/pale-grey-id...

Cover for PALE GREY IDOL issue zero, featuring a stylized mask

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I’m being inundated by scammers pushing fake reading clubs, authir promos, amazon optimisation schemes etc etc. It’s tiresome. But I just got one from ‘Isaiah Archibong’, who sounds like a character from a Thomas Pynchon story, which made me smile…

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jessamyn @librarian.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

An aircraft passenger oxygen mask: a drop down passenger mask with air bag and yellow plastic mouth and nose cover, oxygen tube has been cut; Demonstration model used by flight attendant crew for passenger instruction. Has text on the side indicating that it's non-functional.

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Dear story readers and writers, if you don’t know about this wonderful project, check it out!

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Indeed, have long been bemoaning the decline of the band name. I mean, really? English Teacher, Wet Leg, Dry Cleaning, Handbag, Topiary, weather forecast. The youth of today….

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Dr Neil & Mr Price @drneil.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

It’s really starting to grind me down

The Barney/Moe’s Tavern meme

“Default AI features” Barney being kicked out
“Finding how to turn it all off in the settings” -satisfied Moe

Third panel Barney coming in behind “software update”

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

My story ‘Unhomely’ is included in the new issue of Interzone, alongside some brilliant writers. A funny one this (funny peculiar, not funny ha ha). I took an aside by Freud in his essay ‘Das Unheimliche’, in which he describes reading a ‘thoroughly silly story’ in the Strand Magazine, as a prompt….

Cover of Interzone #305 with list of contributors

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

An extraordinary book. Enjoy the trip!

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

That sounds amazing, thanks for the rec….

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Timby2 @timby2.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Rose Ferraby & the @ukri.org Rewilding Later Prehistory project has 19 new words for mud!

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Bob Fry @bobfry.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

#OwlishMonday The dust jacket of Woodland Birds by Phyllis Barclay-Smith (King Penguin 1955) Art by Peter Shepheard.

The back cover - a repeated pattern of a tawny owl in ivy leaves

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

'If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place....'

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Super interesting, thanks, Ray. Might have to revisit Marc Auge's 'Non-Places' with this in mind. It's subtitled 'Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity' but it was written in the 90s, so it's pre-internet.....

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Mark Danielewski’s extraordinary’House of Leaves’ springs to mind….

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

On 4 June I’ll be at The BookHive in Norwich, chatting to @oldweirdalbion.bsky.social about ‘Paradise’ and ‘Dead The Long Year’. I imagine a conversation about landscape, thresholds, Modernism, art, magic and much more. Come join us! It’s free - reserve your place at www.thebookhive.co.uk/evebnts/

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

I’m heading west this week, for studio visits, meetings, an exhibition opening AND a book event at The Bookshop in Helston. Looking forward to talking about my weird tomes, The North Shore and Paradise. Come and say hello! Reserve your space at www.ticketsource.co.uk

An add for an event with Ben Tufnell at The Bookshop in Helston on Thursday 21 May - including pics on Ben and his books Paradise and The North Shore

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

I’m heading up to King’s Lynn…. If you love Norfolk’s wild coastline and fiction that gets under your skin, this is for you. An evening with Ben Tufnell, exploring his two extraordinary novels: The North Shore, a gothic, unsettling tale rooted in the Norfolk coast, and new eco-thriller, Paradise…

A flyer for an event with Ben Tufnell in King’s Lynn in 14 May 2026….

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Today’s book post. New stories by @andrewhook.bsky.social @dancoxon.bsky.social and Aliya Whiteley. These are from a very handsome new series of single-story chapbooks called ‘ Infidelities‘, from the excellent @salopress.bsky.social….

Chapbooks by Dan Coxon, Andrew Hook and AliyaWhitley, with very cool b&w photos of, respectively, a row of books (spines not showing), a vintage car and a pile of knobbly pinecones…,

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

When the ‘omnilingual’ Anthony Burgess met Jorge Luis Borges, they apparently ‘chatted in Anglo-Saxon’! From ‘Visiting Mrs Nabokov’ by Martin Amis

The first page of a piece on Anthony Burgess by Martin Amis, with the information that when the ‘omnilingual’ Burgess met Borges, they ‘chatted in Anglo-Saxon’!

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Justin Hopper @oldweirdalbion.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

New episode of Uncanny Landscapes is out now. On alls the platforms. Ben Tufnell discusses his new novel Paradise - a brilliant slice of pastoral-noir fiction inspired by his decades as a curator of contemporary landscape art in London.

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

This is a great initiative by @uncertainstories.com - a series of beautiful little chapbooks each containing a single short story, given away for free in independent bookshops. I picked up this spooky tale by the great @daveyfrankel.bsky.social in @goldenharebooks.bsky.social in Edinburgh….

The cover of The Crossing by David Frankel - the silhouette of a figure against snow, with a dark forest and sky in the background.

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Phil Norman @mrphilnorman.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Any writers currently feeling less than productive can thank themselves they're not in the shoes of pulp author Alfred J Burks, who at his peak in the 1930s set himself a target to write 18,000 words a day. A day.

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Mo Ryan @moryan.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...

moryan.com

An open letter to Grammarly and other plagiarists, thieves and slop merchants

To everyone at Grammarly, I am writing a book right now, a really challenging endeavor that no doubt someone in Silicon Valley will think it’s fine to steal the day it’s published. I’ve been a profes...

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Thanks Ian! Don't worry, it really tails off towards the end....

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Ben Tufnell @bentufnell.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

It is here! Huge thanks to @influxpress.bsky.social @dan.coxon.belly.social @charlotteseymour.bsky.social, Luke Bird and Vince Haig, and profound gratitude to the blurbers: @aetwigg.bsky.social @charlieratpig.bsky.social @seanbirnie.bsky.social, James Miller and Aliya Whiteley In bookshops now!

The cover of ‘Paradise’ by Ben Tufnell, depicting a dense forest

'An unsettling novel of juxtapositions and surprises, Paradise moves between city and forest, bringing both to teeming, violent life. Tufnell creates landscapes that work upon us on the deepest level.'
- Aliya Whiteley,
author of The Beauty and Skyward Inn

'A powerful novel of psychogeography set between two landscapes, urban and rural, in a world palpably on the brink of collapse.
Febrile with paranoia and alienation, Paradise confronts the crucial, intimate matter of our time: how 'to be' at the end of all things.'
- Charlotte Tierney, author of The Cat Bride

'Paradise begins as an engrossing neo-noir before pivoting into something considerably stranger, in a manner that recalls a peculiar array of other works: Ben Wheatley's Kill List, Neil Jordan's The Crying Game, Michael Ende's children's novel Momo. A Kafkaeseque end-times parable of acceleration and collapse, violence and repair, it is a resonant page-turner fit for the Capitaloscene. '
- Séan Padraic Birnie, author of I Would
Haunt You If I Could

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Ian Critchley @iancritchley.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

I was just wondering what to read next when this popped through the door. Will read straightaway! @bentufnell.bsky.social @influxpress.bsky.social

Front cover of Paradise by Ben Tufnell, published by Influx Press. Cover shows a dense forest under an apocalyptic sky.

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womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

'Poppy' c.1852 by Anna Atkins, UK pioneer in botany and photography whose photographs created by the cyanotype process were the first ever to be published #womensart #WomensHistoryMonth

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