iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 12h

I think Library of America editions can usually be ordered in the UK. Pretty sure Blackwells used to stock them.

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Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 13h

"...with one particular book appearing to be a complete compendium of every paranormal being that exists here. It is unclear why such a wondrous room of knowledge should be suffused with an atmosphere that rips absolutely everything to shreds." Happy book birthday to @kuzhalimanickavel.bsky.social

A photo of a copy of the 2026 Angry Robot edition of A Compendium of Supernatural Entities Found in the Government Girls Higher Secondary School by Kuzhali Manickavel. The cover is by Sarah O'Flaherty.

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Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 14h

It would trip me up. But then I originally hail from East Anglia.

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Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 15h

"The dolmen arch was drab with lichen, and the stones of the avenue heeled like twisted palings. Clouds still rolled upon the plain, but there was a quickening in the air, and Findias, Falias, and Murias were etched in gold, as though they stood before the dawn."

A photo of the 1973 sixth impression of the Collins hardback of Elidor by Alan Garner. The cover art is by Charles Keeping.

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Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 20h

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Cooking fish curry for tea music. (Never not surprised by how much Andy Bell sounds like Alison Moyet ie amazing.)

A photo of the CD slip case for Always The Very Best of Erasure.

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The most fundamentally contradictory of terms.

It's good to have a very wide gutter from in which to look at the stars.

Also double spacing: "I know I haven't written enough and am hoping I have fooled you into believing I have written more even though you're actually relieved I haven't."

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Tulipsubprimemortgagesuperintelligence type benefits.

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"we'd like to..." sugary insult to injury.

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Ombria in Shadow by Patricia McKillip. Court intrigue and deep mystery in a wonderfully imagined fantasy city threaded and traversed by drawn and scrubbed out doors and passageways.

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The Year of Our War by Steph Swainston. A bunch of selfish ne'er do wells granted immortality by the emperor bicker and plot amongst themselves while leading mankind's fight for survival against an endless rapacious horde of horse-sized insects covering the land in their chewed-paper hives.

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Not just a herione, a heroine too.

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. A constant surprise, a reinvention, a love song to the genre. Gogmagog and Ludluda by Jeff Noon & Steve Beard. Insanely joyful levels of invention and imagination. A superbly cantankerous, foul-mouthed octogenarian herione.

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"She stretched out her hands to break apart Mrs Mabb's house, but upon the instant a pale-green something - or a pale-green someone - flew out of a gap in the stones and sprang up into the sunlight - and then another, and another - and more, and more, until the air seemed crowded with people..."

A photo of the 2007 Bloomsbury paperback of The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke. The cover art is by Petra Borner.

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How many epic music collections were helped onto the slipway by Geoff Love and His Orchestra?

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I am as cautious as the next person of publisher's hyperbole (perhaps more so as a professional perpetrator of it) but I do feel this in character shoutline for Moby Dick undersells it rather.

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"Also you were not so great, Not so very great nor small When as oozy muck you lay Or you stood as still, clear water On the highest ridge of the swamp land, On the crown of the barren fell Where you turned to soggy soil, Then to rusty soil transmuted."

A photo of a copy of the 2021 Penguin Classics edition of Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot. The cover art is "The Poem" by Paavo Halonen.

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Hope you had poo bags with you.

The light gathered beneath the trees, the shadow pooling below the streetlamps.

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The 1970s Halloween "spoof" (hahaha NOT funny you bastards) report on a werewolf on Nationwide - the BBC's flagship early evening news programme. I slept with the light on for weeks afterwards, imagining it crouched against the moon on top of the shed outside my bedroom window.

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Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

99p? You simply cannot go wrong. A wonderful book and perhaps the most consequential SF novel of the year.

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"At whiles with worms he wars, and with wolves also, at whiles with wood-trolls that wandered in the crags, and with bulls and with bears and boars, too, at times; and with ogres that hounded him from the heights of the fells."

A photo of a copy of the 2021 Harper Collins US edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by J.R.R. Tolkien.

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Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"These are the first shoots of a future folklore emerging from an urban Britain that might look soulless and secular but under the surface remains very strange indeed, rippled with weird undercurrents." @garetherees.bsky.social

A photo of a copy of the 2020 Elliott & Thompson edition of Unofficial Britain by Gareth Rees. The cover design is by Jack Smyth.

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Isn't it? The site is a bit of a treasure trove. A true trove of Tove.

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Of course she would love a song called Call Me The Breeze.

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Lolly Willowes (an amazing take on modern witchcraft) is a grand way in.

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