iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 6h

That’s gorgeous, Susan! I’d love to try lino-cuts one day…

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 19h

And I read it, in part, because you put it in the BL Fantasy exhibition!

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

A touching and beautiful Mayan fantasy, which seeks to reconcile past(s), present and perhaps the future in 1920s Mexico. The style took me aback at first, but as I read on I grew to love it. Highly recommended!

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The ultimate tarot fantasy, which repays (demands?) multiple rereadings, like all Calvino’s work. It took me a few goes to grasp it!

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Lost Glasgow @lostglasgow.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

London got an eyeful, and an earful, this morning as this gallus Glasgow girl blew her hooter to mark her 80th birthday! PS Waverley, the world’s last seagoing paddle steamer, passed through Tower Bridge just after 9.30am this morning, as part of a special anniversary sailing on the River Thames.

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I took great delight in this circus. Just one of several novels involving the tarot which I have read recently, leaning into my delight in the union of word and image on the page…

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

After a bit of a break, here's the latest illustration for The Little Toy Soldier. It owes something to the great Jane Simmons. That's a Lesser Water Boatman on the soldier's right!

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Utterly delighted by the Scottish movie The Incomer, which plays hilarious and touching riffs on folk horror on an isolated island. Gayle Rankin’s performance is magnificent, and so is the music and the script!

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I loved this very strange story from the 1980s, which is about the weirdness of everyday life in downstate New York. Filled with bizarre and inexplicable events, it persuades you they are no more bizarre or inexplicable than the experience of living in a middle-class suburb…

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I shall listen to The Handsome Family’s song Giant Ant, from their first album, Odessa. Also The Big Old Bug Is the New Baby Now, by The Flaming Lips, which my children adore. X

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

A new post in The City of Lost Books: Ursula Moray Williams, Adventures of Puffin (1939). It has everything, including information for trainspotters and planespotters. And of course puffins. thecityoflostbooks.glasgow.ac.uk/fantasy-1939...

thecityoflostbooks.glasgow.ac.uk

Fantasy 1939: Ursula Moray Williams, Adventures of Puffin

Moray Williams’s most celebrated books, Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse (1938) and Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat (1942), take place in an imaginary location corresponding to somewhere in Northern…

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Lucky you! They’re all terrific.

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

And Ballard was maybe the best at writing about those little islands - Concrete Island a great example! The Day of Creation seems like his Heart of Darkness…

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

There's a new post at The City of Lost Books: Mervyn Peake, Letters from a Lost Uncle (from Polar Regions) (1948). An oblique look at post-war post-imperialism, invoking the doomed explorers of the British Empire! thecityoflostbooks.glasgow.ac.uk/letters-from...

thecityoflostbooks.glasgow.ac.uk

Mervyn Peake, Letters from a Lost Uncle (from Polar Regions) (1948)

The art of Maeve Gilmore and Mervyn Peake, married writer-artists who moved from house to house many times in the course of their lives together, had a tendency to burst out of formal spaces (studi…

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

I loved the French TV show Les Sentinelles, based on a comic, about a group of super soldiers in WW1. Well plotted and beautifully shot and acted. It’s on BBC iPlayer right now, if you have access to it!

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Another strong recommendation, this time from the always wonderful Frances Hardinge. What a writer she is! Nobody else could ever hope to wear her hat.

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

I used to live quite close to this tree. I miss it!

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Terri Windling @terriwindling.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I'm going to be giving a talk on Selkies for this online course on The Folklore of the Ocean from the always-excellent Carterhaugh School. There's still time to join....

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

In its quiet way it’s just perfect.

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

I agree! It does get mentioned in the official Guardian obituary. Apparently Neill said it was his most difficult role - but he also said it expressed his adoration of dogs. O’Toole was great in it, wasn’t he?

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Ikr? Drinking Tokay gives him embarrassing flashbacks to his former life!

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

I loved Sam Neill’s films, but the one I loved most - unmentioned here - is Dean Spanley, in which he plays a spaniel reincarnated as a Church of England cleric; it’s based on a wonderful but little-known novella by Lord Dunsany. Watch it if you can find it!

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

RIP the great Sam Neill. I loved all Neill’s films, but the one I loved most is Dean Spanley, in which he plays a spaniel reincarnated as a Church of England cleric; it’s based on a wonderful but little-known novella by Lord Dunsany. Watch it if you can find it!

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Latest illustration: the soldier sits and thinks. Can you name the vegetation and the insect?

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

A book that deserves a lot of love.

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Glasgow SF Writers' Circle @gsfwc.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

#Glasgow One week today, join our Neil Williamson and Rhiannon Grist for Chilling Tales! Expect spine-chilling chat on Neil's new collection, Hand-Me-Downs, plus Rhiannon's new novel Home Sick. Ticket link below: @waterstonesargyle.bsky.social @neilwilliamson.bsky.social @rhiannonagrist.bsky.social

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Toy soldier on the move, with insectile friends…

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

This piece makes me wonder about the relationship between illustration and comics. How do they speak to one another? Are they different arts or branches of the same one? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

theguardian.com

The Guardian view on the UK’s first centre for illustration: visual literacy, and the sheer joy of images, matter | Editorial

Editorial: A national institution for this overlooked artform shows it is finally getting the recognition it deserves

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Soldier on the windowsill, with wood louse!

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N. K. Jemisin @nkjemisin.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

THE CITY WE BECAME is the NYPL's first "Big Summer Book Club" pick! All summer long, UNLIMITED borrows of the ebook or audiobook for any NYPL cardholder! And for a finale, a NEW STORY in the Great Cities world will be performed at the Delacorte Theater in Aug! www.nypl.org/summer/2026/...

nypl.org

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

The Second World War as a murderous scholarly dispute!

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Prof. Dimitra Fimi @dimitrafimi.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

(not sure how much of that they kept in!) @profrmaslen.bsky.social is in it too, and so is @ellenkushner.bsky.social! IMDB link: www.imdb.com/title/tt3946... It is available on Amazon Prime in the UK, apparently, and I hear it’s available on Hoopla in the US. 2/2

imdb.com

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Prof. Dimitra Fimi @dimitrafimi.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Off to Edinburgh today, to give a talk about Tolkien, and was just alerted that a documentary I was filmed for ages ago has aired. Haven’t seen it yet, but I remember talking about Middle-earth, Narnia, the Harry Potter series, and fantasy’s roots in myth and legend. 1/2 @uofgfantasy.bsky.social

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Er, that was meant to be ever-sprouting!

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

I’ve admired it since I first saw it!

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Rob Maslen @profrmaslen.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Toy soldier struggling through long grass while dawn breaks

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Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 05/04/2026

Another April and another day with all the seasons in it, with lapwings falling out of sunlight into rain… —James Aitchison, “Landscape with Lapwings” in The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry, @edinburghup.bsky.social 2005 #poem #poetry edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edi...

Landscape with Lapwings
James Aitchison

Another April and another day
with all the seasons in it, with lapwings
falling out of sunlight into rain,
stalling on a squall and then tumbling
over the collapsing wall of air
to float in zones of weightlessness again.

And on a day like this in such a place –
a few square miles of moorland in a round
of rounded hills, rain clouds and scattered trees,
with water flowing clearly over stone –
in such a place I feel the weights slip off
the way a lapwing would if it were me.

The place might form a frame of reference
for calculating weightlessness, and all
the weathers that are in one April day,
for drawing what conclusions can be drawn
from lapwings tumbling in and out of light
with such a total lack of gravity.

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Katherine Langrish @kathlangrish.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Thrilled to have contributed to this lovely book, 'Brian Froud's Green Women', along with many distinguished writers, some of whom are friends. It'll be published 6th October this year, and fans of Brian Froud will love it - as will anyone who loves fantasy. More at Brian's website: bit.ly/4cOoxUT

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Patrick Clarkin @patrickclarkin.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

A decent man (from the Tao Te Ching).

Tao Te Ching – Verse 31

Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.

Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.

Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?

He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.

(translation by Stephen Mitchell, 1995)

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