iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 10h

I’m guest editing the next issue of Agita; send me your weirdest <1000 word stories about weird art. Authors from marginalized backgrounds encouraged and prioritized. No AI bullshit. The weirder the better. agitamag.com/submissions/

Issue 3: Ekphrasis
Between October 17 and November 17, guest editor Zachary Gillan will accept submissions of weird flash fiction that features ekphrasis.
Ekphrasis is the verbal representation of a work of visual art.
Weird fiction is a verbal representation of the world, in order to unsettle it.
We want stories that live at the intersection of the two. Pieces that emphasize the eerie power of weird art, whether fully ekphrastic or embedded within a traditional narrative. How does the weird seep in as reality is doubly estranged from these two layers of representation? Cursed paintings, uncanny statues, haunted mezzotints-send us your stories of weird art.
Publication date: February 1, 2027

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 6h

Treason to manliness is loyalty to humanity

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Nathan Makarios @paralogion.bsky.social · 9h

Shit man, this is actually what I need to integrate more into my work. So much of what I struggle with is my instinctive tendency to try to plaster weird over a bedrock of logistic realism and it just ends up diluting it.

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 10h

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Radio Saturday @radiosaturday.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

So glad I backed @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org on Kickstarter, both for the quality of their output, and the cool stuff I got in the mail!

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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 14h

My third novel, HERO COME HOME, officially has a cover! Preorderable from the usual places us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

The cover of my third novel, HERO COME HOME. Four human figures centred, the main image being that of a bearded man looking back over his shoulder (that's Oro, the protagonist), with a circle of symbols behind him. We can see a swan and a key. In the foreground are three people: two women, one with a mysterious marking? scar? who knows!? on her cheek and the other carrying a sword, flanking an older, balding man holding up a pistol. The possibly-scarred woman looks ever so slightly amused, and that is certainly very like her. Everybody else is not happy to be here, or indeed, anywhere

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

John Frow, Genre

The book's central argument, then, is that far from being merely
'stylistic' devices, genres create effects of reality and truth, authority and plausibility, which are central to the different ways the world is understood in the writing of history or of philosophy or of science, or in painting, or in everyday talk. These effects are not, however, fixed and stable, since texts - even the simplest and most formulaic - do not
"belong' to genres but are, rather, uses of them; they refer not to
"a genre but to a field or economy of genres, and their complexity derives from the complexity of that relation. Uses of texts ('readings') similarly refer, and similarly construct a position in relation to that economy.

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

You've all been polishing your weird art ekphrasis flash fiction, right

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J. Isaac Gadient (they/them) @jisaacgadient.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

it's about to be spooky season, so i've been pretty focussed on my eekphrasis

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

You've all been polishing your weird art ekphrasis flash fiction, right

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I still have some appendices to pick through but overall my take here is much the same as on Mordew (duh… but in totally different directions): loved and really respected what the book was doing on the macro level, found much of what it was doing on a micro level not to my interest at all.

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Pheby, you rascal

was used to expecting and wanting these things from matters to which he turned his attention. Like the reader of a story, he wanted to know what happened next, but the realm he found himself now in was more like the glossary of a book - all information was contained within it, but in no chronological order and without the necessary linkages between one entry and another that a narrative gives.
But much better was this arrangement of a glossary suited to the mind that he now possessed, if such a thing as a mind can be said to exist in the immaterial realm. He could follow the references to the other concepts that each concept held without first having to wait for this or that event to occur, placed into existence by this or that actor under this or that influence.
Instead, he need only to-have-wanted-to-know, and he knew it in its entirety.

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Undertow Publications 🇨🇦 @undertow.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Are you an editor or publisher with an original short fiction project of weird fiction out this year? Anthology? Magazine? Collection? Get it in for consideration in The Best Weird Fiction of the Year.

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cmrn knzlmn @ckunzelman.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If you are a graduate student in the humanities (construed as broadly as possible), what is the MOST EXCITING book published in the last five years to you? Please repost if you’re not a graduate student!

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Ben Lockwood, PhD @benlockwood.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

This was a fascinating issue to put together. Waste is so ever-present in capitalist society that we rarely stop to think about what it actually is, or what it could be instead.

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sean guynes @guynes.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Need some ideas for new books about sf, fantasy, and horror to buy for the weirdos in your life? University presses got those aplenty! And I've got the details!

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Jes Battis @jesbattis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I want to develop a course on fantasy and the nonhuman. What are your favorite texts, novels, poems, about the nonhuman, from the medieval era to the present? Animals, things, forces, armor, stained glass, spirits, weather, monsters, the elements—all that good living stuff.

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

John Coltrane.

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Lee Gardner @leegee.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

John Coltrane was born 100 years ago today. We should all get off work and schools should close.

An image of a young John Coltrane in the studio with his tenor, later used on the cover of Blue Trane

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Mark Stryker @markstryker.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

For today's John Coltrane centennial, I wrote 2,000 words re: the new archival release The Tiberi Tapes. Here are 19 to whet your appetite: "When I finally heard Tiberi’s tapes, the first words that leapt to mind were “revelatory,” “electrifying,” and “holy shit!” www.tabletmag.com/sections/art...

tabletmag.com

Coltrane's Shadow - Tablet Magazine

The legendary ‘Tiberi Tapes’ reveal new sides of the master, even to his biggest fans

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gkraine.bsky.social @gkraine.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

John Coltrane 'Alabama.' Had me listening with new ears.

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Ok the new weird has been against’d; back to Joel Lane. I can write, writing is a thing that I can do.

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Ok the new weird has been against’d; back to Joel Lane. I can write, writing is a thing that I can do.

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Undertow Publications 🇨🇦 @undertow.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Publishers and Editors! I'm taking subs for Vol. 3 of the award-nominated "Best Weird Fiction of the Year" til end of the year. Writers! You'll get a chance to submit your 2026 stories in January. bestspecfic(at)gmail.com

Esteemed Editors and Publishers,

I am now taking submissions of original 2026 short fiction projects — magazines, anthologies, single-author collections — for consideration in The Best Weird Fiction of the Year, Vol. 3. (Publishing Sept. 2027). Vol. 1 is a World fantasy Award Finalist.

I am seeking material first published this year, in 2026. To be clear, only weird fiction FIRST published in 2026 is eligible for inclusion in this volume. I will accept translated work as long as the first English-language publication was 2026.

Stories should be between 500 and 17,499 words. Audio only stories are also ineligible, unless they also appeared as text.

Publishers and editors are encouraged to send electronic or digital copies, via the email address below. (I am not accepting hard copy submissions.) ePubs are preferred, but I will also accept text files (Word), Mobi, or PDF. Please do not cherry-pick selections. Send the entire book, journal, or magazine to:

bestspecfic@gmail.com

Thank you for your time and kind consideration.

Warm Wishes,

Michael
--

Michael Kelly / Publisher / Editor-in-Chief
undertowbooks@gmail.com

Undertow Publications
https://undertowpublications.com/

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Dan Hartland @danhartland.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Very happy that @hararereview.com returns to SH today to write about an anthology of xicanxfuturism. “What all of these futurisms and the work produced in them have in common is resistance: pushing back against hegemony, and against erasure.”

strangehorizons.com

Xicanxfuturism: Codex 1 edited by Scott Russell Duncan

What all of these futurisms and the work produced in them have in common is resistance.

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

My old mentor Jason Bivins theorized about this “erotics of fear” as a driving force in American evangelical Christianity

representation. The first I call the erotics of fear: the desire for or attraction to that which is condemned or consigned to the realm of darkness and demonology.
Throughout the Religion of Fear, the greatest energy is found in the representations of what is damned, demonic, illicit, or carnal. The narratives depend upon not only regular portrayals of "lewd" or "foul" acts but extraordinarily detailed ones, ones which promise documentary realism or even, significantly, the possibility of a surrogate experience. One sees the viscera and smells the smoke of hellfire in a Hell House abortion scene; reads in techno-thriller detail about assassinations, environmental cataclysm, and bloody warfare in Left Behind novels, or observes archetypal sinners meet their grisly fate in a Chick tract; and hears anti-rock preachers painstakingly detail the demonic imagery, sexual traps, and drug propaganda they find concealed in heavy metal and hip-hop music. What does this fascination reveal if not an abiding preoccupation with, even attraction to, the darkness?

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Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

My old mentor Jason Bivins theorized about this “erotics of fear” as a driving force in American evangelical Christianity

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 20/09/2026

students said “Maybe our university should not profit from this” and then donors, faculty, and staff called them terrorists and organized to deport them

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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

never forget that our universities fired and expelled people for opposing this

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

a lot of people act like there's a trade being offered where we give up trans athletes in sports and in exchange fascism is defeated forever

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