iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Been a while since I did one of these...

I didn't say anything, I just stood there, sweating. The boss looked like he'd been on a Rex Stout kick; the interview was taking place in a version of the plant room in Nero Wolfe's famous brownstone, and the boss was wearing an expensive-looking 1940s style suit. He hadn't gone in for the great detective's massive bulk, though; he was tall and slim and angular, and the irises of his eyes were as black as his pupils.
Also, the boss being the boss, the orchids in this plant room could fight back, a bit. One of them made a lunge at the boss's sleeve, and the pruning shears flashed out and clicked again. The severed flower fell to the floor, gnashing its petals reflexively as it died. I shivered a little, even though the plant room was hot – as hot as hell, a rube might say, and they'd be right, by definition.

Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

In addition to some sensible things, the RNLI merch included a replacement for the world's crappest lightsabre, which went missing after an Eleven Month Group meeting more than twenty years ago.

Me (a fat bloke with glasses, wearing a green jumper) standing in a terribly heroic pose while holding a small LED glowstick in both hands as if it were a lightsabre. The glowstick, green in this image, changes colour, but you can't see that in this still picture. You also can't hear me making VRRRM WHSSHHH lightsabre noises.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

And that got me thinking about the "Foundation" series with its succession of cloned Emperors, and, well....

Three one-watt luminaries of the UK's dafter political groups - Darren Grimes, Laurence Fox, and Piers Corbyn - labelled, respectively, "Brother Dawn", "Brother Day" and "Brother Dusk".

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

The Tories already tried this. It didn't work very well.

On the left, a picture of Robert Picardo as the Emergency Medical Hologram from Star Trek: Voyager - a middle-aged man, balding, with a high domed forehead, dark eyes and a stern expression.

On the right - aptly enough - former Conservative Party leader William Hague, show seconds after shimmering into view saying "What is the nature of the leadership emergency?" - a middle-aged man, balding, with a high domed forehead, dark eyes and a stern expression.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

It's not all bad. It does wonders for my impression of Mussolini.

Me again, having removed my glasses and stuck out my chin in a failed attempt to resemble Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945, never say my skeets aren't educational.)

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

All I could do was adopt a root-and-branch approach to the problem.

Me, a fat pasty git in a worn-out green sweater and glasses, with hair shaved down to a faint haze of stubble, staring at the camera with an expression of comical misery.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Post your favourite Lord of the Rings character. Wrong answers only.

Geoffrey Bayldon as Catweazle. A thin man with a beaky nose, staring eyes, long wild hair, beard and moustaches. He is wearing a tattered brown garment, something like a monk's habit, and his arms are raised and his fingers splayed out, as if he is trying to cast some kind of spell.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Last, from me - #WSPit AGENT OF DAMNATION - #Dis #PN #LGBT This one hasn't yet been released into the wild, but I wouldn't mind getting some eyes on it anyway - see if the pitch below piques your interest. (Think THE MALTESE FALCON meets THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS.)

Shax is a demon from the Lesser Key of Solomon. He used to command thirty legions of devils mounted on evil horses, but Hell moves with the times, and his guys mostly get Ubers these days.

With Heaven and Hell at a sort of detente, it’s not unreasonable for Shax’s angelic opposite number to ask a favour. A mortal “client” has been acting oddly, and could Shax make some discreet inquiries?

But Shax is less discreet than he might be, and soon he’s on the run from a shadowy conspiracy which includes both demons and angels – and whose goal seems to be to let their client in on a secret that mortals are not meant to know.

And so, with the help of his demon best friend Amy, a sexy djinni, the world’s (possibly) last and (certainly) least ritual magician, a crew of increasingly baffled angels, and a modicum of strong language*, Shax sets out to trace this conspiracy to its roots – all the way up to its roots. Along the way, some secrets are revealed, such as the true nature of the afterlife, why the Devil quotes Len Deighton as well as Scripture to his purpose, how God bestows His healing grace on consumer electronics, and why the Last Trump is going to sound so, so much worse than you could possibly imagine.

*All right, a f***ton of swearing.**
**And that’s a f***ton avoirdupois – no lightweight metric f***tonnes here.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Next #WSPit THE NINTH KNIGHT - #P #Dis #F #LGBT Eight knights set out on quests for adventure - but an enigmatic ninth knight shadows them all. Features fights against the traditional enemies of knights - dragons, ogres, poor people, poor map reading, mid-life crises...

Cover for THE NINTH KNIGHT - nine swords, points together in a circle, with various heraldic designs in strips above and below. (They actually constitute a kind of cheat-sheet for the knights' shields in the book, which are described in proper heraldic terms in the text.)

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

OK, let's go: #WSPit First up, FELONS IN THE EYES OF GOD - #P #Dis #SF #LGBT Two ambassadors clash with each other and the baffling AI governing a planet, while a starship captain approaches, carrying a cargo which might mean the end of everything. Diverse cast, high concepts, 'orrible monsters.

Cover for FELONS IN THE EYES OF GOD - a (rather clunky) starship zooming into the bottom right of the panel on a column of white light.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

La granda verda orikteropo kantas al la brikon. The large green aardvark sings to the brick. OK, the Esperanto was computer generated, but the artistic interpretation is all me, baby.

Extremely crude line drawing of an aardvark singing to a brick. It's actually supposed to be a green aardvark, but, well, colour images? In this economy?

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Sorry, but I kept thinking about Trump's overall "strategy" for the whole Venezuela thing, and this image formed irresistably in my mind.

Screencap from "Withnail & I": Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and Marwood (Paul McGann) standing in the pouring rain. It's the moment where Withnail is saying "We've gone on holiday by mistake", only the added text reads "We've invaded Venezuela by mistake!"

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

The woolly hat is nice, but it is not as good as the one I already have, which lights up.

Me, with more of my face visible (there's always a down side), wearing a woolly hat with a LED lamp, the glare from which is basically obscuring the upper half of my head.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

My dear sister has sent me woolly things, including one of those neck gaiter affairs, so I can cosplay as a cuddly ICE agent.

Picture of me, muffled in woolly hat and neck gaiter, with only a pair of staring eyes behind my glasses visible.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

If you see this, I IMPLORE you to post a picture from whatever device you're using without explanation.

An office. In the foreground, the top of a computer monitor, surmounted by a black and white picture of a badger. As requested, no explanation is herewith provided.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

"Are you sitting two-square comfortybold on your botty? Then I'll begin."

Keir Starmer, looking serious as befits the Prime Minister, making an Official Announcement at a podium. Closed captions in front of him read "there's a famous slogan in the United Kingdom"

(Also considered: "Skegness is so bracing" and "Santos Uncle Joe's Mint Balls Keep You All Aglow")

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Ah, brings back fond memories of my Economy Laptop.

Palm IIIx with clip-on folding keyboard, and yes, I actually wrote stuff on it.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Hey, "Institute for Family Studies"? FTFY.

Institute for Family Studies article headline, amended to read "Men Are In Trouble. Maybe Not Paying Attention To Complete Pillocks Is A Solution."

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Don't think I can do a movie - how about an episode of "Hammer House of Horror", though? Specifically, the "Carpathian Eagle" one.

Screenshot from "Carpathian Eagle" where Suzanne Danielle is about to lure a very young Pierce Brosnan away for some involuntary cardiectomy. (Blonde woman in pink dress and white belt, and rather obviously braless, standing next to a hunky dark-haired guy in a blue sweater, sitting on a swing in a park.) That swing is long gone now, but they're in Lowndes Park, you can see Skottowe's Pond and what was then the Waitrose car park behind them. About ten-fifteen minutes' walk from where I'm sat right now.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

Convincing you to read my novel with the first sentence. Share yours if you want. (Start of "Felons in the Eyes of God".)

Header line: Felons in the Eyes of God by Stephen James Wright Page 1 of 214

CHAPTER ONE

Laura
I'm reasonably sure this guy isn't actually human, and I am dead certain that he's creeping me out. Still. I need this deal, so I'm keeping the creepy feelings well under control.
I hope.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

Something I wrote a while back, here:https://stevejwright.com/2023/02/16/now-is-the-winter-of-our-ai-content/

Books are not fungible. But AI content is. You can order it by the yard, or by the bucketful, or whatever metaphor appeals to you. It’s bean-counter heaven – you can get as much “consistent reading experience” as you like, any time you like, at the click of a switch.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

People have been posting consoling cat pictures. I would follow suit, but am handicapped by not having a cat. So, I invite you to enjoy this picture of the absence of a cat.

Snow, with the rather cartoonish imprint of a cat's paws (specifically, next door's cat, just after it jumped off our windowsill.)

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

*sigh* Once again, I hate being right. From my long piece (stevejwright.com/2025/01/30/t...) about AI and its failings:

There is, I suppose, one actual, valid, use case. If you want something with a predictable format, and one for which fact-checking is completely irrelevant – well, you could certainly get a chatbot to turn out any number of newspaper opinion columns, at least from some opinion-column writers. No, “Generative AI” cannot replace genuine human expertise. No, it cannot replace genuine human creativity. But I am not the only person to observe that it can, in fact, replace Boris Johnson14. Since I think Boris Johnson could be more usefully replaced by an empty space, I don’t think this is much of a win for AI.

14. It would not surprise me in the least if Boris Johnson was already using ChatGPT or similar to produce his columns. After all, actually writing all that stuff would seriously cut into his drinking and shagging time, wouldn’t it?

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

It's still ticking upwards. I don't think this is going to go down in history as one of Keir Starmer's greatest ideas.

Screenshot of UK government petitions website, the salient details being the title: "Do not introduce Digital ID cards" and the number of signatures: 2,360,393.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

A little piece of Hookland has arrived!

"The Latchless Door: Rhymes & Songs of Hookland", seen here lying on a dusty carpet with the shadow of a dead orchid encroaching on the bottom right.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

Fellow UK peeps, please spread this one around (if you haven't already.)

Graphic from the European Movement:
Leaving the ECHR won't fix migration. But it will:
- Destroy our relationship with Europe.
- Destabilise the UK.
- Put us in Putin's camp.
- Take away protection for our human rights.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

Haven't read "Deathless" yet, though with a recommendation like that, well, I must give it a look. I was introduced to Valente through "Radiance", which I remember reviewing on my blog. (Sample of my critical acumen appended.)

Radiance, by Catherynne M. Valente. Possibly the year’s most significant novel in the field of retrofuturistic cinematic epistolary dieselpunk surrealism. Admittedly, it’s not an overcrowded sub-genre, that.

Actually, I don’t know quite how you would classify this one, if you worry a lot over sub-genres. The author herself describes it as a decopunk alt-history Hollywood space opera mystery thriller with space whales, and, really, that’s fair enough. (I think decopunk is like dieselpunk, only without the stains.) Perhaps the best way to deal with this one is to slot it into the category of SF that Brian Aldiss helpfully named the Widescreen Baroque. (And, as the old adage has it, if it ain’t Baroque, don’t fix it.)

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

From one of my blog's long screeds:

I’ve read a certain amount of the TESCREAL mob’s output (for my sins), and entirely too much of it is along the lines of “here are all the cool things we will do with nanotechnology/AI/aneutronic fusion/whatever, just as soon as those science peons in the laboratories get round to inventing it.”

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

#WI{Snips Despite Berkeley's best efforts, the removals men keep finding things to worry about in Meredith's furniture.

The rest of the day went smoothly enough – not perfectly smoothly, of course; there were hold-ups and misunderstandings and a certain amount of strong language used. Berkeley was helping Mr. Thacker carry some boxes into the ground floor reception room when there came a shriek from above of “Mind that cucurbit! – oh, Hell’s bells!” followed by a crash of breaking glass.
“That sounded expensive,” said Mr. Thacker.
Berkeley shrugged. “We knew there’d be some casualties, so to speak. Never mind, Mr. Thacker, no point in docking anyone’s wages. Truth is, you’ve done a lot better than I was expecting, in the matter of breakages. You’ve got some good lads, there, Mr. Thacker, and no mistake.”
“Well, thank you kindly, Mr. Berkeley. Although….” Mr. Thacker shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“What’s the matter?” asked Berkeley.
“Well,” said Mr. Thacker, “I’ve born in mind all that you said, about doctoring and it involving some nasty looking things, and I’m quite sure you’re right, but this box here -” he nudged it with his foot “- well, I’m blessed if I can see any use for the contents, medical or no.”
“Let’s have a look, then.” Berkeley lifted up the top of the box.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

#WIPSnips It's not always easy, being den mother to a pack of ghouls.

“About flowers, and pretty things? – No matter. Well.” She glared at Horace, and at Big Peter. “It seems both of you think you are in the right, and I have no means to determine what actually happened. So the best I can do is this.” She extended one leg, and swept her foot across the game board, scattering the pieces at random. “That game cannot proceed; it is over, finished, done. Start afresh with a new one, if you will. Or not. Do as you please. But you will do it fairly and with courtesy to each other, or I will know the reason why.”
Horace sank down on his haunches, wrapping his arms around himself and keening softly. Big Peter just stood there, blinking in confusion at the game board.
“Mistress.” It was Luke’s voice. “Garland and I were not talking about flowers.”
“Do I need to know what you were talking about?”
“Yes, Mistress.” Luke took a step towards her. He was the biggest of all of them, half a head taller than Big Peter, even. “I think – we think – it is important.”
N’se-the-knife massaged her temples with her fingertips. I am dead, she thought. Why should I have headaches? Death should have delivered me from such things, surely? “Speak, then.”

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

#WIPSnips Meredith does not have a clean desk policy.

The windows were shuttered and the curtains drawn, but the room was not in darkness – it was brilliantly illuminated by the moaning glare of a carbon arc lamp. The harsh white light exposed a scene which did, indeed, look like the lair of a sorcerer, although it also looked like a warehouse after some sort of cataclysm. Shelves and boxes lined two of the walls; a third was hidden behind a veritable jungle of glassware, tubes and flasks and pipes through which translucent fluids moved, taking their impetus from spirit burners underneath. Beside the door was a desk and a swivel chair, and next to that, ranks of lead-acid batteries to power the doctor’s electrical devices. The space was already cluttered with half-dismantled contraptions of brass and iron and glass, and in the middle of the floor stood a work table, beside which Meredith stood, sticking out her tongue in concentration as she applied a long-handled screwdriver to the inner workings of another device. She was in her shirtsleeves, her collar loosened and her bow tie nowhere to be seen, but she still wore her beard and moustaches. “Oh. Berkeley. Is that coffee? Good man. Put it – err -” She looked from side to side, trying to spot a place for the tray.
“P’raps if I could move some of those papers on the desk -” Berkeley began.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

40+ appreciation post, reskeet with a pic if you're on the right side of 40. I remember being 40. It seems so long ago. Because it *is*

Screenshot of me - 62 year old fat bloke with glasses and hair apparently borrowed from Professor Branestawm for the day, sat in front of computer with a silly grin on my face.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

I believe the technology to house Musk's massive intellect already exists.

Picture of ZX Spectrum microcomputer. (Kids, ask your grandparents.)

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

#WIPSnips Meredith, talking to an estate agent, taking the opportunity to deliver some exposition about her background.

And then a spell at the Devilmakers’ to round it all off.”
“The - ?”
“Oh, forgive me!” Frythe laughed. “The Imperial Military Academy. A bit of a silly joke, that. You see, the officials had a passion for abbreviation, and we would receive all sorts of orders and memoranda headed Imp. Mil. So, some wag decided that the place was actually, you know, a mill for imps, and from that -”
“Oh, I see,” said Norris. “I admit, I was alarmed, there, for a moment. So, you also served in the army?”
“Well, one does one’s duty. And a stint in the forces is part of the deal, and well worth it for the training one gets at the Academy and the practical experience out in the field. Yes, I spent a four year hitch on attachment to the Fourth Fusiliers, and I was gazetted captain, so I could swagger around in the uniform and put on airs if I wanted to. But, frankly, I’m much happier conducting my researches somewhere people aren’t likely to be shooting at me. I suppose -” Frythe’s light tone became more serious “- that I’m still fighting a war, really. A war against disease, and the oldest and canniest enemy of them all. Death.” He smiled wryly, and continued, in a more casual tone, “Of course, I know it can only be a desperate, last-ditch holding action!

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

#WIPSnips Some people like to introduce characters by showing them as they go about their everyday lives. Meet N'se-the-knife.

N’se-the-knife hissed in exasperation. She bore down harder, whispering the secret words as she carved the marks, again, into the dead girl’s chest. Her amber eyes glowed with the power of her will, focused entirely on this one working, this one task. She could feel her ancestors beside her and within her, all chanting in unison, and her vision reached out into the great void, and found -
Nothing.
The marks were just marks, bloodless gashes in the flesh. The corpse was just a corpse. She looked down, at the still, waxen face, at the pale lips that she had kissed so many times…. She stood up, raising herself to her full height, her cloud of wiry hair brushing against the ceiling of the vault. Still standing astride the dead girl’s body, she declaimed, “She has gone.”
A low, wordless moan sounded from the circle of watchers. One of them – Luke, it was Luke – said thickly, “She… does not rise?”
“She does not.” N’se-the-knife stepped down from the stone slab. She reached out for a cloth, and carefully cleaned the bone-handled knife. Only after that did she take a cerement and wrap it around her lean, bare body.

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

#WIPSnips - offstage, the forces of righteousness are gathering, or at least having tea together.

Indeed, the mother seemed to think that she shunned the society of youths of her own age, and would go ‘mooning over old poetry by lamp-light’ instead of meeting with her peers. The mother ascribes much of the decline in her daughter’s health to this behaviour.”
“She may have a point. Reading poetry in a graveyard by night is scarcely the most salubrious of recreations. It smacks of the morbid fantasizing indulged in by some young persons of tender and impressionable years.”
“I would not have thought that likely – such problems are usually the purview of the aristocracy, and the family is more of the respectable lower middle class type.”
“In my experience,” said Wemys, “psychological morbidities may arise in any manner of person; the more complex ones are found mostly in the aristocracy, only because the aristocracy alone have the money and leisure with which to indulge them. You must concede, surely, that these poetical expeditions sound very like a pretext for the girl to slip away and meet a suitor? Probably one who would not meet the parents’ approval?”
“It could be, it could be,” said the bishop, “and you know I speak with veracity when I say that I would rather it were that than – something else. But you must in turn concede that there is at least the possibility of that other thing.”

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Steve J. Wright @stevejwright.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

#WIPSnips Hair! I can do hair! Anyone who's seen my self-inflicted haircuts: No you can't Steve. Shush. I mean, I've used the word in my WIP. Here's Meredith's first appearance. (We are inside Mr. Norris's POV, and he expects Dr. Frythe to be a man, hence the male pronouns for the good doctor.)